Modern Wisdom - #244 - Diana Rodgers - The Case For Eating Better Meat

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

Diana Rodgers is a dietitian, author and a film producer. The case for veganism is often made, today we get to hear the other side of the argument. Expect to learn whether vegans or meat eaters live longer, the environmental, nutritional and ethical reasoning behind Diana's justification for eating meat, if you truly can get all your nutrients from plants and supplements, who meat has become a scapegoat for and much more... Sponsor: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 3.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Check out Sacred Cow - https://www.sacredcow.info/ Follow Diana on Twitter - https://twitter.com/SustainableDish  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello people in podcast land. Welcome back. I am coming to you from a very hot and sunny Dubai, but don't be jealous. I'll be back in the UK soon. And the podcasts are still coming. Your boy is getting it done while he's in the United Arab Emirates. Today's guest is Diana Rogers. She is part of a pro meat eating movement, which I'm seeing increasingly more and more at the moment. Chris Cresser had that famous debate on Jorugan with the guy from the, what the health, what the health, game changes, game changes documentary. And today we get to go into even more of the information around why eating meat is important.

I am still unconvinced about the philosophical case for not being a vegan. Alex O'Connor has really, really read-pilled me on that, the cosmic skeptic, my good buddy. However, the nutritional case that Diana puts forward today and the environmental one is quite compelling. Her film, Sacred Cow, is out on November 22nd and I'm certain that that release is going to spark another flurry of debates around this topic. So,

educate yourself, make sure that you understand both sides of the argument and I think that there's some really interesting insights that I certainly hadn't heard before on today's episode. But for now, it's time to learn about the case for better meat with Diana Rogers. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Diana Rogers, Diana. Welcome to the show. Hi. Nice to have nice to have me. Nice to be here. Thank you so much, Chris. It is nice to have you. Your work is at the intersection of nutrition, environmental sustainability, animal welfare and social justice. That is that that's just all of those in minefields and everyone's emotionally charged.

Like that's an incredibly harsh war zone to exist in. That's right. That's the look of a PTSD battle scarred soldier there. Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of people will say eating meat is wrong, killing animals is wrong, right? But you can't have an ethical discussion until you understand the nutritional benefits that animal products have to humans, especially people that don't have the privilege to be pushing that away, which gets into social justice.

We can't be telling the entire world that everyone needs to be vegetarian when there are so many people that are nutrient-efficient and malnourished. And then when we look at the environmental consequences of a food system without animal inputs, that looks a whole lot like chemical agriculture, which is a huge problem, right? And so when we look at chemical agriculture, plant-based only foods, those two things are the recipe for fake meat,

absolute destruction of our soil health, ecosystem health, and human health. So, I try to tackle all of those things because they're all so intricately twined. And so, I want people to understand all of those things before we have a discussion about whether or not it's okay for an animal to die for us to live. There's some entry prices that you need to pay before we can get to just the ethical question because it's layered within other topics. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What does a real food licensed registered dietician nutritionist mean? What's that? It's my own term, but basically most dietitians are giving out information that they've learned in school where everything in moderation is okay. Let's not eliminate any foods from the plate.

It's all about just portions. And if you want to go vegetarian or vegan, then that's totally okay. But then when we start to talk about eliminating processed foods, oh no, we can't do that. So something like a whole 30 paleo ketotype diet is absolute blasphemy, right? But then vegan or vegetarian are totally okay. And so I call myself a real food dietitian because I focus on real foods and work largely with people to fix their gut health and their metabolic health or weight by getting rid of ultra processed foods.

Got you. You've got a new film which will be out almost exactly 22nd of November, which is probably not far off when this is gonna go live. So can you give us, give us an overview of it? Yeah, so I have a book in film. The book came out in the summer of this past year, Sacred Cow, and the film took just a little bit

more time to edit. I wanted them to line up perfectly, but it just wasn't gonna happen that way. So the film, I actually did some filming in the UK. I went to the Lake District and filmed with James Rebanks, who is sort of a celebrity shepherd there. And he has a new book out, actually, as well. So we went there.

