Tara and Natalie Dropping Truth Bombs on the Agriculture Industry!

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hey everyone it's Dr Anthony JP again here with another episode of I'm free MD and here with a very special pair of guests Natalie kovrick and Tara Vander doosen I hope I pronounced that right I probably didn't they are the co-hosts of the Discover AG podcast together uh Natalie and Tara thank you so much for coming on how are you both hi thanks for having us on yeah we're doing good we're excited to be here good so uh for those who haven't come across your work or your social media podcast can you uh tell us who you are and what you guys do yeah I'll kick us off so my name is Tara Vander Neeson so you're really close on the pronunciation both Natalie and I have tough names um so I actually am a Dairy Farmer in New Mexico I grew up on a dairy farm I'm a fifth generation Dairy Farmer and then I married a fifth generation Dairy Farmer so we now dairy farm with his family and our two daughters in New Mexico my husband manages day-to-day operations on our dairy farm and then my role is actually I got my degree in environmental science so I deal with I always joke it's kind of the back end of the dairy it's you know the manure management soil Health water conservation just assisting my clients with permits and regulations and then about seven years ago I was you know classic Millennial on social media and I was just seeing a ton of misinformation about Dairy and sustainability and like its role in impacting the environment and so I kind of just started sharing online you know facts and information that I thought people might be interested in and that has obviously grown and changed and evolved over the years to the point where we're at now I partnered with Natalie about a year and a half ago and launched you know discover AG podcast and some some other businesses as well where we're able to share more about agriculture and what we're seeing and you know kind of be able to have these conversations around food where our food comes from our food systems and in AG in general right and Natalie tell us a bit about yourself so like Tara I grew up in agriculture I grew up on a ranch though so beef cattle actually in southwest Montana I was brought to Nebraska which is where I am now when I married my husband um like Tara I started sharing online um you know five six years ago for a very very different reason though I actually started direct to Consumer beef business with my um a different co-partner I did that for a couple years and that's really when I saw I think the power of social media and just you know connecting with people and talking about agriculture and I think also recognizing that we are a little bit you know we're two percent of the population and I kind of forgot that when I'm ex all I'm exposed to you know growing up in ag and being an AG and marrying into Agriculture and so I think I saw that you know recognition that there's people who are interested in seeing what we're doing and so I kind of pivoted from that direct to Consumer beef business and started sharing more personal stuff which like Tara said brought us together and a year ago you know we created discover AG oh very cool and so is that how you guys met just over over your work on social media yeah so we met on the internet like people always find that so funny especially maybe our parents and older Generations that we met online when we started sharing you know seven years ago was not that long ago but it was a while ago in the world of social media there was not a ton of people in ag sharing online not a lot of women sharing in ag online and so we kind of had a group where we were supporting each other talking with each other and that's how we met and just ended up meeting in real life and our friendship and our business grew from there right and so what were some of these you know some of this misinformation that you saw that that sparked your desire to sort of correct the the narrative yeah when it comes to the cattle side or the beef side of it I guess I think one of the big things we're up against right now is really you know the beef is bad for the environment you know that cows are ruining the planet and so I spend a lot of time or I did you know as Tara mentioned earlier I think what you share about online kind of like Ebbs and flows and the last couple years I've taken a pretty strong stance and kind of like talking about you know cow's role in climate what that actually looks like it means yeah and I mean for me I was coming at it from the dairy side but obviously we both have the commonality of having cattle and so both of us kind of share in that realm like what does cattle mean for the environment for Natalie you know it's grazing cattle out on pasture in a beef you know in a cattle ranch and for me it's like what can dairy cattle be doing you know dairy cattle on the flip side of the coin um end up eating a lot of our byproducts and things that would otherwise end up in landfill and also play an important role in impacting the environment in a positive way but in a completely different way than beef cattle do and so it's kind of cool to be able to come together and share those different perspectives from both the dairy and the beef world hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks guys that's obviously something that that people talk about now you know I've been pushing that this is a very important thing for us to include in our diets if not exclusively having our diets but a lot of the questions that I get or or people that say fire back say okay well maybe that that's good for us but it's not sustainable it's going to destroy the planet and you know we can't do that so how would you how would you both answer that well how long do your listeners want to say sit around and listen don't talk um first off I do think it's really interesting we got to this place and Society like I feel like you look back and you just wonder how did we get to this place where we've had ruminants grazing forever if you look back in history and all of a sudden now they're the culprit and so you know just grasping like how did we get to this point in society I feel like always kind of blows my mind you know but to I guess start getting into the weeds of the conversation I always again as Tara mentioned you know we're a cow calf operation which means we have a lot of mamas and a lot of babies running around out at pasture we're in a very beautiful part of Nebraska I think a lot of people associate the Midwest with you know the Corn Belt which is fine we're obviously that's some you know something we mainly produce but my our Ranch is an area known as the Nebraska Sand Hills and it's a very large you know grassland ecosystem it's intact it's beautiful it's one of the largest ones I think in um the nation if not the world and so you know cattle play a very important role in that and I love highlighting that relationship between you know what cows are doing when they're grazing the benefits when it comes to the soil when it comes to the water when it comes to biodiversity when it comes to you know plant life and animal life and so I think getting into that actual role of how you manage cattle plays a really big part of the environment and it has when you go all the way back to like the Buffalo roaming you know before we industrialize before we colonized and so I think trying to make that connection of they're actually a very integral part of maintaining these grasslands of playing a role for the soil yeah and I think I'm sorry I was gonna say I feel like with this conversation and we can get more into this but you know we have we've had very carbon tunnel vision focusing on like the amount of carbon and not looking at like the entire picture as Natalie talked about like you know really looking at the ecosystems of these grasslands yeah but it would be true these these grasslands co-evolved with the large ruminant animals as well you know they they played off each other and um I believe that that's that's been attributed to the fertility of these major grasslands and planes like the middle of America and elsewhere around the world that was actually one of the things that I heard about Australia is why it wasn't as fertile as other you know consonants because they didn't have large ruminant animals that helped bring about these big grasslands and then it really really fix a lot of nutrients in the soil um so how would I guess that would be some of the arguments as well you know some you know even even uh people like Alan I don't know if you're familiar with Alan Savory if you come across him yeah so very interesting guy but yeah and he and he's been taking large herds of animals and putting them through deserts and reversing deserts but you listen to him talk and he still attributes the the cause of the major deserts around the world from you know herd animals like herding animals um I disagree with that I think that's it's actually from from crop Agriculture and that's what turned the middle of America into the Dust Bowl in the in the early 1900s and then we had to sort of reverse that reverse gears and uh to save the middle of America from turning into a desert but that is the argument that's the conventional argument that that over grazing will cause problems I think that probably does so what what's what's um you know is there is there a way that you can properly raise cattle that you're benefiting the land versus versus hurting it or and can you destroy the land by overgrazing and things like that yeah absolutely I think you know being in the medical world you know you'd probably relate to the like the um poison is in the dose right so too much of any you know too much of a good thing can be bad and too much of a bad thing you know it's just it's all in how um I guess uh the scale of it or the spectrum of it and so the same thing comes with animals I mean you could have someone that um you know is not maybe they are at grasslands right so it's not a feedlot when we think of you know when we think of beef as bad we think of conventional right but so let's put us on in a grasslands situation you could still be doing everything right and if you're not properly managing them they could over graze but if you are properly managing then they're part of the cycle and so it really comes down to you know Land Management it really comes down to land stewardship like as ranchers we have a very important role and it's not just animal husbandry it's also managing the land and the soil and both of them together and so you