RawPetMedics Tuesday Live: Guest Jayne Buxton

Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Good evening. Welcome to the Raw Pet Medics. We are here. We have Dr. Brendan Clarke, Dr. Conor Brady. We have the wonderful and exquisitely writing Jane Buxton, who's written the book The Great Plant-Based Con, and she's come to talk to us about the plant-based food phenomenon, and we're gonna kind of contrast that with the raw— the phenomenon of vegan food for dogs. And we're just gonna— yeah, you haven't talked at all about vegan food for dogs, Jane, but we're going to just compare and contrast, and we're just going to pick your brains. I mean, there's so much in the book, it's a wonder to know where to start. But we really want to thank you for coming on this evening. That's fantastic.

The book Your book is phenomenal, Jane. It's just, on a personal note, I just want to say Nick is a massive fan, okay? Like, Nick is— Nick, well, look, for the last couple of weeks, did you read the book? What did you think of this chapter? Oh, doesn't she write exquisitely? And I'm just off down the pub, mate. Did you read that chapter? Yeah, I've read it, Nick. I'll talk to you soon though. So Nick is all over, all over a flutter.

I'm slightly starstruck.

I can tell that this is a massive book because Nick, you have put us on to a good few of some books in this line, and it was really you that highlighted this to me first, and the whole carbon business and all that sort of nonsense and sustainable agriculture. But this book, Jane, honestly, of the books that Nick has put me onto, was brilliant. I just ate up every chapter. I love the way you write, but it was fantastic. Just before we begin, guys, a tiny bit of housekeeping. We are Raw Pet Medics. You can see scrolling across the bottom, patreon.com/rawpetmedics, if you can afford the cup price of a cup of tea or coffee, we greatly appreciate it. But if you can't, don't worry, we'll be here every week anyway because we love it and we get to meet people like Jane. So, uh, so who wants to start?

And remember the podcast, guys, remember the podcast.

I do forget.

You can get us all on podcast, you can listen to this on podcast while you walk the dog. So we're all good.

Jane, I was rooting around your website and I saw you with a picture, a picture of you with a golden retriever.

Yeah.

Do you have a dog? Is he still in your life?

He died unfortunately back in 2018. It was a really sad day, as you can imagine. Anyone who's lost a pet will know that. Yeah, um, he was the love of my life. Um, but we, uh, we go— we had another dog at the time, uh, a mini Labradoodle, and then we got a, uh, another dog which is a red fox lab during lockdown. And, uh, he's, he's another joy. He's, um Another love of my life. So, and she's a love of my life too, in a different way. Yeah.

Very nice. Are either of them on a plant-based diet?

No, no, no, no. In fact, I can't even feed them plants, let alone plant-based diets. I mean, if I, if I roll blueberries in front of them, they just sniff them and then walk away in disdain. You know, they're not interested. Carrots, forget it. Nothing. Yeah.

Hilarious.

Yeah.

Tell me, Jane, if— if I'm just going to cut straight to the chase— if we and our dogs all went vegan, would this improve our health and our dog's health and save the planet? Take your time on that one.

Well, you know what I'm going to say. I'm going to say—

I know what you're going to say, but everybody watching—

every—

yeah, no, but, but just expand on that a tiny bit because those are the two main arguments, are there? Most people say, I'm going vegan because I want to be healthy and I want to live to a ripe old age. I'm going vegan because I want to save the planet. Can you just say what the major flaws in those two arguments are?

I will. So if you take them one at a time, the health argument first, let's put it that way.

Yeah.

