How Meat Can Actually Help the Environment and Our Health
Date: October 28th, 2020
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About Diana Rodgers
Diana Rodgers, RD, LDN is a Licensed Registered Dietitian who helps people regain their health through proper nutrition. Her website is www.sustainabledish.com, where you’ll find blog posts and other useful resources to learn more about eating well.
She recently co-wrote a book with Robb Wolf called Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat: Why Well-Raised Meat Is Good for You and Good for the Planet. She also produced a film, Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat and you can sign up to watch the world premier starting November 22, 2020 here.
I watched the film and it’s fantastic. It’s all about how we’ve been raising meat all wrong since the industrial revolution, and how our mismanaged farm and ranch lands are destroying the environment. When animals are raised properly, their biproducts and behaviors actually sequester carbon, help plants grow deeper roots to maintain foliage, and make our soil much more nutritious and viable. It’s the cycle of life, and it’s been this way since there have been plants and animals.
I asked Diana to be on my show because nutrition is low hanging fruit for climbers, and when I ask my clients to eat more protein, they feel better and climb better. Meat in all its forms is the most nutrient dense and efficient form of protein we can eat, but a lot of climbers have eschewed meat for the sake of the environment and their health.
But Diana is here to tell you that meat, when raised properly and humanely, can be supremely helpful to the environment and very beneficial to your health, much to the contrary of what you’ve been told recently. In fact, plant-based diets can actually be quite detrimental to both the environment and your health. There’s a lot to learn here.
Please give this one a listen. I guarantee you’ll learn something, whether you’re a plant-based or carnivore eater, or anything in between. I really appreciate you listening.
Diana Rodgers Interview Details
- Why meat is not actually bad for us
- Why plant-based diets are not good for disease
- Why plant-based diets are not good for the environment
- Why protein recommendations are way too low
- What’s wrong with studies done on meat
- What it’s so important for children to have animal products
- Saturated Fat and Cholesterol 101
- Her thoughts on the movie Game Changers
Diana Rodgers Interview Links
- Instagram: @sustainabledish
- Sacred Cow book
- Sacred Cow film
- Where I get my sustainable, humanely-raised meat: Wild Pastures
- Where you can get local sustainable, humanely-raised meat: eatwild.com
- More info on meat, cholesterol, saturated fat, etc
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Transcript
Neely Quinn
Welcome to the Training Beta podcast where I talk with climbers and trainers about how we can get a little better at our favorite sport. I’m your host, Neely Quinn. And I want to remind you that the Training Beta podcast is actually an offshoot of a website I created a long time ago, Trainingbeta.com. And over there, we have tons of resources for you, to help you get better at climbing. So whether that’s a training program, blog posts, more podcasts, just like this one, or online training services, you can find all of it at Trainingbeta.com.
So a little tiny update on me, I will be having surgery on November 12. It is October 28. Today. And so I’m, I’m really thankful for everybody who has written into me telling me about their experiences with their wrist. And I still have yet to find a single climber who has had the surgery that I’m going to have on my TFCC, which is really crazy, and sort of scary, because you know, you like to hear people’s success stories. And I have not been able to find that at all. And so I’m gonna have surgery on the 12th, like I said, and so I’ll do this episode, and then I’ll do another episode. And then I’m going to be gone for a little bit because I’m going to be in a cast that makes it really hard to type for six weeks and not saying that I’ll be gone for those six weeks, but I’ll be gone for at least a few weeks, and not doing the podcast. So wish me luck. And I hope that I can get better so that I can start doing fun things again.
So today, on the podcast, I have a guest named Diana Rodgers. And she is a dietitian. And Diana wrote a book called Sacred Cow. And it’s all about regenerative farming, and some fallacies about meat and its health effects. She talks a lot about the environmental effects of meat production, as well as the humanity of meat production. And meaning, you know, whether or not you can have meat that has been raised, where the animal is not abused. And I want to just be really clear about why I’m doing this, and then I’m gonna just let her talk because she’s really good at talking. But I am a nutritionist, and I see climbers for nutrition all the time. And what I see is a lot of people coming to me saying that they’re plant based, or they’re vegan or vegetarian, because of the environment, or the fact that they think that meat is bad for them, or because that they think that all meat production is inhumane. And I, everybody can have their own, you know, views on things, but I just want to impart a little bit more truth to the situation. And you can have meat that has been raised humanely with a species specific diet, that actually helps the environment, sequester carbon. And that is very good for our health. Meat is actually totally fine for us. And there is a lot of bad research out there telling us that it’s not. But that is bad research. And we’re going to talk about that in this conversation. And so when I see clients, and I have them eat more protein, and eating meat is just the easiest, most efficient way to get more protein in your diet. And when I say meat, I say I mean fish, poultry, red meat, all of it.
And when I see them do that, eat more protein, I see them have less anxiety, more energy, they recover better, they climb better, all of the good things happen to them. And so I want us to learn a different way of seeing meat and meat production. And hopefully embrace this and start buying meat products from regenerative farmers. And I’ll put some resources in the show notes because all of the meat that I buy is from regenerative farms. And to make that a point, I know that not everybody can afford that, and we’ll talk about that in this episode. But even when I wasn’t making very much money, I definitely reprioritized my money so that I could afford it. And, and because it’s so important to me that the animals that I consume are humanely treated and are helping the environment. So that’s where I’m coming from. I am not saying that people shouldn’t be vegetarians or that — like it can work totally fine for people, sometimes and, and that’s totally fine. But I just want everybody to understand that there is a different side of the story than what you’ve been hearing about meat. So with all of that said, here is Diana Rodgers, and I’ll talk to you on the other side. Thank you for listening to this
Alright, welcome to the show, Diana, thanks so much for being with me today.
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Neely Quinn
Yep. If you could do me a favor and tell me a little bit about yourself so my audience can know who we’re talking to. That’d be great.
Diana Rodgers
Sure, yeah. So my name is Diana. And I am a registered dietitian, outside of Boston. And so I have a clinical practice where I work with people one on one and I do telehealth and mostly focused on metabolic weight loss and GI problems. And I also have a book that just launched called: Sacred Cow – The Case for Better Meat and a film that is also Sacred Cow, which will be coming out this fall that we’re offering for free actually, for one week, this fall on my website. So it’s — that’s sacredcow.info. And then it’ll be available on streaming platforms and stuff this winter. But we just wanted to get it out as soon as we could. So we’re going to do a little, I call it a stunt, we’re going to do a stunt on my website, basically, just just letting folks see it.
