NUTRITION TIPS: Should You Be Eating Meat To Improve Your Health? | Mark Hyman & Scott Lively

I really try to know the people behind my food. I want to know the farmer. I want to get to know him. I want to know who he uses to process his cattle. The larger chunk of primal you buy, the closer you're getting to the producer.

You talked about organic and grass-fed. So what can you explain the sort of differences in the terms and is it regenerative? Is it just grass-fed? What's the difference? Can you sort of help people understand that?

Great, great question. The first thing is that organic is five years ago, maybe eight years ago, organic was the leading claim people looked at. There's this great report called the Power of Meat that talks about what consumers look for when they look at packaging. When they go buy meat, what are the top 10 things they're digging into? Believe it or not, the first is product of the USA. People want to buy American product. That is a fact. People look for American product. They don't know that half the product they're eating didn't come from America, but that's what they look for. Then it's no antibiotics or added growth hormones. Then it's grass-fed. Grass-fed is becoming, it's grown seven times in the last couple of years. It's a seven times multiple of growth in grass-fed beef. It doesn't have to be organic to be grass-fed. It doesn't have to be grass-fed to be organic. And there are two different attributes. You've got to decide what's important to you. I know a lot of the American grass-fed producers aren't organic, but they produce great quality meat. And I look for that symbol a lot. I really when I'm shopping myself. So, all organic means is no antibiotics, no added growth hormones because all cows have hormones. It's just like you and I have hormones. It's just no added hormones. And if an animal gets sick, you got to treat it. But the other part of organic is the animal has eaten organic certified feed its entire life. That's grain-fed or grass-fed. That was certified organic and it wasn't sprayed. So, that's a huge thing. Now, I think most purists on the grass-fed side would go ahead and do that anyways. They just don't. they care more about the grass fed and the quality of the product than they worry about the USDA organic symbol to them. But I would say that that's a good thing. The difference between grass raised and grass finished is simple. All cows eat grass. There's no legal definition of grass fed in America right now. There's no USDA, that's it. So to be grass fed, grass finished, you've got to prove beyond just an affidavit that you really finished that animal only on grass. You've not put any grains in. You haven't tried to get a boost at the last 90 days of its life that it's been a pure grass program, which would take longer, which would be more expensive because it's more labor intensive and more resource intensive, and it would have a different taste. I think a lot of consumers think they want grass fed until they taste it. And there's a little bit of a change. Okay, I got to be ready for this. I like it now. I mean, I've adapted the taste. I can taste grass fed. I'm excited about grass fed when I get it. So I think that there's still that person that that has been conditioned to like a certain flavor of beef, just like I talk about my chocolate cake is that ribeye that's prime. that's got nothing to do with organic. I just like the flavor. But, that's not going to be my main sustenance of protein and that's not.

What I'm going to go to on a daily basis. Do you think this whole move toward.

Regenerative agriculture is scalable? I do. I really do. I think it's got to be stepable. So, I think first of all, we got to look at the type of land we're using. I think a lot of land has been over the past several decades has been turned into crops and has been farmed where it should not have been. It was pasture land, it was prairie land. It should have been left alone. We can go back to the Dust Bowl and look at what happens when you overfarm a region, a huge region. We gave people huge plots of land to farm. It was prairie land, should have never been farmed. And then we had some chemical fertilizers. And then we had a few years of drought. Well, the entire topsoil just took off and headed east and covered the entire nation with dust. So there's types of land that should be grazed and types of land that should be farmed. If you look at some of these hillier areas, Instead of trying to grow a crop on it and destroying it and eroding it, that's great pasture land. I think we need to take a look at programs like the CRP, the Conservation Reserve Program, that was put in place after World War II to pay farmers to not farm. Maybe it was- yeah. Millions of acres in CRP.

You can Google it.

You should pay them- oh my God, yes. To create pasture. To get a soil expert out there and grow some grass that matters to livestock. and you want to do regenerative, you've got to get the nitrogen back in the soil. So get livestock out there, which are natural grazers, the natural roamers, start doing rotational grazing. And I would pay those same people to do that, probably paying more. The last I checked was four years ago because I was trying to go to these people that own CRP and saying, Hey, listen, take it out of CRP. Let me organic certify it. I'll lease it from you. I'll put cattle out there. We'll create a business, had some takers, not a lot. Mostly people were older generation, didn't want to mess with it, hey, I got a good thing, leave it alone. But as it's falling out of CRP, the government's not renewing it like they used to. They're not just automatically renewing. So it's becoming available and that land would certify organic instantly without a three-day wait. Because you could prove it's never been sprayed, it's never been farmed, it's just been in CRP. The whole point of CRP was don't touch it. So, this way, you would have instant organic certified land. You could raise cattle on, you could do regenerative farming. And, last I checked, four years goes 1.4 million acres. That's a lot of pastures.

I just looked it up and in 2021, it was 5.3 million acres.

Okay, there you go. So, yeah, I think that's how much acreage is out there that they're getting paid to not farm.

And, what you're saying, some of these areas are a little marginal, but they would be better for grazing, right? It's better for grazing. You could actually yeah. Well, Alan Williams talks about this. I don't know how accurate his data is, but he talks about how we, you know, we had, we do about 20, I don't know, 29 million cows a year in America that we Slaughter and that, that if we scaled up the conservation land that is existing, the, the Bureau of Land Management, if we convert some of the soy and corn row crops to grass-fed regenerative farms and using other degraded lands that we could literally raise almost double the beef, about 59 million cows a year. Do you think that's accurate? I don't know.

