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Dr. Peter Ballerstedt is an advocate for ruminant animal agriculture and its benefits to healthy soil, healthy plants, and healthy humans. After facing a health crisis in 2007, Peter devoted himself to learning about metabolic health and living a “low-carb lifestyle.”
Professionally, Peter is a forage agronomist and ruminant nutritionist, earning a doctorate from the University of Kentucky. In his journey to regain his health, Peter noticed the gaps between science and policy and between agricultural producers and the consumer.
Now, Peter seeks to bridge these gaps by being an advocate for ruminant health through his presentations, unique brand of humor (you have to check out his dad jokes on Instagram), and as de facto leader of the “Ruminati.”
On the podcast today, Peter shares with us:
- How bologna is just a hot dog pancake and the benefits of processed meat
- How animal-sourced foods can be a solution for Global food problems
- You can still make good food choices with limited choices
- The environmental costs of healthcare
- His three guiding principles:
-
- Animal-sourced foods are essential for public health
- Animal agriculture, in general, and ruminant animal agriculture, in particular, is essential for food systems
- These animal-sourced foods are part of our cultural heritage – wherever that heritage comes from
Resources:
Hans Stein’s Monogastric Nutrition Lab
Digestible Indespensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS)
Global Warming Potential (GWP* & GWP 100)
American Forage and Grassland Council
International Grasslands Council
Connect with Peter:
Website: Grass Based Health
Instagram: @grassbased
Facebook: Peter Ballerstedt
LinkedIn: Peter Ballerstedt
Twitter: @grassbased
YouTube: Meet Your Herdmates
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.
If you’re ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level, join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon. You will have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, a discussion community, and much more. Go to sustainabledish.com/join to support my work.
A big thanks to the sponsor of today’s show, LMNT. Do you often suffer from headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, or sleeplessness? It could be from an electrolyte deficiency, and drinking plain water may not be enough to replenish lost electrolytes. LMNT is a drink mix that has everything you need and nothing you don’t – no artificial ingredients, food coloring, gluten, fillers, or sugar!
LMNT comes in lots of great flavors, and when you go to sustainabledish.com/LMNT, you’ll get a free sample pack with your purchase. Plus, they have a convenient subscription program that makes it easy for you to keep your favorite flavors fully supplied. Head over to sustainabledish.com/LMNT to give it a try.
Quotes:
“It’s important to get people to understand that when they look at a label or on a food table, and it says protein, that’s crude protein. It’s not relevant to human nutrition. It includes non-protein nitrogen. It counts all crude protein as if it’s equivalent plant versus animal.” – Dr. Peter Ballerstedt
“There [are] estimates that the ecosystem services from beef production in the United States was a net 37 cents to the good per pound of beef produced when you consider wildlife, wildfire mitigation, and watershed function.” – Dr. Peter Ballerstedt
“When you improve your health, you are improving the world. Focus on that. You will make a bigger impact than you will by your shopping decisions.” – Dr. Peter Ballerstedt
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
(Patreon Ad) Diana Rodgers, RD
Ready to take your support for a nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system to the next level? Join my Global Food Justice Alliance community on Patreon and have access to ad-free podcasts, exclusive videos, and a discussion community, plus so much more. Go to sustainable dish.com/join to support my work, and thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And today, I have with me Peter Ballerstedt, who I recently was hanging out with in Sacramento at the World Butchers Challenge. And we had a cool side event that we’ll discuss a little bit. Peter is a champion for not only well-raised meat but also good health, good metabolic health, and also the many benefits of the amino acids in protein and the other nutrients in protein. He really breaks them down in a way that no one else does. So, welcome to the podcast.
Peter Ballerstedt
Well, thank you very much, Diana. It was nice to get to spend a little time with you in person. And thank you for this opportunity.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, so maybe we could just talk briefly about what we were doing in Sacramento other than hiding out from 105-degree temperatures. And you did you catch any of the World Butchers Challenge the next day? Were you around?
Peter Ballerstedt
I took off first thing in the morning.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Okay, well, it was a really cool event. I shared it on Instagram. And I think one of the really interesting pieces to me about it was one of the things they were judged on was carcass utilization and innovative uses for the, you know, not-so-popular cuts. And so I know Team Germany won. I saw a lot of sausages and a lot of other kind of really cool value-added, you know, type products that they made. But it was really neat.
Peter Ballerstedt
Oh, you mean processed meat?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Amazing, huh? Yeah. And, actually, I’ve got a bunch of sausage sitting in my freezer right now from Pederson’s farms because they’d love for me to, you know, talk more about the benefits of eating sausage because of the fact that it uses the cuts that no one else really buys in the store. And it’s such a great way to use up those odd bits.
Peter Ballerstedt
Well, not only that, I mean, we now have some work pointing to how when we process meat, for example, we make bologna, or we make salami, or we make jerky, or we make bacon, we actually increase its protein value over the raw meat that went in. And so this is again pointing to several points that we could talk about. But we need to really get the idea that processed plant products and processed animal products are not the same thing. And yet frequently, they get talked about as if they are.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Tell me more about that.