Going vegan for your health is a mistake. It is possible, I will grant, that some people can thrive for a certain amount of time on a vegan diet. And there'll be certain special reasons why that is the case, which we can get into in a little bit of detail. But generally speaking, a vegan diet is not better for us because on several fronts, it lacks certain key nutrients, a great many key nutrients. Ones that people may have heard of are B12, vitamin B12, iron, zinc. They're in short supply in those diets. Vitamin A is another one that's hard to get in its proper form. So it's lacking vitamins. It's also lacking in quality protein. So it is true, and people seem to think these days that protein comes from everywhere—broccoli, rice, whatever they want—but it's not. But all proteins are not created equal. So if you're restricting yourself to a plant protein, you're going to be getting substandard protein. And what do we mean by that? Well, roughly speaking, and you know, it's a protein that does not have all the amino acids that we need acting together in the same, in the right way. So those are just two reasons why you may not want to go on a vegan diet for your health. The other reason, which is very little talked about, is that there are some toxins in plants which, if those plants are eaten in great quantities, could give you great distress. So the most common thing we talk about is oxalate poisoning from things like excessive consumption of spinach or sweet potatoes, and that can lead you to have kidney stones, digestive distress, and arthritic joint pain. So too much of anything is not good for us. So too much of spinach is just the same. So what about the environment? People often say, whenever I talk about this, if I try to put a case for the fact that going vegan would not help the environment, people go, oh, but the methane, the methane, surely. And I think that methane is the most misunderstood topic. First of all, we have great exaggerations of the methane effect of cows. These are exaggerated in many, many ways, you know, sometimes because of ignorance. So you get people citing things like 50% of emissions come from cows. Well, it's nowhere near that amount, nothing like that. It's about 14% globally. It's about 6% in the UK. It's about Cows themselves are about 3% in the US. So these are really different kinds of numbers. But even if you take those numbers, the methane is exaggerated for livestock because of the metrics that we're using. And again, we can get into that if people want a little bit more detail. But the metrics that we use, something called GWP 100, magnifies the so-called effect warming effect of cattle and underplays the warming effect of fossil fuel-based sources of warming. So, you know, that's just one of the— methane and a misunderstanding around methane is one of the reasons people think that cows are hurting the planet when in fact they are not doing anywhere near as much damage as people think. Now, are they doing some damage? Yes, because everything does some damage. Everything creates emissions. Walking out your front door creates emissions, right? Brushing your teeth, whatever you take. So we need to, as a society, really keep all these sources of emissions in perspective and decide where we're going to get the most leverage. And I would put it to you that the most leverage does not come from getting rid of the cows. Aside from the methane, there's also this great misunderstanding of what it is that cows are doing on the land. So I think a lot of people think they're just sitting there pumping out methane. In fact, they're not just sitting there. What they're doing is creating better soil health when they're on soil. Now, this doesn't apply to factory farms, which is another matter, but when they're on soil and they're managed correctly, they have this symbiotic relationship with the plants and with the soil biome. So they are creating soil which can, has more nutrients, can grow things better, can retain carbon, and can retain water. So all of these things are just not talked about by people who throw all these, you know, I noticed on your website, you had something wonderful from a vegan, dog food manufacturer and their quotes, I think it was about how much less land, how much less water is used by these products, by vegan pet food products. But in fact, they're not taking into account any of the other side of the equation, any of the benefits that the cows are bringing to the land. Yeah.

So pet food has a history of that. Pet food likes to talk about calories. All the wheat and corn we use in our pet food for carnivores is actually a great source of energy. All they want to talk about is calories. And it's like, we're not talking about the quality of ingredients. They don't want us talking about the quality ingredients, the quality of protein from cattle. They just want to talk about kilojoules. I loved when you were talking about methane. You made it so simple to me. You said like, guys, this methane is part of a cycle. The cow, she's part of a cycle. You know, the plants are sucking this stuff in and, and, and, and creating, you know, carbon-based structures, cellulose, I assume. And then, then the animals eat us and, you know, methane goes up. It only stays there for 10 years, which is a huge point. And pulled back down by the plants, whereas the fossil fuel industry, which is 75% of our problem, is just sucking it out of the ground and belching it straight up into the air. And so the fact that the methane has a 10-year shelf life was so interesting. You're just saying that like we've got a pretty stable cow population and like there's only so much methane going around. It's dying, it's being produced, it's dying, it's being produced. It's not to let it off the hook, as you said so fairly, you know, we have a lot of cows that are going to produce a bit of carbon. That's— and there's things we can do to mitigate that. I love the way you explain that in like, you know, about 5 or 10 minutes. I listened to that repeatedly and I thought, that is a lovely simple way. You don't hear those nuances from the argument, you just hear one side to make it sound so dramatic.

And, and it makes me wonder, do people not understand the nuances, or are they just too complicated to put over in a 5-second soundbite?

What do you think it is? What do you think it is? How come we're really focused on the terrible and not so much on the positives?