We went to a lot of other farms and other food producers, nutrition experts, and really put together as detailed as we could in one hour and 20 minutes. So the book goes obviously much more into detail, but we're just trying to explain why meat is actually not the main cause of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, why nutrition studies are completely based on observational research and not,

they can't prove cause. So all those studies talking about meat causing health problems are really based on just look, oh look, this population ate meat. This one didn't, oh it must have been the meat. When there's just so many other confounding factors involved there. So humans have been eating meat for three and a half million years and it's much more likely, as Zoe Harcom says in our book, that modern foods are responsible for modern illnesses. We also talk about the environmental case for raising animals in a way that more closely mirrors nature and we dive in and out of the ethics argument throughout the film. So where the book is very scientific and linear and just tackles one argument at the time, that would make probably a very

boring film. And so I worked with some really smart writers and editors that were able to take all the footage that I shot and turn that into a really awesome film. That's awesome. I always think this whenever anyone talks about the correlation and causation of stuff they do in their life. My mum even today said something about this new magnesium supplement that I've been taking. So, so how's it affecting your sleep? Like, I don't know. Like, it needs to have such an unbelievable impact itself for me to be able to work it out in amongst the chaos of everything else that's going on. And as you hit upon there, like, someone that does or doesn't eat meat

is probably going to correlate with them doing or not doing a whole bunch of other stuff. All that it is is essentially a selection variable. And that selection variable will probably be correlated with other selection variable. They're more likely to cycle to work. They're more likely to be left-handed and single and vote Democrat and do a blob. You know what I mean? Like it's the whole host of other things. Right. So, when they've done studies adjusting for those things, they found absolutely no benefit

at all in eliminating meat from the diet. So, and what we do know is that people who don't eat meat, especially vegans, much higher rates of nutrient deficiencies or insufficiencies and that can express itself in mental health as well as in physical health. What was the particular studies that brought that to light, the one that's obviously been controlled for multi-variant analysis? There was one that looked at people who only shopped at health food stores.

So then you've got the people who are more likely, they tend to have a similar lifestyle, right? They're more likely to cycle the work or do yoga. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're less likely to be heavy smokers and drinkers, things like that. So of the population that shopped at health food stores, there was absolutely no difference in longevity between meat eaters and vegetarians. And then there was a very large study out of Australia. So it was about almost 70,000 people. And it took, it looked at all of the meat versus no meat and adjusted for all of the lifestyle variables that they could and again found no benefit at all.

Wow. So meat eaters and vegans live the same amount of time. Well vegetarians, vegans, we don't have a lot of data on long-lived vegans because most of them give it up within three months. And there's never been a vegan population. We've never seen the consequences of vegan babies being born to vegan mothers and then trying to reproduce themselves. But we do know that there are nutrients in animal source foods that you can't get from plants that supplementing isn't always adequate. There's a lot of reasons why people wouldn't do well without animal source food.

So for example, vitamin A is a good example of this. So the form of vitamin A that's in plant source foods is beta-carotene. And when we eat something like a sweet potato or carrot that has beta-carotene, that's the orange color, our bodies need to convert that into retinol. So that's the active form of vitamin A. And about half of all humans can't do that effectively. So 50% of the people listening to this can't digest carrots properly. They can digest carrots but they can't necessarily convert all the beta carotene into vitamin A and so could end up with a vitamin A deficiency which is not so great for your skin and your eyes. Those little bumps that some people have

on the back of their arms is usually vitamin A deficiency. Great source of vitamin A is liver or any animal source fat usually has a lot of vitamin A. Wow, that's so interesting. You say that meat has become a scapegoat, what's that mean? So people are very confused. They're very confused about our health, very concerned about our planet. Everyone's looking for that one magic goji berry that they can take

so that they can avoid actually doing the hard work of eating well every single day and sleeping well every single night, right? They don't want to work out. They just want to eat a goji berry and be done with it, right? And so it's much easier to pin all of our uncomfortable feelings on an object than it is to actually deal with the actual problems. So a scapegoat is literally something that would be the sacrificial animal where people would put their sins on it and sacrifice it, right? And so meat has that was going to be the

title for the film and the book was was scapegoat and that's because you know Cal Farter ruining the environment. When that's absolutely ridiculous, it's fossil fuels, it's consumerism, it's all the junk that we keep on buying, all that kind of stuff. The problem for our nutrition and growing rates of obesity is not meat eating. When you can get 30 grams of protein from 200 calories worth of steak, of protein from 200 calories worth of steak, which has B12, which has all the essential amino acids. It's the most beautiful package of concentrated nutrition for humans, and the most bioavailable, easily digested food we have. And yet, it's become, you know, meat represents so many things to humans. It's power and masculinity and death.