know we have um my husband and I we do cover crops we do rotational grazing um you know we do a lot of things to take care of our land because that's you know at the end of the day we have a couple bottom lines one of them is the animals and one of them is the land you mentioned the Dust Bowl and it's funny that you said that because just yesterday we were recording for our podcast uh discover Ag and we were talking about some of the root causes of the Dust Bowl and it was um the article we were covering was about bison and the removal of bison and how that played a role in the dust bowl that we were removing grazing animals like the these grasslands as you said evolved with ruminant animals grazing on them and so I think that we can mimic those with cattle as Natalie said it's about Land Management it's about you know the ranchers and the farmers working with the land in their cattle to be improving these ecosystems uh and so it's just an interesting conversation when you really do look at that like history and how it evolved and how we can continue those practices now you could also take the same type of grassland and remove animals from it and as we've been kind of saying you know I think that's what people think you remove the animals and it will just like Thrive and it will just you know it will just take care of itself but it won't I mean you'll have desertification you'd have wild fire problems I mean there's a lot of things that animals are doing like we talked about this on the podcast about how if you actually get down to Nature and how it's designed I mean it's designed to function uh within itself but animals are a part of that so if you remove them you're going to have problems within nature yeah I mean that's the thing people forget is that animals are part of nature you know and it's like we're not like born invasive species that come from space and are just just this natural ecosystem like you know animals are the ecosystem as part of the ecosystem and you you take one out and you're going to mess that up so you know the law of unintended consequences you mess with a complex system you're gonna get very bad uh outcomes that you can't necessarily predict so yeah I was gonna say I think that's one of the things when it comes to us as you know consumer Shoppers buyers I think sometimes we ask for things and we don't fully understand you know maybe what we're asking for or the unintended consequences of what we're asking for and I think that's actually a big problem when it comes to the food system is a lot of people have opinions about what we should be doing for the food system and how it should be you know raised and grown and produced without fully understanding like okay maybe yes that would be a good change to make to our food system but that would actually also bring XYZ as a result are you prepared for that is that something you have thought about and I don't think we always make that connection of like you know maybe long term or you know the ripple effect we're just kind of like it's very tunnel focused of okay our food needs to be this way you know our land needs to be this way and it's it's just not a broad scope picture and I think Agriculture and food absolutely has to be a big picture yeah it was um it was something I was reading by by Thomas Saul I don't know if you're familiar with him he's an economist and author super interesting guy and when he was doing his um degrees um he did his undergraduate at Harvard then uh went on from there to his PhD at Chicago but when he was at Harvard he um he said he had a professor there that says okay so if you if you do this do you want to do this or this or whatever and he said okay well I would I would do you know choice a I said okay and then what would happen after that and say okay well this would probably happen and then what and then what and then what and it got around to the point that he just said oh shoot okay that actually had that probably would lead to a consequence that I didn't want and so that's that's the trick and so we wrote a book called um applied economics thinking past step one and so you know you have to sort of think okay and then the other thing sort of like a chest a chess master you know where you're thinking you know dozen steps down two dozen steps down the chain to see okay what is going to happen as opposed to just well this feel bad I don't want to do that as icky or cows that's even grasp well grass is good grass is nature you know that that's bad for that and people are very you know they get caught up a very surface level uh ideas and and I think that people Fray on that uh for different uh for different reasons and I think that's part of why we're having the conversations that we're having right now is because someone makes that service level argument and they say no no there is no stage two it's only stage one and of course there it's such a complex system that you have to think in these these sort of stepwise progression sort of ways yeah that's something Natalie and I talk a lot about is that agriculture is very nuanced it is a lot of information there's a ton of detail that goes into it it is not black and white there's not like one single answer and these headlines you know they do exactly what they're supposed to do it's just like a quick little blurp that people then like take as like law and that that's it that's the end-all be-all and they don't go any deeper than that and we were listening to a micro podcast and we had a quote that I love that was like the headline is like the killer of conversation and it would that's and I agreed with it so much like people read the headline and then that's it there's no discussion after that there's no more Nuance to the conversation and with ag like everything is so much deeper than that there's so much of the things that we don't even fully understand with all the science we have how can we expect to just know like oh removing cattle that's it like that's going to be the answer when there's just so many more layers deeper than that and I mean we haven't even gotten into like the nutrition side of things of how you know what the displays into our nutrition um just on the environment side yeah there was um it's funny I saw a a study from Columbia University and I found that 52 of people that you see some sort of catchy click-based or a headline or something like that that 52 of people won't even click on the article will not read the article but will comment and argue like they've read it just based on on the headline and so it's just like they'll read the headline and that's the only thing uh that they care about and they found that that people not only were arguing and talking about these things but had never clicked the article and and that's and that's what you see now now people only want to have conversation we talk about in years for the last few decades talking about how our attention span is getting shorter and shorter and shorter and now it's gotten to the point of just a sound bite like that's that's the only experience as far as people can actually you know grasp is just like oh this sound might like oh if it's longer than that I don't want to hear about it and uh and I always say that to people you know when I was having a discussion with someone online and they were they were you know vegan and they're like okay well what about that someone about this and they were actually being you know engaging in a conversation and so I was I was just replying um politely and I was just like listen I actually did a video covering all of these arguments and all these things and you know you can take a look at it and like if you have questions after that like you'll come to me but like everything that you're asking me I've addressed here and so he's like okay I'll take a look at it I sent him the link and he just came right back he's like oh 44 minutes nope it's like like these things these assessments can't be done in headlines you know like it's like there's there's actual substance to these things you have to have to actually dig into them and uh and you can't just you can't just talk in sound bites yeah unfortunately I'm not even surprised um and unfortunately you know for us Agriculture and farmers and ranchers it's like our our headlines are sound bites they're not sexy right like the carbon cycle of a cow you can't make that sexy in five words and you know it's hard to talk about carbon versus methane and the differences and make that sound cool too and so we I feel like we're at a disadvantage that we have very complex not super interesting things but very important things right like things we should be investing those 44 minutes into but we'd rather you know watch a nine second clip of something else and so yeah it's hard to go up against that yeah for 44 minutes worth of like you know cat memes or something like that you know definitely yeah they're watching 44 minutes of nine second Clips but like sitting down and watching 44 minutes of the actual like thought-provoking conversation is is too much yeah absolutely and or just the equivalent over text for 44 million because we've easily been like going back and forth for like an hour I'm like look this is this will be this will say all of us a lot of time just watch this you know but yeah it's very funny and um and disturbing at the same time you know but um so speaking about that I actually had a question I saw um a couple people that they were doing sort of regenerative agriculture you know in the sense like like you were talking about you know rotating animals through different pastures and um you know having you know different animals following different pastures and then you know the chickens following a few days after that and they were like eating the bugs off the you know the the feces and things like that so it was just this this stepwise progression and that that just made sort of upcycling nutrients and all these sorts of things they found it that that was you know putting more nutrients down in the ground that the grass was growing much more readily so they could they could they could support more animals the ground was getting more and more fertile as opposed to less and more plants were coming and more grass was growing and they also found that the um that the meat and the eggs were actually having a much higher level of like nutrients and vitamins and minerals and things like that is that is that typical in regenerative farming is that something that you guys find with with your style uh forming does that actually increase the nutritional uh value of of the products that you're