What do you think is going on? I think it's both of those things that I just said. I mean, I had a long conversation with somebody called Finlay Costain, who is about to launch a great radio station, which is based on regenerative agriculture called 8HA. So something to keep on your radar. And he has been involved in talking with many policymakers about methane and how to handle it and how to understand it and how to mitigate it. And His conclusion was— and I won't name the policymakers in particular or the scientists involved— but his conclusion coming away from the meeting was they literally do not understand. They have created models. Those models have a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy because they only take into account certain things. And they are reliant on those models to predict things. And they really don't understand all of the other kind of nuances to do with the argument. And apparently, they don't understand the huge developments in soil science that we've seen since about 2016, which has helped our understanding. And you guys have had some of this on— Nick, you've had this on your Instagram feed about the interaction between the fungi and the nutrients going and the carbon pathway which is created. And how permanent that might be, and how big it might be. So our understanding of that has developed a lot, and a lot of these models that these people are using to dam livestock are based on the very old science, the very limited understanding that we had early on. So, you know, it's partly ignorance. It's also partly that it's convenient, because this story fits a narrative, and the narrative is supported by so many people. I think it must just seem easier to to pursue it.

Yeah, you mentioned, you mentioned in the book that there's a lot of industry, there's a lot of wealthy trust funds, and, and I'm trying not to say Bill Gates, and you are trying that. Oh, come on. There's, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of money invested in promoting the plant based phenomenon, for better or for worse. And therefore, for them to come back from that and to miss that investment opportunity is stupendous. And just it's kind of a one-way street because they've just painted themselves into a corner. So just tell us, just explain a tiny bit about how much pressure there is on science and nutritionists to promote the plant-based thing, please?

Yeah, well, there is a huge amount of pressure, and I think it comes from different sources. So scientists who conduct studies have to get funding for those studies, and they're more likely to get funding for them if their study fits the narrative that the institution is trying to peddle, or that the promoters, you know, the funders are specifically trying to peddle. So a plant-based narrative, you know, if Unilever wants to fund a study or if a university that is well aligned with a plant-based message funds a study, then obviously those scientists are going to be inclined to see their data, A, to construct the study in a certain way, and B, to see and interpret the data in a certain way. And I found that time and time again. And I, I put just, you know, a handful of examples in my book of studies where you— if you dug below the abstract, you could see that actually the study didn't say what the authors said it said. And it— the study did not provide unequivocal evidence of, say, the plant-based diet being better for health or making you live longer or any of those other things. So you really do have to dig below the abstract. You have to go right into the unpublished, sometimes the supplemental pages, to really find what you're looking for. So it's to do with that funding, but then it's to do with the hubris, isn't it? It's to do with— so I read a really interesting interview the other day with the head of the alt meat faculty at Berkeley University in California, and his name is Ricardo St. Martin, or probably San Martin, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. And so he's a guy that studied all this for decades. He has a whole faculty behind him, so I was really surprised by his honesty. And he said Alternative meat, i.e., cell-based meat, is never going to work. Never. It's just not feasible because of the technical difficulties of growing it at scale without compromise and without— the word I'm looking for— contamination. And there's so much energy involved. And so much technicality beyond, say, making a tiny bit of it to making it actually scalable so that we can all eat it, that he says it'll never happen. He said, but they are never going to climb back from it because they've— so many people have invested so much money in what seems like a brilliant idea, right? And they won't climb back from it until it absolutely fails. Literally it has to be on its last legs. Yeah, but I think he predicts that that will happen. It has to be unpopular enough.

It's like Nestlé and the bottled milk versus breast milk kind of debate, right? And they push the bottled milk debate as far as they can until it becomes financially unfeasible to do it. And then when public recourse is strong enough, they go, actually, our research has led us to find out it's second best, so should you choose to move on? You know, that was 30 years of that French couple harassing them until eventually they And they ended up the most boycotted company in the world. Hasn't slowed them down any. Yeah, but, um, you know, yeah, that's, that's what they do.

So, Jane, I, I just wanted to know, you know, there's these other books, um, that are out there. I mean, you, you quote a few in, in your text, uh, you know, from Defending Beef to, uh, the Nourishment, Nourishment Preventer, just a couple of those. Wonderful book. Yeah, just wondered, they've, they've usually got a background in, you know, they're regenerative farmers or they're on the ground doing this, your sort of background of journalism and writing, you know, many different books. What got you into this? What was the thing that drove you towards writing The Great Plant-Based Con? What was going on in your life at that point?

