Order of Man - The Case for Eating More Meat

00:00:00.000 Guys, I'd be willing to bet that without the supporting data, that 95 plus percent of you

00:00:04.960 eat meat. Like me, it really hasn't even crossed your mind not to. That said, there seems to be

00:00:11.300 a growing trend of individuals who have made meat consumption the enemy and the scapegoat for a lot

00:00:17.820 of what's wrong with the world from greenhouse emissions to the growing obesity epidemic and

00:00:24.380 cancer, to the mistreatment and mismanagement of our animals and nature's resources. And that's why

00:00:31.080 I'm honored to bring on an expert in the field, Rob Wolf. He's the author of the New York Times

00:00:36.440 bestselling book, Wired to Eat, and also co-author of Sacred Cow, The Case for Better Meat, Why Well-Raised

00:00:43.600 Meat is Good for You and Good for the Planet. Today, we talk about the environmental, nutritional,

00:00:49.100 and ethical impacts of meat consumption, the power of regenerative cattle ranching,

00:00:55.740 why eating meat seems to be a political divide, how our bodies are evolutionarily hardwired to

00:01:02.980 consume meat, and how veganism can negatively impact the environment. You're a man of action.

00:01:09.600 You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks

00:01:14.560 you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated,

00:01:20.700 rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become

00:01:27.340 at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:32.920 Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler, and I am the host and the founder of

00:01:37.080 this podcast and the Order of Man movement. Welcome back. I've got a really good one, fascinating one

00:01:42.120 lined up for you today. Something different than we've done in the past. My guest today is Rob Wolf.

00:01:46.940 I'm going to introduce you to him in just a minute. If you are joining the podcast for the very first

00:01:51.580 time, know that this is a podcast designed and built around helping you become a more capable,

00:01:58.100 a more effective man, whether that's a husband, a father, a business owner, a community leader,

00:02:03.580 it does not matter how you're showing up. We're going to give you the tools, the resources,

00:02:08.080 and specifically in this podcast, the conversations that you need to thrive as a man. This one is no

00:02:14.940 different, but we've also had guys like Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Andy Frisilla, Tim Kennedy,

00:02:21.120 Ryan Holiday, Brian Rose, Ted Nugent. I mean, the lineup of men that join us is absolutely phenomenal

00:02:29.860 and very interesting. And again, this one is no different. Guys, if you would, before we get into

00:02:35.500 this, please, uh, one quick ask that I have for you is leave a rating and review. Uh, we just hit

00:02:40.180 the 5,000 mark on ratings and reviews. The number isn't as important to me as it is. We get this

00:02:47.600 message out. It's evident to me that the world needs more men, fathers to step up in their homes,

00:02:53.340 leaders to step up in their States and their communities, husbands to lead their wives and just

00:02:58.580 better men across the board. I think a lot of what we see is negative implications of society

00:03:03.040 could be addressed at a minimum addressed and dealt with, uh, if we step up and become more

00:03:10.320 capable in our role as men. So please leave a rating and review. It goes a long way in promoting

00:03:15.060 the visibility of the show. All right, guys, let me introduce you to Rob today. A lot of you guys

00:03:20.000 are probably familiar with him, have read some of his books or at least follow him on the, on the

00:03:24.140 socials. Uh, he's a former research biochemist. He's the New York times bestselling author of two books,

00:03:30.820 the paleo solution, and also his last book wired to eat. And I imagine that that's going to become

00:03:37.240 a three P with his latest book, sacred cow, the case for better meat. Uh, Rob also served as a

00:03:42.920 review editor for the journal of nutrition and metabolism. And he is a consultant for the Naval

00:03:48.720 special warfare resiliency program. Uh, needless to say, his resume speaks for itself. He's one of the

00:03:54.780 foremost authorities on diet, nutrition, exercise, healthy living, all of that stuff. So guys enjoy

00:04:01.340 the conversation with Rob. Rob, great to connect. Glad to be joining you today. Hey, huge honor to

00:04:07.700 be here. I'm big fan. So thank you. Yeah, we, I think we were going to make this happen years ago

00:04:13.480 when, uh, you had written wired to eat, but for some reason, I can't remember exactly what had

00:04:18.360 happened, but it didn't work. Timing was off. I don't know something, but here we are now. And so

00:04:23.800 it's all good. Awesome. Well, again, huge honor to be here. Thank you for taking the time.

00:04:29.220 Yeah. You know, anytime, uh, I hear somebody making the case for eating more beef, uh, I gotta

00:04:34.380 say I'm a fan. So that's what I'm looking forward to talking to you about meat consumption and, uh,

00:04:41.260 why we ought to encourage it more just culturally and society and how it's good for the planet and

00:04:45.900 all this stuff I'm sure we'll get into. Well, it'll be nice to be on a, uh, a non-adversarial

00:04:50.840 podcast for once. Do you get a lot, do you get invited to be on podcasts that are more,

00:04:56.100 you know, vegan type podcasts that, that want to be controversial or it's more like media.

00:05:01.600 So the media will kind of bring you in. And usually ironically, it's somebody that's pretty,

00:05:06.820 uh, uh, open to the idea of, you know, regenerative agriculture and a meat inclusive

00:05:12.620 food system and all that stuff. But for whatever reason, like there's this sense in journalism

00:05:18.340 that balanced journalism is just take two polar opposite extremes and explore them a little

00:05:24.680 bit. And then somehow that brings you to some middle ground. And it's, so it's, um, it's really

00:05:29.200 funny. Yeah. You know, what's interesting is I had a friend of my financial planning practice

00:05:33.880 because we talked a lot about averages. That's my background in the retail, excuse me, financial

00:05:38.020 planning sector, retail management, a little too, but financial planning. And we talked about

00:05:42.440 averages in the stock market. He said, well, you know, technically if you put your feet in the

00:05:46.340 oven in your head in an ice bath, it might average out to the right temperature, but you're still

00:05:51.440 going to be miserable. Right. So I think that ties into what you're saying. That, that is a

00:05:56.000 beautiful analogy. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that, that was so much of the challenge of writing

00:06:00.900 this book, sacred cow, which, um, and again, I don't want to enter into this thing. Like people

00:06:07.860 are so in this, this mode of like, this is the truth. All that stuff is BS, you know, and

00:06:13.980 everything's hyper-polarized. So I try to almost sneak up on this stuff, but I'll, I'll make the

00:06:19.120 case that the kind of vegan centric anti-meat world, they're playing this kind of, uh, uh,

00:06:24.940 asymmetric warfare where they'll take these little hand grenades where they say meat causes cancer and

00:06:30.540 they throw it over the fence and then they run away, you know, meat destroys the environment and

00:06:35.060 they run and it seems super credible. You can pull up some, some seemingly peer reviewed studies

00:06:40.280 that seem to support their position. And for the average person who's just trying to live their life,

00:06:46.100 it seems pretty compelling. And then for someone like myself or my coauthor, Diana Rogers,

00:06:51.020 to get in and really do diligence on that. Like you can just dismiss it. You're like,

00:06:55.440 oh, those people are idiots, you know? And then I guess we, we just continue to draw these like

00:07:00.480 entrenched lines. But if you're really going to unpack that stuff, like does meat really increase

00:07:06.940 your likelihood of cancer? Well, there's a whole mini PhD dissertation involved with doing a

00:07:12.680 legitimate job of unpacking that. And that still assumes that we did the job properly. Like maybe

00:07:18.380 we did it wrong, but even in the process of trying to do it well, there's an enormous amount of effort

00:07:23.980 and information and nuance and detail. And then you're fighting up against the, the, uh, you know,

00:07:30.240 the attention span that folks have. And it's interesting because we, we have two seemingly,

00:07:35.960 uh, push pull things going on, at least in my view, where people are, are like, they're calling

00:07:42.200 it now the attention economy. Like that's actually what, you know, it's not eyeballs or likes. It's

00:07:47.340 actually how long can you keep people engaged? So that's happening on the one hand. And then on the

00:07:51.820 other hand, we have these long format, you know, type of processes, like what you're doing,

00:07:56.320 Joe Rogan and some other people where we were able to go really deep and get into a lot of nuance and

00:08:02.600 whatnot. And I honestly think that it's, um, those things like what you're doing, what Rogan's doing

00:08:09.360 that provides enough hope for me to not just like drive my car off a cliff and call, call it a day

00:08:16.040 because, um, it, it's really a challenge to try to motor through all this material and get anywhere.

00:08:21.780 But so far the book has been really well received. Folks have been getting a lot of value out

00:08:26.300 of it. So it, it, but it definitely has been interesting, you know, trying to, um, unpack

00:08:32.320 all of these different topics and do diligence with it and, and also do it in a way that's

00:08:37.660 not just, uh, uh, you know, painting my kind of social political worldview into it, like

00:08:43.420 really trying to, um, undermine my assumptions first and then try to find what, what are the

00:08:49.580 things that when we, when we really pressure test the assumptions, what are the things that

00:08:53.900 are left? You know, I, I appreciate men like yourself because you are willing to go deep.

00:08:59.160 And I think the majority of us, I would actually place myself in the same category that we look

00:09:03.600 at things on the surface level. We look for things potentially that are, you know, a little

00:09:07.640 bit more sexy maybe, and not researched and as detailed and in depth as you've gone. Uh, and

00:09:13.080 then also I tend to be very, maybe intuitive is the right word, but, uh, very anecdotal.

00:09:18.200 You know, I look at meat for example, and I think, well, I like the taste of meat and from

00:09:22.800 my perspective, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, humans have been eating meat for

00:09:27.180 tens of thousands of years. So there's probably something to it. And that's like the extent

00:09:33.380 of what I know and why I eat meat myself. So I'm anxious to delve into this.

00:09:39.500 Yeah. And you know, it's, it's interesting because we could say, okay, really good. Like Tom

00:09:43.620 hock steak tastes amazing and you eat it. And generally you feel pretty good after eating

00:09:48.760 it. Like there's good physical performance. If it's not too much, like for me, if I eat

00:09:52.900 too much, I started to get like, I'm like, Oh, you know, I shouldn't have had that. But

00:09:57.140 if I do it moderately, I just, I feel good. I feel strong. I feel energized. I feel good

00:10:03.320 if I do it in moderation.

00:10:05.100 And that's maybe one of these nice compare and contrast things because a really good cheesecake

00:10:10.440 also tastes amazing, but there's not many people that will do even a modest serving of cheesecake.