Peter Ballerstedt
There have been a couple papers published out of Hans Stein’s Monogastric Nutrition Lab, University of Illinois, and Eric Berg, who’s a meat scientist, North Carolina, or sorry, North Dakota State University. And they both document that when we utilize the DIAAS system, the digestible indispensable amino acids score for evaluating protein quality, we actually see that increase in meat products that are made into these processed meats. Also, if we cook them to an appropriate stage of doneness, not overcook, but if we cook it to that medium rare, kind of we can see the same thing. And certainly not the decrease that we see when we take plant-source foods and process them, typically in those food sources, we decrease the DIAAS value we make what protein is there less valuable in the human diet.
Diana Rodgers, RD
What’s the mechanism? Is it because it’s a cooked product, and they’re comparing it to like a raw protein from a steak?
Peter Ballerstedt
In part, but if we make bologna, for example, we essentially make an emulsion out of the meat.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So it’s just easier to digest it.
Peter Ballerstedt
Exactly. Brining, I’m not sure what happens when we brine or smoke to make bacon from pork belly and certainly drying. There’s got to be some breakdown in the tissue. But basically, yes, it’s making it more available to us.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. Oh, that’s fascinating. I actually really loved bologna. I’m a huge fan.
Peter Ballerstedt
Yeah. Well, somebody saw, I saw a meme recently that said bologna is just hot dog pancakes.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I know. It is. I think I saw that on your feed. People need to follow you, by the way for your awesome dad memes. They’re very good.
Peter Ballerstedt
Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, childless dad memes, but you know, I gotta get it out of my system. I know, we need to laugh more, don’t we? I mean, there’s just too many people that don’t understand that the secret to enlightenment is to lighten up.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, no. Well, now that I’m gonna add some more baloney back into my world again. And you know, and I talked to, I mean, hot dogs, like kids like hot dogs. It’s okay to give your kids hot dogs. It’s just ground-up meat in a casing. Right? And especially their…
Peter Ballerstedt
Read the label
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, read the label Exactly. Or
Peter Ballerstedt
Or wherever. But yeah, we’ve gotten a… one of my favorite stories, is someone who had met me in an event. And she appreciated my message about, you know, get what’s affordable, get what’s available. Right. And so label claims, I think, are more about marketing than they are about other issues. And she shared a story about how she was… she has three teenage boys, right? So the food budget is a challenge with, you know, those sort of injustice machines. And she said that she was… they like Spam. And she had her mother there visiting, and she was cooking Spam for their lunch and she apologized to her mother. But you know what, I’m sorry, but the kids love it and whatever. And mother was like, oh, no, I love Spam. And this came as a revelation to her because it’s like, Mom, I didn’t know this. Well, she was a young girl in Berlin during the airlift. And one of the things that got brought in was canned meat – Spam. Her line was Spam tastes like freedom, which I told her she needed to contact Hormel immediately. But there are, you know, what, why do we have this kind of thought about this product? So just one more thing to just add to – please we have to find what’s affordable. We have to find what’s available, what fits our families, our, you know, personal choices. And whatever that is, it’s going to be better than, you know, the organic Pop Tarts, right? I mean, it’s going to be better than the highly processed plant-source foods that, you know, are now 60 to 70% of the calories in our diet.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right? This is a level of nuance that is so hard for me to get across to people, especially when they’re just so focused on it has, you know, we’re all eating too much meat, we need to be eating less meat, better meat, you know, all of these messages are so harmful, especially in this era of food equity, of inclusion. While we think about you know, vegan diet is a privilege that not everybody has. And when you have to feed people that maybe don’t have a kitchen, or don’t have access to fancy big grocery stores that have all the fresh produce, you would need to put together a somewhat balanced meat-free diet, canned meat does have a place, especially for people of low income.
Peter Ballerstedt
Well, Professor Berg suggested that, you know, we need to send… we need to stop sending, you know, soy products, as you know, famine relief. And we need to start shipping dried, culturally appropriate meats, right. So beef jerky to Africa, for example, as opposed, you know, and that could be incorporated into whatever grain is available. Right, to improve its nutritive value. Currently, we’re just focusing on the calories, and it’s important, right? You know, if you’re not getting enough energy, that’s a big problem. But we also need to focus that it has to be nutritionally adequate in the sense of those essential nutrition – nutrients necessary to properly grow a human brain. We’ve got almost half of humanity consumes less electrical power than 1000 kilowatt hours a year, per person. So that’s it – a large North American refrigerator, basically. So now let’s think about how are you going to get this highly perishable, highly valued product, if you’re living in the city, right, the animal source foods, we’re driving towards three quarters – 70, some percent of humanity living in urbanized areas by 2050, globally. So the food has to come from areas of production to the area of consumption. But when you don’t have reliable cold chain, when you don’t have, you know, the marketing availability, and then think about what happens when they shut down commerce because of a pandemic. So the last several years have had a very dramatic impact on parts of the world that were already food insecure, and it hasn’t improved it. We’re now in this global energy problem, which manifests as a fertilizer problem, which manifests as food expense. And so all of those are not going to make the situation that was already something that we should have been working on. It’s going to make that worse. And it just, as I said, in a recent presentation, people will say, well, we can’t, you know, feed the world the level of meat that we consume in high-income countries. And my response is, we have to shift the conversation from we can’t to we must because it’s arguable we’re not eating enough. But it’s for sure that they’re not getting enough. And we need to do what we can to help them develop those resources to improve the nutritive the quality of their diet. And obviously, that’s best if it can happen from their local resources and farmers. You know, we’re not talking about shipping them stuff from North America. On the other hand, it’s not a bad thing to be able to ship in food when there’s a harvest, you know, failure, right? I mean, that’s a good thing. But we have lots of work to do. And as long as the people who say we can’t have anything to do with it, they’re right. That’s that universally true statement. It won’t work here if you have anything to do with it. You’re absolutely right. Now let’s get you out of the way, and get in people who see this as a requirement and find out what we need to do to make that progress.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, when I was down in Brazil with Frank Mitloehner at a methane conference, we saw some production down there of canned meats, and they said their biggest market is Africa. And it’s because that’s what they primarily rely on there. And it really kind of shifted my view. Already I was already on board with all this, but even more so. And you know, and you mentioned so many things. I was taking notes as you were speaking, but harvest failure. I mean, as we see more mega-storms and more effects of climate change, we’re going to see more harvest failure, especially in the equatorial areas where it’s just going to be too hot and too dry to be growing grains. But yet livestock can do very well in a lot of areas, and you know, are a little more resilient to a lot of mega-storms and things like that, then, you know, losing your entire harvest and all of your money, you know, as a cropping vegetable farmer or grain farmer.
