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We’ve reached the final episode of the Sustainable Dish podcast, and I am joined by my friend Robb Wolf to help me close it out.
During this casual conversation, we look back on how our ideologies and priorities have changed over the years – from the time of a dogmatic approach to Paleo to now when we are better able to incorporate nuance when it’s needed.
And it wouldn’t be a conversation with Robb if we didn’t debunk the latest study vilifying meat. The latest study from Harvard finds a correlation between red meat consumption and type 2 diabetes. Like other epidemiological studies before it, this, too, falls apart once you start digging into the data.
The chat concludes with an update from Robb about what’s in the future for LMNT. And I report the latest news from GFJA.
We also discuss:
- How our priorities have shifted as we’ve gotten older
- Some thoughts on Ozempic
- The flaws of epidemiological studies
- Plant-based meat alternatives and their potential impact on the food industry
- The staying power of Sacred Cow
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 271: Fireside Chat with Robb Wolf
Resources:
Michael Rose, PhD, Evolutionary Biologist
Red Meat Intake and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in a Prospective Cohort Study of United States Females and Males (Harvard Study)
John P.A. Ioannidis, PhD, Stanford Professor
Connect with Robb:
Website: The Healthy Rebellion | LMNT
Instagram: @dasrobbwolf
LinkedIn: Robb Wolf
Facebook: RobbWolf.com
Twitter: @robbwolf
YouTube: Robb Wolf
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get free downloads and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. Go to sustainabledish.com/join and check it out!
And if you’re looking for a guide to get your diet back on track so you feel your very best, plus learn more about meat’s role in a healthy, sustainable, and ethical food system, check out Sustainavore.
This is my signature course to help you eat for your health, the planet, and your values. For more information, head to Sustainavore and sign up!
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James 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 globalfoodjustice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, onto our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD (Sustainavore Ad)
If you’re looking for a guide to help you get your diet back on track to help you feel your very best and to learn more about meat’s role in a healthy and sustainable and ethical food system, then I highly recommend you take my Sustainavore course. I’ve condensed all of my knowledge in human nutrition and agriculture and have made it accessible to everyone in eight easy modules. There are quizzes, tips, and motivational emails to keep you on your journey. It also comes with a free cookbook and other great bonuses. So, eat for your health, the planet and your values. Head to sustainavore.com today and check it out.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hey, everyone, we are doing a dual recording here. I’m here with Robb Wolf. Say Hi, Robb.
Robb Wolf
Howdy.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So we’re gonna roll… air this both for Robb’s channels and also for Sustainable Dish. This is the very last podcast episode for Sustainable Dish. I have been running this podcast for I don’t even know how many years. It started first with Liz Wolfe, talking more about farming and everything. And then, when Liz had her baby, and was also recording another podcast at the same time, I sort of just took over as the host. I pulled in James Connolly for the last couple of years. And I’ve never made a dime on this podcast. And just with all of my travel and all the work I’m doing with my nonprofit, it has just gotten a little too much to be paying someone so much. So even with the sponsorships, we just don’t make enough to cover the labor for editing the podcast. And so I’ll continue to do some recordings with people as interesting stuff comes out and as I have time, but as a weekly regular podcast, it’s just been a grind. And I know you your regular podcast series ended a while back, right?
