Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #310 Red Meat Is King w/ Diana Rodgers

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

It’s about time y'all, Diana Rodgers is finally gracing us with her knowledge and expertise. She is the co-author of "Sacred Cow" with my buddy, Robb Wolf. Her website, Sustainable Dish, is also chock full of amazing resources for her favorite sustainable products from personal hygiene to Dry Farm Wines.  In this convo we get into many of the misconceptions around red meat and nutritional value of that, even at its worst, being far superior to any other protein source. She pulls no punches in discussing where so many people have gone awry in her eyes. We dip the toes into the vegan discussion as a whole, specifically during pregnancy. At the very least please eat eggs during pregnancy. Diana strongly recommends you dip your toe back into the meat eating realm. We talked about children’s nutrition and I didn’t even know that Italy actually tried to outlaw feeding your child a vegan diet. What’s next for Diana? She’s all over the world, talking to governments, and other entities about the actual carbon footprint of livestock. Not to mention the nutrient deficit that “green” legislature is costing humans by pushing Vegan initiatives.  Go support the cause and learn a ton from Diana at her course, Sustainavore.    ORGANIFI GIVEAWAY Keep those reviews coming in! Please drop a dope review and include your IG/Twitter handle and we’ll get together for some Organifi even faster moving forward.   Connect with Diana: Website: Sustainabledish.com - GlobalFoodJustice.org  Instagram: @sustainabledish - @globalfoodjustice  Podcast: Sustainable Dish  Film/Book: Sacred Cow    Sponsors: Manna Vitality To get the absolute number one mineral replenishment in my arsenal head over to mannavitality.com and punch in “KKP” at checkout for 12% off! Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Cured Nutrition has a wide variety of stellar, naturally sourced, products. They’re chock full of adaptogens and cannabinoids to optimize your meatsuit. You can get 20% off by heading over to www.curednutrition.com/KKP  using code “KKP” Mark Bell’s Mind Bullet This Kratom Extract supplement supports your cognition like no other and that’s not just because Mark’s a homie. Get some over at mindbullet.com and use “KKP” at checkout for 20% off! To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys - @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome back to the show, everybody. Today's guest is somebody I've wanted for some time. Diana Rogers is the co-author of the Sacred Cow book and Sacred Cow documentary. Both are absolutely phenomenal. They came out a few years back, and she co-authored that book with Rob Wolf, who's been on the show a number of times. Rob had recommended me chatting with her, I think the last time he was on, just due to her knowledge on some of the core issues around

the regenerative movement, as well as the movement to go away from meat, the vegan movement, the Meatless Mondays movement, and just how that actually applies to kids in inner cities and third world countries and different things like that. And there's some pretty jaw-dropping statistics and science that's come out regarding how kids perform scholastically without meat, and academically as well as athletically. So loved having her on. We dive into a lot of good stuff in this podcast and go a little counter to some of the arguments that have been made by regenerative farmers in the past

regarding red meat, the quality of red meat and things like that, which I find very interesting. So she offers her own unique and beautiful perspective on this podcast. She was excellent. I most certainly will have her back on. She's also traveling the world quite a bit on the front lines.

I think she spoke at, I don't know, I don't think it was the World Economic Forum, but UN, you know, United Nations Climate Summit. And she was one of the only people there, I think the only person there actually talking about the importance of meat and red meat in particular with healing the soil, regenerating the land and sequestering carbon and most everyone else there, drum roll please, was recommending crickets, cockroaches and a bunch of other bullshit that does not regenerate

and does come at its own carbon impact and does come with its own health consequences. The way we've been eating has worked since the dawn of time and where we find ourselves in a unique position now where we, we uniquely have the ability and the privilege to say that we no longer want to eat meat.

Never before in history have we come to that point where we've said, we can just say, yeah, I'll choose to eat this or no, I'll choose not to eat that. For the most part, we've been opportunistic omnivores, meaning we eat what is available to us seasonally. And that includes both plants, animals, and fungi. And I guess it's more than both. I think fungi fall in the animal category,

like Paul Stamets. So plants and animals. And only now have we had the audacity and the ability to say, no, I'm going to get this. I'm going to eat this certain way, and this is the way we all should do it. More nefarious than that is what some of the people in positions of power are claiming we should eat.

And there's a money driver to that. We didn't dive too far into it in this podcast, but I have in the past with Rob Wolf and many others, the Klaus Schwabs of the world, the Bill Gates of the world, buying up Bill Gates, of course, now owns more farmland in America than any other person in the country and potentially more than any one person in the world. And, you know, he's a guy that's promoting pea protein and different things. He's promoting genetically modified organisms. He had a large stockhold in Monsanto and I think he still does with Bayer who bought Monsanto. So, you know, there's a,

there's a breadcrumb trail, there's a money trail, and it's not hard to piece a lot of these things together, but we do focus on what is healthy and we do focus on a lot of good stuff in this. And, you know, we don't, we don't dive too deep into the deep state stuff. Save that for another podcast, but it's all there still. It's all there. Over 120 meat and food processing centers have gone up in flames in the last two years in North America alone. That's a big fucking deal. It's a big deal and no one's talking about it on mainstream media. It's just not something that gets covered. When I was down in Sultara, one of the largest dairy manufacturers in Texas blew up. Fucking mushroom cloud. You can see it on video. I was watching it on Twitter. I was like, holy shit. How do I balance that, you know, reality with creating the more beautiful world of Hearthstone as possible, you know, to bring in our homie Eisenstein. We want to create this thing and there are definite cracks in the system. And at the same time, there are some nefarious folks that are working here from a financial standpoint and

