262 Shawn Mihalik: The Future of Meat

Yeah, I mean the animals we eat these days, they're not fed the grasses that they evolved to eat. They're fed wheat and soy and corn and most of that corn and soy is genetically modified and it leads the animals to develop a whole different omega 3 to omega 6 ratio than what our ancestors ate. We're not eating the same meat that I mean, I mean you can get the same sort of meat that our ancestors ate, but that's not what most people are eating.

That's Sean Mihalik from Paleo magazine and this is episode 262 of Wellness Force Radio where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence to live life well. Do you eat meat? Not just any meat, but do you eat CAFO meat? Controlled animal feeding operations. We're talking about this today on the podcast these controlled animal feeding operations versus eating organic, clean and sustainably harvested meats. But this is a hot topic for billions, literally billions with a B across the world. Should we eat meat or should we not eat meat? Today on the podcast we're talking to writer managing editor of Paleo magazine radio discussing his latest piece can we fix meat? Question mark. These differences between cellular agriculture or the lab grown meats and the regenerative agriculture which we've talked about with Josh Tickell on the show. Whether or not meat can be eaten from a moral perspective is a unique person's choice.

But what does the health say?

Why do we still have this ongoing debate whether or not we should be eating meat or not? This conversation is now shifting on morals to the environment. Find out why. In this podcast we talk about the new research with the beyond burgers, the impossible burgers and these fake meats. It's a recent scientific study that shows some of the grass ingredients gras generally regarded as safe by the usda, which by the way, we know one of these grass ingredients of the 10,000 is so gross.

I'll let you listen to the show.

It involves beavers. Anyways, the ingredients in these lab grown.

Meats are still yet to be explored.

I'll tell you though, I was at.

The Expo west, the big food healthy.

Food summit here in Los Angeles. I had the Beyond Burger. It tasted good. I figured one bite wouldn't hurt me. But what about a lifetime of bites where one fast food meal leads to a lifetime of non conscious meat consumption choices? In a world where we have PETA telling us that meat is murder and other studies showing powerful health promoting effects of eating clean sourced non CAFO meat, where the cows get to roam around naturally, where do we Actually go for the truth, for the answers. You come to this podcast, this intersection of the physical and the emotional intelligence. In this episode, we're diving into this physical intelligence of eating meat, ethically consuming animals that are roaming around that are not tortured.

Think about that.

If you're going to eat meat. This cafo meat where the animal was tortured. This is not cool. This is not okay. We can do better. We can do much better. But it's hard to do better if the mind and the stomach and the physical body is weak and stressed and not feeling good. Let's face it, if your energy's low, there's absolutely no way you're gonna be able to beat decision fatigue when it comes to eating unhealthy foods. So how do we correct this? We do it with micronutrient delivery, my trusted source for micronutrient delivery. For more energy in the mitochondria, that powerhouse deep down in our cells is through the one and only Organifi Green juice. Now, this green juice has powerful plant adaptogens. Not just ashwagandha, but also the right amount of green tea and spirulina along with other compounds. It's actually going into the heart of the cell to give you fuel from the inside out. And with this new fuel, you can make better choices. This is for everything you do. Giving your husband or wife an extra hug, having more energy to play with your kids, just being fully present. All these things require cellular energy. So you can have more cellular energy. Just go to Organifi.com WellnessForce and use the exclusive discount code WellnessForce for 20% off. Thanks to Organifi for giving us the deep discount. You will not find a bigger one online. Believe me, I've tried like 20 times. That doesn't exist. 20% off. Go to Organifi.com WellnessForce Save some money. Use that code WellnessForce for 20% off for your family, your friends, or basically anyone who you love and care about. It's a great gift too, if it's a birthday. And I have incredible news. We have sold out the breath workshop partner with Soma. We sold out. I told you to get your tickets, right? Get them earlier next time.

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This is gonna be one of the future events we'll do with more breath work coming up for Wellness Force. So don't worry if you missed this event in Encinitas on March 30. This is something we're gonna be emailing to our list. More events for wellness Warriors. If you're not a Wellness Warrior VIP you're going to get first access to these new events. You'll hear about them first. Just go to wellnessforce.com VIP now all you have to do is take a deep breath, actually take five of them. You know how to box, breathe, go on a unplug. This is your time to drop in and get a dose of physical intelligence about the way we consume meat, what it means to our planet and how it's impacting our wellness. With Sean Mihalik from Paleo Magazine Radio right here, right now on Wellness Force.

My guest today is a writer, editor and photographer who's well known for his deep work in the health and wellness field as the managing editor of Paleo magazine that's distributed in thousands of retailers across the country. But he was also a former tour and operations manager for the Minimalists and and editor in chief of Asymmetrical Press. And he's now becoming a trusted and powerful voice at the intersection of paleo health and human evolution. With his writing being seen by hundreds of thousands of people every year, that really sparks them towards introspection about their health behaviors so they can change their behaviors on their wellness journey. His new piece we're talking about today called can we fix a History of Meat consumption and Human Evolution? And this question that seems to be ever explored in the health world, that is should we eat meat or should we not eat meat? And why we're talking about this in depth today. The science of the story about meat harvesting that's changed so much since the industrial agricultural revolution, how we can adjust our purchasing and consumption habits and how we can lead our life. Well, which is why we listen to this show. It's why you're here. How do we eat sustainably sourced animal proteins? What impact does that have on our carbon footprint for the health of the planet? Sean Mihalyk, welcome to Wellness Force.