00:10:16.560 And afterwards they're like, man, I'm all full of piss and vinegar and let's, let's go do some

00:10:20.500 jujitsu or something. You'd be like, Oh my God, what did I do to myself? And I think that that's

00:10:25.340 a pretty good litmus test for, um, kind of cutting through the dietary wars. You know, it, it, some

00:10:31.520 people do better on higher carbs. Some people do better on lower carb, but by and large, um, people

00:10:36.760 don't look, feel, or perform particularly well when they're doing a significant amount of refined

00:10:41.560 food. And that is another one of these kinds of commonalities where everything circles around

00:10:46.700 that, that, that central position. And it's not say you never have some, a plate of nachos

00:10:52.300 or something like that, but there's just some of that feedback where, uh, do I look, feel

00:10:57.240 and perform well eating this consistently or even intermittently. And then those things that

00:11:03.040 you do well with, if you do more of that, then it just all kinds of good things seem to come,

00:11:08.240 come out of that. Well, I think the other thing, and I know I'd run into this is I'm assume most

00:11:14.980 human beings are looking for the short-term immediate gratification. So if you have that

00:11:19.820 plate of nachos, you're going to get the energy, you feel really good. It tastes really good, but you

00:11:24.580 don't really think about the long-term ramifications or impacts of that. Cause I know if I have

00:11:29.020 the whole bag of chips and salsa, which I'm prone to do, I feel really good immediately.

00:11:34.280 And then two hours later, I'm like, Oh, like what did I do? The way I feel digestively. I'm like,

00:11:40.060 nah, probably shouldn't have done that. And then tomorrow I'll go ahead and do it again because I

00:11:43.920 forgot all about that stuff. And I just want it to taste good. Yeah. Yeah. And that does hearken

00:11:50.080 back to our evolutionary biology a little bit. Like if you, it's funny, the real evidence-based

00:11:55.960 nutrition folks really push back on some of this like paleo diet, ancestral health stuff,

00:12:00.980 which I'm, I'm really perplexed by because, uh, there was a, a Russian scientist, uh, Theodosius

00:12:08.420 Dovziansky that had a quote that nothing in biology makes sense, but through the light of evolution. And so

00:12:14.100 if that's true, and if this kind of evolutionary biology is really something that informs, um,

00:12:21.220 the way to understand biology, it's kind of like understanding quantum mechanics. When we talk about

00:12:25.480 physics, like if it's one of these kind of foundational pieces, then in some way that

00:12:31.020 stuff needs to inform what we do. And when we start looking at our evolutionary biology,

00:12:35.900 we're not rewarded in a natural environment from like running around like crazy, burning as much

00:12:43.240 energy as possible, and then eating a salad. Like we're rewarded by eating as much nutrient dense,

00:12:50.600 calorie dense food as we can, and then saving energy. And there's a, there's a great reality

00:12:55.980 show right now alone where people are sent out and they, you know, they're basically out there

00:13:00.620 trying to figure out how to live. And what they figured out almost immediately is like fat and

00:13:05.960 energy dense food is what wins the day. And, and, uh, a guy ended up killing like a caribou or

00:13:12.460 something. And he really had an amazing skillset. Like he rendered a bunch of the fat and had it in

00:13:17.580 like skin bags and put it up in a tree. And then some Wolverines climbed the tree and ate all of his

00:13:22.880 fat. And he ended up, everybody thought that this guy was going to win this show. Like he was just

00:13:27.720 crushing it. But, um, these, these other animals that live by these same principles, like they need

00:13:33.180 as much energy as possible doing as little as possible in order to survive in it. If that's true,

00:13:40.220 if that's the environment that we've been forged in, then it's really hard to vilify people if they

00:13:48.340 live in an environment where, you know, particularly in COVID, like we ended up getting into a pattern

00:13:53.460 where we ordered the bulk of our food to our front door, because you now can do that. Like we had

00:13:58.280 meat delivered and, you know, a bunch of other stuff delivered and we generally made pretty good

00:14:02.740 choices, but man, it would be really easy to just like, Oh, chips and salsa today, ice cream and

00:14:09.180 cheesecake tomorrow. And then on the third day, why don't we make a combo of both of them? You know,

00:14:13.100 we've got a little bit of leftovers there. And there is, if this idea that we are wired to eat

00:14:21.260 more and move less, if that's our default state, and then we're in an environment where we can do

00:14:27.440 almost no movement and eat everything, then we're really set up for a dangerous situation. Like

00:14:33.600 it's going to be very difficult to, to win that. And there's, you know, it's kind of interesting

00:14:38.620 because there is a personal accountability piece to the story that people need to embrace and

00:14:43.600 recognize. But at the same time, I don't think people realize that the desire to eat the whole

00:14:49.560 bag of chips and then have the ice cream and then have a couple of cocktails, like that's totally

00:14:55.220 reasonable. Like from a survival perspective, that is great, um, internal wiring, but it just happens

00:15:02.180 to be really a bad idea in the current, you know, environment that we live in.

00:15:06.540 You know, it's interesting because you're talking about this eating more and move less. And the way

00:15:11.120 you're framing that, that makes sense to me. And I think that probably worked when resources were

00:15:16.900 scarce, but we live in a society now that resources are abundant. If I want ice cream, I got ice cream.

00:15:22.940 If I want chips and sauce, I got chips and sauce. If I want a drink, I can go down the convenience store

00:15:26.440 and get a drink immediately. I can get whatever I want at any time of day immediately. And I think the,

00:15:33.200 the abundance has set us up for failure in a lot of ways, specifically with, with our food choices.

00:15:39.840 Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I, I think that that's where, if we just recognize that at the, at the

00:15:45.700 outset, we still need to take personal accountability. We still need to make better decisions, but it's

00:15:52.660 interesting when I wrote the second book, Wired to Eat, uh, one of the largest groups of people that

00:15:58.560 I got positive feedback from were people who had had disordered eating in the past. And they always

00:16:04.760 felt like they were horrible people, like they were broken. And I really made the case that I'm

00:16:09.640 like, you're not broken. This is normal. It doesn't mean you can keep doing it. Yeah. You're a human

00:16:14.300 being. This is completely to be expected. And now that you understand that we need to make some

00:16:19.560 choices that are going to give you a different outcome. Now that you're enlightened to that,

00:16:23.040 we can't just keep doing the same old, same old. So that that's been cool because like that, that's

00:16:29.220 a, that's a cross section of people that are really hard to reach and they, they suffer a lot. And

00:16:35.040 there's a, you know, and not only do they suffer, particularly like a father who isn't as healthy

00:16:39.900 and robust as he can be for his family. Think about all the failure points there. Like if he's raising a

00:16:45.160 couple of young boys, is he going to wrestle and hike and, and go out shooting and do all this stuff?

00:16:50.880 Like, and so there's a, there's a whole second life that people basically get if they get their

00:16:56.880 health on track and they're, they're able to be so much more effective and enjoy their life more.

00:17:01.960 You're so right. You know, for me, for example, uh, it's been probably at this point close to six

00:17:07.940 years, but I got up to 235 pounds. So as a man who's five 10, you know, that's 50 pounds at least

00:17:15.700 overweight. Right. And, uh, I remember vividly and the guys who've listened to this podcast,

00:17:20.820 know this because they've heard the story. I came home and my boys were jumping on my leg.

00:17:25.260 I've got four kids, but my two oldest boys were jumping on my legs. Dad, dad, dad, let's go jump

00:17:29.060 on the trampoline. And I remember like it was yesterday. I had to look them in the eye and,

00:17:34.960 and tell them, I'm sorry, guys, I can't because I literally could not. I was exhausted from the day

00:17:42.280 from my work out, which was sitting behind a desk and a computer. I shouldn't have been exhausted.

00:17:46.680 I was beat down. And that was the light switch for me that I can't even jump on the trampoline

00:17:53.200 with my boys. How, how bad has this gotten? And you know, life is changed and pivoted because of that

00:17:59.720 and some other things that have happened in my life. But, uh, yeah, when you talk about this second

00:18:05.180 life that opens up for you, this enhanced version of yourself and your family dynamics, man, it's,

00:18:11.540 it's amazing what opens up when you can show some restraint, uh, and get these, uh, food choices in

00:18:18.360 line. Yeah. And I would even go, it, it, it honestly can't really be restraint. You've actually

00:18:24.680 got to plan. And so one of the first things that I have folks do, um, when they start embarking on

00:18:30.880 some dietary change is you've got to go in and just gut your pantry. Like everything's got to go.

00:18:37.020 And I mean like everything and, and even the kids are going to be eating different. It's like,

00:18:42.120 well, I'm going to leave the goldfish. No goldfish. Yes. The goldfish. It's like little

00:18:47.240 Jimmy doesn't need the fucking goldfish. Like nobody needs the goldfish, you know? And if you

00:18:51.700 go out to eat and you want to kick your heels up and that's, that's great. But the thing is, is

00:18:56.000 this would be like going to the playboy mansion, getting pissed drunk and having a bunch of women

00:19:02.300 throw themselves at us and like, Oh yeah, I'm totally going to maintain my, my, uh, you know,

00:19:07.400 loyalty to my wife, you know, that's ridiculous, you know? And so the, I would even go like people,

00:19:14.800 it's almost a self-defense strategy. Like if you don't want to get in fights, don't go to biker

00:19:20.420 bars, you know? And, and on this food thing, you just need to plan ahead. Like nobody lays in bed at

00:19:26.580 night thinking about like, Oh man, that pork loin and broccoli in the fridge is just really calling to

00:19:31.140 me, but the little dead snack cakes and the ice cream, like that's what you want to get up out

00:19:35.840 of bed and, and get in the, and again, it's not to say that you never have that stuff or like at

00:19:40.540 holidays and birthdays, you don't kick your heels up and have a little more fun. But once that stuff's

00:19:45.780 done, it's done, it gets backed up. It either gets pitched. We have a bunch of chickens and stuff.

00:19:50.240 And so that all goes in and our chickens are probably going to be diabetic at some point,

00:19:53.640 but you know, better them than me. Well, they're going to sacrifice themselves at some point.

00:19:57.900 So you might as well make them happy while they, while they're still alive.

00:20:00.700 Yeah. Yeah. I give them, give them a little, little bonus there, but yeah, I would, I would

00:20:05.080 just, it's kind of a subtle distinction, but you really, it can't be restraint. Like self-control

00:20:11.400 is, is such a perishable thing. And I think so many of the folks that follow you, they're

00:20:17.300 entrepreneurial, they're hard chargers, they're go-getters. So many of the, the, the people

00:20:22.380 that follow you, they already have hit this decision fatigue by like eight 30 or 9.00 AM in

00:20:27.480 the morning. They've made a thousand decisions and their day is barely even getting going.

00:20:32.700 And one of the first things to go in that decision fatigue process is the ability to make good

00:20:39.380 choices around food and default to the easiest, the tastiest. And that is where, um, you know,

00:20:46.380 you've got to have some planning. It's really funny. I have, I have two girls, but one of the girls was

00:20:50.660 lamenting the other day. She's like, and it's so funny because I think that this is something from

00:20:55.000 like a sitcom where somebody said this, but she said, dad, we don't have any food. We just have

00:20:59.860 things to make food out of. Like she was really frustrated that there wasn't like a buffet there

00:21:04.460 or something like, yeah, I get it. You know, here we go. We get to cook again, you know? So yeah,

00:21:08.780 it's funny. One of the things a friend of mine told me, Josiah Novak, and he's coached me a little

00:21:13.340 bit with my food choices. And also my strength training is he talks about the best thing you can do.