I'm going to be honest, I've never heard that statistic, but I'd love to believe it.

I think we can do it. I think we can do it. The whole idea is that we can't, if we do regenerative, it's expensive, we can't feed the planet, it's a growing need, we need the volume. These are all the arguments by the big four meat companies and even by the government who's heavily lobbied by them and his opinions are often shaped by them.

But the government still gives billions of dollars away for useless programs that don't create anything. So if we could redirect those funds to lowering the cost of regenerative agriculture, creating more programs, allowing farmers to get in and do it a little bit better and create better soil, yeah, I think you could do it better. There's a lot of people not raising cattle, not because they don't have the space of the land, they just It's just not worth it to them. It's not enough money in it. You know, you got to remember when I don't want to go back to the monopoly and I hate picking on the big beef guys because I have so many friends that work for JBS and I have so many good people in big beef. But when the Packers and Stockyard Act was passed, I think it was 1921, I think it was Wilson, Woodrow Wilson passed it. They were worried because the Packers were, you know, above 14% control of the industry and they fact they had 25% controls. Like we got to do something. and we've got to get these big packers in control because they have monopoly. Well, today it's 85%. So they've gone from 25 to 85 of total control. That's not going to be given up. So what is their mission? Their mission is to create the fastest, most efficient, cheapest protein they can and sell it for the highest price they can. Any business would. That's what the guy that built this phone did. Okay, how do I do it cheap and how do I sell it for as much as I can? You know, that's not going to change. So until there's economic incentive and government Absolute, I don't want to say oversight, I'm gonna say government support to create these programs that could easily be converted to a regenerative farm to easily be turned to an organic farm and raise something that contributes back to the soil. It's not gonna work. It's gotta come from the government. It's gotta come from funding because small family ranchers can't do it. If you look at beef, look at big anything, look at big tech, look at big pharma, look at big finance. There's always a big boogeyman. There's a big, big bad guy. And big beef is an easy target because they genuinely do have a monopoly. 85% of all the beef wheat in America comes from four companies. Which makes them an easy target. A very easy target. I think that you've got to look at what it takes to make beef and why it's so Intense. So, you know, you take chicken, which can be done sustainably and organically very easily, just gotta put it out there, call it free range, but a chicken's, you know, 90, 100 days old when you process it. The average cow is anywhere from 30 months to five years old. That's a long time to have a living, breathing thing on earth walking around, consuming resources, creating waste. So it becomes a very easy target. The amount of transportation involved in moving beef around. is astounding. I mean, the animal from a live point of view probably moves at least two times before it's processed and slaughtered. And then another three to four times after it's a meat product. You know, you've got to move from the cow-calf to the finishing facility, then you move from the slaughterhouse to the further processor, for the further processor to the retail, the retailer home. It moves a lot. There's a lot of impact on that product. Yeah. And I think basically, You talk about the health attributes, you talk about what's good for you, bad for you. I can show you a thousand studies that says meat causes cancer and all sorts of issues. No one's talking about sugar or diabetes or all the other stuff you eat, but they're talking about red meat issues. But, all those studies, if you dig into them, and I've dug into probably a dozen beef studies that said stop eating it, cut it out, vegan's the way to go, they're all observational studies. None of them are actually following everything the person eats, following their entire food choices, their genetics, their background. They just basically say, listen, do you eat a lot of red meat? Oh, you don't feel good and you have heart disease. All right, you're dead. It's had to be the red meat. I think beef has easily become the boogeyman. And I do, I love all sorts of beef. Obviously, I'm passionate about grass-fed organic beef. I'm really passionate about beginning regenerative farming, which I want to talk more about later, that what is regenerative farming? There's so many, I'm so tired of all the buzzwords thrown around that are just, yeah, it used to be sustainable. What does that mean? And you know what? If you can't pay for it, the farmer can't live, maybe it's not sustainable. So there's a lot of other things that create sustainability in a supply chain. And I'm an advocate of grass-fed beef, but of course I do eat conventional prime ribeye once in a while. It's chocolate cake for me. It's going to be my, my indulgence, it's not going to be my constant. It's going to be something that I do once in a while as a treat. So, everything in moderation, but as far as the impact on the environment, there are ways to do it really easily. We just need to start doing them.

So, are you saying that you would limit your beef consumption because maybe it's not healthy for you or because some other reason? Or did I misunderstand what you said?

Well, I'm saying that my conventional beef consumption, when I eat, I go out for a decadent prime bone and ribeye. I'm not doing that for health attributes. To me, that's like dessert. That's chocolate cake. That's an indulgence.

On my daily beef intake, I'm doing grass-fed. I'm eating my ground beef. I see.

So, what you're talking about is you're talking about if you eat non-grass-fed beef, you're eating feedlot beef. When I go outside my purview for a treat, I'm indulgent. But, I understand. I tell a story in my book about my Thursday nights, almost every Thursday night when I get home. going back the last few years, I grill in New York strip with grilled onions and have a little glass of bourbon and that's it. There's no greens, there's no nothing. That's my Thursday night. And it's a grass-fed strip line. It's one of my products. I love it. It's lean. It feels great. I'm ready to work out the next day. I feel, you know, just infused with energy. And that's my daily, my weekly beef intake.

But when I'm celebrating, I might go outside and have enough scope in the wheel of the beef industry. I understand. Okay. Got it. So tell me about the challenges with the beyond the research, the challenges with our current meat system and why we need to reimagine it and what you've done in your career to actually help shift the beef industry in the right direction.

