The Dr. Hyman Show - Meat or Plants: Which Is Better For Reversing Climate Change? with Nicolette Hahn Niman

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Fundamentally, we need to return to understanding and mimicking the way the earth functions. And when you look at natural models, all systems have the three key components. You have the plants, and you have the animals, and you have the fungi. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark. I travel all the time, so at this point i have packing down to a science i know exactly which grab-and-go food items and personal care products i like to bring and i always keep them on hand so i'm ready for my next trip i used to run around before every

Starting point is 00:00:36 trip trying to find what i needed which meant going to different stores spending too much time packing and now i use thrive market and i get everything in one place shipped right to my door. Here's a little snapshot of what I like to travel with. Food is of course first on my list. I always order some of the ioba grass-fed biltong jerky which is so yummy. Royal Hawaiian Orchards organic macadamias because it's super full of fat and protein and I love that they make me feel full and easy to carry and don't go bad. And they're also super handy pouches of Thrive Market brand pitted green olives. I want to splurge and bring a treat. I'll grab some Hugh chocolate too.

Starting point is 00:01:11 And in my toiletry bag, I bring some Schmitz deodorant, some all terrain herbal armor bug spray, a tin of raw elements, SPF 30 natural sunscreen, and a bar of Dr. Bronner's peppermint castile soap. Thrive also carries so many other things that makes packing for a trip easier, and I'm sure you'll find your own personal favorites. Thrive has two different membership options. I went with a 12-month because it comes down to five bucks a month, and I'm constantly ordering stuff. Plus, it's 30 days risk-free, but you can also sign up for a monthly membership. If you join Thrive Market today, you'll get 25% off your first order and a free gift. Just go to thrivemarket.com forward slash Hyman.

Starting point is 00:01:47 That's T-H-R-I-V-E market.com slash Hyman for 25% off plus a free gift. My main goal with diet is to use food as medicine. But even when we eat super well, most of us are missing out on certain essential nutrients. Our soils have become depleted and our digestive tracts just aren't working so great. They're compromised by stress and toxins and they just can't absorb nutrients as efficiently as they should. And that's why I always use, and I recommend to my patients, a multivitamin mineral as nutritional insurance.

Starting point is 00:02:17 It covers the basics for all our day-to-day body functions, all the things that we need that our food might be missing. But there are so many products out there I wouldn't go near because they contain artificial fillers or inactive ingredients and you have to be pretty picky. The one I trust and take myself is Athletic Greens. They use high quality, highly absorbable forms of vitamins and nutrients from real whole foods. Athletic Greens comes in a powder that tastes great and mixes easily with water or smoothies and specifically supports my gut health, immunity, energy, and recovery. And it's not just vitamins and minerals. It has phytonutrient-rich superfoods and adaptogens and

Starting point is 00:02:56 pre and probiotics and even digestive enzymes. I love that they add the digestive support in their powder since so much of our immune strength and overall wellness starts in the gut. It's really one supplement that covers so many bases and you'd be hard-pressed to find something else in this comprehensive form in any single other product. I use Athletic Greens in the morning as part of my daily routine and I love having it with me whenever I travel. I also love that it's diet friendly, whether you're vegan, paleo, keto, dairy-free, or gluten-free. Right now, Athletic Greens is offering my audience a full year supply of their vitamin D3K2 liquid formula, free with your first purchase. Now, these two nutrients are also so vital for a strong immune system and strong bones, and many of us are not getting enough of them. I use the Athletic Greens powder and their D3K2 formula

Starting point is 00:03:47 to make sure I get extra nutrients that complement my diet. They're also going to give you five free travel packs as well. Just go to athleticgreens.com forward slash hymen to get your free year supply of vitamin D3 and K2 and five free travel packs with your first purchase. You'll get it delivered straight to your door and I promise you'll feel the difference Athletic Greens can make in your daily wellness routine. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash Hyman. Now let's get back to this week's

Starting point is 00:04:15 episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Hyman, and that is Pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And if you're confused about meat and whether you should eat it or not, whether it's going to save the planet by not eating it or save the planet by eating it, you better listen to this podcast because it's with none other than Nicolette Hahn-Nyman, who's an extraordinary woman, an expert in this topic. She's a writer, attorney, livestock rancher, and recently a former vegetarian. We're going to talk about that. She's authored a number of books, including Defending Beef. The new edition is coming out and it's available in the summer of 2021. I encourage everybody to get a copy. The full title is

Starting point is 00:05:05 Defending Beef, the Ecological and Nutritional Case for Meat. Now that may be getting some of your hackles up if you're listening and you're vegan, but just listen through the podcast because we're going to explain exactly why that may be the case. She also wrote The Righteous Pork Chop, which is an interesting title, as well as lots of essays for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times. She's written for the Atlantic, San Francisco Chronicle, the Earth, Island Journal, and many others. She's been on the PBS NewsHour, Dr. Oz, and many films and documentaries, including Eating Animals and Sustainable. She was a senior attorney at the environmental organization Waterkeeper,

Starting point is 00:05:41 and she focused on agriculture and food production in that aspect, and also worked for the National Wildlife Federation, lives in Northern California with her husband and two kids. Bill Nyman, who is her husband, is the founder of the natural meat company, Nyman Ranch and BN Ranch. So these are places you can get racy grass-finished or regenerative meat. So welcome, Nicolette. Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here, and thanks for that great introduction. Of course. Now, as I've been thinking about meat, I'm talking with some friends. It seems like there's basically four camps around me. There's the ones who say, well, let's just keep scaling meat production for a growing world population,

Starting point is 00:06:18 and we're going to find new innovative ways and technologies to make it better and do it right. And that is the conventional meat industry or otherwise known as CAFOs or feedlots. And there's people arguing for the benefits of that, for sure. Then there's the people who are like, no, meat's going to kill us. It's going to kill the planet. Everybody should be off meat and we should eradicate animal agriculture, period, from the planet. And that's one position. And another position is we should design lab meat, cell-based meat, stem cell meat, innovators who are trying to create alternatives, maybe insect meat, who knows. And then there are the regenerators, the ones who believe that we can change the way we're raising animals in order to optimize the health of the planet,

Starting point is 00:07:08 the health of the animals and the health of humans in the process, regenerating human health and ecological health. So those are the four, I think, buckets that people are playing with around meat. So it's a very complicated topic. We're going to focus today on the regenerative aspect, which is your focus and your expertise. But there's so much conflicting information about meat, whether it's good or bad for us, and whether it's good for health, the health of the planet. And so tell us, how did beef get to be public enemy number one and be perceived as the most environmentally destructive and least healthy food that we can be eating. And how have we got this wrong when it comes to this topic? Yeah, I really think that's

Starting point is 00:07:52 true. I think it's kind of been, you know, it's been called the king of meats, especially in the United States. And I think part of that is because it was the most consumed meat in the U.S. for a long time. You know, for decades, it was the number one most consumed meat. That's actually chicken now, but, you know, it's been replaced. But it was for a very long time meat, you know, it was the number one meat. So there's that aspect of it. And then there's the fact that beef has always been the most expensive meat. And so, you know, I mean, you know, maybe, you know, frog meat or something obscure would

Starting point is 00:08:24 be above it. But as far as meats that are commonly available, the beef would be kind of the thing you might just have on Saturday night. You know, the nice steak. When I grew up in my household, you had a steak on Saturday night, for example. And that was because it was it was a more expensive piece of meat. And so it was something that you had just once a week. And so it was kind of regarded as, you know was something that you had just once a week. And so it was kind of regarded as, you know, something that was a little bit special. And, and in around 1970, I think partly because of the fact that it was the, you know, the most popular meat, and it was also

Starting point is 00:08:58 considered kind of almost a little bit of a luxury. It but at the same time, these are large animals. And so the individual animals are really, you know, visible on the landscape. And when you look at the individual animal and like how much water it drinks or how much land, you know, purportedly, you know, takes to raise an individual animal, it just looks like a lot. And so right around 1970, you know, I think that kind of, I can kind of date that as the key kickoff point when people really started focusing on, you know, cattle being a problem ecologically and beef, you know, shouldn't be something we're eating so much of. And I think And also because it had saturated fat, which was deemed to be really evil at the time.

