Diana Rodgers (0s):

Is the argument really about meat versus no meat or are we fighting about the wrong thing are vegans, vegetarians and ethical mediators really on the same side and maybe we just need a better boot system.

Katie Ferraro (13s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor, and of seven specializing in baby led weaning here on the Baby Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leading you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hey guys, welcome today's episode talking about meat and in particular, I am interviewing a different kind of dietitian. I've got Diana Rogers on today. She has written a book called Sacred Cow. She's just releasing him, produced a movie called the Sacred Cow.

Katie Ferraro (54s):

She's all about the importance of eating animal products and with an emphasis on beef. Now, if you are a strict full-blown plant-based person vegan, this is probably not going to be the episode for you. And you might just want to skip to another one, but if you're interested in a little bit of the nuances of selecting meats, like I know for one, when I go to the grocery store, I'm always like, oh, what is like, what is grass finished, grass fed? What is pasture raised? What does hormone free antibiotic free mean? She's touching on some of those issues that face us as consumers. So I wanted to have her on to talk about selecting meat and animal products from a sustainability standpoint. And Diana's work is unique. She is not your typical dietitian.

Katie Ferraro (1m 36s):

As I said, she kind of described herself as a robe dietitian and like listen to someone who teaches baby led weaning and a dietitian like in a world where all dietitians ever learned about and teach about is traditional spoon-feeding. I myself could be considered a RO dietitian. So I actually really appreciate her perspective as we do with all topics, you take everything with a grain of salt, but I liked Diana's work because she kind of drives it down to listen. There's three main issues. When we're talking about animal foods, we're talking about the nutritional benefits of it, the environmental impact, and then the ethical considerations. So I think you'll kind of hear those messages laced throughout the interview with Diana today. Again, this is Diana Rodgers, she's a registered dietitian and she talks a lot about the case for meat, but she always qualifies that with the case for better meat.

Katie Ferraro (2m 22s):

Well, hello, Diana, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. It's great to speak with you. I'm so honored to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Okay. So as a registered dietitian, I am so fascinated by your background, and I know you're a registered dietitian as well. I was wondering if you could just tell our audience a little bit about the work you do and then how you got to be in a position where you are a dietitian specializing in this very unique area.

Diana Rodgers (2m 44s):

Yeah. I mean, so my current, what I'm doing is I have a part-time nutrition clinic where I help people. I mostly focus on moms. That's just, who tends to gravitate towards me folks who are looking to either lose weight or fix gut health. Those are the two sort of specialties. And actually lately though, during COVID, I've had a ton of like binge eating and stuff like that. So it's really interesting to me. I kind of didn't really work a lot with that population, but it's just kind of come out. I think of COVID. So I'm learning more about that. I think it's really interesting. And then the other part of my time, just to mix things up a little bit is I just finished producing and directing a film called Sacred Cow: The Case for Better Meat.

Diana Rodgers (3m 31s):

And I released the book this past summer. So I'm doing a lot around the promotion and advocacy for especially meat, the value of meat for women and children worldwide, and really sort of debunking all of the concerns around me. So it was sort of attacked on three levels and it's really beef that I'm focused on, but I'm pro all animal source foods, but it's, you know, we've got the nutrition arguments meat's gonna cause cancer and heart disease. And all of that, we've got the environmental case against me. Cow farts are ruining the planet. They take two up too many resources. Why not just eat directly from crops if you know, it's inefficient to eat meat.

Diana Rodgers (4m 12s):

And then we have all the ethical concerns of course, around meat. And I address ethics last in the book because I feel that you really have to fully appreciate the nutritional environmental contribution that well raised animals can make before we can even talk about whether or not it's okay to kill beautiful animals to eat them because it's, you can't just start with that. Right. And how I got here is a little windy. I had undiagnosed celiac disease as a child and was extremely malnourished and low muscle tone, basically everything I ate just went straight through me. And I also had a lot of neurological issues from that too.

