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On this episode, I am joined by Ty Beal, a Research Advisor on the Knowledge Leadership team at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). So he is the perfect person to talk about nutrition at the global level including nutrient deficiencies and how best to address those gaps in different populations around the world.
We were both in Washington DC presenting at a conference and took advantage of a break in our schedules to have a chat. During the episode, Ty shares the highlights from his talk, “Contributions of Animal-source Foods to Healthy Diets for Improved Nutrition,” which is a topic you all know I am passionate about.
Ty references his presentation slides during the show and each one is pictured below with timestamps so you can follow along. His full presentation slide deck is also available below as a downloadable pdf. For those that want to dive deep into the science, there are also links to the studies he mentions.
For those that just want the good news about including meat in your diet, here are the key takeaways:
- Low consumption of meat and other animal-source foods increase risk of undernutrition
- Animal-source foods contain unique nutrients and are evolutionarily appropriate for humans
- Meat and other animal-source foods are among the top sources of nutrients commonly lacking, especially among vulnerable groups like young children
- Too little animal-source foods may hinder child growth and development and may not be optimal for longevity
- Meat and animal-source foods are important for healthy diets and are compatible with sustainable diets when produced appropriately
- Meat, eggs, and dairy provide unique essential nutrients important for healthy diets
- Consuming too little animal-source foods worsens diet quality, increasing the risk of nutrient deficiencies and ill-health
Presentation Slides:
10:53 – Too many people worldwide are malnourished
12:53 – Vitamin and mineral inadequacies are widespread globally
17:33 – Average national diets low in animal-sourced foods do not meet needs for essential micronutrients
18:02 – Meat intake is very low in low/middle-income countries
19:53 – A Planetary Health Diet may not provide adequate micronutrients
25:21 – Meeting nutrients needs requires more animal-source foods
31:16 – Animal-source foods contain unique nutrients
34:44 – Animal-source foods are evolutionarily appropriate for humans
13 & 14 37:35 – Meat and other animal-source foods are top sources of commonly lacking nutrients
41:49 – Meat and other animal-source foods are top sources of commonly lacking nutrients
42:36 – Growing evidence on importance of animal-source foods for child growth and development
Presentation References:
Meat Supplementation Improves Growth, Cognitive, and Behavioral Outcomes in Kenya Children
The Role of Animal-Source Foods in Healthy, Sustainable, and Equitable Food Systems
Meat Supplementation Improves Growth, Cognitive, and Behavioral Outcomes in Kenyan Children
Vegan Diet in Young Children Remodels Metabolism and Challenges the Statuses of Essential Nutrients
Animal Protein Intake is Inversely Associated with Mortality in Older Adults: The InCHIANTI Study
Additional Resources:
The Grocer: Red Meat Health Risks Study is ‘Unreliable’, Claim Scientists
Sustainable Dish Episode 84 with Frédéric Leroy
20 Ways Eat-Lancet’s Global Diet is Wrongfully Vilifying Meat (Sustainable Dish blog post)
White Oak Pastures Beef and Organ Meat Blend
FoodFluence Presentation Slide Deck
Connect with Ty:
Website: Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
Twitter: @tyrbeal
LinkedIn: Ty Beal
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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.
This episode was brought to you by my new Sustainavore Course! Are you confused about which diet is best for your health and the planet? Are you feeling frustrated with quick-fix diets and conflicting nutrition information? Check out Sustainavore. You will learn how to feel confident that the food you’re buying is the right choice for your health and the environment. The course includes over 7 hours of video instruction from me and 60 daily emails full of tips, tricks, and motivation to keep you going – plus lots of bonus material. For a limited time, I am offering special discount pricing so head over to The Sustainavore Course now!
This episode is also being sponsored by Levels, a continuous glucose monitor that gives you individualized insight into your metabolism. This is a tool I personally use and recommend to people I work with. It’s helped me figure out what foods spike my blood sugar and which ones keep me level. I can also see how certain tricks like walks after a meal affect my body. Right now Levels has a waiting list of over 150,000 but they are allowing my listeners to skip the line if you go to sustainabledish.com/levels and sign up. Try it out to see how the food you eat affects your metabolism. This is a must-have tool for anyone interested in personalizing their nutrition.
Transcript:
(Intro) Diana Rodgers, RD 0:01
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 and 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 onto our show.
(Ad for The Sustainavore Course) Diana Rodgers, RD 0:39
Hi Everyone. I wanted to let you know that I am launching a really cool new nutrition and sustainable eating course. I’m calling it Sustainavore, and it is going to teach you how to feel confident that the food you’re buying is the right choice for your health and the environment. You’ll learn the root cause of why you’re so sick, which foods to optimize and which to avoid, how to optimize your protein intake to balance your blood sugar, and which carbs and fat are ideal. I’ll also share my favorite tools for tracking your progress, and you’ll get 60 days full of helpful emails to keep you on track. So if you’re looking to make a change in the way you eat but have been let down in the past give Sustainavore a try. Head over to Sustainavore.com to learn more. Check out all of the cook bonuses I am including and take advantage of the special discount pricing I’m offering right now to my followers.
Diana Rodgers, RD 1:25
Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Today I am recording from the Four Seasons in DC with Ty Beal, who I’m here with to present tomorrow. So I thought I’d take this opportunity. We have a little break right now to do a podcast.
Ty Beal 1:40
Yeah, I’m glad to be here. And it was great to meet you in person.
Diana Rodgers, RD 1:44
Why don’t you tell everybody what you do?
Ty Beal 1:47
Okay, so I’m a Research Advisor at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. So this is a global NGO that works to improve access to nutritious food, especially low-income consumers. And so we try to improve diets working across the free system. I work on the knowledge leadership team. So what we do is a lot of research to inform programs, help design programs and evaluate them. But I specifically do a lot of research on global topics that are of interest to the organization or the broader global nutrition and health communities. So trying to understand dietary patterns – what are the gaps in nutrients what are the gaps in different food groups? And how can they best be improved in different contexts? So and also trying to quantify the burden of undernutrition and NCDs and obesity.
Diana Rodgers, RD 2:34
And NCDs are?
Ty Beal 2:36
Non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers.
Diana Rodgers, RD 2:41
And so the presentation that we’re going to be doing… first, there’s Alice Stanton, who is a doctor from Ireland and a professor, and she’s going to be talking about the global burden of disease. Do you want to recap really quickly what… I was hoping to snag her and interview her as well. But she couldn’t make it. So do you want to just briefly recap what she’s going to be presenting on? And then we can share some of your slides?