Robb Wolf
We’ve still been continuing to do a weekly podcast for the most part. With moving and stuff like that, it’s been super intermittent over the last three months, but it’s um, it’s fine. It’s fun. And there’s always a rock that needs to be pushed up a hill on the sustainability and health topics. There’s never not a need. But there’s… I’ve never had cancer. So like I but I’ve heard people who have had cancer who also do things like a weekly blog or a podcast, they’re like, they’re similar in that you never, you never feel like you’re done with it in you know, you kind of want to be wrapped up in it at some points. And so I appreciate you drawing a bubble around this stuff. Like, you’ve contributed so much to this space, both on the health front, but you know, clearly more in-depth on the regenerative ag and kind of a fact and logic-based approach to our food systems, you know, and you were the pointy end of the spear that made a lot of magical stuff happens. So I actually applaud you for pulling the ripcord on this particular thing. And there’s always the opportunity to jump back in if at some point you decide that you want to do that. But I think that too often folks just keep adding things to their plate. And I think it’s really good to start simplifying and focusing on the areas that make us happy. And maybe that we have the most leverage on.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, yeah, you know, I had like a list of things we could cover. And actually, the very last thing I was going to bring up with you that I didn’t even mention to you before we started recording was like, now that we’re both, I just turned 50, you’re a couple years ahead of me on that. But, you know, like what’s important, and what’s important now to us versus what was important 10 years ago is very, very different. So, you know, I thought we would kind of talk a little bit about, like the changes we’ve seen since like, first getting into all of this, a few things we predicted that are actually coming true. I want to also touch on this Harvard study that shows that there’s an association between red meat and type two diabetes. But the very last thing I was going to chat about, maybe we could get into it now but like perspective of being a little bit older, like I know, for me, when I first got into paleo, I was like, Oh my God, no, you can’t ever eat popcorn because that’s not you know, like, that’s the worst. And now I’m like, do you, live your life and have some popcorn and like, if that works for you, that’s fine. Generally stick within, you know, like, healthy-ish lifestyle, but like, don’t kill yourself. You know, I don’t know, if you want to add anything to that. And I’m sure I will think of a few more things. But basically, I’m just like, I have a lot more perspective. I have a lot more nuance. I was on another podcast where I was chatting about like ozempic, right? And like, I think maybe 10 years ago I would have been like that’s evil. And now I’m like, if someone’s not going to do the diet changes, and you know, they’ve got a really stressful life, and you know, this is going to keep them out of the hospital and keep them seeing their grandchildren. Maybe that’s the best solution if they’re not gonna do anything else. And like, who am I to… you know, like making major diet changes, you know, while I say it’s an easy thing, it’s actually maybe not that easy for everybody or in modern food environment is so overwhelming…
Robb Wolf
Because it is so stacked against us. It’s crazy,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right? So like, I really am just not going to stress it. And it seems to be you know, there’s definitely some concerning side effects, like with all pharmaceuticals, but at the same time, you know, and I think that can only come with age and also working with people and knowing, you know, as a clinician, there’s a lot of people that for life stressors just get in the way of being able to be spot on with perfect diet all the time. So…
Robb Wolf
Right, right. You know, it’s interesting in the folks that I work with, right, I try to help, I think a much more forgiving if this point in my career, acknowledging that there’s more variation and whatnot. But I… it’s funny, I’ve also been kind of having this resurgence or revitalization and kind of my appreciation of like the Paleo template, Michael Rose, who’s an evolutionary biologist, he’s been doing all this research on aging. And he really makes this case that as we get older, one should really consider the possibility that we continually lose the ability to deal with Neolithic inputs, you know, in that could be in modern inputs. And that ranges from like, alcohol to photoperiod, and, you know, on and on and on. And it’s just kind of a risk reward thing. Like, what type of life do you want to live? What you know, what type of health issues do you have now, and for myself, I’ve had to tighten my dietary issues over time. Because my rheumatoid arthritis has gotten worse, my essential tremor has gotten worse. And I’ve been able to manage that stuff fairly well. But like, I have to… the aperture of what my options are, have have shrunk. And it’s kind of