It's bloody. It's strong. So especially young women are easy prey for these vegan propaganda documentaries because they're much more likely to feel extra uncomfortable with all of those messages. So a lot of people, I'm sure you've met people that won't eat anything on a bone, right? They don't want to, they don't even want to know, or maybe you haven't. Now they want to detach themselves away from the fact that it was an animal. Right, so like, bone-less skinless chicken breast, okay, because it's sort of like tofu,

and you don't have to like think about it having been an animal and maybe even the idea of chickens isn't as close to a dog where a cow would be closer to a dog which is our friend not an animal or a child you know so cattle you're cracking up. It's funny. It's funny. It's funny. It's funny. Anyway, so it just seems that on the totem pole of ethicalness, of food consumption, cows are at the bottom. Right? The actual food.

Is cow the rich white man of the food group world? Probably. Yeah. And then it's like chicken and fish, you know, pescatarians or like I'm a vegetarian, but I eat fish. And so you're like slightly more pure, right? And then, you know, vegetarian would be just eggs and dairy, but then vegan, but then above that, there's raw vegan and fruititarian, right? Things that only fall. So you wouldn't eat anything that might have been harvested and harming

things. You would only eat things that have fallen already. So that's a diet that's based on purely on gravity, the gravity diet. Well, then there's gravitarian. Right. Which would be, if you are ultra-pure, then you only need air, right? So all of this is absolutely ridiculous, right? Yes, it's true. But even the idea that eating meat is bad when humans are biologically

omnivores, when meat has been something that has been, that's why we have such large brains right now. It's because of animal source foods. And so to be so disconnected from the fact that humans are animals and that there is a biologically appropriate food for us, and that we are intertwined within a food web instead of on top of it and controlling it and dominating it, is really at the heart of what I talk about. It's our denial of death.

I mean, we even see it in the fitness world, right? Like longevity. Everyone wants longevity. It's not even quality of life. It's just how can I live the longest? How can I cheat death? Most Americans don't have a will. We don't want to think about death.

We don't see it on a regular basis. And we don't accept that it's part of the cycle of life. It's not just the end point of everything. So I kind of get through all of that stuff in the book more so than in the film, but in the film, we talk about it too. Do you know who Sheldon Solomon is? Okay, so he's an expert in Ernest Backer's denial of death. He was on the show a couple of weeks ago and he's. Oh, I have that book. It's on my food politics book. Bookcase, which I didn't realize was even a topic. Yeah, I'm denial of death. Fantastic, fantastic insight, kind of a heavy read. It's not like an easy one as you go to bed. I know that you have done your research, especially for the book and also subsequently for the film.

I want to close one of the doors to hell that we've left a jar there about the methane argument. What is the contribution of livestock to greenhouse gases and greenhouse gas effect, please? Okay, so there's there's a couple different ways you have to understand it. So this is a little bit longer than. is a little bit longer than that. I'm not sure. Yeah, right. No big deal is the fast answer. So two things. One is methane through biogenic sources

needs to be viewed completely differently than from fossil fuel extraction. So I have an animation in the film and an infographic about this on my Instagram feed and available on my website, but basically we show the molecules being breathed out by a cow. So it's not cowfarts, actually, it's belching from cows. So it's cow burps that cause methods? It's cow burps.

Well, that caused it's the bacteria in their stomachs that's causing the methane, right? So they're breaking down very fibrous materials in an anaerobic way, which produces methane, okay? So almost all of the food that those cows would eat, if they weren't eating it, would just sit in a pile and emit greenhouse gases if we didn't turn it into protein. Right? So we just have to sort of talk about that. The grass is still going to be there. So when the cow breeze out methane, it goes up into

the atmosphere at last for about 10 years, and then it gets broken down into H2O, which is water, which becomes part of the water cycle, which is rain, and then CO2, which is taken up by the plants again, and they respire oxygen, which is what we breathe in. And then the carbon goes down into the ground. It feeds the microbes underground. The carbon becomes the grass. That's what it is, the cow eats the carbon, and it goes back into their digestive cycles, some of that carbon turns into meat, that we eat, some of it turns into poop, that fertilizes the ground again. So it's all these molecules are working in, if you could just picture the swirl of bubbles.