Ty Beal 3:06
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. So I was disappointed. I thought Alice was gonna be here in person with us too. But she’s really presenting on the burden of disease study in 2019. As you’re aware, had a big change in the, you know, what they considered a risk factor in terms of red meat. What quantity is considered a health risk, and there’s a lot of controversy around this. But the 2017 study had a certain amount that they allowed, which is questionable already in itself because it’s lower than the WHO recommendations to reduce cancer risk, which are about 71 grams a day. And so this, this was… the GBD was lower, I don’t know the exact about maybe 20 – something grams. I don’t know.
Diana Rodgers, RD 3:46
I’m just remembering when I saw Alice first present about this, just the dramatic difference. She showed a bar graph. And so high sodium diets were much more likely to kill you than eating red meat. And red meat was a very small percentage of the global burden of disease.
Ty Beal 3:53
If you look at the 2017 paper, basically the contribution to what they would call morbidity, which is like disability affected life years. It’s like your healthy life lost, as well as the risk of death. Red meat is really at the very bottom of all the dietary risk factors.
Diana Rodgers, RD 4:23
Of all the bad things, meat is the least bad.
Ty Beal 4:26
And… yes. And of course, you don’t really always consider the nutrients that have been there. So the positive contribution in. 2019, the big changes that they consider any amount of red meat to be harmful,
Diana Rodgers, RD 4:38
And not just by a little bit by about 34 times more deadly amounts.
Ty Beal 4:44
Yeah. So the actual contribution to the global burden of disease went up orders of magnitude.
Diana Rodgers, RD 4:50
Right with no explanation as to why.
Ty Beal 4:53
No, it’s not… it’s not really documented. All right. And so that’s where Alice in her presentation tomorrow, will go over that. This process of writing a letter with other co-authors, you know, concern raising this issue, you know, a balanced letter just trying to raise concern with where’s the evidence behind this. And they faced a lot of pushback and trouble trying to get that published. But it sounds like after some news articles on the subject, there’s some pressure and I think they’re getting some consideration by Lancet, potentially.
Diana Rodgers, RD 5:24
Yes. And I’ll share that paper in the show notes. Well, I’ll share the global burden of disease. But I’ll also share that article in The Grocer. And then my listeners are familiar with Frédéric Leroy. Most people are because he’s in my film, and I’ve had him on the podcast at least once. And so he was a co-author on that paper. And basically, they wrote the letter, they didn’t hear anything from the journal, they were completely ignored. And then all of a sudden, the journal finally wrote back after there was all this media, and said, not only do we agree with you, but we have our own concerns, too. And so that’s, that’s an impressive showing of how powerful media can be.
Ty Beal 6:05
Yeah, absolutely. And to me, there’s… it’s not easy to do a global burden of disease. There’s so many factors to consider and these teams have different expertise. They don’t always have the expertise and nutrition about that. But at the very least, there needs to be the evidence. It needs to be reported fairly. And they need to, you know, that needs to be scrutinized. And from my perspective, as a researcher who’s familiar with this data, it’s just not founded. It’s really not founded to say that any amount has a risk, and really, we look at the nutritional value, and we look at iron B12, and zinc in bioavailable forms, it really does contribute. Those are some of the most prevalent nutrient deficiencies, especially iron and zinc, even in the US. And so when we talk about, you know, my presentation focuses on undernutrition, you really see the US 22% of women of reproductive age have iron deficiency. In the UK, it’s about 21%. So it’s no small deficiency.
Diana Rodgers, RD 7:02
Right. It is easy for a lot of people to picture that low and middle-income countries could maybe eat more meat, right. But a lot of people don’t realize it here in the US, we still have problems. And I actually did a nutrient density challenge a couple years ago, where I tried to get at least 100% of all my nutrients every day without exceeding my calories. And even when I ate red meat three times in a day, I still didn’t actually reach my iron. The DRI for iron.
Ty Beal 7:36
It’s incredibly high for women, right? And in pregnancy, it goes up. So it’s…
Diana Rodgers, RD 7:41
Really hard
Ty Beal 7:42
Very hard. And I don’t think people recognize this. You in general… they’re sort of this sense of like, just eat a varied diet, just eat a balanced diet and your nutrient needs will be met. And that’s just not true, especially for, you know, certain population groups that have increased requirements. And I think like, you don’t necessarily have to consume tons of red meat, but you have to address the deficiency, right? And red meat has the best sources and trying to eat a kind of natural whole foods diet. That’s a pretty good way to get it. You can also eat fortified foods and all that, but it’s at least needs to be mentioned that there’s this big dietary gap.
Diana Rodgers, RD 8:17
Yeah, yeah, the only way I was able to beat other nutrition folks like Rhonda Patrick, who was like that was my goal is to beat her was to eat a ton of oysters, like every day, and then to actually supplement with liver, desiccated liver supplements. Alright, so we are going to share some of the slides from your presentation. So I’m going to do a screen share, just because it’s really remarkable how in 2022, we still have so many people that are not able to access the right nutrition. So you can just advance right through this if you want and just kind of you don’t have to do like a full thing, but I just thought it’d be really cool for my followers to see what you’re presenting on.
Ty Beal 9:01
Okay. Yeah. So if I, just to start off, I’m really talking about the contribution of animal source foods, so I don’t go into any sort of risk factors. We don’t really address that. So just kind of a disclaimer, I’m not really…
Diana Rodgers, RD 9:16
And you’re not anti plant foods. We’re just talking about the contribution that animal source foods can make to undernutrition.
Ty Beal 9:24
Exactly. I’m an advocate of you know, a whole foods diet rich and plants, minimally processed plant foods, so absolutely nothing to disclose here. So really what I talked about in this presentation tomorrow, we’re going to talk about the global burden of malnutrition, focusing on undernutrition, because that’s kind of where animal-sourced foods can often make a big contribution. I chose some studies that are either in process that we’re working on or that we have recently published and others have published about dietary inadequacies. And we can see the correspondence of inadequacies and deficiencies which is really interesting to look at, and this is globally. We also… I also go into kind of the different aspects of meat and other animal source foods that can contribute to nutrient adequacy and other components in the diet that can be helpful. I go into a little bit on the role of animal source foods in child growth and development course of particularly vulnerable times, especially in lower-middle-income countries, low-income countries. And I touched on the role on longevity, which is kind of interesting, because, you know, I do believe that a plant-rich diet is important for longevity, kind of reducing NCD risk. But there’s also risks with under-consuming animal source foods. And so I don’t think that’s as commonly understood but there are many studies that look into that for different reasons
Diana Rodgers, RD 10:44
And quality of life too. You want to maintain muscle mass and sarcopenia is such a big problem. I haven’t even seen that part of your presentation. So you probably talk about that.