Hi, thanks for having me.

You know, if we're talking about human evolution and meat man, we got to go back to the first page of the story. 40,000 years ago, there was cave drawings that were found, this is very recent actually, in Borneo, 40,000 years ago, cave paintings with cattle with spears in them. Let's talk about this as we go into the story of should we eat meat or should we not eat meat?

Yeah, that was fortuitous. I was finishing up the article when that discovery happened and it was just the perfect introduction. It's very fortuitous how stuff like that can happen. In November, some researchers found a 40,000 year old cave painting. So I guess the oldest drawing or the oldest drawing depicting an actual thing, an actual object or an actual event. And yeah, it's got an animal that looks like a bison or a cow or something like that.

Yes.

And yeah, it has a spear sticking out of its side. It's been hunted.

One of the things I love. We're gonna go into your article in depth today. But one of the things I love is that when I read Paleo magazine, I've been connected to Paleo Magazine radio for I guess three years now. Back when Tony Federico was the original host, I was a guest on the show. And what I've always respected about your magazine is yes, you do wanna educate people about the Paleo and ancestral lifestyle, but you also explore some of the things that are a little bit controversial. Like, hey, should we actually eat meat? Let's get down to the truth of this matter. One of the things that I love though is that when you talk about eating, you talk about this regenerative aspect. Like there's cellular agriculture and then on the other side there's regenerative agriculture. Can you contrast these two?

Yeah. So cellular agriculture, or you'll more commonly hear it called lab grown meat.

This is like the beyond meat.

So those are different actually. So the beyond meat and the impossible burger, those are these fake meats where they take soybeans and mung beans and beets and coconut oil and all these other ingredients and form them into a patty.

Got it.

And then they inject that also with. So one of them, and I often confuse the two because they each have slightly different approaches, but they bleed, that bleed in quotation marks. One of them bleeds via the beets that are part of the patty. So the beet juice makes it, quote, bleed red. But the other one, they actually inject it with heme iron, which is the same component that makes our blood red. So those are, those are fake meats. That's not the lab grown meat. Those are like super advanced veggie burgers. Think of them. The lab grown meat is actually real meat grown in a petri dish. So it's grown from stem cells. And instead of growing a whole cow, you know, they can grow. Well, right now they really just grow. It's, it's a particular muscle tissue that then the only way it's, it's appealing is to ground it up and make ground, say, ground beef out of it. Or like a chicken nugget.

The lab grown meat kind of sketches me out, I'm not going to lie. Like, how do we know that whatever protein compounds they're Harvesting from in the beginning that that's not going to have any like future deleterious effects on our health. Like, what's the real science and story on the lab grown meat aspect?

Yeah, I'll be honest. The lab grown meat I'm actually, I want to be optimistic about. And when I first heard about it, I was kind of excited. And that was, that was what I was gonna originally write this whole article about was about lab grown meat and whether it was too good to be true or what the problems with it were, what the, the promises it had were just, just a whole thing on lab grown meat. And as I was writing that, it kind of led me into just a much broader picture of the kind of future of meat landscape. But yeah, I mean, so the lab grown meat, it's, it's, it starts from stem cells and they, they grow it in a petri dish. And you know, the ultimate goal would be that they'd be able to grow a, a ribeye if somebody, if they want to sell ribeye or a flank steak, if you want a flank steak or a pot roast or you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But right now it's, it's very limited. And the real issue, one of the real issues, at least from an ethical standpoint, because that's the, that's the point of it, right? As to, to get meat that looks like meat, tastes like meat.

Yeah.

Has the same nutritional profile as meat. It literally is meat, but without the killing involved.

Yeah, I think that's so attractive to people too because they're like, wait, if we can get the exact same thing, if we can get all the aminos and all the proteins and all the things that make our body function optimally, if we can get it from lab grown meat and there's no negative effects, then why not? Right. But I don't know. We're still early in that field.

Yeah, we're still very early. So they use a fetal bovine hormone, fetal bovine growth hormone, in order to kind of to grow those stem cells and turn them into the actual muscle tissue. And that currently can only be taken from dead baby cows. So the ethical side of things haven't even been figured out yet. There's definitely still death involved. And they've tried, they've tried different methods of deriving that hormone or substances similar to that hormone. And interestingly, and this is like a whole other topic, but they found sun promise from mushrooms, which is amazing because.

Mushrooms, mushrooms are so magical. Paul Stamens's work in Mushrooms is mind blowing.