That's what a biogenic cycle is, okay? And there aren't really more cattle than there were wild remnants before we sort of took over and got rid of it. So we don't have more belching animals than we did when we had like the bison in the, you know, 1500s before we went and killed them all, right? So when we talk about fossil fuels, that is a one-way street. So we're extracting ancient, ancient carbon and methane that's been locked in the Earth's core for millions of years, and we're pumping it straight up into the atmosphere. So it's not really circulating in the same way that the methane from a cow is being burped out. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Surely the methane, oh, go ahead. The methane from both will break down at the same rate, though, right? 10 years or so? Yeah, yeah. It's different. It's not that it's going to be treated differently, but because there's no balance to the fossil fuel equation, it's

just gets used and blown into the atmosphere. It's extra carbon, right? So if you picture like, if you were to picture one of those little, um, ecosphere glass things, you know what I'm talking about, what are they called? Bio-sphere, is it? Bio-sphere, right. It would be like the fossil fuels were pumping in extra gases into that, right? Because they're being extracted not from the biogenic natural cycles that are already

happening in there. It's from like way locked away carbon that is outside of that biosphere that then we're going to be pumping in, and it's too much. I'm blown away. The main breathtaking takeaway from today is that it comes from cow burps, not cow farts. Like that, that's just totally taken. And there's something about that as well, like even just in that little example, I think

it shows that there's something more ricky about it being a fart that goes into the air. And slightly less achy about it being a burp, I don't know where I feel about that. So you said about the there's and then there's a little more to the story too. So I can let me so just as far as the emissions go like worldwide when we're talking about numbers and you're hearing that you know livestock are worse than the entire transportation sector because that's like a common saying that people say that is actually completely not true either. So globally, cattle, livestock in general contribute about 5% of all greenhouse gases, but again it's part of the cycle.

Transportation, energy production, all of that is the lion's share of greenhouse gas emissions. And when you were, if you were to look at global warming trends and CO2 concentrations rising, it is lockstep with the industrial revolution and the transportation industry taking off. So it, you know, we don't, cattle are not the cause in any way of all the problems we have in the environment. Now, there are different ways to raise them. Concentrated manure is a problem. Feed lots can be not great places for cattle to be, although they don't spend their entire lives on feed lots.

They're only there for the last few months of their lives. So all cattle for beef start on grass, guess what the UK is really good at producing grass. And I've been there. Especially when you go north, you don't have a whole lot of vegetable production happening. There's just, you have to import most of the vegetables that are coming there, especially in the winter.

And, but the great thing is grazing animals thrive in lush green pastures, which is the ideal place for them to be not cropping. Got you. So we've talked about meat being escape go. Who is it that wins when meat gets vilified? So the fossil fuel industry loves that all of the attention is on cowfarts and not on gasoline and fossil fuels and all of that, right? So they love this. Also, the ultra-process food industry loves it

because it gives them a pass. So instead of potato chips and junk food being the problem, it's just meat, right? So if you could just eat something that's meat-free, then you're fine, right? It's just sort of like in the 80s and 90s when it was fat-free, it was fine. And we know that that was completely ridiculous. And so, the biggest winners, though, are the Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and all the

money that's going right now into the production of lab-grown meats. So there's big money. There's lots of stocks, lots of hopes placed on these alternatives. I looked up the price of Beyond Meat, and one of those burger patties is actually twice as expensive as organic grass-fed beef here in the US. But it's being pushed as something that's cleaner,

nutritionally, better for the environment, and oh, no animals died. But what we point out in the film of the book is that there is no food system where no animals die. That's impossible. Because even in the production of your pea proteins or your soy or your wheat, tons of animals have to die in order for that to be grown. So if you then can understand that no animals die, I mean, that there is no animal, that there is no deathless system. Sorry, that was a hard one to get out.

Then the only solution is to make sure that the death that happened for your food was done well. And so one large ruminant like a cow can provide 500 pounds of meat. If you were to equate a mammal to a mammal, so if a mouse is life, if a death to a mouse is as traumatic as a death to a cow, you know, if those two things are equal, then clearly the solution, if you're trying to live a diet of least time, would be to eat a cow because so many rodents are killed in the production of grains

and other, you know, plant-based proteins. Yeah, I want to loop back to the philosophical discussion, the ethical side of this in a little bit. I have a good friend, Alex O'Connor, who is a big vegan philosopher coming out of Oxford, and I literally was speaking to him earlier on today. So I have a couple of things that he mentioned to me, but you've highlighted something that's quite interesting there, which is the polarity that most people would expect when they hear this is a book about meat is this is a book about not veganism, and it seems to me that you're primarily opposed

to processed foods rather than people who eat whole foods that are slightly different. Is that right? And is the meat eater versus plant-eated debate making us take our eye off the ball? Yeah, so I mean it's we're arguing about the wrong thing. It's not meat versus no meat. And I'm all for people to have their own choice when it comes to what they feed themselves. As a mother and dietitian, I do have a problem with people not allowing children to eat meat because that can cause some serious problems and we've seen in the literature that babies dying from being on a vegan diet. So what are the deficiencies you get as an infant from Nomean? Primarily B12, which is required for, I mean, a B12 deficiency can cause permanent brain damage.