funny, I just did some DNA analysis, which I’m going to go over in a future podcast, I did it with Dr. Andy Jay. And he was like, Dude, you have like outstanding genetics, like you’ve got some essential tremor stuff. But like I have, interestingly, people with essential tremor tend to live about 15 to 20% longer than the average population. And I guess it’s just so we can sit around, like a seizure salad in our later years. And just like vibrators something, you know, I’m not sure I’m super excited about that if I can’t get a full handle on this stuff. But it was interesting that I’ve oftentimes thought that I was dealt a shite deck of genetics, but it’s actually like, I’ve got some really good stuff – super low cardiovascular disease risk, skyhigh diabetes risk, which I managed dietarily, both type one and type two. Stress, inflammation generally will drive my blood sugar up and so I just empirically known that so like, I have to eat low carb, I can’t do high fiber, like because of my gut issues. Being in a deeper state of ketosis helps me to manage both the autoimmune side of my rheumatoid arthritis, but then also it really seems to benefit my essential tremor. So it’s interesting on the one hand, I’m in agreement that it’s like live your life. Do the things that make you happy, make this stuff sustainable, but then on the flip side of this, like I’ve got a really chapped ass at like the diet culture, warriors that are like, you know, finger wagging at people about just trying to save their lives, you know. Like, I’m 51 now. Nikki’s mother died three months before we met, and she was 50 years old, and she never met her grandkids. And like, it was like a crater was blown into that family because Candy was just like this absolute hub of everything that went on. And this may be I know, I’m jabbering like an idiot. But this kind of circles back around to some of the anxiety that I had early in the Paleo scene, which was nobody knew anything about this stuff. Nobody knew that diet could influence autoimmune disease and gut issues and all this and this is maybe where I think it feels a little bit better for people like you and myself to be able to step back because in a lot of ways the cat is out of the bag like there’s never not going to be a day in which an autoimmune paleo protocol doesn’t get discussed. Unless, you know, like the our tech overlords expunge it from social media and you can’t talk about it, which is maybe you know, something that we could dig into at some point. But yeah, I don’t have that same anxiety around like it. My goal was always just been to give people options, because I didn’t feel like I had to figure all this stuff out on my own. I was a completely crazy heretic, you know, just out there in crazyville, trying to help myself and help other people. And there are 1000s of folks now that have a good understanding of whether it’s keto or carnivore or autoimmune paleo or what have you, that can really help people with a wide variety of issues. I continue to publish research in these spaces. So I mean, it’s interesting. I’m more lax, in some ways, but I’ve also been becoming kind of the recalcitrant old man that’s like, well, if you have issues, and you want to live the best life that you can, we got to get together. And I know, it’s not easy, like, you know, but I did diabetic wound care on my dad for like, three years as he had his toe, and then part of his foot and all of his foot and then a full below the knee amputation, you know, and he would say, ‘Well, Robb, I guess I’ll let them take my foot.’ And it was almost like he was doing this deal with the universe. Like, if they take my foot, then I’ll be fine. And I was like, Dad, you know, it doesn’t stop with him taking the foot. They’re just gonna keep whittling parts off of you. And I never want my kids staff to do diabetic wound care on me, never want, you know, ideally, they know, you know, ideally, they cover me in steak and honey and push me out my back door. And one of the grizzly bears in my backyard eats me when I’m like, 92, you know, and it’s a real quick, thorough process. So yeah, I’ll shut up now. But a lot of thoughts around all that stuff.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, that was a nice gag factor there. You’re so illustrative sometimes. Well, I guess, you know, I agree with you, I guess maybe where all of that stuff is coming from as you know, I feel that I too, have to be pretty on the ball with my sleep and photoperiod, in addition to my diet. In fact, I was just invited to participate in a celiac research trial, where you would like take this enzyme every time before a meal. But then they said, ‘Oh, but then you know, a few times a week, you’d have to eat this fiber bar that, you know, has two grams of gluten.’ And I was like, ‘Heck no way. Absolutely not. Like there’s no amount of money, you could pay me to challenge myself with gluten for 38 weeks, every week, like no. What if I had the placebo? And I don’t even know if your drug works, and no way.’ So I guess where that energy is coming from about the ozempic is like, it’s like people… there are clearly people that are just not going to change, right? And I’m tired of… so if this is going to keep them healthier, longer, and they’re not going to change your diet, you know, then I guess that’s what we’re looking at right now. Because I… not that I give up, but like I’m a well…