Yeah, exactly. But even that, like, while they've. They've made some progress there, it's. It's not a replacement yet for this fetal bovine growth hormone. And there's. There's some speculation that the only way they could make something other than that fetal bovine hormone work is by making the. The cells themselves in the meat GMO in order to make it adaptable to whatever other growth method they're able to devise. So. And, you know, that's not great either. If it's gmo. Well, then it's not that it doesn't meet the goal. It's not identical to meat that comes from, say, a cow or chicken or a duck or et cetera. Not to mention the price side of things. Right now, these things are incredibly expensive. Oh, what is it, 18. $18,000 for a pound of beef? I think a meatball cost, like, that's.

A little out of my price range. That's more expensive than whole foods.

A meatball cost $1,000? Yeah, but it was. It was initially one burger was like 300 grand six years ago.

So, okay, so the price is coming down. It's like when DVD players first came out. So we just need to wait a little bit. One thing, another piece that fascinated me about the future of meat is when you talked about 2.6 million years ago. This is fascinating to me. The brain of Australopithecus was 35% smaller than modern humans. So in 2.6 million years, our brain increased that much size. But it's through this meat consumption. I'll quote your article. Meat consumption did more than just affect our ancestors physically. It also played a significant role in the evolution of human culture. How did meat and the size of our brain play a role in human culture?

A good place to start with that is we became hunters. Right. And hunting was a cooperative endeavor. It still often is. You know, we go out and we hunt in groups, and that is partly what led to the development of language. We needed to be able to communicate with each other in order to do these cooperative group hunts. But then at the same time, we were able to start to settle down. We were able to start to create villages and eventually towns and cities and, you know, now whole. Like, whole nations and whole empires. And we were. We started. And it's not just. When you think of our relationship with meat, it's not just killing animals for food either, but that we started to domesticate animals and use them for farming and for labor.

Mm. It's like the wolves Right. We domesticate the wolves. That's where the modern day dog came from is wolves. People forget that.

Yeah, exactly. About 14,000 years ago we started domesticating wolves and we did that so we would have companions during our hunts.

You know what's so fascinating to me about this is we look at the way that wolves transition into dogs. I mean there's not a dog out there that if you hold a piece of pizza in front of it, it's not drooling and standing attention like that behavioral aspect is baked in to their dn. And I can't argue with anyone that says, just like Bruce Lipton or Candace Pert, you know, we think about the ways that human behavior is baked in to our DNA based on our grandparents and our great grandparents. I'd love for you to talk about in your research, what about human behavior specifically entices us to hunt and entices us to actually consume meat from an evolutionary perspective, like what did we learn from, from our great great great great grandparents about eating meat? Like why is that a natural driver for us?

I think it boils down to efficiency, specifically caloric efficiency. Honestly. I mean there's something primal about our desire like, like hunting and killing. That's a, that's a natural drive. But really. So think of it this way. We spend a lot of time eating flora, leaves, things like that, but those aren't very nutritionally dense or very calorically dense. Maybe nutritionally dense, but not very calorically dense. And we had energy needs, especially as hunter gatherers who were moving from place to place. You know, we were nomadic so we needed a lot of calories, a lot of energy so we could start to eat things like roots and tubers, which have more energy. So for example, 300 calories per pound for your average, like sweet potato or beet or something like that. Compared to leafy greens, which can have as low as 65 calories per pound. But those are more difficult for us to chew and digest and to procure because you have to dig for them. So then we started eating meat, fish, poultry, because they have a lot more calories, 400 to 1,000 calories per pound, but that still also difficult to chew. But then in order to make that more efficient, that led to us developing tools, knives, so that our teeth didn't have to do all the work and then eventually fire, which just made it all that much easier to digest. So really I, based on what my research, I think it just comes down to our energy needs. That's why we, that's why we started hunting.

Yeah, it was like an energy versus how much energy does it take me to get the energy coming in? Like, what is my energy spent versus what is my energy in return? I think just from a logical perspective, why do you think there's still this ongoing debate then about should we eat meat or should we not eat meat? Like, is it a moral perspective? And I want to play devil's advocate too, because I'm talking to the editor from Paleo Magazine Radio. I think a lot of your brands that sponsor and that partner with you, they're meat based products. So what is it from a nonpartisan standpoint? I guess you could say that you believe the case for eating meat still remains today.

