DEBUNKING The Myths Around EATING MEAT & The Impact It Has On Our HEALTH | Nicolette Niman

One in five deaths globally is from that diet. It really is a much more nuanced conversation than meat, good, meat, bad.

We need to return to understanding and mimicking the way the earth functions. It's very clear as well that animals are essential.

Why are my patients sick? They're sick because they're eating the food they're eating predominantly. You know, one in five deaths globally is from that diet. And I think it's probably far more actually. And in America, we're seeing this pandemic of COVID 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. But we really should not have animals. And I've talked to people who are, I thought are experts or 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, 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, farming connection. And I don't discount the value of technology logical 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, 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 and the manure, 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 really important for people to understand is that soil is alive, and most of the plants we grow now are in dead soil.

Yeah.

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. So even if you're eating broccoli or kale or whatever you think you're doing good for your body, it 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 killing and they're using. And by the way, my favorite story is, and I love your comment on this, is that if you eat a regenerative raised grass-fed beef, the cow's a vegan. 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. putting all these animal stuff on the soil. Those people don't 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 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 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 unreally looked at aspects of our nutrition are the phytochemicals in food, which are these things we've all heard about but don't really think about much, which are, let's say, the colorful blueberries. Why are they healthy? Because they have quercetin 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 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, 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. There's a good way to say that.

But 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. we have complex ecosystems producing our food. And it's very clear 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, 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 billion animals a year are killed just through agriculture, even, you know, if you're killing bacteria in the soil or you're killing earthworms, you know, you know, Fred Pervez, who I know, you know, I love him. He said the whole world is a big restaurant consuming itself. We become food for the, for the animals and the plants, and they have food for us. It's this beautiful ecological cycle, and it does involve death. I mean, it's just part of part of the cycle of ecosystems. And I think we kind of missed that. Now, as I've been thinking about me, I'm talking with some friends, it seems like there's basically four camps around. There's the ones who say, well, let's just keep scaling meat production for a growing world population, and we're going to find new Innovative ways and Technologies to make it better and, and do it right. And that is the conventional meat industry, or otherwise known as cafes or feed Lots. And there's people arguing for the benefits of that, for sure. Then there's the People who are like, no, meat's gonna kill us, it's gonna kill the planet. Everybody should be off meat and we should eradicate animal agriculture period from the planet. And that's one position. And then 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, 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 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 true. I think it's kind of been, you know, it's been called the king of meat. meats, especially in the United States. And I think part of that is because it was the most consumed meat in the US 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 be above it. But as far as meats that are commonly only 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 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, something that was a little bit special.

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 considered kind of almost a little bit of a luxury. But at the same time, these are large animals, and so the individual animals are really visible on the landscape. And when you look at the individual animal and how much water it drinks or how much land it purportedly takes to raise an individual animal, it just looks like a lot. And so right around 1970, I think that I can date that as the key kickoff point when people really started focusing on cattle being a problem ecologically. and beef, it 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.

Exactly.

It turned out not so much anymore, but yes, it was.

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, beef has more saturated fat than chicken, for example. So there were all these things that were kind of swirling around that I think sort of led to people starting to focus on, whoa, maybe we shouldn't be eating so much beef or maybe we shouldn't eat it at all. And cattle are bad for the planet. And then, I feel 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 beyond beef and diet for a new America, all those kinds of things. I've read all those books. And to me, it looked like there was kind of this anti-beef sentiment welling up around 1970. And then actually there was a huge consumption in the rise of, a huge 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 we shouldn't be raising cattle, if at all, we should be doing tiny numbers of them. And especially because of methane, 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, legitimately, there's a focus on methane. But the real question I have, and the argument that I'm making in the book, is that we're misidentifying 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 pinning that on cattle and beef.

Well, it's interesting, I think a lot of the arguments sort of missed the nuances of the story of what kind of beef, how it was raised. And from you, I first heard the term, it's not the cow, it's the how. But I think Russ Kons are terms. And it really is a much more nuanced conversation then meat, good meat, bad. It's which meat, how is it raised? I mean, 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.