Peter Ballerstedt
Well, certainly a number of crops. And you could think about corn, for example, if you have a water insufficiency at a particular point in time in that crops development. That’s it. So it’s time-sensitive to a degree that forage-based livestock systems are not because, you know, even if you’re making hay and you lose a cutting because of drought, there’s the chance for recovery if rain comes later in the season versus these grain crops or certainly vegetable crops where if you hit them at the right time, right, from the sense of greatest impact, and they’re not going to yield anything. We could still maybe graze them, so there’s that. But in terms of getting a human edible harvestable yield from them. No. There’s a lot of other reasons to look for these livestock cropping systems as a way to increase the productivity and efficiency, producing more food from the same land with the same inputs, and maybe even, you know, there’s that exciting aspect of soil health that’s also part of this. That we may not be, it may not be necessarily the case that we have to degrade the resource in order to produce human edible food. In fact, just the opposite, we may have a way available to us now could be improved, certainly, of protecting and enhancing those resources while producing this most valuable food source. So yeah, there’s – it’s really good news. So back to what we attended, how long ago has it been now? There’s good news. We have to get better at being able to tell it. And I think we’ve been too long locked into a reactive mode, as opposed to proactive. And so and that manifests itself in many ways. But I just think, you know – you know about the metabolic health message, you know about all that good news. I come from the area of forage agronomy and ruminant animal agriculture. And so there’s tremendous news there. I’ve been about trying to build bridges between these different communities and introduce the metabolic health message to my forage agronomy and ruminant nutrition tribes, and I’m trying to do the other way. And frankly, we’re just up against people that, frankly, make stuff up and tell these stories. And, you know, human beings are being harmed by this. And I just again, I see it as a moral imperative for us to get past this, if we’re going to meet the needs of 2050 and beyond, heck, today’s needs, let alone 2050. And beyond, you know, we have 800 – well, this is pre-pandemic. This is pre all those crises that I talked about 800 million human beings, calorically undernourished. Right. And at the same time, we’ve got 2.2 billion human beings that are overweight or obese, right? I mean, that group, so we got 3 billion people, out of about 8 billion people who are suffering from malnutrition, in its broadest, accurate sense, by my understanding, and yet, we still have people who are working in this space that believe that too much animal source food is the cause of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, you know, go down the list of chronic diseases, which are today the largest single cause of death in the world. And more incorrect thoughts are that those are because we live in an affluent society. And yet 80% of the people that have these conditions live in low and middle-income countries. So once again, we’ve got this conflict between what people think and what the data would tell us if we could just read the data.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. And there’s more and more, you and I are in a little sort of secret Twitter club. And one of the articles that was shared this morning by one of our secret members, was about how those, I want to say – Freight Farms is the name of the company here in the Boston area. But these container companies that come in and grow tomatoes, and lettuce, and all this hydroponically, and it’s you know, solving nutrition and making local food. But you know, as you were speaking about more and more people moving into cities, that’s not feeding people, the percentage of calories we’re getting for the resources in, it makes zero sense. And finally, all of a sudden, the Financial Times write a post about, you know, growing lettuce in critical care might not actually be the solution to feeding people.
Peter Ballerstedt
You will, especially in Europe, where they’re facing this, you know, we’re going to have to, like not heat certain spaces this year. Right, that we’re shutting down industry because they can’t manufacture anything that will bring enough on the world market to pay for their costs. Right, because their energy. So certain societies have entertained some notions over the years that are completely divorced from the reality of physics. Yeah, and I’m also saying biochemistry and endocrinology, and physiology. And there’s a payment. Yeah, there’s a payment at the end. And so, you know, plant-source foods are a really inefficient way to transfer nutrients to human beings from the production areas. And okay, it makes sense if you think about it, but people don’t, and so they actually talk about things like nutrient-dense cabbage. Which, like, you know, I’m like the puppy (make noise) Not sure. But it turns out that, of course, nutrient-dense has an official definition. And this is per the dietary guidelines. And that is explicitly low fat because they don’t consider fat and nutrient. It can only dilute the essential phytonutrients. So there’s so many layers to this, that you have to kind of pull away and say…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Peel off all the layers of the cabbage until you have nothing left, which is basically their argument, right?