Starting point is 00:09:42 Exactly. It turned out not so much anymore. But yes, it was a confluence of those two things. That's right. You had diet for a small planet. And then you had the concern over saturated fat, which has, you know, beef has more saturated fat than chicken, for example. So, you know, there were all these things that were kind of swirling around, that I think sort of led to people starting to focus on, you know, well, maybe we shouldn't be eating so much beef, or maybe we shouldn't eat it at all. And cattle are, you know, bad for the planet. And then, you know, I feel, you know, sort of looking at the trajectory of this, and I've read a lot of the books that were written historically on this topic, things like, you know, Beyond Beef, and, you know, Diet for a New America, and all those kinds of, I've read all those books.

Starting point is 00:10:24 And to me, it looked like there was kind of this, you know, anti-beef sentiment welling up around 1970. And then actually there was a huge consumption in the rise of, you know, excuse, rise in the consumption of beef in the 1970s and 80s. So it kind of like, you know, that also fosters more discussion, you know, more controversy about it. But actually, beef consumption started falling pretty dramatically over the last couple of decades. But there was this rise in concern over climate change, which I think is, you know, legitimate. I mean, I am a very, you know, big advocate of the idea that climate change is important and urgent, and we need to address it. But unfortunately, this led to a kind of a renewed interest in this idea that beef is really problematic and that, you know, we shouldn't be raising cattle, you know, if at all, we should be doing tiny numbers of them.

Starting point is 00:11:12 And especially because of methane, you know, because cattle are ruminant animals and they emit methane in their digestive processes. And there's a real focus on methane when you're talking about climate change. Again, you know, legitimately, there's a focus on methane. But the real question I have, and, you know, the argument that I'm making in the book is that we're misidentifying what, you know, the real concerns that we should be having as far as climate change and methane. And so I don't in any way dismiss the concerns over climate change, but I really protest, you know, pinning that on cattle and beef. Well, it's interesting, you know, I think a lot of the arguments sort of miss the nuances of the story of what kind of beef, how it was raised. And, you know, from you,

Starting point is 00:11:57 I first heard the term, it's not the cow, it's the how, but I think Russ Kahn's a term. And, you know, it really is a much more nuanced conversation than meat good meat bad it's right it's which meat how is it raised i mean even even lab-based meat you know is interesting because what are they feeding the cells they're feeding them food which is grown how which is grown in traditional commercial agricultural processes that drive climate change and environmental and ecological destruction. It's even worse than that because the medium in which a lot of the lab meat is

Starting point is 00:12:34 grown is actually bovine fetal serum, which you have to get from pregnant cows. And this is a really dark side, dark underside of that whole industry. And they have, you know, said they can eventually stop doing that and replace it with something else. But all of the early lab meat is based on, you know, a serum that is taken from pregnant cows at slaughter. And in fact, even heard that there was an incentive, slaughterhouses were offering incentives for bringing pregnant cows to slaughterhouses in order to get that serum. So that's a really dark side to that story that nobody's really talking about. Yeah. And then there's a lot of

Starting point is 00:13:14 debate around whether or not regenerative agriculture at scale, integrating animals, really has the capacity to draw down enough carbon to make a difference. Some people say it can reverse all of the greenhouse gas emissions that have happened since the industrial revolution. Others say that's more challenging. I think the methane argument is very interesting too, because when you really look carefully at it, you know, methane from cows, about 5% of methane emissions, rice is about 3% from rice paddies.

Starting point is 00:13:43 And what's even worse is all the vegetables that you throw in the garbage from your fridge or your scraps that go into the landfills, which is 16% of the methane. So it's more than three times the methane from the vegetables than from the cows, which I don't think people really recognize. And of course, there are a lot of ways to mitigate, which what I want to ask you about, to mitigate the methane in cows by what

Starting point is 00:14:09 they eat and how you raise them and what the soils are like and so forth. So it's a very nuanced conversation. Well, and it just shows that you just gave a bunch of really good examples of how there's methane from a lot of sources of a lot of activities. And some of those things like growing rice are things that, you know, we want the world to be doing right. But some of those things like wasting food, which is a huge source of methane from the landfills is something we shouldn't be doing. And there was just some renewed attention a few weeks ago, the Congress has just indicated that it's going to once again, under the Trump administration, they stopped trying to focus on stopping the methane leaks from natural gas production and the abandoned wells, which apparently is a huge source of methane. It's far more than cattle.

Starting point is 00:14:58 And it's one of those things that, you know, that's something we absolutely shouldn't be doing, right? It's a waste. It's about 31%, right, of all methane comes from the fossil fuel industry, including the fracking. Yeah, it's absolutely from the, you know, there's a huge amount coming from the whole fossil fuel industry. But the key point is a major source of that, a major part of that is actually just leaks that could be capped. You know, so we're talking about when you talk about cattle, you know, there's a whole bunch of complexity to the issue, because you're talking about a living entity, that's part of a living ecosystem, right? But just the fact that it's producing food that's nourishing for lots of people versus, you know, a wasted food item,

Starting point is 00:15:42 you know, rotting in a landfill, or a leaking, you know, uncapped part of the fossil fuel system. So those are, those are things that are, you know, that's kind of the low hanging fruit that we should be attacking is the things that are all bad. There's nothing good about, you know, leaking methane from natural gas, gas production or food waste. Exactly. Food waste is a travesty in so many ways, because it's not just that it's causing the methane, but there was all of the, you know, all the resources that went into the production of that food. And then there's no nourishment, there's no benefit from that, you know, nobody's consuming it, it's just going into the way the landfill, and then on the end, it's also causing

Starting point is 00:16:18 that kind of pollution. So there's so many reasons to focus on reducing food waste. Yeah, absolutely. So let's sort of backtrack a little bit. You know, you have been a paradox for many years, because you were a vegetarian married to a livestock rancher. Yes. And and you wrote a book while being a vegetarian called defending beef. Yeah, which is, you know, kind of a funny concept for a vegetarian to pick, to write about. What first prompted you to become a vegetarian? And then why have you changed? Because now you just let me know before we got on the podcast that you started eating meat again.

