We’re eating way too much meat. An unsustainable, unhealthy amount of meat. If you’re looking for one way to drastically improve your health and carbon footprint — plant-based eating is it. But even if you’re not going fully plant-based, reducing your meat intake is a huge step in the right direction.
In this episode, we hear how our community has noticed a difference in their health since eating more plant-based, how much of an emissions impact we can make by eating fewer hamburgers, and we’re talking to Professor and Nutrition Scientist Christopher Gardner about exactly how meat impacts our bodies.
🌎 For photos of our contributors and further reading, check the full show notes.
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- Listener contributions: Diana Holguin, Drew Crabtree, Elisabeth, Miriam Jornet, Will, Willa Stoutenbeek, Brian Stancheski
- Editing and engineer: Evan Goodchild
- Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham
- (00:00) - Tempo: 120.0
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What is Second Nature?
How can we live sustainably in an unsustainable world? Second Nature is a podcast by Commons exploring how our sustainable choices impact our lives and the planet.
Every week hear how listeners are taking public transit, composting food waste, eating more plant-based meals and practicing deconsumption to create the kind of world they want to live in. We'll calculate the carbon impact of collective action and get expert answers to your burning climate questions.
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Katelan (00:00):
Hey there. Welcome back to Second Nature, a podcast from Commons. Commons is the app that tens of thousands of people are using to put their money where their morals are, find sustainable options for every purchase and get rewarded for it. And on this show, we talk to people to find out how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world.
Katelan (00:23):
If you've listened to the show for a while, you know that this is not our first episode on plant-based eating, and it certainly won't be our last because when it comes to individual action, choosing to eat plants over animals is one of the most impactful climate solutions out there. We've done an episode on how to start your plant-based eating journey, how to eat plant-based in a household that doesn't end. How to learn to love plant-based cheese. And in these episodes, we've talked a lot about how plant-based eating affects the environment, and of course, the animals. But we haven't talked about the physical effects on your body. If you are an omnivore who centers your meals around meat and you're looking for an opportunity to feel better about your climate impact and your health, decentering meat is a great way to do it. But can you get enough protein? If you eat less meat, will you be hungry all the time? Where are you supposed to get your iron from? And what about B12? We know that plant-based eating is better for the planet, but we wanted to find out is it really that much better for our bodies?
Katelan (01:23):
I'm your host, Katelan Cunningham, and today on Second Nature, we are gonna hear from our community about the changes they noticed after switching to more plant-based diets. We're gonna get scientific answers on your burning nutrition questions from Stanford professor and nutrition scientist, Christopher Gardner. And we're finding out how much emissions we can save simply by eating fewer hamburgers. Let's dig in y'all.
Katelan (01:52):
The leading cause of death in humans is heart disease and high cholesterol is one of the key factors that doctors look at when it comes to heart health. Let's say you're looking at two lists. One list is the leading contributors to high cholesterol, and the other is a list of high emissions foods. Beef would be near the very tippy top of both of those lists, which is why we're gonna talk about these moving ruminants quite a bit today. When we talk about eating less beef, there's a common rebuttal that comes up. Someone might say, we just have to eat regeneratively raised beef instead. While regenerative doesn't have its own certification, at least not yet, if a plant or animal is regeneratively raised, it means that the farmer raised it in a way that prioritizes the literal regeneration and restoration of the land, specifically the soil.
Katelan (02:40):
This is undoubtedly a very important climate solution because better soil captures more carbon and hold more water, which means that it helps to lower emissions and offers protections in droughts and floods. Very important, but, and this is a big, big cow, but by its very nature, regenerative agriculture requires much more land per animal. Think of it, a regenerative cow farm keeps its livestock out in nature and grassy fields as opposed to a traditional cattle farm where cows are crowded into grass less pens and barns. We literally don't have enough land to regeneratively raise all the livestock that we're eating. I mean, worldwide, if we're looking at cows alone, we're slaughtering over 900,000 every day in the us. If we ate regeneratively raised meat in the same volume that we're eating meat, now we'd have to use over 80% of us land just to raise all that livestock.