Sure. So I think the big challenges are, you know, anytime you take something macro and try to do it huge, you know, we have. massive processing facilities. There are, you know, my company kills, I shouldn't say kill, I should say harvest this. I know that people are sensitive to that word, but we harvest about a thousand animals a week. And there are companies that do that an hour. You know, the big packers can do 12,000 in a day, like nothing. And so I think you've got people standing next to each other overcrowded, you've got cattle, being finished overcrowded. So some of the issues we have are just limited of space. You know, the amount, we process millions of head of cattle a week in this country, millions. And that's a lot. And I think if you think about how could you do that on a more sustainable venue and how could you lower the amount, you're gonna have to pull back on consumption. and I don't think consumers are ready for that. I think people like their 399 hamburger, although it's probably more expensive today, beef prices are through the roof. So consumer demand is going to have to change. And what has shifted, and I'll tell you what's really, what's happened in the last five to seven years is, when I got into the business, and I'm actually in eastern South Dakota right now.

Wow.

Yeah, it's pretty gorgeous outside, bright and sunny. fields. When I got into the business back in 2004, I met with the big packers. I met with JBS, I met with Cargill. They laughed at me. They said, this is the dumbest thing. No one's ever going to want organic. No one's ever going to want grass-fed. It'll be too expensive. Don't do it. Every one of those large packers today have an organic offering, and it's been consumer driven. So I think what's interesting about organic and grass-fed is this is the first time the consumer said, hey, you know what? what we really want is a healthier green alternative because we're eating this as a protein source. We're not eating this as an indulgence all the time. It's hamburger or it's taco meat or it's lasagna. And the consumer said, we want this and Big Beef has responded. In the past it was always, you want Angus and you want prime or choice, that's it. Here's your option. We'll tell you what you want. But I think raising awareness of organic agriculture and cleaner ways of raising livestock has gotten the attention that these guys are like, this is a market, this is real, and they're starting to go that way. I don't want to pick on the big beef all the time. I'm seeing them do things that are a step in the right direction. And I don't know if it's pure for marketing sake, I don't know if it's purely for, hey, we're trying or maybe it's sincere, but I'm seeing them do things like add a little bit of dehydrated seaweed into their feed to cut down on methane emissions. I know huge feedlots. I'm talking 20,000 head feedlots, which there shouldn't be 20,000 heads stacked together. But the fact that they're making a modicum of, I think it's good, JBS sticks out of they have a green initiative. They're trying to really reduce their carbon footprint. And I'm not fans of these guys. I'm not being honest. I have nothing to do with them. Believe me, they hate me. There's probably a target out there with Scott Lively on it from the Big Four. But they are, I think, making strides to at least appear like they're doing it right. And I think you got to encourage that. Well, that's good.

But, you know, it's a little confusing out there for the average consumer because there's, like, grass-fed grass finished. Yeah, there's regenerative, there's organic, you know, this whole idea about, you know, what you do with the animal during its lifespan really matters. What it's eating really matters. And Russ conser said, who's a regenerative farmer, said, it's not the cow, it's the how.

Yeah.

So can you talk about the difference between all the different types and what we should be actually focusing on? Why? Why is corn fed or feedlot beef not so good for you in the environment and why is grass finished actually better?

Well, there's the obvious. The obvious health attributes of grass-fed are the Omega-3s. It's got more Omega-3s. But, actually, if you look at the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3, grass-fed has 20:1. It's insane how much more it has. Yeah, there's a fat, a healthy fat called CLM. You probably know this better than I do. and I thought it was.

Yeah.

CLA. I'm sorry. CLA.

Conjugated linoleic acid.

Yeah. And it's a, it's a healthy fat. It's a healthy fat that adds in a lot of digestion. And I don't even think conventional grain-fed.

Beef has that in it. I don't think. No, it doesn't. It's actually from, you know, it actually.

Helps with cancer and metabolism, diabetes. So it's quite important. Yeah. And we, omega-6 is an inflammatory, so there's, there's the benefit, the health benefits.

I don't think can be disputed. I think we're past that. The question is. there's also, before you jump on the next one, I want to emphasize that what the cow eats, if it eats a variety of plants, we've talked to Fred Provenza and others on the podcast about the phytonutrients in meat that we're just discovering, which is these plant compounds from animals that are eating a wide variety of plant foods that are medicinal. And so when you have an animal eating one grass, that's not good. But if you're eating 50 or 40 different types of plants, those plants actually contain these beneficial molecules that are upgrading our health all the time. So I think that's a, that's a pretty interesting Discovery.

And it may be more important than the Omega-3s or the antioxidants or the increased minerals or the in the grass finished meat. Absolutely. And I think what you're getting back to there when you're talking about different versions of grass and different versions of feed ingredients, let's just remove corn and soy from the equation and assume we're talking about grass fed. You're getting back to soil health. You're getting back to the actual biodiversity and the health of the soil. A good complex soil system, that's where the supply chain starts. and if it can grow a variety of different things and it can, and if you're returning, you know, nitrogen back into the soil, you can tell a really dark, rich, nitrogen rich soil over just dirt that needs to be fertilized by looking at it. Those other plants and things like switchgrass, alfalfa, there's all sorts of different wild growing things. I mean, sometimes you can use Milo switchgrass, there's legumes, all of those things. And the more they eat, the better. But you have to have solid soil for that. And so when I, when I talk about supply chain of beef, I don't just start with the bull and the genetics. You got to go back to the.

Actual richness and the nutrient denseness of the soil. Absolutely. So the soil matters because that's what creates the phytochemical richness of the plants. And that's put the nutrient density of the plants. And if you're eating the right foods that have eaten the right foods, then.