producing so our beef actually enters like the conventional supply chain so excuse me so we would uh we have in like May kind of just this is just our operation too that's one of the hard things about agriculture is you could listen to me as a Rancher and then you could bring on another Rancher and they may have a completely different life cycle so for anyone who is listening um it's just not a copy stamp repeat there's a lot of variables that go into agriculture from farming and ranching perspective so I'll just talk a little bit about our operation um so our cattle are board we have in May um we they would stay with The Mamas we would graze them out at pasture all summer long we do that all the way until fall we're actually in a again being where we're located in Nebraska we're actually able to graze corn stalks which is a pretty cool thing we can use that as feedstock for animals so we'll go from pasture land um out to Corn stocks and we graze that through the winter and then we have a small period of time between when the farmers need us back off of the corn stalks before we can put them back on grass that we'll have to actually like supplement ourselves like with hay or things like that um and so that is a normal cycle for us and we're conventional operations so um I I can't speak to you know uh small level of regenerative agriculture but I think what we can pull from that is there's a spectrum of regenerative right so you would look at our operation we're we're pretty large in the scale of things so when it comes to the United States I know you have like probably a worldwide base of listeners when it comes to the U.S the average herd size for a bee farm is actually only 43 cows our operation is yeah it's very tiny which is is something I think that's really overlooked um and we can even get into the rabbit hole because I love to talk about how the beef industry is vastly different than the chicken and pig industry which is not something that people they kind of lump animal proteins all together and it's just not accurate um so anyway we're much much larger than that but we still do a lot of the same things that maybe you would have you know a smaller alternative farmer that's talking about you know this multi-specy grazing where he has the chicken going through and he has the you know maybe he's grazing like sheep with the the cattle as well um it's just a spectrum right so we're doing some of the same principles we're just doing it you know in a different way um and it goes back to our conversation really of like our jobs as ranchers is to look at the land we're at someone who is practicing you know quote unquote regenerative agriculture in Georgia is going to look a lot different than someone who's practicing quote unquote return of Agriculture Nebraska you know we have a different stocking rate we have different rainfall we have different soil even the soil from our operation from pasture to pasture can be different right so when we're out at the Sand Hills I talk about that soil so much more different than we would have cattle grazing maybe closer to our home base and so we're going to have to rotate those differently we have to manage them differently and so there's just a lot of variables that can go into it so I think when it comes to regenerative agriculture I I would love for people to understand that there's a spectrum there is it's not black or white again going back it's not you don't check a box and say like yes I'm regenerative check um it's like I am instilling these principles and then there's a spectrum of how we can instill them where we're located okay I don't know that was a really long answer I'm sorry that was great so and I'll answer on the dairy side I guess on the flip side of that coin we're also conventional and um I joke like we have the world's largest Cheese plant near us so all of our milk goes to cheese and people are always like oh what cheese can we buy like where can we buy your cheese and I'm like it's probably like the Walmart brand like I know we said to Subway and you know people like to not always think of like the you know the store-bought Brands as like less than but I would put our milk quality up against anyone like we have a phenomenal milk quality in our milkshed like our milk area um and so you know it's it's just the way the system is it you know big does not mean bad small does not mean good like there is it's a spectrum I love that Natalie used that word it's a spectrum in all sorts of practices and um how you're implementing different practices on your farm right and so what do you think is is behind this sort of anti-meat narrative is is growing bigger and bigger there's a lot of weird things happening and a lot of people are saying obviously we've been saying for years or people have been saying for years that I mean it's bad for you causes heart disease and things like that but it really started ramming it down this year actually somebody just sent me a um a picture of like their niece or something like that that had a project at school up in Canada where they said you know um is carnivore got a fad diet and say what if you saw this sign and said oh the carnivore diet and can help you and you know help you lose weight and and get better things like this would you call this a fad diet and why would you call it that it was a very leading and uh and manipulative of um of the schools to do that but what do you think is going on behind this and and um yeah maybe just just talking about the sort of anti-mede narrative yeah I think a lot of things unfortunately and I always um I was going to bring this up earlier when you're talking but I think one of the so social media is great and the way our society is built right now is great right for connection look at us we're connecting we're talking about you know common interests and sharing I feel like a good message we never would have been able to do that without social media right but I do feel like one of the pitfalls and downfalls of it is you can get into um almost an you can feed yourself what you want to see right so if you follow only vegan accounts that preach you know that vegan is the way and cows are killing the environment that is what you're going to feed you know your mind with and you can find a narrative basically to support whatever it is you want to support and I feel like that's a very dangerous thing to do so I think that's part of maybe what's happening is that we are as a society now able to feed our own addiction essentially you know or feed our own belief that and if we don't care enough if you're not a type of person that you know values gathering information or looking at different viewpoints or you know what we've been talking about taking the conversational level deep and going beyond the headlines and the taglines then it's going to be really easy to fall into some of these things that are absolutely not true um you mentioned the school system which is funny because I this is something I grapple with I'm like am I just in my own little bubble where I feel like people are out to get me as a Rancher and it's it's just a loud voice that's not you know like the majority it's just one loud crazy person over here yelling at me Kim is talking about how you know cows are killing the environment last week on the podcast we talked about how there is a school system in Utah that was talking having their students do reports on crickets as a protein Source because cows are killing the environment and so I feel like you do see these things where you're like no I'm not making this up like there are things to be concerned about where we're seeing these headlines and we're seeing people preach and so I think it's getting into the school system I think celebrities are playing a role I think influencers online are playing a role I mean there's a lot of people who quote unquote are sharing their you know expertise opinion um and it's going a lot farther than it used to before we had you know social media I think as far as you talked about with the you know fad diet of like being a carnivore I think it's crazy that we've gotten to this point considering if you look at our evolution of eating meat uh the fact that there are like in my mind it just I'm like how can it make sense that people want to completely remove a source of food that is so nutrient dense like they're I don't think there is like a planet or a place where you can truly put a plant against a piece of steak and like convince someone that like there's not more nutrients in the steak like there absolutely is more nutrients in that steak than any other Food Source on the planet and it's like how have we gotten so gotten this like so wrong how have we gotten so removed from the very basis of the fact there is more protein in a steak than just about any other food on the planet especially compared to you know calories and all these other things and it's it is wild that we are like in a place where we have school systems teaching and implementing these practices having students talk about you know do these essays uh it just seems really like backwards like sometimes I have to stop and think like how on Earth did we get here yeah it's pretty it's pretty creepy as well you know because like schools aren't supposed to be doing I mean that's the parents job to feed their kids and to talk about food and um you know you're supposed to be teaching I used to be reading writing in arithmetic or you know classic um you know education you know learning the classics learning languages learning things that would serve you as an adult as opposed to you know being taught how to think as opposed to what to think and now it's kind of being taught what to say and I also think it's funny having a fad diet Club you know um being attributed to what we've always eaten and and what all the best evidence shows I've been eating for millions of years now and so and certainly up until very recently everyone sort of understood that this was this was the best source of nutrition very simply we are animal tissue and the point of eating is to build and maintain our animal tissue right so what's going to be what's going to have most of those nutrients is other animal tissue it's it's you don't have to do like a big conversion it's there it's pre-made it's already there it's already done for you plant tissue is very foreign as it can get here on Earth and it's an entire different Kingdom of life and that's not very easy to then turn that animal tissue into or sorry turn that plant tissue into animal tissue there are some animals that can do it but we're not great