So I kind of got into all of this because firstly, I was really sick as a kid and didn’t find out until I was about 26 that I had undiagnosed celiac my whole life. And so going gluten free was helpful, but didn’t solve everything. And I was still reaching for my gluten free sandwiches and gluten free granola bars and all that stuff, you know, every hour to two hours, just having all these blood sugar crashes. And I kept going to my doctor asking why it was happening? Do I have diabetes, I feel like I have diabetes. And, you know, no answers there. And at the same time, I had this true love for just being outside and working on farms. I started working on vegetable farms when I was about 17 as my summer job on Long Island, Eastern Long Island, which is actually quite rural. And I just absolutely loved everything about it. I loved being outside all day, I loved being covered in dirt I loved you know all the movement and, and just being around all the food that just smelled so great. And so I — then it gets a little complicated. But basically I ended up marrying a farmer who, who had a career in high tech but decided right about the time we got married that he wanted to be an organic farmer because he was a big environmentalist.
And so we started living on a farm. And it was great. We were there for 10 years I got I started in my professional life in natural foods marketing, and then and I’ve worked for Whole Foods for many years. But then when I had our second child, it didn’t make sense for me to have like an off farm job. So I started working on the farm and ran our big 500 member CSA, which is the Community Supported Agriculture, I’m sure now I don’t even really have to describe what that is. But you know, for those who don’t know, it’s, you pay up front and then you kind of get like a membership to a farm and you come each week for your, for your distribution, basically, of vegetables.
What we also started incorporating animals for the fertility of the soil. So when you grow vegetables, you need to replenish the soil. And you can do that with chemical fertilizers. Or you can do that with animal inputs. You can do that with, you know, here, Massachusetts, there’s some great fish emulsion that we use as a fertilizer from the place called Neptune’s harvest, which, you know, uses byproducts from the seafood industry. But you can also use animal manure and, you know, compost animals that you know, died on the farm and all of those nutrients are really, really critical for healthy soil. And so even if you go to a vegetable farm that doesn’t seem to have animals on it, there are animal inputs going into, you know, they’re getting manure or they’re getting something from farm in order to nourish the soil.
So then I started getting more interested in nutrition I was selling like coconut oil and lard at the farm stand. And people kept asking me well, you know, aren’t saturated fats bad for you? And I kind of knew the answer, but I wanted to really be able to fully understand the answer and, and, and articulate it well. And so I ended up going back to school and getting a graduate degree in nutrition. And it took me about seven years because I had, I was balancing like the kids and work and just everything.
And so so here I am today, I, this latest book that I wrote is because I’ve noticed that when people today are talking about like a sustainable diet that’s going to feed the future and you know, feed us and be good for the planet, it’s always assumed that a vegan or vegetarian diet is ideal. And as a dietitian, I strongly disagree with that, especially when we have a population of Americans where the majority of people are overweight or obese. telling them to eat less animal source protein, and getting it instead from plant sources, is a surefire way of actually making people fatter, because you need to, you know, take in more calories. So you can, you know, 30 grams of protein you can get from 200 calories worth of steak or 750 calories worth of beans and rice, right. And all the carbs that go along with that. And so, nutritionally I strongly disagree, and I, especially for children.
Environmentally, I also disagree that a food system with no animals is actually going to be a more sustainable system. And that cattle are actually one of our best tools at mitigating climate change. But then I also go into the ethics of, of eating meat and what that means, and you know, is it what does a diet of least harm look like? So, so the book, it came out in July, and, and then, in the middle of writing the book, I have, yet another vegan documentary had come out, and I realized, you know, books are only going to reach a certain number of people, and really the way to reach you know, the masses, and especially young people who are, you know, making very important decisions based on very poor information. You know, they’re getting their information from documentary films and from the media. And so I put the book down for a little bit and started working on Sacred Cow, the documentary. And so that is finally done, it took a very long time to do that, to raise all the money. I was the director and producer of the film. And so it’s done finally, and so now I’m just here to talk about all that stuff. So that’s, that’s my very long monologue of who I am and what I do.
Neely Quinn
I love it. That’s so great. You just answered so many of the questions I was gonna ask you anyway. So I just want to say thank you for your work. And I have been a fan of yours for like a decade. And you’re one of the only people who is strongly coming out and saying why these things are important. Even though a lot of people don’t like hearing it. Am I right?
Diana Rodgers
Oh, it is everything I say tends to rub somebody the wrong way. And I refuse to just tell people what they want to hear I actually, you know, try very hard to have as much integrity as possible and go with evidence and tell the truth.
Neely Quinn
Yeah. And I know that in my own practice, I’m constantly getting questions about these documentaries, like game changers and people telling me that it’s really bad to eat animal protein and all the things. I mean, also in, you know, seven years ago, it was The China Study. And there’s always something that’s telling us that meat is bad for us. And so maybe we can start there. And then we can get into the environmental aspects of it. But can you —
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, I really, I really think it’s important to talk about nutrition first, and here’s why everyone else is starting with whoa, what food in our current system is most sustainable, and then we should eat that, right? Instead of looking at it from what food is optimal for human health and how can we produce that in a sustainable way?
Neely Quinn
Right
Diana Rodgers
Right, because we’ve got these two problems and everyone’s just siloed in their own little cans. And dieticians aren’t talking to environmentalists and environmentalists, you know, they may agree that, you know, cattle can be raised in a good way. But of course we see less or no meat, right? And so there’s actually nobody that saying, well, we’re actually not eating enough protein. And it can be done in a better way, right?
Neely Quinn
Yeah.
Diana Rodgers
So that’s why I decided to start with nutrition. And actually, it’s funny, you brought up The China Study, because the publisher of my book is actually the publisher of The China Study.
Neely Quinn
That’s funny.
Diana Rodgers
Isn’t that funny?
Neely Quinn
Yeah
Diana Rodgers
It’s a little tiny publisher that they do mostly vegan books. And, you know, I thought, who better to that material than a group of vegans, right. And I won the book contract based on my environmental argument, because, you know, he came to me saying, I think this is really cool. The nutrition argument is a no brainer, you’re gonna win that one. Ethics, you’re never gonna sway an ethical vegan, but it’s important to address it. It really what you need to sell me on is the environmental case for how cattle can be good. And I did, just in my book proposal, and he was like: Oh my God.
