This episode of UK low carb podcast is sponsored by deliciously guilt free, enjoy the show. You can't be for sustainable food systems if you're against animal agriculture.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to UK low carb, I really excited when I do these recordings because I always think about those people out there who are listening. And I think about all those wonderful people who support this podcast. And I want to say, a huge, huge thank you because last night, I went to the podcasting for Business Awards, and actually won the listeners Choice Award, you could have blown me down with a feather is that an
expression? Yeah. Now that is an award that's based on people who vote for the show. And so I put my podcast in not expecting necessarily to win that award. And yet, I was then told that I'd had actually won because I had the most number of votes. And that is because you listening right now voted for me. But if you didn't, personally, then no hard feelings, but a majority of you have. And that's what gave us
the edge. Now, that to me tells you something if a Keto low carb podcast can win in the United Kingdom and a national award with people entering podcasts on all different categories. And I can then still win that award, then that means so much to me. So to say a massive, massive thank you. I'll put out the recording of the award ceremony on Tuesday next week. And you can actually listen to that yourself. I think there will be a video I can get hold of from the organizers. But just just
thank you so much. I'm so touched, it means the world to me. So let's get on with the show, then come on, let's kick this thing off. So welcome to UK low carb, you might not have listened to this before, if you haven't welcome. If you're a longtime listener, welcome again, my name is Dan Greef. And I believe that change happens because we are the change
witness in the world. And by sharing individual stories, we can encourage and inspire people to realize that low carb and keto is a way for most people, I think, to eat to live a healthy lifestyle. So on this podcast, sometimes we have people who share their story of maybe reversing a condition or stopping a chronic condition.
And other times, it's actually about people who be like my guest next week are actually quite young and starting it, because they realize it's the way they want to live the rest of their lives. So that's what the show is all about. And today, I'm gonna talk to a very special guest. Before I get to that guest let me just share a quick review. This is by kurzick
Karen. And she says pillars of health five stars, I'm really enjoying the pillars of health Susan Pauline Cox, her knowledge is inspiring without being biased. She leaves the listener with ideas of how to make simple lifestyle changes in in their own way and their own time. Thank you so much, Karen. I agree. I think that Pauline to the for absolutely fantastic job
in that series. And actually the good news is I've actually I've Pauline, it should be willing to come back onto the show again, soon, because I think she's got so much to teach us wishes really inspiring. Well, I'm really excited now to be joined by someone who I did meet briefly in person at low carb USA in 2017. And if I'm honest, I can't really remember much of his talk, but I do remember, he was the funniest speaker there. And he really made me laugh. He's got a lovely dry sense of
humor. And he's also from what I've seen subsequently, a very knowledgeable man too. And that is Dr. Peter ballasted. Welcome to UK lowcarb.
Thank you, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here.
Great to meet you again. The sod father himself coming on to my podcasts. So
yes, I have been given the title of Don Pedro, the sod father of the room and Adi,
there you go. Well, that's a hell of a I get called a lot ruder than that. But I'm glad that you get the good nicknames at least. And I've got to start by saying this morning. I this is I never planned this to happen this morning, my time this morning. So for you probably last night sometime. I was talking to Gary Fettke. And he said he wanted to pass on his regards to you. He'll now be asleep because now his his nighttime it's confusing, isn't it? And he said, How are the
dogs? So that's my question to you. And then I guess I've got to wake him up and tell him the answer. Yeah.
Well, Connor is our oldest dog and noni are doing fine. They're trying to behave and be quiet. Otherwise they'd be contributing to the conversation to Britain, his
excellent stuff. So there you go. Gary, if you listen to this podcast, the dogs are
fine. Okay, airy and best regards to Belinda.
Excellent that you don't ask me to now call him and return the favor, I suppose. Excellent. I let him listen to that. So the reason that I would like you to come on today because as I described earlier on, before we started recording, you are the bridge. I think it's a better way of saying it, not the missing link that wouldn't
be appropriate. You're the bridge between I think agriculture, understanding how for instance ruminants work and you know The process which I've learned a lot from you about that, which I found really interesting, but also your own personal health journey as being one where you are like the rest of us on the low carb path where you've had to make changes in your life because of what happened to you. And so you've got this kind of bridge between
the two areas. So this is going to start really asking about your story if that's okay. And how did you come to low carb?
Well, so my training is that I'm a forage agronomist and a ruminant nutritionist.
What does that mean? Sorry for for germ gurnam it and you know, I'm not going to pretend I know straightaway. What is that note to pizza?
Well, forages are those plants that are grown to be eaten by other by animals. So, grasses, Clovers, alfalfa, you would call it Lucerne, you can grow even brassicas a whole host of crops that are grown to be grazed or harvested and stored for later use. So that's forages. agronomy is that group of sciences to do with science, soil and plant sciences related
to agriculture. And so that's been my training and what I've done for most of my adult life, but in 2007, I had my own sort of personal awakening, when I realized I was a 51 year old balding, obese, pre diabetic? Yeah. If anyone's been around long enough, or knows the dates for some of these things, good calories, bad calories came out in what 2008, something like that I was introduced to that book by my wife, who was already on her own journey. Basically, over the next couple years, I
reversed my pre diabetes. You know, the line is today, I'm just balding. It's, it's it's not a miracle. But it has produced this profound change in me. And then over the succeeding years, between 2010 and today, I've had the opportunity to show up at a number of low carb keto related kinds of conferences. And what I realized was, I was not here I knew things about agriculture that I thought that audience should my new tribe
should know. And then I very much believe when I go to my old tribe, the forage, agronomy, animal science, that they absolutely need to hear the metabolic health message. And so I've become really active in trying to bridge the discipline gaps, and get more people aware of all these pieces. Because I think at the end of the day, we have a really good message, we just have to get better at communicating.