at it and so we do benefit from just going straight to the source and and just the argument that that animal tissue which we are is somehow inherently bad for us and I always wonder it's like okay so your your muscle in your arm that's going to cause cancer to you that's gonna that's gonna give you heart disease just being in your body does that does that make any sort of sense and um no one ever really has an answer for that you know but and they don't when you when you sort of ask them like like you know why would animal tissue why would just the body of an animal all of a sudden be carcinogenic and and cause all this damage and what you know what sense does that make you but it's it really baffles me that we were sort of even having this discussion I mean I do think we've lost touch with a little bit of like fact and reality as a society we just interviewed um a research scientist out of Colorado State and she said something that I will never forget she said when it comes to you know the food or agriculture you know whatever you want to call this she said it is the only industry that science and emotion are on the same level and I thought wow if that's not true and so I think the emotion Factor plays a really large role into this you know you talk about again going back to the science of like what our bodies are built of and like what we need to sustain our bodies um people don't want to hear you know there's the top of a food chain people don't want to hear that we're primates that we have carnivoreal instincts they don't want to hear you know they don't want to think about the killing of the animals that you know this emotion has come into play and especially when it comes to these vegan vegetarian Lifestyles that you know they really build a lot of their decision making off of that emotional factor I have listened to so many interesting and I have friends that have you know shared personally about you know their thoughts and beliefs as a vegetarian and a vegan um and it's pretty astounding you know it's hard to combat science and some of this reality when they're so deeply rooted in an emotional standpoint almost uh I have so many things I want to say to both of your guys's statements but I'm going to start with um you know you mentioned that like in your last comment about how there are some animals that can turn plant material into you know protein and it we had another scientist on Dr Von holder and he was talking about how cattle are literally one of the only they are the only animal on the planet they can take plant food and turn it into better quality protein and it's because of you know enzymes in their stomach there are multiple compartments of their stomach and they turn 60 grams of protein into a hundred grams of complete protein so 60 grams of incomplete plant protein into 100 grams of complete protein that's incredible and we get to benefit from that we don't have that in our stomach there's not a that's never going to happen for us it is we have to consume those animals and when you really like think it goes back to kind of the very beginning of our conversation like the like underlying principles that are at play the science that's at play here that we don't fully understand uh that is going into making this protein is really incredible and then to Natalie's point about you know the vegans I've seen a lot of vegan comments that I've talked about like oh well if you actually had to like butcher your own animals like you wouldn't be able to do it and I'm like the opposite is true back when most people butchered their own animals most people had no problem eating meat it's because we have gotten so disconnected from our food sources and then we don't understand that life cycle is why we've ended up I think where We've Ended up yeah I I always thought that was very funny at this I mean someone who hasn't just paid attention to any part of human history uh I mean just I mean just you know it's all about you know like you know you know killing uh lambs and Rams and things like that for a fees it's all about you know just just eating animals and things like that and they talk about it's like yes they did this and this is how they did it you know and um I mean just that is just a the solid fact that everyone was was part of the food chain of the you know the food cycle and things like that but you're right we've been we've been you know divorced from our our own food and and where our food comes from that it's it's very easy for people to forget where it comes from and and also forget that farming crops is no different you have to destroy an entire ecosystem just to grow a single crop you kill all the plants all the animals 50 of 55 of borneo's rainforests are gone now they've turned those into polymer crops killed all the orangutans killed all the snakes killed all the animals living there and then I heard someone say they're like oh well you know yeah that's true but then they they just planted trees again so you know same same you know it's just I was like no you're like not same same not same same and yeah there's this there's this dietitian I followed the couple there's two things I want to touch on that you said there's this dietitian I follow and she said you know not to continue this emotion thing but I just think it plays such a large role she says that the further you are from your food source the more you fear your food source and I think you know you talk a lot about how we forget where it comes from I don't know if that's so much it anymore as that Fear Factor enters in a lot of questions enter in like when we're removed we have questions about okay what are they doing what did they do what does this mean like let's go down the the label Rabbit Hole of like the problem of food labeling in our system right now you know I feel like as a consumer when you're removed from your food system you see these labels and you start questioning like oh what's that word mean oh is that word better than that one you know that emotion Creeps in when we remove ourselves from the food system and I think that's a you know again a big big problem we have and then yeah going to you know I like to call it almost hypocrisy when the the lifestyle that's advocating for you know plant only or more plant um it's like if we cared about you know Carbon no one is talking about agriculture is the only industry or forestry if you count that with it that is a carbon sink right so we can actually remove carbon from the environment and you know no one wants to talk about that so you want to play you know remove the animals from this this industry that could actually be a solution to some of our problems um and go to plant-based or you know all planting all crops it's like there goes our soil you know we have a lot of things to consider if you were to to do that and not only that you have marginal Land versus non-marginal land so a lot of cattle Grays what can only be used to Grace cattle right again my Ranch is a beautiful example of that if you follow along on my personal Instagram you'll see a static pasture on horseback riding through beautiful fields that are very steep very you know uh just not you could not get a tractor out there to plant and here in Nebraska we're not growing grapes and avocados and other things you know like where we're at is beautifully built to graze cattle and so if you want to just kick that out it's like we're already a nutrient starve nation and we're already you know food secure Nation too and you want to kick out an animal that not only upcycles and turns inedible you know cellulose into protein you want to kick that out but you also want to kick out the nutrition portion of it like that's incredibly irresponsible and on the other side of that you want to remove cattle then you're going to be removing a very great nutrient source for our soils nobody is talking about that in the Plant World in the plant-based world that manure is the best fertilizer like I'll we are not out on pasture our animals are confined but one of the great things about that is we collect all of our manure and compost it all and then it leaves our farm and goes out to other Farms as fertilizer if we didn't have that cow manure we wouldn't be producing you know nutrition for our soils like we that's a whole nother piece of this that like we need those animals and we need their manure in order to provide for our soils to continue this entire cycle yeah first thing um guy I was talking to Dr Peter Ballard oh yeah have you guys spoken to him yeah we ran into him at a conference a couple months ago oh great Natalie totally fangirled over him when she met him oh that's awesome which um which conference was that uh we were in Denver at the global uh Roundtable for sustainable beef oh very cool yeah yeah so I actually in Denver at uh low-carb Denver he was there as well that was just so cool yeah yeah so a couple things in Denver and um I guess you just didn't have to go too far so that's good and yeah but yeah I mean he pointed out that you can't have plant agriculture without animal agriculture and um you know everyone thinks it's like well um you know you have to you know you have to grow all these crops or you know for the cows and things like that and um you know he was pointing out that it's like well no actually 92 percent of the the feed that animals eat are inedible by humans like you say they're up cycling there's a bunch of cellulose everyone just sticks and twigs and things like that that we're not going to be able to do anything with but the cows can and they can turn that into very high nutrients um steaks and um and then also their their byproducts or what is is rejuvenating the soil and that and that's you know I mean people are going to say it's like oh these are these people this is just a big big for a big cattle or a big big egg yeah big egg um but you know the alternative to this is is um you know big woe because the the only only other you know really um fertilizer source that I'm I'm aware of is is like petroleum-based so they you know that that could be part of this as well they're trying to Edge out you know um animal agriculture so that they can sell more of their very substandard um fertilizers and things like that and that actually is uh you know a big industry that is that is you know trying to to influence an infiltrate different markets like this yeah go ahead Natalie as I say a couple of things on that um again being a medicine so I always forget to mention this but I am a pharmacist by education and so I actually practiced a full-time Pharmacy and then part-time Pharmacy and