Diana Rodgers (4m 52s):

Just like words swirling around the page, kind of almost like a dyslexia kind of thing. And it wasn't until I was 26 when I got diagnosed. And I couldn't believe that you could be allergic to wheat. I mean, I was like, that's what people eat, you know? So it really took me by surprise and I gave up wheat and it did make a huge difference, but I also, at the same time still kept going to my doctor saying, you know, I think I'm diabetic. Like, I don't know why I need to eat every hour or two. I was always had my gluten-free granola bars on me and all of that stuff. So I've always just been interested in like, how do I fix myself?

Diana Rodgers (5m 33s):

Because gosh, if I miss lunch, I have like tunnel vision and I start sweating and, you know, just, it was horrible. And so I really entered the field of nutrition later in life just to figure out how to fix myself. And at that point I then decided to become a dietitian with two little kids. And I know at the time it felt really overwhelming, but I just decided I really wanted that medical credential. I wanted to be able to take insurance and I wanted to have some credibility in the space. And so having that medical credential of RD really was important to me for all of the writing and speaking I do.

Diana Rodgers (6m 14s):

And so I just made it my part-time job basically to, you know, take biochemistry and all these courses that I didn't take undergrad as an art major. And so it took me a very long time. It took me about seven years to complete it. And it was really rough because I was already sold on no processed foods and, you know, kind of the real food way of life as I was going through the program. And so it was tough for me. And especially when I was working in the hospitals and nursing homes, you know, where like boost is your only solution for everybody. It was just so depressing. So I'm really happy to be on the other side to have my private practice where I can help people who want to learn more about real food nutrition.

Diana Rodgers (7m 3s):

And I don't have to necessarily follow guidelines of my boss telling me what to do in a more clinical setting. So at the same time, as my nutrition interest is unfolding and my nutrition education until very recently, I was married to an organic farmer. So I've spent the last 18 years living on working farms, looking at the role of animals in an organic farm and really understanding that you can't have a sustainable closed loop system of growing food without animals. That they're critical to all, all food production systems and all nature.

Diana Rodgers (7m 43s):

And so, as I was watching this global dialogue sort of unfold about like, you know, what diets are best for the planet and for human health, everybody in this space is gravitating towards vegetarian and vegan diets, or certainly we need to eat less meat, right. But there's, you know, we're eating way too much meat. And so I'm really one of the only people that's out there questioning this and, you know, saying like, hold on, are we really eating too much meat? Number one are the studies against meat, environmentally really accurate? And, you know, could cattle actually be one of our best tools that mitigating climate change?

Katie Ferraro (8m 23s):

So you're not your traditional boost, pushing dietitian is what you're saying. No way. First of all, I cannot believe that you went back to school to do your dietician credential when you had two kids. But I think it's super important because a lot of parents listening to the podcast will like write to me and be like, Hey, I'm really interested in nutrition. I think, you know, the work you do is really cool. I've been interested in this, but I really want to get that credential. And I just want you guys to hear that, that, like, if you are passionate about something still matters that you have the appropriate credential behind you and it took you seven years to get your dietitian credential. And I'm certainly sure being a dietetics educator, myself, and a preceptor for the last 20 years, I know that a lot of what you learned in school probably ruffled your feathers and yet you still stuck with it.

Katie Ferraro (9m 5s):

And I think our profession certainly needs more people who are questioning. Yeah. You know, sugar-laden boost and ensure is like, what a nutritional supplement should be like, like I completely hear where you're coming from. And I think it is important to be having these conversations and that there's enough work for all dietitians. Like if you look at a lot of the problems facing our population today. Yeah.

Diana Rodgers (9m 24s):

And you know, it's, it's interesting. Cause I keep trying to present at FNCE and I'm going to apply again with my book and my film. And hopefully we'll get more dieticians to be open to, you know, some of these ideas and then the value of, of animal source foods, at least in nutritionally because they're not even on board there.

Katie Ferraro (9m 42s):

Yeah. And dietitians, no. I mean, in the traditional dietetics curriculum, I mean, I know how to make an egg foam, but I don't learn about the difference between grass and grain fed beef. Like it is incumbent upon. There has to be other outlets, I guess, for dietitians and future dieticians and parents and consumers to learn about these topics. I wanted to touch real quick on something you said in the intro. And it's kind of about this issue of quality over quantity. And my mom is actually a registered dietitian. I grew up with a family like medium size exposure to meat, but after college I was a peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. So I lived in a primarily Hindu community who doesn't eat beef at all and then travel to different parts, lived in an area in north Eastern Nepal, which was very close to like the Darjeeling area of India.