Starting point is 00:16:56 And how has your perspective shifted? And what are the changes you've noticed in yourself? Well, you know, I started becoming a vegetarian when I was a freshman in college. And I had already, you know, been a sort of what I would consider an environmentalist as a kid. You know, I used to get the Ranger Rick magazine from National Wildlife Federation. And I was, you know, I got involved in, you know, sort of high school environmental groups. And then I started in college and I was a biology major in college and involved in the environmental society there and everything. And it's just kind of in the, you know, like we were just talking about before, it was kind of in

Starting point is 00:17:27 that zeitgeist at that time that if you were a good environmentalist, you did not eat beef because they were supposedly, you know, this was what was being said is it was destroying the rainforests and it was overly resource consumptive to produce beef. And oh, there was too much water. Also, there are all these pieces of the argument, but it just seemed like, well, if you're gonna be a good environmentalist, you shouldn't eat beef. So I first gave up beef, I remember very distinctly. And then about six to eight months after that, I stopped eating all, all kinds of animal based foods, or I should say all meat, you know, fish and chicken and everything. I always ate dairy and egg products. But, but in any event, I did it because I just thought it was

Starting point is 00:18:06 kind of the right thing to do. And as we were talking about before, I also bought the idea that, you know, from a health standpoint, it would be a healthier diet. And I kind of skated along with that perspective for many years. And then I was hired, I was working as an environmental lawyer for National Wildlife Federation. And I worked, and then I was hired by Bobby Kennedy Jr. from that job to work for him at the group Waterkeeper Alliance as an environmental lawyer. And he asked me to focus on the livestock industry, because there's a lot of pollution from industrial, you know, which I know, you're well aware of. And, you know, it's really about the concentration of the animals and the systems that are very much like factories. And so you have a lot of waste that's brought together and you have a lot of animals brought together and the water pollution coming out of those operations. And that was the focus of the work that Bobby Kennedy asked me to do, you know, sort of address that pollution as a lawyer.

Starting point is 00:19:13 And at first, that kind of neatly reinforced my own ideas that not eating meat is the right thing to do, because I was looking at, you know, kind of the worst of the meat industry. And not too long into that project, I started thinking, you know, we should really be seeking out good examples of animal farming so that we can promote what we want to build, not just be tearing things down. And I started working with a lot of farmers in the Nyman Ranch Network. And that's a collection of farmers that all follow sort of traditional animal husbandry practices and focus on animal welfare, focus on soil health, focus on animal health. And through that, I met Bill Nyman. And then, you know, a couple years later, we got married, you know, to sort of fast forward. But I still, and I moved out to California from New York and began actually living and eventually working on our ranch as well. But for 17 years, I still did not eat meat. And it was mostly at that point, by the time I kind of got to 17 years after living on a ranch, not eating meat, it was more just about kind of habit and also just this still this feeling that I don't

Starting point is 00:20:26 really need to eat meat, and I haven't needed it, and I'm okay. And so why should I be eating meat? But what happened is I turned 50 years old a couple of years ago. And I decided that as I got older, you know, sort of entering, you know, the second half of my life, I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything I possibly could with lifestyle choices, you know, eating and, you know, exercise and everything else to keep vibrant health. I didn't want to just kind of, you know, limp into my, you know, 50s and 60s and 70s. I wanted to, you know, I've been, I'm really active. I've always been a triathlete and a runner and everything. And I was really active physically. And I've always been super focused on eating healthy, you know, real whole foods. And I started feeling like I want to make

Starting point is 00:21:17 sure that I'm doing everything I can in my diet to, you know, to make sure I have strong bones and strong muscles as I age. And I knew that women especially have a problem with bone density as they age. And I had my own bone density tested. And I was kind of shocked to learn that I had the precursor to osteoporosis. So I really decided I made a very conscious choice that I would begin eating meat again, because I knew that would help me, especially in retaining muscle mass. And that would help me keep my bone density and hopefully even rebuild bone density that I might have already lost. And, you know, that was about a year and a half ago. And I've been feeling really good. And I'm very happy. What do you notice in

Starting point is 00:22:00 difference in the quality of your health before and after? Well, one of the biggest differences really surprised me. I hadn't heard people talking about this, but it was definitely my experience. And that was I had always craved sweets a lot my whole life. And, you know, I thought by beginning to eat meat, I would not be hungry as much. And that's true for sure, because I was always hungry, you know, for like 30. I was a vegetarian for 33 years, and I was kind of chronically hungry. But the other thing I noticed, this surprised me more was that I stopped craving sweets nearly as much. I mean,

Starting point is 00:22:36 there was a huge difference in that almost, almost from one day to the next. And so I kind of feel like it was my body beginning to feel like satiated, really, for the first time, you know, nutritionally satiated. And I had been, you know, like, like I was saying a moment ago, I, you know, I was reared by parents that believed in whole foods and had my mom had a big garden in the backyard and used to bake her own bread and all that stuff and your own yogurt. I mean, I was always raised eating whole foods. But I still had that sweet craving thing for for many years. And then now, with adding meat to my diet that has not totally gone away, but dramatically gone down. So I feel like my body for the first time is really satiated nutrition.

Starting point is 00:23:26 That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, the data are pretty clear, but as we get older, we need more protein to increase muscle synthesis. And the disease of aging is really a disease of muscle loss, which people don't really understand. And, and the best protein for building muscle, clearly, according to the data, is animal protein. There's no doubt about that. Because the quality of amino acids, the concentration of protein, many other factors. And the sugar craving is fascinating because often people who are vegetarians have higher loads of carbohydrates in their diet. And that leads, as we age, to higher levels of insulin.

Starting point is 00:24:03 And insulin makes you hungry all the time. And when you eat protein, it higher levels of insulin and insulin makes you hungry all the time. And when you eat protein, it doesn't really spike the insulin that much. Fat doesn't spike it at all. And so you're ending up having a more balanced blood sugar and even metabolism, which is so critical as we get older. So that's a fascinating discovery because, you know, we get into the health aspects of being. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. I know a lot of you out there are practitioners like me, helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as your framework for getting to the root cause. What's critical to understanding what each individual person and body needs is testing, which is why I'm excited to tell you about Rupa Health.

Starting point is 00:24:45 Looking at hormones, organic acids, nutrient levels, inflammatory factors, gut bacteria, and so many other internal variables can help us find the most effective path to optimize health and reverse disease. But up till now, that meant you were usually ordering tests for one patient from multiple labs. And I'm sure many of you can relate how time-consuming this process was, and that it could all feel like a lot of work to keep track of. Now there's Rupa Health, a place for functional medicine practitioners to access more than 2,000 specialty labs from over 20 labs like Dutch, Fiber in America, Genova, Great Plains, and more.

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Starting point is 00:25:52 I sort of want to loop back and go, why did you write Defending Beef and why did you update it? Because it was a great book to start with and you put a lot of new stuff in it. And I wonder why you came back to to this book again uh it's such an important moment in history around climate change and our nutritional strategies uh in the increasing polarization of views as i sort of open up the conversation with you've got the ones who are no meat, yes, meat, regenerative meat, lab meat. So it's like, we're in this conversation. So what was the thesis of the book that sort of is driving you forward with this discussion? Yeah, well, the first book, as you mentioned

Starting point is 00:26:38 in the intro, I wrote a book called Righteous Pork Chap, which was really about, you know, sort of attacking the industrialization of animal-based foods and saying that that's, you know, sort of problematic on so many levels, whether it's, you know, the quality of the food that's produced or the environmental impact and whatever. And after I wrote that book, I was increasingly getting people say to me, you know, oh, I read Righteous Pork Chop and I just became a vegetarian. And I kept thinking, well, that wasn't really the message. And so I thought, I'm going to try to get people thinking about what they can do to sort of build this regenerative food system that I think we so desperately need. And for me, you know, opting out of meat. And so that's why it's sort of ironic, I was doing it