Peter Ballerstedt
Just that woody core that’s left
Diana Rodgers, RD
Completely inedible.
Peter Ballerstedt
Exactly, exactly. I think that one of the and I tried to mention this at the meeting that we attended, and that was the meeting was representatives from the global meat industries, writ large, many different players, many different stakeholders. And my point that I keep trying to make is we’ve got to stop talking to ourselves. We got to find ways to talk to the public. And one of the problems, of course, is when the meat industry talks to the meat industry, which we could come back to. But when that industry speaks to the public, it’s too easy to just marginalize them. Wow, what do you expect, it’s the meat industry. They’ve already been demonized. But again, the good news is, there’s this growing part of the population that’s discovering that when I eat the product of the meat industry, and I restrict my consumption of the products of the plant processing industry, I get better. And all of a sudden, my life improves. And, you know, I have energy to engage with my children, or I’m more productive worker, or I no longer need these medications, or the list goes on and on and on. And that can open up conversations with their neighbors, with their co-workers, as well as between the industry and the consumer. That currently I don’t think we’re realizing the value of So I’d like to find ways for that to happen more. And part of my thought is, you know, I look around the audiences at some of these things and go, “Have you heard about metabolic health? Would you like to?” Would, you know, I, you know, I, it needs to be done carefully. And I’m not always the right person for that job. But, you know, if you’ve got diabetes, and you’ve been told it’s progressive, and it’s incurable, and you get introduced to a physician who can reverse that drug-free, and you can live with that with nor, you know, maybe that changes the producers’ ideas as well about what they’re doing about how to message about, you know, your value as a contributor to society. And so, I keep looking for ways to do that more and more.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, I, you know; similarly, I do that as well. And I’ll go to very similar conferences that you go to – a little bit more in the Paleo world, you’re a little more in the Keto world. But I have found that people who are aligned with this idea of ancestral eating understand the idea that, you know, animals should be raised in a way that’s consistent with how they naturally like, it’s the same way of eating as it is with like this, these ideas of regenerative agriculture and things like that, I found less of a buy-in speaking to producers, animal producers, farmers, even regenerative farmers, that the health importance of animal source foods is still a harder sell on that group, in my experience than selling the idea of regenerative ag to people who are on board with kind of the low carb, less processed food type eating. How about you?
Peter Ballerstedt
Well, I guess I’ll start with, you know, I’ve been so I received my PhD in the mid-80s. And my major professor came from New Zealand. And so his major professors came from New Zealand who were influenced by people from the United States. And so the grazing management, the grazing systems, these are things that the people that trained me, have been looking at for generations, literally generations. Now, we haven’t done a good job of communicating that work that’s been done. So okay on us. On the other hand, a growing number of people are discovering it. The mistake often is they think that it’s a new thing. And so it’s not and so though there are reasons for why people do what they do, and I think there’s a line somewhere that says before you tear down a fence, find out why it was put there in the first place. And so again, people come into something new. And it’s human nature, perhaps, to think that we, because of this new knowledge, we, therefore, know how things should be done. And at the same time, you have people who’ve been doing it for generations going, want to come out and do it for a while. I think that part of the message of regenerative ag, as I said, is something that’s not new, but it is popular. So I’m all for it. But at the same time, I think that you’ve got, for generations, you’ve had farmers resisting the fringe dietary messages that come against them. And you could imagine what those are like. And to a large extent, they’ve relied on authority to answer those issues. And authority, unfortunately has been USDA. Now in agriculture, you know, there are technicians that can help people develop fencing systems and water systems and, you know, make recommendations, soil conservation, all that kind of expertise is there, and they’re used to it. They don’t always although they frequently suspected, they don’t always recognize that there’s a tremendous difference between how different departments within the Department of Agriculture function. And so they might suspect that the dietary guidelines are a little hokey, they don’t really understand how that sausage got made, you should pardon the expression. And so they’re used to looking toward authority to answer, and then they hear somebody coming and saying, whatever. And they kind of have to take a step back and now deal with that dissonance. And one of the messages we just have to get across is, you know, the dietary guidelines are not well-founded, and they have been unfairly demonizing the product of your, in some cases, family work for generations. But it is, you know, there are strong messages about, well, everything in moderation and balance and these sort of platitudes that sound great until you start digging into them a little bit. So I’ve gotten some very big pushback from people who are within the grass-fed community because I’ve stood up and said, I think you should stop making health claims for your products. And, you know, obviously, you know, maybe I should have chosen my words better. But you know, within animal agriculture, there’s not enough of us to be going against each other. Right? There’s, it’s not us it’s them. And people should not believe for a moment that the animal rights activists somehow smile on the grass-fed community. They’re just not a big enough target to go after at this point. And we can see it when they react to regenerative agriculture or whatever. They’ll attack it eventually. Because ultimately, they don’t think that we should be managing animals in any way, shape, or form that includes pets, by the way, and certainly don’t think that we should be ingesting animal-source food. And so at some point, we just need to understand that so that we can disregard and then focus on if it’s, you know, I have three guiding principles: one is that animal source foods are essential for public health. Number two is that animal agriculture, in general, ruminant animal agriculture, in particular, is essential for sustainable food systems. And number three, these are animal-source foods are part of our cultural heritage, wherever that heritage comes from, right, and so anybody who’s coming against animal source food, in my mind, is going against those three principles. And I think that that’s worth standing against. And then, however, we have to find the right way to talk to the audiences we’re in front of about those things – that’s the goal. And that’s the challenge.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah.