Katie Ferraro (10m 22s):

But we also had a lot of Buddhist families that lived in the same community. So occasionally some people around me were eating certain types of meat, but mostly not beef. And what always struck me was like, when there would be a holiday and you would get one ounce of goat meat and it was such a big deal, obviously a much more impoverished community in a rural area, but they really, really valued animal products in a way that I was like, if these people walked into a grocery store in the United States and saw like a 16 ounce porterhouse steak, like their head would explode not to mention, like I'm appreciating this one ounce of meat so much more because the quality and what it signifies is really different in this culture and community.

Katie Ferraro (11m 3s):

Whereas sometimes in the United States, like you look at your traditional restaurant plate and it's like a massive slab of meat with some white carbs and no vegetables. So even though we both agree in the nutritional benefits of meat and for parents' taste and texture, et cetera for the babies, but would you argue that there's something to be said about going lower on the quantity in order to assure that you're getting better quality?

Diana Rodgers (11m 24s):

A really interesting question. I kind of, I looked at so since 1970, our intake in America of beef has gone way, way, way down. So the typical American today eats about two ounces of beef per person, two ounces per person per day. There's this perception. I think that all Americans are like, you know, sitting down to a 72 ounce Tomahawk, you know, steak for dinner, but really what's happened is that our intake of processed foods has doubled our intake of industrially. Processed oils has gone way up our intake of chicken, which is less nutrient dense than red meat has gone up 400%.

Diana Rodgers (12m 7s):

And so we've just kind of shifted. And I think that protein is underrated. And I looked closely at the RDA for protein at the studies that support the classic RDA for protein. The 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight are based on these nitrogen balance studies, which are really flawed. And when I looked at the papers that research, what happens when people are fed more than the RDA of protein, what I found was that not only do people lose weight, but when they also combine that with exercise in particular weightlifting there, the weight that they lost was fat instead of just overall body weight.

Diana Rodgers (12m 55s):

So, you know, there's a lot of diets where you can lose weight, but it's really the higher protein diets are the ones where you're losing fat instead of just weight. And we also know for children, the only randomized controlled trial that's been done on children with more meat versus less meat found that the kids who got the more meat this was done in Kenya with school children compared to the ones that just got more dairy products or more calories, the ones who got the more meat did better academically, behaviorally, and physically in all three categories. And so that's where I just questioned.

Diana Rodgers (13m 36s):

Clearly we have a problem in our food system, right, with the factory farming and the way, you know, animals are treated and all of that. But I think the real villain here is our consumption of ultra processed foods and animal source. Protein is really low in calories for what you're getting. It's incredibly a nutrient dense food. And also protein is the most satiating macronutrient. So when you increase your intake of meat, you actually eat less of the other calories. And so I just think that, you know, more better meat might be.

Katie Ferraro (14m 12s):

Yeah and that's what I'm saying essentially, as far as quality goes, and I completely agree with you with regards to the processed food situation. And that's, you know, the audience that's listening when we're talking about like the most satiating macronutrient, but for babies, they're just learning how to eat and learning how to listen and respond to their hunger cues. And I completely agree with you that the RDA for protein certainly could be updated, but I do just want to play the devil's advocate that people in the developed world, you're mentioning some studies in Ethiopia and certainly the situation might be different in other parts of the world. But you know, parents here are not running around with widespread protein deficiency. And yet they oftentimes give this undeserved a health halo to protein and they're like, my baby needs more protein. It's like, whoa, your baby needs to have a variety, different nutrients and learn how to eat protein.

Katie Ferraro (14m 54s):

So I was wondering if you could help the parents that are just like learning about protein, knowing that, okay, we don't need to overdo it with protein. There are other nutrients babies need, but what are some tips that you would have for them, if they're selecting proteins that they're going to start feeding to their baby?