Your health is upgraded.

Right?

And, I would say it's as complex as the bacteria and the digestive good bugs in your stomach.

I think, well, that's a whole another layer, right? Yeah.

Your own digestive system has the same complex good bugs and bad bugs as your soil should. I have some soil here I was going to show you earlier, but this is what a regenerative good soil should look like. You can smell it, you can see it. I mean, this is, it's black, it's earthy, it's not, I mean, it's fueled. you know, roots. See it. It's not just, if you looked at drove down most farm roads, you're gonna see brown dirt that has zero nutritional value. It's got to be enhanced with chemical fertilizers to get to grow anything. And most of those are GMO created.

Crops, so they're resistant to the herbicides and pesticides. It also depends on the cow, right? Because, you know, in the animal, I I I'm, someone I know works with this breed of cows that sort of escaped into Mexico. The Haro Haro cows or Haro cows. I forget what you're saying, right?

Yeah.

Royal cows. And they're these really Hardy cows that live up in the, in the high desert, and they, they actually eat all kinds of wild plants, and they, they become wild, like wild horses, but they're becoming re-domesticated and they, they're very different in terms of their genetic makeup, the, the actual nutrient density of the food. So can you talk about how they're different and why it's different and why that even not only what they're eating is important, but the breed of the.

Cow is so absolutely. So there are certain genetic predispositions in livestock that do better in different climates and different geographic areas. So you'll find the traditional American Angus does really well in Missouri and Nebraska and that area where there's a lot of water. They're a hardy animal. And then you, we always talk about the Texas Longhorn that's big in, in Texas and dry. But the Texas Longhorn is actually a distant relative of a Spanish steer from when the Spaniards came into Florida and they had these work animals, these oxens with these long horns and they migrated over to the dry Texas, which was more adapt to their bodies of being Spanish animals and they thrived in Texas and they did really well. There's so much genetic crossbreeding that's been going on in the last 20 years where you can take look at Wagyu with Kobe and American Angus. There's terminal cross between Herefords and Charolais. They're breeding Angus with Holsteins to make a stronger steer, the grain spec. So, in the conventional world, you can almost genetically create a cow or steer that is predisposition to grow in the environment you want it to. It's a little scary actually how that happens so much. it's just about combining genetics, a bull with a cow that have like traits. But there are absolutely, I mean, the type of animals and cattle they raise in Canada and Saskatchewan are nowhere near the type of animal you're going to raise in New Mexico or Arizona or the Panhandle of Texas.

They're massively genetically different, different resources, different use of water. And that, and that affects the food and affects the quality of the food. I mean, and, and I think we know that particularly in dairy cows, you know, when you look at A2 casing cows, which are more traditional heirloom cows versus A1 casing, more Holsteins. The milk they produce is very different. The inflammatory nature is very different. And, you know, when we look at the, and I've talked about this in the podcast before, but you're looking at wild meat versus feedlot meat, very different effects on your biology in terms of inflammation, metabolic effects, hormonal effects. So it really matters what you're eating and the quality of it. And that quality is determined by one, the genetics to the environment it was raised in three, the the things that might have been given, which is growth hormone antibiotics. And, you know, I think the quality of the grass and the feed that they're eating, that all determines the health.

Of the animal, and that determines our health.

And you're eating with the animal eight. You're 100 right. Absolutely. No question. Let's talk. Let's talk a little bit about the environment, because I think people are very focused on climate. And, and we really recently had the Glasgow climate Summit. There was just a big push for being vegan and, and ending meat consumption. or limiting it to save the planet. Is that true? Is it something we should be focused on or what's the deal?

You know, obviously I don't think we should end meat consumption. And I think that it's a healthy part of a good diet. That's just my opinion.

I think that there's- I wouldn't challenge you on that. I don't think it's your opinion. I think it's actually what the evidence shows.

Yeah, I think that there is obviously more we can do in commercial feeding to make it healthier, more sustainable and cleaner. There's no question. Everyone thinks that water is the issue, but cows don't actually go drink water. Cows get their water from their feed, from the moisture in their feed. They very rarely go and just start lapping up water. They're not like a dog. So, I think that there's a lot of things commercially that can be done and I don't think we're ever going to get rid of the big four. I mean, I don't think we're going.

To break them up.

I don't think you're gonna stop 80 million people in America eating beef every day. Not once a week, not occasionally, every day. That's a statistic, 80 some million people. It's part of their diet. So I think what's gonna have to happen is the consumer is gonna have to start heading towards the way that they want the big packers to act. And everyone says, well, why are you always obsessed about the big packers? Because they're 85% of what we're eating. that's what's out there. You and I can talk, and I can talk to my friends in Greenwich, Connecticut. They get to go to the local Green Butcher and they have the means to spend 34 bucks for a tiny piece of filet. But that's not the rest of the world. The rest of the world is eating conventional beef from Safeway or Burger. And you have to reach into that pool of food support to make real.

Change or you're not going to make real change.