And you can't just supplement that out. Not necessarily. So there have been cases of vegan exclusively breastfed babies, two vegan mothers who were taking B12 and the baby died. From some downstream effect of the B12 deficiency, that is terrifying. Yeah. And another nutrient that is so B12 and iron are two of the most common nutrient efficiencies worldwide. It's really hard to get the iron you need from spinach or from plant-based sources. Iron deficiency causes also, well, it causes stunting because you need iron to grow, but it can also cause delayed learning problems.

And there's only been one clinical control trial, a randomized control trial looking at children and meat versus less meat or no meat in their diets. And the group that got the meat supplement excelled physically, behaviorally, and physically. So we know that pulling meat away from kids is not going to do them as good as actually giving them a little bit more meat. And so, you know, that needs to be considered when we're having these policies like Meet Free Mondays in schools, because they're based on no science at all. It feels like the right thing to do.

We should just make those kids not eat meat. It really is difficult to bifurcate the emotional component to a lot of this discussion. I think if there was a subtitle to 2020, it's that like, yeah, I know there might be some fact, or I don't know the fact, but this feels right. Definitely. So, yeah, the world of fast, easy news and a tweet which can be untrue, but reach a million people, I think sadly probably doesn't necessarily help this situation.

I mean, there wouldn't be, oh, there shouldn't be anyone that wouldn't get behind processed foods free Monday. Like processed foods free Monday would be like, that's probably not a bad idea. But meat, meat. Whole foods Wednesday, I guess it doesn't. Whole foods Wednesday. I don't mind. I'm all right with Whole Foods Wednesday.

What one of the things that I have seen probably get you a lot online is we're already eating too much meat. Isn't that the case? No. Oh. It's not the case at all. So most people aren't getting, you know, the RDA for protein is way too low and I go through that in detail in the books. That's a recommended daily allowance here in the US. I don't know what you call it in the UK. I think. RDA. So what is it over there? Is it 0.8 grams per kilogram? Do you know? I don't know. I think it's 10%, maybe 10 or 15%. Perhaps of total diet, total calories.

I think so, yeah. Which is way too low too. So we have two measurements here. We have pounds per gram per kilogram of body weight, but of course in the US nobody knows what a gram is or what a kilogram is, right? So they do the math for you and they base it on an ideal body weight for women of 125 pounds, which is way less than what I weigh and just way too low.

And for men, 154 pounds. Wow. Yeah. I would be seriously malnourished if I was eating what 154 pound man eats. Right. And the RDA is the minimum, not the optimal amount. So it's the minimum for the light weight. For the skinny people that don't do anything. America is a big country as well. Right. So the average American woman

is 166 pounds. The average American man is 195 pounds. So when you then go, okay, 0.8 grams per kilogram times, you know, what do we need when we look at 166 pound woman, it's twice the RDA. And then when you look at anyone who's in a growth stage, so babies, children, adolescents, pregnant women, lactating women, or anyone over 40 when we start to lose muscle mass, they need twice as much protein. So really, people are eating way under the protein. Almost all age groups are getting less than even the RDA of protein right now. And so my recommendation is to at least start at 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight,

which is almost nobody walks into my nutrition practice, even eating that RDA of protein. And then wondering why they're so hungry all the time, tired, and why they can't lose weight. And the magical thing about upping someone's protein, especially from animal sources, is they lose weight. They have more energy. They're full all day long. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. And here in America, we're only eating

about two ounces of beef per person per day. So that's not like these massive tomahawk steaks every single night, but that's what the perception is. We're clearly eating too much meat. And again, that's based on an environmental. I feel like we're eating too much meat. And what that really means is I don't like what feed lots look like.

It's gross. I think we should stop them and do something different. That's what is actually, if you could do a thought bubble over someone's head, that's what they're thinking. We're eating way more chicken than we ever have before and chicken is less nutrient dense than beef. And we're also eating twice as much processed foods

as we did in the 1970s. And so we've seen our obesity and diabetes rates soar because of this. We're eating less meat than 1970. And again and again, when I increase someone's meat intake and I tell them like, okay, why don't you, I'll take a 160 pound woman that wants to lose weight and I'll say, okay, how about you try eating 130 grams of protein a day. They can't even do it. They're so full and they think it's so wrong, you know? But that's what works. That's my like magical ticket.