And, you know, it's even worse than that because the medium in which a lot of the lab meat is grown is actually bovine fetal serum, which you 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 it's a lot of 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, but, you know, methane from cows, about five percent of methane emissions. Rice is about three percent from rice patties. And what's even worse is all the vegetables that you throw in the garbage from your fridge or your scraps that go in 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 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 are 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. And it's one of those things that, you know, that's something we absolutely shouldn't be doing, right? It's a waste.

31% of all methane comes from the fossil fuel industry, including the fracking.

Yeah, it's absolutely from the, 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. So we're talking about, when you talk about cattle, 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, you know, rotting in a landfill or a leaking, you know, uncapped part of the fossil fuel system. So those are things that, 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 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 landfill. And then on the end, it's also causing that kind of pollution.

So there's so many reasons to focus on reducing food waste. Yeah, absolutely. 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, and you put a lot of new stuff in it. And I wonder if why you came back to this book again. It's such an important moment in history around climate change and our nutritional strategies and the increasing polarization of views as I sort of opened 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 in the intro, I wrote a book called Righteous Pork Chop, 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, 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 for the book, you know? 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 myself, and I finally decided, you know, I'm not going to do this anymore, but I was, I was kind of part of that mode of thinking almost. And it's a simple solution. 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, 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, I wrote to Ben & Jerry's because I I was constantly hearing and constantly struck by the idea that beef was the worst problem, you know, the worst problem of 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 of 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 love wearing it 'cause it's kind of a great conversation starter. I know, it's such a great t-shirt. It's just boom, boom, you know. Diana Rogers made them. 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 or bad, cow or 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 fifth and sixth graders, and I had a little whiteboard and I drew a cow, and then I did very bad artwork, but I drew a cow and then I drew a cow a car. 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 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 is releasing and that it's essentially cycling and it's essentially 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 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, Fritzof Capra.

And he said, he wrote the Tao of Physics, right?

Yeah, right. And he says everything, it's all about systems, you know, he says everything nature is connected and nothing is linear. And he said, only humans create linear machines. So when you look at a car, 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. Then you have, 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 have heard a lot about this already.

Maybe they're sick of it, but I can't keep talking about it because it's such an important topic.

We just gotta keep going there because this really is the key. I mean, it's funny because soil is the foundation, literally, of the food system. And it also sort of the foundation of sustainability for the planet. And you've mentioned before about 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 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 re-sequestering 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 does belong, which enhances the life of the soil. And the biology of the soil is very complex. There's a lot of discussion about carbon and carbon is absolutely crucial but a lot of it is about the microorganisms.

It's like your microbiome except for the soil.

Exactly. And there's that great book by Dr. David Montgomery and his wife, Ann Bikay, 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 having a healthy subsoil, the life of the soil in that 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 of the soil. And it's all about, and that means more water in the soil, and that means more vegetation can grow and more diverse vegetation grows, and that length means more above ground life, more diverse and more plentiful insects and everything from earthworms to, you know, beetles. And then you have the more diverse vegetation you have and the more diverse insect life you have, the more diverse, you know, 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 gonna be better off. And then, then you don't really need animals to be part of a regenerative system. So let's sort of backtrack a little bit. You know, you have been a paradox for many years because you a vegetarian married to a livestock rancher. And you wrote a book while being a vegetarian called Defending Beef, which is a kind of a funny concept for a vegetarian 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. And how has your perspective shifted 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 the 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 elsewhere. so 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 kinds of animal-based foods, or I should say all meat, fish and chicken and everything. I always ate dairy and egg products.

So let's sort of backtrack a little bit. You have been a paradox. for many years because you were a vegetarian married to a livestock rancher. And you wrote a book while being a vegetarian called Defending Beef, which is 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. And how has your perspective shifted? and what are the changes you've noticed in yourself?