Starting point is 00:27:23 myself. And I finally decided, you know, I ironic, I was doing it myself. And I finally decided, you know, I'm not gonna do this anymore. But I was, I was kind of part of that mode of thinking almost. And it's a simple solution, you know, you think you've just, well, I've dealt with that now, I'm not part of the problem. And in fact, if you opt out of meat, you're not doing anything to build the complex, sort of interconnected, interrelated, locally based, regionally based, you know, relationship based kind of food system that I think we really so desperately need, which is kind of the opposite of the industrial food system. And so increasingly, you know, I wrote Defending Beef because I was constantly hearing and constantly struck by the idea that beef was

Starting point is 00:28:05 the worst problem, you know, the worst problem with plates and the worst problem out in the environment. And my own lived experience was showing me just the opposite. I was seeing not just, you know, a lot of really good information about, you know, the wholesomeness and the high nutrient value of the food, but I was seeing, I'm just learning more and more everywhere I went and everything I read about the importance of raising animals in healthy ecosystems. And essentially the, you know, sort of the, you mentioned the, it's not the cow, it's the how tagline that I, you know, I have a t-shirt that says that on it. I, you know, I love wearing it because it's kind of a great conversation starter.

Starting point is 00:28:46 I know it's such a great teacher. It's just boom, boom, you know, Diana Rogers made them. Oh, good. But I'm sure we can get you one. But it's, you know, the idea is that people have taken this, you know, very complex question and reduce it to this very simple idea, which is beef are bad, bad and in fact the how is the key point and so what i wanted to do in defending beef is show how actually i just gave a talk a few days ago to a group of um fifth and uh sixth graders and i had a little whiteboard and i drew um a cow and then I did very bad artwork. I drew a cow and then I drew a car.

Starting point is 00:29:27 And I asked them, I said, what is the similarity between these two? And I thought they would never get the answer. And a kid yelled it out right away. He said, they both start with the letter C. And I thought, my God, that's amazing. No adult would have gotten that. And I said, that's exactly the right answer. I said, otherwise the cow and the cart, there's no similarity. Okay. And so I went through this whole big conversation with them about how you have essentially, you know, fossil fuel drawn out of the ground, fossil fuel that was not, you know, environmentally problematic. And then it's goes through the car and it's emitted through a tailpipe. Whereas a cow is part of a complex ecosystem, and it has carbon that it's using, and it's releasing, and that it's essentially cycling, and it's essentially

Starting point is 00:30:11 old carbon versus new carbon. And you wouldn't believe it, this class was so engaged and so interested, and they just got it. You know, it was, it was, it was a really fun, fun experience to meet with the kids and talk about that. But so basically defending beef was, you know, my answer to this idea that cattle and beef are the problem out there. And, you know, I just take this. I heard an amazing talk a few years ago by the physicist and philosopher Frithjof Capra. And he said he wrote the Tao of physics. Right. Yeah. Right. And he says everything is all about systems. You know, he wrote the Tao of physics, right? Yeah. And right. And he says, everything, it's all about systems. You know, he says, everything in nature is connected and nothing is linear. And he said, only humans create linear machines. So when you look at a car,

Starting point is 00:30:57 you can think of the inputs. You can think of the outputs. When you look at a cow, you're talking about something that has all different kinds of relationships and impacts and all kinds of things affect that animal and everything. It has many impacts. So when I talk about cattle, for example, I talk about their hooves and their hooves press the seeds into the ground, which helps germination. They also help press vegetation into the ground, which feeds the soil. Their mouths are doing a clipping and pruning process of vegetation, which also helps the regrowth of the plant. But it also helps the diversity of the vegetation that's growing there because the plant is no longer shading other things that are trying to sprout.

Starting point is 00:31:47 And then you, of course, have the impact of the urine and the manure coming out of the animal. And that helps the soil to, of course it adds nutrients, but a lot more than that. And, you know, water essentially through both the urine and the feces. But most importantly, the biology of the manure is actually helping to trigger the biology of the soil. And this is the key to the grazing animal is it has all of these impacts that are helping the ecosystem have a healthier function. And especially starting with that soil biology. And that leads when you have healthier soil biology. I know you have talked about this many times on your podcast before. So your listeners probably heard a lot about this already.

Starting point is 00:32:28 Yeah, maybe they're sick of it, but I can't keep talking about it. It's such an important topic. You just got to keep going there, you know, because this really is the key. I mean, you know, it's funny because soil is the foundation, literally, of the food system. And it is also sort of the foundation of sustainability for the planet. And, you know, you've planet. And, you know, you've mentioned before about, you know, there are all these figures about how much carbon can be sequestered in the soil. And I think, you know, we don't need to worry about whether or not this can

Starting point is 00:32:56 fully sequester all of the carbon that needs to be sequestered to stop global warming. When you talk about carbon in soil, you're actually talking about the life of the soil. And historically, there was a lot more carbon in the soil than there is now, a great deal more. We've lost a huge portion of it. And much of that carbon that we've lost is in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. So when you're talking about reintroducing and resequestering the carbon into the soil, you're both talking about pulling carbon out of the atmosphere where it doesn't belong. And you're talking about putting it back into the soil where it doesn't belong, which enhances the life of the soil. And the biology of the soil is very complex. You know a lot of discussion about carbon, and carbon is absolutely crucial.

Starting point is 00:33:46 But a lot of it is about the microorganisms. Yeah. It's like a microbiome except for the soil. Exactly. And there's that great book by Dr. David Montgomery and his wife, Ann Bilkey, making the hidden half of nature, making that very argument and making that analogy that you have to have for a healthy human, you have to have that healthy microbiome. And for a healthy planet, you have to have the soil

Starting point is 00:34:10 having a healthy, you know, subsoil, the life of the soil in that micro microscopic life has to be vibrant and functioning at a high level. And what modern industrial agriculture has done is essentially destroy that soil life below ground. And the goal of regenerative agriculture, and cattle are a really important part of this, is to reintroduce that life, to revitalize that life in the soil, and that means more vegetation can grow and more diverse vegetation grows. And that means more above ground life, more diverse and more plentiful insects and everything from earthworms to beetles. And then you have the more diverse vegetation you have, and the more diverse insect life you have, the more diverse, larger species you have. And so it's kind of an upward cascade. So what would you say to those people who say, well, you know, that sounds good, but at the end of the day, you know, you know, if you grow vegetables, you're going to be better off.

Starting point is 00:35:20 And then, then you don't really need animals to be part of a regenerative system maybe you know maybe we can introduce a few more bison in montana and that'll help but you know they can migrate do their thing but we really should not have animals i've talked to people who were actually i thought are experts are billing themselves as experts in this space who are saying no no animals do not need to be part of a regenerative agriculture system, what would you say to those people? Well, I would, the first of all, I think Sir Albert Howard said it so well when he said, essentially, there is no system in nature that doesn't have animals. And the whole, I think the solution, you mentioned technology at the beginning, and there are lots of people who are looking to technology to solve climate change and to solve, you know, human health problems and to solve diet, you know, sort of like our diet and health and, you know,

Starting point is 00:36:08 farming connection. And I don't discount the value of technological contributions, but to me, fundamentally, we need to return to understanding and mimicking the way the earth functions. And when you look at natural models, all systems have the three key components. You have the plants and you have the animals and you have the fungi. And we haven't really talked about fungi here so far today, but they're a critical part of, you know, the way, for example, the subterranean ecosystem works is a lot of the whole process of carbon sequestration and the way the plant gets nutrients and so forth is facilitated by microscopic fungi. So they're a really key,

Starting point is 00:36:53 you know, sort of the three-legged stool that creates sustainability. So if you just think you can remove animals from that, in my view, the stool is not going to stand. Yeah, I think that's right i think that you know like you said before they contribute to the fertilization of the soil the urine the manure they they dig it up with their hooves and even the saliva from the mouths of the ruminants actually stimulates plant growth so if they graze down a little bit that saliva makes the plants grow even more which even sequesters more carbon. It's so powerful. You know, what's, what's really important for people to understand is that soil is, is alive.