I think it boils down to those same reasons we started eating meat. Nutrient density, just bioavailability in general of certain nutrients. I mean, there are certain things you can B12, for example, that are very, very difficult to get from plants. And then even if you do, they're not bioavailable because they're not paired with certain fats and other things that are available in the meat. But I think the debate. So for a long time it was a moral debate. Right. And you have all these videos of slaughterhouses and there was that moral factor that was driving people who became vegetarians or vegans. But I think in the last, probably just the last three to five years, debate has actually become more of an environmental one than even a moral one. Yeah, with, with climate change and everything, the meat has taken a lot of the blame for that and, and in some ways, rightly so. Right. So these, these CAFOs and, and factory farms really are huge contributors to methane emissions and carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. So, and so I'm not, I would never argue for those means of meat production. Yes, A lot of, a lot of people see these statistics and think, well, then we need to stop eating meat. You know that Eat Lancet study came out about a month ago, well after this article was published that recommended eating. Oh, was it 2 ounces of meat a day? Don't quote me on that. But it was something really, really, really small like that. This, this was a diet that was developed solely with the environment in mind, not, not with human health in mind. You know, a lot of these what's the optimal human diet? Studies are done with human health in mind, but this specific one was done for the environment. But I think there's, there's a flaw there, there's a flaw in thinking that because our current means of meat production, which we've only been doing for probably less than 100 years. I mean, maybe even realistically 50 years. So there's a, there's a flaw in thinking that the only solution is to stop eating meat altogether, where it seems like the real solution. And this is where you mentioned the regenerative agriculture earlier, which then I veered off and didn't actually get into. But that's where that comes in as the real solution. We need to change the way we're producing the meat we're eating, but not stop eating meat altogether. In fact, there's some evidence that if we did stop eating meat altogether, that could be in some ways worse for the environment or at least not better, because then we shift to crops, wheat and rice and soy and those, those crops take a lot of resources, a lot of water resources, a lot of soil. They deplete the soil. Whereas. So this, the way this regenerative grazing works, it's. Think of it as a kind of a fancier, more involved form of grass fed. It's, it's not just grass fed, it's. There's a lot more to it than that. That involves cycling the animals through different parts of the grasslands and everything. But essentially what it boils down to is, if done right, this regenerative agriculture, this regenerative grazing can, for lack of a better word, be carbon positive. So if you were to eat animals that were, that were produced in this way, that were raised in this way, you are actually actively helping the environment. The animal waste, the carbon ends up going back into the soil. Whole, whole grasslands are actually actively restored. New wildlife is brought into the area essentially. And that's why the COVID of this, the issue this article appeared in quite provocatively said, can eating meat save the planet? And that's why, because potentially it can. If enough people were to shifted their meat consumption from factory farmed meats to this.

You know what, Sean? I feel like this argument will continue for decades because what happens, and we've had many guests on the show that have had moments like this. Someone will be in ages 0 to 7 or maybe young, and they'll see an animal get killed on TV or they'll lose a pet, or their heartstring will kind of get plucked when an animal is lost. And so that imprints a code of memory where then for their adult life they operate not eating meat because they don't want to kill Sammy and the seal or they don't want to kill Benny the cow. And I understand that, I get it. But looking at the construct, and this is the Most important part that I got from your article and honestly, just from so many years of looking at this myself, if you look at human evolution and when we started to eat meat, and especially when we were eating cooked meat, that is what really developed our brains. And that's how you and I are talking through Skype right now. We would not be able to have the technological evolution and to be able to connect across the world to each other and have all these inventions going if our brain hadn't increased in size. And of course below that comes how did our brain increase in size? The part about your article when you talked about Omega 3 was fascinating to me and I didn't make this connection until I read it because you talked about most meat in stores is very far away from the Omega 3 rich flesh of grazers that our ancestors actually ate. Can we talk about that specifically? Because I think it underpins the size of our brain now and how we actually can do what we do as human beings in 2019.

Yeah, I mean, the animals we eat these days, they're not fed the grasses that they evolved to eat. They're fed wheat and soy and corn and, and most of that corn and soy is genetically modified and it leads the animals to develop a whole different omega 3 to omega 6 ratio than what our ancestors ate. We're not eating the same meat that, I mean, I mean you can get the same sort of meat that our ancestors ate, but that's not what most people are eating. Ye, they're eating this meat that's been raised in very stressful, abusive environments, fed food that it's not meant to eat. I mean, there's a whole system that we are supposed to have for what our food eats. And then we eat that food, we eat that meat and that nourishes our body and our brain and led to our evolution and, and that whole thing is just broken down. And only in the last 50 to 70 years, maybe 100 years, has that really started to break down.

The fascinating part to me is I'm flashing Back to episode 226 with Paul Check. And I remember him saying, specifically I was in his house and it like shook me to my core. I had never made this connection before. He goes, when you look at the amount of mycotoxins, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides that are stored in the fatty deposits of these cows that are eating in a CAFO style operation, the fattier the cut of meat, the more toxins we are consuming. And I had to take a breath, Shawn, because I'd Never made that connection before. Those mycotoxins are actually stored in the fat of the animal. So every time someone's going to Burger King or they're going to these traditional fast food or even buying these mega packs like 5 pounds of ground beef at a time from Costco, I think they forget, man, these cows are standing in their own feces in million acre lots, not able to move, stressed out. We're eating the energy of these animals.

Yeah. And you know, it's a common piece of advice in the paleo world that if you, if you could afford to eat grass fed, then eat fattier cuts of meat. But if you can't, if you can only afford to eat traditional meat, then go as lean as possible. And that's why.

Yeah, that's such a good point. Because I think about in my life, there were so many years where I would eat fast food. I remember I was raised on welfare, so we would go to Burger King. It was like a treat, you know. And so I look at now the meat consumption in America. I'm thinking about this conversation I had with Darren Olien. He's the founder of Barucas and he believes like we should be eating as little meat as possible. Now I actually don't join that camp. I joined the camp of let's eat meat sustainably. Let's eat meat from a moral perspective. Can we talk about this? Eating meat from a moral perspective, like how do we get our meats sustainably harvested so that we can feel good about the meat we're eating?