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Diana Rodgers, RD
I’m going to back up just for a second off the metabolic health piece just to quickly give people an idea of what we were doing in Sacramento. So you and I are both involved in this conference in Dublin at the end of October, and it’s the role of meat and society. And there are different sections. There’s the nutrition section, and these are all academics that are presenting their case, basically. There’ll be a white paper published in Animal Frontiers next March as a result of this conference. So there’s nutrition, environment, and then the third category is like economics and livelihoods and ethics. So I’m sort of the Vanna White of nutrition, and you are of environment. And so…
Peter Ballerstedt
Who are you going to compare me to?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Alex Trebek, you’re the Alex Trebek.
Peter Ballerstedt
Yes, that’s fine. Thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And so, because the World Butchers Challenge was happening in Sacramento, and there were all these people, all these stakeholders in the meat industry, coming into town for this really cool event, one of the people from Dublin thought it might be a good idea to just get some input, to get some thoughts from some people that can’t attend that Dublin event. So you graciously flew in, I went out. And we were just sort of collecting thoughts on nutrition, environment, and then ethics and livelihoods. And so that’s what we were doing out there. And I’m so excited for Ireland, and to see what comes out of it. Because what I think people are not understanding, especially people in the regenerative grass-based world, is that there is a very powerful snowball happening against all livestock, and it doesn’t, they don’t care how its raised. They just have this carbon tunnel vision. We must reduce emissions because that’s what is working the best as an argument currently, everyone’s really hyped up about it. And so we’re just seeing dramatic shifts all over the world in policy, either taxing farmers or giving them money to plant trees instead of raise livestock on fertile land. Or as in Ireland’s case, completely culling over a million head of cattle, which will do nothing to reduce demand will only put Irish farmers out of business and give more business to Brazil or New Zealand or whoever else is currently a favorable exporter/importer to Ireland. So we are going to see metabolic health suffer from these. And people are not making those connections. There’s very few people globally who are making the connection that you know, animal-source foods are also critical for their amino acids score their bioavailability the nutrients that they have in them like zinc, B12, and iron, which are difficult or impossible to find in plant source foods. They’re low calorie per satiety, which is really, really powerful. So if you just like increase your meat consumption, you’re going to naturally eat less food because you’re going to be so satiated. And these are really important things for both obesity. And for people who are suffering from hunger as well.
Peter Ballerstedt
Well, the environmental impacts extend beyond the production, right? There’s also the questions of when we’ve got 93% of adult Americans that don’t have optimal cardiometabolic health. There’s a tremendous, and again, anytime we have a conversation around the sustainability space, if we’re not talking about societal issues, economic issues, as well as environmental issues, we’re not having an honest conversation, we’re restricting it in an inaccurate way. And unfortunately, there are far more environmental issues than are currently spoken of because that tends to be, as you said, overly focused on greenhouse gas emissions alone and frequently misrepresented. And we do that. And so there’s a number of levels of error involved here. And, you know, when we’re talking about the level of malnutrition, globally, and its impacts from stunting on the low end, you know, extreme low end of intake for children for pregnant mothers, lactating mothers, and their children, up to and through not enough manifesting as various forms of metabolic illness perhaps I’m fascinated by the phrase subclinical kwashiorkor.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I didn’t know there was a sub-clinical, or is that something you made up? No. Is it exists?
Peter Ballerstedt
No, it’s not something I made up I got it from someone and what they were talking about was the indispensable amino acid deficiencies. And when you, I mean, this is you can find lots of references to this, and it’s harder to find the literature to back it up. But when people talk about the symptoms and then you start seeing what people are complaining about But it’s like, Well, okay, maybe.
Diana Rodgers, RD
We should just let people know what kwashiorkor is. So there is straight malnutrition. And then there’s kwashiorkor, which is a protein malnutrition. So they’re getting enough calories but not enough protein. And then there’s even we’re seeing in parts, especially in parts of Southeast Asia, they’re getting their total protein, but they’re not meeting their amino acid requirement.