Starting point is 00:37:35 And most of the plants we grow now are in dead soil and even vegetables. So what's fascinating is that even our vegetable quality has gone way down. Our meat quality has gone way down and we're not growing foods in a way that actually produces the most nutrient dense foods, even if eating broccoli or kale or whatever you think you're doing good for your body. Depends how it's grown, because if it's grown, even in a in an organic setting, it still may not be that great for you. Because a lot of organic farmers use industrial organic, and they're tilling and they're using. And by the way, my favorite story is, I love your comment on this is that, you know, if you eat a regenerative raised grass fed beef, the cows are vegan.

Starting point is 00:38:11 If you're eating, if you're eating organic broccoli grown, the way it's grown in America today, it's actually a carnivore because they use animal products on the farm to grow the food they use obviously manure they use blood meal bone meal oyster shells so they're putting all these animal stuff on the soil let's be able to realize that and then on top of that we talked about this but just a very active agriculture is destructive, except regenerative agriculture is less destructive because it restores ecosystems. But if you're clearing fields, if you're plowing, if you are disturbing natural habitats, you're killing the rodents and the

Starting point is 00:38:57 rabbits and the birds. I mean, 50% of bird species have been decimated because of our modern agriculture, not to mention the bazillions, literally, I don't even know if there's a number to count the number of organisms and fungi in the soil, which are so critical to life. And they're critical for a lot of reasons. And from a health perspective, this is the one that I've learned that's most fascinating to me, because I'm always interested as a doctor in how do I create health for my patients? And one of the most important and undiscovered and really looked at aspects of our nutrition are the phytochemicals in food, which are these things we've all heard about,

Starting point is 00:39:32 but don't really think about much, which are, let's say, the colorful blueberries. Why are they healthy? Because they have proanthocyanins or green tea. Why is that good for you? Because it has catechins and so forth. So why is red wine good for you? Well, it has resveratrol. These are all polyphenols, antioxidant compounds and phytochemical compounds that

Starting point is 00:39:49 determine our health. And when you have a depleted soil, the bugs are missing. The bugs are required to extract nutrients to get to the plants. And then the plants, because they can't get them, are less nutritious. So even if you're eating broccoli today, it's 50% less nutritious than it was 50 years ago. That's a problem. So it's not just about animals or plants. It's like, what plants? It's not the broccoli. It's the whatever, the how, kind of the broccoli. I don't know if there's a good way to say that, but it's so important. I think what you just were talking about is a perfect illustration of how it isn't about meat versus no meat. It's about what kind of a system do we have? Do we have an industrial system, which is reducing everything into simplistic components and trying to function like a factory? Or do we have complex ecosystems producing our food? And it's very clear

Starting point is 00:40:42 that from a planetary health standpoint and a dietary health standpoint, we need to create ecosystems. And when you're focusing on that, it's very clear as well that animals are essential. So to me, I'm trying to move people a little bit away from that, you know, that sort of dualistic view. Yeah. And I think, you know, the idea that we can avoid killing or dying or death as we eat is just, you know, it's not actually true. I mean, seven million animals a year killed just through agriculture.

Starting point is 00:41:13 Even, you know, if you're killing bacteria in the soil or you're killing earthworms, you know, Fred Provenzo, I know you know, I love him. He said the whole world is a big restaurant consuming itself. We become food for the animals and the plants and they become food for us. It's this beautiful ecological cycle

Starting point is 00:41:32 and it does involve death. I mean, it's just part of the cycle of ecosystems. And I think we kind of miss that. And well, and Mark, I had an interesting moment several years ago when I was still a vegetarian, when that really came home to me because I was working in my garden. I have a pretty large garden and I have a little orchard that we just use for our own consumption. But I was clearing the garden, you know, sort of at the beginning of the season when I was going to be planting a lot of things and it was really overgrown. And so it was full of all kinds of spiders and insects and, you know, worms and snails

Starting point is 00:42:04 and tons of different kinds of plants and some and, you know, worms and snails and tons of different kinds of plants and some little fungi were growing in there. And I was just ripping that all away in order to plant what I wanted, you know, the one plant. And I was like, wow, I'm like, I was like causing Armageddon for this whole system, right. In order to put my, you know, my one seed that I wanted to put in there. And that just really struck me like, my God, there is no such thing as food production that doesn't cause, you know, death and destruction to some organisms. So I think what we're, what we're, you know, you know, Gabe Brown, who I'm sure you're also familiar with, is, you know, this wonderful farmer in North Dakota. And he says, yeah, he's just, I think he's just amazing. And I love his book, Dirt to Soil. And one of the things that he kept emphasizing in that book,

Starting point is 00:42:51 Dirt to Soil, and also when I've met him in person, he said, he says, what I realized when I moved from conventional farming, I was waking up every day thinking, what should I kill today? You know, what, what plant do I need? What weed do I need to kill? What insect do I need to kill? And then regenerative complex farming is all about life. He thinks of himself now as fostering life versus trying to kill all these things that were in the way of the one crop that he was trying to produce before. So it's a really big shift in regenerative food production. You're moving towards life. And that's why there's kind of that irony that people think that, you know, if you're eating animals, you're causing death. I think of it very differently. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. So, you know,

Starting point is 00:43:33 that's the beauty of regenerative agriculture. It regenerates ecosystems. It regenerates all the life in the soil, the insect community, bird communities, natural mammal communities that live in the area, whole watersheds and ecosystems totally transform. And the Carbon Project in Marin shows this. And there's just so many examples of how this happens. And the same thing happened, for example, in Yellowstone, when they reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone, everything changed in the entire ecosystem to make it healthier. So when you actually have a robust ecosystem, that's what we need to be focused on. It's not what we're doing in farming or in health. And in fact, that's what functional

Starting point is 00:44:08 medicine is. It's an ecosystem approach to health because the body is an ecosystem and we're connected to the ecosystem of the earth and the plants and the animals. You know, what's even more striking to me is that, you know, these phytochemicals that are so critical for our health are demeaning in great short supply because we don't eat that many fruits and vegetables, but the way we grow the food is depleting them. And the work of Fred Provenza and Stephen VanVleet at Duke, you're aware of, I'm sure, is showing that there's this new discovery

Starting point is 00:44:39 of phytochemicals in meat. What's even more interesting is that the animals modify these chemicals that they're getting from eating hundreds of different plants that all have these medicinal compounds and their metabolites are quite different. So you're almost getting in some ways upgraded phytochemicals when you eat regenerally raised grass-fed beef, which is a mind-blowing concept. Right. No, I have to admit, you know, all these years I've been studying this and now