Right. So I don't go, I don't talk about that as much as I would have liked in the article. I don't have as much room for that. And that's something I'll be talking about more and some, some more work I'll be doing throughout this year. I'm really looking forward to diving more into that subject. But a good argument I came across, it was the, the philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris. He wasn't even necessarily making an argument, but he was posing the question, if an animal is raised with the goal of us eating it, but that animal is raised in such a way that it has a good life that is free to roam and graze and live in the way it's supposed to live and eat the food that it's supposed to eat and have a stress free, happy life, even if that animal is raised with the purpose of eventually being slaughtered for human consumption, there's a argument to be made, or at least a legitimate question that Maybe that existing in that way is better for that animal than never having existed at all.

Because they got to move around and they got to live their life. They got to hang out with their other animal friends on the field, and they weren't stuck inside of a metal cage. Let's transition here, because one thing that I enjoyed, too, about the article, we're linking this in the show notes today. Everything that we talk about, Sean, will be in the show notes, man. So don't worry about sending me anything because we have you on lockdown. We're gonna get all these resources listed. But there was three ways that you talked about consuming meat. Option one, really, where we can start. This is when we look at stopping eating meat. Is that really an option? Because out of the three, I feel like stopping to eat meat might not be the most intelligent.

Yeah, I agree for several reasons. And I didn't. And this isn't even really considering health reason. Like I said, that's one of the things I didn't even have time to dive into in this article, at least not in a large way, but I did a little bit. So what was interesting about the stop eating meat option? So more and more people are going vegetarian and vegan. The numbers are growing exponentially every year all across the world, or at least all across the developed world. But we talked about the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger earlier. These burgers that, quote, bleed. The fact that there is such a huge market for this fake meat that tastes, looks, smells, and even bleeds like meat shows that there's something deeply, a deep part of us, this desire to actually eat meat. So there are problems with a lot of these. These things like these. These meats that bleed. The. The himi iron that I talked about earlier is derived from soy lehemoglobin, which the FDA actually doesn't approve for human consumption. It's considered an allergen.

And that's in the Burger that bleeds.

The fake meat that's in the Impossible Burger, not the Beyond Burger. So the Beyond Burger bleeds beet juice. So take from that what you will, but the Impossible Burger bleeds. Yeah, from the soy lehemoglobin, and that's what's in this. And you actually can't yet buy it. And it seems like more news that has come out since this article was published, you might never be able to buy it. Like, you may never be able to go to the store and buy a box of Impossible Meat Patties for this very reason, but you can get them in restaurants. In fact, a Lot of fast food restaurants, even here in central Oregon. I keep seeing Carl's Jr. Commercials for the impossible Burger.

Yep. The thing about this impossible Burger, and I don't know if it's the impossible or it's the beyond meat, but the Gras list, generally regarded as safe. We talked about this with Dr. Bromutter. There is a chemical that is actually derived from the anus of a beaver and that is in the gross list, the generally regarded as safe, not to mention a ton of other things that are not really fit for human consumption. And they're in the guidelines. They're in the generally regarded as safe, the gross list. Why is this accepted in the meat production or in this fake meat? Like why does this, why does the FDA not regulate that more, in other words?

I honestly don't know. And that's something I plan on looking into a lot further over the coming months. I honestly don't know. But I can tell you that because of this, I mean, the FDA is unaware of 1:10 of the ingredients that go into all food, all food products. Wow.

And there's like over 10,000 chemically engineered additives in the gross list. And how many of these things does the FDA actually have time for? Honestly, like 10,000 additives. There's no way they could understand if these things are actually safe or not. So why are they on the generally regarded as safe? Maybe it's the word generally with air quotes.

And from what I understand, the company making the product just has to, they just have to self affirm it. And the FDA takes their word for it, essentially.

Well, it's no surprise that it's growing because these big huge mega food companies, Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's and all the big fast food chains, they want to sell what customers are buying. And this is so interesting. We always have the power, Sean. We forget this. We can always choose to buy sustainably harvested meats. It just might cost more. So then don't you think if it costs more, people could actually eat less meat but just eat sustainably sourced meat?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, you talk about the big companies like the fast food companies and everything. It's interesting to look at the investors as well who are involved in the development of some of these products. Both the lab grown meat and the, the fake meats. You've got people like Bill Gates or Elon Musk's brother, Kimball Musk.

I know Jay Z and Beyonce are like very heavily vegan right now. And I think they're also investing in these fake Meat companies.

And the one that's really interesting to me is Tyson. Tyson. Is it Tyson or Tyson's Chicken? They make the. You find them in the frozen foods aisle all the time. They've got their chicken nuggets and their frozen chicken breasts and everything. But they're one of the biggest investors in I think both the lab grown meat and the fake plant based meats, which is so interesting because they're willing to cannibalize themselves and their current product in order to meet the demand.

Why do you think they're doing that?

It's just staying ahead of the curve. They want to skate to where they think the puck is going. Yeah, but, but we don't. You know, it's still early days for all of these. These might be the things that are getting the most attention. I mean, regenerative agriculture is not getting the attention one would hope, at least not yet. But there's a lot of great, great work and I think we'll hear more and more about this just in the coming year. I know Diana Rogers said of Sustainable Dish, she is working on a. It started as a documentary and now it's an entire docu series that dives into this subject.