I so agree with that. And I love the way that you come to the community. And I really honestly believe it is a community and I think maybe the last two years with COVID, it's been hard to get that sense of being together in person. But when I went to that low carb, USA conference in 2017, which is only I think the second they had, I was bowled over by how big this was. And there were some really lovely people there. I met Amber O'Hearn, I met Gary
Taubes was there. I remember thinking, Yeah, this is really special, like these people are all trying to help each other. And what I love, so my background is archaeology. That's my degree. And so I did a lot on human evolution. And I'm now thinking, actually, if I really go and get the books out and dust them off and have a look at them, there's probably a lot I could add from that point of view, which maybe people
wouldn't necessarily know. And I love the fact you brought from your professional career, what you understood, because I don't think there's anyone else I know of who covers this this kind of area.
Well, and there are certainly people who know more about aspects of what I was trained in, I mean, just and those people have been mentors of mine. And so likewise, on the human health side, I certainly am not a physician, certainly not a human nutritionist. But there are things that I might be able to contribute to the
conversation to help us. And so things that are really meaningful to me or when a clinician will say, well, thanks to what you say, I now feel like I can tell my patients, you know, don't worry about spending more, go to the store, buy what you can afford, buy what's appropriate, buy what's accessible. And don't worry about all the extra label claims. Eat that don't eat the
other things. And likewise, when I introduce some of my colleagues who themselves begin to have a health journey to the same people that helped me, and hey, what do you know it works? And then I get to say, Well, you do the work. I'm just a pipe. And that's all I want to be. So that I had one occasion here in low carb, San Diego in September, where surgeon came up to me afterwards, because I had shown pictures of what happens to pigs when we don't feed them
sufficient. lysing. Right. He came up to me the next day and said, when you showed those, I said to myself, that's what I'm seeing in my patients. Wow. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's very much for me a desire to give back. I was trained in parts of the United States where the rate of obesity and metabolic illness is very high, the southeastern US. And, you know, those those institutions gave me opportunities. And if I can give back in some way, happy
to do it. And and again, I think there's so many excuses for not accepting this lifestyle. And they are it to the degree that I can give people data to refute those arguments and just say, okay, that's Don't worry about that, that that's off the table. Now.
Just what I want to ask about, because I think there's some big things there we can go into today. Actually, before I do, though, don't don't you think that one of the biggest questions we have is, as a society, I don't think you and I, or any question or doubt about the answer to saralee. But I think as a society, we don't know what we're supposed to eat. That seems to be the biggest problem. It's very weird. Now, you could say there's there are
reasons for that. And there's an agenda for that, and I think there is, but it seems like most people you meet, they'd have no idea whatsoever. And so I thought it'd be good just to try and break down really, what is a human supposed to eat based on their physiological laferla? Physiological biology? And what is a ruminant supposed to eat according to theirs? And how is that?
Well, so just from a purely digestive physiology, and there's lots of other issues I can see. But for brevity, humans are monogastric, they have one stomach, ruminants have four. So the ruminant is able, because it supports a very large microbial population. It is it's the microbes that digest the fiber and allow this animal to utilize a high fiber, low protein quality diet. And then the host
animal in its acidic stomach. So essentially, you've got a couple stomachs put in front of our stomach, and the structures allow for this fermentation. And then the host animal actually ends up using byproducts and the microbes themselves as food resources. So it's, it's it's a remarkable structure, the ruminants long predate primates, long predate humans. And we need to remember that the largest the most abundant carbohydrate in the biosphere, is cellulose,
which we can't utilize. In fact, no. vertebrate produces cell you lace which is the enzyme necessary. But the difference between starch and cellulose is is merely the bond formed between the glucose units. So that that difference just makes all the difference. A ruminant animal has no essential amino
acid requirements. We do. Now, in some modern systems, where they're really pushing animal performance, they find that if they feed a protected form of amino acid, they can see a response but in sort of the general state No, because what happens is anything that's degradable within the room and the micro organisms capture that make it into micro obile protein which the host animal digests, there's a very low level of fat that can be in the ruminants
diet. So for a beef cow, it's somewhere in the 5% crude fat range. And even more than that, and fiber digestion begins to be inhibited. But what happens is because of this, and microbial activity 60 70% of its energy comes from volatile fatty acids, which are formed by the micro organisms that the host animal absorbs from its its gut. So this is this remarkable means of having organisms, mammals in an environment with a very low fat,
very poor quality protein. And then they are the key link in high quality protein, high quality fat being available to other organisms, namely us and yeah, carnivores and other organisms that don't have that ability. So that's kind of where I would start. That's flippin
amazing. So can I just because I'm always bowled over by this, it only learnt it. Actually, Tim Noakes came onto the show last summer. And he actually said this. And I was like, Sorry, what? And I thought, How did I miss that from Peters talk? And then I've come back and I've watched your stuff. And you do a lovely Trick question where you say, you know, which when these groups is able to digest a low fat diet, and the distinction you made was lovely was about ingestion is
not the same as digestion. And the fact that just to say in layman's terms, that in fact, the cow is feeding is bacteria, it's microorganisms. And then it's eating the byproducts from those microorganisms plus the microorganisms. That's incredible. Why when you realize wow, whereas we're actually taking food and digesting it directly, aren't we?
Well, indeed, and I got that idea from someone else. I leverage all my best material.
How do you leverage that Corp? Why?
He A L.
Not so. Lame. Sorry, the dad joke is given out today. Carry on, carry on. But we are
part of this process. And and once upon a time, I mean, if I read people like Jessica Thompson, Dr. Thompson's paper on the human predatory pattern, where we are the only primate that routinely kills and eats animals larger than ourselves out of all the primates. And going back into the record and saying, What if cut marks don't indicate the first tool use? What if the first tool was a hammer stone? And and then they go and they find evidence of that on bones that long predates stump, you
know, cut marks. Okay. Why is that? Well, because as a scavenger on the grasslands, there were only there was only according to what I understand only one other organism that would exploit bone marrow in long bones and brains in sculpt cases, right from the kills by other carnivores. And and if you were a clever organism and knew how to access that, it would be and here's the quote, I think from her, like finding a bus, a stick of butter in a landscape
devoid of fat. Wow, wow. And so that high quality food source now allowed for other adaptations, like a larger brain, a smaller gut, etc, etc. And there's a number of other key points like the loss of B 12 absorption from the beginning of the large intestine, which chimps apparently still can do.