00:21:17.460 And the easiest, most simple way to, to shop is look for single ingredient items. So that's your

00:21:23.100 vegetables. Of course, beef would fall in the line. It's your single ingredient item and items,

00:21:28.240 and you're just consuming that. But it is really interesting. You're talking about discipline

00:21:33.260 because one thing we've addressed before is, you know, you have motivation and inspiration,

00:21:37.860 which serves its purpose, but it's, it's a lower tier of, of getting the thing done. Right. So you

00:21:44.660 have motivation, inspiration. Then next you have your discipline. That's better, right? I'm going to make

00:21:49.020 decisions, not regarding how I feel, but just because I committed to doing it. Right. And then

00:21:55.700 this third component is the strategy or systems. And this is what you're talking about. So a system

00:22:00.900 is eliminating the temptation. Now the temptation is not even there. That's the, the highest tier

00:22:07.440 of ensuring that you do what you've committed to actually doing. Yeah. Yeah. There was a really

00:22:14.740 interesting study where they looked at, uh, how people consumed peanut M&Ms, which I I'm hard

00:22:20.940 pressed to think of something more amazing than peanut M&Ms. Like I'm not a super sweet guy,

00:22:26.580 but you get some butter M&Ms with it. That now you might get me there, but not peanut M&Ms.

00:22:31.340 Okay. Well, it's in the neighborhood, you know, close enough. They did it. They did a fascinating study

00:22:36.980 where they, they set folks up where they had three different options for eating these,

00:22:41.260 these peanut M&Ms. And it was cool because the M&Ms are quantifiable. It's like you,

00:22:46.380 would they put 150 of them on the table? And so you count them. So it was really cool in that regard.

00:22:51.040 But what they did is they had a group of people where they had a bowl of peanut M&Ms on their desk.

00:22:57.380 The other group of people had peanut M&Ms at their desk, but they had to open up a drawer,

00:23:02.640 reach down and grab the peanut M&Ms. And then the third group of people, there was a bowl of peanut

00:23:07.600 M&Ms for them across the office, but they had to get up, leave the workstation, walk across the

00:23:13.720 office, do the walk of shame because they knew that everybody going over there was going over

00:23:17.280 there for the peanut M&Ms. Just simply putting the M&Ms in the drawer below them, not just being

00:23:24.740 a single like hand reach away, cut consumption by 50%. And then sticking it across the room,

00:23:32.300 actually cut it by like 90%. And it, because there was a little bit of the social shame and

00:23:37.820 everybody would kind of shit talk around it and stuff like that. But that blew my mind that just,

00:23:42.100 if it's right there, like literally right there, hand reach away, there's just the speed bump of

00:23:48.900 needing to scoot your chair back, pull the drawer out, scoop your hand in, cut consumption by 50%.

00:23:54.840 And this is some of that stuff where the strategies are, are critical. I call it the kind of

00:24:00.380 speed bump process, you know, and it works both ways. If you want to make it to the gym and like

00:24:05.760 you've got a super long commute or there are some problems with that, you might be better off parking

00:24:10.360 your car outside and building a home gym because then you walk out into the garage and you're there,

00:24:16.080 you know, every little speed bump impediment from online marketing, when you're trying to sell people

00:24:24.220 stuff, every single time someone needs to click, typically the conversions reduce themselves by

00:24:30.160 50%, you know, it's like 50%, 50%. And so it, you can tweak these things both positively and negatively

00:24:37.120 to make some, some good impact in the direction that you want. And again, to your point, and I really

00:24:42.620 like that heuristic for looking at this stuff, you have like the, the motivation. I want to be around

00:24:47.660 for my kids to see them graduate and see grandkids. Okay. That's kind of your anchor and your North star.

00:24:53.340 And then you have that discipline piece. It's like, I will commit to doing this. And now my

00:24:57.780 strategy so that I don't need to spin out on it every moment of the day is thinking about like,

00:25:05.460 well, I'm not going to keep peanut M&Ms in the house. If we go out and I want some, then I'll eat

00:25:11.260 some and whatever's left, I'm, I'm pitching it. And, and that, that ends up developing the strategy

00:25:16.280 that's really kind of hard to screw up. And, and one, one final piece around that also is an absolute

00:25:22.520 poison in this whole story is trying to make perfection the goal. And even the notion of

00:25:29.920 like screwing up it, if you eat three meals a day, that's seven days a week, 21 meals. If 19 of those

00:25:37.140 meals are on point and two of them aren't, who cares? No big deal. Like if it's the flip, if it's

00:25:42.740 19 of them are a, are an absolute disaster, two are on point, then we've, we've got a problem there.

00:25:47.200 But what people will do is set themselves up for, for failure so that they can abandon the process

00:25:53.640 where they're like, Oh, I had five days of success. I screwed up one day and now I'm done. It's like,

00:25:59.040 no, you didn't screw up. You had a meal off plan. Your next meal will be on plan. Get over it,

00:26:05.320 sack it up and you're good to go. But that those are kind of the strategy on the front end, but then

00:26:10.020 also the, the greatest psychological hamstringing technique that I see people do, and they'll do it on

00:26:16.220 purpose where they set it up such that they will guarantee their failure, you know, and they're

00:26:22.240 like, well, I wasn't perfect with it. So I'm just going to abandon it. It's like, no, no, you're not

00:26:25.840 like, you don't do anything. Perfect. Your first shot at archery or your first attempt at an arm bar

00:26:31.080 is never perfect. You just keep iterating and doing and working on it. Yeah. I can see how even I have

00:26:38.540 done that in the past where we failed to compartmentalize in a way our decisions. So we think, for

00:26:44.980 example, like your, your scenario, you know, I had, uh, I had six good days of the week and I had one

00:26:51.220 bad day. Therefore all the other days didn't count. Right. It's like, no, no, no, no. You had six good

00:26:57.800 days and one bad day. Now let's not compound it. And let's put six more days of, of making the right

00:27:04.500 decisions on the tail end of that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Totally. And you know,

00:27:09.960 as you talk about the speed bumps, James Clear actually talks about this. I don't, I don't know if you're

00:27:13.760 familiar with James Clear with, with atomic habits. Yeah. Yep. Uh, he talks about just the process of

00:27:19.620 making things, uh, more simple for yourself, you know, simple in that, Hey, this is not a temptation.

00:27:26.280 So I don't have to worry about that simple in that your gym scenario. If I want to go to the gym,

00:27:30.160 it's just right outside in the garage and, and eliminating those speed bumps and then putting

00:27:34.940 speed bumps in place where you need to the appropriate spots. Yep. It's just funny as I hear you

00:27:39.700 talk about that with the off office scenario of, of, of, uh, having M&Ms, two things came to mind.

00:27:46.440 Number one, how lazy are we? You know what I mean? Like that's the first thing that comes to mind.

00:27:52.800 But then the second thing that comes to mind is like, okay, well we know we're lazy and, and we have

00:27:58.360 a tendency of, of not having very good willpower. So let's just acknowledge that and then use that to

00:28:03.860 our advantage. Yeah. Because we, we either do that or we do what kind of, uh, gets into almost

00:28:13.840 the realm of spirituality mysticism where it's like, well, we're going to make humanity better,

00:28:19.600 better, whatever that means, you know? And so we're, we're endeavoring to change who we

00:28:25.960 fundamentally are, which never works. Like it's, it's like kind of trying to say, well, we're going

00:28:31.360 to turn a cat into not being a carnivore. You know, no, that's how it's biologically wired.

00:28:36.920 So yeah, we really, we either have an option of acknowledging who we are as human beings and

00:28:41.660 working within those things and figuring out how much latitude that understanding really gives us,

00:28:46.880 or we get stuck in this cul-de-sac of, of this kind of weird self-improvement thing where,

00:28:53.560 well, my desire for the ice cream is a failure. If I just changed my, my fundamental being that I

00:28:59.560 wouldn't want ice cream anymore. And it's like, no, that's still a biological imperative. Of course

00:29:03.920 you want a super calorie dense, delicious item. Like that's part of your evolutionary wiring. So yeah.

00:29:10.980 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really valuable. I've actually never heard it painted in that light. It's

00:29:17.100 just, it's who you are and it, you're not broken. You're not messed up. You aren't a loser. I imagine

00:29:24.340 a lot of people say that or a piece of shit, you know, you're, you're not those things. You're just

00:29:29.640 a human being who has some evolutionarily hardwired processes and systems. And we need to overcome

00:29:37.300 that. I do have a question about the evolution thing. Cause this is one argument I've heard a lot

00:29:41.260 is that with a paleo diet and these types of things, people say, well, we're not evolutionarily

00:29:46.120 hardwired to consume these foods. I get that. I understand that. But then I wonder, okay, so now that

00:29:52.720 we have all these processed foods is the argument then saying that at some point, whether it's

00:29:57.840 the next thousand years or a hundred thousand years, that human beings will be more able

00:30:04.480 and capable of consuming and processing these processed foods.

00:30:09.940 Yeah. So I'll try to, it's a really, really good question. This is where the original paleo

00:30:19.220 diet concept didn't provide enough latitude. And it really should have been couched in terms

00:30:23.560 of like ancestral health, like a broader kind of, kind of story, because there are some folks

00:30:30.000 that have developed the ability to really do well with dairy. And we've seen that emerge

00:30:35.460 in, in Northern Europe, in Africa, and in certain places in, in Asia, Mongolia specifically.

00:30:41.940 And interestingly, the adaptations to do well with dairy is totally different in the three

00:30:47.980 different locations. Some of them deals with dealing with the protein, some of it dealing

00:30:52.400 with the lactose in Mongolia, they largely deal with it by the way that they ferment the

00:30:56.920 dairy. They are actually lactose intolerant, but the way that they ferment the dairy, it removes

00:31:01.300 all the, all the lactose. And so it's, it's not really an issue, but there's some biological

00:31:06.120 changes there that aren't paleo, you know, but there, this is where I kind of push back,

00:31:11.920 which is that there's a concept called the discordance theory of disease, where at some

00:31:17.380 point our, our environment changes in such a way that it starts becoming path of pathological

00:31:23.380 for us. And, and we are definitely in that spot. Like, uh, I think when we were growing

00:31:29.580 up, there was adult onset diabetes, type two diabetes, and then there was childhood diabetes,

00:31:35.920 which is type one. And it's caused by an autoimmune disease. Type two diabetes was unheard of,

00:31:43.120 unknown in children. And now I want to say it's like two thirds or a third of all new type two

00:31:50.080 diabetics are below the age of 18. And they've had kids as young as 18 months old with type two

00:31:56.680 diabetes from the parents putting Coca-Cola and stuff like that in their body. At 18 months?