Ty Beal 10:53
So that this first slide here just goes into this is from the global nutrition report in I think it was 2021 and malnourished people, so you know, stunted children, there’s almost 150 million stunted children under five. And this is just poor growth and development and has associations with cognitive development, learning capacity, lifetime earning potential, it’s really a kind of metric of the whole state of the economy, and how well, people are going to be able to grow and develop.
Diana Rodgers, RD 11:24
Sorry to interrupt, I was just gonna further talk about stunting, as it’s not just like, Oh, too bad, you’re going to be sure,
Ty Beal 11:30
Absolutely not. And actually, the reasons something has become an indicator, it’s very easy to measure. And it’s a, it’s a sort of marker to track over time, the real thing that we care about more… that people care about is the effect on sort of your quality of life, your risk of infection, and, of course, your cognitive development as you’re a child. But one of the things that happen is when you’re in the complementary feeding stage, which is six to 23 months, ideally, breastfeeding, you have a chance to grow. It’s the most rapid time where you’re growing, so you have a lot of growth and development. So it’s physical development, as well as brain development in other aspects. So it’s a really important time period to have very nutrient-dense foods. And if you look at the nutrient requirements, during that age, proportional to the energy requirements, they’re very, very high. One of the highest… probably the highest group in terms of nutrients required, particularly iron, because breast milk is very high in iron. So other indicators here anemia, there’s 571 million adolescent girls and women, so that’s 15 to 49, with anemia, and a lot of that anemia is from iron deficiency and other some from other deficiencies in folate, etc. Not all of anemia is caused by iron. So and then another indicator, I guess on the next slide, I go into a few here. So I think this is probably surprising to people. But according to at least one study, by colleagues of mine, there are 1 billion people who do not consume enough protein. And this is going by sort of the minimum what we consider like something similar to the RDA or the recommended amount, which is the bare minimum, right. And it’s not really talking about optimal levels. So there’s a lot of good arguments or good reasons to consume above that, right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 13:19
Right. And there was a recent paper, I’m sure you saw it, where even children in low and middle-income countries who are getting the protein requirement are still not reaching their amino acid requirements.
Ty Beal 13:31
Exactly. So it’s not just about protein, right? The amino acids are essential, essential amino acids are essential. And so that’s a big contribution to poor growth in low and middle-income countries. And then we’re currently finalizing a study that we haven’t, we’re about to submit for publication for review, where we looked at all of this, we compiled data globally from different countries on micronutrient biomarkers. What is your iron status? What is your zinc status? B12, folate, etc? And we really looked at what is the prevalence and what’s the total number of preschool-aged children. So that’s usually it’s about five months to, you know, five years old, and women of reproductive age, so 15 to 49. And what we found is for me who researches this, it’s still surprising the prevalence, so over half, both age groups globally, of the population has a micronutrient deficiency. So that’s at least one nutrient deficiency. In women, it’s about two and three, on average, globally. And that’s it could be I mean, it’s very likely an underestimate, because we don’t have all the data on all micronutrients, right?
Diana Rodgers, RD 14:47
Well, some are hard to measure in blood, right? Like B12. By the time it’s low in your blood. That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know if that’s true. That by the time it’s low in your blood, you are really low.
Ty Beal 14:56
Yeah, it’s not… I think your body really doesn’t absorb a lot of B12 at one time from diet, so it’s good, you need to get it kind of regularly throughout your life. And so this study what the other thing is sort of surprising is that in deficiencies are higher in low and middle-income countries. That’s what we expected. And you see South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly high. And those countries generally have low animal source foods, and they’re oftentimes dependent on, you know, a single staple food, if that’s whether it’s rice, or corn, or wheat. And so they’re not getting a lot of bioavailable nutrients, especially the iron and zinc. And so, but in the US and UK, and high-income countries, still a problem. So in the US, as mentioned earlier, iron deficiency is about 22%. From our study in women of reproductive age in the UK, it’s about 21%. And in the UK folate deficiency is about 20% and vitamin D as well. And zinc is about… I think it’s 10% in the UK and 14% in the US. This is for women of reproductive age. So those aren’t just they’re not insignificant numbers.
Diana Rodgers, RD 16:06
Yeah, and everything other than folate are best found in animal-sourced foods.
Ty Beal 16:11
Yeah exactly. So when we look at other forms of data, another one is sort of the looking at the diet, how does the diet stand up to what are called the recommended intakes. And when you look at a population level, the intakes of the diet, you match it up with food composition data and the nutrient requirements, you actually see quite a lot of inadequacies here. It doesn’t always correspond perfectly with the biomarkers. But the main point from this slide is if you look at the boxes, anything that’s going towards more red, when it’s sort of like a moderate red color is about 50% deficiency. So when you’re at a dark red, it’s close to 100%. And a lot of nutrients… if you look at the countries on the bottom, so if you look, most countries or all countries have at least two nutrients or more where there’s, you know, a sizable portion of inadequacy. And so this is from a paper that we wrote a couple of years ago, and really looking at the food supply. So this is a very broad ecological type of indicator from the FAO. We matched it with food composition data to look at the micronutrient density of the diet and then tried to estimate what is the risk of inadequate supply at the population level. And what we’re seeing here is, each dot is sort of a country nutrient combo to just simplify if you go to the right of the axis, that’s the percent of energy calories from animal source foods. And the y axis is showing you the prevalence of, you know, inadequate nutrient supply. And so the prevalence when you have a low percentage of calories from animal-sourced foods, the prevalence is very high. And many of these nutrients are very high up to 100% percent. And this is, you know, this isn’t to say it’s necessarily those are deficiencies, but it’s looking at the diet that people have access to is not providing enough nutrient density to meet their recommended intakes. And so as you get to a higher proportion of energy from animal source foods up to about a third use, you really significantly reduce the risk of inadequacies. And that’s an important thing to highlight. And this doesn’t look at fortification. So fortification, of course, can contribute and help. But if you’re looking at just the foods that we eat, having about a third of calories from animal-sourced foods is generally what it takes to kind of meet those nutrients. It’s interesting.