And how do we do that? I think one is, one is you vote with your pocketbook. I think if you start buying more organic grass-fed beef and asking for it. and I think if you start asking your local grocery, you know, to carry it, you'll see it happen. It's happened already. I think you can, it's, I would say put pressure on the big beef, but their lobby is so strong, their lobby is bigger than big banks. I mean, they've got a lot of sway over the USDA. They have a lot of sway over, like, country of origin labeling. They have a lot of sway over the Packers and Stockyards Act. It's a very political business, if you put it that way, that you, it's one of the only things that they publish the pricing of beef every morning and every night, and everybody knows what everyone's paying for cattle, for beef, for everything. And there's no secrets. And it's a really, it, it, what I would do if I'm just saying I would like to make it a personal impact is I really try to know the people behind my food. I want to know the farm. I want to get to know them. I want to know who he uses to process his cattle. and you can ask those questions and I think you'd be shocked how many producers are probably not in your backyard but very close to you within 100 miles of your house where you could buy a locally raised or a locally processed piece of meat. It may not be all your beef consumption but you could start there. You could start by trying to go a little more local and trying to get to know, I always say it's not just the food, it's the people behind the food. Who did it and what was their intentions? And if they just want to make a cheap product and get 20 cents a pound and get out the door, maybe that's not who I want to be doing business with. Maybe I want to be doing business with a guy that his heart and.

Soul into the product and he knows where it came from. They're saying that you should always see the face that feeds you. Yeah. You know, I think that's a good one. I went to the farmer's market in my town last year, and I, I met the woman who was raising lamb, and, you know, basically you could buy a half a lamb or a quarter of a lamb or a whole lamb and put in your freezer, which I did. It was amazing. And it was super relatively inexpensive. It was relatively expensive because we cut out the middleman. They butchered it, they got it to me and I picked it up at the farmer's market and it was awesome.

The larger piece of meat you buy, the larger chunk of primal you buy, the closer you're getting to the producer. So, if you're buying a cut steak or a hamburger, you're way through the process, you're way to the end of the supply chain. It's had a lot of hands on it. If you're buying a whole primal, you're a little closer probably packing house farmer. And if you buy a quarter cow or half cow, you were literally really helping that farmer and you're buying a lot closer and helping that guy that raised the animal. So, I think I sent you a big crime once.

I think you sent you a giant tenderloin.

You did.

You sent me this giant thing. I'm like, what am I going to do with this? I need to have a party because otherwise I don't know what to do.

With this big turkey.

Put the whole thing on the grill and let it sit.

Oh, really? That's at low temperature. Let it go slow. I reverse sear those things.

Just slow and low, then burn it at the end. You can do it. oh, there you go. Well, I think, you know, you're challenging a lot of our Notions about meat, which is that it's bad for us, it's bad for the environment, and you're challenging the idea that, that we should not be eating as much meat. The challenge is that, you know, people are often concerned that we can't scale regenerative meat production, that we can't, you know, it sounds nice. It's a great idea. Yes, we want, you know, heirloom cows fit on a hundred different plants, all with medicinal different properties. rich in phytochemicals and Omega-3 fats and where the animals are killed humanely and everything's beautiful and it's all local. But how do we get from here to there? Because, you know, we're right. I mean, you don't want to, you don't want to have to spend seven dollars for a grass-fed ribeye and, and, and just like for a little piece.

Of steak, you want to be able.

To have it affordable and accessible. Yeah. And these big four, these big four, you call them big four, JBS Tyson, Cargill and National Beef. are really monsters that have huge impact in Congress and just in the whole meat industry itself. Yeah.

I think that I'll talk really generally on what we can do, and then I'm going to get a little more granular on what I think you can do today and immediately. And what I think the big four are starting to do, because they're waking up pretty quick. They're not going to, people aren't going to stand for today's beef prices at today's quality and then also not have the ability to know what country they're Beef came from, which is, oh, that's another problem, right? I mean, the fact that they can put product of the USA on meat that was not born, raised and harvested.

In America is just, yeah, it's on.

Another level of consumer deception, in my opinion.

But for sure.

So what I think, and this might sound a little Pollyanna, is that we really need to create better agricultural departments in colleges and universities, each one of those. are obviously sponsored by Tyson Cargill Monsanto. But if you could get a sustainable department, sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture and start, you know, we, a lot of universities have agronomy majors where you're studying soil and soil conservation. But it's based on how to enhance the soil with science, not how to allow the soil to regenerate naturally through hooks and plants and decay and solar. There's all these things. I think when the universities start, you know, we got a really good opportunity and that the world's focused on climate change. The world is focused on huge. So if the agriculture departments would grab on to that and create some sustainable agricultural courses and degrees, I think you would attract more of these, I'm going to call them Gen Xers and Gen Zs, to those areas of study. You know, sustainability, is a major. I think my daughter's got a major in Boulder, but it's not in agriculture. So why aren't we doing that? Why aren't these universities and these, I'm not going to say left, but these organizations of academic focusing on sustainability in agriculture?

Well, to give a little history of that, I think, you know, the land grant colleges, which are the colleges established under Lincoln to bring research, Innovation and agriculture, were funded by the government to, to help advance agriculture in America. Unfortunately, those land grant colleges have been highly funded and co-opted, not just by the government, which is hopefully to do the right thing, but by industry. And so a lot of the research and a lot of things that get done there are really driven out of the food industry, the beef industry, the ag and chem industry, just like at major academic institutions in America. Most of the research is around pharma and pharma companies provide the funding for the schools, whether they're public or private universities. So we have a lot of public land grant colleges all across America that are established under Lincoln. And I went to Cornell, they had the Cornell Ag School, which was a state school. And yet they they're really not focused on this. They're really focused on practices that are pretty outdated and they're destructive and they're not bringing up a new generation of farmers. It's really thinking about how do we create a more regenerative system that actually is not extractive and destructive, but actually creates more abundant food, better food, higher quality food. It's better for the plants, it's better for humans, it's better for the animals. It's kind of a no-brainer, but we really don't have the incentives aligned and that has to change. And I don't know if you have any insight about that, if you think.

