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Frédéric Leroy, PhD is a professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the field of food science and biotechnology. When he is not busy with his day job, he spends his time researching and writing about meat and why this ancestral food, once consider nutritious and a symbol of vitality and strength, has suddenly become unhealthy and responsible for the destruction of the planet.
His paper, Meat as Scapegoat, outlines many of his arguments, and be sure to check out Frédéric’s first visit to the show to hear our discussion on the role meat plays in society. The paper was also an inspiration for a chapter in Sacred Cow and he was featured in the Sacred Cow film too.
As you can probably tell, I deeply respect Frédéric’s work and I’m so happy to have him back on the podcast to share his updates. Listen in as we discuss:
- Frédéric’s background and how he became interested in meat and how he observed meat becoming controversial
- The lost connection between meat as a food product and the actual animal
- Why arguments about meat get so complicated
- Why replacing meat with Beyond Burgers won’t work
- How pro-meat materials are not getting published
- The Global Burden of Disease and why having accurate science is so important
Resources:
Sustainable Dish Episode 84: Frédéric Leroy
The Joe Rogan Experience Episode 1784: Diana Rodgers, RD & Robb Wolf
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt. Col. Dan Grossman
Sustainable Dish Episode 117: Dr. Sylvia Karpagam
The Grocer: Red Meat Health Risks Study is ‘Ureliable,’ Claim Scientists
Christopher Murray’s response to GBD criticism
Connect with Frédéric:
Website: ALEPH2020 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Twitter: @fleroy1974
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.
Thank you to Dry Farm Wines for their continued support of my work. Their wines are all-natural and low in alcohol which means less of a foggy feeling the next day. Plus, the non-irrigated vineyards force the roots to dig deep in search of water allowing the grapes to absorb extra minerals. Give Dry Farm Wines a try if you’ve given up on wine because of how you feel the next day or if you are simply looking for high-quality, all-natural wine. They have a great selection of sparkling, whites, rosés, and reds. And when you visit sustainabledish.com/wine you can check out their latest special offer exclusively for listeners of the Sustainable Dish podcast.
Quotes:
“I just wanted to understand why this ancestral food, which has always been looked at as something very nutritious, as a symbol of vitality and strength, suddenly became the thing that was harmful and toxic and destroys health and destroys the planet.” – Frédéric Leroy, PhD
“When I talk to young people nutrition is not a concern. They’re much more trying to save the planet and save the animals. And I’ll just get my nutrition in other ways, and maybe I’ll be nutrient deficient, but at least I’m saving the planet and saving the animals.” – Diana Rodgers, RD
“If you talk about the food system, it’s such a complex system. It’s an extremely complex system. We need to have the humility to admit that we will never understand complex systems to the full extent. And we will never know what will come out as an action.” – Frédéric Leroy, PhD
“Science is a work in progress, and science is a debate. If it’s no longer a debate, it’s finished and it’s an illusion to think that the science that is reported in mainstream media and the one that gets the most exposure is always the correct science.” – Frédéric Leroy, PhD
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 Connolly 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 onto our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD 0:39
Welcome back to the Sustainable Dish podcast, everybody. I’m excited to have with me, Frédéric Leroy. Thank you so much for being here. It is your second time on the podcast.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 0:49
Right. Thank you, Diana. I’m glad to be back.
Diana Rodgers, RD 0:51
So only a small bit of your interview made it into the film. And I’m so sad about that. And I’m going to be going through and like making extra clips. But you are my favorite meat writer, because you talk about meat in society, the role meat has had in human culture from the days of necessity to today when it is now seen as pharmakon. Maybe you could explain that a little bit. But I also want to dive into your background a little bit. Just how did you become this awesome expert in meat. And then we’re going to be talking a little bit about this Global Burden of Disease study and sort of this anti-meat bias happening at the science level. Because we… you know, a lot of people are familiar with the anti-meat media messaging and these anti-meat groups that are funding Meatless Mondays and all these other programs. But now we’re seeing it from actual scientists whose papers are being used to set global food policies. This is very concerning. I brought it up on the Joe Rogan podcast, thanks to some of the notes from you. So Frédéric, you can just kind of take anything I just talked about and please go with it.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 2:06
Yeah. Well, let me start by saying why I’m so much interested in meat in the first place. I have a complicated background. So I started bioengineering sciences, which is, could be anything. It’s the combination of engineering and quantitative approaches and process technologies and biological sciences. And within that space, I was interested in food. So I became a food scientist, and a food technologist did a master’s thesis on nutrition and food security. And then I did a Ph.D., which happened to be on meat, that was just the topic of my PhD. And it was very technical. In the beginning, it was about modeling microbial populations and how they develop in a meat matrix and very, very technical stuff. I continue to look at meat, and meat products as interesting foods, just generally speaking. And while I was developing my career, the topic of my research became controversial, much more than when I started. When I started my research, it wasn’t all that specific. I mean, all that interesting, it was just one other food. But then it became extremely controversial. And the more that was happening, the more I started to ask myself what is going on, and I wanted to know more about it. Now I happen also to be very interested in social sciences and cultural sciences and philosophy. And I started to talk to other people, which are experts in the field of anthropology or psychology, you name it, to understand what’s going on, and we got funded as well. So there’s this money at my university for interdisciplinary research, which allows me to look a bit closer to all of this. And I just wanted to understand why this ancestral food, which has always been looked at as something very nutritious as a symbol of vitality, and strength suddenly became the thing that was harmful and toxic and destroys health and destroys the planet. There was just too weird to be a natural process. Something has happened. So by looking at all of this, I started to look at the players as well, who’s saying what and why are they saying it, and in which environment, which are the actors? What is the network? And that has been keeping me busy for years now.
