Aug 28, 2019
Hey hey, what’s going on healthy
friends? Is everyone eating densely and moving intensely? People
have been saying I should make shirts or stickers for that phrase.
Anyone want to help design that? I want it to look really
cool.
Also for new people, or anyone
really, I should quickly spell out what eating densely and moving
intensely is. A nutrient dense diet with a full array of
bioavailable nutrients and the least processing, sugar, and other
antinutrients is what I’ve been exploring for the past 5 years and
more intensely for the last 2. I’ve landed on the sapien diet which
is really a framework that many good dietary strategies fit into.
Go to sapien.org/diet to learn more. Moving instesley just means
resistance training and high intensity stuff like sprinting.
There’s nothing wrong with long cardio workouts if you enjoy them,
I just don’t think they're that efficient timewise or for weight
loss. Start back at episode one of this podcast if you haven't
caught them all - you’ll be glad you did.
So hard cut transition to
today’s episode with Dr. Sara Place. She works in sustainable beef production research
at National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. She did her PhD under Dr.
Frank Mitloehner at UC Davis who’s awesome and was a guest on a
very popular episode a few weeks back. She’ll also be presenting
tons of information that goes counter to all the vegan propaganda
you hear thrown around in mainstream media or the social media
world.
She works daily to improve the
environmental impact of raising cattle. Beef producers also want to
do this because they care for the environment just as much if not
more than a vegan activist. It’s their livelihood. They care for
animals, care for the land, and care about being efficient for the
future of these as well as actually trying to make a few dollars
off this challenging enterprise. Contrary to popular belief the
meat industry gets zero subsidies from the government.
Sara was kind enough to spend
almost 2 hours answering all my questions, partly to help
prepare me for the presentation I'm giving at the big food industry
conference in Chicago at the end of September and the friendly
debate with the vegan activist lady after. This really helped and I
hope it will help you get the other side of these arguments you
never get otherwise.
Other updates and thinly veiled
promotions include us compiling and editing all our footage for
Food Lies. We’re really on a roll here and have some great graphics
coming together. You can help fund these on Indiegogo by clicking
through http://FoodLies.org
My favorite thing I ate last
week was definitely the NoseToTail.org lamb. I slow cooked some
overnight with onions, rosemary, and garlic. Also the ground lamb
with a bit of greek seasoning is one of the best things ever.
Always sad when that runs out. Get a box delivered to you at
NoseToTail.org and add on some marrow bones or cod liver - get some
extra nutrition in the mix.
Also want to say thank you to
Kristi for helping me daily. She also puts together the extended
show notes for this podcast for supporters on Patreon at http://Patreon.com/peakhuman
Throwing a few bucks a month helps
support all this work. I’ll say it again - I really appreciate this
community and couldn't do it without you guys! Much
love!
Alright so that’s it! Enjoy this
episode with Dr. Sara Place and support your local farmers and
ranchers!
SHOW NOTES
- Sara
Place received her PhD from UC Davis working under Dr. Frank
Mitloehner studying animal agriculture
- She
currently works in sustainable beef production research at National
Cattlemen’s Beef Association
- This
association serves as a
contractor to the Beef
Checkoff Program which is a
program that beef farmers and ranchers fund for research and
promotion as it relates to beef in the US and part of that is
sustainability which is what she manages
- www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com/
- Her
research at UC Davis was measuring methane emission directly from
cattle
- People think the beef industry is an evil
empire, but there are people trying to improve the
impact
- [5:30] Its harder to find something more
important than how are we going to nourish ourselves for the next
few decades
- [6:30] only around 10% of cattle’s diet is
edible to humans
- Beef
production in the US is based on grazing, forage of whole plants,
and most are finished on grain
- People assume cows spend their whole life in a
feedlot but this is not the case
- [8:44] Most of the animals are primarily eating
forage, almost all feed resources going into producing beef is
mostly forage the stuff humans can’t eat
- CO2
out of the air, is transformed through photosynthesis, carbon is
captured in plants, and if we ate them we wouldn’t be able to
access the energy, but ruminants can and they turn it into food,
it’s a symbiotic relationship
- Beef
production is not inefficient
- Feed
for beef is not in competition with the human food
supply
- If we
were to compare cattle, to pigs, to chicken, it would look like
cows would look like they need a lot more feed resources but if we
look at human edible feed inputs, cattle are consuming less than
chicken and pigs or at least equivalent
- Chickens and pigs are monogastric, they have to
eat more energy dense feed and higher quality protein
source
- Ruminants can consume forage resources and have
a symbiotic relationship with the microbes in their gut that
ferment the material and convert it into something that the animal
can absorb and metabolize
- This
also plays into the feed efficiency when we look at what are human
edible protein inputs going into the system vs outputs, this is
where ruminants shine and are much more efficient than pigs or
chickens, ruminants are the best from this
standpoint
- About
10% for US average of grain going to cattle but another 7-8% is
from byproduct feed that humans can’t consume
- [15:47] Cattles take this waste product and
upcycle into something of worth
- The
plant based vs animal based foods dichotomy is false because it
doesn’t take into consideration how agriculture works
- Plant
and animal agriculture is integrated
- Plant-based companies are indirectly supporting
animal agriculture
- There
are farms that integrate animal and plant agriculture together (for
example, 1 acre of land producing corn and also supporting cattle
for part of the year)
- A lot
of corn is grown to make ethanol and then cows can eat the
byproducts of this
- Crops
today are far more efficient (higher yield for less
space)
- 38%
of all domestic corn use in the US goes towards corn ethanol
production for fuel and the same amount goes to all livestock, beef
cattle is around 10% of this
- Cattle accounts for about 8 million acres of
corn, that’s about 2% of US cropland acres
- [24:43] We generate more human protein by
taking that corn and running it through cattle to generate beef
than consuming that corn directly
- If we
look at the whole US cattle system we generate two times more high
quality protein than goes into the cattle
themselves
- We
have to ask the question “What’s the alternative?”