Diana Rodgers (15m 9s):

The great thing about meat is it's not just protein, right? It has like really important fats too, so that you get on all those important fat soluble, vitamins and animal source foods contain almost all of the nutrients we need. And when, whenever there's a nutrient available in a plant or an animal, it's always more bioavailable and better for the body,

Katie Ferraro (15m 26s):

But sorry, real quick with the exception of carbohydrates, right? The animal products that you're mentioning, don't provide carbohydrate. Okay.

Diana Rodgers (15m 32s):

So giving children, you know, even like a bone to non, you know, is like a teething bone. I've seen people do that, you know, like you finish your rib or something, and the kids can just kind of work on it as far as you know, which animal source proteins are the most nutrient dense, we're looking at seafood off the charts, oysters and different, you know, fatty fish. And then as we move into the terrestrial animals, red meat and especially organ meats are going to be the most nutrient dense. So at the bottom of the list would be chicken, which is the most common meat that people, and there's certainly nothing wrong with chicken.

Diana Rodgers (16m 13s):

But if we're looking at just the hierarchy of nutrient density and what we're getting for, you know, the calorie, it's definitely going to be seafood and organ meats followed by red meat.

Katie Ferraro (16m 24s):

Could you talk a little bit about some of the greenwashing marketing terminology that's out there that a lot of us myself included fall victim to like you're at the store. What does hormone free? What does free range? I mean, I know we can't like run through the tables of what they actually mean, but what are some things that parents who are like just in the grocery store? Like what do you want them to avoid as far as claims on packaging? I guess that doesn't really matter.

Diana Rodgers (16m 46s):

Yeah. I actually, well, we have, for folks that are going to watch the movie, everyone will be directed to a page where we have different offers and one of them is a guide to ethical sourcing. So there are so many different labels out there and it can be really confusing and some of them do mean something. And a lot of them don't, there's a lot out there. I think. So like grass said, isn't really regulated. All beef is grass fed. So it's really just isn't grass-finished and again, there's no FDA oversight on that. So there's no one really saying, I mean, even meat that was raised in another country, but sent here to be slaughtered is called product of the USA.

Diana Rodgers (17m 28s):

Like that's how crazy it was.

Katie Ferraro (17m 29s):

Right. It's so confusing. So if a cow has fed corn, its entire life and then finished with grass, it can be called grass fed. Is that correct?

Diana Rodgers (17m 38s):

Actually, it's the other way around. So all cattle start on grass. So there's no cows that are a hundred percent in a factory farm. That's very different though from chicken and pork, there's a lot of benefits to going with meat over chicken and pork because chicken and pork are, you know, in our industrial system, a hundred percent of their lives. They're indoors eating grains where cattle actually, they don't do well on a feed lot, their whole lives cause they are ruins. And so they all start out on a calf cow operation like in Montana or someplace grazing with their moms. And then they're either finished on a feedlot or finished on grass. But again, that, that grass finished, you know, a lot of people can say grass fed, but that's true of all meat is grass fed.

Diana Rodgers (18m 26s):

But most people though, when they say grass fed, they mean grass finished beef and it does taste a little bit different. It tends to be leaner. It doesn't necessarily have to be leaner. I've had amazingly, you know, very fatty grass fed beef too. But in general, it's leaner, there is a misconception that it's healthier. And so a lot of people will say, oh, well, it's better than omega threes,

Katie Ferraro (18m 50s):

Which beef's not a great source of omega threes to begin with. Right.

Diana Rodgers (18m 55s):

So that's, you know, as a dietitian, I always, I just caution because a lot of me companies will want to have me endorse their products. Right. You know, will you be our nutritionist to talk to the press to talk about the best, you know, reasons to eat our product. And I'm like, sure, but I'm not going to say it's healthier necessarily because it's just so insignificant.

Katie Ferraro (19m 18s):

What about saturated made fat? For example, like I always think like as a not super well informed consumer about sustainability, like I always thought, oh, if they eat grass and they're leaner the saturated fat content of grass fed beef is lower, but is it kind of like splitting hairs?

Diana Rodgers (19m 31s):

Yeah, a little bit, because you can always, you know, a lot of other processes you're taking the fat out anyway, like in a burger you're draining the fat. So like 80% versus 90%, if you're just going to drain the fat anyway, you know, it doesn't really make that much of a difference. Grass fed and grain finished beef both have about the same ratio of saturated fat to monounsaturated fat. It's really just looking at those omegas. And what I like to tell people is, you know, if you're looking at a pie chart and I actually use this in the book and in my presentations, a pie chart, it is the skinniest level, little sliver of omegas versus the saturated monounsaturated.