Somewhere in our ancestor, we lost ancestry, we lost that that should have been a fatal thing but it so these things all indicate what it is that homosapien has been eating and then somewhere along the line, we have cultural issues, family history issues, all of those need to be acknowledged as being really important because we have family relationships. We have social relationships. We don't. Food isn't only for nourishment. Yeah, it's all these other
aspects come together. And we've lost a lot of those and minimized others in the conversation. But it's clear to me that all all societies have as an important part of their diet, animal source foods. Yeah. And it looks different in different cultures. But they're all there. And the reason is, because animal source food is essential for proper human development and function.
Yeah, yeah. And actually, the thing I like to say to people, it's not like we, we just a beat, and somehow that's good for us. And that's the end of it. Like you just said, there are evolutions tied up in it, isn't it? So it's not like we can we can't really separate ourselves and say, well, we don't need that anymore. Because we've got this now, we've actually adapted to
eating that way. And that, and there's evidence for that, like you just said, which goes back millions of years, and certainly, certainly hundreds of 1000s. I actually have something to show you here, Peter. This is a Paleolithic axehead. Because I am pretty terrified. But I drop it. And this is what I find amazing. If I just show you a modern day human mouse sees me the size is different. But actually actually it's around the actual human hand has not
changed. And yet, I'm looking at that that's the same kind of tool for the same kind of hand. Now the person who made this is now dust I imagine or fossilize somewhere? And yeah, they would have been in Great Britain kind of maybe, I don't know, exact data this maybe 60,000 years ago. And look at the sharp edges. I don't think that was useful agriculture. You know, that's clearly butchery. And I just thought you'd be interested in that, because that is the evidence. That's part of our
evolution. That's how we are tied in with this story of eating meat.
Hmm, indeed. That's wonderful. Where did where did you obtain that?
Let's move on. So
fair enough.
I'll tell you what was recording.
Fascinating. I get distracted by other topics and geology and the Pacific Northwest. You know, we had a series of cataclysmic floods about 15,000 years ago that dramatically reshaped the landscape
sheet that melted and flooded down light through America. Is that right? Well,
so briefly, the end of the last advance, we had the lobes of the glacier that came down and blocked rivers, over in northern Idaho. And then the melt water built up in western Montana, to great depths. And then the IceBridge D stabilized for a number of reasons, and release these unimaginably large amounts of water.
That is the Great Lakes now, is that right? No, no, no, no, no, we're
much west of the Great Lakes, the Great Lakes also glaciation, but that's a different situation. So in any case, there are things like that. There's the what was the shoreline of Great Britain and, and Netherlands, like, when the water when the ocean level was much lower, because and so there, there's just fascinating stuff that is left to be discovered. We don't really know
as much as we think we do. But to bring it back to, you know, this idea of, well, you said, just, you know, we now have this well, but we don't know many cases, how to accurately compare the new food like substances to the ancestral evolutionarily appropriate subs, you know, foods. Yeah, yeah. And so we don't appropriately or accurately represent the protein
values. Nor do we properly account for, I've got one slide that shows that if I could find equal calories from animal source food and plant source foods, they wouldn't have the same metabolic effect on human beings. We know that in the low carb community. Many people don't think about this. Similarly, with the amount of protein which is actually crude protein, which we could talk
about. It's not equal even and yet all the many of the conversations within sustainability space insist on merely looking at pounds or kilowatt kilos of crude protein yield per hectare, and that's completely inappropriate. And then we do environmental impacts based on those yields. And and yet, today we know enough to say that if we would accurately look at both the protein quality and utilize ability and the emissions, that they're very close.
Right, right. Well, this is this is the big debate now, isn't it? I think emission sustainability is a huge thing at the moment, and I want to go into that. But before I do, can I just just explore a little bit more about the the protein from plant sources? Because what are your thoughts I saw you did a breakdown of kind of like the, you know, the piece of steak compared to some beans, I come up with the beans where I know I'm probably allergic to them. I don't go near that sort of
thing. But there are some beans that are supposedly high in protein. But actually, that's only a surface level true. And like you just said, it's the way your body interacts and digest them. That means that that's not the case. Would you mind breaking that down a bit more?
Well, sure. Back to the ingest, ingestion versus digestion. So for a very long time, we've been determining something called crude protein in feeds and foods. And crude protein is an estimate based on the percent nitrogen in a sample, we take that number, we multiply it by 6.25. And that gives us percent crude protein,
right. And then people take that percentage, and whatever the amount of the feed or food, they come up with the amount of crude protein that works, okay for most ruminants, in most cases, because as we've already mentioned, cattle, other ruminants can utilize non protein nitrogen, the problem is monogastric X cannot utilize non protein nitrogen. So, the assumptions that underlie the six point to five factor are that all of the nitrogen that
was there was in protein. And all of that protein was 16%. Nitrogen. That's where that number comes from. Right? There's, there's many nitrogen containing substances in foods. And when we get to plants, they tend to have more of their crude protein coming from non protein nitrogen than animal source foods. Right? So nitrate, for example, which can be very high in green leafy plants and other vegetables. That gets converted to protein, crude protein. Well, it's not, we can't utilize that
for protein nutrition. So there's that. Just because it's present in a food doesn't mean we're going to absorb it or digest it.
Right, right.
So when we take lysine, a specific amino acid like lysine, which is limiting in cereal crops, and we make something Brown, and or crispy out of it, we take that lysine and we bind it to carbohydrate.
Is that below the belly odds effect? Is that exactly what that is who I feel like I've been tested by a professor here for
many questions yet, we'll get to that.
Oh, that's okay. So
that, that is makes that lysine indigestible to us.