It'S going to be a great university. It's a great university. He looked at the agriculture department. He went and met, he talked to advisors. He's like, Dad, I really don't think you want me studying here. I think I'm going to be completely opposite of what you thought I would get here. and it wasn't bad. It's probably a great program for what they do, but he decided to study business instead. He's like, I just don't think this is the doctrine that I grew up for the last 18 years of my father being an organic beef wanting to study. And, I hear you on that. And, I think when those departments, those agriculture departments realize that they are there to create better ways of agriculture, not just bigger, faster, cheaper. And there's actual study done into, you know, how can we, you want to reduce emissions, go to the ag department. You want to create better health or food, go to the ag department. Stop depending on the science department, tell you how to do it. And I think that there's some really talented, intelligent people out there that should be teaching and involved at the academic level that just get shut down.

Absolutely. And I also think that the government has a role because if the government is funding a lot of these land grant colleges, then the opportunity is really for them to change their funding to make sure that it actually is required for them to do some of this in their curriculum.

A portion of it. Yeah, give us a percentage. Exactly. You know, it's like you can't- Totally important. I don't think you can even get government crop insurance if you don't spray for weeds. So how is that incentivizing anyone to go organic if they have a financial disaster. Well, I didn't spray. Well, you don't qualify for cooperative crop insurance. I mean, things like that.

You can't have animals. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, the USDA organic seal has become a brand in itself. The, the, the US Department of Agriculture has had a great time divvying that out to people that have, I mean, most of them are owned by Hain and big business and, you know, big food companies. And it's, it's, it's, it's a process to go organic. It's a process to go organic certified. but it's not hard anymore. It can be done by almost anybody. Proving you're grass-fed and proving you've done it from birth to slaughter is a really difficult thing to do.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of sort of opponents of eating meat, right? So, I think whether it was the recent Glasgow conference or Atlantic Eat Atlantic Commission or you got movies like Game Changers and what the health and others out there that are really influencing people. What are the main arguments you use to kind of address these concerns? Because I think they're really real for people.

I think when people say that, sorry to interrupt you, I think when people say that, you know, I'm going to go to the argument I think they make. They already, they always go quickly to these meat substitutes, these plant-based meats and these beyond and the impossible and stuff. And, yeah, in my mind, it's like, I don't want to eat 46 different chemicals. I'm a minimalist. I want to eat less. I don't tell me it's made out of peas. It's made out of a pea protein, you know, it's not peas. And I get them two mixed up. One's a bit heavy, soy.

Beyond beef is, I think, was it Beyond Meat? It's called Soy Leg and the FP, pea protein and Impossible Burger is from soy. GMO soy. Yeah. Yeah.

But, it's a bioengineered soy.

It's not just soy, it's not tofu. Let's be honest. No, definitely not. Definitely not. I mean, there's 47 novel proteins that they've identified and some of them won't even identify. Right. And so, I mean, maybe they're okay, but if you think food is information.

What are those proteins saying to your biology and how do we regulate that? Okay, when I pick up a box and I look at the back of it, if I see more than six ingredients, I get a little concerned. You've got 46 different proteins and some of you won't identify. I'm not sure I'm ready. I'm not sure that is a meat alternative. That's food science and I think what it's doing.

It's a science project for sure. And the question is what is the health risk and what are the environmental risks? And even, you know, you see you've got all these different meats. You've got the plant-based meats, you've got cell-based meats, you've got the conventional meat, the regenerative meat, right? And I think a lot of people.

Are looking towards some of these other solutions like lab-based meats.

What do you think about that?

You know, I, I just started doing a lot of research on that because, as I told you earlier, I'm looking at a second book on all the different types of beets. And what I know is that protein requires an amino acid and a chain to grow. And I'm just really interested in how that happens at a lab level, how they create a, a, a, a protein growth of a red meat tissue and how you classify it. And if it is red meat and if it is lab growing red meat and it starts with amino acid, it's got a protein strain, and it's growing around that. which I'm not up on the science, I'm going to be honest. What are the food safety implications? I mean, we struggle with fighting E. coli in the beef industry, but I will say we process millions of pounds of burger a day and we do a really good job of keeping people safe. And E. coli O157:H7 is a very unique foodborne illness. It's a very unique pathogen. I'll talk about that a little bit later, but I mean, what is the food safety ramifications of bacteria growth? And you're not going to get E. coli from it because it's not been near slaughter or hides and stuff. What's in it? I mean, is there temperature controls? Is there, I just don't know enough about it and I'm dying to know. I'd love to be invited to one of those lab plants and told all about it.

I mean, right now it's super expensive to produce and I think the things that concern me most about it are things that we don't know, the unknown unknowns, right? So, one, what is actually the full metabolomic profile of a fully regeneratively raised cow that's eating a hundred different wild plants, what is that metabolomic profile and its health benefits compared to, for example, a lab-grown meat, which is just using the basic things that they put in, basic protein, fats, carbs, whatever they're feeding the meat. So, that's one piece of the puzzle.

You have to feed that meat. That meat has to be fed to grow. So, you make a really good point there.