Diana Rodgers, RD 4:30
Yeah, and some of it can sound very conspiratorial, you know, from different groups, of different religious groups, different political groups. You and I have talked about that a little bit and how it’s been used as meat… that anti-meat purity message has been touted as, you know, something that was a big shift. And can you talk a little bit more before we get into the science because I’m personally most interested in this in and there’s no one else talking about it? So, where else can people learn more about that? Like, are there any really good books on this or any other people that are really looking at this because it’s so interesting to me.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 5:10
Not much. There are some books about, especially how people look at the killing of animals and how that plays out in society, and how that conflicts with, you know, the Western mindset that is no longer exposed to the realities of death and life and has difficulties coping with that. So there’s literature on this. There’s literature also on the fact that we have commodified much of animal production. So the animals are no longer visible, they became an abstraction. And that, again, amplifies the whole problem, because well, it’s an abstraction. And then you’re confronted with what’s happening in reality, and you see the blood and you see the carcasses, and you see the actual animal. It’s a shock, right? Understandably, so. So there’s literature on this, the shift from what some people define as the zoophage, the eater of animals to the sarcophage, which is the eater of flesh, of meat. So meat is a food product, and losing the link with the actual animals is kind of problematic because that’s no longer absorbed in worldview. And when confronted with it, it comes as something disturbing. And so that’s one of the main reasons why in the West, we have so much trouble now with accepting that, indeed, we eat animals, and they’re an important part of our food chain. But you feel the conflict. And so there’s a bit of literature on this, but not all that much, especially on the cultural practices. And the way people look at meat in the western world is hardly explored. There is literature on hunter-gatherers, right. And there’s literature on historical views. And but not so much on contemporary Western attitudes. It’s always from the negative side, you know, it’s always vegan books or animal rights, people that write about it, but it’s hardly explored from the positive side. Now, what it still means today for us, and how we have a legacy there and how this translates and in many things, we take for granted now, but we just no longer have the connection with what was going on. That’s the whole space that needs more exploration. And I stepped in that space and try to write a bit about all this connecting it to how people… So it’s interesting, just very interesting that food, and then meat in particular, because it’s one of the most peculiar foods, really, I mean, if you look at all the food system, it’s the most symbolic one is, it’s the one that brings out the emotions. So if you look at food, it’s a lens, it’s a way of looking at society in general. Because understanding what happens with the place of meat in our daily patterns in our daily behavior is it’s a way of approaching deeper underlying problems in society. Larger problems, which are much more profound than just, you know, a dietary discussion, it touches upon really fundamental things. And it’s an angle that I’ve taken, and I and with using that angle, I start to look broader, much broader than that, because it makes us think about what is happening today, in the West, in the urban West in particular, and why things are falling apart in many ways.
Diana Rodgers, RD 8:27
Yeah, and your paper Meat as Scapegoat was an inspiration for one of the chapters in Sacred Cow. You know, the only other person that I’ve seen that’s really explored this was one chapter in a book called On Killing by Colonel, I think it’s Dan Grossman. But I could be wrong. I think I have the book over there. But he talked about how, during the Victorian era, things became taboo. And as more people moved off farms, and moved into cities. We no longer wanted butcher shops and animal production near us. And so it got pushed out to the outskirts. We also outsource all death. And you know, no one cares for grandma dying in the home anymore that gets outsourced too. And so the whole outsourcing of meat production and not wanting to know what’s happening was part of this whole problem.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 9:23
Yes, yes. And so indeed, a couple of people have written on this, specifically. And there are many similarities with what happened in the 19th century, the second half of the 19th century in particular, and maybe the first decade of the 20th century as well. So many things happened back then that are so similar to what is happening today. Almost copy-paste, in many cases. It’s you know, it’s the progressive era and the connection of views on diet and moral eating and the first vegetarian societies, and how that was connected to progressive agendas, all sorts of different agendas. And the way that was played out in society and how the symbol was used for other things than the actual food. I mean, the actual nutrition, it wasn’t about the nutrition, meaning you don’t stop eating meat because that’s what… that’s how they fill it in afterwards. But it doesn’t come from there. It doesn’t. It doesn’t start with health concerns. It starts with ideas that will lead to purity, that lead to avoiding anxieties about death a lot as well. That’s why it’s often a religious atmosphere. It’s about going back to the Garden of Eden, spiritual ideas, essentially, and then…
Diana Rodgers, RD 10:36
And also removing ourselves as animals, right? Because the eating of meat is seen as unnecessary and barbaric.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 10:45
Yes, yes. That’s so you have I mean, it’s not… the vegetarian societies have been formalized for the first time in during that period. But you have historical anecdotes, going back much further with this. The same ideas were visible, it’s it was always if historical figures or movements were not eating meat, it was spiritual, it was done because of spiritual, it was often in a religious atmosphere. It had to do either with your inclination or with purity or with self-denial… is that thing that happens. And it’s just all of that today, in the perfect storm, it all comes, you know, it all comes together again. And then it’s much… to a much larger scale than ever before. And that’s because of the connectivity of society nowadays. And how that gets narrowed down by the loud voices that dominate communication.