Wow. So natural reaction means it's, we can't just pass through as then is that right?
Exactly. So now we have an actual amino acid present in food that we can't digest. Okay, now, we have all the other amino acids that are absorbed, but we don't, we don't store those like sugar or like fat. We basically have to kind of use those or oxidize them. So if that lysine is limiting in the diet, then we can only utilize amino acids for protein synthesis up to the level of that limiting amino
acid. So now everything else that's been absorbed above that gets oxidized, we use the carbon skeletons we excrete the nitrogen. Okay? So that's the picture of that process. Beans are limit or legumes tend to be limiting in certain amino acids. That's why people have talked about combining them With other foods when you know they talk about protein combined, or amino, you know, combining foods for complete protein. The
problem then is one. The example I was given by someone who works in the field is that an eight year old boy physically can't eat enough rice and lentils to meet their lysine requirements. Oh, wow. Wow. Now what just because a god sighs that they can't process that much food? And what else are you getting with the rice and the lentils, as you're trying to do that? Well, you're getting a lot of carbohydrate from the rice, you're getting some other nut, anti nutrient components from
cereals, for example. So all of this becomes very complicated. If we could make a small amount of animal source food available to that diet, we could easily meet the requirements,
which seems to me and this is actually what Gary fat key was talking about this morning. He said about eating to get the nutrition we need for our body. And actually, if you think about food in that way, now I know, you know, there's the social elements of food and all that, but just from a fuel standpoint, that our bodies are not stupid, they're trying to seek the right amount of nutrients, macro and also micronutrients to keep itself
going. There's obviously protein requirements, a huge part of that story, isn't it and what we eat and Ted namens done a lot on that work. But it seems to me like if you're eating them, the bean based diet, you're just going to be eating and eating and eating and eating and eating, or you have to highly processed the food to be able to break it down and add the nutrition that you're not going to get in that food naturally.
So if that's the case, how the hell would that be ever considered healthy by anybody?
Well, we've we've had messages that tell us so
that's it. Bye, everyone say, Yeah, I mean, go home now,
or for a number of reasons people have their belief systems. And Be that as it may, the evidence behind the idea, the narrative that we can feed the population on highly processed foods, and clearly lacks evidence. And when we look at the results, it seems pretty obvious what's happening, at least to me, so. And then you have people imagining that somehow they can reinvent the food system, which is a phrase that scares me, quite a bit odd
a scare a lot of people. Because what we have, look, if you there's a lot of romance about agriculture, there's a lot of romance about living on the land. And I understand it, I had it. Once upon a time, I grew up in suburban Philadelphia. So I got out of that environment as quickly as I could. But the actual experience of farming and especially farming live lot large livestock is different than many people imagined it to
be. And on the other side of that, we now have the ability to sort of engage in exchange, which says that, for your effort to provide me with this food, I get time to go do other things, which then I compensate you for. So, you know, economics is something I'd get too much into. I just recognize that
although you say that is exactly human evolution, you just said there, the fact that we are, for instance, not grazing for like maybe 12 hours of every single day, but rather, I mean, look at the Lion when I used to work in Africa briefly. And when I was there, I remember seeing in this Wildlife Reserve, the lions, and they said, oh, there needs to be 14 hours. I was like, well, there must be starving. So no, they so it's
protein and fat. They don't need to eat this before I did low carb, but they don't need to eat anything else. That's why they choose to eat every 48 hours. So how much more time do they have? And they think about us, just in the same way economically, your model, there is the same for the individual, the individual that has all this kind of high rich protein and fats, fueling their brains fueling their bodies means they have more time on their hands to investigate other
areas. Maybe that's religious science, whether it's technology, whatever the actual area is, that gives us time back doesn't it? Which is what farming does. Sorry. I just wanted to jump in there on that.
No, and one of the talks I just I just gave a talk last week to society for range management. Which under ordinary occasions would be An international organization still is, but the meeting itself wasn't. And I'm saying we need to redefine sustainability given that we're in an era of sub optimal metabolic health. And you need to, when I'm in front of that kind of an audience, I need to unpack different things than I do when I'm speaking to a low carb or keto audience. And
it's a real challenge. But when we have in the United States, the reality that 60% of adult Americans have one or more chronic illnesses, that almost 90% of adult Americans do not exhibit optimal metabolic health, when something above 9% of GDP is the direct and indirect cost of obesity and obesity related disorders. And that's not only in the high income countries, that extends right around the world in terms of the low and middle income
countries. And yet, so many of the solutions that people want to engage to address sustainable development, etc, are based on this belief system, that people need to be eating less animal source food, etc, etc, etc. And various versions. And and so one of my comments is that there is such a thing as too little animal source food in the human diet, we have hard objective
evidence of this. What we don't have is evidence of harm coming harm to human beings health, coming from too much animal source food in the human diet. Now, based on epidemiological surveys, they look at how much meat they're eating and say, Oh, look, it's that, well, they don't pay attention to all the other factors that impact
health. So getting people to understand that so much of this conversation, this conversation space has been contaminated with poorly sourced, poorly grounded beliefs over what constitutes a healthy diet,
believe it or not belief, not facts. That's exactly it, isn't it? We are in a post religious age, right? I think people have a sense of belonging to a tribe to a community, which can be very positive and can be based in lots of salt truth. But at the same time, you can sometimes get people then you don't question the science, and they just go with the common narrative. And I think that's really dangerous.
Well, indeed, and and let's, you know, it's always good to keep the mirror handy. And look and make sure, you know, we have our own tribes. Yeah. And people get I know, from myself, I mean, I call my little effort, grass based health. One of the reasons I did that was because grass roots health was already taken by an organization that was promoting vitamin D, so I couldn't. But I. So I'm trained in grazing management, grazing systems, all
of that stuff. I've been doing that since I graduated in 86. You know, my professor came from New Zealand, he was trained by Professor, I mean, people have been working in these spaces for decades. I'm really glad that more and more people are becoming aware of some of these topics. And part of what I'm trying to do is introduce them to this this lineage of research
that's been going on. But as soon as I got into this low carb, you know, whatever space, I started reading stuff about, oh, grass fed, and I said, oh, boy, yeah, that's it. Yeah. And then I started reading the papers that the grass fed people were using to support there. And
I was like, I don't think so. So I want to make sure that what I talk about as well sourced and here's the information and, and people need to, to not necessarily take my word for it, but look into it a little bit further, and, you know, question our own sort of dogma that can arise.