Robb Wolf
Like, you can only save so many people on like, I think I don’t think I’m misstating this, but arguably you and I have cared far more about the health outcomes of lots of people than they’ve cared about their own health outcomes, which isn’t necessarily healthy, and is kind of a great operation for self failure, you know, but it also you and I have been deluged with commentary from people that like, Oh, my life was saved, like your book changed everything in your podcast, or you know, what have you. And so it’s, um, that is sometimes the impetus to get back in and keep fighting the fight. But you can only do that so much, you know, and again, the information is out there, other people are spinning up this information and running with it and working with it and everything. And I think that that’s where it’s reasonable to, to step back and kind of provide some space for other people to do this stuff on the ozempic thing. Just really quickly, though, I think we live in this environment where people are really delusional about risk reward. So if you’re morbidly obese, or you’re having health problems and this ozempic is maybe going to fix that, that’s great. But there’s also some percentage of people for whom they never… they lose gastric motility. And it appears they never get it back. And then like they may be eating through a feeding tube that bypasses their stomach the rest of their life. It seems to be a very low number. It’s not a high frequency. But, you know, this was something that was like kind of endemic in the COVID story, which was, we had lots of things presented to us and we continue to have lots of things presented to us as if this is a zero risk solution. And it’s not, you know, and there’s risks associated – with everything, and I think that this is something that just folks generally need to get more sophisticated about, like any decision that we make even a nondecision is a decision. And there’s consequences to that, you know, and I think that kind of the modern world doesn’t want people to think about the reality, that there’s just trade offs to everything. Thomas Sol has this great statement, I’m gonna butcher it. But he said, there are no solutions. There’s only trade offs. And I think that that’s really, really true. So to your point, I agree that like some of these weight loss drugs, can be miracles for some people, but folks need to go into it with eyes open that there could be a really gnarly consequence on the back end of that. But if you’re looking at dying early due to you know, morbid obesity, and all the challenges associated with that, then maybe it’s a it’s a worthwhile risk take.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, certainly compared to like gastric bypass, right? Right, which is incredibly invasive. And for the rest of your life, you’re going to be nutrient-deprived because your intestines just aren’t absorbing, right? And for some people, that is the only salvation like they absolutely die, like within a year or two without it, and anyway, you got to make the whole show about that. But…
Robb Wolf
yeah, yeah,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Let’s dive in real quick before we get too down rabbit holes about this Harvard study real quick, you know, so we’re not like, just being salty and cranky about…
Robb Wolf
The world at large?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. So, you know, multiple issues, right? This? It’s not really a new study. Walter Willett basically just keeps churning out, you know, like, ooh, I wonder if there’s an association between I don’t know. And you could pick anything carrots and heart attacks, like you definitely can find any kind of association you want between any two things in a large study where you have people badly recording food frequency questionnaires, right. And so that’s what’s happening. These people, we know rely on food frequency questionnaires, things like lasagna are recorded as red meat. Right? You know, so we don’t know if they’re doing, you know, steak and salad or if they’re doing lasagna with a side of fries. Like we don’t know, you know, that part. Just because it’s an association doesn’t mean much. There’s lots of things that are associated with each other. Like, I think it was like movies that Nicolas Cage is in versus the divorce rate in Maine or something, are like, perfectly correlated. And so just because one thing is associated with something else, it doesn’t mean that it caused it, even though that’s how the media reports it. But then Walter Willett has multiple conflicts of interest that he doesn’t declare on these. So I have a list I can rattle through. I don’t know if you have any other… I mean, there’s also just what they’re saying is the proposed mechanism, even though that’s not part of this study, but they’re saying that is the heme iron that causes an inflammatory situation which can develop into type two diabetes. So do you have commentary on that?