Katelan (03:36):
So yes, a switch to regeneratively raised beef is great, but it's only feasible if we drastically reduce the amount that we're eating. You may be asking yourself, shouldn't we just stop eating cows altogether? Sure, yes, that would be fantastic. But I'm not sure it's totally reasonable. At least not very soon. Our beef consumption in the US has decreased around 10% in the past 25 years, which is progress. But we're still eating way more than doctors recommend. We need to make some serious shifts in our diets for the sake of the planet. And what's so appealing about the idea of eating less meat, especially beef, is that the payoff comes much quicker than other climate solutions. We've heard from our community that when they eat less meat, they actually feel positive changes in their bodies within like a week or two. These changes manifest in different ways because we all have different bodies and our bodies need different things. So while it's definitely helpful to hear how others' bodies function with different foods, this is of course not medical or professional advice. Remember, it's always best to consult your doctor or a nutritionist if you want more insights on what's best for your body.
Elisabeth (04:44):
So I'm plant-based since 2016. I just did research and I learned so many beautiful things about following a plant-based diet. So although I did it for the animals, I did it for ethics. I am very happy and I appreciate myself for being such an animal lover because if I would have kept eating like before, like meat and dairy and yeah, all these things, I would end up sick. So since I started being plant-based, I am healthier and I have more energy. I started trail running in a year. I run 280 kilometers.
Will (05:26):
When I started eating pescatarian, I was concerned about my health and nutrition needs. I think about my iron levels and my B12 levels. I guess. So far I've been addressing my concerns by taking B12 supplements and iron supplements. Um, I also don't feel like I need to hold myself to 100% of the time eating plant-based or a pescatarian diet. I would say that I would feel comfortable eating some sort of dietary restricted level of meat that would have B12 in it, but restricting myself to never buying it myself would be a reasonable way to go forward. And I do live in Wisconsin. There's a lot of dairy in this state and in people's diets. So I also grew up eating meat and dairy and I don't restrict myself to non-dairy, but I have definitely been reducing my dairy consumption. I have noticed a difference physically and mentally. I think my focus is really good because I lean more on high fiber foods and whole grains and you know, you can't as often go to like those processed options. I think also like it's led me to eating more high protein nuts and dried fruits and stuff. And those have always been really great wonders for my mental clarity.
Diana (06:40):
Um, I definitely feel a change physically and mentally. Um, physically I've never been in more shape. I also started a, a fitness program a couple years into going vegan, so maybe it wasn't entirely being plant-based or vegan, but it kind of goes hand in hand I think. And mentally I just, I feel really good knowing that my food choices aren't having an impact on the environment, on the suffering of any animals. On the hardships of, uh, the people that work in the, um, animal agriculture industry. I've always read about it being a very dangerous and not very just working environment. The thing I've gained the most from eating plant-based is just a better understanding of, uh, nutrition overall and, uh, just how powerful the meat and dairy and egg lobbies are and you know, how much they desperately wanna sell their products to us despite the fact that they're not terribly healthy.
Willa (07:46):
Um, actually before I got pregnant I was eating completely plant-based for a couple of years, but I did struggle to, um, to make sure that I would get all my micros in. And yeah, so I've been going back and forth a little bit and trying not to be too dogmatic about it, but also trying to really be as planned forward as I can be. I think that's just really my preferred way of living. It's brought me a lot of insights, um, but also health benefits. Human beings aren't designed to eat a lot of meat or a lot of dairy or omnivores and uh, maybe health-wise, a little bit of meat and dairy every now and then wouldn't really hurt us, but the way we consume meat and dairy in our daily lives is very unhealthy. So cutting that out I think already gave me a lot of a lot of health benefits, but it also just makes me feel good about myself.
Drew (08:40):
A plant-based diet also makes me feel better in my body. I feel healthier. I don't feel sluggish. There was such a clear difference when I switched to a plant-based diet of the sluggishness goes away. We joke with the term meat sweats, right? That's like a thing that we talk about in our culture, but it's a real thing. If you eat too much meat, your body doesn't know what to do with it. And so to get rid of those things helps the body run cleaner and smoother. And that's been a really great thing to have.
Miriam (09:10):
When I meet new people, I always get asked the usual judgy questions or comments like, are you lacking nutrients? Or What do you eat? Then tofu, you don't have to eat tofu if you don't eat meat or dairy. There are many other tasty options. Um, it's just a matter of using spices to condiment them and not eat plain boiled veggies or legumes. In fact, I love to host meals for big groups of friends and they all love what I cook. It's only when we finish the meal that they realized there was no meat, no dairy or no soy in what they ate. And they found it delicious regardless.