Now nobody has to come see me as a dietitian because that's like pretty much what I charge people to do. Guess what? You need more protein. Eat more protein and so do you and so do you. Right. Everybody come in here. We're going to have a mega church sermon. Everybody here needs some more protein. Yeah. I mean, anyone who's ever tried to hit two grams per kilo of body weight, who is like untrained or unused to it, it's challenging. Like. Like, nobody accidentally eats two grams per kilo of body weight of protein. You would have to be just an unbelievable, like, ridiculous portion control person. Yeah, it would be insane. And therefore, we heavily rely on supplements. So,

what are some of your best pieces of advice for someone who needs to get more protein in? You've just identified there that you say 160 pound woman, 130 grams of protein, I can't get it in. What are what are some of the ways the... No, no, you left it. I can't get it in first. And then I saw you laughing and now I'm laughing. Okay, I'm changing. How can we, how can people eat breakfast breakfast is the number one way to get. So if we can get at least just 30 grams of animal source food, animal source protein in at breakfast that really sets the metabolism and sets your appetite for the whole rest of the day. So, and surprisingly eggs are solo in protein. Everyone's like, well, I hate eggs. And I'm like, well, who said you have to eat eggs for breakfast?

Eggs for breakfast? But they think that that's the rule, right? That's that's that's the egg in cereal industry telling us that breakfast cereals and eggs are what you eat for breakfast. So this morning for breakfast, I had some meatballs, I think, and then for lunch I just had a big piece of fish with some vegetables on the side. So I'm not telling people not to eat vegetables. I'm just saying if you, if weight is an issue for you, or if you don't want to gain weight, which most of us don't, or if you want to put on some muscle, or if you want to have more energy, then consider increasing your protein. And it's a lot easier. Usually people are not eating a protein in the morning with breakfast. So it's easier to think of, you know, maybe eating like six ounces of steak or pork or chicken or something or fish with

lunch or dinner, but for some reason with breakfast people are thinking, oh, I just want a little piece of toast and, you know, no, you need meat balls. What else can we do on a morning? Cause I, you know, I mean, I'm a fan of meatballs, but I can't see me having it every morning for breakfast. Yeah, sausage is leftover steak from the night before. I'll make eggs, but I'll put a ton of ham in them. A little bit of cheddar cheese, that's a good source of protein too. I eat fish a lot, and are some people like, just like Turkey with,

like in a lettuce wrap for breakfast, with a little bit of pesto or something, there's so many ways to get it in. I mean, it's just really meal one, not breakfast. If you think meal one, meal two, meal three, it doesn't have to be, you know, eggs and bacon, or as your only like meat-based breakfast option. Yeah, that fits for me as well.

I tend to go fasted until around about midday, just I don't like training on a full stomach and I tend to train in the morning. So for me, I'll then like kind of condense that afternoon. So that very much is kind of like early lunch, late lunch, nearly dinner, early dinner, dinner, bed. Like, so it is meal one, two, three, four. And what about meat and cancer?

Doesn't increase in increasing our meat consumption, increase our risk of cancer? Not with fresh red meat. They did find a little bit of an increase with bacon, but your average chance of getting colon cancer with in the general public is 5% out of people, right? If you were to eat five slices of bacon every single day for the entire rest of your life,

your chance goes from 5% to 6%. Okay. But the media reports that as a 20% increase, oh my gosh, it was actually 18% increase, but that's still not even 20% the risk. That's statistically meaningless to go from 5% to 6% there are so many other great ways to avoid getting cancer like don't smoke, exercise, either mostly unprocessed food diet in general. Anyway, so in the context of a good diet and a good lifestyle

I see no reason why people should be avoiding processed meats, either. What about cholesterol? Are you cholesterol's bad and meets a bad and I don't even know what mine is, but I don't want cholesterol. Right. I go into it in depth in the book and it's interesting because a lot of the hysteria has just been debunked so many times about cholesterol. It's actually taken off the nutrients of concern of the US dietary guidelines now, but quietly, so that didn't make too many headlines. So, we're less afraid of fat these days. Butters now making a little bit of a comeback. Actually, butter sales during COVID were through the roof better than ever before. I think because a

lot of people were homebaking too. So that's not necessarily always a good thing. But meat is worse than butter could, right? Because it's not only going to kill you, but it's also bad for the environment and it's bad to kill an animal, right? So the anti-meat thing is way worse than the anti-fat thing because we didn't have anti-butter people marching around and going after butcher stores and destroying property and issuing death threats to people that promoted butter, right?