maybe even worse, maybe a control standpoint. So anywho, this is a great podcast. Share it. That's one of the ways you can help this podcast grow. Just share it with somebody who's into this. Somebody's into regenerative agriculture. Somebody's into eating better. Somebody's into keto or paleo style living, ancestral living. Share them this podcast. Diana's got a ton of information there. That's great. She shares her own personal health story, which is phenomenal and very akin to Rob Wolf and Mark Sisson and many of the people that I've followed a tale through, you know, really degeneration before she got to regeneration and share it, share it wide, share it with friends, share it with people that'll listen. Leave us a five-star rating with one or two ways the show has helped you out in life. Organifi has been a very, one of our longest sponsors. They're hooking up people all year

long. All you got to do is leave your Twitter handle or your Instagram, your Facebook handle. My team will reach out to you and get you my favorite product from Organifi. Uh, if you're the lucky winner each month, one, one per month, we're going to have select. So keep doing that. That helps the show grow. And then also support our sponsors. They've been hand selected. They are fucking awesome companies that I love. Many of which I have told my team, go out and find me these guys, get them to sponsor the show because I love what they're doing and I want to help them grow. Mana Vitality is a combination of the highest quality minerals, amino, fulvic, and humic acids and nutrients gathered from some of the highest and lowest points on the planet to provide a comprehensive and enhanced mineral matrix. Mana combines the wisdom and practices of ancient medicine with modern science to powerfully restore people's health, balance, and vitality. I absolutely love these guys. They come in these really convenient little foil packs, 30 of them in a cool box. They also have the most psychedelic

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stuff. Check it out, mindbullet.com. And don't forget KKP for 20% off everything in the store. And without further ado, my sister, Diana Rogers. Diana Rogers, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. Oh, this has been awesome. It's been a long time coming. I've had your cohort and co-author Rob Wolf on the podcast a few times and have been a fan of his for years. I was chomping at the bit in preparation for Sacred Cow to come out, both the documentary

and the book, and had Rob on after the fact. And he's like, you really ought to get Diane on the podcast here as well because she's got so much to offer, especially, you know, in regards to certain aspects of the film and different things like that. So I'm super grateful to have you here on the podcast and I'm excited to talk about all of your work. Before we dive into Sacred Cow

and everything that you've got going on these days, because I know that it's not old, but it's also not super recent since that came out. I'd love to find out what kind of set you on this path of understanding health and wellness in a different way than most. Yeah, definitely. Like Rob and so many of the nutrition folks that were early in the ancestral health and paleo type movement, I was really sick. So I had undiagnosed celiac disease and I didn't know until I was 26. And when I first went gluten-free, I met with the like head dietician in my area, specialist in gluten-free diets.

And she just gave me a bunch of coupons for like frozen gluten-free. Actually, there was like Amy's brand was the only one that was doing gluten-free. So it was vegetarian gluten-free. And so it did help a little bit, but I still had this like blood sugar roller coaster. I didn't understand why. And I kept like running to the doctors, like asking them to test my blood sugar. I thought I was diabetic. I was like passing out from blood sugar dysregulation.

And I was working in the food space. I was doing marketing for Whole Foods Market and advertising agencies and things like that. And decided to switch my career to become a dietician to learn more about nutrition first through like a more holistic type program that's sort of focused on Weston A. Price nutrition. And then towards the end of that program, it was 2010, we were supposed to read a diet book, follow the diet recommendations in that book, and then write a report on our experience. And so this book, The Paleo Solution had just come out out and so i read that book i followed the diet and my life went from like black and white to color like um i'm not a huge sweet potato fan so i just was sort of like did like paleo keto uh just like you know didn't do much starches are you more of a are you more of a polar type? Using Weston A. Price's terminology,

are you more of a polar type, like less carbs, higher fat? Well, ironically, I am also highly sensitive to fat. Oh, interesting. Okay. Genetic lottery there. So I have to be kind of like high protein, low carb, and low fat. Wow. Very interesting.

Yeah. Super fun. Right. So, yeah. But then like even carnivore isn't good for me either. Like it's been a long kind of, well, and also, I mean, 26 years of being screwed up from celiac disease doesn't help. Right.

Because like I have so much already just like damage from that. Um, anyway, um, I just like, I could go from breakfast to lunch without a snack. Like that was crazy. I could like miss lunch and not pass out or, uh, feel really sweaty and like ragey. And I just decided like, I have to learn more about this. And I wanted to, I got the credential of RD part-time. It took me seven years to do it. Like I was like raising kids and working and trying to take the biochem classes at night and stuff

because I wanted to be able to take insurance. I wanted to be like a little more respected than someone, cause anyone can really call themselves a nutritionist. Like anyone from like a, you know, you can get like a weekend certification in nutrition and call yourself a nutritionist. Um, and it's really served me well because now I can, um, I can use that credential to now, um, you to now show evidence for why I think a lot of the current nutrition recommendations are wrong. So that was my path on the nutrition. I had a tangential path with sustainability and farming.

I was married to a farmer and lived on a farm this whole time. We recently divorced, but so I was living like catching chickens and like, you know, tending sheep this whole time as well. And so I, you know, noticed when I was becoming a dietitian in the program that, you know, vegan and vegetarian diets were okay to talk about. And, you know, we could advise people that, you know, vegan and vegetarian diets were okay to talk about. And, you know, we could advise people that, but eliminating processed foods or cutting down like that's, you know, crazy talk, right. And, and meanwhile, I'm living on this farm that's like as close to a closed loop system as possible, where we're raising animals to like improve the fertility of the vegetables that

we're growing so it was a vegetable and meat kind of csa farm like we did kind of everything you could get your vegetables your eggs your your meat um and i was like this is the most sustainable way to farm and it's the most sustainable way to eat and so why isn't anyone talking about this? And so that's, um, you know, I ended up becoming friends with Rob and, um, and he and I both were like, okay, once you fix yourself, you know, there's like paleo 2.0. And, and that really is more like the sustainability argument. And Chris Kresser was a huge advocate for it. Mark Sisson also very supportive of this work. And so that's kind of how it all started. That's awesome. Yeah. And it is, you bring up Sisson, you know, another guy classic who was a really high level athlete and had just destroyed