So anyway, so it’s just been a really interesting experience to work with this team of skeptics. And, you know, Robb and I, tried to be as skeptical as possible when we were writing it as well. So, but the truth is, we’re not eating enough protein, the protein recommendations are way too low. They’re actually the RTA for protein is actually set at, you know, the minimum you need to eat in order to avoid disease, not the optimal amount. So we kind of give some evidence on as to why that is how it was based on these really poor nitrogen balance studies that are highly flawed.
And then we also go into the studies that are vilifying meat from a nutrition perspective. So you know, meat causes cancer, meat causes heart disease, meat causes diabetes, and we actually just look at, look at these studies in an objective way and say: Okay, can you really from an observational study, you cannot prove cause – it’s impossible. And you cannot just look at a population of people and draw any conclusion from one item in their diet. It’s, it’s impossible. And so the only way we’d be able to really draw any sort of, you know, direct cause would be a randomized control trial. And there have been randomized control trials. The only one I know of, that looked at meat versus less meat in underprivileged kids showed that the kids who got more meat did better not only academically but also physically and behaviorally.
And so my position is that programs like Meatless Mondays, are actually completely not evidence based, there’s never been a study showing that pulling meat away from children is actually going to help them. And for, you know, a school system like New York City, where 70% of those kids are low income or homeless. That’s a huge problem, right? A lot of kids, that might be the best meal that they’re getting all day, or the only meal they’re getting all day. And so you know, that we’re not really going to nourish kids on salad, they need the nutrients in meat, and there’s nutrients in meat that you cannot get from other sources. And yes, there are some people that have been able to pull off a vegan diet, but it requires a lot of supplementation, and you have to really know what you’re doing when it comes to that. It also requires a certain set of genetics that a lot of us don’t have, for example, 45% of all humans can’t convert the plant based version of vitamin A, which is beta carotene, efficiently into the usable form of vitamin A retinol. So if you happen to be in that 45% category, a vegan diet will not work for you, because you need to get the plant based source of vitamin A. So there’s a lot of reasons why some people might appear to do better on a vegan diet than others, and we kind of walk through that as well.
And, you know, I mean, films like Game Changers, you know, there’s a lot of pro athletes out there that are just genetically gods and goddesses, right? That would probably also be doing well if they just ate fast food every single day. And I’ve met people like that. Actually, I met one just the other day who you know, drinks, tons of coke and you know, eats cotton candy for dinner, and he’s perfectly fit looking. And so, but the problem is for the majority of people that are not eating enough or no meat, they run into some pretty serious health ramifications. And a lot of times it won’t show up on bloodwork until it’s too late. And so that’s the nutritional case it — meat is something that humans have eaten for 3.5 million years. And I think when we vilify meat, it actually allows the ultra processed food industry to get away with a win. Because that’s the real problem in our food system. It’s not the meat, it’s, it’s what you eat it with. So it’s not the burger, it’s the large fries, it’s the 72 ounce soda, it’s the deep fried apple pie, it’s all that other stuff, the sauces and everything that are the problem.
Neely Quinn
And just the sheer amount of carbs that are being consumed with it.
Diana Rodgers
Or the empty carbs, right. I mean, yeah, like, like I, you know, I tend to eat a low carb diet. And I found that for most people, it works really well. But I don’t think, you know, humans have existed on a wide spectrum of, you know, macronutrient ratios. And I think it has way more to do with food quality than macronutrient ratios, you know, like, you know, there’s the Inuit were largely keto. And then, you know, we’ve got people in more tropical areas that, you know, 75% of their diet was roots and tubers, but what they all have in common is no ultra processed food.
Neely Quinn
Right. Okay, so there’s a lot there. And I think that people, probably, so people read the news, and they do see these articles all the time, red meat is bad for you. Red Meat gives you I don’t even understand this, but diabetes. And so can you just give me like one example of if you can, and I’m sorry to put you in the hot seat here. But like one example of a study that has come out like that, that and why exactly, it was flawed. I know that you talked about one particular situation, but is there something else that comes to mind?
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, I mean, so the, the WHO has said that red meat likely causes cancer, but there’s other things that they have in that category, like air and sunlight, right. And so there’s lots of things that could likely be, but they couldn’t prove it. And so because the, again, the studies are all based on observation, they’re not based on any kind of hard science, nutrition is a really, really difficult field to study. And it’s really lacking in in hard science. And that’s because it’s just really hard to rely on a self reported data from people, they they lie, people lie on food frequency questionnaires.
You know, and a lot of times they’re asking, okay, over the last six months, how many times a week did you eat chicken? You know, and, and so it’s just, it’s ridiculous. And people are much more likely to report foods that they think are healthy, they’re much more likely to forget that they drink and smoke. They’re much likely to exaggerate their — how much they exercise, like this is just a natural human tendency when when they’re filling out these questionnaires. And so actually, food — any study that’s based on a food frequency questionnaire should be questioned highly, but you just can’t, you know, take a population of vegetarians and then a population of a general american omnivores that which might include Joe sixpack tailgater, every weekend, and say that it’s the meat when there’s just so many confounding factors, there’s, you know, vegetarians are much less likely to drink and smoke, they’re much more likely to exercise on a regular basis and just be more conscious, right? They’re more likely to meditate; all those things.
And so, there was one study that looked at shoppers at a health food store. And so adjusting for those lifestyle factors because, you know, most people that shopped at health food stores generally have a similar lifestyle, and they found absolutely no difference at all longevity between meat eaters and and vegetarians or vegans.
Neely Quinn
Hmm. And so, okay, that’s interesting. I wonder if people listening to that would say, well, then what’s wrong with eating a plant based diet?
Diana Rodgers
Because I also point out in my book that vegetarians and vegans are way more likely to have nutrient deficiencies. And so, you know, you can invest all of your money in, you know, this one new tech startup or you can diversify and you know, have your bases covered.
And so my advice as a dietitian and a human is just to kind of go with the diet that, you know, contains the most nutrients, the most diverse set of nutrients from animal and plant sources. That has been proven over time. We’ve never seen a vegetarian — I’m sorry, never seen a vegan population and a lot of people who say they’re vegetarian aren’t actually vegetarian. So, you know, like the studies coming out of India that might show that vegetarian — there was one just recently vegetarian pregnant women were healthier than the meat eaters, but there were there’s a lot of socio economic stuff going on there. So you know, the some — the wealthier classes tend to be the vegetarians that have better access to health care and eat way more animal source foods, like, you know, what yogurts and eggs then, you know, some of the other folks there.