00:32:01.300 18 months is the youngest documented to my knowledge of type two diabetes. And literally

00:32:06.620 30 years ago, this was unheard of. So this is clearly a situation, like whether we, we go fully

00:32:14.020 like paleo caveman reenactment or whatnot, we've reached a point where our food system and our,

00:32:19.860 our lifestyle is so at odds with the way that our biology is expecting to be born into the world,

00:32:25.720 that it's causing some real problems. The interesting thing is that for adaptation to

00:32:31.780 occur so that let's say we could thrive on a, a, a processed food diet, you need to have people get

00:32:39.860 so sick that they die before reproductive age, because then there is a selection pressure for

00:32:45.880 the people that do comparatively better. And that's a pretty gnarly scenario. Like you literally

00:32:52.100 wouldn't want that to play out for sure. You don't want it. And I don't know that even our

00:32:56.800 civilization or society could survive a selection pressure like that. Like it's a, it's a really

00:33:02.560 gnarly event. Um, so basically it kills off what you're saying is it would kill off anybody who didn't

00:33:09.840 adapt. It's like literally adapt or die. Yeah. And people may be like, Oh, that's bullshit. You know,

00:33:15.900 but there's a, there's an interesting example of where this has happened in the past. So the,

00:33:20.340 the Swinton cultures, which, which emerged in central Africa, they developed kind of a slash

00:33:25.740 and burn technology where they would clear an area and then they would plant things like yucca and,

00:33:31.000 and, um, sweet potatoes. And they lived in pretty close proximity to these areas. But what was

00:33:36.520 interesting is that this slash and burn kind of methodology, it created these open areas where

00:33:43.060 water could be held in kind of standing water, you know, small lakes, small ponds and whatnot.

00:33:49.100 And there had always been mosquitoes and malaria in these areas. But what this technology did is it

00:33:55.320 exploded the populations of mosquitoes that carry malaria. And then these folks started living in

00:34:00.900 these kinds of thatched hut scenarios that are a perfect environment for mosquitoes to live in and

00:34:06.660 basically feed on humans. And malaria has a remarkably high fatality rate. It makes people both sick and,

00:34:13.420 and it kills a good number of people, but a biological adaptation occurred, which is called sickle cell

00:34:19.140 anemia, where if somebody has one copy of the sickle cell genes, their red blood cells, instead of

00:34:25.180 being kind of circular, they're sickled. And what this does is it makes it more difficult for the malaria

00:34:30.940 parasite to live in the person. So it tends to not make them as sick. Somebody with two copies of the

00:34:38.080 sickle cell gene, it causes even more sickling of the cell, but to such a degree that it causes

00:34:44.120 vascular damage and the person usually dies in childhood. And it's a one fourth fatality rate,

00:34:51.540 25% of that population dies from the sickle cell anemia. But that is the selection pressure that makes

00:34:58.980 it possible for that sickle cell anemia to make its way through that population. And it's one of the most

00:35:05.220 rapid genetic adaptations that we've ever seen in history. And interestingly, folks that live in the

00:35:11.280 United States that are African American in background, the sickle cell gene is disappearing

00:35:16.220 because there's no longer that selection pressure. So this isn't something I'm making up. Like there's

00:35:22.000 good evolutionary biology that explains this stuff. And it is possible that we could adapt ourselves to

00:35:29.640 living on a more processed food diet. But it really also begs the question, what will we be at the end

00:35:37.720 of that? Because part of clearly what has made humans who we are, the big brains, all the rest of this

00:35:43.960 stuff was this really nutrient dense diet of which meat was a primary feature. There's a hypothesis called

00:35:51.260 the expensive tissue hypothesis that as early hominins started eating meat, mainly from the leftover

00:35:59.220 carcasses of other animals' kills. They developed the technology of stone tools and breaking open

00:36:06.000 long bones and getting the bone marrow out and breaking open the skulls and getting the brains.

00:36:11.740 And that stuff was so nutrient and calorie dense that they didn't need to eat as much vegetable

00:36:17.780 matter. And so the brain was allowed to grow while the gut actually shrank. And when you look at the

00:36:24.380 difference between a human and a chimpanzee or a gorilla, they have quite large brains, but they

00:36:30.280 have much larger guts. And it's exactly the same ratio. Like the amount of gut we lost is the amount

00:36:36.800 of brain that we gained. Men, I just want to interject in the conversation real quickly. I just looked at

00:36:43.400 the statistics and over 6,000 men have now enrolled in the 30 days to battle ready course. These are guys

00:36:50.160 just like you. They want to deepen the relationship they have with their spouse, stack a few more zeros

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00:37:08.340 as I do, that it's not going to just happen. You need to plan for it. And then you need to actually work

00:37:13.880 to make it a reality. And while I can't do the work for you, I can give you the roadmap and help you

00:37:19.120 create a path for yourself. It's, it's that old adage, give a man a fish, you feed him for a day,

00:37:23.740 teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. If you want to learn how to fish in your

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00:37:34.760 enrolled at order of men.com slash battle ready. This is a free course again, order of men.com slash

00:37:41.440 battle ready. You can do that after the conversation for now, let's get back to it with Rob.

00:37:45.700 So, so what I'm understanding you say, and maybe help me round this out is that if we adapt,

00:37:54.620 either we could potentially run the risk of mass sort of extinction or death, or we would cease to

00:38:03.020 be human at all is kind of what I'm hearing you say. We would definitely be a different flavor of

00:38:08.120 human. Like humanity has evolved over time and you know, we would definitely be different and who

00:38:13.480 knows, maybe it could be a good thing, but to get that type of selection pressure, you would, you would

00:38:18.100 have a lot of illness and a lot of death to, to, to even facilitate that. And again, I, uh, the people

00:38:24.560 need to die before reproductive age. So they need to die at like 12 or 13 or something for there to be a

00:38:31.100 sufficient, um, signal in the, the kind of biological systems for it to be like, well, okay, we need to get

00:38:38.780 really good at dealing with little Debbie snack cakes as our main source of nutrition. Yeah.

00:38:45.120 So, I mean, basically the answer just to sum this up and from my perspective is, you know, we probably

00:38:50.120 ought to wait for evolution to take care of itself. We probably ought to adapt ourselves and deliberately

00:38:56.620 and build up our mindset, our fortitude and our systems to ensure that we can handle the changing

00:39:02.440 landscape with society, culture, and food. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yes, absolutely. And I guess

00:39:10.500 in some ways that kind of circles back around a little bit to the, the sacred cow book, which tackles

00:39:16.560 the health, environmental, and ethical considerations of a meat inclusive food system. And the first place

00:39:22.640 that we jump in there is actually the health story. Because when you look at folks that tend to not eat a

00:39:30.040 meat inclusive diet, they tend to not fare as well. And you really see this at the two ends of the life

00:39:36.440 cycle extremes, um, infants and children, breastfeeding moms, and then all also older

00:39:42.840 people and the nutrient deficiencies, lack of protein failure to thrive are endemic in these

00:39:49.280 populations. And it's kind of this middle of the life cycle, like twenties through forties, twenties

00:39:54.060 through fifties, that people to varying degrees can do okay on a more vegan centric vegetarian type

00:40:00.860 diet. Um, but it's because they don't have those, those real growth demands of childhood, nor the,

00:40:08.620 the near end of life demands where we, we need to improve our nutrient intake, improve our,

00:40:14.700 our protein intake. Like one of the biggest factors of whether or not we remain independent

00:40:19.500 is our maintenance of muscle mass and bone mineral density. And one of the group two primary drivers

00:40:25.660 with that inactivity and a lack of protein intake, when people are terrified of protein,

00:40:30.940 they think it's going to give them cancer and, you know, all kinds of, of different things like that.

00:40:35.820 So it's, um, it's interesting. And this is where this puzzle gets fascinating to me when we start

00:40:43.580 talking about the regenerative agriculture story, like small decentralized farms all over the place.

00:40:51.900 Um, it's really good for the environment. It's fantastic for economies and local, local

00:40:58.060 infrastructure, like instead of all the middle of America. And honestly, this is all over the world,

00:41:02.620 but the United States in particular, um, the, the small time farm used to be the, the economic

00:41:08.860 engine of the United States. Right. We're in this interesting scenario where say artificial

00:41:14.140 intelligence is being predicted to displace all of these different work roles for human beings.

00:41:20.140 And ironically, some of the first things that are going to go is going to be doctoring and

00:41:24.220 lawyering because this stuff is so algorithmically driven that as it is right now,

00:41:29.420 there are computer programs that do a better job of diagnosing disease than, than doctors do for the

00:41:34.780 most part without the, uh, the, the baggage we'll call it baggage. Yeah. I don't know if that's the

00:41:39.820 right term, the baggage of human emotion and experience and biases and all that kind of stuff.

00:41:45.180 Yeah. Yeah, totally. And what's interesting is anybody in this artificial intelligence scene

00:41:52.220 that talks about this topic of, you know, AI displacing human work, they can see that the last

00:41:58.700 place that this will be a factor is in creative endeavors, things where human creativity is,

00:42:04.380 is a, an important factor. Sure.

00:42:06.620 And a lot of people suggest that we'll never see AI that, that really encompasses the creativity

00:42:13.180 that the human mind can, can bring to bear on problems. And people have painted ranchers and

00:42:19.660 farmers as these kind of dumb lug nuts, and they're not really that sophisticated, but all that ranchers

00:42:25.660 and farmers do, particularly in, in that regenerative ag scene where they're not relying on the industrial

00:42:30.700 row crop system to make this whole thing go. All they do is problem solve like morning, noon,

00:42:37.180 no doubt. When do you move the electric fences? How do you birth a cow? You know, there's all this

00:42:42.300 stuff and it's fairly labor intensive, but folks can make a good living doing this stuff, you know,

00:42:47.340 and it's very rewarding. You're feeding yourself and you're feeding your community. Like it's,

00:42:51.180 it's kind of hard to think of something that's not more meaningful in that regard. And so this is a lot of

00:42:55.900 the stuff that we, we try to unpack in the book. It, you know, health is important. The environment's

00:43:01.420 important, but then there's this whole economic piece and, and just finding and embracing meaningful

00:43:08.780 work that has, has really been kind of destroyed with the industrialization of our food system.

00:43:14.860 You know, I really love that you're talking about this because I've got some own personal experiences

00:43:20.220 in my life. And we were talking before we hit record on this podcast, but how I moved up here to

00:43:24.860 Maine. Well, we've got, uh, 50 acres here and I would say, I don't know exactly, but I would say

00:43:30.860 roughly 35 to 40 acres of it is field. We've got a neighbor across the field who comes and haze the

00:43:39.180 field. And then he takes that hay and he feeds his cow and he pays us. He compensates us in, in beef.

00:43:46.460 That that's our arrangement. And then, uh, a couple of weeks ago he came by and he's like,

00:43:51.260 Hey Ryan, you know, I really want to, uh, make sure the hay is sustainable and make sure this

00:43:55.820 is working correctly. And so I'm going to bring a big load of, uh, chicken crap over here and we're

00:44:01.740 going to spread it all over your entire field. It's going to stink for three or four days and,

00:44:05.420 but it's going to be better for both of us. Yeah. And, and we're neighborly, we're, uh, cooperating.

00:44:12.460 We get to know each other better. I have food for my family. He gets the hay that he needs. My field

00:44:17.340 is hayed and has a beautiful view. Uh, I've got another neighbor. In fact, he's downstairs right

00:44:22.220 now. He's building out, uh, some bathrooms in the barn that we have. He's got 15 to 20 head of cattle.