And actually, you know, what I think is really important there is that those facts and know that debate should never be personal anyway. Like, why are you personally holding on to an idea that somehow relates to your character? It's not about that is that you should let go of that and literally say, this is interesting. Should we look at it that works or it doesn't work because and then we move on? And I think that's a lot healthier.
And I think if there's anything you've just said that I think is definitely true. It's I don't want ever low cost To become a cultish experience because we have to have disagreement. I think that's only a healthy thing. And I love it when, you know, like Steven Finney said he disagree with Ted name and asked Ted name about on a podcast. And he said, Well, I think this because and I've got a huge respect for Steve Finney. But I think this because I thought,
yeah, excellent. That's a sign of an adult healthy debate, you know, you can have two people very respectable, and they've got a slight differences of opinion, but it's okay. Because they're discussing it based on evidence. And that's, that's got to be healthy.
Well, if, if you're in a group of people you agree with 100%, you're probably in a cult. Yeah. And my job may be to prove that low carb is not a cult, because my spirit animal is the balding headed ship flicker, I can find something to annoy any group of people. I try not to because I have a primary purpose. And that is I want more people to get to experience metabolic healing. Yeah, and yeah, and that's the primary
thing for me. Now my part in that is to say, well, if animal source food is essential, and I believe it is, different animal source foods have intrinsically different impacts in their
production. And I argue that ruminant animals have this unique environmental evolutionary niche, that gives them advantages over other forms, now, I'm not into us in them, I just want to say, don't treat all animal source food production as it's as if it's the same, whether that's across species of animals, or whether that's across countries around
the world. Yeah. You know, in the United States, I think the emissions intensity for beef is something like 12 kilograms of co2 equivalent per kilogram of boneless beef. In, in Zimbabwe, it's seven D.
Wow. Wow. So
So you know, that that gives an idea of the potential to reduce impacts globally. Also, that, you know, eliminating, what is it? Brazil has something like three times the number of cattle of the United States and produces less beef? Wow.
So just efficiency. Yeah, cuz efficiency, I think is a really important thing. Because you know, that comparison to an American Brazil's very interesting, isn't it? What is going on there? That they what they have skinnier cows? Or is it just the the waste products that are made for them?
There are a number of factors, feed quality. Um, so nutrition, herd health, reproductive efficiency, breed differences, basic climate, all of those things can impact how long it takes for a calf. You know? If if a metric is getting a calf every year, and having it survive to then harvest at at essentially two years age? Yeah. Well, then, if that cow doesn't re breed on time, because of nutrition, or because of problems with the bowl or what
have you. If it takes longer for that calf to reach the market weight, all of those things lower the efficiency. Yeah. So and that's where all of the sciences related to animal science come into play and forage, agronomy and these sorts of things. You know, we we, I make the case that the existential crisis that humanity faces is a lack of animal source food and its diet globally. So something like between a fifth and a quarter of children globally under the age of five
are stunted. Wow, trudge, this is not only stature, this is cognitive development, and that's a lifetime's darkness. awful awful. It's been estimated that the deck the drag on economic development in Sub Saharan Africa due to stunting is about 11% of GDP.
Wow.
At the same time, you've got a significant number of children that are wasted that That is a low weight to height ratio. We have a third of women globally of childbearing age that are anemic. 1/3 and 1/3. We have something approaching 70% of children globally, who between six, six months and two years don't eat meat, eggs, dairy seafood. Due to not a choice, it's it's a lack of
access. Yeah, yeah. So these are things that we could be working on, except then for the headwinds of all the, you know, belief systems that are in play. I think the figure I read from one of Tim Noakes, his books, and I traced it back to where it came from. But basically, every 30 seconds, someone in the world loses a lower leg due to diabetes.
Wow, that's just tragic. You know, in this country, at least about 10% of the whole national budget for health and in terms of the national health services are socialized health system, and about 10% 10 billion pounds are spent on type two diabetes, well, all types of diabetes, but the vast majority is type two, which could be put into remission. And I keep saying, I'm so sorry, to the listener. Now, I forget that I've got listeners, just get into the
conversation. But I'm sorry that they're having to listen to this fact, again. But I think it is shocking, because if that money was used into nutrition and helping people eat properly, if it started with the poorest people, and then also the poorest, nourish people who might be wealthy in other ways, and actually help those people first, how much happier and longer would people's lives be?
And what a much better use of that money it would be as well, instead of using medication to try and whatever fits?
Yeah, one one estimate that I've cited, suggests that if the average type two diabetic in the United States could eliminate their medication use, let's just, you know, speculate wildly, that such a thing could be possible. If they could do that, that would reduce their carbon footprint 29% More than if they went from a high meat to a vegan diet.
That's interesting. We never hear those sorts of facts. No,
no, the greenhouse gas emissions from the US healthcare industry have been estimated at about 10%. All of agriculture's, you know something like eight. Animal agriculture is somewhere down around four beef as to now, those comparisons aren't strictly fair, because there's a lot of things counted into the health care. Yeah, the point is that health care has an environmental footprint. Yeah, yeah, even in different ways.
And we're not used. And when those conversations about sustainability and healthcare come up, they drag with them all the conventional wisdom of what constitutes a healthy diet. And if everybody would follow that diet, they wouldn't be as sick. Well, no, sorry, stop. You're You're assuming evidence. Facts not in evidence. In fact, there's contradictory evidence. And, and so let's imagine what would be the savings if we could eliminate the burden of chronic disease, or reduce it, do
whatever you want. But let's get off this trajectory of increasing burden globally, where the only possible solution is to increase drugs and increase, you know, conventional medical, and or go to an increasingly manufactured food like substance in hopes of achieving better health. It's just complete insanity. And that is best evidence. And I forget her name, the physician from Sweden, who got in trouble for telling patients that she herself was on a low carb diet.