Well, I really wrote it from the perspective of a very concerned citizen, and I'm a concerned citizen who happens to be a writer too, so I could leverage that to express my concerns. So I'm probably no different than any of you, than a lot of other people, but I had an outlet because I already had an agent and I found a publisher, and it was, it was, and I was used to writing nonfiction, so I knew how to go about researching it. But specifically what got me concerned as a citizen about this was the, the kind of atmosphere that was developing in 2019, which was a sudden uptick in all of this plant-based messaging and The Game Changers movie came out. You may all remember that movie. And then there was the whole uproar when the Annals of Internal Medicine produced 5 papers in late 2019 that exonerated meat from causing cancer and heart disease. And that exoneration by these scientists caused such an uproar. People accused them of all kinds of different things and being biased and conflicted, and it was so— oh, I lost you for a second. We're here. So I thought something's going on here, and this is just going to get worse unless we really hit this issue head-on. So the books that you've held up a second ago, of course they discuss many of the same things that I discuss, and they discuss it in a very diplomatic way. I mean, I know Nicolette Ham Neiman, she's a very diplomatic, considered person. Fred Provenza, the same. And they've said some of these things, but I wanted to say it in a way that said, wake up, everybody. Wake up, because this is a con. And that was a controversial title. I realized that. But my publishers wanted to stick with it because it would distinguish this discussion from others a little bit. And also just make it shock people into trying to get to grips with the data rather than just maybe passing it over.

Yeah, sorry, sorry, I'm just going to say, Jane, have you got any references for people to, to go to, to follow up once they've read your book? And they— and your book is full of references, for which we're really grateful. That's really, really great. Um, but have you got just one or two really go-to websites that you would suggest? Frank Mitliner, for example?

Yeah, we can talk about Frank in a minute because I do think Frank has a lot of excellent information and he's very good at explaining things at the Clear Center in California. So people can look that up, the Clear Center. But there's been some controversy around Frank, which is really unfortunate for him, and I supported him through that because the New York Times did a sort of hit job on him. Because they wanted to show that he was biased because he works with agriculture to reduce emissions. Now, of course he works with agriculture. That's his job. So in working with them, he also understands the issues and he understands the science. So I think all the criticism was so completely unfair, but nevertheless, it is out there. I think that the Allan Savory Foundation website is a very good place to go. There's a website called Soil for Climate also, and that's a group with a 4, isn't it?

With a 4.

And they have collated about a good stack of studies talking about this whole carbon sequestration regenerative agriculture effect. So if anybody wants to know that, so that when you're in a conversation and somebody says, well, that's not real, or I've never heard of that, or 'You know, prove it to me that that's what happens in the soil.' There is proof that you can pull out these studies and there's evidence.

Can I move you over a little bit to— you quoted a great study on people in prisons. I love a good study of people. Oh yeah, sounds a bit sad, but it's true. If you can't go anywhere, eat that. So I'll ask you to talk about the difference between what happened when they tried to go vegetarian in this prison to the women and men and their issues and why you think that happened. Because we have this issue where there is some certain brands raising a lot of cash and moving into the pet sector. And so we have these vegan pet foods for cats and dogs. Now, you could argue that there's precious little difference between vegan pet food and the cereal-based pet food sold in most veterinary clinics because they only have 4 or 5% bone meal in it, which is nothing. You'd probably rather it wasn't in it, particularly if you're in the US where a lot of things can go into meat. So they're virtually plant-based foods anyway. They just pretend they call those meat-based foods. And so I don't doubt that the vegan foods can be made as good as these, you know, meat— the vegan foods can be made as good as the meat-based ones. But the problem we have is poor cats and dogs living full-time on vegan-based kibble. So I thought that prison study was perfect analogy. So can you tell us a little bit about that study?