I mean, you think about, you think about just with humans, you know, when we, we started refining foods, we didn't really know what we're doing, and, and we didn't realize that, that we were causing all these massive vitamin deficiencies. And how they discovered vitamin deficiencies were because they were providing the refined grains to, to prisoners and, and, and they were getting super sick into chickens, and they were getting super sick, and they, and they were all suffering from severe vitamin deficiencies. And they realized there was something that they took out of a whole grain that was vital, a vital amine. And then there's vitamin. Yeah. That, that was super important for health. And, and so when they just sort of build it down to the basic building blocks like we do in agriculture now with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium or NPK. Yeah. That's just a little bit of what is a plant needs. There's all these other compounds that are in soil that are super complex that we don't probably even figure it out or know yet. There's literally more organisms in a thumb. thumbnail. I mean, I'm not full of soil. And there is people on the planet. And there's also all these other compounds in there that are, that are being extracted and given to the plants to produce these phytochemicals. Is that going to happen when you have a lab meat? And the other, the other thing that I, I'm concerned about is the inputs. You know, when you look at, for example, the, these Impossible Burger, it's GMO soy. And so there's, there's tremendous amounts of environmental impact using GMO soy spray with glyphosate, which destroys a microbiome of the soil, contributes to climate change. I mean, there's so many issues with it. not to mention all the downstream effects that are coming from that kind of agriculture and mono row crop agriculture, which is highly extractive and destructive. And then just to finish on the lab-based meat, and I've talked to Uma Valeti who actually founded one of the most important companies of cell-based meat. I think they're trying to do the right thing. He's a great guy. He's a cardiologist from Mayo, smart guy. and doing the right thing, but you have to consider, you know, what are the inputs and also where those inputs come from. In other words, if you're feeding the meat, let's say broken down amino acids or fats or carbohydrates, where are those coming from? They're usually coming from industrial agriculture. So you're growing, you know, using massive inputs from industrial agriculture to feed that meat. It's not that different than feed lot meat. It's just, you know, you don't have a cow, it's not alive. And then the third thing is, is where do they get the energy? Because the bioreactors that are required to actually create this is very energy intensive. So is that coming from fossil fuels, coal, carbon source fuels, or is it regenerative fuels or renewable fuels like solar, wind? I mean, so we just have so many issues that we're really not even grappling with when we look at the story. We have to look at it as really a gestalt and as a systems problem. And I think we can start to sort of, we can start to try to look at, okay, well how do we balance this out? Because a lab-based mean is not going to restore the soil, it's not going to restore ecosystems, it's not going to increase biodiversity, it's not going to improve our watersheds and it's not going to actually do the things that we need to do in order to restore environmental and climate health. We don't know where to go to us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, maybe, it may be.

A great source of protein. It may be healthy for you, but it may not have all the adverse effects of, you know, feedlot meat, maybe. But we don't know. I mean, will it have the beneficial effects of eating a wild elk or a wild, a wild kangaroo? I mean, I just found this great source of, of elk online. I think it's not wild. They farm it, but elk or rice and. It's really great. I'm so excited because I love elk.

Elk's my favorite wild game.

It's hard to get. It's hard to get. So, I usually I'm lucky if I know someone who was a hunter and got it, but it's very different. And I think we really have to sort of rethink our whole focus on meat and get out of the sort of meat bad vegetables good argument because it's overly simplistic and it doesn't take into account one, how we grow things, two, the quality of the meat, three, what people's individual needs are, and four, some of the environmental and climate consequences of needing animals to be integrated into agriculture in order to help restore and address some of the big problems we're facing environmentally and climate-wise.

I agree. I agree 100%. And I didn't know the story about the prisoners and the nutrient deficiency. That's a really good story. The amount of I guess I call it glycophate allowance or 2x.

Glycophate.

Glycophate. That is allowed in cattle feed versus what's allowed in human feed. It's almost like a 20 times.

Oh my God.

And so, you look at that and you say, but you're allowing that to be sprayed on my food's food, but you're going to limit mine by 1/20th of it. And, I think there's such a, I don't want to use the word dichotomy. It just, it's, there's a disconnect before, between what we're allowing cattle that we wouldn't allow humans to eat, but we're eating that same cattle.

So, so true. And I think, you know, you're, you're, you really help people sort of navigate buying beef. So can you guide people through if they're going to try to get the right kind of meat? How do they do that?

Sure. I think the first thing you've got to remember is that, you know, There's label claim overload going on in the beef industry. There's a million different claims, not GMO verify, humane, never ever, all natural, organic, grass fed. There's so many label claims and you've really got to learn to sift through that. And I think the book gives you a guide on what these mean and how much teeth they have in them, no pun intended, because some of these are just things you can apply for. pay the fee and you get the certification. It's not difficult to get. I think the second thing you can do is you need to, like I said, you need to know that you said the face behind the food. You need to know who processed your meat. I tell this analogy and I joke around a lot. If you and I sat down at my favorite steakhouse and we both got a flaming onion and it was $56, $60. And let's just say it said, let's just say it said grass-fed or maybe it was grass-fed wagyu. Let's give it something crazy. Let's give it, you know, we indulged. and we would fine, we bought, we whatever, it says it on the menu, I'll take it. We don't ask a second question. And chances are the waiter doesn't know anything about it, right? But that $35 bottle of wine we're gonna share, we want to know the vintage, we want to know the year.

Where it came from.

I gotta know everything about it. And so, but this living, breathing animal that died so you can eat it, you don't ask two questions. You don't care.

Yeah, I'll take it.