Diana Rodgers, RD 11:41
Right. And you have collaborated with Dr. Sylvia Karpagam who have also had on the podcast, and there’s a lot of people will tend to romanticize vegetarian India as this utopia. And she, in particular, is very vocal about how vegetarian India is not healthy at all. That it’s much more based on socioeconomics and access to health care. And we touched on this a little bit on the Joe Rogan podcast. But it’s interesting that we romanticize – well, skinny, first of all, as healthy, but people who deny themselves meat as more pure than us barbaric mortals who want to eat meat.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 12:31
And once more that goes back to the same period, again, in the early days of theosophy, for instance, there was a lot of, I mean, theosophy was all about bringing all sorts of religion together, it was a kind of pre-New Age movement were new age was developed upon later but so they made a strongly with India, I mean, theosophy was somewhere lost between different continents, but they had this very strong foot in India, and it remained strong in India. So there was this romanticized idea that the, you know, the spiritual masters and so they were situated in the Himalaya and in India and that Indian wisdom, that Indian purity and spirituality was important, and it was connected to the way we eat, to the way we behave and theosophy had a strong influence over certain sectarian movements that then, you know, led to the new way, macrobiotic diets, and you name it.
Diana Rodgers, RD 13:27
So now we’ve got this situation where there’s this narrative, it’s very heavy narrative that meat is wrong. And when I talk to young people, especially, nutrition is not a concern. They’re much more trying to save the planet and save the animals. And, you know, whatever, I’ll just get my nutrition in other ways, and maybe I’ll be nutrient deficient, but at least I’m saving the planet and saving the animals. And so it’s become this big, massive sticky ball, that is something that’s so hard to pull apart. And there’s not many people that are trying to pull it apart.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 14:08
Because it’s difficult, because, as you say, they’re mostly interested in other ideas that have to do with it could be with concerns about the animals, it could be indeed, climate anxiety, could be anything. But it’s interesting that they will try not to give up on the health argument as well, you know, they will try to pull it in because they need every single argument they can use to move that idea forward. So they will not easily say that the health argument is wrong unless they’re really confronted with the facts then okay, they will say yes, but I care about the animals and I don’t… The Crusaders will try whatever or use whatever they find as an argument and fabricate that sticky ball you’re talking about and then if it’s all… it comes one entangle set of arguments, that is, how to address that, how to start even and talk about it from the more you will that will address one of the topics they’ll come up with another one and then you’ll talk for days and days. If you really wouldn’t have the time and the format to do so, just to have that entire discussion, because there’s so many different arguments that are all sticking in that ball together so that they can have that entity that they can put on the table. Right? So that’s, that’s in the end, also why I developed this website, ALEPH 2020, just to have the counterarguments out, I wouldn’t have to repeat them all the time. And I can just refer to this one webpage and say, Look, read this first, and then we have another discussion. Because otherwise, it’s, you never can have any productive discussion with people like that, because it’s, it’s not about a single concern, it’s about using everything in support of one of the actual concern that we’re having. And that concern can be a perfectly valid one. I mean, I understand that, especially younger generations are anxious about what will happen in the future. And the climate is a challenge, right? So I can understand that that drives them and then they try to fix that and or find something to do, or something to at least do their little bit. And because of the narrative, they take meat as an easy option, right, it’s much easier to drop meat and to fundamentally change your lifestyle. But it’s a confusing debate where all sorts of arguments are intermixed. And then if you look at the actual science, you will see as you referred to before, as well, you will see that even within the scientific field, or even when academic within academia, you will have confusing debates, because the science in the fields of nutrition, and also in the field of sustainability, and especially in the field of ethics is not clear. And if you’re really ill-intentioned, you can further any argument you like, and you just you’ll find that in support of that. It’s just if you start using common sense, and if you start to look holistically at the data, you know, you don’t get anywhere with those arguments, but you can always, you know, fabricate your narrative, even within science nowadays. Because the data just is… this is not physical chemistry. It’s not about, you know, particles that are behaving in certain manners that you can describe in universal equations and look at, and this is confusing data, it is contradictory data. And it’s just because we don’t know the whole picture.