Yeah, what happened to those people? Yeah, because in fact dogs, if they have a vegan owner, they're prisoners, aren't they? They have to do whatever they're told. So yeah, so that study— and actually I can't remember the exact percentages, but I do remember that a certain percentage of the inmates were fed the plant-based meats and a total vegan diet and a lot of soy-based food. And others weren't. But they had to withdraw that and they had to stop it because there was so much distress amongst the people who were forced, the prisoners who were forced to eat the vegan food. It was described as, you know, headaches and sleeplessness and gastro, intense gastro distress. And so they had to reverse it, but they didn't do it on their own. So the Weston Price Foundation campaign for this and knew it was happening. And they succeeded in turning it around because the Weston Price Foundation has for a very long time advocated against veganism in schools or in government institutions where people have no choice. You know, this is what's really— so the prisoner thing is a scary example, but it's happening again in New York because Mayor Adams in New York has decreed that he wants to make that a vegan state. And the hospitals and schools under his control are slowly being pushed towards vegan foods. It started with Meatless Mondays, then Fridays, and then in hospitals, largely plant-based foods. And you're trapped if you're in a hospital too. And we all know the real importance of solid, good quality protein. I was supposed to turn off my notifications and that didn't work. Um, the, um, good quality protein when you're recovering from an illness is even more important than it is in everyday life. And I, you know, my elderly parents who've been in and out of hospital recently The one thing they tell me when we're taking them home is make sure they get some really good protein. That's the best thing for their recovery. So doctors know it. Doctors do know it. It's just that they're not allowed to say it outside of that context. And there's a sort of this silencing that goes on. We still— and we pretend that prisoners and people in hospitals and kids in schools eating plant-based is really going to be okay for them. And it isn't.

Yeah, and there's so many things within your book. I mean, you pack in— I mean, it's not just about the carbon dioxide and, you know, the global warming. There is so much in there that I'm so impressed as how you've got so many arguments into that. One of my favorites is all about the soil and, you know, the amount of erosion that, you know, intensive plant growing has— crops has created. I mean, even in the UK, we see, you know, it's almost like 1,000 years worth of soil has been washed away in the last 100 years of mechanical intensive farming. And, you know, there's so much in there. Is there one great thing that you think will be the saving of that soil? Is there— is it the no-till stuff that really is the lead? Is it really this back to rotational stuff with animals. What would be your biggest thing to small farmers like myself who are out there trying our best to improve the health of the land? What would you be saying to us?

Well, I think if I said one thing only, I'd get into trouble with my regenag friends because both people like Gabe Brown and the people at Understanding Ag Understanding agriculture in the, in the US and people like Savory Foundation and their, their offshoot here, which is called 3LM and the Pasture for Life people. All those people recognize that it's doing lots of things together, a certain number of things. It is no-till. Yes, it's no-till. It's cover crops, never having bare ground. It's mixed farming, diversity, and using the cows to create that degeneration— decomposition, I should say— of the plants in the right way without using herbicides. Because if you have cover crops and no cows, how do you get rid of those when it comes to planting again? Right. So it's all of those things. But not disturbing the soil is a big, big one amongst those, I think very much. But this relationship between the animals and the plants and then the subterranean health that is created by those plants is just absolutely critical. So anything that farmers do to enhance that is really something that needs to be encouraged.

Yeah, people don't understand—

sorry, sorry, that's really one thing that is really close to my heart as a companion animal vet, you know, is actually the amount of the parasite treatments that we're now seeing contaminating our waterways and our things from not just the things that we'd normally associate with agriculture, whether coating seeds as a way of controlling pests, you know, whether, you know, putting stuff out there as pesticides or even treating farm animals. But actually we're seeing, you know, every day, you know, people putting their pets on health plans where they're week in, week out, month in, month out, giving them a parasite treatment. And that influence, that impact on the soil microbiome, the soil, you know, nematodes, you know, all of the important part to soil health. Yes, absolutely.

So reduce— the other thing I would mention is reduction in inputs, and by that I mean artificial fossil fuel-based inputs, so nitrous oxide. And again, we never talk about that. So, you know, in all these sort of vegan posts, where is the recognition that growing plants with this artificial fertilizer, which has 265 times the warming effect of carbon, right? And also, it's very naive to think that if we went to plant-based everything, including plant-based dog foods. Do we really think that all those plants, all that soy and corn and everything else is going to be grown in a small-scale mixed farming regenerative fashion? Or do we think that that is simply going to explode the use of nitrous oxide? Right. So we're going to be— we might be able to reduce the direct emission of methane, but we'll create a whole other problem. And I read something the other day which I thought was a really nice way of capturing it. A farmer who was trying to say, look, CH4, so methane, may be the cure. It may be the substitute and the cure for too much nitrous oxide, right? Because if you're— you may have a little methane, but you're also getting all these other benefits which stop you having to bring in this nitrous oxide onto your land. So again, that's a very complicated thing to explain in a soundbite. It really doesn't lend itself to that. So people probably don't bother.