Diana Rodgers (20m 16s):

And so like two pennies is twice as much as one penny, but it doesn't mean you have a lot of money. And so you would still need to eat eight pounds of grass fed beef to get the same omega-3 as you can get in three ounces of wild salmon. Exactly. So eat fatty fish for the omega-threes. But also if you're looking at your overall ratio in your diet, just switching to grass, fed beef is not going to make a huge, huge difference to your overall health, because the best way to fix your omega three to six ratio is don't eat processed food and just eat, you know, lots of vegetables in animal source foods. And there you go, like that's the best way to reduce inflammation.

Katie Ferraro (20m 54s):

kind of along the same lines as the marketing and the greenwashing and the grocery store. Do you have any tips for parents about like products that are advertised as being hormone free or antibiotic free? Like that's something that I think is also largely misunderstood. And just curious if you have like consumer tips for us.

Diana Rodgers (21m 8s):

Yes, yes. Sorry. I got down a rabbit hole of, I do that sometimes. So thank you for redirecting me. So cage-free eggs, for example, I don't really think that that's a great practice overall because chickens in a factory farm setting are very stressed out. They're very aggressive and the cage is actually protect these chickens from pecking at each other. And so to put 10,000 chickens in a henhouse, just in a big lump is a really bad idea. And so I always recommend that folks try as hard as they can to support local farmers who are doing it at a smaller scale, buying directly from them and talking to them about their practices, try to go visit the farm.

Diana Rodgers (21m 50s):

You can buy a meat share from them often and, you know, look at the farm. It should smell good. The animals should be outdoors, at least in the, in the growing season. And when I have to go to the grocery store, what I look for is pasture raised for eggs. And in the case of eggs, there is a massive difference between CAFO traditional, just, you know, the cheapo eggs that you get in those styrofoam containers versus like a brand like vital farms or another brand that does pasture raised.

Katie Ferraro (22m 26s):

And you just mentioned CAFO, could you just explain what that is real quickly? Sure.

Diana Rodgers (22m 31s):

Concentrated animal feeding operation. So that would be, you know, there's rules about animal per square feet that would define exactly the CAFO, but basically it's, you know, these factory farms of animals.

Katie Ferraro (22m 42s):

And I have a question cause I have seven kids. So we buy a lot of stuff like in bulk, including eggs from Costco, but then in my farm box, whatever, I get the farm fresh eggs, I'm always like, oh my God, these are so much better. And then my husband's like, we should get chickens. I'm like we have seven kids. We can't get chickens. Why do the farm fresh eggs taste so much better? Is it it's not, I mean, it's not like happier chickens make happier eggs. Like, is it the feed that they're fed? That's different. Like literally the egg yolk looks better and tastes better in a farm, fresh egg then the Costco ones.

Diana Rodgers (23m 10s):

Totally. And they are definitely more nutrient dense like by far. And it has to do with chicken as a monogastric animal. So what they're eating goes directly into their eggs and their meat versus a cow is a ruminant. And so what they're eating is actually broken down by bacteria in their stomachs and then translate it into fatty acids that go to feed the cow. So it doesn't make, as they get different, basically.

Katie Ferraro (23m 35s):

In beef than chicken, in beef than eggs, excuse me.

Diana Rodgers (23m 37s):

Right, right, right. So that's why pastured pork and pastured chicken and pastured eggs are nutritionally better. And it just like also wild salmon is way healthier.

Katie Ferraro (23m 49s):

You also make a super good point about the difference in taste. And parents always ask me, you know, do I have to buy organic? I'm like, listen, you do you. And what works for you? But I said, well, do you buy organic? I said, I buy what organic products I can afford. And those that I feel tastes better. And we're talking about helping our babies develop their taste preferences. Like I live in California, tomatoes tastes awful here. I buy organic tomatoes cause they taste better. Apples tastes better when their organic farm fresh egg tastes better. And to me, grass fed beef tastes better. But I think we need to also remember that in addition to the nutrition, babies are also developing these flavor preferences and we know that the greatest number of foods and flavors and tastes and textures babies can be exposed to that's what helps us raise independent eaters and prevent picky eating.