Diana Rodgers, RD 18:37
That’s a significant amount because I mean, not with fat but with protein. Protein is actually low… animal protein is low in calories. Yeah, relative to the other foods people are eating.
Ty Beal 18:49
Yeah, especially relative to nutrient density of priority nutrients that are often lacking. So and then this slide is just giving a big overview of the… I think this is red meat intake, and it may not be easy to see. But basically, what I want to show here is just sort of the pattern. You can see, you know, in North America and South America, you have higher intakes and Australia, China, and then most of Europe, sort of higher intakes, relatively, and then you get to Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia, it’s very low. In some of these countries and when you look at the amount, even a sort of effort to go a lot more plant-based, like an Eat Lancet approach would recommend about 14 grams on average of red meat, but many of these countries in Africa and Asia are actually well below that. So even by that kind of standard, they’re not getting enough of these and this is definitely one of the contributors to the undernutrition that we see.
Diana Rodgers, RD 19:48
And so for people that don’t know what 14 grams looks like, it’s about the size of a blueberry.
Ty Beal 19:53
So this year is under consideration. So it’s not published at this point, but it’s actually a comment that we sort of drafted to look at the nutrient adequacy of the Eat Lancet diet. And I just want to point out that there are inadequacies when we look at these kind of suggested diets when we match it with the nutrient requirements and the nutrients found in the foods in the diet. So we see inadequacies in B12, calcium, iron, and zinc. The biggest is really when you look at women of reproductive age. Iron, I think the mean is only about 55% of the recommended intakes. So that sort of highlights that issue. That does correspond with what we see in terms of the biomarkers, and an iron deficiency is very prevalent.
Diana Rodgers, RD 20:39
And we don’t want pregnant women and babies to be iron deficient, because?
Ty Beal 20:44
It’s a cycle of malnutrition, right? It doesn’t help facilitate proper growth and development,
Diana Rodgers, RD 20:50
Especially brain development for iron. Yeah. And just so folks are familiar, I’ve talked about Eat Lancet many times. But for those who are new, I did write about it, I’ll put a link in the show notes. And the Eat Lancet is like this diet that was created in order to solve both nutrient issues and be sustainable for the planet. And it’s this sort of model diet that’s been highly criticized by people like us.
Ty Beal 21:20
Yeah. So and I don’t have major criticisms over that over the diet itself in terms of risk of NCDs. I think there are a lot of ways to try to kind of minimize that risk. But definitely, in terms of the nutrient adequacy, there’s a challenge there that has to be addressed, I think so. One of the things that we did just to kind of get a sense of, what would it take? This was not an easy process, we were trying to not use fortification, because of course, on paper, if you fortify or use a supplement, you can get any diet that you’re 100%. Right. But it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy to actually have… For me, fortification is a challenge. I think it’s a great strategy and plays a role. But when you look at just, you know, foods, how can we try to meet nutrient needs. It’s really challenging. And one of the things we found was animal source foods, pretty much need to be increased almost double what they were… So they were in the Eat Lancet about 14%. So to try to meet the actual nutrient needs, through foods alone, we had to go about double that 27-28%. And that’s sort of the minimum required and one of the things that was interesting looking at the diet, we look at the plant-rich diet, the phytate content, which is an anti-nutrient, which hinders absorption of minerals like iron, zinc, calcium, it was off the charts. So it was about 2500-3000 milligrams of phytate. In the diet.
Diana Rodgers, RD 22:46
Yeah. So it’s a very grain-rich diet that they were promoting and…
Ty Beal 22:50
I think 800 calories of whole grains. That’s high. It’s very high in phytate. Because it’s an anti-nutrient. Yeah, one of the things that we looked at… when you’re trying to estimate the adequacy of a diet, you have to adjust for the bioavailability of the diet, the population that you’re looking at. And one of the things that has been done before by different organizations, FAO, WHO. and researchers is to try to estimate when you have this quantity of phytate, what’s the absorption, basically, of zinc, and the categories that they created, were 300 milligrams, 600, 900, and 1200. And so if you have 300 milligrams, it’s considered a refined diet. So it’s kind of like a, you know, US diet or Western diet, and the absorption is high in zinc, when you have low phytate, right. But 1200 is the max and the Eat Lancet has about 2500-3000 milligrams, of phytate depending on how you look at it. And that also hinders the iron absorption.. And one of the things that is not commonly done is in requirements when people are saying, you know, I can meet, I can meet my requirements on a completely plant-based diet, they’re not looking at the requirements adjusted for bioavailability, which is, the bioavailability is lower in plant source food. So you have…
Diana Rodgers, RD 24:14
On top of the anti-nutrients that you might be getting from the grain.
Ty Beal 24:17
Exactly. So if you want… Yeah, and if you go into the details of that sort of heme iron – nonheme-iron, heme iron is a much more bioavailable form of iron. It’s only found in animal source foods. And also animal sources increase the absorption of nonheme iron in plant foods, as well as vitamin C. So there’s strategies, but in general, what you see is that populations with very low animal source food intake, iron absorption is estimated, as well as 5%. Oftentimes 10%. My sense is that if you have a kind of a very diverse diet and it’s rich in vitamin C, you can maybe get that up to 10% but the animal sourced-rich that is closer to 15-18%
Diana Rodgers, RD 24:59
Well, and milk… doesn’t milk or block iron absorption too?
Ty Beal 25:04
I think it does but I don’t research that.
Diana Rodgers, RD 25:07
Okay. I just remember the Eat Lancet diet… It actually was, there was quite a bit of dairy recommended as part of it and my understanding is that dairy blocks iron absorption as well.
Ty Beal 25:20
Yeah, I think it does. I think it may be interactions with calcium. So yeah, I mean, I won’t go through the specifics here, but we were trying to change food categories, you know, fish and shellfish, eggs, beef, so all of the animal source foods had to increase and one of the things that we kind of specifically highlighted was we need to also be eating the organs of the animals and I know that they are consumed to some degree but probably not as much as they could be. And some innovations around organ meats like liver, kidneys…
Diana Rodgers, RD 25:52
I know when you see all these other innovations happening in the food space right now with the plant-based alternatives. I would love to see innovation sneak in organ meat that we’re currently exporting. Like I know White Oak Pastures you can order a blend meat that has organs in it. And it’s so easy to hide organs in ground meat and things like that.