Oh, you know who you would love? I'm going to connect you to Josh Tickell for your next piece. We had him on the show. He's the author of Kiss the Ground and it's about this regenerative agriculture. And he talked about how the soil actually, the quality of the humus, the quality of the soil that our grass is grown in, that then the cows eat that directly impacts our microbiome because in a handful of soil there's literally billions and billions of things that are actually great for our microflora. And I love this concept of regenerative agriculture. I do want to play devil's advocate though, because I'm sure you heard this, Sean. People say, well, if everybody ate sustainably harvested meat, how could there possibly be enough meat to feed the world?

Right? Well, if everybody ate sustainable, and I don't, I'm not saying this is the answer for sure, but this, this is certainly part of it. If everybody ate sustainably harvested meat, most of our current cropland is actually being used to grow the wheat, corn and soy that is feeding factory farmed animals, not to grow what's feeding humans. That's part of why we have a, why we have a food shortage is because these crops aren't actually being grown to feed humans. They're being grown to feed the factory farmed animals. So if Everybody ate sustainably grown meat. We'd be repurposing a lot of that land and actually replenishing that soil as well. So it's quite likely that we wouldn't be eating as much meat as we currently do, like you said before, but we'd be eating higher quality meat.

Okay. Yeah. Because the option two is this lab grown meat. And you know, option three is regenerative, which is what we're talking about now. But I want to circle back because we didn't go into the lab grown meat as much as I wanted to. I know people are probably thinking, what the hell does this even mean that you grow lab in a meat. This cellular agriculture, I think you mentioned it's known in its early days as, quote, clean meat.

Yeah.

Various types of meat in bioreactors. Let's talk about this a little bit. I haven't heard of this. Really? Too much.

Yeah. It's like I said, to be honest, this is the one I'm actually, I want to be optimistic and excited about because if it worked like that, that's really, really fascinating. To be able to get all the nutrients and eat what is identical to the meat we eat now, but without the killing involved. Yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's growing meat in a petri dish, essentially. And I've been informed since writing this article that the companies who are involved in this on Memphis Meats is the big one. Another one is a company called Just. They prefer the term just sell meat or cell based meat, which is just kind of interesting because that lab grown meat, you hear that and that's kind of, that can kind of make you cringe or make you skeptical. So that's interesting the way they're trying to shift the narrative just in the naming of it.

Also, one thing too, when we look at this regenerative aspect. So we've mentioned Joel Salatin on the show before. You know, Polyface farms, where they do the crop rotations and that's one farm. There is so much land, I think people forget this. There's so much land that if it was invested in properly by the government, because right now there's subsidies paid for farmers to grow millions of acres of monocrops. So a farmer in Nebraska will be, you know, literally paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. All their equipment is subsidized, all their land is helped with, you know, specific pesticides and Roundup and glyphosate and millions of acres will be grown of corn. What if we took 30% of all the agricultural acres of monocrops in the country and we converted those to what Polyface Farms is doing. I mean, can you imagine what would happen?

Yeah, that'd be fantastic. And you wouldn't need to, you wouldn't need that 30% of say, corn that you'd be replacing anyway because you'd be, it wouldn't need to be used to feed these factory farmed animals.

Yeah.

And I think about so many parts of the cow that people don't eat. Like, there's one thing to say, hey, what if we had more cows grazing on the monocrop land? There's the other side of the coin. We look at regeneration and this regenerative grazing aspect. How much of the cows are being wasted, you know, how many people don't have the taste for the beef tongue, the tripe, things like that? Why do you think that people are grossed out by the way that our ancestors actually ate, you know, the innards and the gizzards and all that stuff?

Yeah, I think it's just all probably just boils down to marketing because it's not like that in all parts of the world. There are still parts of the world where the organ meat is considered the best part of the meat and where the muscle meat is thrown away. I forget if I talked about that specifically in the article or if it was something I came across later, but certain hunter gatherer cultures where as long as times are plentiful, they do the opposite actually. They tend to throw away the muscle meat and eat the organ meat.

Wow. So they do the opposite. They don't even eat the meats, they eat the.

Right, yeah. And then they, they, if times are scarce, then they use the whole animal. But, but when they're not, it's funny, they do, they do the opposite of what we do. That was actually one of the problems. One of the considerations I came across with this lab grown meat is it would, it would largely be market driven. Right. So I talked about hopefully being able to grow a ribeye if people want rib eye or grow a pot roast if people want pot roast. But because at least in most of the western world, people don't think about eating organ meats and those are the most nutritious parts of the animal. There's not going to be much incentive for the developers of the lab grown meats to grow those organ meats. And so people are then going to eat even less and less of that because the market is going to drive the production and then these things just won't be available at all because the animal itself won't be being killed to bring the meat to the market. Instead, we'll just be growing individual parts of the animal. So that's a concern. I mean, there goes our bone broth, there goes our hearts, our livers, our kidneys. And by our, I don't mean our, I mean the culinary kind that we get from the animal.