They don't want to mention the darker side of, like, using all those chemicals and pesticides, GMO, and annihilating biodiversity. And you mentioned, and a few people mentioned, White Oak Pastures. Is that the name of the— and they have this enormous farm and it's you know, so cleverly done. In the first few years when you're seeing them, the trials and kind of tribulations that they had, the successes and a few failures as they get this thing cemented in. But everything lives together, even the pests. Like, I mean, how they talk about it is unbelievable. And the guy that runs the farm, can't remember his name— he— Will Harris. That's his name. Yeah. He goes to the corner of his farm, he goes, check out the runoff on my farm. And it's just crystal clear water. Yeah. He goes, look at the runoff on my neighbor's farm and it's only 20 meters down the way into the same stream and it's just dark brown sludge pumping out. And people don't understand that our monoculture is demanding of soil and we try to replace with a bit of horrible nitrogen and pesticides. That is not replenishing the soil. So we're losing soil. Soil is a carbon sink. Where do people think soil comes from? The cows poo it out into the ground. It's just a wonderful process. Pastures are producing huge volumes of crops. They're not suffering for want of, you know, kilos of beef per acre or any of that kind of stuff. If anything, they're more successful than their neighbors and they don't use any of the inputs. And it's just like, it's totally doable. But though, why isn't that story on the front of the newspaper? Why isn't that like, you know, encouraging Irish and English farmers who are growing cows on the best soils around? We've got everything we need, and yet the farmers are taking it in the neck from these ridiculous lobbies who are just pushing one-tenth of the message and the nasty side of it because cows fart. I mean, bloody hell, vegans fart, we don't talk about that, you know.

Yeah, yeah, well, you're right. I mean, if I had a wish list, top of the wish list would be that government policy gave funding and support to farmers to transition fully to regenerative systems, because, you know, we have people who are doing it very well and others who are struggling or maybe reluctant to try, I think we would gain so much from shifting our farming systems over wholesale to that kind of farming, rather than these blunt instruments that we're seeing, which is, you know, this proposed cull of 30% of the cattle in Ireland, right? So not only is that going to decimate livelihoods of farmers, it's going to result in a sudden drop in Irish beef production, and therefore supply. And what's going to happen? Fly it in. Fly it in from maybe Brazil, where, you know, grown on deforested land. And the fact that we think about it in these short-term ways, it just makes me wonder, you know, the screws that are loose in policymakers' heads. It's insane.

Yeah. Oh, it's that government down to they've only got a 5-year term and then they're going to be moved on. So they can't think long term. Yeah. That's politics. We shouldn't—

yeah, so Jane, just, just, we're just coming into the last 5 minutes or so, and I'm just thinking, what did you learn? So you sat down for years and years in order to produce this opus work that, that you've, you've given to us all, and what did you learn? What were your takeaways? How are you changed from having produced this work, would you say?

Well, I think I probably went from thinking meat is not bad for me to meat is essential and it's good for me. So I learned so much about what eating meat and other animal foods can bring nutrition-wise. I thought I knew that, but the more I dug, it's just amazing to me, absolutely amazing to me. And I guess similar, I could say something similar about the environment. I knew that cows were being unfairly slandered, but I wasn't aware of the full extent of the misinformation and the level of expertise in soil science that we have in the world that is not being represented. It's really the silent story, you know, the hidden story here of of soil science. And that is amazing to me. And I— people send me stuff all the time continually, and it's really geeky, and it's stuff about all the fungi, all the stuff you were writing about. And I've got to confess, I only understand probably a tenth of every paper that's sent to me. But I know that therein lies a pot of gold. And so I really put my faith in those people. I put my faith in those scientists. I put my faith in those farmers who understand those scientists and who are trying to apply that. And I think that's the only way through this situation.