Ty Beal 26:15
You know, my favorite is, because I don’t like beef liver. It’s not something I want to eat but the… you probably had this but the liverwurst from US Wellness Meats.
Diana Rodgers, RD 26:26
I’ve heard it’s amazing.
Ty Beal 26:29
And it’s very minimally processed. It’s half beef. It has I think it’s about 20 to 30% liver, 15%, kidney, and heart or some combination of those, I can’t remember that exact amount, but it’s a mix. And they have just natural spices and salt. And it’s not a lot of salt. It’s really good with mustard. Our daughters eat it all the time. That’s like their… and it’s easy for young children. So if you’re thinking of young children during the complementary feeding age, it’s a really good source of really, really nutrient-dense. And one of the other things while we’re talking about young children and undernutrition, it’s really interesting to see this in my own daughters that they were drawn to the nutrient-dense foods from start like just to see the desire to eat eggs, and, you know, beef, and liverwurst and chicken liver, you know, like it’s, there’s something in their palate. I think that really, it can get corrupted and you can get to ultra-processed food. Definitely, that can be a bigger driver, but especially when they’re young in the first exposed foods, those foods that really what they want.
Diana Rodgers, RD 27:36
Yeah, my kids too, my son, the like, the more tentacles the better for him as a boy, maybe or just his curiosity. But sardines, pate, things that I even have a hard time eating because I grew up eating like Pop-Tarts, but I would feed to him and he still like really loved sardines.
Ty Beal 27:56
That’s a hard fish for people to get past.
Diana Rodgers, RD 27:59
But if you get like sardines… and yeah, start early and it’s just what it is just on the table and get to eat a little fish.
Ty Beal 28:06
Yeah, I don’t love sardines, but eat them for the health reasons. But like, if you were exposed to that maybe as a young kid, you can develop that palate. Right. And you can kind of form that in your childhood.
Diana Rodgers, RD 28:18
Yeah, and I did actually just before you came in, I looked up the typical American child’s diet and some of their favorite foods. And as you might expect, like pizza, chicken nuggets, burgers, pasta, all those kinds of things. And so when we have messages that are vilifying meat to parents and children, you know of all those foods, I would say like the burger patty in there is probably and maybe okay, you could have like a healthier version of a chicken nugget. But there’s still good protein and vitamins even in a processed chicken nugget. And so, unfortunately, when those foods get pulled out, then you’re just left with usually mac and cheese and pizza and pasta with no animal-source protein.
Ty Beal 29:07
Yeah, that’s a good point. I think the question of the replacement foods is important because there are much better ways to do diets that are low in animal-sourced foods and there are much worse ways. And so it takes a lot of intention to try to get it right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 29:23
Yes, and kids are squirmy like trying to get enough spinach into a squirmy two-year-old to meet their iron requirements is pretty impossible.
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Ty Beal 31:16
So this slide just highlights a few of the kind of unique compounds in animal source foods. So we’ve talked about bioavailability, when you look at micronutrients, they’re the only source of retinol which is about 12 times more bioavailable, but then, you know, carotenoids, beta carotene on average.
Diana Rodgers, RD 31:33
And I would also just add to that 45% of humans lack the ability to properly convert beta carotene to retinol, which is vitamin A. So even though a food might say it has vitamin A on it, actually, if it’s in the form of beta carotene, there’s a lot of people that will not be able to really absorb that.
Ty Beal 31:53
Yeah, and I think that’s a… it’s important point that absorption really varies. Thankfully, for vitamin A, we can talk about the other nutrients. When you look at a package and says percent of RDA that actually accounts for a difference in bioavailability a factor of 12 to 1.
Diana Rodgers, RD 32:08
Oh, good.
Ty Beal 32:09
So thankfully, it’s considering and it varies wildly. So raw carrots, I think it’s about 77 to one, so basically, you get very little vitamin A. Cooking them helps. If you have something like an oil, so like a red palm oil, it can be as high as two to one, the conversion. Average. So these are average numbers. And like you said, there are individuals who can’t convert very well. Some of the other nutrients and which don’t, when you look at the RDA package, they don’t consider the bioavailability, iron, and zinc for example. You can have a package that… say it’s black beans or something, right. And it says that it has a lot of iron, and it does have a good amount of iron. But the bioavailability is much lower because of the phytate, and lack of heme iron.
Diana Rodgers, RD 32:54
And they’re eating with rice, which is more phytates.
Ty Beal 32:57
Yeah. And so when you look at the package, they don’t… there’s no adjustment. If you look at iron, and zinc, there’s no adjustment for bioavailability. And so it’s sort of deceiving, because its bioavailability, depends on the total diet, right. So if on average, if you’re consuming, for example, you’re consuming a lot of animal source foods and relatively low phytate, your absorption will be higher. But if you were to just base it off of the plant foods that you’re eating, it’s going to overestimate the absorption a lot. And so you really actually need more than what they’re showing there. So you need nutrients or heme iron. And then, of course, vitamin D, not found in plant-sourced foods. And then the form of zinc is much more bioavailable, largely because of the lack of anti-nutrients. And then complete amino acid profile, bioavailable protein, the only source of DHA and EPA other than sea vegetables.
Diana Rodgers, RD 33:49
Which a lot of people are not consuming if they’re eating like that.