Diana Rodgers, RD 17:20
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I put the ethics section of Sacred Cow at the end, because even though people like to lead with that, and sometimes when I go to conferences, I remember I was at one at a university in Canada, and there was a nutrition track. There was a sustainability track. And then they had all these philosophers that don’t know anything about nutrition or sustainability, just saying how wrong it is to kill animals. And, of course, you can’t argue that unless you understand the totality of the nutrition and the environmental argument. And that’s why we need so many more interdisciplinary people, because the siloing of academics has made this 10 times worse,
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 18:03
Right. Absolutely, yes, let’s say… So if you, if you talk about ethics, you’d have to include the entire debate, also what it would mean, ethically, if you would remove livestock, from the food system, the ethical implications of that are serious, and you should take it into account. But if you don’t understand what that will mean, in practice, it’s hard for philosophers to even address it because they don’t understand the actual implications, because they don’t have the expertise to look at it, or they haven’t taken the time to look at it properly. And if you’re addressing sustainability, the same thing, I mean, if you look… you cannot look at sustainability without factoring in nutrition because all the footprints you’re calculating all the effects you’re calculating on the environment, somehow relate to the nutrition, the nutritional value of the food you’re addressing. And you cannot just talk about nutrition and pretend that sustainability doesn’t exist. And so you know, the listings are indeed interrelated. But they’re very specialized fields. So it’s normal, that people are not able to make the bridges. It’s only when you invest a lot of personal time, and you have the broad scientific background to do so that you can make those bridges and start to see this one whole and is one interrelated picture. And that’s the only way to look at it. This is the recent paper that I wrote with a couple of colleagues, which is an argument against radical scenarios that would take out livestock or minimize it to very low, very marginal role and bringing the three arguments in one paper. Now, that was very difficult because you have a short format and you have to get all those arguments inside. So you always need to be a bit superficial. You can never do it in full detail. I wrote it specifically because it this is what is absolutely needed. We need to bring those three pillars of the discussion together. And it’s only by bringing them together that you know that you have to. You have trade-offs and you’ll have you have a difficult discussion. So you need to optimize things into three fields. Because, indeed, we’re not perfect, I mean, the domain of animal production is not perfect, there are issues in the sustainability part, there are issues in the ethical part, you could even say that there are issues in the nutritional part, the way some animal products are used in certain formulations. So they need to be addressed, but you cannot do it in an isolated manner, you need to see the whole picture because whenever you’re modifying the one will have repercussion for the other parts. Yeah, that’s why it’s so difficult to work with systems, the whole food systems approach is what we need. But on the other hand, what we don’t need is those people that are the system, the system fixers, you know, they are dangerous, the ones that defend the system and very radically start to press buttons and change things. Those are extremely dangerous people. And they… what they’re doing can have serious repercussions for public health and for just an end ecology and animal welfare for that matter.
Diana Rodgers, RD 21:00
Yes, and so we so that’s what we’re seeing today, we’re seeing that the very large international groups are being taken over by people who are pushing buttons in the system. And they don’t fully understand what detonating this one button is going to do.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 21:20
Yes and it goes and you can never I mean, this, or if you talk about the food system, it’s such a complex system. It’s an extremely complex system. We need to be to have the humility to admit that we will never understand complex systems to the full extent. And we will never know what will come out as an action. If we change something fundamentally, the system. The thing you need to do with systems is to carefully play with it, carefully modify something and see how which direction it takes, and you know, adjust all the time. Not a radical change of scenario. Not a top-down thing where you just change stuff. You don’t do that it’s too dangerous. You need to do it carefully. Because there are things at stake here. Food security is to start with.
Diana Rodgers, RD 22:05
Yeah, let’s talk about food, I still want to get to the GBD. And we will but let’s talk about food security because that’s another piece that doesn’t often get brought up and nutrition security and livelihood security for those who depend on livestock. This is very real.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 22:25
It is. And it’s completely underestimated. We cannot just… the ideas are so horribly reductionist and simplistic I mean, it’s not you cannot just take out meat and replace it with Beyond Burgers, you know, those are not the same thing. It doesn’t go. It doesn’t go nutritionally and it doesn’t go production wise. It’s an absurdity. It’s not the same product. So you cannot use it just as a swapping around, you cannot just swap those things around this. And that goes for everything. The idea that protein is something you can just swap from animal to plants, you can’t. They are different. They are different, they come with different nutrients, they have a different bioavailability effect. And then it’s dangerous because people will often assume that those things are the same. You can see for instance with milk and the milk replacers, They’re not the same products. And if you’re just only use the one, instead of the other, you will have vulnerable populations depending on it. Because milk is often given to young children. And it is an important source of nutrients for those people that drink milk. There are other solutions, you can do something else you don’t need.. nobody says that you have to drink milk, there are other solutions. But the idea that you can just replace one product with another one, just because, you know, it looks like milk is dangerous, even if they think about protein, they ignore all the other things.
Diana Rodgers, RD 23:53
Right, right. And you do a very good job also on your Twitter account of pointing out the groups that are pushing for this and who’s profiting from this because there’s a lot of money to be made in taking these commodity crops and converting them into these protein burgers which end up nutritionally inadequate, but also many times more expensive than just the real meat oftentimes
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 24:17
Yes. Well, you have to ask yourself, how an idea that was completely in the margin of society, vegan eating and even vegetarianism – How that suddenly became mainstream? How that we’re always talking about big meat and big dairy. But essentially, the ones controlling the narrative are the ones that are supporting you know, the replacements to the imitation food industry, and we should ask ourselves, how is it that the powers that be which means mainstream media, no mainstream media, let’s not be under any illusion here mainstream media picks up the messages from the ones that are in charge? How how can it be that those people that are in charge suddenly start promoting vegetarianism? I mean, that would be a crazy idea 20 years ago. Whatever is seen as a, you know, as a as a high bar as a something dangerous that would compromise, you know where the money is they would crush it. They would ridiculize it. I mean, they would, they would make fun of it, they will completely destroy the narratives. The fact that it’s not only supported, but that is the only version you almost find nowadays in the mainstream media shows that something is going on. And that’s because there are powerful agendas are that are interested in those messages. And there’s money to be made, obviously. Well, money to be made, that has to be seen, because a lot of those products, for now, are just artificially being kept on the shelves while they’re losing money. So the money is somehow also, you know, it’s a complicated story. It’s something with a future direction. You know, it’s something that is planned for the future. It’s not something that is actually making it right now. It’s not the success that is being claimed for sure.