So, again, it’s really hard when you’re talking vegetarian, because it’s, I consider dairy products and eggs, animal source foods, and I’m advocating for animal source foods, however you want to eat them, you know. But when we get into veganism, we just see dramatically higher rates of bone fractures, many, many, many nutrient deficiencies. There’s been infant deaths associated with vegan diets. In fact, even Italy wanted to make it illegal to feed your babies, a vegan diet. So, you know, America, American dietitians, generally do say that vegetarian and vegan diets can be healthy at all life stages. But there’s a lot of other countries that absolutely do not recommend a vegetarian/vegan diet for pregnant or lactating women, infants, children or adolescents.
Neely Quinn
Yeah. And I always look at it evolutionarily, especially coming from a paleo background, we talk about that so much. And in children, you know, a million years ago, we’re not being fed soy products, right? Do you want to talk about that a little bit.
Diana Rodgers
I mean, meat is what made our brains larger. And the nutrients and meat are the things that children need, especially to be growing. Vitamin B12 and iron are the most common nutrient deficiencies, especially in children. And iron deficiency is the leading cause of stunting, which is a marker for the rest of your life, like you, you kind of — you kind of can’t recover. If you don’t get proper nutrition in the first three years of your life, they say the first 1000 days.
And so we’re especially when we’re looking at developing countries, where people don’t have the privilege to go to a CVS and get their b12 and iron tablets, and where animals also thrive in those areas where women can’t legally own land, but they can own livestock to tell these people that they need to be, you know, switching to beyond burgers and soy formulas and things like that is I think it’s discriminatory. And elitist.
Neely Quinn
Yeah.
Diana Rodgers
And so we actually address that in the film a lot in the book and film I go pretty hard into both of those. Those areas, yeah.
Neely Quinn
Right, because it’s one thing to tell like you’re saying, it’s one thing to tell somebody who’s socioeconomically able to do these things, but a completely different thing when you’re talking to basically like a hunter gatherer to switch to some sort of highly processed food that you can only find —
Diana Rodgers
Or even — yeah, but even here in the US to tell you know, a working mom in an inner city that she needs to eat only grass fed meat or no meat and — or and switch to beyond burger, which is twice as expensive as organic grass fed beef or to feed her kids beans and rice over beef because you don’t like how beef is produced, even though the beef is going to nourish her kids better.
So I fully acknowledge that there’s problems in the livestock sector. But there’s also problems in the plant based sector to so those beyond burgers and impossible burgers and other products like them. They’re not grown organically. There’s crazy chemicals going into the production of those. There’s lots of death that happens to create pea proteins and soy proteins. And so, you know, given that it’s nutritionally inferior, that that well managed cattle actually can be a net ecosystem gain They can improve biodiversity and sequester carbon. You know, why not just try to move towards a better beef animal system instead of trying to push this plant based system. And you know, really the people who are making the money off the plant based system is Silicon Valley. And that’s why this is getting pushed so hard. There’s, there’s not a lot of profit in the meat industry, believe it or not, it’s mostly in, you know, converting raw materials into some ultra processed, you know, end product. And that’s what beyond and impossible foods are.
Neely Quinn
Before we get into all of the the big questions, I want to ask you for the rest of our time, I do want to get into saturated fat because a lot of people are still under the assumption that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us, and they haven’t seen the research that has come out. And so they’re avoiding meat because of those reasons. Can you just talk a little bit about that?
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, I mean, so saturated fat is — cholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern, even according to the US dietary guidelines now, like, it’s, it’s pretty well accepted that fat is not the problem. And the, the focus has now shifted to meat. And the the problem with meat is that not only is it seen as something that’s gonna, you know, kill you, but it’s also bad for the planet, and you’re killing beautiful animals at the same time.
So, so that’s why I wrote this book, but we do address the fat piece in the book, and we talk about what the Ancel Keys studies and how it was deeply flawed. And I, I think most people are coming around to understanding that, you know, there’s a big difference in the type of fat and that fat isn’t actually what makes you fat. You know, it’s, it’s ultra processed foods. It’s, it’s, it’s a it’s a whole host of other of other issues that that actually cause obesity and diabetes.
Neely Quinn
Okay. So suffice it to say that saturated fat and cholesterol are not issues that we need to be concerned with. It’s other foods, and other types of foods and food quality and the amount of food and all the things.
My next question is, let’s talk about the environmental aspects of raising meat. So people, generally who I talked to who become plant based say that they’re doing it because it’s bad for the environment, to raise beef and other animals. So what is your response to that?
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, so I break that down into different categories of bad for the environment, right, because this can be a little bit of a game of whack a mole, where, you know, you talk about water usage, but then they’ll say greenhouse gases, and then you address the greenhouse gases, which takes a little bit of time to break all that down and explain why it’s completely looked at in the wrong way. But then they’ll say, but they take up too much land. And then you address the land thing. And it’s, well, if they’re inefficient, with feed, we should just eat them the direct grain and not run it through a cow and turn it into protein. That way, it’s inefficient.
And so so I break each one of those down in the book, starting with greenhouse gases, because that’s like, the biggest concern people have is farting cows and nothing and, and all that stuff. So I’m happy to address any of those. Do you want me to just jump into methane or?
Neely Quinn
Yeah, sure.
Diana Rodgers
Okay. Just wanted to check. Okay, so there’s two reasons why cow farts are not — are overblown. One is that in the United States, and direct emissions from cattle are only about 2% of all greenhouse gases. And that’s adjusted for Co2 equivalents. And so and even though Co2 equivalents have now been shown to be overly exaggerated, so it’s it’s probably less than 2%. But according to the EPA, it’s 2%. And a lot of people say, Oh, I, you know, I don’t trust the government, but well, that’s the only data we have to go on.
Transportation, industry, and, you know, consumerism are the main problems with, you know, all the fossil fuels that we’re using. That is the problem. But it’s convenient for the fossil fuel industry to blame farting cows, because then they can get away with fracking and all the leakage that happens with fracking and you know, burning oil and drilling for gas and all that kind of stuff. And so, so that’s one is that it’s actually not you know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, it’s as bad as the transportation or worse as the transportation industry and it’s absolutely not. And there I also walked through in the book and we don’t have to go into it. But I and I have infographics on my website about why, you know, there were global reports that cattle are worse than the transportation industry. And I explained why that methodology was incorrect. And the author’s actually admitted that they were not comparing apples to apples in those studies.