himself from eating what he was told to eat, you know, all the goos, all the carb loading, all the starches. And, you know, he's goos, all the carb loading, all the starches. And, you know, he's fantastic. He's a buddy. He's been a guest on the show. And I think about that too. You know, Paul Saladino, the carnivore doc, also raw vegan, just like Rob and different people that really, they run the experiment, you know, the N equals one experiment until there's not much left in the tank. And then they have to almost by default, go the opposite direction and see how that feels. The rebound seems, you know, it's like a, like a, a slingshot. You're getting pulled back in the wrong direction and then just catapulted forward as we learn about these things. I had Ryland Englehart on the podcast who did Kiss the Ground

documentary and they're doing a follow-up now called Common Ground that should come out this summer on Netflix. I'm really excited about him. But yeah, I found it very interesting. He had his first burger at 35 years old, you know, because as he got- Oh, I didn't even know if he's eating. He's eating now. Yeah, he is. He is. It is great because, you know, he talked about, you know, his family growing up and doing biodynamic farming, some Steiner stuff. And then more and more as they realized the relationships and necessity of the animals for their food. And you point this out beautifully.

Well, we're gonna dive into this when we dive in a sacred cow, but he realized that that is a part of the system. We actually eat the cows rather than let them die of old age and let the crows have them or the animals have them. So his first burger was at 35 years old and he actually had, because he had these vegan restaurants that were so popular in LA and different places in the world, they actually had protesters there with signs outside calling a murderer and things like

that. And it just went, holy shit, that he could, it takes something like that to actually be able to pierce through the dogma. I think if you're on the team, it's a little harder, but when it, when it comes full circle in that way, it's, it's, uh, it's, I think it'd be really, you know, jaw dropping for people like him and different people that kind of switch teams and, and find a different way to, to go about their health in particular. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I interviewed his dad, his parents, who started the farm and their story, you know, they transformed way before he did. I didn't even know that he was eating meat now and tried to get a release from them because I wanted to make the film around them. I wanted to make Sacred Cow about them.

And they were like, well, unfortunately, we have these vegan restaurants and we're connected to it and it wouldn't be good for business. And so they wouldn't. So I'm excited that they're sharing this story now. And I think their son was a big part of why they were just holding back. Yeah. He said that first burger was with his dad and it was an eight-year-old cow that they knew, they named, they loved and harvested together. You know, so it's pretty, pretty cool story coming full circle there. You know, I, you know, it's interesting because people talk about that

and I think that's a nice story, then you look at you know there's a privilege in that right like there's a privilege in like oh this sacred burger and we um we named it and we loved it and it's like there are a lot of people out there hunting for their meat that don't have the privilege of like holding its hand and naming it before, like they have to eat. And humans didn't, you know, in hunter gatherer times, we didn't have that kind of like, I mean, certainly we used all of the animal because there, there was like scarcity, right. And then we had to like make paintbrushes. And so we use the hairs of the animal to make the brushes or whatever.

But this, um, brushes and so we use the hairs of the animal to make the brushes or whatever but this um this kind of like coddling of animals and naming them and um uh really like having the privilege to decide whether or not meat is going to be like on your plate is never before in human existence has that been possible. And I just think we need to like acknowledge like to a lot of humans on this planet, how silly that is. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's great. Well, I mean, there's, there's a couple of things there of one, let me play devil's advocate. When I do sacred hunts with Manso, we actually name our animal before we get the kill. And the idea behind that is to build a connection. So it's not just bang, you're dead. Now I have food, right? I want to actually make a connection on a spiritual level. And that's, that's its own

thing, right? It doesn't have to be that. I appreciate that. You know, I appreciate having some connection to the animal to really honor it fully and take as much of that animal as I possibly can, nose to tail, to truly, again, honor it fully. And what you're speaking to, on the other hand, is completely correct. And you really dive into this in education and how it works internationally. And I thought this was a brilliant point that you made in the documentary was scholastically, the difference in scores that we see between mediating and non-mediating peoples across-meat-eating peoples across the world. And I think that that's a huge piece of the discussion that we need to

have. So I'd love for you to talk about that. Talk about Meatless Mondays in New York and talk about some of the different cultures you've looked at in Africa that don't have the option of having meat or not. Yeah. Yeah. And I get obviously you know i i lived on a farm and we raised animals and we were you know i was on the board of an humane treatment you know animal welfare organization so i i just want to acknowledge that um i just think it's also some people have taken a little too far with the the level of thought of like whether or not to eat meat and, and like, Oh,

this animal and its soul. And also it's like, Oh, okay. Try raising 500 chickens and then tell me that you're going to like name the chicken. And like chickens are so dumb. They're eating each other.

They're eating my, like they are, they're like little dinosaurs. And so, uh, anyway, I've kind of gotten, I'm just like over it, um, a little bit, but I, I get where you're coming from. Um, and, and I appreciate, you know, at least that people are at least coming around to eating meat. Um, what I have a problem with is then the folks who are saying like less meat, better meat, like it has to be grass fed, perfect meat. That was what allows programs like Meatless Mondays

to exist, which are elitist and causing harm to kids, right? Like humans are more important than animals. They just are. And so 70% of the kids in the New York City public schools are low income, 10% are homeless. And we have these programs now, Meatless Mondays has been there for a long time. And, you know, people will say, well, why are you being so radical? What's wrong with the salad? And it's like, it's not really that. It's telling poor kids that meat is bad, that it's unhealthy, and that, you know, lies. I mean, the propaganda that the Meatless Mondays campaign puts out, it's all inaccurate. So they'll say, you know, livestock cause more greenhouse gases than all of transportation. That's just not true. They have, you know, posters that are like aimed at little kids saying, save your kidneys, just replace