And, and then they did and then that got reported. And finally she won and was able to get back into practicing. But apparently, she's kind of in a diabetes education. Roll now and somewhere in the government is someone who tracks supply use. And so this person calls her up one day and says, you know, she serves an area. And so this bureaucrat calls her up and says, why are all your patients dying? Which he says, fully mean, they're not dying. They're
getting healthier. He saw a decline in Diabetic Supply use and the uninsured Humans have what the possible explanation was that the patients are dying. And so so that's evidence of, of human beings and how we can go wrong, I guess.
So Well, that's the paradigm that tells me the paradigm is so ingrained, you can't imagine another outcome. And it's interesting how you can take the same facts. But if you've paradigm is different, you'll see a different outcome or a different reason. And that's always a bit worrying in humans, isn't it? That's why it's important to discuss these things. But I want to ask you about two areas that are kind of
linked, actually. And that was about, well, I've been farming efficiency, I think it's really interesting. So where I am in the world right now, Cambridge, I'm in Cambridge, and Cambridge here and East Anglia is a very flat area, you know, completely flattened in the last Pleistocene Ice Age, very much a farming area, and much like cereal crops and whatnot. And yet, in the rest of the country, there are areas where you can't grow cereal crops. And so you have to use of course, those
areas, for other things. And that's like Wales, and the north of England has got very hilly landscapes, and so we have lamb and, and, of course, cows, and, you know, cattle. So the use of land, I think, in this country is quite good in many ways. But the arguments you hear from a Vegan Point of View, and I don't want to make it us in them, I don't think that's fair. But I think there's a lot of people argue that somehow, we're just wiping out the earth and farming
on everything. And we just should get rid of the animals. And we could just go back to growing cereal crops, or somehow that all makes complete sense. But actually, the land doesn't work like that does it? And I thought it just described to me that process and how to make it the most efficient. Actually, I'd say eating meat is part of that, isn't it? Well,
I think the example is if you can imagine a 1/32 of an apple. Right? That's the amount of tillable land on the earth.
Wow, what so an apple in 32? Pieces? Just 1/32? piece? Yes. Right. Okay.
So so what frequently happens is people don't understand the difference between agricultural land and what we call arable or cultivatable land. Yeah. And, and then there's a fair amount of land that yeah, you can cultivate it. But if you do it without proper care, you end up degrading that land significantly, and at various
degrees of speed. So again, arable land is a very limited resource, the vast majority of agricultural land is really only suited for the production of livestock from forage, really that range or pasture land. And then, in addition, there's this false either or that somehow crop agriculture exists apart
from animal agriculture. And the reality is that whenever we produce crops, for human utilization, a certain amount of that crop, even the crop, even the edible bit itself, a certain amount of that's not suited for human consumption for a number of reasons. And then there's all the rest of that plant that was isn't suited. And and so you have a fair amount of byproduct or what would be waste, except that we can feed that to
livestock. And then we have just what you described, the upland areas are well suited to the production of calves, or lambs and lambs. But frequently, those need to go to other places to finish. And so then you have the movement of livestock from one environment to another. And so we have that kind of interaction. In my part of the world, we grow a lot of grass
seed, right? Well, in the winter time, you'll see a lot of sheep on those fields grazing for a number of reasons, one of which is it makes for a better seed harvest. Right? So in the southern plains, you'll find wheat being planted. It will be grazed for a period of time and then the owner can say, Do I want to harvest a wheat crop or do I want to continue grazing
it? Yeah. And then based on whatever their decision is, they either remove the animals or they allow the animals to graze which would which then because the wheats at a stage of development would mean there's no more potential for a wheat yield. So we have this kind of overlap. We need to also keep our global glasses on. And the majority of fertilizer used to grow human crops globally is manure. So if you take animals out of the picture, where does the fertilizer come
from? Well, fossil fuel, right? Is that is that the option? That's shocking, isn't it? When you tell people that they're horrified, like, I thought we're trying to cut down on our carbon footprint, and now we'll take in fossil fuel fertilizers into the land? Yeah,
well, and something like a billion people in the world depend on burning dung, and other dirty biofuels, wow, looking
1/7, I think friendlier,
which then increases the respiratory disease burden on the women and children. And when you do that, the fertility is lost. Right. So so that's, you know, majority of the world's farmers depend on livestock for draft, you know,
for muscle power. So so the, you know, we vary, and you get to a number of people who tend to be the poorest in the world are dependent on livestock for their economic security, etc, etc, etc. So, this, this is a much more complicated picture than people confidently represent it to be. And, and, you know, get it back to, if if a person finds themselves where they're insulin resistant hyperinsulinemic, what do they need to do? Do that?
Learn how to do that, with whatever is appropriate, whatever's affordable, whatever is accessible in your area. Yeah, and then kind of go from there. But eating animal source foods won't kill you. And it's not killing the planet. Yeah. And, and so people like Dr. Noakes and Dr. Fettke, and so many others, can assure people, it's not going to kill you. And people like us who say, you know, I've been doing this now for, what, 15 years and ain't
dead yet. Yeah. And then other people can come and say, what specifically about the environmental questions are you concerned about? So I can assure people that we are learning more about the environmental footprints of ruminant animal production? We, we know more now than we did. And as we're learning, we're saying, Oh, look, we've been overestimating the impact of ruminant animals.