now I just kind of fill in but um you know it's really cool when you look at like the byproducts of an animal what it actually goes into and so um you know people talk about again like let's end animal agriculture or remove these like okay say buy to a lot of your medicine okay say bye to a lot of fillers in you know everyday things that we're using say goodbye to you know I don't know tennis I mean it's insane what you actually look at what if an animal contributes to um and then the other thing there's actually studies like if people want to get into the again going back to like carbon and footprint um you know we talked about you mentioned that the 86 percent of what uh cattle consume is non-edible by humans um there are studies that show if we didn't the cattle weren't consuming those byproducts we'd actually maybe see our um carbon footprint go up because though those products have to go to a landfill right so there's a study that shows if you compost it which is like the best case scenario and like are we really let's be realistic are we all really going to compost all that you know not in today's society um the footprint went up by five times if you put it into a landfill it went up by 49 times and so I think again we're just forgetting the these the things that the roll cattle play and what would actually happen the unattended consequences if we tried to kick them out of the cycle because they're they're just the more and more you get into the weeds the more and more you realize how pertinent and important they are well Natalie just heat me up perfect for what I wanted to say because my favorite thing to do when we have tours on our Dairy is we go to the commodity Barn which is basically like our cow's Pantry like it's a massive area with all the different ingredients that go into our cow's diet and it's amazing when my husband starts listing off all of the byproducts that our cattle are consuming like entire just feed bunks that are filled with tons and tons and tons of byproducts byproducts from ethanol you know buy products from um you can feed I know lots of dairies that feed like Bakery waste like things that leave bakery that can't be consumed grocery store waste um you know if you're in California a lot of times or even Florida I know a lot of the dairy cattle get fed like citrus waste for making orange juices um different tons of different fruits and vegetables that are processed and you have leftovers and the cattle are able to eat them and the alternative is like Natalie said if it goes to a landfill it is a significant larger contributor I'm sorry there's a train going by my house right now um but there is a significant larger contribution to our car in footprint and instead cattle are able to upcycle that for us reduce that impact and actually turn it into nutrient dense food and on our Dairy obviously milk and then ultimately beef and it's really cool to see that and it's something I don't think anyone ever thinks about when you eat you know your or you have pour your glass of orange juice you don't think about what happens to the pulp or when you get your non-pulp orange juice what happens to the Rind all of that can get fed to cattle yeah Tara and I were actually down uh last fall we were visiting a cotton Farm in California and that's a huge uh byproduct that is used from the cotton industry to feed cattle um and almonds almond holes like uh so again it's this kind of stickular thing where it's pretty cool that agriculture can take the waste from other parts of Agriculture and instead of dumping it into a landfill we can again feed it to a cow and it can make this piece of protein which again is one of the most complete but beneficial nutrient dense things we can put it as our in our body as a human one thing I always have to ask people on tour is on Dairy is if they're allergic to peanuts because um we have a lot of peanut production in our area and our calves are bedded with peanut shells so the shells are really soft when they're crunched up they make really great bedding and so you can walk into our calf barn and literally see like lots of little peanut holes and that's what we bed with that would otherwise again like we actually can pay the farmer for it so they generate a revenue from a waste stream on their farm and it's a really great bedding for us yeah and that's the thing like yeah almond almond Hustler I guess it's like wood yeah and they're like actually that and do something with that yeah that's actually pretty amazing yeah cows are cool man I mean that we need to be that's our Sound by that we need to try and get out there towns are cool there's our sexy sound bite yeah yeah that was the thing yeah and that that's always the the arguments you know go from nutrition well you know you know arguing that you know this is this is better better for our nutrition you can still get there and then they then people will switch over to oh well the environmental impact and then you know you talk about that and then and then we'll always switch over to the ethical side of things as well and those are the three main arguments why we should eat one way or the other and I remember I can't I can't exactly who remember who exactly it was but it was a famous sort of vegetarian and intellectual years ago or so and he said that um vegetarians are are just people who've never heard a tomato scream you know and um you know sort of a funny thing but uh you know I I understand where it came from you know you see animal suffering he doesn't like that and so that's fair enough but you know there was a time that people didn't think that animals could feel pain the way we would and that's why it was it was okay to treat them certain ways obviously we know better now and we have laws protecting them which is important and people don't understand that either they think they're just abused and and tortured and humiliated and and um and that's not the case you mean you go to jail you do something like that and you should and um but now we know that better that animals you know obviously well why why would they feel pain differently than we do but but now we know that about plants soon plants actually do feel pain they have a they have a sort of a nervous system and they feel and respond to damage which is what pain is and they they actually screen they send out chemical signals with other plants saying hey I'm being attacked I'm being killed protect yourself I can send out specific signals if they're getting eaten by a certain animal or insect they'll send out a specific signal all the plants will start increasing the the toxins for that for that animal or insect and uh you know they don't they actually have a very very complex interaction uh with the other plants around them and you know it's it's not nice that we have to eat something and that something has to die for us to live but it is reality and you know there's no nice way of doing that but you know it's it's going to be one thing or the other and um and unfortunately you know uh we do have to do something or we die or kids die our parents die and I guess you can make that choice as an individual to let yourself just go but something has to suffer something has to die and what you can't do is you can you know make it as as ethical and Humane as possible and still feed yourself what you need and give your kids what they need yeah so going back to earlier when I said that I feel like we are just a little bit removed from reality I think people forget how vicious nature is right so I saw a really funny meme the other day of uh oh I'm glad you're going to share this I think but I don't know um there was a deer laying in a hospital bed and it had love you know humans surrounding him and it said you know how vegans think Wildlife pass away um and it's like it's pretty vicious out there you know of what could happen to animals if we aren't you know protecting them or caring for them um and so yeah I have a big a pretty big problem when people like to lump um you know ranchers or Farmers I just had someone attack me on Twitter the other day about how we rape abuse you know all of the Terrible Things That ranchers are doing to their cattle and I obviously have a very huge issue with that because I have been involved in agriculture you know I was raised on a cattle ranch I married a you know a Rancher I know cattle you know raise cattle with um him and our children and um it could not be further from the truth are there outliers that abuse animals absolutely but that's going to be the same in Indie industry is there you know a medical professional that doesn't care for his patients properly that is you know corrupt absolutely like there is not you can't point me to an industry that doesn't have correct people in it it's unfortunate you know that there are you know because I guess when it comes to human human interaction maybe people would argue that they have the autonomy to fight back a little bit more than animals would so yeah it's unfortunate there are people within our industry that Care for Animals you know that don't do it the way we do but they are absolutely 100 and I can say this factually um they are the minority they are not the rule when it comes to you know everyday farmers and ranchers who are carrying for their animals yeah I think on the dairy side um you know we get attacked a lot about like the word rape gets thrown out because we use Ai and it just reminds me I grew up on a bull bread dairy where there was no AI it was fully bull bred and I don't think it's this like lovely beautiful thing that people think it is like Bulls can be very aggressive I don't know how many trucks my dad had that the door was dented in on the side because a bull like rammed his truck like they are very aggressive animals and so when you see a eyeing in real life you're like oh like it is a very calm situation we get to choose when the cow is bred which means a lot of times we wait longer than what quote-unquote nature would wait so that the cow isn't bred as soon and until people see that though they have this huge misconception of what it actually looks like and and I do agree with Natalie that nature can be aggressive like we were just watching a National Geographic with our kids and I remember my kids were like fighting for you know like they were cheering for the zebra and I was like don't for get that if the mom lion doesn't you know get the zebra like the Cubs are gonna die and they were like oh my gosh and it was like this is nature like there is not a a happy ending on you know somebody somebody has to be fed someone's going to need