Brian (09:46):
I started eating less meat around covid. I started becoming more health conscious and I was trying to figure out ways that I could lose weight and eating less. Red meat was one of them. As I got older and I started just reading about more sustainable living and working out, the meat was reserved to fish or chicken. We kind of weaned ourselves off of beef completely. I feel physically more energetic and mentally I would say I'm a bit more focused. My energy level, like this night and day,
Katelan (10:21):
So many of us have spent our lives with meat as the central piece of our plates. So when you take that away, you might be a little worried about where you're gonna get all those missing nutrients. A key thing to remember is that the animals we eat cows, chickens, pigs, they're getting most, if not all of their energy and nutrients from plants. And you can too. But I would never ask you to just take my word for it. I am not a nutrition professional. But you know. Who is Christopher Gardner? Christopher is a professor of medicine and a nutrition scientist at Stanford University. For over 30 years, he has been studying what to eat or avoid eating for optimal health. You may have seen him in the Netflix series. You are what you eat. Hi Christopher.
Christopher (11:08):
Hi Katelan.
Katelan (11:09):
Thank you for coming on the show.
Christopher (11:11):
My pleasure.
Katelan (11:12):
Okay, so I'm gonna start out with a really, what I think is a simple question, but maybe it has a complex answer. Okay. Are there nutrients that we need that we can only get from animals?
Christopher (11:23):
No. No. It's a simple question. No.
Katelan (11:26):
So there's no argument for saying I need to eat meat because I I need to get this one nutrient and I can only get it here.
Christopher (11:33):
None whatsoever. But there is a tricky one and it's B12. There are no plant sources of food that have B12 and B12 is one of the required vitamins that we need. Interestingly, animals don't make B12 bacteria makes B12 animals eat dirty food that has bacteria on it. That's how they get the B12.
Katelan (11:56):
Wow.
Christopher (11:57):
So one of the ways we could get it is to not peel our carrots and not wash our potatoes. So technically you could get a little bit of B12 just from dirty food, but who wants to eat dirt? Plenty of things are fortified with B12. So a lot of plant-based milks are fortified with B12. Nutritional yeast has B12. There's another important part of this particular issue is that there is no vitamin or mineral for which we need in a lower amount. So we need grams every day of protein, carbs, and fat. There's a lot of vitamins and minerals that we need milligrams of. So that's a thousandth of a gram. mm-Hmm , we need two to three micrograms of B12 a day. That's a thousandth of a thousandth of a gram. It is such a minute amount. So one of the quick backlashes against eating a plant-based is oh, where will you get your B12 from nutritional yeast from some fortified products. I could even get a little bit from the carrots that I didn't peel and get all the dirt off. And then well how much is that? Well, yeah, but you don't need any much, you need, you need two to three micrograms a day. It's not a hard thing to get enough of.
Katelan (13:07):
So we have a lot of plant forward eaters in our audiences. Some people are all the way vegan, some people are vegetarian. I'm wondering if someone's making the switch either from omnivore to vegetarian or vegetarian to vegan, what are some of the first nutrients that come to your mind or things that they need to start compensating for in their diet that they will no longer be getting from meat or dairy?
Christopher (13:29):
Yep. So one of the things that comes up is calcium that a lot of people get from dairy. Mm-Hmm. . But actually calcium is in a lot of foods. It's in almonds, it's in leafy greens. There's also another really fun twist to calcium, which is of all the nutrients that we eat, we tend to absorb them in different amounts. So if you were to take protein, carbs, or fats, you pretty much absorb like 90% of what you eat all the time. Okay. If you were to take cholesterol as an issue, and we don't really need cholesterol in the diet, but we only absorb 50% of the cholesterol, we only absorb 35% of the calcium that we eat. And we only absorb 10 to 20% of the iron that we eat. Okay. So interestingly there are a whole bunch of plant foods where the proportion of calcium absorbed is higher than dairy.
Christopher (14:17):
Okay. So we absorb like 50% of the calcium and some of the green leafy vegetables that have it. And we only absorb 35% in dairy or supplements. But dairy still wins 'cause dairy has so much calcium. I see. You might absorb 50% in broccoli, but you'd need 10 cups of broccoli to end up with the same amount that you did in one cup of dairy. Yeah. But let's put an interesting twist on the calcium side of this. So we all pretty much know that calcium is related to bone health. Mm-Hmm. And so osteoporosis is a horrible thing. Later on in life a lot of people suffer from hip fractures and sometimes hip fractures can even be life threatening because of the consequences of the treatments. However, if you did look globally at intakes of dairy and milk and calcium, this is in a New England Journal of Medicine Review by Walter Willett and David Ludwig.