Ty Beal 33:52
I mean in general, it’s hard to get it without a supplement, but you can get a DHA or EPA supplement. But access to those worldwide are not going to be very high, right? It’s not gonna be high. So other compounds are, you know, unique bioactive, like CLA, bioactive peptides. And then a recent study by a friend, Stefan VanFleet really found that in grass-fed meat, there are actually meaningful amounts of phytochemicals and also milk, and these phytonutrients can actually be there… they come from the grass that the animal eats, they can actually potentially have some beneficial effects. And that’s, I think, was a really interesting finding because most people wouldn’t say, eat your beef and your milk to get some phytonutrients and then it’s not going to be as high as you know, consuming dark leafy greens or something, but it still makes a contribution. So this slide I won’t really spend too much time on but really, this is just to say, you know, animal source foods were really instrumental in our evolution and they’ve been… we’ve been consuming them for a long time to really help with increased brain size and anatomy and, and what’s really interesting is that the amount of animal source foods in the diet was actually very high on average from hunter-gatherers, of course, and so the range varied a lot could have been as low as 15%, but up to 90 plus percent. It actually corresponds to latitude generally. But yeah, so that’s just what’s interesting to say that, you know, we’ve been eating a lot of animal-sourced foods for a long time. You can argue even and I’ve heard this argued a lot, you can argue that it’s focusing on reproductive success, right. And it’s not necessarily optimizing for longevity. But again, we’ve been commonly consuming them. And we have had low rates, low burdens of chronic disease, up until recently, where we’ve had large amounts of really highly processed foods. So the other kind of point that I wanted to make, I don’t talk about chronic disease in this presentation much. But just to point out that modern cultures or societies that have kind of maintained their traditional lifestyle and have moderate to high amounts of animal source foods by our standards still are relatively free, it doesn’t mean they’re optimizing their lifespan necessarily from their diet. But it shows that, to me, the much larger problem is sort of the very energy-dense, really refined, and, you know, ultra-processed foods which have taken over and they’re actually, most people know that they’re very high in… well most… a lot of your listeners probably know, they’re very high in the US, UK, and the West, over half in calories in South America. But in Asia and Africa, they’re lower, but they’re increasing rapidly, very rapidly. And so that’s you know… and I’ve traveled to different countries and in rural places and remote villages, and the food industry has reached there, right. You can see Coca-Cola, you can see Pepsi, just about anywhere. And so it’s coming. And that’s where the transition, and we talk about how do you kind of… how do you have a sustainable diet? How do you, you know, how do you get your nutrients you need while minimizing your risk of chronic disease in fish or plant-based diets? And I’m a proponent of plant-rich diets. But it’s sort of… what is the alternative? What are the plants? Right? Is it going to be processed corn syrup? Or is it going to be a rich whole, like, you know, like the Ezekiel bread, like if you can have gluten, sort of flourless sprouted, so it has more bioavailable nutrients?
Diana Rodgers, RD 37:19
Yeah, and unfortunately, eating Western food is culturally in a lot of places seen as a marker of being modern and, you know, having the money to afford it and all that stuff.
Ty Beal 37:32
Yeah. And that’s what fast food is, and a lot of contexts, right? It’s consumed as sort of a social status. It’s no wonder where you know, the challenge that we’re in today. So this slide is from a paper that’s not published, it’s under review. And it’s just looking at sort of nutrient density of six nutrients that we find commonly lacking. So it’s iron, zinc, folate, B12, calcium, and vitamin A. And I won’t go into the details of the algorithm, but it’s basically trying to say, if the quantity required to meet, on average about a third of the chronic requirements, because it’s just one food and we think it’s going to contribute part of the recommended intakes. The smaller the bars, the more nutrient-dense the food is. Now on the left-hand side is calories, and on the right-hand side is grams. And so we sort of classify them into a very high nutrient density, high, moderate, and low energy. You’ll notice the organ meats, the bivalves. So clams, mussels, and then even the ruminant meat, like beef, and then eggs and dairy are the highest in those. So those require you can have smaller quantities to get comparable amounts of micronutrients.
Diana Rodgers, RD 38:41
I’m so glad that you did this by gram too, because so many people… you know, when you look by calorie, something like lettuce looks amazing by calorie. But then if you think about how much dark leafy green vegetables you need to eat, to get the bioavailable nutrients, it’s a lot.
Ty Beal 39:02
Quite a lot. And it’s not easy for a lot of people to eat that much. Yeah, absolutely. That’s a barrier. And so what we did here, we sort of, we assumed an average of the energy density. And so of course, that can vary a lot. But I think we chose about 1.3 In terms of the energy per mass. And so basically what it does, it sort of adjusts for that if you if the quantity required to meet the sort of third of the recommended intakes is too large in terms of mass, it’s penalized. So it doesn’t… it says basically… the algorithm says that’s not really real life, that’s because you can’t have like 10 pounds of carrots or whatever it is right. Yeah. So this figure in particular just goes through some of the specific nutrients and the foods that are the good sources. So it’s a little bit more granular to say, Okay, well, what does kidney? What do bivalves? What do crustaceans? what do they have? What sort of the dense nutrients. And you can see a lot of the plant source foods on the bottom, or foods like chicken, which people don’t really… I don’t think people think about the nutrient density differences from something like chicken versus beef. It’s big. And it’s especially big in iron and zinc, and B12. And so those are, when you look at the sort of contribution to the diet chicken has a lot of it’s a great protein, and it has some iron and zinc, but it’s not on the same level as something like ruminant meat.
Diana Rodgers, RD 40:29
It also has a lot of omega six
Ty Beal 40:30
It also has a lot of omega six. So this last version of this type of study, this was actually published. And this is sort of an extension of this analysis, to specifically children during the complementary feeding age of six to 23 months, and specifically in South Asia. And I think Southeast Asia.
Diana Rodgers, RD 40:49
Oh, this just came out. I just used this study recently.
Ty Beal 40:53
Yeah. So this came out… the grams and calories are reversed. And the reason we did that is just to emphasize that for young children, they have small stomachs.
Diana Rodgers, RD 41:01
Yeah. And they’re squirmy.
Ty Beal 41:05
Yeah. You can’t get 200 grams of spinach or kale into a child easily. Right, that’s not very feasible. So we’ve kind of highlighted that. We considered both but we kind of favored visually, just to try to communicate that. If the quantity is too large, especially depending on the food, some foods, yogurt, it’s actually pretty easy to get a fair amount of yogurt, but that’s actually one of the foods that contributes to a lot of nutrients. But yeah, you can see up here, we talked about the requirements are really high for young children. The bars that are sort of in the darkest, you know, very high nutrient density, there’s not a lot of them, it’s organ meats. So even beef gets demoted to high, it’s not even the same level. I mean, and that depends on the… what nutrients you’re considering. But you have goat and goat… the reason goat is just because it’s leaner. So when you look at the average, you look at the nutrient density, per calorie. And all of this… a lot of this depends on sort of the nutrient composition day you’re using. And that kind of varies across countries, but just gives a sense that it’s not easy. It’s actually really important to have animal-sourced foods for young children, or you know, there are other strategies, I don’t want to say there’s not other strategies. A recent supplement in AJC, one of the top nutrition journals, came out by my colleagues who was on my advisory panel of a program at UC Davis. So Kay Dewey, and a lot of others. And they have liquid-based nutrient supplements. So these have their lipid and it has fortified nutrients in the oil
Diana Rodgers, RD 42:33
Like soy oil with vitamins in it?