And then we can start saying, and when we talk about it, we tend to not include all of the nutrition that comes with meat, eggs, dairy or seafood. We go protein. Yes, yeah, we get more than protein from this. Yeah. And and when we can properly represent the nutritive value along with properly representing the environmental side of things, the picture changes
completely. And then as I say, chronic disease has an impact that we haven't been adequately, you know, sustainability should consider societal, economic, and environmental factors. And too often, it's been only the environmental factors. And then too often, it's only been looking at emissions, greenhouse gases, there's a lot more to the environmental question. So it's, it's exciting time for me, because there are so many people across the space that are doing
this kind of work. And if we can bring this all together into a more comprehensive, holistic story, it's the best story going.
Yeah, fascinating one time to be alive. And, and like I said, just the beginning of this conversation, I did say, we don't seem to know as people what we should be eating, that still seems to be a big question. But I think we make a mistake to separate our health, the planet health and actually the evolutionary interlinking chains that bring us all together because that that has existed for millions of years. So what's going out of whack? Well, is it the populations too
big? Not much we can do about that. But you know, is it the technology you can use try to harness things and make them better? Is there something else we're doing like fossil fuel burning, that's a very well relatively modern thing we're doing suddenly. And that can be a huge factor in our in our problems, couldn't it? So it's funny how, you know, we sort of were Pooh poohing the things that are part of our evolution. and saving the things that maybe are modern added adaptations and add ons.
Well, and maybe we're not seeing where we are relative to where we've been. So that when horses were the major means of you know, and transport and farm equipment, etc. A quarter of the farmland was dedicated to the production of fuel for the tractors, right? The horse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. cities were very nasty places because of dung and urine, and, and all of the things that came with having all those animals in
place. You know, we have advantages, which we've mentioned earlier today, that we can sort of minimize when our rose colored glasses are on and we're looking at, you know, the year before I was born, Jonas Salk's polio vaccine came out. You know, what was that? Like? Immediately prior to World War Two, penicillin became a thing. And I remember a story about how the first patient to be given penicillin was either a postman or a police
officer in London. He's a police officer. He had a cut from a Rosalie's cheek. Yes, I became infected, didn't it? Yeah. And it was actually it wasn't Fleming either. Was it? It was, I forget his name. Now the guy who developed it? Yeah.
But but so so you know, what do we got to lose? This guy's dying? They give him penicillin. And he gets better. But they don't have enough to complete the course. And he still dies? From a rose scratch. Yeah, yeah. I just did that. And that was only what 1938 39?
I think. Yeah, it's like 29. Flowing, discovered it. And I think it was then the 30s they developed it. But that's mind blowing. When you think about it, guys teach history. So I see the history of medicine. And chain was one of the scientists, what's the other guy's name? I can't remember. It's gonna come to me after this. Yeah. I hate that. Yes, or No, I guess. But
people talk about too many human beings. And here's a little factoid, I'd like to share people because I frequently hear you know, we've got to use too many people, too many people, you know, because we're going to go to, you know, 2 billion more people by 2100, or whatever the number is. That's not going to, you know, that's not going to be more children. 15. And under? Yeah, the projections are that 2100 There's going to be the same
number of children 15. And under as there are today, the 2 billion more people are going to be more people getting to be old farts into their 60s 70s and 80s. Yeah. So what you're saying is there needs to be less old people in Africa and India. That's what you're saying? Whether you know it or not. That's really, really, I mean, I just heard yesterday, that by 2050, what the senior population of China is going to be. And it's some massive number, beyond, you know,
several countries complete. And what do we know about healthy aging? Well, to age healthfully, we need a higher quality diet, we need more animal source food, we need more protein than we've been told, at the point eight grams per kilogram or whatever the RDA is. And it needs to be animal source food, because if it isn't, then we need even
more. Yeah, and these these issues now start to, you know, kind of as we look toward the future, it becomes more and more important for people to get this information because we haven't been well served by the conventional sources. I mean, I'm amazed that the dietary guidelines didn't look at protein until 2010. That recently Oh my word. Yeah. And, and somehow in 2015, they still
came. So one of the slides I show it shows that 40% of adult Americans don't get enough protein, and that most females over the age of eight aren't getting enough protein. And that's based on two things. One, an RDA of point eight per kilogram. And number two that they treat plant, source protein and animal source Tina's if they're equivalent. And they're not. So the numbers are worse
than that. And somehow, despite that, they can still say that protein isn't a concern, nutrient of concern in American diet. And that feeds then into the too much narrative. But when we look globally, there was a paper that came out almost a year ago now, which did a deeper dive into it. When they looked at utilizable protein Mowen mo ug h a n is his name out of New Zealand, he, they, when they got to a utilizable protein, not total, not digestible, but
utilizable. Something like 103 countries and territories aren't meeting that minimum. And when they looked at utilizable, protein yield rather than crew, it took the environment, the emissions intensity of dairy and reduced it by a factor of 100. And then what we have to couple that with is that the IPCC in its latest assessment last August, admitted that the metric they've been using to estimate global warming potential for the methane that comes from cattle
or ruminants. Digestion has been overestimating its impact by three to four times.
Wow, that's flippin amazing news.
Oh, my word a lot about that habit. You?
Yeah, it's been all over the news air.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, the methane that comes from fossil fuels has been underestimated by a similar amount.