your meat with beans. And it's like, okay, first of all, what eight-year-old is worried about kidney health? But secondly, that's just not true. Meat doesn't cause kidney problems. But because people are so uncomfortable with how meat is produced and we're, you know, nervous about our health or nervous about global warming, all this stuff, we allow these ideological programs like Meatless Mondays to harm kids. And so not only do they have Meatless Mondays in New York City public schools, but they now have Vegan Fridays. Food insecure kids, if you picture like a typical inner city kid, right? These kids are going home to food insecure homes on the weekends. And now we're

taking away, I would argue, the most nutrient dense piece of their meals on Mondays and Fridays. So, you know, a burger patty that is served at a typical school, people will say, oh, it's toxic, it's bad meat, they shouldn't be eating that anyway. It's actually just ground meat with salt and pepper, like even a McDonald's burger patty is just beef, salt and pepper. And there's, you know, we're attributing junk food to beef when those are, they shouldn't be conflated together. And it's just this horrible message to be sending to kids. It does impact their choices outside of school. And so what is the kid going to do on the weekend? Like, it's really great to be a vegan in LA when you live near Whole Foods,

you have access to supplements, you, you know, can walk around and like, think about how you, well, maybe I'll eat a cow if I can name it. And it's eight years old, you know, okay. But what about these poor kids that are, are like the brunt of that ideology who are, you know, the most common nutrient deficiencies are B12 and iron best found in meat. These kids aren't going to go get a $25 sweet green bowl with kale and quinoa with their like iron and B12 supplements on the side, like little nutritional yeast sprinkled on top, right? They're just going to go get a burger with no burger, right? Or, or I mean, it's, it's not possible to be a poor inner city vegan. Like that just means white bread. So I, uh, you know, it's fine if people want to, you know, indulge themselves in whatever, like, privileged food culture they want.

That's totally great. But when we talk about policies that impact poor children, as a mom and as a dietician who's concerned with public health, it's incredibly elitist. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't, I think more and more in the last few years that that word gets used, it becomes really obvious, like what elitist actually looks like, you know, and it's been funny because I've had these conversations over the years about the drive away from meat, the drive to, um, Franken foods, you know, as Rob points to in Wired to Eat and different books. And then, you know, now this push for insects, you know, I had insects in Thailand, I had fried crickets and I was like, all right, you know, it's not cooked in good oil, but it was

salty, crunchy, kind of tastes like French fries. I could do that if I had to, you know, but it's not better than meat. And I think that's one of the biggest points to it all is that it doesn't help the environment. It's non-regenerative. It's not a better food source for me in particular from a nutritional standpoint. It's lacking in all these categories. So why is it even a part of the conversation? It's a part of the conversation for money. It's a part of the conversation for potentially more nefarious purposes, but it has become more and more obvious. And I do just, I just love though, that in the book and in the movie, you really point to some pretty undeniable facts. You know, when you looked at the kids in Africa,

the ones that ate, that didn't have access to meat, I think it was something like 40 plus percent lower test scores across the board universally than those who were even able to eat meat a couple days a week. So not with every meal, but just a couple days a week if they had meat versus no meat in their diet, these huge changes and what they were capable of from a scholastic point of view, that's massive to understand. Yeah. So we only have one randomized controlled trial. So most of the anti-meat research is based on observational research. And maybe your listeners already kind of are familiar with that. But basically you take your typical vegetarian that like does yoga, take supplements, less likely

to drink and smoke, eats lots of fruits and vegetables, like things that are like generally most people would agree, not all, but most people would agree those are like generally healthy things to do. And then you take like Joe six pack tailgater guy and you say, oh, it's the meat, you know, it's cause he eats burgers. It's like, no, no, no, no. So they've done studies where they looked at shoppers at health food stores. So, uh, you know, therefore kind of adjusting for lifestyle factors, they've found no difference at all in meat eaters versus vegetarians, they have, they did find that vegans did worse. But in kids, and actually, overall, there's only one RCT, like you're referencing

there, looking at meat versus less meat. And so it was a school in Kenya. One group got a meat snack at school. One group got a milk snack. One group got just extra calories. And then one group was the control group without anything. And the meat group did better, not only on test scores, like you said, so academically, but also physically and behaviorally. So they were better behaved, they had better athletic scores, and they were smarter. Interestingly, the milk group did the worst. Really? Yes. And I think that's interesting because milk is something that we, you know, force on the schools here in the US. It's often used as a supplement in African schools when they can't afford any sort of meat protein, they'll just send milk in. So milk,

you know, I have no problem with kids drinking milk sometimes, but it does interfere with iron absorption. And so for kids who are already food insecure, malnourished in some way, milk is not going to help them. And it's definitely not a substitute for actual meat. They need the meat. Yeah. I would say too, if you're looking at probably what they're sending in Africa is like UHT, it's the shit that we saw overseas. If the troops had milk, it was hyper-processed, ultra-high pasteurization, non-fat skim milk, which is lacking all the beneficial fats you'd get. We found a farm not far from us in Schulenburg that does really amazing raw A2A2 Jersey cow milk.