food and it just is a reminder I think we all have to that we have to get our calories and our nutrients from somewhere whether that's plants or animals there's a cycle there's a life cycle that has to take place yeah absolutely and uh yeah I obviously I grew up watching nature videos and and so I never had it had a doubt in my mind what was going on out in the wild but they I think they've actually changed the nature videos now I I got so uh put off by a nature video I saw I think was like you know some sort of National Geographic thing and there was all this sort of narrative and and editorialization that was going in as well and it was just it was I had to turn it off it was just a waste of time and they have these lines that are hunting something down and then they're sort of getting up to it and you're like yes this is the exciting part and us to them like idiot I'm like no like no you know they left that out yeah and so people to see like what is actually happening it's like it's vicious it's brutal and that is life and um it's important to know about that and there was one um there was a like this uh I think it was like maybe Disney did it but it was about lions and things like that and they and um like I said you know these these lines were hungry and they got this like bull hippo or something like that and took it down they wouldn't show any of it and they just the narrator says like oh yeah they took this down they killed it but then they you know didn't want to eat it because it was just so full of rancid fat like that was like animals love sad like those were like how was it rancid it was alive two minutes ago not just going rancid it's not like living with a bunch of of you know the festering fat in you know in its body so it was just like it was all this just this weird uh you know just sort of political bent on these things and again just you know trashing me trashing fat and and um and uh and trying to pretend that animals don't don't get killed or eaten in the wild it's crazy I I also know there are some people that talk about like the humanization of animals through like cartoons you know you mentioned Disney that's what made me think of it like Disney movies and how we humanize them and the relationships and kind of like um I guess put them in a different Spotlight than again going back to like what nature is when it comes to animals and there are people who will talk about how they kind of feel like that that is playing a role into especially like younger Generations growing up with this mentality around like you know cows are friends not food you know I try to avoid using the word like people are always like are your cows happy and I actually really avoid using like human human characteristics on animals because of that exact reason I'm like I what I am worried about as the the Dairy Farmer is that my cows are healthy they're comfortable that they in are enjoying their habitat that their pen is clean like all of those things are what that's my job I cannot give a human characteristic like happy to account if it is healthy I think that is a sign of being content with their surroundings and to me that like the health benefit like the health of the cow is the ultimate indicator of how we're caring for our animals yeah also you know they've changed how how the cartoons are as well because I remember when I was a kid and certainly like the old school was I mean they still had these you know anthropomorphized animals but they were they were still trying to kill and eat each other you know yeah you know like even like like Wiley coyotes trying to that bird and he's just like like Tom and Jerry going after each other or you know something to just be going around and like look at it like they turn into a stake in their eyes yes murder and eat it and I think that has had a bit of you know reality to it was like yeah that's that's what happens there that's a predator that wants to kill that wants to eat it you know maybe you know has it mess up in funny ways but it that's that's what it's trying to do and you you didn't didn't I wasn't lost on you even those even though it was a kids show maybe that needs to be our next venture is a gruesome childhood bring back the gruesome cartoons yeah like the Itchy and Scratchy Show or something like that just like just over the top violence with uh with animals yeah yeah I actually saw a New York Times opinion article or it was like where you advice column it was an advice column and it was a vegan who was sharing that their cat goes outside and they were having like a real conundrum that the cat was bringing in Birds was killing birds and bringing them back home and they didn't know what to do and they were like should I leave my like should I force my cat to stay inside and I just I had to just laugh because there was nothing else to do but I was like that's that's the cat's nature like you are trying to change the nature of the cat the cat no matter how much you feed it is going to want to go out and hunt birds and mice it's a predator that's what it's meant to do and I was like I can't believe this is our advice column in the New York Times in 2023 yeah and that that's you know when I talk to people as well you know on that on the ethical side of things they say well it's just you know it's not okay to you know that something has to die for us we shouldn't you shouldn't have you shouldn't kill something I was like okay so what do we do we get rid of all predators we get rid of all the whales all things all the lions all the you know big cats all the you know the birds of prey things like that and and oh automatically they all say it's like oh well no no I mean I mean that's just that's just nature yeah weird nature too you know like that's that we're a part of Nature and we forget that because we live in houses but we actually are part of nature we are animals we're from the kingdom Animalia we and we grew up with these other animals and eating other animals and that that is part of it it's not nice you know but it is reality and that that and you you know deny reality at your own risk that was what uh Marcus Aurelius said um in his meditations he was talking about death and he said you know death is just a natural part of the world and and you know to so you it's just something natural it's just something that happens and so to fear something natural makes you a child you know and so and that that I I feel the same way about our food supply this is not this is nature and this is natural and this is what we are supposed to do this is what is in our nature to do and this is what provides us with the best health to develop uh to our our best potential to live our best and most healthy life to live as long as we can in a healthful way and to provide our children our family members and our parents with the best life possible as well and that is our nature and to deny that is childish because it's it's not going to go away it's also very foolhardy because you will suffer for it it's not it's not you can't just get an equivalent with with with uh plants even with supplementation it doesn't work there's actually a study with that and um I mean obviously it's playing this day you only have plans to have these different biotoxins that they make to harm you for if you eat them so obviously that's going to cause harm but you know when you're not designed to eat something it's it's not going to work properly in you there was a study with the the Maasai in 1931 was published in Jana and their neighbors Dr kuyu Who were genetically similar because they enter breath they intermarried and uh the Maasai you know just eat meat blood and milk and uh that could be or largely plant-based all food plant-bases this is back in the 20s that they were studying these things the 20s and 30s and so this is like a vegan's dream you know there's no pesticides no fertilizers there's no nothing it's just just you know plants plants you get in just out in the Wilds in Africa and that they will cultivate and uh and they found that the uh Maasai were adult males were five inches taller fifty percent stronger um or sorry twice as strong and um or something like 20 28 pounds heavier lean muscle mass and they're much much better health in in every every regard back to who you were uh had sort of bone deformities uh low bone density they were anemic they had all these uh different sorts of health issues Dental issues uh they would get chest infections they would get you know all sorts of different uh nasty infections much more susceptible to them and they had a lot of vitamin and mineral deficiencies and so they they tested that and they tried to like give them all the supplementation to catch them up with all the things that they were deficient in and they found it actually didn't didn't help their health at all you know they were still sick and they were obviously you're not going to change their development but it wasn't until they started feeding them meat and taking away the plants and so they replaced the plants with meat that they actually got healthy again so you know it's not enough to just just supplement that's not good enough and so if you want to do that to yourself if you want to suffer if you want to hurt yourself that's your business you don't get to do that to your kids and you don't get to push that on other people absolutely out of bounds yeah I think that's one thing um we talk about a lot on our podcast and just in general conversations Tara and I really stand for food choice so it's like yes I guess you know if that this is the way you want to run your household with you know whatever food purchasing habits it is or you know food products it is that's great but you know we have the we draw the line when you know people start wanting to push that out that like everyone has to eat that way I mean I I'd be interested in your taking this but I I really find it hard to believe that there could be like one food um diet that is across the board you know healthy for everyone like you know there's what is it eight billion people on the planet now and you're telling me that we should all be eating one exact same way I just don't subscribe to that um and I also that's why I like going back to kind of like the regenerative you know conventional conversation um you know we got to where we got in the food system because people wanted like you know affordable safe food um and as our food system weights built right now like the best in every aspect no but at the end of the day we do have you know options for everyone to eat um you know at the end of the I mean we obviously still