Katie Ferraro (24m 32s):

So I think you're doing your family a service when you choose the items that do overall tastes better, which is kind of in alignment with what I think I hear you're saying as well.

Diana Rodgers (24m 41s):

Yeah. I mean, my kids could taste the difference between grass fed milk and typical milk. They can taste the difference. Organic milk has been shown to be more nutrient dense, but more so than, than meat, which is lower in fat.

Katie Ferraro (24m 54s):

Okay. So what about milk? You're saying that it is more nutrient dense than conventionally grown raised milk.

Diana Rodgers (25m 2s):

Yeah. So there's different nutrients that you can get in milk from grass fed animals and organic. It's been documented. I've seen many studies on this conjugated than the lake acid, which is a really great fatty acid. That's hard to get in. Other places is higher in grass fed organic milk. We also have more vitamin A and D in grass fed milk and it tastes better. Like my kids really, really prefer grass fed milk to typical milk. So up in new England, we can get Maple Hill and I don't actually drink milk because when I was sick as a kid milk just really didn't work for me. And so now as an adult, like drinking milk just seems, it's just a weird thing to me.

Diana Rodgers (25m 46s):

But anyway, I watch my kids drink milk and they just guzzle the Maple Hill milk.

Katie Ferraro (25m 51s):

It's grass fed milks. I mean, you can buy at a regular grocery store. Like I don't know that I've ever seen it, but maybe never been looking for it

Diana Rodgers (25m 58s):

Actually will. Yeah. Maple Hill Creamery, as I mentioned is a brand here in new England, but there, you know, people can look for pasture-raised milk out there, but a lot of those other claims like, you know, fortified with omega-threes or, you know, some of them are just complete sort of nutrient washing or greenwashing, you know, no hormones, for example, you know, that's also in the case of meat, I looked at the differences in grass fed versus typical beef and did not find any evidence that the diet, you know, the, any glyphosate for example, or antibiotic or anything actually ended up in the meat.

Diana Rodgers (26m 42s):

So meat itself is nutrient dense. If you can support a farmer and you prefer the taste of grass fed meat, and there's certainly great environmental and ethical reasons to buy grass fed meat, definitely do it. But to those moms that are struggling and just want to get nutrients into their kids, like buy eggs, they have choline, you know, like that's

Katie Ferraro (27m 0s):

It well, and a great source of iron as well, which I think a lot of times we forget about, and our audience is really familiar with eggs because as one of the big eight allergenic foods, we spend a lot of time talking about, and this is one of the earlier allergenic foods that we introduced. But I really appreciate your insight that you're saying, looking for pasture raised eggs actually is a choice that you can make that might make a difference or does make a difference environmentally, for sure. Nutritionally. It certainly does. And I think most people would agree that taste-wise. So this is kind of covering that three-pronged approach that you're looking at in your materials, which is the environmental side of it, the nutrition side of it. And then of course the ethical side of it as well. Now I want to ask just from a food safety standpoint, because you mentioned the pasture raised milk, we are talking about feeding between six and 12 month old babies parents know not to replace breast milk or formula with fluid cows milk until after the time the baby is one, but it's perfectly fine to introduce dairy products.

Katie Ferraro (27m 51s):

And we do so with lower sodium ones that are safe to feed. If you guys have questions about milk protein, make sure you go listen to my podcast episode, it's called milk protein. How to introduce your baby to this potentially allergenic food it's way back in episode 13. But that will kind of clear up some of this because parents are like, wait, what? It's okay to have milk, but is that pasture-raised milk? Is that raw milk? Meaning unpasteurized?

Diana Rodgers (28m 12s):

Right. A lot of people, especially cause I talk fast, I'll say pasture-raised and they'll sit, they'll think pasteurized. So those are two different things. So milk. I know it's really tricky. There are some people out there that feed raw milk to their kids and you can get it in certain states and some stores I'm really torn about that one because as somebody who's like servsafe certified and knows the dangers, I think it can be, it can be sometimes really dangerous if you don't know the production.