00:44:29.020 And my son goes over every couple of weeks and, uh, butchers the, uh, the chickens and goes through

00:44:36.540 that process. And he's got the cattle that he cycles through and he lives a really good life

00:44:43.020 with his family. And he's teaching his daughters and his sons how to farm. And anecdotally, I see

00:44:48.620 the evidence and I love the lifestyle. I love the way of life. And I love all of the things that it

00:44:54.540 brings in as far as bringing together a community, uh, having clean locally sourced meat and provisions

00:45:03.340 for yourself, learning the skill of harvesting animals, which is something that I think is

00:45:07.260 important. There's just so much beyond the nutritional benefits of this for me and my family.

00:45:13.820 Yeah. And that's kind of the cool thing. It's, it's kind of, um, I don't know if this is a good

00:45:19.980 analogy or not, but good diet, good lifestyle is good for all of these multiplicative reasons.

00:45:28.220 Yeah. More bone mineral density. You have greater muscle mass. You feel better. You're more

00:45:32.620 motivated. So there's all, you know, it's like benefit, benefit, benefit, benefit.

00:45:37.420 Whereas these extractive processes of like industrializing the food system, it's like,

00:45:42.380 well, it damages the soil and it kills all the native flora and fauna and holy smokes,

00:45:48.060 like the insect population has plummeted. And so there's all that like, okay, we get an assumed

00:45:55.260 benefit that we're getting some food out of this system, which is usually kind of low nutrient quality

00:46:00.220 food. But then we have all these other factors like jobs have been destroyed. Waterways are damaged

00:46:06.940 or destroyed. The, the, the very soil that we grow the food out of is washing away or blowing away.

00:46:13.820 And so it's like negative, negative, negative, kind of, sort of one positive, you know? And,

00:46:18.620 and so these, these regenerative systems with what they call holistic management, it's not holistic in,

00:46:24.860 in like kind of a hippie chakra balancing thing. It's, I need to look at the whole system, right?

00:46:30.380 We need to really look at what are all the inputs, what are all the outputs and really assess that in

00:46:36.220 a critical way and then stack the deck so that we get as much benefit out of this as we can.

00:46:42.540 You're an investment. It seems like, uh, well, I was going to say, it seems like to me that,

00:46:47.660 and I'm just speaking generally that society has put the villain pin on the wrong culprit,

00:46:55.100 right? They've put it on meat, for example, when I don't know that it should have been placed on

00:46:59.420 meat. Cause the first thing you talk about in the book is the scapegoat of meat, right? Every

00:47:02.780 cancer and the, the economy and, and global warming and everything else that goes with it.

00:47:08.300 So we placed that villain pin on the meat. It's not the meat. It was the process. It was the system

00:47:13.900 that the villain pin should have been pinned on. If that makes sense, I'm saying that.

00:47:18.940 Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, it's a really compelling story. It on a kind of intuitive level,

00:47:25.740 it kind of makes sense. Like, uh, I grew up in Northern California and you'd go up,

00:47:30.140 up and down interstate five and there are these huge, you know, feed lots. And like,

00:47:34.940 there's a good 20 minute period where you're like roll up the windows and, you know, close.

00:47:38.940 Definitely. I've been on that road.

00:47:40.300 It smells horrible. Yeah. Right. And that is not a good scene. It's not good for the animals. It's not

00:47:45.660 good for the local environment. And all of that is a consequence of a system that has gotten more

00:47:51.580 and more consolidated, more and more monopolized. And it's not good for anybody. It doesn't produce

00:47:57.100 good food. It doesn't produce, uh, the same number of jobs or the infrastructure that we would have.

00:48:02.460 This kind of globalization of our food system is, is really a bad thing. But yet,

00:48:07.100 um, we don't look at the row crops that are a part of that system and vilify them to the degree that

00:48:14.700 they need to be vilified. It's almost exclusively, um, you know, all of the problems are, are laid

00:48:20.860 ironically at beef. And, you know, the chicken and pork production thing is actually, uh, to the degree

00:48:26.380 that there's some merit about like the kind of unsustainability of, of meat production, chicken and

00:48:31.580 pork, you could make some cases around that. Like, like pre 1940s, chicken and pork were a very

00:48:38.780 secondary, uh, food, food source. Like it was a chicken was something that you had on like,

00:48:44.620 uh, family gatherings. It was a rare thing. And what people ate day to day was, uh, beef and lamb

00:48:50.540 for the most part, these large grazing animals were the cornerstone of the protein that we ate. And these

00:48:55.980 other items like. Much more efficient. Is that why? Much more efficient because they're just eating

00:49:00.940 grass. We can't eat grass, you know, it's humans. Right. Um, whereas they turn, they turn vegetables

00:49:06.940 into meat, which, which I really appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas there is a case to be made,

00:49:12.540 you know, chicken and pork grow almost exclusively off of corn and soybean. Right. Which you could argue

00:49:19.100 could be fed to humans. I would argue that I would rather just grow much more pastured meat and feed that

00:49:24.060 to humans, but, but there, there is a, a, a, a, a poor resource allocation there. Like there's a lot

00:49:30.860 of energy that goes into creating grains and soybeans and turning that into feed and then

00:49:36.540 feeding that to animals. So there's a good point. Cause I think about our scenario, we've got,

00:49:41.820 I believe we've got roughly 20 chickens or so. Uh, and yeah, we buy feed for them, but the cattle that

00:49:48.780 my neighbors have, we don't have cattle ourselves. They don't buy feed except for in the winter,

00:49:52.460 maybe, or their, or they bail their hay and then they, that uses for the winter. Um, but yeah,

00:49:57.100 it's much more sustainable. That makes sense. And generally what folks like that will do

00:50:01.740 is they'll move the cattle through an area. And then after the cattle get moved to a new paddock,

00:50:06.860 then the chickens are brought in. Usually they have like a mobile chicken tractor and then the chickens

00:50:11.020 eat the bugs and the worms and they pick through the poo and they, they poo themselves. Right.

00:50:16.780 And they, you know, and the bulk of their, their food comes from that and you can supplement them

00:50:21.740 in the winter and whatnot. But when you look at it, like, uh, you know, like, uh, uh, a nature

00:50:27.340 program talking about the Serengeti and if they do like a full, full deal on it, they'll talk about

00:50:32.780 like all the wildebeest and water buffalo that go through and they poop everywhere. And then

00:50:38.700 there are like dung beetles that pop up and then there are birds that go through and, you know,

00:50:44.300 play their role in that whole system. So birds really should be kind of a secondary tertiary

00:50:49.660 feature of, uh, uh, a legit sustainable food system. Whereas over the course of time, like

00:50:56.540 Americans eat about 30% less beef than what they did 30 years ago, but they eat, uh, proportionally

00:51:04.620 more chicken than what they used to. And chicken is kind of portrayed as more of a, uh, a sustainable,

00:51:09.500 more like kind of feminine food or, or what, but it's really not.

00:51:14.300 You know, what's funny is, so I wanted to ask you because I knew we're having this conversation

00:51:18.300 and I wanted to ask you something maybe somewhat political. It seems like, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:51:23.260 because you have more evidence on this than I do, but it seems like meat eaters tend to be

00:51:29.020 more conservative in nature and you're, you're, you're vegans and vegetarians tend to be more

00:51:34.860 liberal in nature. Is, is that, do you believe, is that kind of in line with what you've seen?

00:51:40.540 And why is that? I'm not entirely sure why, but I've seen that for a long time. And this sounds

00:51:47.740 like kind of a, a prick thing to say, but I've, I've said that, um, veganism is the state religion

00:51:54.300 of progressism, like the state religious diet of progress. Agreed for sure. And it's not a hundred

00:52:00.540 percent. Like there are some folks out there that, that, uh, I will get pushed back on it. They're

00:52:04.700 like, Hey, I'm super liberal, but I eat meat. But they're, man, it's, it's, um,

00:52:09.180 It just seems like generally these are the camps we fall into.

00:52:11.660 That's a damn good trend. It's a damn good trend. And you know, one of the things, uh,

00:52:17.020 heck I, I, I, I've been, um, just push poking the bear on like cancel culture. I'm like, come on,

00:52:22.940 just bring it. Just cancel me. I'm ready to go open my farm and just be like done, you know,

00:52:27.420 for sure. And, and, uh, you know, one of the things, you know, just in this whole COVID thing,

00:52:33.260 like there's this thing of, well, let's take care of the people that are really at risk. We know

00:52:37.980 crystal clear who those people are. And then for the rest of us, if, if you, you know, like,

00:52:43.100 if I feel like, Oh wow, I'm really scared of it, then I'll wear a mask and I'll do my social

00:52:46.780 distancing. And then for other people, you do whatever the hell you want to do. And again,

00:52:50.540 there seems to be kind of a political divide on that. Whereas there are other people that are of

00:52:56.220 the mind. It's like, we must do everything possible to save every life we can. It's like,

00:53:03.020 okay, that's a noble. I can appreciate that. Sure.

00:53:06.140 Yeah. I can appreciate that until again, we look at externalities, knock on consequences.

00:53:12.460 We left Reno a little over a year ago, but every single restaurant we used to go to is closed.

00:53:19.020 Like they're all gone. And we're friends with some of the people that had them. And they're like,

00:53:23.340 I don't know what I'm going to do. Like one guy, his wife intervened in a suicide. Like he was

00:53:28.380 literally in the process of killing himself after this. So where does saving that life factor into

00:53:36.780 the story? Where does, where are we going to be a year or two years from now when like every small,

00:53:43.420 this is kind of an interesting thing. Did Walmart get closed? Did Target get closed? No,

00:53:48.060 but all these small businesses got closed. So when, and what's ironic is the more

00:53:53.500 left leaning people will rail against like capitalism and globalization and all this type

00:53:59.100 of stuff we destroyed and are destroying our internal base of small businesses. The only thing

00:54:05.980 we're going to have left are like big box options at the end of this thing. And this is just this

00:54:12.060 real interesting disconnect. And it's something that Diana and I talk about in the book is that we,

00:54:17.980 we feel like there's a, a massive disconnect between the realities of life and death and

00:54:23.980 people in this kind of more left leaning arena. I think that they're very, um,

00:54:29.900 empathetic in many ways. Like they, they just feel strong emotions and yeah, I agree with that.

00:54:34.940 And the, and there's a, you know, and there's a desire to mitigate suffering, which again,

00:54:38.860 I think is a noble goal. It's noble. Sure.

00:54:41.820 But the irony is the path to hell is paved on good intentions and our world is so complex that the,

00:54:50.300 here's a possibly decent example. Um, in India, as it was growing, this was about 20 years ago,

00:54:57.980 even though it's industrializing and growing rapidly, it still is this kind of wild place.

00:55:02.460 Like there's tigers that will make their way into like urban centers and stuff like that. And one of the

00:55:07.660 problems that they had is that there are Cobras everywhere and these things can, can clearly kill

00:55:13.340 you. So the government enacted a program where they would pay people, I think either for like the skin

00:55:19.260 of the Cobra or the head of the Cobra or something like that. And so it was kind of this bounty system.