Diana Rodgers, RD 26:05
Yes, I just had 100 thoughts while you were talking. And I didn’t want to interrupt you, but you’re correct. We go into a Whole Foods Market or another grocery store here, and you see all these fake meat products, but nobody’s actually making money on them yet. They’re not a financially viable solution right now. But they’re getting the shelf space because people are making sure they have shelf space. So a couple weeks ago, I don’t know if you saw in the New York Times Magazine, but there was an ethical piece on meat. And you know, why are people still clinging to this idea, this barbaric idea that we have to be eating meat and she exaggerated how much meat Americans are eating. She used a whole bunch of other wrong statistics. She mentioned a president that died because he started eating meat even though he died of tuberculosis or something like that. And I wrote a letter in response and cc’d a friend of mine that works at The New York Times in the opinion department. And nothing. Got no response. And I continue to get no response. We know Nina Teicholz has written a great piece about the GBD study. It’s not getting picked up. I couldn’t get with all the connections I have it at NPR and these other media sources Sacred Cow did not get picked up. There’s definitely energy making sure that this pro-vegan pro-vegetarian narrative continues.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 27:39
Yes. I also got it from somebody very influential in the food space that recently told me that he was when he saw the GBD article, the criticism of the GBD report. He said, Well, maybe I should write something about this and get it published because he has access to mainstream media. Then he told me Well, but I was thinking, where could I get this published? And then he said then he understood that this will never get published. So he just…
Diana Rodgers, RD 28:07
So why even try, right?
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 28:09
Why even try? Because there’s in the current climate, it’s just impossible to get those kinds of messages out. They’re not accepted. There’s there’s an editorial line that just blocks it.
Diana Rodgers, RD 28:19
Yes. And unfortunately, then people like you and I are seen as Flat Earthers and climate change deniers, and we’re lumped into this crazy category, when we’re just trying so hard to wave a flag and say, please just look at this more deeply.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 28:37
And it’s also crazy, because in the end, the argument is just plain common sense. Now, the argument is humans are omnivores. We just adapted since, you know, over a very large evolutionary window to eating all sorts of foods, including animal source foods, which have actually been very important for our evolutionary development. So we’re omnivores. So it’s not that abnormal that we kind of benefit from that foods. No, that’s not weird, is it? To start with and then the other thing is in agriculture, well, the best way forward is to combine livestock agriculture with crop agriculture and integrate it to the best of the possibilities, and that’s gonna give you the best solution. Not just taking out one fundamental part of the equation. So the common sense arguments are, you know, just include animal source foods, think about how you’re going to do that. Right? That should be the discussion, but not the fact that they are there. I mean, this discussions we’re having today will be completely surreal, even to my grandparents. They would have never understood what was going on, they could have never imagined that this would actually happen. Because it just so so bizarre. You know, it’s just so bizarre to say that animal foods are going to be harmful for your health. It just doesn’t make any sense. There’s no scientific… proposed scientific data to support that. It just doesn’t make any logical sense because it’s just our species adapted diet is like, you know, koalas eat eucalyptus, exactly. Loads of. And then for agriculture, people that are actually having the agricultural experience, just know that, you know, those things work together. They help to development, but you just can just plant the animal and in just a single world. It just doesn’t go like that. So it’s it’s just so bizarre that we are having these discussions, and that there’s so much effort in mainstream media globally, or globally, especially in the Western media, I suppose. But to reinforce the weird side of the story, you know, that the strange narrative is… there’s so much power and influence trying to keep up that bizarre narrative. So that the actual common sense one, it’s not showing up anymore. And then you can start coming up with logical arguments, but then they will say yes, but you know, everybody knows that, or the science says that.
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Diana Rodgers, RD 31:54
Alright, so let’s talk about nutrition science. And number one, how hard it is to do nutrition science. And then let’s specifically talk about what the GBD is, and the whole controversy that you exposed with this paper.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 32:11
Right. Okay, let me maybe let’s start with explaining what the GBD is. Because it’s well, the GBD is one example of things going wrong. It’s not the only example. But it’s a very influential one. That’s why we were so concerned about this particular one. Global Burden of Disease is a huge effort. It’s a huge collaborative… it’s impressive in what it’s doing to be fair, and it influences dietary policies and other policies as well, but also dietary policies worldwide. So it’s being used in the Lancet report, for instance. But it’s also being used in the national strategies, like in the UK. It’s influencing the European Union’s Farm to Fork documents. It’s the gold standard, basically, to look at dietary risks, and you know, and try to address them. Now, historically speaking, there’s certain risks that have always been identified and actually meat showed up at some point and still in the data from 2017. It was there that there was a risk for red meat, because… but it was a tiny risk, it was a little, little bar, and you could hardly distinguish it from, you know, the central line. And…
Diana Rodgers, RD 33:28
So I’m just gonna quickly interrupt you and just let people know what… so there’s these bars, and basically, they list all the global deaths and what they can sort of be attributed to like a high sodium diet, things like that. And then a diet high in red meat is one of the categories of like, why people die, basically. And then there’s a whole other set of risk factors of diets low and fiber, like all these other things, too. And yeah, what we’re talking about is, you mentioned 2017, the deaths attributed to eating red meat was a very small percentage, even though it’s kind of ridiculous that it was even there in the first place. It was a small percentage, and so whatever. And diets high in in sodium, for example, was a much bigger reason why there was a global death or, you know, global burdens of disease. And then in 2019, explain the big shift that happened?