But that's what's happening with the meat movement right now, is the anti-meat folks. And we touch on that in the film. We show a story about a butcher shop that was being harassed and actually has to have assigned permanently in their window now about how, you know, there is no such thing as an ethical slaughter. Animals have died for your food, you know, stuff like that. It's absolutely crazy. And, you know, unfortunately, these fringe groups tend to attract people who already are maybe not maybe not totally thinking logically, but then when you get a B12 deficiency on the top of that from being vegan, then you get some really radical behavior. And so, you know, it's been really interesting for me to see how this all gets expressed.

Yeah, it's fascinating for me as well. I mentioned earlier on my friend Alex, who is one of the best thought-through vegans. The single best thought-through vegan I've ever met. So he hasn't gone from a minimum of perspective. He goes from a philosophical perspective in that he thinks minimizing suffering is something that we should all do. And if I was to dig into, if I was to steal man his argument versus the mouse argument that you meant made earlier on, I think that he wouldn't equate the suffering of a mouse to the suffering of a cow. Now again, volume of how many earthworms and everything else is dug up versus killing a cow, all that sort of stuff. Alex needs to be here to kind of defend himself. My point is that he stood out to me

because of how robust and well-grounded his understanding was. He spent hundreds of hours debating people in the Oxford University halls and pubs around there to ensure that his stance was robust enough for him to make the lifestyle change. He didn't want to go vegan, but he felt compelled to because of something philosophically. Now, that was

surprising to me because that appears to be a rarity. And if everybody was coming up to me and saying, Hey man, like here is my incredibly well-read, very well-grounded, calmly, beautifully articulated reason for why I think that veganism is the lifestyle for me. I'm like, yeah, I can have a conversation with, I enjoy having a conversation with him, having pig's blood thrown on me because I own a Canada goose doesn't feel quite the same. And that's got nothing to do with diet. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely ways to intelligently engage

people. You know, your friend should probably read this book written by Andrew Smith out of Drexel University. It's called a critique of the moral defense of vegetarianism. So he is a philosophy professor PhD, he was an ethical vegan. He started writing a paper on why he was vegan, and it turned into a book where he talked himself out of it. I did a podcast with him a while ago, maybe three years ago, so his name's Andrew Smith.

I did interview him for the film, and his interview didn't make it in only because we had some other stronger stories that the editors felt were better. But I do, when we do the global release of the film, people are going to have an opportunity to purchase the extended interviews and his is one of it. Yeah, that's cool. So my pushback to that argument would be who are you to say that just because an animal is larger, it's life is worth more. Like what is the criteria of life being worth more or less than something else? Would a zebra be worth more or would a giraffe be worth more? Because it's physically larger. Would that mean that you are more important than me because I'm smaller? Where does that, where do we go with that?

Or a 300 year old maple tree that is the habitat for hundreds of little critters and insects and providing food for shelter. Because that's a plant with the death of that tree be less important than the death of a field mouse. So where do we draw the line between the difference between ecosystem function and health and individual lives and how do you equip? Why on earth would a mouse be less important than a, you know, or a colony of bees? They're really intelligent, right? But, you know, so it's spraying insecticides, okay? You know, and if it isn't okay, then how are we going to produce food without insecticides? Oh, we need animals. But then how are we going to, I feel like I'm on the Princess bride. How are we going to,

how are we going to, you know, use animal inputs to grow kale if no animals can die? What if an animal dies? Do we put it in the compost? Or do we just like leave it in the woods? It's going to compost in the woods too. Should we just, you know, like how, what, where do things end and other things begin? And the reality is we're all just molecules being recycled into other molecules, right?

Like that's all we are, which gets some of the very religious people very frustrated with me, but that is the truth. So we have to just be looking at how do we increase the biodiversity, how do we increase the quality of life? What's your opinion on the carnivore diet? I think it can be a great tool for someone who has really messed up guts and has tried a lot of other things and it hasn't worked. Maybe people with extreme autoimmune issues, things like that. Although I think as a lifestyle, like just for someone who wants to try it out because it's cool or just as a weight loss thing.

I think people should be eating as many foods that don't give them as problems as possible and try to get the most nutrient density we can through food. And so as a clinician, I've used it with patients with amazing success, with binge eaters sometimes just restricting it all the way down to just meat so they have no other decision is really actually quite helpful amazingly and I've seen so many more binge eaters

during COVID than I've ever seen before. So why do you- Why does people come for eating themselves with food? Yeah, I mean binge eating tends to be something that comes out of people feeling that they don't have control. And I think it's really hard to feel like you have control over anything during this time. Yeah. Yeah. So, and also, I mean, just if you have an emotional issue with food, a distorted relationship with food, having 24-7 access to your refrigerator is not a good thing. I saw this meme at the beginning of the summer that said, and it was a note posted inside

of the fridge, and it said, you're not hungry, you're just fucking bored. Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually had it. I saw another cartoon saying that the fridge was sent yet because it's calling your name, you know. So no other animal has to go around saying, oh, I've had enough. I can't possibly eat. I better stop eating all those coconuts, you know, like all animals are wired to seek out food as diverse as possible. So that's called optimum foraging strategies and awesome paper written about that. So humans are wired to eat some of these berries, but then you kind of get a little like full on those.