But then the second thing about you have to understand about methane and cattle is that there’s a really big difference between the biogenic carbon cycle and what’s happening in the fossil fuel cycle, which actually isn’t a cycle. And so when a cow belches methane, it’s a, it’s actually not a fart. They, I mean, they do fart a little bit of methane, but it’s largely cow burps. So it’s a by it’s a result of the breakdown of the cellulose material. So you know, when you break down things, and in, in rumen, in their stomach, it produces methane. So the methane goes into the atmosphere for about 10 years. And that is broken down into water, which is part of the water cycle, like rain and you know, gets taken up by plants and Co2. Co2 is also taken up by plants. The plants then, you know, give off o2 oxygen, which is what we breathe in, and then they take the carbon molecules, some of it becomes grass, and then some of it gets dripped down from their roots to feed microbes and fungal networks, which then take the carbon as food and exchange the carbon for nutrients that the plants need. So there’s this whole like weird symbiotic relationship that’s going on underground, between the plant roots dripping the carbon molecules and the fungal networks that are actually mining all the minerals and getting that to the plant. It’s pretty crazy, amazing system. And up to about 40% of that carbon actually can get sequestered in the soil and goes to building new soil.
So that’s how the Great Plains were built. That’s how America’s breadbasket was built. It was built on grazing animals, bison, who were pooping, chewing on grass, you know, it — grasslands absolutely need grazing animals in order to be a healthy ecosystem. If you take the grazing animals off grasslands, the grass just oxidizes and dies. And eventually the roots die. So you need an animal chewing it and biologically breaking it down and then pooping it out. And, you know, making it part of a cycle. We don’t have more ruminant animals really than we did before we got rid of the bison. So you know when, when the settlers came and disrupted all that, right before that we actually had, you know, if you count all the bison plus the deer plus all the other grazing animals that were in North America, we actually have about the same number of of cattle today in North America as we did, so they’re not more belching animals in North America than there were in, you know, 1600s or so. It’s just that we, you know, we can manage cattle in the same way that the bison were going across the plains. And it’s actually way healthier for the land than plowing it up and planting all those squares and circles that you see when you fly over the United States.
Neely Quinn
Which are mostly corn and barley and wheat partly to feed the animals.
Diana Rodgers
Partly to feed the animals, the majority of it goes into the ethanol industry, which is completely a waste of time, it actually takes more energy to produce methane then to produce ethanol than it does, you know, with theirs. It’s the dumbest system ever, the ethanol industry, but one of the things that cattle can do is they can eat the corn stalks from the ethanol industry and actually turn that into protein. So that’s something that a lot of people, you know, and that actually brings me into the feed conversion argument that cattle are in, you know, inefficient with feed and we should just, you know, eat, eat the grains ourselves.
So even in a feedlot finished system, cattle are getting only about 10% of their overall diet from corn or grain. The majority of what they’re eating is grass because all cattle start on grass, like in a calf cow operation. And then, you know, even when they’re finished at a feedlot, they’re getting a lot of byproducts that have no value in our food system anyway that would break down and emit greenhouse gases, anyway, if we didn’t just run it through a cow and turn it into the most perfect food for humans. So it’s actually quite an in there, cattle are a net protein gain, they’re actually, you know, converting, it takes about two and a half pounds of grain to make one pound of beef. And so as a dietitian, I would argue strongly that that one pound of beef is going to be way better for you than two and a half pounds of corn.
Neely Quinn
Okay. And then what about the water, I think that people are often really concerned about the water usage.
Diana Rodgers
Yeah. So in, in the measuring of water, what they’re not telling you is how that water — where that water is coming from. So 94% of the water footprint for beef is naturally occurring water that’s either rain, or already in the plants themselves that the cow is eating whether or not the cow ate that.
So it’s a very, very small percentage, that’s blue water. Blue Water is irrigation, drinking water, you know, lakes and streams, things like that. So it’s important to you know, when they have these infographics that say it takes 10 bathtubs full of water to produce your quarter pound burger, they’re leading you to believe that those 10 bathtubs full of water or drinking water that’s going to compete with you for drinking water. And it’s actually completely false. That cattle when they’re grazed well can actually improve the water holding capacity of the soil, making it more spongy, and allowing the soil to absorb more water, they can actually also bring moisture to the ground. And that’s one of the things that we’re showing in the film, we go to Chihuahua, Mexico, and meet with a rancher that’s working collectively, with a group of ranchers restoring over a million acres of desert back into grasslands, which is what it used to be in northern Mexico, just with grazing cattle, not planting anything, no extra irrigation, literally just grazing cattle managed in a way where they’re moved frequently. So there’s no over grazing or and it’s not under grazed, you actually need just the right level of grazing. And you can easily do that with this method called Holistic Management or some people call it Mob Grazing, but it’s basically just moving the cattle frequently and making sure that their, their impact is even on the land.
Neely Quinn
Okay. And what you said before, because a lot of people imagine that all cattle that is raised on CAFOs are there — they’re there their whole lives, they’re on these like, gross, you know, factory farms their whole lives. But what you’re saying is all cattle, you know, started on grass,
Diana Rodgers
There’s no cows are raised 100% in a feedlot, as opposed to chicken and pork, which is 100% in these horrible conditions and 100% competing with us eating only grain, right and, and so there could be feed conversion rate is it’s much less efficient than a cow when you consider that 85% of the cattle today, right now being raised for beef are grazing on land that we can’t crop. So most of our agricultural land, we actually can’t tell up in crop we, you know, it’s either too dry or the soils to poor or it’s too rocky or too hilly. But you can graze animals on this marginal land. And that’s what we do with marginal land we graze cattle. It is it is efficient in the US to be grain finishing them. In other countries, it’s way more expensive to grain finish them because they don’t have the subsidies that we have and cheap oil and cheap grain. And so you know, it’s ironically, grain fed beef in many parts of South America is actually that’s considered like a delicacy because it’s more expensive. And it’s fattier, you know, it tastes different. But grass fed is sort of the global norm for beef.
Neely Quinn
Yeah, I mean, that’s obviously one of the arguments too, is that we don’t we don’t have enough land to graze cattle in order to feed everybody. And I know you, talked about that a lot.
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yes, we do. Yes, we do. I go through the numbers in the book. You know, there’s a lot of underutilized land. The government has programs that are actually paying farmers not to use land. We’re being really inefficient with how we graze right now. So I talked about the difference between continuous grazing and intensive management.