Robb Wolf
Yeah. I mean, broadly, like John Ioannidis, Dr. John Ioannidis, who’s one of the most recognized medical researchers in the world, ages ago, was maybe eight years ago, 10 years ago, he did a review paper that really made the case that these food frequency questionnaires should be done away with wholesale. Like, they are providing nothing of value to nutrition, nutritional biochemistry, Epidemiology, that they are so flawed in so many ways, and you detailed and maybe like a 10th of the ways that they are flawed, and even those things are… make them… there’s more error than signal in these few things. And broadly, medical research is going through this reproducibility crisis, like it’s estimated that upwards of 80% of peer-reviewed literature at this point is non-reproducible, that it’s both like there’s some conflict of interest. There’s some weird something about the way the research has been rolled out that it when if people do circle back around to try to replicate it, it’s non-replicable. And so there’s huge issues with that. But yet these things still garner this huge bandwidth from both public health and the media writ large. And it’s, you know, some people have kind of hand rung, they’re like, Well, if we really… Gary Taubes has talked about this, like if we really wanted to thoroughly answer some of these questions, it would be exorbitantly expensive, and so we just don’t do it, but it’s, um, it’s really a mess. And it is one of those Groundhog Day type things that you’re just like, didn’t really talk about exactly this study like 10 years ago, but to your point, like there’s a little tweak on it. It’s still like nurses health data, you know whatever it is that they’re digging into just kind of rejiggering the stuff that they’re looking at to spin up a new piece. And to your point again, conflicts of interest don’t necessarily disqualify somebody from, you know, having valuable commentary on something. But the problem with Walter Willett and Harvard School of Public Health writ large, is that they aren’t really transparent about massive conflicts of interest.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I actually just submitted a paper to the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, talking about meat’s role in both undernutrition and obesity and how it can be a powerful ally. I do not know. I submitted it about a month ago and I have not heard a word from from anybody over there. I’ve got some pretty powerful co-authors on the paper and it’s pretty irrefutable the evidence that we put forward and in it. You know, we even talk about the harms that Meatless Monday does through its messaging and the restriction of meat to low-income children. But I did disclose that I had help from the meat industry, paying my time because I’m not employed by a university. But here are… I’ll just rattle off a few of the things. I got these from Nina Teicholz Nutrition Coalition, but this is just a few of the stuff that Walter Willett does not disclose. Okay, so, between July 16 and June 2017, the Peanut Institute donated between 250 and $499,000 to the School of Public Health, and then in since March 2016… Well, it has published at least two studies that promote the use of walnuts or peanuts. We have the Walnut Commission also donating between $100,000 and $249,000. Let’s see, Unilever is a major donor. They are one of the world’s longest largest manufacturers of vegetable oils. Willett is a huge proponent of the use of vegetable oils. We’ve got, let’s see Environmental Defense Fund, which is a big promoter of Meatless Mondays. Nature Conservancy, also a major donor. Their executive director is a vegan. Let’s say the World Health Organization, which recommends at least one plant-based vegetarian options such as tofu or beans for breakfasts. Aramark, Nature’s Touch frozen foods, major donor. There’s major pharmaceutical donors. Willett is an advisor to the Blue Zones. Willett is also on the True Health Initiative, which is pretty much a vegan organization headed by David Katz. And he also has several commercial ventures with David Katz, who is a vegan. Walter Willett has also published many books with this ideology that, you know, meat is bad for you. So he’s got ideological and financial conflicts of interest that he just simply doesn’t disclose on any of his papers, which is unethical. And I’m surprised not more people are calling him out on that.
Robb Wolf
There’s definitely a double standard that exists in the scene. And this is one of the interesting things is that there is a cross section of society that is so certain that they are right in their morality, their politics, their worldview, that it’s kind of like well, we, you know, this is so obviously correct, that only the other side should be held accountable for conflicts of interest or, you know, any disclosures that need to be made. And it’s like trying to do brain surgery wearing oven mitts, you know, like you were… these folks. And even for all of us, if we’re that divorced from the feedback of reality, we’re going to make massive mistakes. And you know, we talked about this with regards to vertical farms, and you know, a bunch of the kind of alternative food production things. And we write a fairly speculative back-of-the-envelope spot, but we were based in economics and thermodynamics in evolution. And God, we were right about all that stuff, you know, and that is another part that for me kind of kind of putting a big loop on this thing, why I feel a little bit more comfortable stepping back in some ways with this because all of these proposed systems are going to fail, because they simply just don’t work. It’s kind of just because an airplane flies doesn’t mean that gravity stops working. We just have this process of aerodynamics. And but if they… if the