Peter Ballerstedt
Yeah, so I believe this is true that kwashiorkor is a West African word that basically means the sickness the child gets when the next baby comes. So you think about it, here’s a child that’s being breastfed it gets weaned on to primarily a cereal diet that doesn’t provide the essential amino acids that it needs. And it develops that wasting in the limbs, but edema in the belly, pretty stereotypical image. And, again, one of these researchers has told me that the example was in India, but I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be the case with any eight-year-old boy, but basically, that an eight-year-old boy in India can’t physically eat enough rice and lentils to meet his essential amino acid requirement, his lysine requirements. That is just, even if he had unlimited access, just can’t process it physically. So that says a couple of things. But again, this idea that maybe, you know, does what we eat influence what we eat, right. And then there’s a whole thought about protein leverage. And you know, that sort of thing that if we’re trying to get our essential amino acids from a cereal-based ration, who we may eat more trying to get what we need, and therefore consume a lot more current carbohydrate than we would if it was a more balanced ration. I gave… I sat at one presentation last year in August to the Meat Science Society. And Eric Berg gave a presentation where he showed if you take swine, which are an accepted model for human digestion, and he found 10 studies where they fed sufficient and deficient lysine rations, and three things uniformly happened. One was increased subcutaneous fat, second was increased intra muscular fat, internal, intramuscular fat marbling, and smaller loin eye muscle back muscle size. And so I, because I leverage a lot of things, I leveraged those slides for a presentation a week later showed them. A physician came up to me, and he said, when you showed those, I looked at my partner and I said, that’s what I’m seeing in my patients. Because apparently, I don’t know I’m just an agronomist, what he told me was there is an association between intramuscular fat in back muscle and chronic back pain. It makes sense. And this is from their literature. And he described himself as you know, he’s installing $60,000 devices that don’t work to control back pain. What if it’s lysine? Well, okay, lysine is deficient in cereal products. Cereal, by the way, is the single largest source of crude protein, and humanity’s diet larger than all animal-source foods combined. Wheat is the single largest – greater than any one animal source, food and cereals are really low in lysine. And then, when we process it, it makes it even less available up to an including zero on a DIAAS.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And we should say why lysine is so critical. It is one of the most essential amino acids for muscle synthesis. So it is imperative especially for children because it’s really hard to put on muscle, especially after 40. So it during those critical growing years, getting adequate lysine is of the utmost importance.
Peter Ballerstedt
And it’s globally limiting the cross humanity’s diet. So you know, you imagine people living in low socio-economic conditions where a larger part of their diet is going to be made up of these processed cereal products of one sort or another, which are even lower in lysine than the wheat berries are. Nobody eats raw wheat berries, right? So we’re processing those into something. So it’s not hard to imagine this, you know, as a plausible explanation for what is now being seen at least observed, and then the question is – how do we shift people away from talking about protein to available utilizable essential amino acids, that’s a more complicated conversation to have. But it’s important to get people to understand that when they look at a label or on a food table, and it says protein, that’s crude protein. It’s not relevant to human nutrition. It includes non-protein nitrogen. It counts all crude protein as if it’s equivalent plant versus animal. Neither of those is true. So, you know, again, we got to find ways to communicate this information. And because it impacts environmental conversation,
Diana Rodgers, RD
It really does. And I wonder, I’m just thinking with dietary nutrition labels, there’s, you know, they introduced net carbs. So I wonder if they can have like protein and then, bioavailable protein?
Peter Ballerstedt
Well, the FAO, eight years ago, said that we ought to start listing the essential amino acids on a label as if it’s a separate nutrient now. Okay, so we’re gonna have a label this long. I, uh, but I get the point that this is critical information that isn’t, you know, again, people, adults, can make whatever dietary decisions they want to, right? I’m not telling anybody how they should eat. I’m concerned when, under certain circumstances, but my concern is, I’m pretty sure they don’t have the information they think they have in order to make an informed decision that they think they’re making for any number of reasons. And so the same group Berg and Stein did a DIAAS evaluation of the plant pucks, you know, the Impossible and Beyond. And because Impossible is made with soy, it qualifies by itself as a good source of protein per DIAAS. Okay, the Beyond does not because pea protein extract is not that good a source of protein, okay, it doesn’t meet the standards, okay. But nobody’s going to eat those things by themselves. So when you slap them into a wheat bond, there’s not enough lysine in the Impossible Burger to make up for the lack in the wheat bread. And so as a meal, it no longer qualifies as a good source of protein. And then you can combine this with many other aspects of the story that we’re being told about why this is a good idea. But, again, if we could have the conversation we see, you know, it really isn’t… it doesn’t withstand scrutiny.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes, I get it. I say it all the time. And I’m so glad you’re out there doing that. So let’s talk a little bit more about that. You have provided me some great slides that I know given my talks about the environmental implications of poor metabolic health. And there is a phenomenon happening right now in the dietetics community with this movement of Health at Every Size, where there was just a dietitian recently on Instagram, I came in and defended her because she had this awesome post where she was saying – she was just listing the end results of what happens when someone has Type 2 diabetes, amputations, the sores, blindness, all of these things. And you can reverse this through diet. This is what she said. And she got blasted by several dietitians on there for shaming people who can only access poor food choices. And I was thinking but even in Cumberland Farms, you can get Spam, like you can still make good… you can buy water instead of soda like there are things you can do. And we must do. But there are other poor outcomes to a society of people with obesity and Type 2 diabetes. As far as you know, the carbon footprint and the economy. I mean, Medicare is going to be crippled. So will you talk a little bit about that?