Christopher (15:09):
Mm-Hmm. . There's a slight trend in the opposite counterintuitive directions that the countries that get the least dairy in their diet, mostly 'cause they're lactose intolerant, actually have lower rates of osteoporosis, not higher rates of osteoporosis. Probably what's more important than calcium is weight weightbearing. So our bodies respond to the need to carry our weight by building the bones necessary to carry it. And if you get more physical activity, you actually also build stronger bones. So you need calcium in the bones, but you need physical activity. And so one of the thoughts is in these countries that are lactose intolerant where they have slightly lower rates of osteoporosis, it's because they have more weight bearing activity. Mm-Hmm. , some of these populations are walking for miles to get water and carry it back to their village. And, and in doing that, they're getting more weight bearing activity.
Christopher (16:03):
So calcium would be one. Okay. Iron is another and iron has a particular twist to it because I had just mentioned different rates of absorption. And another term for that is bioavailability. Right. So how much of what you ate is available to your body, to your biology. And it turns out that when you get iron in meats, you absorb about 20% of that. And when you eat iron in plants, you only absorb about 10%. Oh, okay. So it's actually much more efficient from meat. Uh, I have to tell you two interesting studies that we recently conducted where people were on higher plant diets, total amount of iron they got was higher than the people eating meat. Wow. So that's the amount they're ingesting. But you have to keep in mind that the amount you're ingesting isn't necessarily the amount that you'll get in your body.
Christopher (16:57):
You can absorb and get plenty of iron from plants. And there are tricks to it. Things like coffee and sodas and some other things can limit how much iron is absorbed. And vitamin C can enhance how much iron you absorb. So you can actually play with that 10% from plants and do better or worse. I will say that I know some vegans who are anemic. Mm-Hmm. . And I know they've tried supplements. So there's plenty of dietary supplements out there with iron for quite a few people that the dietary supplements are constipating, which is really not a comfortable position to be in. Right. And over the years I've had time where somebody said, look, I went vegan. It's really important to me. I'm iron deficient, I tried the supplements, it's constipating, what should I do? And I say, you might wanna add a little meat to your diet because you, you are the kind of person that isn't getting enough, you're not absorbing it and you can't tolerate the supplements and picture this.
Christopher (17:55):
Particularly for a population of women, a lot of your requirement has to do with your menstrual cycle. Some people have heavier losses than others. Yeah. I mean we have one number that's a recommended allowance for the day, but everybody's different. And so if somebody who has heavy menstrual losses might actually need more than somebody else, or in a developing country, a lot of iron losses due to parasites in the GI tract that are causing internal bleeding. And so I can see that there would be some people who would need more that would have problems with iron. But it just to be, this isn't fair. 'cause I'm a guy and I don't have a menstrual cycle. But yeah. When I donate blood, you know, they look at your hemoglobin and they won't take it if your iron isn't high enough.
Katelan (18:39):
Yeah.
Christopher (18:39):
And I remember a while back somebody said, oh, you just barely made it. And I said, really? Am I that close? And they said, yeah, you're almost over the limit so we don't take hemoglobins over 18 and yours was 17. I'm like,
Katelan (18:52):
Yes. Wow.
Christopher (18:54):
Vegan minute it, oh, I'm almost too high in iron. But again, I'm a guy and I've never been a premenopausal woman, so I don't have those losses. So calcium, iron. Mm-Hmm. . Sometimes zinc. Zinc is more available in animal foods. It would be a minor one. If you get a a variety of whole grains and beans, you'll probably get enough zinc. Mm-Hmm. .
Katelan (19:18):
Okay.
Christopher (19:18):
And I already brought up the B twelves. So I think the main ones are B12, which I think is a myth and easy to overcome calcium, which isn't that hard if you get a range of foods iron, which you might need a supplement or might not work out for you in zinc, which seems to be more minor. And what you will get is fiber antioxidants and you'll get a lot of extra things from eating a more plant-based diet. Anyway,
Katelan (19:45):
I wanna follow up on one thing that you, you noted, which is like that it is personal, that something that works for me may not work for you, may not work for someone else depending on all kinds of different factors. Right?
Christopher (19:55):
Absolutely.
Katelan (19:56):
I wanted to actually touch on also cholesterol because I was reading up on the twin study that you did for the Netflix documentary where you had one twin eat plant-based and the other eat omnivore. And you said that the main factor you were looking at in that study was LDL cholesterol. I wondered if you could explain what that is and why that was like one of the most important factors that you were looking at.