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 34:30
Well, in 2019, certainly out of the blue, the little bar we were facing in the 2017 data certainly was multiplied almost by a factor of 40. With respect to the deaths that were, you know, attributed to red meat, so the amount of deaths certainly was multiplied enormously, you notice an enormous effect. And from one of the least significant dietary risk factors, it became what is it the seventh leading one. It became an important one, causing now suddenly 900,000. That’s worldwide so… And the point was that this wasn’t, it wasn’t justified from the document. I mean, the recent version of the Global Burden of Disease didn’t justify why they did this. Well, in a way they said is because they said a couple of things, they say, well, we reevaluated, you know, the intake levels. And we did a couple of things. And we came up with new systematic review segment analysis. And most interestingly, they also changed the TMREL value. So that’s the threshold where the harmful effects start to appear. And that threshold before was set at a certain amount, it was 22 grams per day, more or less, and then they have reduced that without any justification to zero, or without any good justification to zero. So that means that every bite of red meat you’re taking according to the newest data is toxic. And that is also why we see suddenly this huge increase in deaths because now everybody is just vulnerable to the harmful effects of meat, even the ones in the Global South, and, you know, much less than people in other places. Certainly, all meat became toxic.
Diana Rodgers, RD 36:07
And this is radical. This is like, nobody else is like, oh, my gosh, look at this, except for you, Alice Stanton and a few others. And so this got published in The Lancet. And then you guys wrote a paper to the Lancet, can you explain this process of what happened?
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 36:26
Oh, it was an extremely long process. And it’s a complicated story. But essentially, in the beginning, our letter was not accepted. We try to get it published in other places. We faced again, issues.
Diana Rodgers, RD 36:39
And your letter was requesting for backup research.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 36:42
Our letter just literally very simple. So we were just saying, look, what we’re seeing here is something that we find suspicious. We didn’t form it like this. But you know, there was a suspicion from our side. This is not in agreement with what we know from, you know, large studies looking at meat and how when meat starts to be associated with certain things and when not. So there’s something that doesn’t make sense here. And we don’t see in your reporting, where the evidence is. So we just show is the evidence. We wanted to see the evidence behind the statements they’re making, and the new systematic reviews, which was…
Diana Rodgers, RD 37:20
Which proper methods would have been that they would have provided that information when they published it.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 37:25
Yes, yes, because that’s how you, that’s how the science works, right. And especially because The Lancet has subscribed to certain agreements, where you should, you know, respect certain procedures to be in place before you can actually call it the valid document. So we just, if you make, especially spectacular statement like this, that, you know, you just have this huge effect that comes out of nowhere, well, you need to show why you’re doing that in its fullest detail so that the peers can evaluate the process. So the only request we were having is just show us the data. And we were saying the same letter also, because we know from this and this and listed all the studies, that this is not plausible. And that, and that’s not… it was rejected the first time. We tried it in other places, and some very interesting things happened, which I’m not going to disclose now. Just not to put some people in difficult positions, but some very interesting things happened on the way. And the more time passes, the more I was concerned about the scientific process, you know, because if you cannot have a debate about the data, this is not normal, right? This is not, I can understand that Global Burden of Disease people have certain views, and they have a certain theory. They can advance that. It’s an academic exercise. And we can talk about it, but we need to see the full picture. Especially because the GBD is influencing so many policies. This is not just you know, something happening between silly academics, you know, in the corner. This is global policy that is affected. So it’s extremely important. And then at some point, there was journalistic pressure, because some journalists started to ask to the Lancet as well, what is going on here? There was an article published in The Grocer. And then at some point, the Lancet came back to us and said, Well, we looked again at the letter, and actually, yes, there are some concerns here, and we’re going to publish it after all. So that’s what happened. Well, not so long ago, they published our letter, preprint is not officially published. It’s a preprint is available.