Oh, my goodness. So
now we've got where if we look at the nutritive value properly, when we consider the emission intensity with the old metric, they're almost equivalent. Yeah. Now when we apply the right metric, we have to cut that by at least a third. Right? What are we talking about anymore? Yeah. Are we still believing that saturated fat causes heart disease? Are we still believing that animal source protein causes cancer? Are we still believing the cholesterol in our food causes cholesterol plaques in our
arteries? Because none of that's true. And yet, now we have people who are fidgeting with the global burden of disease figures. And they're trying to tell us how many people die every year because they don't get enough fiber in their diet. Yeah, really. But no
focus on protein. You know what, by the way, just to make it that kind of bring it down to the layperson as well, somebody at my current level, who's not in science, we get told all the time, a calorie is a calorie. And I know that
obviously, that's not true. But it's funny, just the fact you're breaking down what your type of protein is, let alone what your actual energy sources, you know, you're going down to those very detailed level descriptions there, shows you just how ridiculous that whole calorie is a calorie is is like putting diesel and petrol and a bit of coal in your car engine and saying, Well, they're all fine. They're all energy sources. So the car can just use them
equally. And you know, if you just add those pieces up together, that comes to this much energy, so go and use it, but you're just saying energy but protein as well,
or having us drink gasoline, because there's so many calories cup. Yes, exactly. A calorie is a perfectly fine unit of measure. That then gets misapplied. Yeah, you know, and so we have everyone confidently saying there's four kcal per gram of carbohydrate, fat, sorry, and protein and nine of fat. Well, those are approximations. And the variation is significant when you start looking across what real free real live free living
human beings are eating. It could end up explaining a great deal of noise in the data, but we just sort of apply those values you know, so So there's so many more aspects to all this. But you know, just eat if you eat your meat, eggs, dairy seafood. Yeah. Which, if you take the abbreviation stands for meds, nice. So take your daily meds. And a lot of this stuff
sorts itself out. It's only when we get further and further and further away from a species appropriate diet that we have to start imagining that we can balance You know, complementary proteins are, we can go to the store and buy a supplement to make up for what we ought to be getting from food, etc, etc, etc. and And again, if someone chooses not to eat red meat, that's a vegetarian, I'm fine, you're still an omnivore, you're eating other animal source foods, you're getting what you
need from other sources, it's when you completely eliminate animal source foods from the diet, that it becomes very problematic. I don't want to get into trying to convince you that you know, whatever. But I do have a strong sense that people who choose those paths don't have all the information that they think they do, in order to make the informed decision that they think they're making, for a number of reasons. And so, you know, the secret to enlightenment is to lighten up.
And so let's just, like I say, if we just eat what we like to eat, you know, if we're eating enough animal source food, I think intake issues resolve themselves. You know, I think that a lot of what we're seeing is the result of this misunderstanding of nutrient content. And then misunderstanding, just the impact of all that. So I want to encourage people, like you said, I think we live in a really good time, we have information available to us that used to be much harder to find it if we
could. We certainly have options that are available to us. I recognize that I'm very blessed because of my economic situation. And that's part of why I want this to be an honest conversation about go to the store buy eggs, right? The eggs in the US are very, very cheap. And you know, ground meat is what do you call it? Mince is getting is getting more expensive in the US. And that's unfortunate. But what's wrong with hotdogs? What's wrong with
some of the tinned meats? Well, we have a narrative that says, but is it really? Yeah, it? How misaligned are those
that you are just hitting exactly on an area that I agree with you very heavily and strongly with because I don't know, I appreciate the time, by the way. And I don't want to take too much your time, because I appreciate you, you know, you're getting into your day here. bios will raise this quickly. Some people on our side of the argument can talk a lot about grass fed meats, and I'm not saying I'm against that, I think is obviously a good thing.
However, you know, there's the there's the ideal of what you can afford, if you can really go for it. Great. There's also other things that maybe are not as ideal, but it's still better in my opinion. And so I think there's nothing wrong with going for those. And I think sometimes it becomes a bit of a snobbery between, oh, you should only go for this. It's like well, I
can't afford that. So there's just go vegetarian then in that case, and I find that quite frustrating because it doesn't actually it doesn't actually meet people where they are it's almost a bit judgmental. You either do it properly or you're not really doing it at all and I think that's just sad and wrong.
i The the version I've heard is if you can afford grass fed then don't don't even bother just I gave one presentation where somebody that I respect a great deal because of what I know of how he practices farming. said if you're not going to get people off onto a completely organic diet, you might as well leave them on the SAD diet. Well, okay, now now this is belief system. There's there's no evidence here to
support this. You look back at Atkins you look at Pennington, you look at the Aedes is you look at anybody who did this. Westman for 20, some years publishing, there's no requirement for that. Yeah, now. Okay, are there specific things that you think you're getting? From one versus the other? Let's talk about those because those aren't always as clear as people think they are. Yeah. And so and and one of you know, if you are in a position where you can have a relationship with a farmer buy
directly from them. Wonderful. I'm all for that. That's great. On the other hand, most people aren't that you know, located. And so I think it's far more important for people to like I say start where you are work
from there. You know, another aspect of this is an I said this one set a meeting I said, you know, why don't you go to your local just chain grocery store, you know, lowest cost grocery store, figure out what they're charging for various products, then go to your high and, you know, high label claim market figure out a comparable product
and a comparable price. Figure the difference by him at the cheap store bank the difference for a year cut a check to something like heat better South Africa or some other, you know, some other worthy effort. And maybe that would make a bigger impact on global issues, then thinking that, you know, my, my recyclable grocery bag means I'm
a better person than you. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of sort of virtue signaling at work, which doesn't do anything to actually improve people's health, or the status of farmers, or etc, etc. So, I'm absolutely sympathetic. I help people, you know, develop production systems to achieve whatever goal they have as managers. You know, I enjoy grass finished meat when it's available. But I also enjoy the meat that we buy at the supermarket. So it's all good.
Yeah, totally agree. Dr. Peter Ballester, it's been such a privilege for me to meet you and spend this time together. And I hope for those listening now there's lots of topics of conversation that have been started, because I feel like, as we've gone through today, there's been lots of different areas, we could go down. And it's been fascinating. So thank you so much for that.
And also thank you for the work you do, and for everything you bring to the local community, because it's a very particular angle. And I've learned so much from you. So thank you for that.
Well, thank you, Dan. I really appreciate that. And thank you for the opportunity. I look forward to the next time.
Excellent, good, man. Right. Take care of yourself and bye for now. Bye. Hello, you still there, Dan. Here, I can see one of the keen ones because you're still listening. So got a very simple request. Please go and review the podcast now on Apple if you haven't done so already. And I'll read it out next week on the show. So go and do that here about review next week. Everyone's a winner. Right. I'm going to shoot off now. Take care. Have a lovely week. See you next Friday.