Christopher (20:16):
Sure. So that is the biggest risk factor for heart disease. So proven decades and decades ago. There's plenty of drugs, lots of people in the US are on statin drugs. Mm-Hmm , which are really effective at lowering LDL cholesterol, which contributes to the plaques, the blockage of the flow of blood in your artery, particularly your coronary artery. And the main contributors to increasing that is saturated fat. And the main factor for lowering it is fiber.
Katelan (20:46):
Oh, okay.
Christopher (20:47):
A plant-based diet is low in saturated fat and high in fiber. Right. So it's kind of a no-brainer that vegetarians pretty much always have lower LDL cholesterol than non-vegetarians. So interestingly in a lot of our studies, Caitlin, we sometimes look at immune function inflammatory markers. There's actually no good clinical markers or inflammatory markers. Your doctor never says, oh Caitlin, your inflammation level is 17, you should get it where Christopher's is his is. There isn't a number like that. Okay. Right. So we have numbers for blood pressure, we have numbers for cholesterol, very established cut points. Plant-based diet are really good for lowering LDL cholesterol.
Katelan (21:33):
And that's because a lot of the saturated fats are just coming from those animals that we're eating or dairy.
Christopher (21:38):
Absolutely. And the unsaturated, it's not just the presence of saturated fat, but unsaturated fat also helps to lower it, especially if it's replacing saturated fat. So when you've gone from butter to olive oil, that's an instant switch right there. When you've gone from meat to whole grains and beans, they have less total fat, much less saturated fat and they have fiber and that's all working together to lower your LDL cholesterol.
Katelan (22:05):
You know, we did some math on how much meat Americans are eating right now. We're eating so much more than we just should be eating. Right. And so I guess my base question is like, like what's a healthy amount of meat to eat? If you decided that I'm an omnivore, I'm not interested in being vegetarian or vegan, I would assume that the difference between a healthy amount and what we're eating is still pretty vast. And so I just wanted your take on that. If there's a healthy version of being an omnivore, like what does that look like? What types of meats is that person eating and and what quantity are they eating them?
Christopher (22:34):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I would think it's a total continuum here actually. So I, I really don't like dichotomous cutoffs. So, and some vegetarians and vegans can be downright self-righteous and condescending and it's pretty annoying. Well picture somebody who's really doing this all for environmental reasons. Mm-Hmm. or for animal rights. Mm-Hmm. because would be completely legit. And because of that they really are having a lot of coke, french fries, white tortillas and cheese. And here you've got an omnivore who eats a very Mediterranean diet. Right? Mm-Hmm. . And they're having lots of lentils, lots of whole grains and they put a little bit of fish, uh, in, in some of their salad and they have some yogurt every morning 'cause they're not vegan and they have eggs once in a while and they're actually getting them from their own backyard chickens. And Right. Occasionally they'll go someplace and have some lamb or some pork or some beef.
Christopher (23:30):
But it tends to be once a week. That would be a much healthier diet than the vegan who's eating the Oreos and the white tortillas and the processed cheese. I actually really prefer whole food plant-based where you're getting a mostly plant-based diet and it's mostly whole foods. Mm-Hmm. . And if you had some eggs, some yogurt, some fish along the way, that'd be a really healthy diet. There'd be nothing wrong with that when it does come to beef and pork. It, Americans do eat obscene amounts like so much more than any other country. So that would be a big shift to get down to just a couple times a week.
Katelan (24:10):
So that would be your ideal scenario if someone's eating red meat a couple times a week at at the most.
Christopher (24:15):
Yeah. And it would make it easier than saying never have it again. I think that people who try that try to uh, you know, I went completely from A to B don't last. Yep. And if you allow them some flexibility they'd say, oh yeah, I've actually cut down to four times a week. Oh I've cut down to three times a week. Take your time. Make it a transition that works for you. So nutrition folks and dieticians have a saying that one of the best diets, given that we're sort of arguing, what is the best diet for you in the long run? The best diet is the one that you can keep forever. 'cause quite often an American conception of diet is something that you go on, which means that later you'll go off it when you finished being on your diet. In most other cultures, the diet is your habitual diet.