So continuous grazing is where you know you have this big, let’s say, 100 acre field and You’ve got 50 cows, you just sort of open it up for the whole season and the cows can go around and just pick and choose where they want to graze. And it ends up being, you have sicker cows and a more degraded landscape because they go around, and they’ll just eat their favorite patches, you know, because a pasture isn’t just grass, it’s like, a whole mix of, of different plants, but the cattle will go around and you know, some of the plants tastes sweeter than other words, and so they’ll eat those down to the ground and kill them. And then you end up with bald patches in your pasture. And then they’ll not eat the ones that aren’t as tasty and those ones overgrow. And and then if you have any parasites in an animal, which, as a farmer, you’re always trying to manage for parasites, they’re going to spread so fast, if you just allow the cows to be, you know, graze basically each other’s poop all the time.
The type of grazing that I explained in the book and show in the film with animations, and all the producers that were visiting, do this method. They’re allowing the cattle to graze a very small patch of pasture. for, you know, sometimes just half a day, it really just depends on, you know, the land and how many animals and the practices of the farmer but sometimes they move the cattle several times a day, other people will move them less frequently, once a day or once every other day. But basically, they will graze everything down evenly, not over graze or under graze anything, and then you move them and allow the land to rest and then everything grows back evenly. If there were any parasites, the birds will come and eat the little critters that are in there. And in that rest period is when all the magic happens with a carbon sequestration.
So it’s that’s really the way you know, if you imagine wild herds of gazelles or wildebeest or something in Africa, they’re constantly moving, they’re never just like: Oh, I’m gonna hang out by this watering hole, like for my whole life, right, because there’s always like a lion or a tiger in the bushes ready to get them. So they’re bunched up tightly for protection. And they’re moving constantly and the bunched up a pack of of animals is actually what the land needs in order to be evenly pruned, grazed, and then the animals move off, and we can move them we don’t need, you know, lions and tigers here in the West, we can just move them with electric fencing.
Neely Quinn
Right?
Diana Rodgers
That’s it. That’s the basics of the type of management that I talked about when I say, well managed cattle.
Neely Quinn
And it doesn’t require that much land because you’ve got these fenced off areas, and you just move like rotate them between those areas, right?
Diana Rodgers
Correct. You know, it can take more, because if you finish on grass, you’re going to need more grass, right, as opposed to finishing on corn. And the cows do live longer when you finish them on grass, because it just takes them longer to get to the right size, as opposed to finishing them on corn in three months and they balloon up. But the other thing is when you manage the grass well, you’re actually improving the carrying capacity of the land. So you’re you’re increasing the amount of animals that you can actually feed on that land because the land is so much healthier and producing such denser, more dense, denser forage for the animals to eat.
So it’s, it’s healthier for the land, and it’s healthier for the pollinators. It’s healthier for the wild animals. It’s healthier for the rivers and streams. You know, a farm, an ecosystem thrives when it has as much life as possible on it. And so as opposed to just a field of corn or a field of soybeans, which has one plant and you know, chemicals to keep all the insects out. A regenerative farm actually has as much biodiversity as possible above and below ground.
Neely Quinn
Do you know like when you go to a conventional grocery store and you buy beef, do you know like how many of those ranchers are using these techniques in the beginning of the cattles lives.
Diana Rodgers
You know, it’s really hard because a lot of the ranchers that I’ve met that do this type of grazing but then finish on a feedlot, it’s all just commodity they just sell to a feedlot they just happen to be really ecologically responsible farmers that are that are doing this type of grazing. So a lot of the ones that do this grazing will actually finish on grass and there are places you can buy beef that’s that’s finished that way and my website I have tons of companies that you know White Oak Pastures in Georgia, they ship. Blueness Beef is an Audubon certified beef company that actually has partnered with the Audubon Society because Audubon Society has realized that you have to have grazing animals in order to have healthy grasslands. And the destruction of grasslands is the leading cause of the decline in bird populations. And so without well managed cattle, you don’t have healthy birds.
And that was one of the cool things about going to Chihuahua is that he had all this bird life like that you didn’t see anywhere else. And there’s all these bird organizations that have been flying down there to take pictures at his ranch and video and stuff of all the, you know, migratory birds that are stopping specifically at his ranch, because he has the perfect habitat for these birds. You know, birds need a little bit of one type of grass, you know, and it’s all these native plants that we’ve completely plowed in and destroyed as we plant soy and, you know, inputs for beyond burger.
Neely Quinn
Right.
Diana Rodgers
And so there’s absolutely nothing natural about that system at all.
Neely Quinn
Yeah, and I just before we go into that, because that’s my next question. I just want to bring it home for people like I just went to this farm, McCauley farms in Longmont, Colorado, and it’s a regenerative farm and he had this patch of land next to him that the city managed, but that had been unusable for, like 20 years, because it had been over grazed. And it was a desert. And so he has his animals on there now and they’re regenerating that land. And so it’s not just in Mexico is not just in you know, it’s like here at home, this thing that’s happening everywhere.
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, so I always encourage people to if they can, if they have the, you know, the privilege to to connect with the farmer, see if you can go visit his ranch or her ranch, because, you know, you’ll you’ll be able to understand, you know, if the if there’s permanent fencing and kind of patches all over the grass, then they’re using continuous grazing. And it’s not the same as these more regenerative techniques.
Neely Quinn
Yeah, and I just got really interested in it. And I just googled like, regenerative farm in my area. And then I found a few that had tours. And I highly recommend that people go do that it was fascinating. He just did this whole tour, and explained all the processes to me. So the next thing I did want to talk about is soy, because I know that a lot of people are like, well, I’m not gonna have beef, I’m not gonna have animals. But I’m gonna have soy because that’s a plant and it’s better. Can you talk about that?
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, I mean, in the book, I talk about why soy is less bioavailable as a protein source than animal source proteins. It’s just not the same even though on the package, it might say, you know, the same, I don’t know, grams of protein per, you know, ounce or something as as beef, it’s just not the same when your body sees it as animal source proteins. And it’s also grown in a quite a destructive way, a lot of it is GMO, meaning that it requires a lot of chemicals in order to kill all the weeds around it heavily sprayed with insecticides to keep the insects off it.