Katie Ferraro (28m 45s):

Okay. I was like breathing a huge sigh of relief. Cause I'm like, I'm going to have to add a disclaimer that I do not endorse the feeding of raw milk to babies just from a, I don't want to get into the process of whether or not it changes the nutrition content, but just from a food safety standpoint, are we both on the same page that we don't feed raw milk products to babies? .

Diana Rodgers (29m 1s):

Yeah. Way back in the day it was done. But way back in the day, there were also, you know, it was a cow. It came straight from the goats teat.

Katie Ferraro (29m 11s):

Yeah. And even in the poorest farthest reaches of rural Nepal where I was living, no matter how poor you were with minimal access to firewood or peat, every single family sculpted their milk to kill any potential pathogens. And so I really do take, I don't get involved a lot with some of the more political sides of food, but really the feeding of raw milk has no nutrition advantage for your babies. It's a safety precaution that you're taking and that you still can make more sustainable choices, but you don't have to put your baby in peril.

Diana Rodgers (29m 41s):

So pastor raised just means the animals is on grass,

Katie Ferraro (29m 43s):

Okay. We are not talking about feeding, unpasteurized, dairy products. We are talking pasture raised.

Diana Rodgers (29m 49s):

No, no, but then there's homogenized.

Katie Ferraro (29m 52s):

Purely aesthetic, right? Just to distribute fat throughout the middle.

Diana Rodgers (29m 54s):

Right. And so my kids don't love unhomogenized milk because it can be lumpy because homogenizing just means that you're taking those fat particles and you're distributing them evenly throughout the milk. So you don't have cream on them.

Katie Ferraro (30m 8s):

but so many people get homogenized, like so many consumers get homogenization confused with pasteurization and they're two totally different things with homogenization, just being an aesthetic preferential thing for the distribution of fat. But pasteurization is there to help protect you from ingesting any harmful pathogens. So there are two totally different things, but parents see homogenized and pasteurized milk, which at a traditional grocery store, all milk is homogenized and pasteurized. Okay. Any final tips for parents who are like, oh, I go to the store and I look at the meat aisle and there's like all these options when they're just trying to pick animal foods for their families. Like maybe top three tips. If you're at the grocery store.

Diana Rodgers (30m 48s):

Sure. One is if you're strapped for money and budget is really a problem. I still think that beef is going to be the best choice, nutritionally, environmentally and ethically, even if it was feedlot finished. And I go into that more in the book.

Katie Ferraro (31m 4s):

like what about hormones and antibiotics? Is there anything we should be on the lookout for? Or just ignore?

Diana Rodgers (31m 12s):

Totally ignore. It's so funny because nuance is so not easy.

Katie Ferraro (31m 15s):

That's good though. I just want to make sure we're not missing any like major red flags like, oh, that's totally bogus.

Diana Rodgers (31m 23s):

Animal given antibiotics are a huge problem for the environment and for our overall health, when it comes to antibiotic resistant bacteria that, you know, that can cause sepsis and, you know, we don't have any more antibiotics on coming out. Like we just don't. And so we need producers to stop just using so many antibiotics in our food system because they get into the environment and then that causes problems. But as far as, you know, will this antibiotic then translate into, oh, my kid is now full of this weird antibiotic that was given to the animal. No, there's a lot of testing done and things are pretty, pretty stringent in America.

Diana Rodgers (32m 4s):

I have had people send me studies showing the higher rates of drugs and antibiotics in animals, but they were not in the U S and I looked really, really deeply at the testing that's done here. And it just is safe to just, you know, meat is healthy basically, and it's important, just really important for child development. And so I would go for fatty fish and red meat as, as the number one liver, if, I mean, I got my kids the more tentacle's the better for them. Like they love chicken hearts and squid and octopus.

Diana Rodgers (32m 44s):

And like, I was super, super adventurous with them when they were little. And now they're the most amazing eaters and we will go to a Brazilian restaurant and they're like more chicken hearts, please.

Katie Ferraro (32m 57s):

Wait really? You have teenagers that eat chicken hearts?