Christopher (25:05):
I eat Mediterranean, I eat Latin American. If you do something very short term and then go back, all the adverse health conditions will come back and they will only have been attenuated for a short period of time. So something you can stick with that works for your culture and your preferences and your family and your social situation and your economic situation. What can you afford and what you have access to. Those are all hugely important to the people who you know really want to eat this cardboard. The fiber is sure to lower your cholesterol. I know it will. That cardboard has no saturated fat and it's loaded with fiber and it's really not fun to eat. And I think we did that for a really long time as a public health community. Yeah. That I know the biochemistry, you, this should be punitive, this should be restrictive, this should, I'm only focusing on what not to eat. Mm-Hmm. . And I really feel like there's been a shift lately to oh you should have this global fusion of flavors. Think of Middle Eastern hummus and Indian Shaima SA and an Indonesian gato ga with peanut sauce all over the vegetables. Just dripping off those. There's so many delicious things to eat. So let's focus more on joy and pleasure.
Katelan (26:21):
Okay. So there are some newer meat alternatives out there, like beyond Meat and Impossible Meat that are trying to emulate meat beyond what I grew up with, which was like veggie burgers and things like that. Right. But these are processed foods. So I just kind of wondered what was your take on the health of something of an impossible burger versus a ground beef burger and how plant-based eaters should think about these processed plant-based meats?
Christopher (26:43):
Yeah. And we did one of those studies head to head. So we got about 40 people to eat two servings a day of beyond meat or two servings a day of red meat. And just to add to the, what I think is an important part of the rigor of the study, what do you think we picked for the red meat? We could have gone with fast food, we could have gone with, we went to San Francisco where one of the vendors only supplies organic pasture raised high quality red meat. So we didn't wanna set a straw man up to be knocked over. So we said good quality red meat. Mm-Hmm. and got one of these plant-based meats. Two servings a day is pretty high. It ended up being about 25% of their calories. Yep. So over the course of eight weeks on each one, everybody did both diets.
Christopher (27:31):
Their LDL cholesterol went down, which was expected 'cause it was less saturated fat and more fiber in the plant-based burger than the meat burgers. Right. And their trimethyl amine oxide was lower. That's a sort of an emerging risk factor for heart disease. It's related to inflammation that we were talking about earlier. Okay. And they actually lost a little bit of weight. It wasn't enough to be clinically significant, but it was oddly enough, statistically significant. 'cause almost every single person was a pound or two lower. And so I got some really interesting backlash from this study when we showed the health benefits relative to red meat. And people said, wow, that's crazy. Don't you want people to eat beans and lentils? Mm-Hmm. . And I said, of course I do. I've been trying for 30 years to get people to eat more beans and lentils. Yeah. And they're not, they're not giving up the red meat for that.
Christopher (28:20):
And I'm not asking the question, are these healthy? Right? It's asking are these healthier than red meat? 'cause that's what we're trying to get people to eat less of and head to head. When they ate less red meat and they replaced them with the plant-based alternative meats, they got healthier and it made sense because of the nutrient profile differences. Would I rather have them have the beans and lentils? Absolutely. But maybe these plant-based meats are gateway drugs to getting there and just saying, oh, could I really eat less red meat? I feel like there's a lot of Americans who don't think they can. Mm-Hmm. . So the really fun part about the plant-based meats was that the folks, the Ethan Brown and Pat Browns who came up with those formulations tried really, really hard for the first time to make them look, smell, taste sizzle. I mean, I don't know, I don't wanna call it compromised, but they certainly made some decisions that weren't health-based.
Christopher (29:17):
They were, I really need to mimic this so that somebody who's very reluctant to give it up would be more willing to try this than not. Because it does look and taste so similar. So making black bean burgers and other things for the vegetarian population is a market of five or 10% of the population. If you wanna address the other 90 to 95% of the the population, that's a big potential market. And again, if it's this idea of switching from these obscenely high levels to much lower, I absolutely completely see the value of the plant-based meats.
Katelan (29:55):
And when it comes to the health factor of red meat, is it just that it comes with more saturated fat and so that's why it's the one you wanna focus on for improving your health?
Christopher (30:03):
Yep. Never any fiber. So by the way, no animal foods ever contain fiber. Mm-Hmm. only plants have fiber and of all the contributors to fat red meat tends to be the biggest one. And there's kind of an interesting twist there too. If you go back historically when people were uh, running around with bows and arrows and chasing wild creatures, that meat was much leaner. Mm-Hmm. in America in particular, when they started putting the animals in concentrated animal feeding operations, they found that there it was too hard to graze them and way more efficient to feed them corn and soy.
Katelan (30:40):
Mm-Hmm.