00:55:23.500 Sure. Yeah. And people realized, man, Cobras breed like crazy. So I'll raise Cobras, turn them in for

00:55:31.580 the bounty, which is a great idea. People respond to incentives, but, um, but once the government got

00:55:38.860 wind that people were raising Cobras for the bounty, then they canceled the program. Then people dump

00:55:44.540 these Cobras out into the streets. And the problem was literally like 10 times worse than what it was

00:55:50.140 before unintended consequences, unintended consequences. Yeah. And I think that our

00:55:54.940 world is fraught with those. And when people don't recognize that we are part of this biological

00:56:00.940 system, that we will live and we will die and that everything will live and die. Then we have a

00:56:07.260 tendency to make decisions as if we could intervene in that process in a way that will either, either

00:56:14.780 halt death or that we can just like kick the can on it indefinitely. And I think that that's a really

00:56:21.660 big part of this. And a lot of folks that have been vegan, if they go and they, they do some work

00:56:28.620 on say like a regenerative farm and they see the way that these systems work together, they're like,

00:56:34.460 oh, I have to have animals on the land. And like what your neighbor is doing is like,

00:56:39.980 hey, I've got a load of chicken shit coming over because otherwise we're going to, we're going to

00:56:44.060 strip mine all the nutrients out of your soil and I won't have hay anymore for my animals. So like,

00:56:48.860 there has to be this, this cyclical process. And when people understand that we're part of a system,

00:56:54.540 part of a cycle, it doesn't mean that we treat each other or the other organisms on this planet

00:56:59.980 horribly. Like we can always have, have goals of, of treating people and animals better. But it also

00:57:06.700 doesn't mean that the only route to like a, a moral way of producing food is a vegan diet. In fact,

00:57:15.340 when you look at the knock on effects of like the industrial row crop food system, it kills an

00:57:20.540 enormous amount of life, you know, from, from small animals to the invertebrates in the soil to,

00:57:26.700 to birds, uh, insects. Yeah. But I don't think people care as much, those individuals who are

00:57:31.900 concerned about that for, from my perspective, it doesn't seem like they care as much about insects

00:57:36.460 as they do about furry things. It's true. And this is where we start getting into some

00:57:41.500 apples to apples comparison. So a mouse is a mammal and a cow was a mammal and they're actually pretty

00:57:48.460 similar in intelligence, even though their size is dramatically different. And when you look at the

00:57:53.340 number of mice and birds and, and reptiles that are killed in the process of, of the industrial

00:57:59.500 row crop food system, it's enormous. And, and, uh, a guy out of Oregon state, he did a paper looking

00:58:06.380 at the least harm principle, which is this idea of, okay, an ethical food system would cause the

00:58:10.940 least amount of death and suffering. Right. And in his analysis, what that looks like is lots of

00:58:17.100 grazing animals on lots of grass and then fruits, nuts and seeds, and some root crops like potatoes and

00:58:25.180 and beets and stuff like that. And that's actually where you produce the most food and cause the least

00:58:30.300 death and least harm. And one of the fascinating places that we've seen some embracing of this

00:58:37.020 regenerative system is the Audubon society. Historically, these folks have been really

00:58:42.620 antagonistic towards ranching and ranching can be done poorly and it can damage the environment.

00:58:47.980 And then if you pull grazing animals off of grasslands entirely, those grasslands will also

00:58:53.980 perform poorly. They will die. Right. There's this kind of middle ground in there, but what's been

00:58:58.860 happening in these holistically managed grasslands is that the bird populations have rebounded like these,

00:59:05.820 these, uh, uh, you know, endangered species and, and these at-risk species have been exploding

00:59:11.900 in these holistically managed environments because these grasslands co-evolved with

00:59:17.100 all of these birds, all of these insects, all of these animals. And so if you do something that

00:59:22.300 improves the ability for these birds to be there, that it improves the ability for you to raise

00:59:27.100 cattle or goats or sheep on these, these grasslands. So this regenerative process actually improves

00:59:34.860 the ability to have more life exist in these scenarios versus the industrial row crop food system.

00:59:41.500 Like it's monoculture. You kill everything except the soybeans you're growing or the corn you're

00:59:47.260 growing. You know, I, when I hear this, I think of the level of arrogance that we as a species have

00:59:52.860 to believe that we can just, just isolate ourselves above what we see in the environment. And I, and I

01:00:00.060 think the conclusion I've, I've drawn over the past several years as I've got into hunting and now I see

01:00:04.540 my neighbors ranching and things like that is that it's not that we humans are, are above and that

01:00:11.100 we can dictate almost as gods, how the world will work, but that we just assume our position

01:00:18.140 in the environment. Right. And we do it with a level of stewardship with long-term thinking.

01:00:23.020 That's what I think about my neighbor. When he comes and drops the manure off, I think, okay,

01:00:26.780 obviously it's in his best interest to continue the crop, obviously. Right. And it actually helps

01:00:31.660 everything else. It's a win-win situation, but we need to pull ourselves off the pedestal of

01:00:37.740 thinking that we can solve every little problem and we can do away with harm and we can do away

01:00:41.900 with death and just assume with level of maturity and stewardship, our place in the environment and

01:00:48.700 in the world. I completely agree. And, and again, I don't know if this is a great analogy, but the,

01:00:54.380 the current food system to me is like someone who thinks that they can live indefinitely on a credit

01:01:00.380 card. It just won't work. Like you can live kind of large, you can, you know, but there's going to

01:01:07.180 be a day of reckoning with that. And this is why I'm a big fan of, of economics, particularly the kind

01:01:13.420 of Austrian economic stuff. And this is kind of a failure of a lot of modern economists. When they

01:01:18.380 look at our food system, they're like, oh, it's incredibly efficient and all this stuff. It looks

01:01:22.460 efficient so long as you ignore all the other externalities, all the damage to the environment,

01:01:27.340 the loss of work, the, the, the loss of just kind of traditional food systems and stuff like that,

01:01:32.380 like has, has occurred in, um, developing countries. It literally is, is living on borrowed time.

01:01:39.980 Whereas, you know, if we live within our means and reinvest in ourselves and in the, you know,

01:01:46.620 the communities and the environment around us, then things can perform a stepwise improvement over time.

01:01:54.220 But if we, if we're just continually trying to live off of, of credit, which again is it,

01:01:58.940 from my perspective, the way that the modern food system is designed, there will be a failure

01:02:04.220 point at some, some time in the future. I don't know if it's five years or 50 years, but it will

01:02:09.660 happen. And it can be catastrophic if we haven't made allowances for, for diversifying the way that

01:02:15.420 we do things. What does, what does that failure look like? Like how would that actually play out?

01:02:20.540 It, you know, Jared diamond has a book called collapse and it, it looks at different societies

01:02:27.180 that have, um, become remarkably, you know, civilized, like fairly sophisticated civilizations.

01:02:34.460 And then these civilizations have disappeared and virtually all of them ended up running into

01:02:39.340 problems at the food production side. They became too extractive and it's, uh, you know,

01:02:47.820 it varies. When you say extractive, would another word for that be

01:02:51.020 consumptive? Is that what you're saying?

01:02:54.780 By extractive, you're not putting anything back.

01:02:57.820 Got it. So, you know, it's not that regenerative process.

01:03:00.620 It's not that regenerative closed loop cycle kind of, kind of deal.

01:03:04.060 Got it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he also has examples of, of, uh, cultures that almost got to the brink,

01:03:10.540 to the brink and they managed to tweak some things and kind of pull it back. The,

01:03:14.140 the examples of success are far fewer than the examples of failure. But this is one spot where I,

01:03:20.700 I do think that human ingenuity is incredible. Um, and we could do some really good things by,

01:03:27.340 by, you know, kind of pulling ourselves back from the brink. But the, the interesting thing going back

01:03:32.060 to this kind of social political story is that folks are, are so wed to some ideas around like climate

01:03:38.300 change and the negative impacts that they assume that animals have on the environment that, that

01:03:44.300 actually this tool of regenerative agriculture, we pull more carbon out of the atmosphere and

01:03:50.140 sequester it underground in the production of grass-fed meat than what is produced. And we're

01:03:56.540 talking about methane and carbon equivalents and all the rest of this stuff. There was a, a great.

01:04:01.500 Because I thought cow farts were the problem. One would think so. And then, you know, during COVID,

01:04:06.860 the cows kept farting, but the transportation industry cratered and all of our, our greenhouse

01:04:13.900 gas emissions plummeted. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Yeah. So again, we have a very empirical,

01:04:20.380 uh, uh, you know, um, real world example. Like if there was one good thing that came out of COVID,

01:04:26.140 you know, there's a few, uh, uh, silver linings, that was one of the silver linings where it's like

01:04:30.780 the, the, the cow, the cow population actually increased during that time, but greenhouse gas

01:04:35.260 emissions just fell off a cliff. I mean, I hope I look, I'm looking at this and I hope people wake

01:04:40.940 up and realize, you know, maybe we don't need to commute as much as we did. Maybe we don't need to

01:04:45.420 live in these big centralized locations of concrete jungles and realize that we can spread out a little

01:04:51.420 bit. We don't need to commute as much as we once thought we can get to know our neighbors.

01:04:56.140 And yet we can still conduct business in a very efficient manner. Yeah. Yeah. And that,

01:05:02.140 that is a cool thing. Like if this had, if a COVID type situation had happened in the 1980s,

01:05:08.460 we might not have seen that shift, but there, there is a really fascinating opportunity. Uh,

01:05:13.900 you know, like people are fleeing the big cities and droves and they're going to what, you know,

01:05:18.380 the, what they call the second and third tier, uh, cities. And like the food is going there,

01:05:23.580 the culture is going there. So it could be a real fascinating Renaissance. And it's interesting

01:05:29.660 again, within this kind of more kind of vegan centric model of the world, there's this notion

01:05:35.660 that we should live all of humanity in a few mega cities. And then the rest of the world should just

01:05:41.820 be, you know, left to, to, to go back to being wild. And there's a counterpoint to that, which is this

01:05:47.980 notion that people should actually live in a much more distributed, decentralized kind of scenario.

01:05:53.580 And again, under this pandemic, what areas fared the worst were these, the mega cities, you know,

01:06:00.460 and, and we saw that these second and third tier, uh, uh, size cities fared quite well. Um, you know,

01:06:07.660 by comparison, both in, in like transmission and death rates and whatnot, but also quality of life.

01:06:12.060 But there's some, some real cases to be made around the quality of life, the economic, um,

01:06:18.140 kind of diversification that can occur under those scenarios. We saw a big scare with the, the, the,

01:06:24.700 the, uh, hiccups in our food system, you know, like there were meat shortages and whatnot that were

01:06:29.260 only, you know, due to the centralized processing that occurs. Like there is a, effectively a monopoly

01:06:36.540 on the processing of meat in the United States. There's four companies that own virtually all of

01:06:43.020 the processing capacity. And it's funny because, you know, I look at, I, I take our scenario again,

01:06:48.620 I'm just coming back to my own personal stories and it's like, you know, people were worried about

01:06:52.220 meat shortages. And I'm like, you know, we're probably pretty good for this year because we've

01:06:56.060 got elk, bear, moose, deer, and beef in the freezer. And we, I shot some of it. Some of my neighbors

01:07:05.260 shot some of it. Others of my neighbors butchered it. And, and we just bought 20 chickens from our

01:07:10.140 neighbors across the road. Like we're pretty good. This goes back to your decentralized notion of let's

01:07:15.180 decentralize this and let these people, you know, take care of themselves and their community members.