Well, you know, I've, 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, 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 was just kind of in the, you know, like we were just talking about before, it was kind of in the 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, 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, you know, 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 kinds of animal-based foods, or I should say all meat, fish and chicken and everything. I always ate dairy and egg products, but in any event, I did it because I just thought it was kind of the right thing to do. And as we were talking about before, I also bought the idea that 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 and 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. in small amounts of, you know, usually fully confined indoors, you know, if you're talking about pigs and chickens and turkeys, for example, or dairy cows. And then you have the problem of the air pollution 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. And at first, that kind of neatly reinforced my own ideas that not 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 animal husbandry practices and focus on animal welfare, focus on soil health, focus on animal health. And through that, I met Bill Niman and then, you know, a couple of years later, we got married, you know, just 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, you know, kind of got to to, you know, 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 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, you know, triathlete and a runner and everything, and I really 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 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 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, and this surprised me more, was that I, stopped craving sweets nearly as much. I mean, there was a huge difference in that 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, nutritionally satiated. And I had been, like I was saying a moment ago, I was reared by parents that believed in whole foods, and my mom had a big garden in the backyard and used to bake her own bread and all that stuff and her own yogurt. I was always raised eating whole foods, but I still had that sweet craving thing 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 nutritionally.

That's amazing. that's maybe what the data are pretty clear that 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. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. And because the quality of amino acids, the concentration of protein, many other factors. and, 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. 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 meat.

And well, and Mark, I had an interesting moment several years ago when I was still a vegetarian. 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 gonna 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 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 tiny food ecosystem, 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, you know, you know, Gabe Brown, who I'm sure you're also familiar with, this wonderful farmer in North Dakota and he says all the time. He's been on the podcast too. 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, Dirt to Soil, and also when I've met him in person, 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 plant do I need to kill? What weed do I need to kill? What insect do I need to kill? And then he 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 the irony that people think that if you're eating animals, you're causing death. I think of it very differently.

Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. so, you know, that's the beauty of regenerative agriculture. Regenerates ecosystems, 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 in the, in the carbon project. And Marin shows us. 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. That's not what we're doing in farming or in health. In fact, that's what functional 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 many fruits and vegetables, but the way we grow the food is depleting them. And, and the work of Fred Provenza and Steven Van Vleet, as Duke, you, you're aware of, I'm sure, is showing that there's this new discovery 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 we generally raise 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 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 pasture, but he 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 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 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 selecting 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.

Yeah.

The modern industrial food system has ruptured that whole connection that we would inherently have. And he talks about the irony of the fact that we now we need to have experts tell us what to eat, you know, because it is kind of fun.

Yeah, you know, wild elk doesn't get advice from its nutritionists, its 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, too. And he says, no, it's not a giant leap. We actually have this, but the problem is right now we're stuffing ourselves from infancy, from the moment we get formula, we're getting processed foods. We're not getting the real food as it should have, 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 part of 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 starts, you know, that starts receding really dramatically.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

Yeah.

I love that book, nourishment. I'm gonna have Fred back on the podcast. I'm actually going to visit him in Montana because I'm so inspired by that guy. And I don't have a lot of people who I go, wow, I really want to meet that guy. Yeah. And, you know, he's one of them. And in the book, he talked about this fascinating experiment that 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 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 fascinating.

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 called Clara's kids because the researcher was Clara, the name Clara. But he said 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 what it's really fascinating because we keep thinking we have to follow a food pyramid or a MyPlate 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 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. I mean, you start to break that down, people can begin to notice. 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 people don't understand. That's what these animals are going, oh, I need my vitamin C. I'm gonna eat this plant or I need these phytochemicals because they're gonna help me with inflammation or, yeah, my joints hurt, so I'm gonna take this thing that's gonna help with my throat. 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 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. So he had kind of gotten used to that, but then when he started eating exclusively grass-based meats, he started saying, wow, I really like this. I prefer this. And the other stuff doesn't taste right anymore. So I think our taste 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 Fred's book, too, is it's kind of hopeful. It says, okay, we have gotten into this place where you're used to industrial foods and we were raised, a lot of people were 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 nutritional things that our body says, oh, wow, 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. It was coming, it's coming out in the fall called Eat eat like a human. And it's written by an anthropologist.

Okay.

Who has been studying food and has gone around the world looking at different cultures and what they're eating. We're talking about tribes in Africa that, you know, mix blood and milk from the animals and drink that. You know, he explained how, how great he felt after he, after he had that, even though it sounds like a weird food to us. But, yeah, it's really, all the ways that we've sort of processed and prepared foods have really denuded it of its nutritional national qualities. And that's really what regenerative, in my mind, regenerative agriculture is about. 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. 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 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? And I was invited by the publisher to do it, and I jumped at the chance, because we felt, you know, that 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 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 you know, sort of going back to talking about the insects 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 much to me.