And so we've been getting cheese from there. We'll occasionally have a glass of milk or cook, I'll throw that with some bone broth powder and make a little hot cocoa, that kind of thing. My daughter, who's still two, has transitioned from mom to that and seamlessly well. She has a bottle in the morning and a bottle at night and there's no congestion,

there's no anything going on there. But yeah, I do wonder about even the quality of that. One thing that you guys point out that I think is a really interesting piece of the conversation is how good red meat is for you almost universally, right? So like, like this is, this is, this is where a lot of people in the space of health and wellness might disagree and raise a hand and say, no, it has to be grass fed, grass finished. It has to be a hundred percent pasture raised. It has to be, you know, no

antibiotics, none of this, none of that. And I found that very, very curious and mind blowing, you know, that you're saying from the studies that very, very curious and mind blowing, you know, that you're saying from the studies that you guys have put together and really looked at, that it's even, even lesser quality red meat, ground beef is still going to be higher quality than most other meat sources and most other food products. Oh, definitely. You know, there, um you know they're they're so we did a systematic review of all of the um uh the research that was available um at the time of writing the book we looked at glyphosate levels we looked at antibiotic residue we looked at bacterial like e coli in the meat um and then we just looked also at all the studies looking at you know people will argue you know it's twice as much or five times, 10 times the omega-3s. We looked at all that.

And what we found at the time was it was just not significant. The difference between typical beef and, you know, typical grocery store beef that was finished on a feedlot and grass finished beef. And that's largely because, first of all, the difference is really in the fats. It's not in the protein matrix. And so when you look at the fats, grass fed beef has less fat overall. So there's going to be just less of those vitamins, those fat soluble vitamins, because it's less fat. And some of the studies did show twice as much omega threes, but, um, if like, let's say all the fats were pennies and you had a dollar's worth of fat in a, in a steak from a typical, typical, uh, burger versus a grass-fed burger, the amount of omega threes is like one penny

worth of the, of the fat. So it's mostly saturated fat and monounsaturated fat. The polyunsaturated fat is a very small amount. And the omega-3s is an even smaller amount of that. So two pennies is twice as much money as one penny, but it's still not a lot of money. And you would still need to eat eight pounds of grass-fed steak or burgers to get the same omega-3s you can get in a three ounce piece of salmon. So it's like saying, well, organic carrots have five times the protein. It's like no one's eating carrots for protein, right? So it's kind of like that. Like if you

want omega threes is really better to just go get some sardines or some salmon. Um, but beef is awesome for so many other reasons. It's got B12. It's definitely the best choice nutritionally of all the grocery store meat options, which really is just chicken, pork, or beef, right? And so if someone doesn't have access to grass-fed, regenerative beef from the farmer's market or know their farmer or whatever, I do eat that because I have access to it and people send me meat and I gladly accept it. But even typical beef is going to be about 30% more nutritious than chicken. There is a study going on right now at Utah State where they're looking at two groups. It's really interesting. They're looking at a group that is getting a vegetable box, typical vegetables like conventionally

vegetables, conventional dairy and conventional meat versus folks that are getting grass-fed, organic, regenerative versions of the same things. What they expect is that both groups are going to do very well for their health, but they are going to be testing their blood and looking at different markers of inflammation to see if the grass-fed regenerative organic group has even better markers. And so that should be a really interesting study. You know, Rob and I wanted the grass fed beef to be healthier and better. But you also have to like, look at the evidence and see the difference. But it also means, you know, those folks who are struggling, who maybe, you know, don't just like, oh, they didn't have grass fed beef at the supermarket.

So I got a bagel, right? Like that's no, don't do that. It's still better to eat the beef, buy the best beef you can afford, try to, you know, if you can find a farmer, that's even better. But even environmentally, feedlot finished beef is not necessarily as evil as people are making it out to be. One thing I learned is that for every pound of plant-based protein, there's four pounds of waste. So like soy protein, pea protein. So that waste, these fibers, like the stalks from the pea plant, right? Like the pea pot, all the rest of the, you know, that's not a pea. That can either sit in a

pile and emit greenhouse gases as it decomposes, or we can add that to the feed supplement on a feedlot and upcycle that into affordable protein for people who have massive metabolic problems. Right. Um, and so I, I do see a place for feedlot finished beef in our food system because it's affordable. It's not toxic garbage like everyone is saying it is. It can still be regeneratively grazed before it ends up on a feedlot because all these cows start on pasture. They're either just continued on pasture or end up being finished very quickly on a feedlot. But while they're on that feedlot, the majority of their diet is actually food waste that has no other use in our food system. I like that.

I think it's an important piece to point out. And yeah, you could be following all of Alan Savory methods you know the best of the best in terms of how you want to regenerate the land before that thing gets gets shipped off to be fattened up um yeah actually the the in our film the um the uh guys in mexico and chihuahua that are like totally transforming the desert like from barren desert back to grasslands, he finishes on feedlots. Oh, wow. Okay. And so he's like, he just doesn't have the land or the ability to finish because finishing takes a long time. It takes a different type of grass. And economically,

it just makes more sense for him to sell the feedlots and finish that way. It doesn't mean that his animals are toxic or that he's a bad rancher or anything. He's still doing amazing work. So I think when the regenerative folks and the typical folks are fighting, it A, allows, you know, the plant-based industry to win. But B, it also turns off a lot of ranchers that could be doing better grazing before they end up finishing on a feedlot. So I think everybody needs to like calm down. I mean, it's just like the diet wars, right? Like keto folks are like, you're not low carb enough or whatever. It's like, what works for you is the most sustainable thing, right? You know, in general, like you do you.

And you know, there's some, there's some general kind of like, we all want to be eating in a healthy way. We all want to be not causing harm to other people or, you know, whatever. But there's going to be different things that work for different farmers, just like nutrition protocols for people. Yeah. I like that. We had, I got, I had a chance to speak at the last force of Nature event out in Fredericksburg at Rome Ranch. It was, what good shall I do? And I met a lot of really cool people there. And Joel Talaton was a speaker there, Daniel Griffith.

And what was cool is it was really a mixed bag of who showed up. I was talking to Taylor about that. And he's like, probably 20% are health and wellness geeks. 20% are farmers that have farmed traditionally and want to learn about this and see like, can I apply this to my system and how would that look? Another handful are people that have been in the game for a long time and consider themselves experts in that. And so it was kind of just really a mixed bag of people that were there. But I found it very interesting because of the way Salatin is such a great speaker.