01:07:21.500 Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, Senator Thomas Massey, I think he's in Kentucky. He has a bill called the, um,

01:07:27.260 the prime act, which is really moving to allow, uh, more local, um, meat processing to occur.

01:07:36.140 And I, I don't know if people realize this, but right now, if you have a locally owned butcher shop

01:07:41.340 or like a higher end restaurant that can receive a whole cow and then, then part it out and process

01:07:46.540 it, they are allowed to do that. And they're monitored under the local, uh, uh, health department,

01:07:52.860 you know, agencies. So it's not like they just do this with no oversight, like, but they have

01:07:57.980 much more latitude than the main meat processing facilities, which must be USDA certified. And

01:08:04.300 there's all these kind of, kind of, uh, crazy standards that occur there. Prior to, to, uh,

01:08:10.940 World War II, there were like 200,000 meat processing facilities in the United States. Like there was

01:08:16.380 literally one set of four you said. Yeah. Well, there's about 150 facilities, but they're owned by four

01:08:22.700 companies. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Two of those companies are foreign owned one by China and one

01:08:26.940 by, by Brazil. And, and, uh, in the Brazilian company, JBL, it just shut down its processing

01:08:34.780 of lamb at the facilities that it owns, basically creating a monopoly for itself to export lamb from

01:08:41.980 Brazil into the United States, which I think is absolutely. So that's where we're getting our land.

01:08:46.540 That interesting. Okay. Yeah. And this is, this is where, you know, like I feel like conservatives

01:08:52.540 and progressives could, should have a meeting of the minds. If you're conservative, does it raise

01:08:59.740 your hackles from a national security perspective that China owns a quarter of our food? Definitely.

01:09:06.060 Definitely. Just like with the pharmaceutical production and access to medication, you know,

01:09:11.100 we run into the same scenario. Yeah. And if you're more on the progressive side of the fence,

01:09:15.900 are you comfortable with the, the human rights considerations of some of these, these, uh,

01:09:20.860 the companies and the globalization and whatnot, like, so this is a thing where do you want more

01:09:27.180 access and more scrutiny that would happen if our food systems occur at a local level, if our food

01:09:34.700 processing occurs at a local level, you have thousands of more eyes on it. And when you even get into the,

01:09:41.580 the whole notion of say like greed and graft and, and mismanagement, how many more people do you need

01:09:48.700 to buy off? If there's 200,000 locally owned facilities for you to get a wink, wink, nod,

01:09:55.020 nod in the way that you're doing things versus if it's owned by four companies and they have a monopoly

01:10:00.300 on this stuff, like you have fewer doors to knock on fewer people to buy off to get, you know, a dodgy

01:10:06.860 food practices through. So I just can't, I can't think of why this decentralization wouldn't occur,

01:10:13.100 uh, resonate with anybody in the social political spectrum, so long as they really understand the

01:10:19.100 full picture. And that's the point. That's the, you just made the point because I think

01:10:23.260 everybody can get behind what we're talking about. The problem is, is our information is filtered

01:10:28.700 through those who want to consolidate power. Yeah. Right. So a different narrative is communicated

01:10:37.740 and then that's what we hear. And then we choose to adopt that narrative based on our own experiences

01:10:43.100 and perceptions and viewpoints. Uh, and, and so I think in a lot of ways, the powers that would be

01:10:50.540 filter the information we receive, paint it in the way they want to paint it so they can continue to

01:10:55.100 consolidate power. I'll give you an example. Years ago, when we were living in Southern Utah,

01:10:59.260 you and I talked about this. Um, my wife had, uh, 20, 20, uh, goats at one point,

01:11:05.980 and there was a couple of families in the community who they had children who could not

01:11:10.220 consume, uh, cow milk for, for whatever reason, their, their systems wouldn't allow them to.

01:11:15.020 I don't know the specifics. You would know more than I do. So they would come to us and they would

01:11:19.420 buy goat milk. Well, we ended up getting, I can't remember if we got a letter or there was a, there's

01:11:25.420 something and it was either the state, excuse me, the, uh, the city or the, the county or the state

01:11:31.100 that said that we cannot sell that or even give that goat milk to these families because it wasn't

01:11:37.900 pasteurized. And there was some other processes that they wanted in place. And I just thought,

01:11:42.060 you know, what a shame. Here's a family. That's a neighbor. We're trying to do a good thing for them.

01:11:47.580 They come and they pick up a couple of gallons of goat milk. It serves their kids. It serves them.

01:11:51.900 They save some money. And it's just so frustrating that we have all this red tape and these things

01:11:58.300 in place that keep us from doing the types of things you're talking about. Yeah. The, the,

01:12:02.460 the raw milk access, that's a good barometer for how totalitarian a given state is. It's just that,

01:12:09.580 that raw milk access. And you know, this stuff always happens for your safety. Like there was one

01:12:16.940 foodborne illness outbreak and then, Oh, well we need to lock all this stuff down. And instead of figuring

01:12:21.580 out ways where people can do still conduct business person to person, you know, and, and maybe we

01:12:27.500 have some degree of oversight or some type of process in there so that we have, we have some

01:12:31.580 controls. And also at the end of the day, if you know, if those people know you guys and they get

01:12:38.220 sick from your, your milk or your cheese, they know exactly who to go to and who to, where it came

01:12:45.100 from actually going. Yeah. You're going to, you're going to be like, Oh my God, well, let's figure out

01:12:49.420 how we can fix this and make it right. Yeah. Like there is no, no reason. The incentives don't

01:12:55.100 align for you to like hide it and, you know, stifle it. It's like, you gotta tackle that stuff

01:12:59.900 head on. And it's, um, uh, it, it is crazy. The wars that have been fought over the, the raw milk

01:13:08.380 gig. Like there, there have been, uh, instances of, uh, these Amish farmers were like the DEA arrives,

01:13:15.420 body armor, armored personnel carriers for farmers and ranchers, farmers, pacifists, pacifists.

01:13:25.180 Like, right. And, uh, like if there's, if there's work that needs to be done, that's probably not the

01:13:31.020 work that needs to be done, but it's, it's interesting. There are these, um, kind of, uh,

01:13:37.340 keystone topics and like food access and freedom to food is one of these late linchpin things that,

01:13:45.980 um, from, from local on up to federal levels, they really want control over that. Because if we start

01:13:52.800 controlling our own food system, we can opt out in a variety of ways. We're not dependent on the

01:14:00.240 largesse of the government and, you know, that, that whole thing. And that starts sounding a little

01:14:05.740 bit info war, uh, you know, uh, type stuff, but it's true. Man, I don't think so, but maybe I lean

01:14:09.900 that way anyways. It's really true. And, and again, um, this again goes, if, and also why can't you have,

01:14:19.220 if you want to buy something from a USDA inspected facility, because that's what you feel comfortable

01:14:24.280 with. Great. And do that. I, I don't want to, so let me do that. And then you do, you do you and

01:14:31.700 I'll do me. And, and this is a, a really interesting, um, Delta or difference in these two ideologies,

01:14:38.600 uh, Joel Salatin, good friend of mine and a pretty famous regenerative farmer. He was giving a public

01:14:44.980 talk on this stuff. And there was a family there that was either vegan or vegetarian. I, I forget

01:14:49.940 which, but they said, well, you know, you raise a lot of meat, like how, what am I going to do in

01:14:56.400 this story? And Joel said, if you let me feed my family, the way I want to feed them, I promise

01:15:02.040 you, I will make enough food for you to feed your family the way you want to feed them, but just let

01:15:06.620 me do that. And there were, you know, but, but that, that doesn't reciprocate both ways, like this

01:15:13.460 more progressive kind of left leaning sentiment is like, I am going to dictate to you whether or not

01:15:19.980 you can graze animals on your land. I'm going to create meat taxes. So it's harder for you to sell

01:15:25.780 your meat because I have this ideological bent that, you know, animal it's unethical to eat

01:15:30.780 animals. It's unhealthy and it's bad for the environment. Like I never met somebody who

01:15:35.480 consumes meat, who has actively gone out of their way to make it more difficult for a vegetarian or a

01:15:42.000 vegan to consume what they want to consume. Never right now that individual might, might tease them,

01:15:47.820 might mock them, might make fun of them, poke at them a little bit. I've certainly done that.

01:15:51.420 Right. But I've never gone out of my way to make it harder for them to live their lifestyle.

01:15:56.400 But if you flip that around, you have the, you have the opposite. It seems to me,

01:16:01.920 it seems to me that reciprocity on the other side. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

01:16:05.860 And I, again, that's just, it, maybe it's broad brushstrokes, but I I've been in this

01:16:10.440 22 years and this is definitely the trend that I see. And I think that you could very easily get

01:16:17.580 into an online discussion with somebody and you would see this play out where it's like, Hey man,

01:16:22.580 I'm going to shut you down. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you can't buy me,

01:16:26.600 grow me, sell me, you know, and there are people that are definitely of that, that opinion. And

01:16:32.260 when we look at where this has gone at like the global level, the CDC, the, the world health

01:16:38.320 organization, they're on a campaign to try to limit meat access and, and the wrapping the whole thing

01:16:45.200 into climate change. And ironically, the places that are pushing back are developing countries

01:16:50.940 countries because these developing countries still have intact traditional food systems

01:16:57.180 that have done a fairly good job of feeding the folks that they, that they serve. And they're not

01:17:03.120 completely beholden to the, the outputs of the, the industrial row crop food system that basically

01:17:09.840 comes out of the United States and Europe. So ironically, some of the biggest pushback that has

01:17:14.580 occurred on this idea that you should abandon all animal husbandry has been coming from the

01:17:19.700 developing world. There are people that are just like, we're not going to do this. We're not going

01:17:23.920 to become completely dependent on the, the grain exports of, of the United States. And I think that

01:17:30.060 that's a really smart thing to do. If they want to do some collaborative trade, great. Become

01:17:35.540 completely dependent upon us. That's a terrible idea. Definitely. Definitely. So, you know, as we,

01:17:41.980 as we kind of wrap this up, I want to be respectful of your time and I could go on more and more about

01:17:46.600 this, but what, what does the average man do? Does he vote with his dollars? Does he buy a ranch

01:17:56.160 somewhere? Like what does the average person who's listening to this podcast do? They're hearing this

01:18:01.740 like, yeah, this all makes sense to me. I want to contribute and play my part in this. What does that

01:18:05.940 guy do? Well, first nobody is average. Everybody's above average, but you know, you know what I'm, you

01:18:12.000 know what I'm saying? The person is listening, right? You know, so you've shared some great

01:18:18.700 personal anecdotes. I'll, I'll share some of mine. We're, we're really thinking that our next step in

01:18:24.300 this evolution will be to, I will probably always have some degree of an online presence, but the

01:18:30.980 next iteration will be dramatically curtailed online presence and mainly focusing on regenerative

01:18:36.940 food production, like really investing in that. For your family, for your community. Do you see it

01:18:42.520 broadening out from yourself? Like it would be an economic enterprise. That would be kind of the

01:18:48.160 primary or at least one of the main things that we do as it is. Like when, when we lived in Reno,

01:18:54.100 we had two acres, we had sheep and goats and like, we really dramatically improved the quality of the

01:18:59.940 land there. And I, I learned a lot. When you say improve the quality of the land, Rob, can you like,

01:19:05.960 what specifically, how did it improve? It was massively overgrazed. So like there were erosion

01:19:11.520 channels all over this property where like, when it would rain, you would just have topsoil like

01:19:17.840 bleeding. And it was so dry anyways, I'm sure. And everything, right? Yeah. Reno's quite, quite dry,

01:19:22.640 but it, uh, what we did is we, we bought some portable electric fencing and we just started moving

01:19:27.880 these animals around. And so they would appropriately graze in this area. And three years later,

01:19:34.440 we had chest high perennial grasses there. And we had one of the biologists from, uh, uh, UNR come

01:19:41.420 out and look and they're like, I didn't even know these grasses grew here. Like this was stuff that

01:19:46.840 they thought was gone. Some of these grass seeds can exist in the soil for like a hundred years.