Right?

So I could see that if lab grown meat fully takes off, I could see all that distance disappearing just because it's not what people want. So it's really important to educate people on the benefits of organ meat and, and for people to fully understand how nutrition works. And if we're going to shift this narrative at all and get people looking more at the regenerative agriculture.

You know what, Tushawn? I feel like we're all doing the absolute best we can with the level of consciousness and with the education that we're at. In other words, I don't have any animosity, I don't have any anger or bad feelings towards people that eat a vegan diet or vegetarian diet because I know tons of people that are so healthy with eating vegan and eating vegetarian, even their blood work looks great. But I would say that by and large, like 80% of the people that I know that eat sustainably harvested meat, they're the ones that have the optimal health. And I'm not saying that from a dogmatic standpoint. In no way am I shouting from the mountaintop, everybody has to eat meat. All I'm saying is if everyone is going to eat meat, make sure that it applies to sustainable and this regenerative harvesting practices, because the data is in man. And there's tons of links in this article, like this is actually what has the most potential to contribute to human health and also so that these animals aren't suffering. Why do you care so much about this? I haven't asked you about that. You wrote this fantastic article. You're doing more and more work in this space at the intersection of human evolution and animals. Why is this so important to you? Like, what about your personality gravitates towards this topic?

Well, I was almost 10 years ago. I was vegetarian for a little while and then very briefly vegan. And my health actually quickly started to suffer for that. And that was right before I discovered Paleo. I think. I, I came across Mark Sisson's work when he was just getting started, right as I was trying to figure out my own health issues. I was, I was probably 19 at the time and I was severely overweight. I was about 70 pounds overweight and very unhealthy. And so that, that's how my journey started, which is why I'm so interested in this. And I'm with you. I'm not trying to be dogmatic about this. I see myself as a journalist more than anything else and I'm just trying to learn and be objective, learn and educate people along with me. I don't have any animosity as well toward people who choose not to eat meat or any. Yeah, but that's where my interest in this comes from is my own health journey that started a good 10 years ago.

If you could figure out a way, and I know it's magical and I'm operating this from a 4D perspective but if you could wave a magic wanchan and you could put a spell, a positive sustainable spell over every man and woman and child in the United States, how many times a week would they be consuming meat and what would the factors depend on?

Oh, I don't even know if I'm qualified to answer that, at least not yet. Like I said, I'm a journalist more than anything else, not necessarily a nutritionist and even I have so much to learn here. But.

Well that's honest man. I respect your answer because some people would try to make something up but you're like listen, I'm going to pass on that and I'm just going to keep doing the research. So looking at doing the research then what are you excited about in this intersection continuing for the rest of the year? Like is there anything that you can tell us that might be coming out that can help us even more decide the answer to that question of how often should we be eating meat.

Yeah, I can tell you that I will have further articles and even a much bigger project around this kind of a book length sized project coming out around this topic at the end of the year. So it's something I'm going to my head is, is in the sand on I guess you could say maybe that's not the best metaphor but I am head first diving headfirst into this topic. It's my focus for the next year as a writer and, and I'm looking forward to, I mean this article is about 3,500 words and I'm hoping to have a 35,000 word deep dive into this out at the end.

Yes. So you're going to 10x the research you've already done.

Yes, exactly. There are so many questions I still have. There are so many questions people have asked me that I either don't have the answer for or that I want to know as well. I want to dive in this article. I barely even touched on the health and nutritional aspect of why we maybe should be eating meat. And so I want to dive into that. I want to dive into the moral stuff even more. This article mostly focused on the environment and I want to. There's so much more. I haven't even gotten started talking about seafood. Yes. It's just something I have, I've started looking at recently. I mean you could, you could talk about eating insects. You could. There's just so the cricket proteins. Yeah, yeah. I talk about at the beginning of the article. There's, there's a. I hate the word synergy. It's taken on a weird businessy connotation, but it does mean something. And symbiosis kind of means the same thing. But synergy really is the best word for this in the way our us as biological organisms interact and co evolved with all the other biological organisms on the planet and how we have gotten to where we are. Earlier you talked about how we wouldn't have the brain capacity to have developed the technology, the Skype that allows us to talk and even have this conversation right now, but we wouldn't have the time for it either. We'd be out searching for our next meal. So yeah, I'm just really looking forward to diving into all of that over the next year and I'm looking forward to seeing more and more the conversation that's happening around this space. The response to this article has been really fascinating. It's a really polarizing subject.

It's always going to be polarizing too until we can really just give people their own unique voice about what they believe rather than believing everyone else.

Yeah. So I'm looking forward to helping to facilitate this conversation. It's not just the plant based community who has seen this article or this issue with its provocative question can eating meat save the planet? It's the other side too. You know, carnivore or carnivory, however you want to say that has really started to take off in the last few years as well.

That was from Jordan Peterson, don't you think? Ever since he went on Joe Rogan and he talked about eating meat, salt and water and it made his anxiety better and he lost weight. I feel like that was the spark of his whole carnivore diet, I think so.