But then there's always room for those berries, right? Because those ones are, they have a different nutrients in them. But so when we're confronted with all these nutrient-poor process foods that stimulate us to overeat, we have no off switch for them. It's very easy to see why people are overweight, and it's really not their fault. We've engineered ourselves into a really disturbing relationship with food. The arms race is incredibly unfair. I learned the words, orrification at the beginning of this year, which I think is the design

of the texture of foods. And one of the examples or a couple of examples that were given is that, um, ancestrally, it would be very rare for us to come across a food which had multiple textures in it. Like you get a bunch of berries, they're kind of slimy, you get some kale, it's also kind of slimy, you get some meat, it's kind of like a little bit more tough and chewy and you get something that's been out in the sun and it's dry and crispy or whatever.

But if you look at most foods that are really weaponized for overeating like fries or Oreos. There is contrast to the texture, crispy on the outside and fluffy and light on the inside. And that helps to bypass, obviously another one of them is the balance between carbohydrates and fat. And fat. That tends to be in there as well,

which is why cheesecake is such a bastard. Oh, it's my favorite. Because you've got this, you've got the buttery biscuit base and then you've got the cream on top and then you've got the tanginess, the sweetness of the jam so you can sugar and fat and then a little bit more carbs at the bottom. It's hard to say no.

So that's the stuff we shouldn't be eating. What are the rules that I can follow so that I make sure that I get good meat? I've got to the supermarket tomorrow or I go shopping online tomorrow. What do I do? You know, I There's two thing you know one is for health, right? So there's not a massive difference in nutritional quality between Totally grass fed steak and a steak that was finished on a feedlot And so even if you don't have a lot of money,

your best money is spent on the more red meats than chicken or pork. Just because nutritionally, it's just a powerhouse, right? Organ meats are going to be a really good choice for you. When we're, you know, local fish, I love fish. I actually prefer the taste of fish to meat. It's all just animal flesh, though. I don't know why we like say like meat.

Every fish. You're from Boston, right? Are you're in Boston? Yeah. Yeah. Everyone I know from Boston absolutely adores seafood. And for everyone, I went out there and I got taken for a roll,

some sort of roll with lobster, yeah, with lobster shredded in it, and covered in butter. Yeah. You've never heard of a lobster roll. No, British, when do you think we have over here, fish and chips, battered fish, chips, and weak tea. That's what we've got over here. Yeah, lobster rolls pretty well. I didn't actually grow up here, but yeah, I love fish. And when someone comes, you have to take them out for a lobster roll. That's what you do. Or clam chowder. Yeah. It's nice to go happen to. Uh-huh. So, I highly recommend, folks just try to get food as close to the source as possible. If you have the opportunity to go find a farmer, to buy your

meat directly from them. Um, and that's not always an option. I know in Iceland, they couldn't do that because of government regulations. Like they had to sell it. They had like all had the governments at the price for lamb. So anyway, I just, as much as you can support local farmers, by British beef, British lamb, not the imported stuff, because that's what's keeping the British landscape beautiful is the farming culture there. And I saw a big divide between like city and farming, urban and rural, when I was there. We have that here too in America, and it's really unfortunate. So, you know, supporting the people that are in your own region

that are working hard to produce food and also keeping things beautiful is beautiful and healthy is the best. I get it. Diana, thank you. Where can people go? They want to watch the film. They want to buy the book. Where did they go? Yeah, so sacredcow.info. They can sign up. We're doing the free global preview of the film November 22nd through 30th. It's going to be only that week and then it's going to go away. It's going into distribution. It'll be available on mainstream platforms starting in January and in North America. I don't know when it's coming to the UK. So this is your chance.

So it's November 22nd to the 30th. The book is available wherever books are sold. I have info on the website and then folks can follow me on Instagram at sustainable dish. You are pounding the Instagram at the moment. You got some really cool infographics and stuff on there, whoever's putting your artwork together. He's awesome. James Cooper all the way from Tasmania actually. It's James, my designer. Yeah, totally his.

Everything I'll be linked in the show notes below. Diana, thank you so much for today. Thank you.