have you know food insecurity in the US I don't want to like deny that reality um but we're pretty fortunate to have the food system we do to be able to go to make the choices we want to and so it's pretty hard to argue again you know with your stance too like on the carnivore diet it's pretty hard to argue like I am for you know the conventional grocery store beef on someone's plate that they can afford before I end them not putting the meat there at all so when we want to get into that like regenerative grass-fed only narrative I'm like well again I go back to food choice if there's a family that doesn't you know can't afford it or doesn't maybe care about some of the values you do or you know understand like at the end of the day I am for like meat on the plate um and unfortunately that involves kind of the conventional food system if we want to do it widespread at an affordable you know price and at a very fast price too like people who you want to take away your doordash okay you want to take away all these the Convenient Food factors we have in America and go back to like you know buying I'm all for buying for your local Rancher that's great I'm all for shopping at the local farmers market you know I used to do that when I lived in a big city like some of these habits I absolutely support but that changes a lot of the other things again going back to like what we asked for and understanding like the consequences and the ripple effect that comes behind that yeah and going to back to kind of your point about like the nutrition and the food choice and people making decisions I think where I start getting really worried is looking at like these school systems like we have you know both the New York school system and the LA school system who are pushing more vegan options on our children and I'm just that is extremely like it almost feels like we're running a science experiment on our kids which is terrifying that we don't know the full consequences of a you know plant-based diet and some of these school systems it's in my mind I'm like it's not like they're getting like an avocado or you know other like tons of really great nuts or legumes or what you know all these like Whole Foods that's not what they're getting and so we're removing one of the most nutrient dense things on their plate in these school systems and giving them a lot more you know calories with nutrient deficient you know lots of carbs filling them up and that really is a huge concern to me is when we're pushing these diets onto to our children and we're not realizing the unintended consequences and we're removing nutrient dense foods from their their plates going to back to the earlier conversation when you talked about like we're at this point of like this anti-meet narrative and I do actually I think we've hopefully seen a peek of it because I do think we are seeing vegans come out of the Woodworks kind of saying like sure I felt great the first six months or the year or whatever it is but we're starting to have that longer time span and that lifestyle where they're coming out to say like I've been in it for seven years now and the last four were actual hell and you know so we're getting this narrative and so going to what Tara said about the long-term effects of veganism like I actually think the longer someone stays in veganism the more detrimental it is and we're starting to see him come out of it and so to push it on our kids at such a young age and to do it so many years you know you're in the school system for 18 years so if you're not going home and having a well-bounced meal you're going to get a vegan lifestyle that's like Tara said a pretty crappy one at that you know for 18 years like what's 18 years due to your body if you talk to a lot of vegans like they're out of it by that time like there's not a lot of 20-year vegans out there I mean I don't know I guess I don't know the percentages but I feel like a lot of them like break it you know at a certain point where they're like sure I felt great because I was making other lifestyle changes or because I was cutting some of the crappy food but the longer I stayed in it you know the more detriment I had to my body because I was lacking those you know amino acids I needed I was lacking the protein the macronutrients that I needed yeah so it's actually 82 of vegans stop being vegan after a year yeah yeah it's quite high and uh and also gave me it's more detrimental during during development and kids that are going vegan things like that they have the lower bone density their shorter stature um and they have high risk lossism as well there was a study out of Oxford in 2008 that showed that people went vegan after five years and they checked with MRI that their brains actually shrunk by five percent Plus so they actually oh my gosh they're bringing by volume and we actually see this in neurosurgery as well you can actually see uh the difference in the spinal cord Integrity uh and and brain as well um in in C because their spinal cord actually atrophies after several years uh one major reason for that is B12 cannot get B12 from plant-based diet and so some people don't don't uh supplement enough and actually you know most people are chronically low on B12 we see this all the time people have very low B12 but they don't even know it because the reference range is is similar in the U.S and in Australia sort of like 160 to 620 something like that right and so people will be in there like oh they're you know 250 300 400 something like that like okay you're right there in the middle of the range that's what most most doctors will look at that and go oh yeah yeah you're fine well below 400 you can actually get nerve damage and demyelination of your axons in your in your brain cells and your and your nerve cells so you can actually see that demyelination and that thinning and narrowing of your spinal cord so it's actually very serious uh serious issue that people aren't aren't understanding you're doing that to yourself as an adult it will have serious consequences you do that to a kid it has a permanent impact on stunting their development yeah and unfortunately I do feel like when it comes for um females I do feel like that um the vegan diet or vegetarian can be used as a um it's just restrictive eating yeah um but what's that called White yes thank you um it's used as a cover for an eating disorder um it's been shown for females that it you know that way they could say that oh no I can't eat that because I you know and it's just really sad when you step back and look at like um the health because that's when it it really um tears me up a little bit is when we see these younger Generations the teenagers or the you know early age college girls that are um you know living this lifestyle they don't really understand I think like what's actually happening inside their bodies the negative relationship with food yeah yeah yeah I had a I had a a friend of mine actually knew and when I was in San Diego and she she'd been blaming for a while and she told me that she sort of basically went to these vegetarian sort of you know salad soup bars and and she said the reason she did that was because the the vegetarian food was easier to throw up and so she would eat that she makes a point eating it and then she could throw it up and it'd be comfortable and get rid of it and that was that was easier for her so uh that was I mean that was that was just one person but um it sort of fits with what you're talking about it's it's just wild I think I've said this but it just as wild this is where we've got to with our food like our food system our food sources and how we view the food that we're putting into our bodies so I'm Catholic um and so we're in Lent right now and so on Fridays we abstain from me and I swear on Fridays I'm like I don't know what to eat I don't know I'm like how does someone live this way all the time I for one don't know what to eat and then I feel like I I truly do feel like I um because I'm obviously not anywhere where like I'm sourcing like amazing Seafood um I feel like I ate crappier that day like I just don't feel good that day I'm like well great Friday's back around you know I gotta find something to eat that makes me feel good because I feel like I just snack on crap and so it just I always think wow how does someone live like this seven days a week 365 days a year X amount of years in a row yeah you know you know the more that I learn about like the carnivore diet I'm not carnivore but I've been learning more and more about it recently and it's made me stop when I eat like Whole Foods whether it's meat or vegetables and think about how it truly tastes to me um not because this is something I saw a carnivore talk about is like your salad how does it actually taste you you know you talked about like the plant putting out like you know what I don't know exactly what it is but things that make it taste like bitter or things so that as humans we wouldn't want to eat it and yesterday I was eating a salad and I was like you know if it wasn't for the dressing that I had poured all over the salad I like it would be I'd be having a really hard time like palatability wise eating these just whole lettuce uh on the other hand I had a great salmon and the salmon had like nothing on it I mean it was I think it was probably cooked I think it said it was cooked in like a lemon butter and it was amazing and I just was like contrasting those two different things that like how on its own like steak with get cooked in butter and maybe even maybe garlic maybe a little salt and pepper like very minimal things how amazing it can taste to you versus like the salad that you're putting like you know buttermilk ranch on it or you know whatever lots of different salad options and just thinking about what those Whole Foods actually taste like to your palette at their core yeah I think I think that's really uh telling you know uh why would we evolve to hate the taste of you know what we're supposed to eat or why were we designed and created to hate the taste of something that we're supposed to eat that doesn't make any sense you know deer don't go around eating you know the crappy tasting leaves and I've seen cows eat like really green grass their eyes are just wider yes you know like they they are really enjoying that and so if you know if you notice something bitter I think that's a very good sign that that's something bad for you because our tongue and our brain in a very sophisticated machines and they can identify harmful chemicals in there and then give that negative feedback saying hey this