energy fails in the airplane engines, it’s going to crash. The anxiety that I’ve had to some degree is how much collateral damage and how many people are going to be hurt in the process. Some of these alternate food systems and ways of looking at the world fail. And it’s kind of heartbreaking. But we I forget if we mentioned this in the book, or if this was too spicy in the book, but I said, you know, we should just double down on telling moms Yeah, for sure, be vegan in your pregnancy and raise your infants vegan, because the signal of the damage done to those children would be so profound. It’s kind of like if you there’s a graphic novel that was made into a really interesting movie called The Watchmen and it was basically a nuke was detonated in New York City. And it was terrible, millions of people died, but it prevented World War Three, like it stung people so much that a few million people died to prevent billions of people dying. And to some degree, I kind of see it similar here. There’s so many bad decisions being made around energy and food production and sourcing and what people should and shouldn’t eat, that there are going to be a lot of folks hurt, but the signal to that is going to be irrefutable, like when you and when you start damaging children, people take notice of that, you know. It’s kind of one thing if you’re skinny, 20-year-old, you know, college student, and you’ve managed to motor through a vegan period and suffer some degree of health consequences. But when kids are stunted, when they have developmental issues and things like that, you know, what we talked about, that will change things. And I don’t know if that’s just a cranky, salty way of looking at it. Or if it’s actually kind of a place of wisdom, like, no matter how hard we try, we’re not going to be able to avert all of this stuff happening. But the failed state of nutrition science and these recommendations around food systems, there will be a come up with it. And it’s just, hopefully we’ve let enough people know about that. They’re able to navigate that more effectively than what they would have been otherwise.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, what’s interesting is what I’m seeing now. Just because I get all the listservs, right, I get like meat is three listservs. But then I get the alt-meat industry listservs as well. And for the longest time, it was you know, this company gets new funding, this company gets new funding, you know, and I’m like, Oh, my God, all this money. And lately, it’s been more fantastical language and more of this, like cognitive dissidence that like, you know, like, Okay, well, the aliens didn’t come yet. But they’re gonna come you know, we just have to wear you know, remove more zippers from our clothes, and then we’ll be like, totally saved. And so I’m referencing a cult.
Robb Wolf
I remember hearing about that. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And it was interesting, because basically, what happened in this situation was that they… the end of days was coming, the aliens were gonna come. And then when they didn’t come, these guys actually got even more evangelical. And they were talking about this phenomenon that happens when things look, like it’s a lie, you actually believe 10 times stronger. And that’s what I’m hearing now. And so as we see all the stock prices falling for Beyond Meat, Oatley, all these other ones, what we’re seeing now is more crazy language coming from those alt meat and plant based meat companies. But we’re also I’m noticing more governmental pressure, like if we can’t get Silicon Valley and investors backing us anymore, because financially, it’s not going to work, then we must convince governments to both subsidize our innovation in production, but also campaigns aimed at swaying consumers. And that’s what’s happening. Now I see it in Canada major investments from Canada, we’ve got it in the Netherlands, Denmark, many, many other countries are investing very heavily in from the government in all this.
Robb Wolf
And undermining the current food systems, like decommissioning farms, calling cattle and things like that. It will fail. It will ultimately fail. But there might be massive economic fallout, there might be some starvation, there will certainly be nutrient deficiencies, it will almost certainly worsen the diabesity, you know, metabolic issue story. But it’s also going to be a really profound signal, like we’re going to see this trend towards less animal consumption. We’ve already seen that. But it’s like, the hypothesis is linear correlation, exponential correlation between animal product consumption and a litany of diseases. Okay. Those products went away, the government actually, like, prevented their production, their dissemination promoted the exact opposite. We can quantify how these folks you know, change their diets and things got worse and At some point that that system will just break, but there’s gonna be a lot of damage along the way. And that’s part of the reason why I live in Montana. And we’re going to, as I look out my my office window, like there’s going to be a bunch of sheep and cows and alpaca and stuff like that here next year to kind of hedge my bets on the way that that whole thing plays out.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And I’ll be huddled down in my pottery shed just make a mug making…
Robb Wolf
Tradable items so that we can we can have a small economy here.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. All right, well, um, before, we totally end, let’s just catch up on like, let’s catch our listeners up on you know, what we’re both doing. So you’ve got things are going really well with LMNT? I should disclose that you guys are big sponsors of me. So thank you very much for that. It’s going really well, right?