He's able to really bridge that gap and talk about maybe where he would have more inputs in his system than somebody like Daniel, who's more wanting to be 100% regenerative. I think that gave people a lot to work with, you know, and I think conversations like that are important. That's why I wanted to bring that up. You know, like, let's just let this piece die here in terms of beef. I think what you were speaking to also, when you look at something after the fact, like people who eat McDonald's three days a week and you try to tell us that it's the beef, where's the soybean oil factoring into? Where's the carbohydrates from all the potatoes and the fries and the high fructose corn syrup and their gallon size drink, their big gulp, right? So obviously those things are a factor. And I think

most people with a head on their shoulders can differentiate that, but it's how science is being framed in a certain way to portray a story that's not true, that I think is, is, is a little bit more sinister. Totally. A hundred percent. Well, I'd love for you to dive in, you know, in the book, you did such a great job of really showing, um, I coach probably 300 plus people a year in fit for service. And then, you know, a few one-on-ones and have the podcast. And so I'm constantly giving out information, but I, I, I always run up against a friend who has a vegan wife or a friend who has a vegan husband, you know, and, and it goes back and forth like this. Now, it's obviously not too big of a deal if the husband's vegan, but when they go to get pregnant, I'm always like, fucking sound the alarms. If she can eat eggs and cheese, do something,

just do something, take it in, you know, supplement as best you can, you know, and really, if you can bend the rules while you're pregnant. I think that's a very good idea for your child's sake. I think you outlined this so beautifully in Sacred Cow. I would love for you to dive in. How does it look for vegan couples who want to raise kids? What does that actually pan out to look like with the children? Well, I influence a lot of industry and try to get the meat industry to be better with better grazing, better animal handling. And I think there's a huge opportunity with young moms.

Because I think inherently we know, as women, that there is a biologically appropriate diet and you can't mess with nature. And so I think most women are reasonable enough that if you begin to point out, you know, are you tired? You know, yes, of course you're going to be tired as a vegan, right? You know, do you want your child to have the best advantage, like the best cognitive and physical advantage possible? Do you want to set them up properly? Then you need to be feeding them a biologically appropriate quickly start incorporating some animal source foods during their pregnancy. Also, pregnancy is incredibly draining. I had Rachel Brothen on.

She's a yoga girl. She has a pretty big following. And I've been to her yoga studio in Aruba. But her story is really fascinating because she has this vegan cafe attached to her yoga studio in Aruba, but her story is really fascinating because she has this vegan cafe attached to her yoga studio. She, pregnancy just, it will suck all of your nutrients to go to that baby because that's the role of the world, right?

Like we need to put all of our energy into the next generation and maybe that's going to cost you, but that's just the way nature wants to work. Right. Um, and so she was just really depleted after her pregnancy from being vegan and, um, they were staying on a farm and, uh, she was, she was really, um, you know, she was waiting for a sign. And then of course the daughter finds an egg, runs up to the mom, says, this is for you, mom. Okay. That was the sign. She starts eating eggs and then it quickly starts eating meat and all that

kind of stuff. So, you know, we do know that vegan, especially vegan women, have lower bone density, much lower B12s. That increases your chance of mental health problems, depression, anxiety. Even women who have supplemented with B12 have had babies die from breastfeeding from them because it just isn't enough. And so I think most women are motivated enough not to harm their children. And a lot of the people that follow me are ex-vegan women. Yeah, I think you pointed to some of the cases where kids had actually been taken from their parents when the kids were fed a vegan diet. We talked about mom there. I'd love for you to talk about kids that are kind of force-fed into this adopted, dogmatic way of eating.

Yeah, it's really sad. There's been several cases. Some of it's been sort of quasi-religious, I think, you know, where like the parents are only eating watermelon forever and starving their children. They did try to make it illegal in Italy to feed your children a vegan diet. The vegan movement is not doing very well in Italy. They do not like people messing with their meat over there. And there are a couple other governments in the European Union, I believe it's Belgium and Switzerland, who do not recommend a vegan diet for children or pregnant women or breastfeeding women. It's really unfortunate that, you know, that's not the case over here.

It should definitely, I mean, I think that there should be some rules around, you know, if you're going to feed your child a vegan diet, you need to sign off that you know that this could cause harm, that this is biologically inappropriate for human babies, and that you promise to correct if there's any sign of deficiencies, and that they should bring their kids in for checkups more frequently than a typical, you know, fed baby. And people will say, oh, but the standard American diet is, you know, just as bad. And so whatever, this is probably better. It is not better. A standard American diet at least has iron B12 and animal source food. So any meat is better than no meat. No meat is the worst diet that you can have. Yeah, that's a big one. It's an absolute big one. One thing that I bring up on this podcast, I've probably said it, I don't know, a dozen times, but I did my 23 and

me back in the day and had my wife do it. And Aubrey, who's a close friend, a former founder of Onnit and ran them through, found my fitness doctor on a Patrick site. So she'd actually break it down with her machine learning and actually tell me what I wanted to fucking hear. And one of the things that it pointed, a few of the things that pointed out was neither one of us, neither one, all three of us could not take ALA from chia seeds and flaxseed and convert that to DHA and EPA, which are critical for brain development, critical for inflammation, critical for cognitive function, right? So there's no way I could get what I need from an omega-3 standpoint from plants. We just don't make a conversion. We don't have the enzymes to do it. Same thing with vitamin A. I can't take beta carotene. I could eat carrots until my skin turned orange. I'm not going to