Peter Ballerstedt
Yeah. I guess let me, before I launch into that, just say that if we could get people who are involved in the good work of food banks and community kitchens and those things to recognize the essential need to provide animal-source food in their programs. That would be a good thing. Right? So this idea that we can’t again, you’re right now get out of the way and let us find people who are doing it and let’s encourage them and in whatever way
Diana Rodgers, RD
And it has been documented. The number one need that food pantries have is animal source foods like time and time again, that is what they need.
Peter Ballerstedt
Sure. Yeah, and in my community, it may not be the same everywhere, but they can’t handle refrigerated foods. They can’t handle frozen foods. It’s got to be canned food. It’s got to be shelf-stable. Let’s put it that way. And so, but you know, I’ve got a can of butter on my bookshelf – can of butter. It is possible. I mean…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Really? Yeah. Oh, let’s see.
Peter Ballerstedt
So, so cool. Red Feather brand, Creamery butter.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I guess I don’t see any reason why butter can’t be canned. But that’s awesome. Okay,
Peter Ballerstedt
What – we used to do things like that, you know, tuna, fish, and sardines, and all those things. So, to the point specifically, there’s one, there’s one study that I can point to that estimated that the anthropogenic greenhouse so it stated that the American healthcare industry was a significant source of air pollution, including 10% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, okay. Now, EPA, sources, and sinks puts all of agriculture at somewhere around 10%. But animal agriculture is less than half of that. So about 4% of the total. And beef is half of that, or about 2% of the total. Now, it’s not a fair apples-to-apples comparison. Because what they did was they said, Well, how much energy is used. And so they put some into the pot for health care for that. How much food is fed in health care? So they put something in there. So EPA divides things up industry, and you know, transportation, you know, energy, that kind of thing. But the point is that healthcare has a significant emissions footprint. There’s also study that looked at the global pharmaceutical industry, and looked at its emissions intensity. And the statement from the paper was that there are a higher intensity emitter than the automotive industry, with a wider variation between the industries. And again, whatever that number ends up being, it’s there, and we’re not talking about it. And then someone took the figures from that, as well as from Diabetes Association. And what they said was, if the average adult American with Type 2 diabetes could eliminate their medication use, speculating wildly, just, let’s just be crazy. And think that such a thing as even, yeah, okay. So if they would do that, they would reduce their carbon footprint 29%, more than if they went from a high-meat to a vegan diet.
Peter Ballerstedt
So that’s how we get there. Now, whatever that number ends up being, it has an impact. And at the same time that you’re doing that, I would suggest you’re dramatically improving the quality of your life. Right, and you’re increasing your health span as well as probably your lifespan. What does that have as an impact in terms of the next generation coming? What does that have? I mean, as you said, the cost to society of chronic illness is massive. And so far, we’ve only we’ve merely been talking about diabetes. We haven’t yet expanded this to the full suite of metabolic illnesses. And saying, okay, what percentage of healthcare is currently being driven by these? Well, we know it’s the biggest driver of healthcare costs and use. There’s another estimate pre-pandemic saying that 5% of road traffic was due to the NHS in the UK. Wow. So we have – there are these congress that people are having conversations about sustainability in health care, when they do it’s my perception that they will bring in the, you know, what constitutes a healthy diet. And so that’s what we need. We need to feed the more greens and more you know, healthy fruit juices and whatever. And so maybe we can’t get you to stop doing that and replace maybe but if we could compare both, could we like bring this other thought in and say where’s we have evidence now five year data? We have some other data that just, you know, it was getting published here very recently showing drug use reduction and metabolic health, restoration, and so part of what I hope we can do is expand the conversation in this space. Because it’s been, you know, the beef industry, the dairy industry has done a lot of work in sustainability. And they’ve got their initiatives, but those tend to end at the farm or ranch gate. And when I talk to those communities, they say, Yeah, we see the metabolic health message. We know it’s there. But we don’t feel like we can speak into that space yet. And so my question to them is, what would it take to help you feel comfortable doing that? Or what do you think needs to happen in order for that to be part of the conversation? Because already there were estimates without any health consideration, there were estimates that the ecosystem services from beef production in the United States was a net 37 cents to the good per pound of beef produced when you consider wildlife, wildfire mitigation, watershed function, as said, you know, these other benefits to society for which the producer is not currently being compensated? Yeah, well, what happens if we could drive the burden of health care down?
Diana Rodgers, RD
I did sit through a health care without harm presentation a couple of years ago, and they were proudly talking about how they’ve reduced the carbon footprint by pulling beef out of hospital meals at you know, this many hospitals. And then she showed a picture of a dairy manure lagoon, as if it were, you know, something from the beef industry. And so I raised my hand as a dietitian and said, “Don’t people have a higher protein need when they’re sick?” You know, like, how are they getting their protein? Because I’ve been very involved with hospital meals, and I know what goes into these hospital meals. And it’s extremely ultra-processed, high carb, and there’s not a lot of meat to begin with. And so to proudly go on and on about the beef reduction, and how this is supposed to be health care without harm?