Robb Wolf
It’s going wonderfully and couldn’t be happier, couldn’t be more lucky. Like it was right place, right time and an amazing team that has really actioned amazing, really well. It’s just salt, but we also do some awesome customer service and try to excite and delight things. And you know, just as an aside, like the, our mission with LMNT is health through hydration. The hydration part is kind of like self-evident. It’s like sodium, potassium, magnesium check. Okay, cool. That health part is like a big story. And we really, our guiding principles are driven from this phenomenal paper that was released a couple of years ago to hallmarks of health. And it defined eight different features of what health is historically. In medicine, health really didn’t have a great definition. It was kind of like the absence of disease, which doesn’t doesn’t really help or define things into the I won’t go into all eight of the categories, but they really kind of got boiled down to integrity, and resilience. And the integrity part is you want some things in and out of your experience. And you don’t want just willy nilly exposure, but you also don’t want to be walled off in such a way that you can’t adapt and grow with your environment. And this thing has been really fascinating as a business principles foundation, because it goes from the cellular level, to the organismal level to like the ecological level. And it has been this guiding light for our business. And some of the stuff that we’re looking at doing long term is actually acquiring ranch land and employing farmers and ranchers to do regenerative ag as part of our peripheral mission, you know, so because the business is successful, and because there is a high barrier of entry to get people into doing these types of things. Part of our long term plan is to start setting aside different locations where we get people getting in and doing regenerative ranching and farming and holistic management and the whole nine yards. So it’s a really cool thing that this little salt companies kind of blown up to the degree that we can start continue to have that impact on just the hydration space, but can really stretch our legs into the broader scope of like, planetary and individual health. So like, that’s super exciting stuff. And James our CEO, he likes to quote, there’s something that the world is good when people plant trees, they will never sit under. And that’s part of his mission around like this, you know, expanding into the regenerative ranching, farming food production, seen as it we’re investing in stuff that is going to take decades for it to work and I’m gonna be an old old person before the flywheel really catches on it, but my kids and their kids are hopefully going to be the ones that benefit from stuff like that with regards to a more stable robust food system and just, you know, beautiful environment and all that stuff.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, there’s a beautiful story there too with hydration of the soil like the more carbon in the soil has the better the water holding capacity. So it’s not the rain you get, it’s the rain you keep so that’s that’s actually a really nice kind of…
Robb Wolf
A great angle. I’d never really thought about it that way. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I should you guys should go down and visit Alejandro down in Chihuahua because he talks about that a lot. Because he gets the same amount of rain you know, he’s you’re driving towards his ranch. He’s like, ‘You’re not gonna believe it. You’re not going to believe it.’ And you know, we’re driving through these like kind of sage brushy barren lands. He’s like this all used to be grasslands. And we’ve completely destroyed it and then you get to his ranch and it is like Eden is so lush, and he’s like, we don’t get more rain in this little area. We just are managing it with We’re keeping the rain and it’s not evaporating off because we have this beautiful cycle here and Um, so it’s a really beautiful system. And I think there’s a lot you guys could…
Robb Wolf
I don’t think it’d be hard to get the team to sign up on doing that. So yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, one of the really cool things through GFJA, is just all the travel that I’ve been able to do to places that aren’t like bucket list places like, I would never, you know, no one’s ever like dying to go to Chihuahua, Mexico, in the middle of of the desert on a vacation right or, you know, Uruguay, for example, was not on my list of places. That was… were even on my radar. Like I hadn’t, I didn’t even just consider Uruguay at all. But it was so incredible to go there. And like I could live there in Montevideo was so cool. It’s the people were so so nice. And so I’ve been just really happy with focusing more on the work I’m doing through GFJA, getting invited to speak at different conferences. It is a little bit of a challenge. Like when I was at COP27 in Egypt, I’m not going this year, it’s in Dubai, I’d rather not be in the Middle East right now. So I’m kind of relieved that there wasn’t a badge that came through for me for this year. It was a little tough to be in Egypt last year too, I have to be honest, like as a Western woman going to Egypt, I was very aware of very strong elements in the culture there that are… that are not pro-woman. But once I was down on the ground at COP, I mean, just the energy, we can only save people with a plant-based diet. I mean, that is what everyone’s talking about. There were very few pro-livestock and no nutritionists promoting the consumption of livestock. I was the only one and there were 1000s and 1000s of people there. So you know, we still have a lot of work to do in that space. And we’re doing some other cool things like getting meat sticks into kids’ backpack program. I’m looking at a cow-to-school program. So paying ranchers and right now there’s a lot of ranchers that are just like part of programs where they have to take on the burden of the donation, but I’m looking at actually paying them through public support and maybe some corporate partners to get in there and actually reimburse rancher for donating a full animal to a school lunch program.