Starting point is 00:45:05 I've been a practitioner of ranching for the last 18 years. And it was not until I read Fred Provenza's book, Nourishment, that I really thought about the question that he talks about in terms of the diversity of the pasture for the animal. Of course, I knew as a general matter, it was a good idea to have a diverse pastor, but he goes really specifically into the science of it and shows, to me, the most fascinating thing that he talks about in his book, Nourishment, is that they would test the blood of sheep in the morning, and then they would have grad students and so forth follow around the sheep and watch what they ate. And they discovered that every single animal

Starting point is 00:45:45 ate something different every day. And that every day, the foods that they selected for themselves individually for that day corresponded to what was sort of lacking in their blood work that morning. And by the evening, they would have remedied that. And he also showed that they were able to prophylactically avoid illness through the things that they were selected dietarily, and that they could treat, they could self-medicate through what they were selecting. And so he's arguing that we have an inherent nutritional wisdom, not just sheep, you know, but that humans have this. The modern industrial food system has ruptured that whole connection that we would inherently have. And he talks about

Starting point is 00:46:26 the irony of the fact that we now believe we need to have experts tell us what to eat, you know, because it is kind of fun. Yeah, your wild elk doesn't get advice from its nutritionist, this elk nutritionist. Exactly. And he says, you know, we all kind of accept the idea that elk have that, right. And then we might buy it that maybe sheep or cattle can figure out what they should be eating. But then we think it's a giant leap to think that the human has this ability to and he says, No, it's not a giant leap. We actually have this. But the problem is, right now we're stopping ourselves, you know, from infancy, you know, from the moment we get formula, right, we're getting processed foods, we're not getting

Starting point is 00:47:05 the real food as it should have, you know, as it does occur in nature. And when we do that, then our body recognizes what we need, what it contains and what we need, and we're able to manage our own nutrition. So that's, you know, that whole idea about real foods versus processed foods, is it actually allows your body to do its own, you know, maintenance work to a certain degree of knowing what it needs and seeking that out. And that's where, you know, going back to why I'm eating meat again, that is part of why I'm eating meat again, I really believe my body was saying you need meat, you know, because I was feeling hungry all the time. And I was, I was, you know, craving sweets all the time. And then I started eating meat, and everything

Starting point is 00:47:43 starts, you know, that starts receding really dramatically. Yeah. It's fascinating. I love that book nourishment. I'm going to have Fred back on the podcast. I'm actually going to visit him in Montana. Cause I just, I'm so inspired by that guy. And I, and I don't, you know, I don't have a lot of people who I go, wow, I really want to meet that guy. You know, he's one of them. in the book he talked about this fascinating experiment they did years ago on kids they took a bunch of orphans and they stuck them in a lab which I don't you couldn't do that study today but they gave them all this weird food like organ meats and weird stuff that kids wouldn't eat but that you know let them select whatever

Starting point is 00:48:21 they wanted and these kids ate all this weird stuff that we wouldn't think would be attractive to them. But because they hadn't been enculturated with what to eat and not to eat, they naturally sought out those foods, which were most nutrient dense, which provided the right building blocks for them to build their robust health. And it turned out after a long period of time, these kids were eating like weird organ meats and all this stuff, they actually were more robust health than all the other kids was fat yeah and also you know what's fascinating about the experiment as well and i agree with you it's not something could be done now you know so it's you know a historical anomaly but i think it's

Starting point is 00:48:56 called clara's kids because the researcher was clara named clara but um he says they similar to that to the ruminant animals that he studied, they did not choose the same thing day after day, they would choose different foods. And so they were naturally balancing out their own nutritional needs. And that's where it's really fascinating, because we keep thinking we have to follow a, you know, food pyramid or a my plate or something, somebody has to tell us how to get our nutrition. And that experiment really helps make the case that we ourselves have the ability, if we're actually exposing ourselves to real whole foods, right? And we're allowing our bodies to use their nutritional wisdom.

Starting point is 00:49:39 It's absolutely fascinating. It's something that's the whole theory of the book, right? It's reclaiming our nutritional wisdom that we each innately have wisdom. And I always say, listen to your body. It's absolutely fascinating. It's something- That's the whole theory of the book, right? It's reclaiming our nutritional wisdom that we each innately have wisdom. And I always say, listen to your body. It's the smartest doctor in the room. Yep, exactly. Those people don't connect what they eat with how they feel. And you start to break that down. People can begin to notice.

Starting point is 00:49:57 And we know that, for example, the most flavorful foods are actually the best for us, right? We know the biochemicals in the food provide the flavor. We know the, in the meat, for example, even the way it's raised, the flavor is dependent on the quality of the food. And that flavor goes along with health. And that's something that people don't understand. That's what these animals are going, oh, I need my vitamin C, I'm going to eat this plant, or I need these phytochemicals because they're going to help me with inflammation, or yeah, my joints hurt, so I'm going to take this thing that's going to help me more.

Starting point is 00:50:30 They're not thinking that. They're just naturally picking foods that are flavorful and that their body intuitively wants, and I think we've missed the boat on that. Yeah, and I'll tell you, my husband, Bill Nyman really is a meat expert and he was actually raised, he's from Minneapolis and his parents had a little grocery store, Nyman Groceries. So he's kind of, you know, grew up in the food world and he's always been really interested in, you know, eating quality and making delicious food as well as healthy food. And he's undergone an interesting transition in about the last decade when we started trying to move all of our animal raising to completely pasture based. And what he noticed is that not only does he he likes the flavor of the grass based meat now, but when he eats sort of conventionally produced meat now, it really tastes bland to him yeah so he had kind of gotten used to that but then when he started eating exclusively grass-based meats he started saying wow i now i really like this i prefer this and the other stuff doesn't taste right anymore so i think we our our taste

Starting point is 00:51:37 buds have in so many ways gotten kind of dumbed down over the generations but at the same time we can what i like about about Fred's book too, is it's kind of hopeful, you know, it's, it says, okay, we have gotten into this place where we're used to industrial foods and we were raised, a lot of people were raised on them, but still, you still have that inherent nutritional wisdom and you still can recognize the foods and the compounds that are good for you. And those taste good, you know, like ripe fruit tastes good. And, you know, meat that is raised on grass tastes good, because it has those traditional things that our body says, Oh, wow,

Starting point is 00:52:09 this is this is good for me. I like this. And it's a kind of a natural process. Yeah, I just sort of had to review a book that was coming is coming out in the fall, called Eat Like a Human. And it's written by an anthropologist, who has been studying food and has gone around the world looking at different cultures and what they're eating. He was talking about tribes in Africa that mix blood and milk from the animals and drink that. He explained how great he felt after he had that, even though it sounds like a weird food to us. But really, all the ways that we've sort of processed and prepared foods have really denuded it of its nutritional qualities. And that's really what regenerative, in my mind, regenerative agriculture is about.

Starting point is 00:52:52 It's about restoring not only the earth and the soils and better conditions for animals, but it's to provide way more nutrient dense food. As a doctor, that's what I care about is why are my patients sick? They're sick because they're eating the food they're eating predominantly, you know, right. One in five deaths globally is from bad diet. And I think it's probably far more actually. And in America, we're seeing this pandemic of COVID,

Starting point is 00:53:18 but it's on a pandemic of chronic disease and obesity, which is driving the deaths and the horrific outcomes. And a lot of it's because of the food people are eating. And so if we go, well, wait a minute, if we start to shift our system to provide more nutrient-dense food, real food, we're going to shift this healthcare crisis. And it's a win-win-win all the way around. Now, backing up to your book a little bit, Defending Beef, which I really think people should get a copy of. What was it that you learned between writing the book the first time and rewriting it the second time? Oh, there's just so much. I mean, it's such an important topic. And you asked me at the beginning, you know, why did I want to pick it up and rewrite it?