It's like, give me the prime Angus. All right, great. Are you sure? Show me the box. I don't know. But we're gonna go create. So we've been conditioned on things like wine to ask third and fourth questions. But beef, we just take it and swallow it, no pun intended. So the consumer can ask questions is the first you can do. You can go and ask your meat manager or your local retailer questions. Where did it come from? How do you know? You know, there's a chapter called Butcher your Butcher with Questions. Ask those questions. You're not being a jerk if he's a reputable guy and he knows and he's a true craft. He'll tell you it's all natural, comes from this ranch, we know. The second thing that's easy to do is every piece of meat that's sold in retail, every piece of meat has what's called an establishment number. It's usually on the front and it says EST and it gives a series of numbers, establishment, USDA, whatever. You can Google that. It'll tell you exactly where that meat came from. It'll tell you if it was ground meat, where it was ground, where it was last touched, if it was steak, where it was cut. It'll give you the source of where that meat came from before it hit the grocery retailer. And that'll give you a good indication who you're dealing with and where it came from. There's a lot of really crafty brands out there that are just these really folksy, farmy, you know, warm, fuzzy brands that's just Tyson, JBS, and it's the same guys just branding it really well. So dig in, search the establishment numbers, ask your producer, and don't think you.

Can just Google that and Google the.

Establishment number and it'll show you exactly what planet came from. It'll say JBS, Grand Island. It'll say whatever it came from. It'll say Fresno beef. It'll tell you exactly the last person that touched and handled and packaged that meat. And it's been there forever.

Amazing.

No one knows it's there.

Amazing. I remember going to this Japanese restaurant. It was a very fancy Japanese restaurant. And we had, I think, Wagyu beef or something like that. It was quite a special treat. and they, they came to the table with this little certificate which had the nose print of the actual animal and where it came from and where it was grown. And how. What was. It was like, really, it was like a little confronting. It was like, oh, gee, I don't know if I want to see the nose print of the animal I'm eating, but it was real. It was real.

I've seen that, too. And I'm like, maybe. I mean, I'd like to see four or five of those because there's, you know, there's very little Kobe that gets in America.

Yeah.

There's a, there's a tariff on it. But, you know, why goo kind of cracks me up, too. How do you know? I mean, is it just fatty meat or is it really lagga?

We don't really know.

We don't have any way of really. We don't know. And the fact that they've now done the, they've overturned country of origin labeling laws that in 2008, they had them, or you had to put the country of origin of the beef. The problem was when you went and bought hamburger, it would literally say, Australia. Uruguay, Canada, Mexico, USA. People are like, how can there be that many countries in one pound of ground beef? It was off-putting to people. And it can be.

Because it's like a hundred cows, you mean?

Could be thousands.

Thousands of cows in your backyard.

It could be literally thousands of cows and DNA into one brick of beef. Doesn't mean it's not safe. It just, it could be.

It's a little crazy.

Yeah.

Do 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. So when you were, when you were 32, you basically were working in an IT and you bought this old out of use meat packing facility in Howard, South Dakota, knowing nothing about the beef industry. So what How did you take that leap? And how did you go from there over the last 15 years to create something called Raise America, which is your company that is really providing people with a source of reliable grass finished meat? Tell us about it.

I was young and I sold a couple of software companies and was not being overwhelmingly fulfilled by the tech world. nothing against it. I just wasn't firing my passion. It was a great job at a college. It was during that.com bubble where it was very easy to make a lot of money, not doing a whole lot. And I, I did have an early passion for the meat industry. I loved beef. I loved going out for steakhouses. I really loved and I was interested in what made beef taste good. And I guess that's what a lot of us started it. And I remember very vividly watching a segment. I think it was on an NPR, like a Market to Market or something. I don't, don't quote me on that. I don't remember, but and they had two back-to-back segments. One was on the explosive growth of the beef industry against pork and chicken because of the Atkins diet fat. Atkins had exploded around that time, 01-02, I guess, and everyone was eating this lean Atkins thing and it was huge. And beef surpassed chicken and pork in total volume sales for the first time in a while because of this, hey, eat Atkins. the very next segments, I think, was about Whole Foods IPO or something about how, what their stock price had been doing in it. It was explosive. And, and the, the caption was fastest growing segment in American grocery is organic. And the one before that was fastest growing segment in agriculture's beef. And I remember just like, is anyone doing organic beef? And there wasn't. And this was before Google, so I think I was on, like, ash jeeves or Yahoo or some crap like that. And I started searching and I found a guy in Seaward, Illinois, a guy named Joel Rizman. I don't know if he's still around. Bought 30 head of cattle from him and a partner and I sold them door-to-door to Chicago restaurants and literally created this business called Dakota Beef and it grew and we raised private equity and became a real thing. It's been through a few iterations and I've had a few really horrible partners over the year financially that really like the business side more than the lifestyle side and I've had to balance that a lot. 'Cause it's really easy just to cut corners and do it just enough to be covered documentation wise when there's a right way to do it and we're gonna stick with that and current partners are great people. It's now headquartered in Gordon, Nebraska. It's called raiseamerican.com and it's been, I guess I would say 18 years of my life wrapped up into one business that really tries to source verify the product. really, really goes the extra mile to check and verify the claims by producers and give consumers what they're looking for.

So you aggregate other ranchers and create a distribution channel for their meat.

We contract with hundreds of producers that give us what we'll do deposits or we'll do whatever and we'll advance them to give us their cattle. We couldn't do it ourselves. I mean, you're looking at 4,000 animals a month plus, that's a lot of animals and the infrastructure, the land and also knowing it's done right, you don't want to just go and start doing it in feed yards. What's the point?

Keep it for sure.

I'd rather have a hundred really good producers than each doing 100 animals than one guy doing 1,000 just okay. And so, you've got to spread it out. we've managed to create a really good business around, I think, doing it right.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. Someone who is getting, you know, buying pasture raised beef, for example, from a local farmer or a meat CSA, that's gonna have a different impact than someone who is eating, you know, commodity CAFO beef.