Ty Beal 42:34
It’s kind of it has… I don’t know the oil exactly, but has sort of peanut, and yeah, some sort of fat, but that helps the fat-soluble vitamins. It may sound like oh, I don’t want to give that to my kid. But the impact is actually huge on growth on cognitive function. Yeah. So like, and these are sort of this is an affordable strategy, there’s going to be controversy about what’s the strategy, but I just want to say there… it’s not like, animal-sourced foods are the only way to get nutrients, but they are a really good way to get nutrients in many contexts. And they can fit into a lot of strategies for that.
Diana Rodgers, RD 43:07
Yeah and we still don’t really appreciate all the complications of fortification. And so whenever there’s a food source option, that’s always going to be better.
Ty Beal 43:17
Yeah, I personally would rather pay for sort of food first approach whenever possible. But not everybody has access to all those foods. So this slide is borrowed from Adesogan…Doctor Adesogan. And he presented this at the micronutrient forum a couple years ago, just a little over a year ago, really kind of looking at… summarizing some of the studies that have shown the contribution of animal sources to child growth and development. So reduced stunting, you know, improved linear growth, height, improved cognitive function, etc. And there’s a lot of studies here, I won’t, I won’t cover all of them, but
Diana Rodgers, RD 43:54
There’s a lot of egg-a-day ones. And yeah, we’re, you know, even the family gets… every baby gets a couple of chickens, the parents are taught how to take care of the chickens. And the agreement is that the baby gets an egg a day and anything else goes towards the family. And it works.
Ty Beal 44:12
And another reason is because it’s easy to eat it. So if you have a soft-boiled egg or you have a scrambled egg, it’s easy. It’s soft, it dissolves quickly, right. And I think it’s an easy for you to eat. I will say, you know, the Lulun Project, which was led by Laura Ionnatti found that you know, really, really strong impact, I think it was in Ecuador, and they did it… one of my colleagues who was Metro Professor Christine Stewart, they redid it in Malawi, and they didn’t find any significant contribution to growth, but there was there’s a lot of different reasons why but one of the reasons they thought particularly was that the area where they were the children are eating a lot of fish. And so the actual contribution was a smaller percentage. I think that’s important to recognize. Yeah, it often it’s where you see this strongest effect is where you have that really low intake and the vulnerable children who need it. And there’s other… I think there are other reasons why that may be. But certainly when we look at the nutrient density is a strong argument, you have many studies showing correlations. And then you have also have RCTs that are showing a contribution. So, for example, what you shared with me, which I had seen before, but I didn’t hadn’t included before as the meat supplementation improves growth, cognitive and behavioral outcomes in Kenyan children. I think this was from 2007, and strong support right there, a randomized control trial. So and when you look at the systematic reviews, there have been a few, I think they’re about three that have been published in 2019 on child growth. It gets really complicated. And that’s probably, from my perspective, it has more to do with the study design and figuring out how to really capture that contribution. And so it’s sometimes evidence is mixed. And it’s not… the systematic reviews aren’t fully showing that it’s I think we do need more data. But it’s a very compelling case and we need a lot of evidence.
Diana Rodgers, RD 46:02
This was a good study.
Ty Beal 46:05
And then the last one on the growth aspect of you mentioned this slide, study, this is why it came out very recently. And Richard Semba is honestly he’s sort of, he’s been an advocate of amino acids for young children for a long time, we’ve cited his work a lot. They recently did this review, where they looked at protein can be adequate. But if you’re not meeting your targets for essential amino acids, that’s making a big contribution to stunting and development. So the last sort of section I think of what I’m going to talk about is on a vegan diet, just because, you know, there’s obviously a lot of push towards this type of approach in western context. And it’s certainly possible, especially as an adult, to meet your nutrient requirements with a really careful diet and with some supplementation or fortified foods. But when you look at children, this study, the reason I put this here is that I believe dietetics designed the diet, and so they’re trying to design a diet…
Diana Rodgers, RD 47:01
That’s the perfect vegan diet.
Ty Beal 47:04
We should be able to get there, but they still found inadequacy, so DHA was low, vitamin A and vitamin D…
Diana Rodgers, RD 47:09
Probably choline.
Ty Beal 47:11
I don’t even know if they looked at choline. That’s the one… that’s definitely a challenge if you’re not consuming animal source sourced foods right? So and then this… when you looked at the longevity issue, this study in Japan really found that some meat consumption going from a very low baseline increasing, actually is… can make a contribution to longevity for certain risk factors. Yes, cardiovascular risk factors, which is really interesting to see. And then a recent study here, there’s actually a lot of these I’ve seen, that have come out where you’re looking at sort of the protein intake in elderly populations. And animal source foods, again, oftentimes show our total protein, but then sometimes like this one, it’s actually animal source food source protein itself that really seems to be contributing.
Diana Rodgers, RD 47:58
But what about the Blue Zones?
Ty Beal 48:00
Yeah. What about the Blue Zones? Well, I mean, to be fair, yeah, the Blue Zones have healthy diets, right? They’re not eating ultra-processed foods. It’s a pretty balanced diet, and they consume some animal-sourced foods. But again, it’s like this case right here, sort of like the quality of life in and can contribute to actual longevity too. You don’t really want to have too little animal-sourced foods. And if you do, you really have to pay attention to that, right? You can eat… you can have protein powders, you can have soy and soy milk and tofu, like I feel like this… the Eden soy milk it’s just soybeans and water, it has about 12 grams of protein, that’s a good protein source if you’re not having a lot of animal source foods. So but again, if you’re gonna have oat milk, if you’re gonna have almond milk, all the other plant milks, you’re not gonna…
Diana Rodgers, RD 48:47
It’s just white water.
Ty Beal 48:47
Yeah, you’re not gonna get much protein at all.
Diana Rodgers, RD 48:50
And then there’s Hong Kong that has the highest meat consumption per capita and the longest lifespans, period. So takeaways.