Starting point is 00:53:59 And I was invited by the publisher to do it. And I jumped at the chance because we felt, you know, that there's there's kind of more conversation about this even now than there was five years ago when the first book came out. And also more misunderstanding. You know, there's kind of this oversimplified, again, this kind of, you know, simple view is beef is unhealthy food and cattle are bad for the environment. And we were seeing, you know, more and more examples around the world where beef are restoring ecological health, for example. And I think there's, you know, I'm sure you've talked about this many times on your podcast, but there's really good research kind of reevaluating the whole connection between the purported connection between red meat and bad health outcomes. And so I wanted to sort of take up the new research and look at that more carefully and present that. But also, I specifically wanted to look at the methane question in particular,

Starting point is 00:54:51 because there was so much focus on that. And what I've learned is, I mean, there's so much to say about methane, as you said, there are ways to mitigate it. You know, good, good management of cattle grazing, for example, reduces methane production just by about 25%, just by sort of improving grazing practices. But there are also, there's really good research showing that when you have, you know, sort of going back to talking about the insects in the, in the ecosystems, when you have more dung beetles in a system, for example, that there's more methane that comes, there's less methane rather that comes out of that production system. And really importantly, the whole science of it, the way it's calculated. I don't want to be reincarnated as a dung beetle. That doesn't sound like fun to me.

Starting point is 00:55:35 You know, they're pretty cool. I mean, they're, you know, I heard somewhere, I heard somewhere that scarab beetles in, you know, in ancient Egypt, you know, I heard somewhere, I don't know if it's true, but I heard somewhere that scarab beetle in, you know, in ancient Egypt, you know, all those scarab beetles that are holding up the sun, that that's actually a dung beetle holding up a piece of dung. I don't know if it's true or not. I've heard that rumor before. The ancient Egyptians knew the importance of the dung beetle, you know, but there was a, there's a scientist at Oxford University, Dr. Miles Allen. And I don't know if you've encountered his work or not, but I had read some articles that he wrote.

Starting point is 00:56:10 And then I heard him speak in person in England and I met him and spoke with him directly. And I talk about his work in the new edition of Defending Beef because he's one of the really important, you know, sort of voices that are saying, hey, we've got this methane question completely wrong. And he's a methane expert. You know, he's a physicist at Oxford University, and he was on the international, the intergovernmental panel on climate change. He was on their scientific advisory committee. And so he's really, this is his area of expertise. He read something, he directed something called the Methane Project there at Oxford University, and he really knows the topic. And he says this whole idea of global warming potential, which is what is the way that it's always calculated when you talk about policy questions and methane and you, you know, you sort of, you say, well, this much methane equals this much global warming, and so forth. And he says that essentially, the science of that is incorrect, and that everybody who's working on this issue from the science side knows this. But because it was so much more sort of logistically simple, that this was something that was adopted, you know, 20 years ago, or

Starting point is 00:57:17 whatever, and nobody wants to revise it, because it has huge policy implications. So what he says is, you know, we need to revise the way we're calculating the global warming potential of methane. And when you look at the methane from cattle, it's really a minor issue globally. And he says the real issue is the fossil fuel industry. And if you really understand the science behind methane, there's no question about that, he says. And he says, in fact, that, you know, if we essentially keep this number of cattle on the globe static, you know, if we're not increasing the global number of cattle, then it doesn't contribute to global warming at all, because of the way the science actually works on this. And in the United States, we're actually reducing the number of cattle. And I talk about that in the book in a lot of detail. We've been reducing the total number of large ruminant animals on farms for a long time in the United States. And so, you know, we talk about deforestation and it's true, that's a big problem, but it's not an issue in the United States. And that's not to say there's no

Starting point is 00:58:25 deforestation, but the net impact in the United States is we're reforesting the United States. And so again, this is really, you're taking concepts and you're generalizing them. And so when you look at whether the U.S. consumer who's buying American raised beef, which is the vast majority of the beef in the United States, it's about 80% is grown in the U.S. consumer who's buying American raised beef, which is the vast majority of the beef in the United States, about 80% is grown in the U.S. You can easily seek it out, you know, if you are concerned, which you should be, you know, you should seek out American raised beef. But if you're doing that, then you know that it is not from a deforestation situation. And you also know that the total herd size in the United States, the herd of the United States, the cattle herd of the United States is not collectively contributing to the global methane problem.

Starting point is 00:59:11 And in fact, there's another professor at Cornell, Dr. Robert Haworth, who heads the methane project at Cornell University. And he's done a ton of work showing that fracking is really the problem in the United States when it comes to methane. So it's kind of a, you know, it's not that methane shouldn't be discussed at all when you talk about cattle. They do emit methane. And there are lots of good ways to mitigate that from a management and an ecosystem perspective. But it's really not the giant issue that people have. I mean, it's my understanding that, you know, 12,000 years ago, the amount of methane in the atmosphere was the same as it is today.

Starting point is 00:59:54 We had a lot. Well, and the ruminants. We had a lot of ruminants, right? Yeah. There were more ruminants, wild ruminants than there are domesticated ruminants today. Buffalo, elk, deer, antelope. Yeah. Carabao. All those are producing methane and And it really, it's about the same. It's a short-lived greenhouse gas, not like carbon,

Starting point is 01:00:12 which stays there forever. And it seems like there's a lot of ways to mitigate it by, for example, what the cows eat if they're foraging on plants, for example, with high tannin levels. And it's important that it shouldn't be called grass fed beef, it should be called grasses fed beef. Right? That's right. They need a lot of different plants with different properties. And the tannins, for example, and some of the plants reduce methane, or if they're fed seaweed, they reduce methane, or if they have a real regenerative system that there are organisms within the soil, the methanotropes that actually suck methane out of the atmosphere. So when you put all that together and you say, well, you know, how does that compare to, you know, let's say fracking? Well, that's three times as much methane is produced from that as it is from animal

Starting point is 01:00:54 agriculture. And on top of that, you know, you've got nitrogen fertilizers, which are deriving the fertilizer from an energy intensive process that requires natural gas, which is about one to 2% of the natural gas use in the world globally of global energy use is for making fertilizer, which is the nitrogen. But what that does is it gets turned into nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So there's a whole bunch of other stuff people aren't talking about, like the fertilizer stuff scares me way more than the methane stuff. And that's used for plants too. That's used for animal agriculture. And there's some very interesting research as well that shows that essentially when you put

Starting point is 01:01:39 the commercial chemical fertilizer on plants, that they begin essentially getting lazy and they no longer engage in those subterranean microscopic exchanges that they normally would with the soil. So they are no longer as able to get the nutrients that they need from the soil and they don't put as much carbon into the soil. So you have to have plants and soils functioning in the way that they're supposed to function in order to have this, you know, healthy food system, a healthy food and healthy ecosystem that we've been talking about. And so the implications of commercial fertilizer are there are a lot of downstream effects. And a lot of it is stuff that people are not thinking about, you know, when they're buying soy at the supermarket and they think they're doing the right thing. That's, that's all fascinating. And I want to sort of loop back to this conversation about just what an impact and the health question we've discussed in the podcast many times that I don't