And it’s a monocrop. And what we don’t want to nature is just one thing, because then what are the birds going to eat? What are where the, you know, rabbits were all the things that used to live in that ecosystem, they’re gone just to make way for one crop soy. And you know, when it rains and you’ve got a crop like soy, the rain actually takes the topsoil with it. And the chemicals with it into our waterways and kills fish creates dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, all these massive problems. When we have you know, cattle managed well, the the rain is actually way more effective and can and can saturate the ground, less flooding. No, no chemicals. I mean, there’s just, I don’t even know what else to say about soy other than it’s, you know, it’s not a perfect food for humans in any way you look at it.
Neely Quinn
And what if people are eating organic soy?
Diana Rodgers
It’s still a mono crop. I mean, maybe there’s no chemicals spray, but it’s still a mono crop. It’s still — you still had to destroy an ecosystem in order to make way for that one crop like it, whether it was a prairie where you know, tons of beautiful bunnies used to live — I like to use the bunnies because then people like start to get a little teary at the fact that like, you know, animals like Thumper and Bambi might have died for their soy, but absolutely, those animals have died for them to eat their tofu.
Neely Quinn
Right. I want to talk a little bit about chicken and pork. Not that those are the only two other animal products.
Diana Rodgers
They’re the main ones, yeah.
Neely Quinn
Yeah, so because we’ve talked a lot about cattle, and you’ve mentioned chicken and pork. Can you talk a little bit about that? In terms of the environment, health, all of the things?
Diana Rodgers
Yeah. Well, beef is more nutrient dense than chicken and pork. So just right off the bat, but chicken and pork are also more nutrient dense than bagels and rice and macaroni and cheese, right? So I would still rather somebody if they don’t like beef, and they only want to eat chicken, I would still rather have them eat chicken than tofu or beans and rice.
So you know, it’s way harder to get regeneratively produced chicken and pork than it is to get grass fed beef. So grass fed beef is just easier. Ethically, you know, when we’re talking I — while I already just described typical chicken and pork production, typical. Pigs are really, really smart. And the way pigs are handled in typical, confined, you know, factory farm settings is atrocious. And I never eat pork from traditional methods, because it’s those animals, it’s, I mean, they’re in really confined settings. It’s, it’s awful.
Chicken is also I mean, chickens raised for meat, it’s our — they’re going to die of a heart attack at five weeks if you don’t kill them first. Because they’re such an unnatural animal, we have bred them to have such heavy, large breasts that they’ll they can’t even support their own weight, and their legs will break. And, you know, one cow produces about 500 pounds of meat, I think about how many chickens you would need to kill in order to get that many pounds of meat, right? So when we’re looking at even traditional systems, I would argue that, like if you’re in a regular grocery store, and you can’t tell how anything was raised, which means likely not raised the best standards, I would still argue that beef nutritionally, ethically and environmentally, because those cattle can be raised in a great way before they go to the feedlot. And you know, even the worst managed cattle in continuous grazing system is better than plowing. So I would still argue that typical beef is a better choice than typical chicken or pork. Yeah.
Neely Quinn
This is such an interest– I bet nobody has ever heard anybody say the things that you’re saying. Because everybody’s like, we’ll eat chicken, eat turkey, you know, stay away from the red meat, but you’re saying no. In general, ethically, it’s better to eat beef. and environmentally, it’s better to eat beef, even if it’s conventional than to eat chicken and pork that’s been raised conventionally.
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, so you can find pasture raised pigs. Pigs, though, are monogastric animals, they don’t eat grass. So they’re digging for roots and trying to eat things like acorns, which is awesome. But most people I know that raised pigs, even in the woods are giving them tons of grain and pigs just are really, really efficient at turning grain into flesh. Like that’s what they’re made to do. And so they’re still getting tons of grain, they’re pretty high in omega six.
And pork, though from a from a pasture raised pig is so so much tastier than typical pork. And when you’re looking at monogastric animals like chickens and pigs compared to a ruminant, what they eat does directly impact the nutrient density of their flesh. Were in beef, it’s not as much because their digestive system is sort of their food is like getting translated by their rumen’; by the bacteria. So the bacteria are breaking down all the cellulose material, whether it’s corn stalks or grass, and basically feeding the cow from the byproducts of them breaking that down. So the cows are basically keto. Like they’re they’re they’re living on the fatty acids that are broken down by the rumen. And that’s why feedlot beef and grass fed beef really don’t have significant differences in the nutrition when it comes to us eating them.
But when you’re looking at chicken and pork, there’s a massive difference between you know, chickens that had access to fresh bugs and you know, pasture versus chickens that were raised 100% indoors on only grain. Similair with pigs.
Neely Quinn
Which you can totally see in their eggs like it’s visible. The difference.
Diana Rodgers
Oh, Totally. Yeah, but it’s that can be misleading too because I’ve been to New Zealand and I remember thinking like wow, these eggs there were like orange yolks like deep deep orange. And it was it but then I noticed like every single time I ordered eggs anywhere they were like that and I was like it can’t be the entire country is just the most beautiful pasture raised eggs I’ve ever seen in my life like there’s something’s going on. And I found out that different countries actually have additives like like different cultures find different colors of yolk more preferable and so the egg producers will just put colorant in their feed in the chicken feed to make the yolks —
So I found out that they were just traditional eggs but they were just a deep deep, Americans tend to like their eggs, more anemic looking and paler yolks in general, but so when you do find a yolk that’s really rich, orange it’s either you’re in New Zealand and and that’s how new — Kiwis like their eggs or that chicken was a you know, pasture raised egg and and the the nutrient value in a pasture raised egg compared to a typical battery raised chicken is just, I don’t even know 20 fold or something like it is just ridiculous how much better a pastured pasture raised egg is for you than a typical egg.
Neely Quinn
On that note on my farm tour, he was talking about how because their land is so — ½it’s regenerated, right. And so it was more alive, like we’ve been talking about the soil is and so all of the food that is produced on his farm is like all of the plants are much more nutritious than you would get from a conventional farm where they don’t have animals, you know, trotting around on the crops all winter long.
Diana Rodgers
Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, definitely the difference though. Like, it’s in the it’s in the eggs and the chicken and the pork for sure, like, way, way more so than even the difference in the in the vegetables. But, but yes, he’s right.
Neely Quinn
So last couple questions. Cuz I think that a lot of people are like, Well, what do I do with this information? And, for me, I’ve decided a long time ago that I was only going to eat meat from like regenerative farms, and as highly, you know, humanely raised as possible. But that’s also a huge privilege of mine, like —
Diana Rodgers
Yes.