Sean Baker had talked about it on Joe Rogan before that as well. But yeah, Jordan Peterson and then Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter Who I have, I've met and talked to a little bit, talked to a little bit of Paleofx last year. Yeah, I think that's where this really started. And it's on each side, on each side you just kind of start to see a dogmatism. There was, there was one tweet I saw that I was tagged in where somebody read my article, finished reading it, and came to the conclusion that my article said that eating meat and only meat was the only way that we can. Oh no, we can save the planet. Well, that's not what I said.

Yeah, talk about foot and mouth.

But at the same time, I've gotten, I've been a writer for 10 years, largely mostly fiction, but I've got, you know, and I've gotten hate mail here and there, but never, never as much as I've gotten in the last month from the vegan community. So it's like both sides are reading into this what they will. And what's really telling is the, the COVID of this issue is just a question, can eating meat save the planet? And I've, I've noticed that each side chooses to see that question as a statement. They, they each choose to see it as eating meat can save the planet. And as a journalist, I'm not trying to make those sorts of statements. I'm trying to ask questions and learn and share what I've learned. But each side see that question as a statement and one side is very opposed to that statement that they see and they think, no, of course not, you're an idiot. Eating meat can't save the planet. And the other side sees that as a statement and says, of course eating meat is the only way to save the planet. And that's really fascinating to me. So I'm looking forward to seeing, and in some ways I'm not looking forward to it as well because it's so tumultuous. But seeing the conversation that continues to evolve around this subject, I can only.

Imagine the backlash you got from people in maybe the vegan community. We have a post on wellnessforce where we explored the actual data and the science behind the vegan movement and how people that have explored veganism have crossed over and have stopped eating a vegan diet. Just recently, actually one of the top names, this vegan YouTuber and athlete, he actually got fired by his vegan company he founded. He received a ton of backlash because after a 35 day water fast, he ate raw eggs and salmon. Tim Sheaf, a champion free runner, he actually was on American Ninja Warrior right.

I linked to this on my personal website just yesterday, actually.

What is the story with this? Why do you think that he's receiving such a backlash? I mean, here we are with one side being help focused and really what's driving health, and the other side being ideological, where what's morally right.

I think. I think conflict and tribalism is a part of human nature. In some ways, this. This has almost replaced religion for a lot of people. As far as this is, this is what's true and anything else is not true. I think that's where a lot of this comes from. But, yeah, I was reading about him just yesterday and I linked to it on my site and. And at least based on his anecdotal evidence, I don't know if he ever talked about anything like blood tests, but based on his anecdotal evidence, it's undeniable that shifting back to eating meat was crucial for his health. Not to get, like, too, too weird, but the. The quote that stood out to me the most was he said that after eating the salmon, he, quote, ejaculated for the first time in months. I mean, you can't.

That's a sure sign of health.

Yeah, you can't get much more telling than that.

Sean.

He said it was a huge. He said it was a huge identity crisis for him as well. So that. That just shows the polarization.

Sean, I'm so glad we ended with that because I feel like, you know, it's a serious topic. It involves food, religion, and politics. They're all things that when brought up at the dinner table, they all spark. Sometimes anger, sometimes joy, but they all spark something in people. And so I love that we ended with kind of a lighthearted story because, gosh, this doesn't have to be so serious, you know, like, we can enjoy the discovery process of this physical and emotional intelligence. So at the end of the day, man, we can live our life well. That's why we do everything on this show. The last question for you, with all your research and all the ways that you're serving people to really take an inventory, to take this introspection about what's their truth. What is your truth, man? When we look at wellness, how does Sean define wellness? How do you see wellness in your life? What's your definition of that?

It ultimately boils down to how I feel when I wake up in the morning. You know, I'm a big techno optimist and futurist, and I wear an apple watch and I check my heart rate variability in the morning, and my resting heart rate and I get blood tests and all these things. And I'm curious about biohacking and all of that, but it really just boils down to how I feel every day. How do I feel when I work out? I do martial arts. How, how am I performing in the gym and in competition. And for me, that's where the evidence is for how I'm doing.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Paleo magazine is the website again. This is the future of meat. We'll link all the resources and videos and more about Sean in the show notes page. Sean, if they want to reach out to you. If anyone is like, I want to talk smack to Sean or I want to give Sean some praise, I want to like learn more about what Sean's up to. Where are you most active? Like, where can people actually get you online where you'd respond?

Yeah, so they can, they can tweet at me. I'm Sean Mahalik on Twitter. But I don't, I don't tweet from there very much. But I'll see things, I'll respond. But the best place would be my personal website, Sean Mahalik dot com. I'm, I'm pretty active on there, blogging wise and linking to things as I explore this and then people can find other contact information for me there as well.

All right, Sean, thanks for talking to us about your truth and really this future of meat concept. So fascinating. We just did a scrape of the tip of the iceberg today, man, but we appreciate the work you do. And are you going to be at PaleoFX?

No, I won't this year. Unfortunately I was going to, but then my plans didn't come together. I'm actually going to be spending a lot of that time working, working on some more research and stuff in this space.

Okay, well, we look forward to your research and future articles. Thanks again for coming on the show, man.

Thank you. It's been great.

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