Starting point is 01:02:35 know if we have time today to talk about it. I want to talk about the impact on climate change because, you know, from regenerative agriculture perspective, some say that, well, we could sequester all the carbon in the atmosphere today using advanced soil practices and regenerative agriculture. Which essentially, for those listening, is defined as a few practices, key practices that have been agreed upon, such as no tilling, cover crops, crop rotation, managed grazing, integrated animals into the livestock of the farm making sure that you leave roots in the ground and that you understand the context of where you're growing things so you do it properly those that's what we mean by regenerative agriculture and there's a lot of ways to do it and some of the some of the ways that work the best like silvopasture which is where you actually grow trees and then you put animals in the trees to eat what the trees are you know dropping down

Starting point is 01:03:25 that actually probably is one of the better ways to restore soil we're not even talking about that so when you when you look at those practices some say well we could we could literally reverse climate change 100 and others say no not so much and and people talk about soil soil carbon sequestration it's complicated because there's soil in North Dakota, there's soil in North Korea, there's soil in, you know, in Chile, there's soil in Arizona. It's like, and they're all different and the contexts are different. The climates are different. The ability to sequester soil is different. And then there's the questions of how do we even measure the effect and a lot of controversy about that. So we really haven't gotten all the nuanced pieces together in my mind.

Starting point is 01:04:05 I just wonder if you have a perspective. If you were a policymaker and you were in D.C. and you were like, look, we really want to support regenerative agriculture. We don't really know what works best or how to measure it to define success. What would be your advice? Yeah, well, I think you can't come up, you can't pin all your hopes for climate change, you know, mitigation and improving that situation on agriculture. But it is a very important piece of it. And so for me, the debate over whether it can fully mitigate

Starting point is 01:04:40 climate change or not is not that important. It's really about moving it forward in the right direction. And I'm very happy that, you know, the Biden administration is focusing on soil health and the biology of soil and incentivizing, you know, carbon to go back into the soil because it's absolutely the right thing to do. And I think it's- I think he was the first president to say cover crops in a speech. Yeah. Well, I remember, you know, when when your friend Tim Ryan was running for, you know, a while back, you know, in the primaries, he was doing such an amazing job talking about regenerative agriculture and regenerative food systems and everything. And that was extremely exciting. But I was thrilled that some of that stuff got adopted, you know,

Starting point is 01:05:21 by the Biden people. And so he I think he's doing, you know, a lot of really good things with focusing on soil health. And, you know, this idea that regenerative agriculture is mainstream. And, you know, Secretary Vilsack of, you know, the Agriculture Secretary now was Obama's Secretary of Agriculture, but it was a completely different time then. And nobody was talking about regenerative agriculture. And so he wasn't right. But, but he's, you know, he's moved along. And I'm thrilled that he's talking about organic agriculture more. And he's talking about the importance of smaller scale farming. And he's talking about, you know, soil health and soil carbon and that sort of thing. So I'm hopeful that some good things will come of that. But you know, to me, it's a piece of what needs to be done. I think, you know, it's

Starting point is 01:06:05 really important to always remember that, well, the main problem with fossil is with climate changes from fossil fuels, and that we need to see major policy changes in order to really address that. Things like, for example, you know, fuel efficiency standards in cars and improving the number of electric vehicles that we're having in the United States and, you know, just shifting towards renewable fuels. And that's happening too. So I think those are all really good. Those are really good signs. And I think, you know, each of us can sort of look at our individual footprints and, you know, try to make sure we're doing everything we can. But ultimately, the most important thing from a climate change perspective is that the governments of all of our countries are doing the right thing because we need big things to happen on the policy level,

Starting point is 01:06:55 and especially with respect to fossil fuels. And so we as citizens need to ensure that that's happening. But our own diets are not going to resolve climate change. And so I think, you know, focusing on them for our personal health and to support regenerative agriculture is really important. But I do not look at it as the solution for climate change. It's interesting because, you know, if you look at Project Drawdown and look at 80 of the top global solutions for mitigating or reducing or drawing down carbon and and food and agriculture were the collective number one solution not fossil fuels yeah no i don't i i i say i cite that in my book actually yeah i remember and and depending on how you slice and dice it when you

Starting point is 01:07:39 look end to end at the food system deforestation erosion, factory farming of animals, the transport refrigeration, food waste, all of that, when you add it all together, it's estimated between 40 to 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is actually more than the fossil fuel industry. So I agree with you. We need to dramatically reduce fossil fuel emissions or eliminate them. But we also need a system of actually mitigating or drawing down carbon because just stopping emitting won't solve the problem. If we stop now, it's got, we've got another piece of it. I think this goes back to the idea of complex solutions for complex problems. And we have to come at not just, you know, climate change, but all of these,

Starting point is 01:08:26 you know, sort of the implications of the way we're living in an industrialized world today, which I think are, you know, like, I'm always interested in these kind of more obscure questions like lighting, you know, like, the fact that so many people are living under, you know, fluorescent lights, and all kinds of other weird lights that clearly can have human health effects and how much time we're looking at, you know, computer screens late at night, it's affecting our sleep. I mean, I think all of this is a, you know, it's a, it's a facet of, you know, and I have two young sons, and they want to, you know, be on the, you know, iPad all the time playing video games, which they were basically never allowed to do at all until this darn, you know, pandemic made, you know, their schooling be on Zoom, right?

Starting point is 01:09:10 And so, you know, it's like all of this stuff is sort of modern living collectively, right? And so for me, it's about how are we living as humans and sort of, you know, and talking again about Fred Provenza's book, he kind of gives this beautiful, huge vision at the end of his book of sort of like, okay, we need to sort of reclaim our humanity and our connection with the earth. as individuals that are eating it. And also those that are practitioners are helping to rebuild this broken earth that we have really damaged so much with industrial food production and all the other industrial systems. And so I, you know, in my own life, I try to, you know, not just eat healthy food, but I also try to be outside a lot, exercise a lot, breathe fresh, get my kids out all the time. I really limit their screen time, you know, I encourage lots of physical movement and working, you know, working physically,

Starting point is 01:10:11 you know, all the stuff that I think really builds healthy bodies, the things that our bodies were evolved to do. And so many modern humans are not doing them anymore. And I think that has a lot, it's not just about the food, I think it's that whole way of living that's leading to this very widespread illness or unhealthfulness as we age. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, we have to reclaim our relationship to the natural world and our place in it as part of the ecosystem. We're not separate from it. And I think that's really the change that has to happen. And Fred in his book, Nourishment, blew my mind talking about the 20 senses that plants have, and talking about is how do we restore an ecological way of living that creates more balance and will solve a lot of our global problems.

Starting point is 01:11:09 So Nicola, thank you so much for being on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Again, everybody should get a copy of the new edition of Defending Beef, which is a powerful case for understanding the role of meat in our life. The title is Defending Beef, the Ecological and Nutritional Case for Meat. And no one will be disappointed by that book. I can't wait to get my new copy. And I hope you all enjoyed this podcast. If you have anybody

Starting point is 01:11:38 who's concerned or confused about meat, share this podcast with them on your social media, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you and we will see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important

Starting point is 01:12:24 that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

The Dr. Hyman Show - Meat or Plants: Which Is Better For Reversing Climate Change? with Nicolette Hahn Niman

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