The way to understand fungi is Merlin Sheldrake has written Entangled Lives. You've probably come across it.

Yeah, in fact, you mentioned it, so I need to read that. Yeah, it's—

you gotta get it on audiobook because his voice is is lovely as well. Is it? Yeah, I will.

And okay, one of our, one of our wonderful supporters, Fiona Murray, is asking, have you read Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan? Now that this— when we started the Raw Pet Medics 2, 3 years ago, we all kind of came together and we just read this just, just because we were all interested, and it's been a game changer for us. They quote the Weston A. Price Foundation and Weston A. Price a lot. She's traveled the world. She looks to— looked at indigenous people and how they eat and how you eat for best epigenetics for your kids and using traditional methods and what have you. It's— if you haven't read it, it's, it's a real treat and it's a real opus like yours.

There's a lot. So that's Cate Shanahan, right?

Dr. Cate Shanahan. Yeah.

And she is a big advocate of the switch away from seed oils. She's very hot on the whole seed oil problem, isn't she? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've read that much of her work, but I haven't read the whole book. So thank you. I'll get that one.

It got me away from— I was vegetarian at the time. Were you? Years ago? Yeah, I was vegetarian for about 6, 8 years. I don't know how long. And that was pretty strict. Not too strict, you know, but, you know, a few lapses here and there. I didn't consider fish an animal. They were fine. Prawns. Okay. You know, I'd have the odd burger if I had a few drinks. Okay, I wasn't that much of a vegetarian, I was pretty much vegetarian, but it was that book. You know, that book really, really hammered home the importance of the nutrients in meat. And then my kids, it's all they want to eat and I can see it. So I get the best quality. Can you give us, give us 2 minutes on like, what is the— like, give me some of the nutrient, the benefits of eating meat. I'm going to be thinking about cats and dogs as you're saying it. What are the nutrient benefits of eating meat?

Well, the best protein. The best complete protein that you can find. Fantastic source of iron and zinc, vitamin B12, but also lesser-known things like— I just read a paper today about L-carnitine. L-carnitine is meant to be cardioprotective. And where is it found? In meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. And very little of it is found in plant foods. So I think meat has all of those well-known sort of vitamins as well as the quality protein with all of the amino acids, but it also has these very undersold elements such as taurine as well, any of those things, L-carnitine, things that are nitric oxide, which is great for heart health. It sort of, it helps nitric oxide synthesis, which is why it's really curious when you get these papers saying, well, it has nitric oxide and it has L-carnitine, which are both good for heart health. And yet a lot of the American Heart Association quoted studies are saying that meat is bad for heart health. So, you know, nothing makes sense, but I would go back an individual to what's in it. Forget those big associational studies that the American Heart Association loves so much. Go back to what's in the meat that's good for your heart.

Great. Eat some good quality, good quality fats. I mean, sure. Good quality fats. Yeah, we, we're going to, we're going to pause as we get to 45 minutes here. We're going to pause and we do what's called a bit on the side where we— it's just on a slightly different platform. It's just another 10 minutes. But we wanted to show you a panel of what the ingredient panel looks like. On one of these vegan pet foods, and I'd like you just to take us on a tour through it and go, would you feed this to your kids for, you know, a week, let alone full time for life? I thought that would be fun for the viewers.

Okay, let's do that on Patreon. Yeah, so I'm going to round off just with, um, towards the beginning of the book, uh, Jane, you get a quote from, I think it's a Navy surgeon Yes. Can you remember the quote?

I can't remember it exactly. I think he said— isn't he the one that said— he was a former Surgeon General, right? And he said that to blame an old-fashioned food for modern disease is the most ridiculous thing he has ever heard of, right? Yes. Because we've been eating meat forever, and yet these diseases, these non-communicable diseases that we've seen rising in, you know, since the 1950s really, is it just doesn't add up that that could be, you know, must be something new that we're eating and doing, you know, seed oils have got to have something to do with it, ultra-processed food has a lot to do with it, excess carbohydrate consumption, you know, we know what the culprits are probably likely to be because those have been rising. Yeah, that's amazing.

There was that wonderful panorama, I don't know whether you see Panorama at all. It's, uh, yeah, on the ultra-high processed foods. Yeah, last week. So yeah, interesting. Is that going to be your next sort of foray into writing? What's your next foray?