01:19:51.540 It's crazy. You know? And I, I, and the way that the erosion had occurred, I didn't even know that

01:19:56.380 they, it had all been washed away, but that's a good example. And what, what that grass there did,

01:20:02.580 what that land is now doing, it's sequestering carbon. So it's taking carbon and out of the

01:20:07.960 atmosphere and putting it underground as it feeds the root system and actually grows more

01:20:12.140 topsoil. So the plants are pulling that carbon out of the environment, using it, consuming it,

01:20:17.400 right. And doing what they do. Sure. Okay. Got it. And some of that carbon goes into the grass growing

01:20:22.800 up. And a lot of it goes into growing the root systems below ground. And that actually feeds into the,

01:20:27.920 the production of new topsoil. Yeah. Which I think would help even, and correct me if I'm wrong,

01:20:33.020 but we see some of these like, uh, landslides, for example, and all of that stuff has just been

01:20:37.260 burned away and rotted away and grazed away and everything else. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, so,

01:20:43.500 so that's another thing is it really enhances the water retention capacity of the soil. Right. So

01:20:49.080 it ain't, it ain't, there've been some, some kind of pithy remarks that it's not how much rain you get,

01:20:55.700 it's how much rain you keep and, and, you know, a poorly managed area. Most of the water just kind

01:21:00.940 of runs off. It's hard pan. You don't retain it, but in these really spongy, uh, grasslands,

01:21:06.840 like I forget the exact number, but it improves the water retention capacity of the ground by like

01:21:12.880 a hundred fold, like a cubic meter of soil ends up, uh, holding like tons of literally metric tons of

01:21:21.640 water in that, that cubic meter. And so if you think about this expanded over millions and millions

01:21:27.520 of acres around the world, like there's a huge, uh, uh, potential benefit there. But if you feel

01:21:34.040 like, you know, doing that, but that's a big change, like, you know, it's a big, big change,

01:21:39.060 but for the people who do that, certainly supporting, um, locally raised food and building

01:21:45.540 those relationships, I think that that's great. The flip side of this is that people, um, again,

01:21:51.920 can get into making perfection, the antithesis of good enough. And so like, if you are a young guy

01:21:59.100 and you're, you know, a father and you've got kids and you're, you're, you're working your way up in

01:22:04.540 the world and your budget is tight, eat, feed the most nutrient dense food you can to your family

01:22:10.780 and go to Costco and go to Walmart and, and do the best job you can like eating conventionally

01:22:17.040 raised meat, conventionally raised, uh, fruits and vegetables is way better than feeding your

01:22:21.280 family bagels and Twinkies. Like it's just no, no doubt about it. And then folks with a little more

01:22:26.860 resources, uh, then support the local grass fed, uh, producers and whatnot. And there, there is a

01:22:33.660 reality anywhere else in the world, grain finished meat costs more than grass finished meat because it has

01:22:40.260 more inputs. The only reason why that happens in the United States is because of our, our farm

01:22:44.740 subsidies. If you go to Australia, they will, they will highlight, it's like grain finished meat and

01:22:49.840 you'll pay 30 or 40% more for a given cut because it's much more energy intensive to, to raise that

01:22:56.380 stuff. That's interesting. Yeah. And so we've subsidized it. The government has subsidized it to the

01:23:01.800 point where we have it backwards. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Isn't super surprising when you,

01:23:09.580 and this is the danger of getting in and fiddling with these things, you know? Um, so, so for the,

01:23:16.160 the person with a little more means, if you want to get in and, and, uh, help in these endeavors,

01:23:21.220 there are also some really interesting companies coming online and some investment opportunities.

01:23:25.900 And I can ping this to you because I know you share a lot of this stuff with your folks where,

01:23:30.340 where people can invest in groups that, that provide, uh, financing for people entering or,

01:23:37.260 or expanding their regenerative practices. This is not going to be a unicorn. You're not going to get

01:23:42.480 a 50 X return on this stuff, but it's something that will do good in the world and it should remain

01:23:48.780 inflation and recession resistant because people are always going to produce food and, you know,

01:23:55.180 And they always have to consume it as well. Sure.

01:23:56.960 You always have to consume it. Yeah. Yeah. And then again, you know, for the person who,

01:24:01.180 uh, a young guy just getting going in the world, feed yourself and feed your family the best,

01:24:06.240 best you can within your budget. And don't let these, these high-minded ideals, you got to triage

01:24:11.740 things. And if you are still in that precarious position where you haven't gotten yourself financially

01:24:19.320 and kind of, uh, economically buttoned up so that you're, you're pretty solid, that is concern.

01:24:25.540 Number one, take care of your own self first. Then you start getting some resources, you get

01:24:30.900 some better connections. Then you can start thinking about paying it back and, and, you know,

01:24:35.640 weaving some of your success back into your local, local environment. But that's another thing that I

01:24:40.600 see folks do where they'll feel guilty that they can't eat every meal from pastured meat and whatnot

01:24:46.060 because they're, you know, they're a college student or whatever. And that's just incredibly

01:24:49.900 misplaced in, in that regard. Um, do good enough. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect right out

01:24:55.860 of the gate, but, but it's far better again, to focus on a nutrient dense protein, you know,

01:25:00.620 animal protein centric diet for both you and your family. Everybody's going to be healthier.

01:25:05.200 Everybody's going to do better. And it's going to facilitate you getting to a degree of success

01:25:09.320 in your life that you can then weave it back into this other stuff.

01:25:12.480 Yeah. You, you're reminding me of, uh, it's a, I believe it's a Theodore Roosevelt quote. He says,

01:25:17.540 start with what you have, do what you can with where you are or some paraphrase, but something

01:25:23.140 along those lines, just do something. And then next year, when you're in a better spot,

01:25:27.320 you do a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And that's,

01:25:30.200 that's very similar to what we've been able to do. I remember times where literally pacing around my

01:25:35.860 backyard, which was, you know, quarter of an acre lot, wondering how I was going to make the

01:25:40.620 mortgage payment. Fortunately, we've, we've gone past that particular problem and you know,

01:25:45.260 things change and now we're in a different situation, but it started somewhere, right?

01:25:48.960 It started somewhere and then you just build it from there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, Rob,

01:25:53.900 I appreciate you. I said, I wanted to be respectful of your time. We went a little longer than I thought

01:25:57.240 we would, but that's okay. Hopefully it was okay for you. I'm long winded. Yeah, no, it, but all of this

01:26:02.480 information was, I knew this was going to be a great conversation. I'm now my head's like the wheels are

01:26:09.540 returning, like even more so. Cause it was better than I thought it would be. And I think the guys

01:26:13.380 are going to get a lot of value from it. Go pick up a copy of the book guys, sacred cow, and also

01:26:17.800 wired to eat because you're going to learn about this stuff, obviously more in depth and what you

01:26:22.800 can do about it and how you can participate in all this stuff. So Rob, just really quickly in October,

01:26:28.120 we have a film coming out, a sacred cow, which expands on the material in the book. And so if

01:26:33.580 somebody doesn't want to read a book or someone knows someone that doesn't want to read a book,

01:26:37.680 the film is pretty awesome. Yeah. That's great. I know most of the guys listening are readers,

01:26:41.840 so they will read the book, but when that comes available, let me know. Cause I want to share it

01:26:46.980 on my end so that people can get access to this. Cause I think this stuff is important. And as I

01:26:51.620 begin to, I wouldn't say immerse, but take a few steps in the door of this world, I can see how,

01:26:58.580 how valuable it actually is. So really appreciate your dedication to the research,

01:27:03.860 the amount of time that you've just put into pouring over this information. And obviously

01:27:09.840 you're well-versed and well-researched in this. And I really, really appreciate that from you.

01:27:14.440 Thank you. Huge honor, man. Thank you. Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it.

01:27:18.740 There you go, guys. Like I said, a little different than we've done in the past,

01:27:21.140 but I actually really, really enjoyed this conversation. I was very curious about Rob's

01:27:25.560 insight and his take on eating meat, meat consumption. You know, we hear a lot of things about

01:27:32.060 why meat is the enemy and, and why consuming animals is bad and why you should be a vegan

01:27:37.320 and a vegetarian. And although I don't believe a lot of our audience has subscribed to that,

01:27:42.620 it is becoming more mainstream. And, you know, I'm not sure there's anything necessarily wrong with it,

01:27:49.300 but there's a case to be made for why eating meat is actually a good thing on ourselves, our bodies,

01:27:56.580 nature, the environment. And this book does a great job outlining exactly why that's the case.

01:28:03.520 So if you're interested in more information about what we talked about today, pick up a copy of the

01:28:07.460 sacred cow, the case for better meat, you will not be disappointed. Very well thought out, very well

01:28:13.000 researched, and a lot of great information that will help give you an arm you with the talking points

01:28:19.320 and the information to make good decisions and have conversations with some of these people who

01:28:24.700 don't believe that it's a good thing. The antithesis of it. In fact, all right, guys,

01:28:29.640 I hope you enjoyed. We'll be back tomorrow for the ask me anything with my co-host Kip Sorensen.

01:28:34.020 Then of course your Friday field notes, check out the battle ready program, order a man.com

01:28:38.140 slash battle ready. Outside of that, leave a rating review, keep sharing, keep tuning in,

01:28:43.040 keep commenting, keep sending messages, keep engaging with me on the socials.

01:28:46.320 It's very empowering and inspiring to me to know that so many men are engaged in the mission

01:28:52.220 to reclaim and restore masculinity. So guys, I'll be back again tomorrow. Until then,

01:28:56.740 go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

01:29:00.200 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life

01:29:04.680 and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - September 15, 2020

The Case for Eating More Meat ｜ ROBB WOLF

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