Christopher (30:41):
And the corn and soy acts isn't natural to their digestive tract and it makes them be fattier. At one point the meat was sort of looking odd because it was riddled with fat and they sort of had to say, oh look, this extra cool fat that we've got here, this is such great meat for you. I, I don't understand the whole bit here, but as I understand it, there was some persuasion needed early on to say, I know this meat doesn't look the same way but it's really great meat and we're growing a lot for you. Mm. It turned out they were making it worse. This corn fed beef was much higher in saturated fat and now the American palate has sort of adjusted to this and prefers a fattier
Katelan (31:24):
Meat. Oh no . Okay. My last question is, obviously you've spent your entire career focused on nutrition and so I wanted to ask you about how much, if at all you think about the environment when you're thinking about your own diet and if that consideration has changed over time at all.
Christopher (31:42):
Yep. Absolutely. So for me to be honest, I became vegetarian for a girl who dumped me and I tried to get her back and she didn't take me back. Ugh. Then it was easier to be vegetarian than I thought and my first thought went to animal rights and welfare. So I'm just an an animal lover. Mm-Hmm. . And then I got a PhD and then I thought, oh my God, it's good for your health. This is pretty good. I'm gonna keep doing this. And the last one I came to was the environment and the first thing I came to was CO2 emissions. But the more I looked into it, I learned more about the planetary set of boundaries that includes land use, water use. Mm-Hmm. eutification from nitrogen and phosphorus runoff and biodiversity loss. Yeah. I'm finding it's one of the top reasons to go to as a motivation for maintaining this. Right. So if you see that thing in front of me, you think, well it's just me. It's only my health that I'm affecting. Once you recognize that it's not your health, it's a societal and environmental impact, it's harder to go back and it's easier to maintain some of those changes. So I'm really enamored of that topic and that approach selfishly to get people to eat better for their health.
Katelan (32:53):
. Right. Sneak attack. . Well thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. This has been so, so helpful.
Christopher (33:01):
Alright, Katelan, it was a pleasure talking to you.
Katelan (33:03):
Thanks. Bye.
Christopher (33:04):
Bye.
Katelan (33:09):
As Christopher mentioned, we are eating a lot more than the maximum amount of red meat the doctors recommend, but how much more, and if we only ate the maximum recommended amount, would that be enough to make a significant change in the environment? I called up Commons founder, Sanchali Seth Pall to find out. Welcome back Sanchali.
Sanchali (33:30):
Hey Katelan.
Katelan (33:32):
All right. So let's talk about meat.
Sanchali (33:35):
Let's get into it.
Katelan (33:36):
So the worst meats for our health are red meats from animals like cows and goats as well as pigs, which are typically considered red meat as well as processed meat like your sausages and your deli meats. And it's interesting that when we think about our diets from a health perspective and a climate perspective, red meat stands out on both accounts.
Sanchali (33:56):
Yeah. It's super interesting. Compared to all other proteins, beef has by far the highest emissions per kg of food product about 10 times higher emissions than chicken.
Katelan (34:07):
Is it just because cows are literally just so much bigger than chickens?
Sanchali (34:12):
It kind of comes down to that. Yeah. I mean, cows take up a lot of space. A lot of their emissions are from the land that needs to be cleared for their grazing. Um, but it's also because as ruminants, cows like sheep and goats just produce a lot of methane as part of their digestion.
Katelan (34:27):
So they're burping a lot.
Sanchali (34:30):
Exactly. More than most animals when they eat.
Katelan (34:33):
Yeah. I know that we eat a lot of red meat in the US more than we should, but we can't be the only ones who are like going overboard. Right.
Sanchali (34:41):
We're definitely not the only ones, but we're pretty high up there per capita. We're number seven on the list of top red meat eating countries.
Katelan (34:48):
That's not the kind of list you wanna be at the top of what other countries are eating a lot of red meat.
Sanchali (34:54):
So Mongolia is number one, followed by Hong Kong, Spain is also up there. And Luxembourg. And Croatia. Wow.
Katelan (35:02):
I think one thing that stands out to me is that each of these countries cuisines, I mean I'm no expert in Mongolian cuisine, but in each of these countries people are eating meat in very different ways and different types of meals.
Sanchali (35:15):
Totally. Red meat has definitely become a big part of cuisines all over the world, but it's also being recognized as a health risk in many countries today. A lot of western countries, especially like the uk, Norway, the US and countries in the EU have actually suggested recommended maximums in terms of the amount of red meat you eat per week. And they're usually around 300 hundred to 500 grams. In the US specifically we recommend 340 to 510 grams per week of red meat maximum.