Peter Ballerstedt
Yeah. Well, and it’s almost as ludicrous as the Intercontinental airline that removes beef from their menu. Yeah. In the name of climate change. No, I’m sorry.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Or buying up farmland in Wales. That’s what they’re doing now there. These Airlines for carbon credits are buying up usable farmland from farmers in Wales, taking it out of farm food production for carbon credits. Yeah.
Peter Ballerstedt
Yeah. And there’s another way that that could come back and bite people that ranchers being able to sell carbon credits. Yeah. But when you do that, you lose the benefit to your industry. Right. Right. So you’re reducing this other industry’s footprint, and from an accounting principle, yours is increasing, and but I understand it’s a tricky conversation to have when somebody can have a check in their hand. Right. So there was a really interesting paper, to me at least, that came out in 2019 I think, maybe more recently than that, yeah, probably more recently, again, because we don’t accurate, we don’t use the best metrics, like, you know, for GWP Star versus GWP 100. When we talk about protein and its crude protein, then that unfairly penalizes the value of the animal source food. But when people look at food supplies globally, and they use a crude protein value, they can convince themselves that protein is not a nutrient of concern. And what Moen did was he looked across like 100 and some odd countries and territories at the low end of income. So these are where you would expect, unfortunately, because poverty kills, and when he looked at total protein supply, I think he used the phrase gross protein, but it’s the same as crude protein. Only, just the lower, you know, the leftmost edge at the lowest level, only those were below the RDA target, which isn’t a target. It’s a minimum, but that’s okay. That’s how they phrase the conversation. There was only a few that were below and so some people say it’s not a nutrient of concern, but when they went through the exercise of separating out plant and animal and when they went through the exercise of looking at utilizable lysine provided none of those now are meeting that target because if we don’t get enough, if we have a limiting indispensable amino acid that limits the amount of protein we can utilize, regardless of how much we’re eating, right. So that short stave operates here in protein nutrition and muscle synthesis. And so the metrics matter. And when they then took that and looked at environmental footprint, they took the footprint of providing lysine via dairy down by a factor of 100, making it essentially on par with soy juice.
Peter Ballerstedt
This is how big an impact it can have an environmental conversations, again, we’re getting other things besides the essential amino acids with dairy. So that needs to be added in. And that’s before we account for the difference between GWP Star and GWP 100. So we’re getting the more we know, the closer we’re getting to the point where animal source food production, happily isn’t just essential, it may, in fact, be the best thing for our environment. But again, that’s maybe a few years down the road. We’re in this lag phase where people make claims. And then, it takes a while for the research to be done to refute the claims. Meanwhile, the claims are now part of conventional wisdom. And then we don’t have that many people like you and I that are trying to put the pieces together and say, here is this end-to-end story. And the more we know about that story, the better. So one message is that when you improve your health, you are improving the world. Focus on that. You will make a bigger impact than you will by your shopping decisions, frankly. That this is a global issue, there are really good things to get involved with globally. And you could take the money that you might spend for an extra label claim product. And like, send that to a charity that’s doing good work, like Eat Better South Africa, for example, or other activities that are taking place in the world. And that we have the dietary messages and the environmental messages. And the animal welfare messages that are coming against us are all coming from the same sort of people, like you said before, they’ll shift, right. They have a goal in mind, and now use whatever they need to to achieve that goal. Well, but don’t listen to those people that sold you the diet that made you sick in the first place and make the changes. And you… the changes somebody else needs to make will likely not be the same changes I needed to make to improve my health. But what are your metrics? Again, you know, it’s not weight. It’s not LDL, it’s not total cholesterol. There are some better metrics to evaluate your own personal health than what we’ve been taught and have that journey. Help others along if that’s appropriate for you. And meanwhile, learn more. I am the president-elect of an organization that’s called the American Forage and Grassland Council. I’m not a representative at this moment. But I’m just telling people that this is an organization of industry agency and producers in many states in the United States. And we have an annual meeting. I’m also part of the organization that is hosting the 2023 International, it’s the 25th International Grasslands Congress, which will be in May of 23rd in Northern Kentucky, Its theme is grasslands for soil, animal, and human health. And we’ll have people from all over the world coming to this. And people can find information on that on the web. And by the way, both organizations have a call for presentations out. And that closes the end of September.
Diana Rodgers, RD
All right. Sounds good. Well, it was so nice to chat with you. I really just love your message. I love how it’s like a little different than what I’m doing but so complimentary at the same time. And I really look forward to our big event in Dublin coming up.
Peter Ballerstedt
Only five weeks till I get on the plane.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes. I know and well, and the most exciting part of it, too, for me is just being able to be in the same room with so many of these bright people. Like Frederic and everybody else who’s going to be there, so it’s always a good time to just chat with them.
Peter Ballerstedt
I’ll try not to be too big a fanboy.
Diana Rodgers, RD
All right, well have a wonderful afternoon. Thanks again for your time, and we’ll talk to you again soon.
Peter Ballerstedt
Thank you for the opportunity. Be well.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. If you liked the show, please leave a review on iTunes. And if you’d like to support the work I’m doing on Patreon, please visit sustainabledish.com/join. As a Patreon subscriber, you’ll get access to ad-free podcasts, plus exclusive video podcasts, never before seen interviews, and a discussion community. Go to sustainabledish.com/join, and thank you for your support.