Diana Rodgers (32m 59s):

Yeah. So I guess, you know, like get them excited, like cook a whole fish, like on the bone, a whole fish in the oven. So they can see that that actually came from an animal because I think also our kids are just too removed from the fact that what they're eating was actually a living thing. And I, so when they grow up and they realize that they have a problem with it, I think they need to understand that this animal was a living thing. We should honor the fact that it died for our health, but that there is no life that lives forever and everything is just recycled nutrients, right? Like we're just, there, it goes life, death decomposition, and then life again, like that's just how it works.

Diana Rodgers (33m 42s):

And I think, you know, when kids only see the meat coming in, plastic packages, boneless, skinless, chicken breasts, it's really, you know, it really sets them up for being really confused when they get older. And you know, I've just seen a lot of problems.

Katie Ferraro (33m 57s):

I've read your book, Sacred Cow. How is the movie different? I'm just curious. Because it's like this podcast episode is going to be coming out just before the premiere. If you could tell us like a little bit about that. because I know it's kind of like the next prong of your approach.

Diana Rodgers (34m 12s):

Yeah. So we are going to be offering through my website, sacredcow.info. People can click the link right on the homepage and register to watch the film for free. We're offering it for one week only November 22nd through the 30th, and then it's going to go away and, you know, be up on the mainstream platforms starting this winter so later on, but I really wanted a chance to just offer it to those kind of in the real food space a little bit earlier since I had so much support from this community, the book sort of equally goes into nutrition environment and ethics. It's like sort of this like three phase book and the film does touch on nutrition and ethics pretty strongly.

Diana Rodgers (34m 53s):

But the bulk of the film is the environmental argument. We really went around in circles trying to figure out, you know, is this a docu series where we have one episode just on nutrition and one episode just on environment or something, but you know, those they're expensive to make. It was a lot of energy for me to raise the money. I'd never made a film before and fundraising is definitely not something that was in my skillset.

Katie Ferraro (35m 18s):

They also don't teach that at dietitian school.

Diana Rodgers (35m 21s):

Oh my gosh. For filmmaking for that matter. I mean, I basically now have like a full master's degree on film and documentary filmmaking. So it was fun for me because as I mentioned, my undergrad is an art art education actually. So I think my skill is translating science visually and into words and in stories that someone without a master's degree can understand and relate to. And so I have a ton of graphics that I share on Instagram. My Instagram is at sustainable dish.

Katie Ferraro (35m 52s):

And Diana tell us where the audience can go to learn more about your work, including the movie. We'll link everything up in the show notes for this episode. If you guys go to blwpodcasts.com, but where can we go to learn more about you?

Diana Rodgers (36m 5s):

Sure. Yeah. So my website sacredcow.info has info on the book. The books just available anywhere books are sold. The film will be screened for anyone for free, just enter your email address and we'll send you a link. And that again is going to be just November 22nd through 30th. And we actually pick that week because it's Thanksgiving week. And you know, there can sometimes be those tense conversations at the dinner table about meat versus no meat. And we really asked that question in the film, are we all really on the same side? And are we arguing about the wrong thing? Is it really, you know, meat versus no meat? Or is it really, you know, do we need a better agriculture system? They can find me on Instagram at sustainable dish.

Diana Rodgers (36m 47s):

And then my website for kind of overall nutrition and my nutrition practice is sustainabledish.com.

Katie Ferraro (36m 52s):

Okay. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Diana Rogers. I'm warned you not your typical dietitian, right? I can't say I agree with a hundred percent of everything Diana teaches or is about, but I really did appreciate learning a little bit more about some of those nuances. Certainly like when you're at the grocery store, like, okay, I know that farm fresh eggs taste better, but now I'm going to make more of an effort to buy them. It definitely costs more though. So there there's always the trade off. And if you remember at the outset, Diane was kind of talking about the three-pronged approach to what she teaches, which is just taking into consideration when you're selecting animal foods and namely meat that we're looking at. Okay, what's the nutritional implication here? What is the environmental consideration?

Katie Ferraro (37m 33s):

And then certainly what's the ethical consideration? So I'll link up all of the resources that Diana talked about on the show notes page for this episode, which you can find at blwpodcast.com/76. Thanks for listening. See you next time.