Katelan (35:45):
How much is that in pounds?
Sanchali (35:47):
That is about a little over a pound of red meat a week equivalent to about three to four quarter pound hamburgers. You could think about it that way.
Katelan (35:58):
Okay. That is very helpful to think about things in hamburgers. I don't eat a lot of red meat, so that amount seems totally feasible to me. Three to four quarter pound hamburgers,
Sanchali (36:09):
You'd think so, but on average, Americans are actually eating much more red meat than this.
Katelan (36:14):
Oof. How much more? Exactly.
Sanchali (36:16):
Over two and a half times more. We are eating something like 11 quarter pound burgers a week.
Katelan (36:23):
That is really surprising. So we have a lot of room for improvement is what I'm hearing. .
Sanchali (36:29):
We certainly do. Um, and what I wanted to find out is if we actually reduced our red meat consumption just to the recommended amount, what kinds of climate impacts would we see?
Katelan (36:41):
Yes. Progress over perfection. Okay, let's get into it.
Sanchali (36:44):
Okay. So if Americans ate just the recommended amount of red meat, like three to four burgers a week, we'd eat about 31 billion fewer pounds of red meat per year.
Katelan (36:54):
So that's like 124 billion fewer quarter pounders per year. That's wild. So what is the emissions impact of this kind of reduction?
Sanchali (37:04):
Okay. If the average American ate the recommended max red meat, and we're gonna assume that's about 55% beef and 45% pork. 'cause that's about how much red meat people eat of different kinds in the US we would not only improve our health, but we'd save over 446 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year.
Katelan (37:25):
Wow. That is a lot. Yes.
Sanchali (37:27):
And it's such a big number that it's like hard to comprehend. So we should think about it as about the same as 106 million cars driven for a year. That's over a third of cars in the us. We could take off of the road just by eating less red meat.
Katelan (37:42):
That's a huge amount of emissions. And we're still eating two to four burgers per week. Right,
Sanchali (37:47):
Exactly. And one more thing, if we eat less red meat, we're also saving a lot of money. 'cause beef has actually been getting way more expensive partially because of the climate crisis.
Katelan (37:57):
Another bonus, because groceries are so expensive these days,
Sanchali (38:01):
Seriously, between sirloin and ground beef, the average cost of beef in the US is $8 and 73 cents per pound. But if you were to swap that out for another plant-based protein like beans, beans are five times cheaper than beef.
Katelan (38:16):
Whoa. Okay. So you know the more the better. But if you just wanna cut down to a burger or two per week, we would save money, we would save admissions, and we can improve our health all at the same time.
Sanchali (38:26):
Exactly. We're literally doing what the doctor ordered. We're still eating the occasional burger and we're saving so much money and so much missions.
Katelan (38:37):
And maybe along the way you'll find that you start to prefer plant-based alternatives in more than one meal per week.
Sanchali (38:44):
Exactly.
Katelan (38:45):
Sounds good to me. Thanks so much for your insights, I really appreciate it. Thanks, Katelan.
Katelan (38:54):
Are you ready to decenter meat? Are you ready to swap beef for more low carbon, low cholesterol proteins? There are a couple ways to go about it. You could start by going through a normal week and logging how often you eat meat and which types. Then the following week, try to swap out half of your red meats for white or half of your white meats for veggie-based proteins. And over time, whittle it down to find the right balance of plant-based foods that works for you. Or maybe the cold Turkey approach is better. Try going totally vegetarian or vegan for a couple weeks and see how you feel. Tinker with it. Stay flexible and find the kinds of meals that make you feel good and your body and your choices. I loved Christopher's reminder that all of our bodies are different. What works for someone else may not work for you. Hopefully you're able to find a low meat diet that evolves with you and makes you and our planet feel nourished and happy be. Thank you to our listeners who shared a bit about their plant-based eating journeys today. You heard from —
Katelan (40:04):
This episode was written and produced by me, Katelan Cunningham. It was edited and engineered by Evan Goodchild. Next week, instead of talking about the food you eat, we're gonna talk about the food you throw away. We're gonna find out why cutting down on food waste is one of the most impactful climate actions you can take from home. By the way, if you're enjoying the show, it would really help us out if you left a review or a rating. So if you haven't yet, we would really, really appreciate it. Thank you, and we will see you next week.
Diana (40:37):
Keep trying. Don't give up . All right. Peace.