convert any of that into usable vitamin A. And vitamin A, as you know, as a mom is super critical for cell replication. It's super critical for immune function and a whole host of other things as a fat soluble vitamin. I can't get that from sweet potatoes, yams, or carrots. Neither can my wife. Neither can either one of our kids. Neither can Aubrey. And I think in that, they said that this is common for about 50% of the population. That's a pretty high number. That's a really, really high number when you're talking about how much argument veganism has traction as a healthier way to live when half the people couldn't sustain themselves. I mean, if I imagine as if I was a kid eating a vegan diet, understanding these things about myself now and what these things actually mean for us from fat soluble vitamins to DHA and things like that for brain

development, I wouldn't be the same person. I might have mental retardation. I might have a whole host of issues because of that. I might've died because of that. Yeah. So there are people who genetically can't make that conversion from the plant sources to the active forms that we need for EPA. And those are generally people who grew up in coastal regions who ate a lot of fatty fish. And so they lost the ability to make that conversion. Just like Inuit people, there's a high prevalence of basically like sugar malabsorption because culturally they relied a lot on foods that didn't have a lot of sugar. So, and ironically, Canadian dietitians have made a food igloo based similar, like on, it's very similar to a food pyramid, taking all of their traditional foods like seal and goose way up at the top in the red category as foods to like limit. And then at the bottom, it's orange juice, raisin bran, like typical Mediterranean foods. And it is like, if I could just take one image and show how wrong dietitians have gotten it,

it is this food igloo, like totally culturally inappropriate, just setting these folks up for metabolic disaster, just completely tone deaf. Yeah. So there's a lot of reasons why, you know, like some people who are healthy, they're 25 years old, they're athletic, they might do okay on a vegan diet for a little while. Just like there's also a lot of 25 year old athletes that seem to thrive on complete junk food diets too, right? Like they could, there are just genetically superior humans out there that can seem to thrive for a period of time on lots of different foods. I mean, I'm always shocked when I go to a grocery store and see what people buy and then they seem to look like relatively healthy and I just have to have things so dialed in.

So I think, you know, the state of your gut health is a big one. How you were raised as far as, you know, how nutrient dense was your diet that you grew up on. All these different genetic factors, like you mentioned, I think found my fitness is probably the best resource for that. That's how I learned about my, um, sensitivity to both fat and to carbohydrates, um, which stinks. Um, but I learned a whole bunch of other really interesting things from that report too. I always recommend people do that. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of different reasons why, um, one person might do better on a vegan type diet than another person but generally we know that about 85 percent of anyone trying a vegan diet will give it up within three years yeah that's

a pretty big stat that's that's not showing much much yeah there's not much longevity in that uh or or there's not much health in it if you do stay in it past the point of no return. Yeah, I think there's enough now, thanks to technology, where we can glean and really fine-tune for ourselves. But it is odd because it's such a cultural thing to play for that team. Not many people are finding that through doing a genetic report and off-sourcing the raw data to Found My Fitness and saying, oh, this actually works for me. I'm actually going to do this for all the right reasons. This is actually what my body and my epigenetic on off switches desire. I'm one of the few people where this actually works for. I've rarely met, I've actually, I've never met a vegan who even understood those tests existed, you know? So they, of course they hadn't had the test done,

you know, and it's just like, that's just so curious to me. I understand it's not common knowledge per se, but that would be the first thing I'd want to look into if I was going to try something different. Like, is this going to work? Let's see, you know? And then from there, let's continue to fine tune. Like I'm sure, I don't know if you geeked out,

when I read Wired to Eat, I did the blood sugar test every single day, just like Rob said, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. And then when CGMs became more available, I ran a CGM through NutriSense for six months and didn't change my diet for the first month. Then I started playing and experimenting for the next five. And I've since, you know, cause bodies change and adapt over time. I've since probably had another half dozen, one to two month stints where I've really played with those and seen how it looks because the genetic report will tell me I don't do well with carbohydrates, but there are certain carbohydrates I do just fine with. And certain times a year

where I do just fine with it. Summertime, I do a lot better with carbohydrates than wintertime. Yeah, I was shocked too. I remember texting Rob, uh, because so he and I have the same kind of messed up gut health. We, we seem to react like at least gut wise, because we've traveled a ton together and we're both like, oh yeah, I got sick from lunch. Yeah, me too. You know? Um, but, uh, and the similar genetics, but, um, I would spike, uh, with corn and lentils and, but I'm fine with like potatoes and butternut squash and things like that. And potatoes make him spike. So it was just kind of funny. I was happy to learn that I can eat a lot more carbs than I thought I could.

And I actually ended up, I think CGMs are one of the best tools there are. I recommend it to everybody. And I have like a blood sugar challenge that like people can kind of just walk themselves through is a, something that they can get from me. Uh, that's free. Um, because I just think that these CGMs, you know, I think the next one is like a stool analysis and finding out, you know, cause they can now, I'm sure, you know, like some people spike with bananas, other people spike with cookies. And a lot of that has to do with your gut bacteria as well. So I think that's going to be a new tool that people are going to start using as well.

Yeah, I just did. I had done one in 2015, a comprehensive stool analysis, which, you know, there's some poop tests where it's like, you know, from your, this is, this will be, you know, direct, but from, from the, the, the, the toilet paper that you just recently wiped, take a Q-tip, roll it in that and put it in a jar and send it off. And then the comprehensive stool analysis is like shit in the paper bowl and take spoonfuls in until you fill to the line on four different, you know, tubes. And I'm like, that's a whole different levels of the game. You know, it's not, it's, uh, you know, but at the same time you get to find out that much more, you know, there's, it's just so much more comprehensive.

And, um, I think they're, they're incredibly valuable tools. Well, I want to talk about what you're, what you're into now. Sacred Cow, um, came, I, I heard about it. I was hyped for it. A lot of people were talking about it and it's been, I don't even know how long, a couple of years, two, three years since it came out. Right. Yeah. A couple of years. We were on the Joe Rogan podcast, which was like, we had a huge spike from that. It was really great to get his support. And since then, that came out, unfortunately, in the middle of COVID. So I was invited to do these screenings all over the world and I couldn't do any of them.