You know, they're pretty cool. I mean, they are actually, they're scarab, you know, you know, I heard somewhere, I don't know if it's true, but I heard somewhere that scarab beetles in, you know, in ancient Egypt, you know, all those scarab beetles 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. Ancient Egyptians knew the importance of the dung beetle, you know, but, but there was a, there's a scientist and 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 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 for 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 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 20 years ago or whatever, and nobody wants to revise it because it has huge policy implications. So what he says is, 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 if we essentially keep this number of cattle on the globe static, 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. United States. And that's not to say there's no 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 US 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 US, you could easily seek it out. if you are concerned, which you should be, you should seek out American race 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. And in fact, there's another professor at Cornell, Dr. Robert Howarth, who's 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. Yeah, I think you're right.

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. We had a lot.

Well, and the ruminant. We have more ruminants, right? Yeah. There were more ruminants, wild ruminants, than there are domesticated ruminants today.

And they. Oh, elk, deer, antelope. Yeah. Caribou. All those are producing methane, and it really it's about the It's a short-lived greenhouse gas, not like carbon 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 or something. Because they need a lot of different plants with different properties. And the tannins, for example, in 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 methanotrophes 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 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 1 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. this used for animal agriculture.

And there's some very interesting research as well that shows that essentially when you put 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 have plants and soils functioning in the way that they're supposed to function in order to have this 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 when they're buying soy at the supermarket and they think they're doing the right thing.

You want to know my secret for living a long and happy and healthy life? Well, all I have to do is check out my weekly newsletter, Mark's Picks, where I share my favorite tips for health, longevity, well-being, and lots more. Check it out and the link below. That's all fascinating. And I want to loop back to this conversation about just what an impact and the health question we've discussed in the podcast many times. I don't 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 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. That's what we mean by regenerative agriculture. And there's a lot of ways to do it. And 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 dropping down, that actually probably is one of the better ways to restore soil. We're not even talking about that. So, 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, and they're all different. And the contexts are different. The climates are different. The ability to squander your soil is different. And, and, 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 the nuanced pieces together in my mind. I just wonder if you have a perspective. If you were a policymaker and you were in DC 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 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 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 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 when your friend Tim Ryan was running for a while back 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 by the Biden people. And so I think he's doing a lot of really good things with focusing on soil health and this idea that regenerative agriculture is mainstream. And Secretary Vilsack of 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 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 soil health and soil carbon and that sort of thing. So I'm hopeful that some good things will come of that. But to me, it's a piece of what needs to be done. I think it's really important to always remember that, well, the main problem with climate changes from fossil fuels and that we need to major policy changes in order to really address that. Things like, for example, fuel efficiency standards in cars and improving the number of electric vehicles that we're having in the United States and 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 each of us can sort of look at our individual footprints and 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 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 looked at 80 of the top global solutions for mitigating or reducing or drawing down carbon and food and agriculture, we're the collective number one solution, not fossil fuels.

Yeah, no, I know. I say I fight that in my book, actually. Yeah, I remember that.

And depending on how you slice and dice it, when you look end to and at the food system, deforestation, soil erosion, factory farming of animals, the transport, refrigeration, food waste, all of that. When you add it all together, it's estimated to be 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 gotta be the other 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 climate change, but all of these, sort of the implications of the way we're living in an industrialized world today, which I think are, 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 pandemic made their schooling be on Zoom, right? 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 Pivenza'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. And I think that's a lot of what regenerative food is all about. It's about farming systems that, you know, make us healthy people as individuals that are eating it. And also those are, that our 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, 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 full 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. Hey, YouTube, if you like this video, you're gonna love the next one.

Click on it to check it out today. Dietary guidelines were meant to prevent disease. We got pretty bad.

How is that progress gone?

Like here, you know, how's that working for you? Obesity going up, diabetes going up, heart disease still number one killer, cancer going up. So like by any outcome measure, they have been a total failure.