is bad for you spit it out it was like a Mr Yuck sticker back spit it out and she just automatically do you and then this is why kids say something go like oh no that's that's that's not good for me and uh and that's how you survive in the wild that's how you survive sort of eating things oh don't don't want to eat that and um and so I do think that's exactly what that is I think that's you you're are identifying harmful things and so if something is bitter I think it is bad for you now just because something is good for you doesn't necessarily mean it is good for you sugar and yeah that's the flip side of the coin yeah well but it's it's um it's uh you know it's a drug and we also have recognized uh you know fructose is being safe because you know things that contain fructose uh are generally not acutely poisonous to us now there can be some defense chemicals in them like their furana coumarines in Citrus all citrus that can be quite harmful to you you have to detoxify but they're much less toxins and defense chemicals in things that contain fructose that's that's what people have decided is why we recognize fructose as the sweetest of the carbohydrates so this is something we recognize as safe but it's also addictive it also gives an addiction signal to the uh you know a dopamine signal to the addiction centers of your brain and there have to be an MRI studies showing that uh that sugar fructose kills the same areas of your brain as methamphetamines to the same extent as methamphetamines and it actually is processed in your liver uh into the same byproducts as alcohol so you get the same damage to your body from sugars you do alcohol so this is a drug this benefits by getting you addicted to it so you want to eat it so you want to move its fruit but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for you you know um but if something so that's an outlier but there aren't there aren't actually too many outliers on the good taste side of things but if it tastes bad then I think invariably unless you're using something medicinally that that I think is is your brain telling you there's something bad in here um I did want to I did want to sort of mention you talked about previously about how you didn't you you didn't think that sort of everybody had like a same optimal diet that that's actually an argument that I've made was that you know humans you know should have an optimal diet that should be Universal to us because we're one species we're Homo Sapien sapiens and you know so we should have something that is good for all of us because if we had if there was something different then then we should be different species because that is what you see in nature and I can't think of any example in nature where you have two members of the same species that have different optimal diets now you can have better or worse sub-optimal diets based on you know your ethnicity and background the other people from European background and elsewhere that had agriculture for eight to ten thousand years and we would have more defenses built up against different sorts of things that we find in crops and that that is what we see but we also see native prop populations like in uh you know Native Americans or native Australians when eating a western diet they're four times as likely to develop obesity heart disease diabetes cancer and all the other sort of chronic diseases and uh when they don't eat those things they don't get those diseases and they used to call those the diseases of the West because we only saw those in Western populations we didn't see these in these indigenous populations that were just living these country gatherers Stone Age no man's sort of lives and then they started eating the Western diet and they started getting the Western diseases and so that's another argument I've made that that these so-called chronic diseases that we treat nowadays as a Mainstay in medicine are not really diseases per se but just a consequence of eating outside of our species specific nutrition and and just like you know any people will tell you and any Rancher can tell you you feed an animal something that it's not supposed to eat it can get very sick and if your cows get into into historic passion run out of you know their normal pastures they start eating plants that normally wouldn't they get very very sick and I think that's actually happening to us as well but I would actually think that just biologically we should have an optimal diet and I think meat is definitely it and we get all of our nutrition from that and we don't get in that and that doesn't come along with a lot of Defense chemicals that plants use I mean plants make around a million different chemicals most of which are used to stop poison or kill or disrupt animals and insects from eating them you don't you don't have that in an animal because yes the animal doesn't want to die either but it has other defenses it can kick you we can run away it can you know nail you with this horns the bull can come after you just stomp you so it has other defenses it doesn't need to be physically poisonous to you and so I think that that inherently is going to be uh you know our our most optimal food source yeah I think that's really good perspective I think that I like the idea of like the sub I forget how you said it exactly but like meat or animal protein is at the top then there are Subs like even within Dairy we see that that there are certain people that are better able to digest Dairy based on how long it's been a part of their history um so there's certain cultures that digest Dairy easier and there's other cultures that have a very difficult time um and I guess not just cultures but ethnicities that are able to digest dairy or not because of how long it's been a part of their culture or their acceptable Foods yeah well even even uh in Mongolia you know like you know Genghis Khan the Mongol horde like they were they were carnivores and they forced meat drank horse blood and fermented Mare's milk and so they had they had a lot of dairy products but they fermented all of them and so they're actually horribly lactose intolerant and even to this day like they they can't deal with lactose they're very lactose intolerant and um but they still drink a lot of dairy but it's but it's all that fermented dairy so you can still use this stuff and yeah and and it have been for quite some time it just sort of sort of processed it a bit differently yeah the fermented dairy is I don't know we won't go down that rabbit hole but it's just really cool to see the health benefits and just how Dairy has been used um and so I mean wide variety of ways there's a new um oil company out that is a fermented oil that I think is pretty interesting oh interesting what's that um it's called zero Acre Farms I actually just listened to him on a podcast the other day they were obviously talking about seed oils and stuff but yeah they just um I don't know if they patented or the original I do not quote me on any of that but they're definitely a very first in the fermented oil so is that fermented seed oils then um yes I believe so because he well um I don't know what he's actually pulling from I mean he talked about basically he was talking about how he um wanted to fix he right so he recognized this problem in the seed oil industry and he kind of went to avocado oils and coconut coconut oil but realized like if he's gonna compete with you know canola oil um there's just not a big enough Supply to do it so I believe it is probably a fermented seed oil but I guess I must have tuned out that part part of the podcast I definitely know they're fermented though it's zero Acre Farms okay yeah we look it up yeah it might maybe they figured out another way of processing these seed oil so instead of like the big industrial manufacturing sort of things and dumping in you know different leeches and things like that and maybe maybe they're fermenting it and you get get a better product that way it'd be nice maybe it'd be uh fun if they did sort of figure out how to use that at uh you know that product better you know because it's you know it's a resource that could very well you know be useful in many ways and uh just just uh you know maybe not to eat you know well yeah unless it's fermented yeah exactly yeah it could be yeah it could vary and that'd be great you know they're just asking us more options you know I'm I'm all for having options you know I just I just want them to be you know good healthful options and um and I I think it's just you know and I certainly don't want you know some of the best options that we have which is you know meat and dairy to be vilified wrongly and unfairly you know because these are like the most important you know uh nutrient sources that we have and um you know and people are you know being doing real harm by vilifying these things okay all right well thank you both so much I've been absolute pleasure I think we talked for about an hour and a half there so they will uh wrap it up but um how do people get a hold of you and uh and find you online and find a podcast and support your work yeah we would love if you'd hop over to our podcast it's discover Ag and it's available anywhere you listen to podcasts um basically what we do is break down kind of trending topics in the AG and food space each week so if you want you know a farmer's perspective of things that are going on that you see whether it's you know environmental like we're talking kind of about the flooding that's going in California and what that means for the food system and we've talked about like Bill Gates investing in seaweed and like the future and so just really anything that has to do with the food and AG space we we break it down we talk about it and what it means you know from two Millennial female Farmers perspective so we have a lot of fun and we would love if you guys would hop over to discover AG lovely and what are your uh social media handles for people to find you yeah you can find us on social media at our personal Pages at targetson and at Natalie kovark and you can also find discover AG at discoverag underscore thanks great well I'll put all those links in the description as well scoopers can stroller down and and find those and uh and hopefully check out your podcasts and your pages so uh Natalie tomorrow thank you both so much it's been an absolute pleasure hope to do it again sometime hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcasts and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you could share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys [Music] thank you