Diana Rodgers, RD 39:29
And at that time, they had also asked the authors of the GBD paper to provide the evidence, and that was supposed to be I think, initially published with your letter was their response.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 39:41
Yes, yes. Well, the first feedback we got was that the authors were working on a rebuttal. But then they didn’t send it off. First, they didn’t even answer to the editors, was what we were told. And then suddenly, they were providing rebuttal after all that never came and an hour later that was published anyway. But now very recently, well, a couple of days ago, the rebuttal was published in The Lancet. It’s not again, not officially published yet, but it’s already available, you can already read it. So there was a reply by Christopher Murray, which is the lead scientists of the GBD. addressing our concerns, and it’s very interesting to see that he admits that there are fundamental issues with the GBD 2019 data. In a way, the normal procedure here is also people ask questions, and there is a rebuttal now. But if you look at the whole picture here, we voiced our criticism, the authors confirm that there are issues with the 2019 data. So at that point in time, I think it’s we need to have a serious discussion about the position of this paper. This cannot just remain in scientific literature and keep on influencing policies. There’s a fundamental issue with this. And that needs to be taken seriously, we need some serious discussions. Now, we are a small fish, I mean, the authors of this paper compared to the Global Burden of Disease, we don’t have the leverage that you know, big groups have. We raised the concerns. But now that this is in the open, we need to have some very, very serious discussions about such kind of initiatives like the Global Burden of Disease and any other scientific effort that is invading policy space. Right, because Global Burden of Disease is now very tightly linked also to the World Health Organization. For instance, they have signed a memorandum a couple of years ago, where they will work together and change policies worldwide, as intensely as they can and as fast as they can. We also know that Christopher Murray, the leading scientist of the Global Burden of Disease is also the senior author, the last author in the author list of The Lancet report. And the GBD feeds into The Lancet report and The Lancet report has its own story of, you know, influencing all sorts of policies and, and so something needs to be done, because if this discussion now is just finishing with the criticism and the rebuttal, well, that’s not good enough. Because…
Diana Rodgers, RD 42:09
Right. Because I mean, then all these other, also sub papers that are referring back to the 2019 are going to be coming out, we’ve already seen other… I’ve seen news reports saying, okay, not eating meat extends your life by seven years, and all these crazy things. And the origins, the GBD being the origin of so many wrong media reports, it’s extremely dangerous. Yes. So where do you go from here?
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 42:44
Well, we will see you I mean, I hope that we will get some reactions from people that are in positions to address this, you know, whether it be leading scientists or policymakers or other people that, you know, have actual effect on how this is further developed. We are not gonna let it stop here. I mean, as long as this keeps on influencing the nutritional space and the nutritional policy developments, I think we’ll keep on voicing our concerns. Now, it’s, at least because of the letter, now we have something to start from and start finally discussing something that was otherwise taken for granted and just was passing without any scrutiny or without any proper discussion. At it may be a little… I mean, this is not probably going to be the game changer that changes everything. But at least at least it’s a little crystal that you know, where things can develop around. And so it maybe can trigger you know, bigger things. It’s maybe it can be a catalyst of some…
Diana Rodgers, RD 43:58
Of our own ball on this side. Snowballing and like wait a second. If science researchers are biased, which often happens in epidemiology, observational studies, and then we’re seeing environmental, this carbon tunnel vision where people are only looking at carbon emissions and not looking at biodiversity and nutrition and all the other water cycles, everything else that comes into play with livestock production. Hopefully, more webs can be connected here.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 44:34
Yes, yes. And it’s very urgent that we start treating science properly. Science is not necessarily truth. We should get back from the idea of science, you know, was with a capital “S” TM. That’s not… that shouldn’t be the approach. Science is a work in progress, but science is a debate. If it’s no longer a debate it’s finished and It’s an illusion to think that the science that is reported in mainstream media and the one that gets the most exposure is always the correct science. Why would that be? It’s just the science that is most supportive of certain ideas that those people want to propagate. It’s not necessarily the science, that is the best science. We’ve seen this, notice this communication coming out of Oxford University saying that we should all go vegan to save the planet, which is complete nonsense. I mean, this is… in the end this is such a ridiculous statement. It’s plainly a ridiculous statement. It’s coming from Oxford University. And it’s thrown around all over the media. So why is that happening? It’s not because the science says that it’s true, it’s because some guy in Oxford, which is either Poor, or Springmann, says so and that then that message is being… is in tune with some of the other ideas that are within the journalistic space. And that’s why it’s propagating. That’s why it’s going viral because of that not because proper science, so we should stop seeing science as a monolithic block that is representing truth. Now, it’s science that is the discussion you’re having on the data. And then you need to make the next step and translate it into policies to the best of your possibilities. When enough honesty and with enough humility and with an understanding that things are multidimensional.
Diana Rodgers, RD 46:20
Yes, exactly. And I get so infuriated, especially on Twitter, for some reason, when people are saying, well, that’s not the consensus, and so I’m not going to listen to you. And that’s just the most dismissive anti-science statement possible.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 46:37
Exactly. Well, Twitter is probably not the best formula to get complicated messages.
Diana Rodgers, RD 46:41
No. That’s why I try to avoid it so much, because it just, I just ended up getting these ridiculous, whatever 240 character simplistic solutions to complex problems that you can’t, you know, and then people refuse to read your book, or actually, you know, they just want to have an argument or, you know, where’s your debate? Anyway, I, I find it so hard, but I appreciate so much all the energy that that you and Alice and others are putting into this.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 47:14
Oh, especially Alice has been fantastic. I mean, Alice is the one that leads this, she’s she’s been doing most of the work here. I mean, she takes largely most of the credit for this. But it has been an extremely long procedure, we had so many phone calls. But it needs to be done. I mean, it just needs to be done. And I think as an academic, you have a responsibility to keep an eye on things, if they’re going in the wrong direction. Now, whether that will make a change or not this depends, but it just has to be done.