Virtual screenings are just not as much fun to do for me. But I, right after COVID ended, I did get still invites to go all over the world. So in the last like year, year and a half, I've been to Brazil, New Zealand, Australia twice. Gosh, all over the UK. I can't even remember at this point. I'm going to Uruguay in September to go meet with the government there to talk about their, you know, cattle industry and different ways, and different ways they can, they can be more

sustainable. So it's really cool for me to do this much travel. Um, and, uh, so I'm really focused on, on making sure that governments understand that taxing farmers for their methane emissions, which is what's going on in New Zealand right now, is dumb. It is completely short-sighted. In Ireland, they're looking at culling, you know, millions of cattle because of the greenhouse gases. Because what happens is the way they sort of do the accounting is the country that is generating the beef gets pinned with all the greenhouse gases so in ireland they're a major supplier of uh beef and dairy products for all over i mean you can get kerry gold butter you know

costco now yeah yeah yeah um so ireland is taking that hit for the the greenhouse gas emissions for producing that dairy product um but yet you you know, countries like Saudi Arabia, they don't get hit for the oil greenhouse gases because it doesn't actually get burned in Saudi Arabia. It gets burned in other places. And so anyway, it's unfair that that's how they account for things. But culling Irish cattle is not going to change,

you know, the demand for Kerrygold butter. It's just going to displace it. And so all that's going to happen is Irish farmers are going to go out of work and it's going to harm rural communities. It's going to just destroy these rural communities, honestly. And then, you know, the business is just going to go to New Zealand or Brazil or some other country is going to pick up that business. So these, these governments have this like carbon tunnel vision, they're overly obsessed with carbon emissions, and not looking at all of the other pieces of what makes a sustainable food system and also really kind of having a reality check that, you know, livestock are just not a major driver of climate change to begin with. That's really, this narrative is being driven by the plant-based food sector and the lab meat

sector. Um, and because they can't really win on ethics, not everyone really cares about, you know, the ethical reasons why you might not want to eat an animal. Uh, nutritionally, they have no argument, um, because they just can't win nutritionally. And environmentally, they can't win on like soil health or water systems or overall ecosystem function, biodiversity. They can look like they win with carbon emissions. And so it's, they are driving that, they are driving that narrative to increase their stock price. And they're having a lot of success at influencing governments and convincing them that, you know, cattle are driving climate change. I was in Egypt last year at the UN climate change talks presenting on why this on this whole phenomenon, why meat is solving malnutrition can attenuate obesity. You know, it's like good

to eat meat, even if, you know, it can, it can help you if you're hungry and it can help you if you're overweight. Um, it's, you know, I went into the ethics of it. I went into the, um, environmental case. I was the only person there, Everybody else who was talking about nutrition or sustainability was pushing for crickets, for lab meat, for beyond meat. There was no one else that was pro-livestock. So anyway, so I have a nonprofit called the Global Food Justice Alliance, and that pays for me to be able to do the advocacy work that I do. And we also teamed up with the NFL, getting meat sticks to kids' backpacks for those kids that need to ride on the bus for a really long time. The snacks that these kids, the breakfast that the school is providing, like French toast or, you know, a box of cereal. Toaster strudel. providing like French toast or, you know, box of cereal, you know, so we're, oh my gosh. So we're

trying to get meat sticks to these kids that need to, um, you know, ride the bus for a long time to get to school, um, or to get home from school. Uh, so at least they can have these, uh, something that's, um, you know, much healthier and actually going to help them grow. That's amazing. How, it must be so frustrating. I mean, it's frustrating for me, but I'm not necessarily on the front lines the way you are. It must be so frustrating to know the science behind carbon sequestration, the closed loop cycle that is livestock with the land, the way nature had it. And then to brush up against everything that's really been driven for industry and for profit, you know, to try to use those arguments, you know, about around carbon when actually, you know,

running animals and larger animals is the very thing that will heal the land. It's a question of more carbon and put it back into the ground. Yeah. And there was just a study out of UC Davis that showed that lab meat is five to 25 times higher in greenhouse gas emissions than typical beef. So like they can't even win with the carbon emissions argument either. So basically all these people are running around not knowing, you know, they're making really important decisions that are impacting people's health and people's livelihoods

without having any knowledge of what they're talking about. So I try to go around and we need more people going around and doing this. But anyway, that's my big passion right now. So I run a social media influencing feed at Sustainable Dish. But most of my energy these days goes into global food justice and, you know, getting meat to hungry kids, helping the industry get better. And, you know, trying to have some influence over these, these horrible decisions that are being made on these massive scales. Yeah, you're doing the great work. Do you have any plans for doing a follow up or another

documentary anytime? Oh, my God, no. No way. It was so much work. And I think these days, when I'm not working, I am creating art and really psyched to be doing pottery or painting and just enjoying my life a little bit more than I have when I was grinding and trying to do the film. So yeah, doing what I can and then also trying to give back to myself

a little bit these days. Absolutely. Yeah, that's so important. That is sustainability in a nutshell. No question. Well, it's been so great having you on. You mentioned the website and your handle. Are those the only two places people can find you

or the best two places for people can find you or the best two places for people to find you? Yeah, thank you. So it's sustainabledish.com. I have a course called Sustainivore, which is basically my sacred cow book, high protein, paleo type diet, but also I teach people about environmental issues and ethical issues. So they can take that course. And then if they want to follow and support Global Food Justice Alliance, we're at Global Food Justice on Instagram. And we are a nonprofit, 501c3. And so, you know, very psyched to take people's contributions to help us,

you know, do the work that we're doing there. Amazing. Well, it's been so great having you on. and I look forward to having you back in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you.