146. Kale Vs Cow: An Animal Loving Farmer’s Case For Eating Meat with Diana Rodgers

Which diet is best for humans, animals, and the planet? This is a question we will perhaps never fully answer. I can’t resist the temptation to try, and this episode endeavors to do just that.

I am continually trying to learn more about what I’m putting in, on, and near my body. I love learning about the way things work. That’s why I recently found myself at a Belcampo Farms (@belcampomeatco) Meat Camp, learning about where my most of my animal foods come from, to make sure that I have some connection to the land, people, and animals involved. I wanted to meet the meat I eat, and the farmers producing it.

While I was at Belcamp Farms, I met #DianaRodgers (@sustainabledish), a #realfood Licensed Registered Dietitian Nutritionist living on a working #organicfarm west of Boston. She also runs an #activenutrition practice, where she helps people recover their health through diet, and hosts The Sustainable Dish Podcast.

We really hit it off at the farm, so I had to have Diana on the show to discuss all things meat, and her upcoming film project: “Kale vs. Cow: The Case for Better Meat.” At a time when many in the health and environmental fields call for a world without meat, #kalevscow makes a case for better meat – and shows how eliminating animals from our #foodsystem could cause more harm than good.

While this episode takes a frail firm stand for eating meat, I don’t take a position on other people’s dietary choices – you can eat a box of rocks for for dinner if that’s what makes you happy. This episode isn’t about right/wrong good/bad. It’s about zooming out to take an open-minded perspective on the human, animal, and planet relationship. What makes us all thrive, and most of all, what is the most natural way to live in our modern, disconnected urban environments.

I also think it’s important to consider and understand the impact of our food buying and consumption… because sometimes the things sold to us as “better” alternatives, like #kale or #soy, can have devastating consequences.

How many animals die to turn a plot of land into a kale pasture? How many salmon lose their habitat because water is diverted for irrigation? What happens to the bears who depend on those salmon for their diet?

What is the math of clearing land to grow a single crop VS raising animals with sensible farming practices?

Just something to chew on.

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Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• Diana’s farm in Massachusetts
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• How industrial farming has killed America
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• When everyone in America grew food
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• Not being obsessed with food (what a lovely feeling it is!)
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• Ancestral health & the paleo diet
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• Luke’s love / grossed out relationship with eating animals
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• The difference between Diana’s farm & a factory farm
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• Why eating something isn’t necessarily good or evil, for any animal
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• The uncomfortable reality that everything gets eaten, even people
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• The biomimicry process on farms, from beginning to end
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• Croppable land VS uncroppable land (like central California)
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• How humans invented the modern cow and sheep
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• Taking bias & ulterior motives out of our food research
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• Why people get emotionally attached to their diets
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• The potential health risks involved with a strictly vegan diet
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• Why the recommended dietary allowance of protein is actually half of what the average American should consume
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• Chewing your food
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• Valuing life

More about this episode.

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