Ty Beal 49:00
Takeaways. So this is just sort of a, you know, animal source foods can be compatible with sustainable diets, they are really, you know, from my perspective… so basically saying to prioritize productions of foods that are appropriate for local ecosystems that can be produced, you know, in the ecological context shift towards regenerative production, diverse agroecosystems and integrating crops and livestock to really get the benefits of circularity, inputs for crops, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, things like that. And then I think moderating intake of foods with largest environmental impacts which vary, so there may be beef in one context and maybe something else in another, maybe nuts, if it’s water down in California. It depends on the food and it depends on the context. I really think that there’s still… it’s important to strengthen fortification because this is sort of a safety net for people and it’s an affordable way. Insurance policy. And if you think about it, there are really big success stories. So iodine is one, I think it’s not consistent in foods, because it depends on the soil content. There’s other nutrients that are lacking. And so it’s actually not easy, especially if you come from a place where you’re eating local foods and in the local foods the soil is low in iodine, it’s not easy to get it. So iodized salt has been one of those success stories where it’s actually made a big contribution globally.
Diana Rodgers, RD 50:24
And although the… like a lot of people following like a paleo type diet who don’t eat a lot of ultra-processed foods and eat sea salt are not getting the iodine they need. So supplementing with iodine for eating a ton of sea snacks or something like that.
Ty Beal 50:40
Yeah, I personally favor the kelp flakes because they have kelp adults, but kelp has such a high concentration. If you just have a little bit of kelp flakes
Diana Rodgers, RD 50:50
Yeah, I put it on my eggs in the morning.
Ty Beal 50:51
Yeah, it’s almost like you could reduce your salt intake potentially, but it’s like, I don’t eat a lot of iodized salt. I’d probably get more of it through that through the kelp flakes. But yeah, you’re right, you have to do some somewhere. So if it’s going to be the whole food, you got to make a conscious effort to try to do it with seaweed. And then the last point is just I think it’s important to… sort of a lot of division that happens in this debate about animal-sourced foods – what’s the role of plant-sourced foods? I think it’s just really important to be kind of constructive in these debates in these kind of discussions, because people, most people who are advocating for one side or the other, they care about people and they want what’s best, and they have different perspectives. And those are valid considerations. And we all have our biases. So I think just like making that sort of effort of, hey, well, where can we align? Like, maybe you don’t think we should have as much but you think there should be, you know, a moderate amount? And can we kind of incorporate this into programs or whatever, whatever field you’re working on. And so this just kind of summarizes there are billions of people who are malnourished, you know, meat intake, it’s very low. It’s actually below recommended intakes. And so a lot of the undernutrition that we’re seeing is from low consumption of meat and other animal source foods. Planetary health diet may not be usually adequate, without additional animal source foods. And I think you can also use improved fortification for that strategy. Animal source foods contain a lot of unique nutrients that are evolutionary appropriate. And then animal-sourced foods are nutrient-dense in the nutrients that are commonly lacking, specifically iron, zinc, B12. And so too little animal source foods really can hinder child growth and development. And it’s not necessarily optimal for longevity, I think there’s sort of a minimal level that would probably support more optimal longevity, and that they can, you know, animal source foods have a role to play in sustainable diets. So I can leave it there. And I think the sort of key takeaway is, when we’re talking about sustainable diets, we’re talking about healthy diets to meet nutrients and reduce risk for chronic disease. Don’t oversimplify, just go plant-based to solve the problems, because your… it depends on what plants. That ultra-processed is all plants. And it also depends on you know, can you have access to a huge diversity of plants and good fortification supplementation, so I think we really need to be careful. And you know, this, and probably you’re going to talk about this to some extent, but livestock can play a huge role in livelihoods specifically with women, right. And so it’s sort of, there’s a lot of different ways that animal source foods can contribute to societal benefits, whether that’s their cultural aspects, process of food, bringing people together, all these things are valid. And animal rights are valid, too, right. Welfare is valid. That should be a consideration. I’m not an advocate of just like torturing animals, and just that we can have cheap animal source foods like I want to, I want to support, you know, producers that are doing things that really respect the animals and yeah, that’s my key takeaway.
Diana Rodgers, RD 53:54
Yeah, yeah, I’ll just, yeah, so some of the points I’m going to bring up tomorrow. And I should mention, this is a conference with dieticians, and some of them are plant-based, but hopefully open-minded to what we’re going to be saying. But women in half the countries in the world cannot own land, but they can, in many cases, own livestock. And, you know, improving the nutrition and financial status of women is one of the best ways we can make sure that children are growing up to be healthy and strong.
Ty Beal 54:29
Then they make on average, they make much more reasonable decisions about investing in the family and children. There’s that issue. It’s a topic that has to be addressed. But yeah, in general, women, especially in these low and middle-income countries, when they have those resources and are in control and they can really help invest in the growth and development of their children.
Diana Rodgers, RD 54:51
Yeah. And so my main message is that anti-meat messages are not super ethical. Especially coming from people in wealthier countries that have access to Whole Foods Market and supplement stores and a wide variety without really taking into consideration people who depend on livestock for their income, livestock may be the only thing that’s really productive where they live. We can’t just grow crops everywhere. You need crops are… especially in low-income countries, access to owning land, even for men is hard with corrupt governments and things like that. And then one monsoon will wipe out all your food and your income for the whole year. So livestock are much more stable as a food source and an income source. They’re a larder, for so many people, and so…
Ty Beal 55:50
Women, in particular, can play a huge role in recycling materials from crops and diverse systems, crop residues, and of course, grass being food that we can’t consume, and grasslands actually take up a large share of the planet. So I totally agree, I think what needs to be done is and what is happening is sort of this ranching with the environment in mind, trying to really be stewards of the land to encourage biodiversity and really develop good ecosystems, right, that can actually support in many contexts, support greater biodiversity and soil health, and than you can with crops.
Diana Rodgers, RD 56:26
Totally. So I’ll be touching on all of that stuff a little bit tomorrow. And yeah, so Ty, you’re mostly on Twitter, right? Or only on Twitter? Yeah.
Ty Beal 56:36
Yeah. I’m mostly on Twitter.
Diana Rodgers, RD 56:37
Okay. So will you share your handle?
Ty Beal 56:39
I’ll share my handle, Ty R Beal. So T-Y-R-B-E-A-L. I share a lot of studies that I’m working on and that I find interesting from others. So yeah, check it out.
Diana Rodgers, RD 56:50
Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much. And we’ll keep our fingers crossed for tomorrow that it all goes well.
Ty Beal 56:55
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Diana Rodgers, RD 56:57
Thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD 56:58
Thanks so much for joining us on the Sustainable Dish Podcast. If you like the show, please leave us a review on iTunes, and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter at Sacred Cow dot info. See you next time. Thanks for listening.