Uh, well, yeah, I think I want to write something that is very, um, approachable for younger people, a much shorter version of what I've done. And I'm also working on a documentary idea with a company because I think documentaries hit home sometimes in, in a way that books don't always. So that's two of the projects which will probably take forever, but we're— that's what we're working on. I just— on that UPF thing on Panorama, I was pleased to see that, but I was also slightly distressed because I think they, they focused on two particular aspects of processed food. One was aspartame and one was emulsifiers. And the, the kind of leaning was, if we could only get companies to take those things out of our processed food, it would all be fine. So they totally missed everything to do with seed oils. They totally missed everything to do with the addictive nature of processed food. The studies that they cited didn't really bring that to the fore. And really, they missed that whole thing about, well, we need to go back to real food and basics and cooking, right? So yeah, it was okay.

I have to forgive them that it was only half an hour. It was, yes. You could make a 2-hour film on ultra high processed foods and its downfalls.

Yeah, they make it, they make it. Those documentaries are very effective because when Cowspiracy came out and I watched it, it was, you know, you would believe what they were saying. But of course, since then, the figures that they were quoting were just scandalously off the charts. And it's like, you can see terrible, but so convincing when you see cattle in CAFO. A CAFO is the worst possible— I mean, it's a concentration camp for beef. Nobody wants it. And to pretend that that's the same as rearing beef on grass and, you know, by a farmer that cares, small little holdings, you know, it's just a completely different thing. But very believable. Cowspiracy and Apocalypse Cow, all those. But I mean, I mean, they're the sort of things that should be redacted, let alone studies. I mean, there's some— I totally ate that. I was a vegetarian watching those things going, yeah, this is exactly why I don't do it. I think it was very good. Just to conclude, I think it was great in your book where you didn't— you weren't throwing anybody under the bus and you were saying, look, there are vegetarians that can do fine and there's plenty of people that do it for ethical reasons. And that's absolutely where I was. And so that's all well and good. But to say that or to go around preaching, certainly that it's a health benefit is questionable to me, you know, to be— not to insult them. It's like it's highly questionable. There's not— it's not like it's a done deal. And to say it's better for carbon is just not right. And it's not even talking about soils, biodiversity, chemical usage, all the other crap that comes. I mean, a Beyond Burger made by Bill Gates thousands of miles away, flown in a plastic box to my Tesco's, is better than my local cow down the road? Yeah. Come on. Yeah. People are just buying this hook, line, and sinker.

They really are. Yeah. Well, I think Bill Gates— I know we've said his name a few times. He's going to get his comeuppance because these plant-based meat companies are falling like flies. I mean, we just had another one this week. You know, the meat— oh, God, what was it called? What is that one called? There's one— there's an English— The Meat Farm or something. And yeah, 2 years ago when the book— when my book was coming out, they were flying high. They were supported by Channel 4, etc. Now they're going into bankruptcy. They're firing everybody. And vegan restaurants in California, in California, are closing. Now if you can't be vegan in California, I'm not sure where you can be vegan.

So yeah, and New York's going vegan all at the wrong time.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, they're really on the wrong track.

Yeah, guys, I'm gonna, I'm gonna draw, I'm gonna draw a halt there. This has been absolutely wonderful. A lot of people saying Jane, please will you come back because there's so much to discuss. We would be really grateful. You can have a rest for a month or two just to draw breath and get cool, but we'd love to see you again. If you could bear with us for 10 minutes more, if you don't mind, we'd love to ask you about Omni Pet Food, which is one of the leading brands of pet food in the UK, and just take us through the pea protein and the various ingredients. If you could do that for us, for our Patreon supporters, we'd be really grateful.

So thank you, everybody. Yeah, next week we've got to say about next week, I think, uh, Rodney and Karen have a lot to live up to. Um, I think, uh, you know, just for you guys, uh, next Tuesday, uh, we'll be live with Planet Paws. Um, however, Jane, you've been an absolute star, and if you want to hear more from Jane, please join us on Patreon after a short break, and you will be able to listen to the rest of the interview.

Lovely, thanks all. Cheerio.

Thanks everybody, and thank you, Jane.

Thank you.