Neely Quinn
— and it’s also a reprioritizing of my money, even when I didn’t have very much of it. Like, it was a priority for me that I would spend that money on my food. But a lot of people that’s the case. So like, what do they do if they are on a budget?
Diana Rodgers
Right. And, you know, it is really important to recognize, you know, that and also, you know, I’m a clinician first, and I’m worried about your health first. And so to somebody who’s, you know, working two jobs doesn’t, you know, just goes to a typical grocery store and just needs to buy healthy food to feed their family. You know, it’s not grass fed or nothing. And again, like I said, the beginning, I think that’s quite discriminatory and elitist. A doctor would never say, eat only organic vegetables or don’t eat vegetables. And so we need to, we need to take a step back about our meat system to and say, you know, it’s not, you know, less meat, better meat for everybody, there’s plenty of people who would actually benefit highly from more meat, and more protein in their diet. And so I just encourage people to buy the best food they can afford.
And, you know, if feeding your kids typical beef is still going to be a better choice than box mac and cheese or, you know, a lot of other choices. And so, you know, if if you want to try some better meats, you know, definitely, you know, don’t go for the really expensive cuts, you can, you know, try to get into organ meats or ground meats, those are going to be less expensive. So you can try that. You know, seafood is way expensive compared to beef. So, you know, and even pasture raised chicken per pound is way more expensive than beef. So economically, beef beef wins in that way. If you’re looking for a better like a quote unquote better meat to be eating a better animal source protein, it’s going to be you’re going to get a lot of bang for your buck and in beef.
Neely Quinn
Okay. Last question, I promise. A lot of people listening to this are saying to themselves, but I’m only supposed to eat 20 grams of protein per —
Diana Rodgers
Nah.
Neely Quinn
I can’t eat this much protein, it will give me kidney disease. Can you just say one thing about that?
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, I mean, I go through in the book how the protein recommendations are wrong, and there’s absolutely no adult that I would recommend to eat a 60 grams of protein. Like even a very thin woman, I would never ever tell her to eat 60 grams of protein, I don’t know anyone who would do well with 60 grams of protein. And that’s what that the USDA is saying for men, because they’re basing it on ideal body weight of men at 154 pounds, which I don’t even know any men that are that thin.
And so you know, when anyway, so no meat is not going to give you kidney disease. Once you have kidney disease, your your body is not as able to process proteins as well, because your kidneys are broken, but they don’t break from protein they break from carbs.
Neely Quinn
Right?
Diana Rodgers
So they break when you have diabetes, which is not from heme iron, which — that’s ridiculous. It’s from it’s from, you know, out of control glucose and insulin.
Neely Quinn
Yes. Okay. Cool. I really, really appreciate you being on it’s so hard to say these things. And I want to say that I’m, I still support people who choose to eat plant based for whatever reasons. But I don’t think that it’s evolutionarily in our best interest to do that. And like you said to your practitioner, first, you want people to be healthy first. And this is just how I see people be the healthiest. So I really appreciate you having the courage to say these things. And thank you so much for being on my show.
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, and and I take the same position, I think adults should just be able to choose any diet that they want, but my issue is when they’re feeding their children this way. And when they’re trying to set policy that restricts animal products from people who need need them more like women and children. And so that’s where I get really, really stressed out.
So, yes, yeah. So if folks want to sign up to get updates about how to see the film, they can go to sacredcow.info and sign up for my newsletter. They can follow me at Sustainable Dish on Instagram. And the book is available now and makes a great companion to the film it they they — the film is more big picture stuff. And the book is really goes into detail a lot more, but they’re meant to kind of go together.
Neely Quinn
Yeah. And the book is great. I’ve read it. And it’s fantastic. And —
Diana Rodgers
Oh, thank you so much. So thank you.
Neely Quinn
Yeah. And we’ll look out for the film. And I’ll put all the links to all of these things on the show notes. So yeah, thanks again, Diana. I really appreciate it.
Diana Rodgers
Yeah, thank you have a great afternoon.
Neely Quinn
You too.
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Diana Rodgers, you can find her on Instagram @SustainableDish. You can find more information about the film Sacred Cow at sacredcow.info. And then you can find out more information about Diana, her services and blog posts and all that at sustainabledish.com. So I really encourage you to look this stuff up more if you’re interested in it and learning more about it reading her book, Sacred Cow is super helpful to like really get the full story of where she’s coming from. These things that she talked about in the interview are tidbits of information. You know, there’s so much more information about that.
And a couple other resources for you if you’re interested in the meat studies that have come out saying that meat is bad for us. Chris Kresser has done a really good job of explaining the flaws in that that that research and you can find him at Chris Kresser: K R E SS E R .com. And then Chris Masterjohn has done really extensive research on cardiovascular disease and meat and saturated fat and cholesterol and all that. He’s a PhD. And he does a really good job of explaining some other flaws in research on cardiovascular disease. Because I know that that’s a concern when talking about meat. It’s also very flawed. So you can go to ChrisMasterjohn.com and it’s see his blog posts and research and all that.
And then one last one is if you decided to go vegan or vegetarian because of The China Study that was also highly picked apart by a person by, by the name of Denise Minger. And if you just type in Denise Minger, M I N G E R China Study she did like, I don’t know how many pages of research analysis on that film, the book, the study, all of it, and it really was eye opening for me a decade ago when she did it when I was like, Oh, this is not okay, that research like this can go out there and like change people’s way of life for no good reason.
So anyway, those are some more resources for you, obviously, I’m really passionate about this topic. It’s, it’s very important to me, because I understand that we can get really emotionally involved in our diets and say, I am a vegan and not go against that, because my identity is now a vegan. And I know because I did it for a long time. When I was young, you know, I was like, no, I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat that, because I’m a vegetarian. And I never will, you know, and it took me a long time to put that first bite of fish in my mouth, even though my body was calling out for it. So it’s good to look at our ways of being sometimes and just get new perspective. And hopefully, that’s what this interview did. I will be quiet now about this topic. I could talk about it for hours, and I do in my classes.
So coming up on the podcast, I did a really awesome interview, I didn’t do it. She did it with Alex Stiger, who is a trainer and has a ton of experience helping people get stronger. And she’s also gotten a ton stronger herself in the last five years. So she you’re going to be hearing a lot more from her and she’s going to be creating a program for you. She also just put a blog post up on TrainingBeta, about core exercises and how you should train your core for climbing. So anyway, that’s coming up next week. And so stay tuned for that.
Thank you very much for listening all the way to the end. I appreciate it and I will talk to you soon.