- Soy
as an alternative protein source wouldn’t produce more protein per
acre than cattle
- [28:55] These discussions are too far from
reality because we have to consider what the actual alternative
would be, and where corn is grown, a common alternative would be in
fact a corn-soy rotation this is reality we’re not going to start
growing quinoa or something similar
- If we
remove the cattle industry we lose grasslands and these grasslands
play a crucial role in the environment and in
ecosystems
- [31:14] We could have a much smaller land
footprint by producing a certain crop but we are degrading the soil
over time so it’s not a durable or resilient system, so is that
better?
- We’ve
lost the connection between the reality of the human animal bond
and just the fact that human beings are part of the
cycle
- You
can visit beefitswhatsfordinner.com to see 360 degree videos of
feedlots
- Feedlot operators are proud of what they do,
and the perception that its evil crushes them
- Feedlot practices are a lot better than what is
represented online
- There
are PhD researchers who formulate the diets of these animals to
make it as efficient as possible it’s much more precise than human
nutrition
- The
reality is that the resources in North America are lots of forage
as well as all this byproduct from processing grain crops and so
feeding it to animals makes sense
- The
majority of people live in cities and suburban areas so efficient
food production is needed to feed everyone
- We
have gotten more efficient, the number of cattle in a herd today is
the same size as it was in 1953 but we produce far more beef and
milk with these cattle
- It is
not perfect but we are doing the best we can
- Cattle and livestock are more than just food,
they are a source of livelihood for people, they cycle nutrients,
they provide all sorts of byproducts, we even use cow material in
medicine (heart valve replacements)
- The
life cycle assessments are calculated
inappropriately
- [46:45] Eliminating livestock in the US
wouldn’t solve anything
- We
are avoiding micronutrient deficiencies when we eat animal-sourced
foods
- 82%
of the cattle’s feed comes from grass and forage, 7% from by
products and 11% from grains
- The
best source is USDA to find out % use for each US
commodity
- Most
of the beef raised in the US are family-run operations, even the
feedlots
- If
you want to consume grass-fed beef that’s awesome, but there isn’t
substantial evidence to say that grain-fed isn’t
healthy
- When
animals go to a packing plant, they are screened for antibiotics
and hormones so there is no contamination in the human food
supply
- Dairy
is very highly regulated and is tested rigorously for
antibiotics
- In
the US we have a very safe food supply
- The
FDA came out with a regulatory directive over two years ago that
you cannot feed antibiotics to livestock for growth promotion but
you can for disease prevention
- They
give antibiotic doses based on body weight, it is very precise, and
they make sure to give a withdrawal period before going for
slaughter where for human medicine the doctor will prescribe
antibiotics in dosing that is the same for someone that weighs a
lot more than you
- Fossil fuels are a lot worse than the methane
produced from cattle
- On
the GHG issue, remember that according to the EPA cattle contribute
only 2% of GHG emissions most coming from methane
- Cattle numbers are stable in the US for the
last decade or so but methane is increasing so we can’t point our
fingers at cattle
- If we
put all our hopes to fix climate change by eating our way out of
it, unfortunately all our hopes will be lost
- If we
look at the potential impact of climate change, we do not want to
pigeon ourselves into a less diverse agricultural
system
- The
government does not directly subsidize beef production in the US it
is 100% funded by the farmers and ranchers
- There
is a small group of researchers that kind of just cite each other
to create consensus but there is a large amount of data showing the
benefit of animal based foods, there is no consensus
- Beef
consumption in the US is going down
- All
of the food security challenges are happening in developing
countries and we should be helping them out to
improve
- A lot
of this privileged conversation is coming from the US and Europe
and doesn’t take into consideration the other growing
countries
- There
are so many people depending on animals for livelihood, food,
power, etc.
- If we
want to make a big difference in climate change, changing your diet
is not the way to do it
- Fake
meats and lab-grown meat is not the solution
- We
already have solar powered plant-based meat, it’s called
beef.
- Videos of feed lots
https://www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com/raising-beef/360-videos