Diana Rodgers, RD 47:45
Well, hopefully, I’ll have you back on to discuss the next big movement in this. I wish that I were over there with a video camera, you know, making a documentary about all of this, because I think you could tie in so many different side stories to the bias. You know, I thought about calling the film actually, initially when we were kind of going in a slightly different direction, Cherry Pickers, right. But it’s a really fascinating thing, I think, I hope that somebody is listening to this that is a writer or has some connection to media that can, you know, put some pressure on seeing if this can potentially get retracted or something can happen. So I will continue to push this out there. Thank you so much for your time and for your energy.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 48:39
Thanks. Great talking to you again.
Diana Rodgers, RD 48:41
Oh and where can people… can you spell out your website? We’ll put it in the show notes and also where they can find you on Twitter. You’re not on Instagram, right?
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 48:49
No, no, no. Well, I have some accounts here and they’re on like on Facebook go to hardly use it because I just dislike the platform. But I have a Twitter handle Yes, which is @fleroy1974 which gives away how old I am. And then the website with the scientific information that I often refer to if I propose a specific argument ALEPH2020. It’s a Blogspot. That’s so much money from the big meat industry that they can pay me all kinds of expense.
Diana Rodgers, RD 49:23
Oh yes, know. You and I are rolling in it. Like big big money right? That’s why we’re broadcasting from luxury homes. It’s ALEPH?,
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 49:32
ALEPH. Yes.
Diana Rodgers, RD 49:35
2020
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 49:36
Actually to give you the background of this alpeh is going back to the origins of the alphabet. Now Alpeh is what gave afterwards Alpha gave afterwards the letter A and originally it was cattle. It was the head of… was a cow head. So actually imagined the horns like that, yeah. Like that’s another thing was…this was turned around, it became the alpha and it became a letter. So that but it’s also an acronym for animal source foods, livestock, and then you see the E for ethical, P of planet and H of health. So I’ve been thinking about this, you know,
Diana Rodgers, RD 50:16
Oh my gosh, it’s so complex, I had no idea. That’s really cool. And you’ve got information… you’ve got really high level…
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 50:25
So what so we what we do, it’s basically a dynamic white paper. So means that it’s, if I would have more time to do it more properly, but it’s changing. So it is a new report, I still didn’t integrate the GBD data, for instance, urgently should do so. So if there’s new information I integrated in website, so the text is changing, if there’s a new insight, or sometimes sometimes it can happen that I wrote something that I’m no longer in agreement with, and I can change it. Now they can be there, the information is not the same. If you look now, or if you look in a year. So it’s moving, it’s an influx, but it also contains the hyperlinks to the original source material. So in this statement, there can be looked up in the original papers. And it’s a great way I think, for people that are wanting to explore a topic and read the primary literature as well, because it just have to click through all the links, and they will find loads of different papers talking about a certain topic.
Diana Rodgers, RD 51:20
So where my work tends to be more towards basic consumer education, yours takes it just a step further. for people that really want to dig into the literature.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 51:30
Yes. It’s quite technical. I mean, it’s not the easiest website, I mean, you need a certain background, you don’t have to be high level expert. You know, it’s if you have a bit of scientific background, but it’s not for the main public. It’s too dense and too technical. It’s at some point. But for people that have some backgrounds, or it doesn’t have to be all that much, but want to explore some lines of investigation, they can start from there. And we’ll hopefully find a lot of things to read.
Diana Rodgers, RD 51:59
I also want to mention, before we go that this is just a crazy hobby of yours, that you have a job, that you are a professor at a university and all of this work you’re doing is just like side stuff, because it needs to be done. And I think that’s pretty cool.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 52:15
Yeah, yes, yes. Well, if I wouldn’t have imagined that I would be writing letters to The Lancet to talk about global policy. Some years ago, I was doing my own well delineated research and have very specific things. It’s why well, in a way as it starts to blur and to integrate, because of the interdisciplinary research part has started to evolve. And it is partly my job. But it’s also it’s very much also a civic responsibility and academic responsibility. But also, since I’m an academic, my civic responsibility is to do the academic stuff. And to look at this, since nobody, I mean, and also the whole, you know, all the different trips and all talks and all the different talks and all the media interviews I had over the years, it’s not particularly like it. I like talking to you don’t get me wrong, but a lot of things. It’s not, I’m not doing it because I like it, because I’m not the kind of person that looks for the spotlight and to begin with. But if so few other people are doing it. Somebody has to, you know, to go there, and not by far not the only one, but but they’re not so many entering that spotlight. And that’s because it’s very intimidating. It’s not easy, because the pushback you get for doing this, this is not to be underestimated.
Diana Rodgers, RD 53:34
I completely agree. 100% Yes, I have lots of people that are that are always pushing me to have my face or hold a product up on Instagram. And I’m like, this is just about the messaging like of trying to get this word out. This is not because I want to be some kind of influencer. Alright, well, hopefully I’ll get to see you on one of my trips over. Always nice to talk. Thank you so much for your time on a weekend, late at night. I love the work you’re doing and I hope more people hear about it. So thank you.
Frédéric Leroy, PhD 54:08
Thanks a lot.
Diana Rodgers, RD 54:10
Thank you so much for tuning into the Sustainable Dish Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on iTunes and check out my website at sustainabledish.com where you can sign up for my newsletter, catch up on the latest blog post, and check out my courses and favorite products. See you next time and thanks again for listening.