Robb Wolf
Oh, awesome.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So very, very excited about that. And hopefully some more videos for schools with Nick Offerman, you know, if LA ever gets out of this… I don’t even know if they’re still in this writer’s strike. I think it’s still going on.
Robb Wolf
I think so, yeah. Parts of it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
But, we certainly have a lot of work that we’re doing there. And it’s been a lot more rewarding than trying to beat the pavement and play the social media game, which is getting tiring,
Robb Wolf
Right, shocker. Well, you’ve done it for a long time. When did we really meet? Was it like 2009? It was through
Diana Rodgers, RD
It was through Matt Lalonde. And it was at the first AHS in LA, which was probably 2011.
Robb Wolf
Eleven. Yeah. Pretty good. Run. Yeah, yeah. And so much… it’s changed. And it is interesting, like when I wrote Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat, they’re good books, I’m proud of them and everything. But immediately upon them being written, was like, Oh, I wish I had done this study, I wish I’d done this piece, you know, and it wasn’t like the material was inherently wrong, but it gets dated quickly. And I gotta say, like, Sacred Cow just gets more and more solid every day that goes by, you know, like the implosion of Impossible Foods and Oatly. And clearly, like, like you said, with with, you know, these international meetings, so focused on on plant-based diets, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. But there are resources out there that lay out a credible explanation for the way that things have been the way that they are now. And then I think the most important piece is provides a predictive framework for, you know, if we’re right about what we’re saying, these are the five things that we’re going to see. And we’ve been really bang on with that stuff. It’s funny, there’s a bunch of development happening here in Bozeman. And one of the things that folks are wanting to do, there’s this urban farm concept, which is really, really cool. But there they want to do this greenhouse, and they’ve just been like twisted inside out because they’re like, I just don’t think this thing is economically viable. And I was like, it’s not… let me show you where we talk about this. And, you know, the crunchy lettuce, crunchy water story around lettuces and stuff, and so we actually rejiggered it, and looked at that as a venue for weddings all year round and growing the flowers there. And then also culinary herbs, and all of a sudden this thing is economically viable. And it makes sense and it doesn’t need subsidies for it to make sense. And they’re like, ‘Do you… are you like a farmer? Anything?’ I’m like, No, we’ve just done a lot of work in this space. So that was, that was actually kind of cool. We had only been here maybe a week, and I got invited to this planning thing, because of Sacred Cow, you know, stood up talking to a bunch of engineers and urban planners, and I think had a lot of folks who were not real stoked to hear what I had to say initially, but by the end of it, it was like, oh, you know, I brought a bunch of books and handed those out. And I think, you know, we just did some very back-of-the-envelope numbers, shifting the emphasis of this thing, it’s like, you’re not going to grow food indoors. Unless you’re on Mars, you know, unless you’re, you’re on a spaceship. Like, that’s the only place that makes sense when you have sunlight and grass and grazing animals in particular, like, that’s where we win. And it was kind of cool, because a lot of the old school Montanans are like, well, this is what we’ve been doing forever. I’m like, exactly, just keep doing that. But do it even better than what you’ve done.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I should, um, you know, the governor of Montana had reached out to me, I don’t know if I mentioned this to you, because they were they were doing some beef initiatives. Anyway, I’ll make a connection offline with you, but maybe since…
Robb Wolf
That’d be awesome. He’s pretty cool.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh, yeah?
Robb Wolf
He… I forget the exact story. But when he was running for office, this reporter was like totally talking him and Gianforte, punched the dude, knocked him out. And then he had to like pay him some hush money to not… but he’s, you know, Italian – Gianforte, but also kind of old school, Montana. But I liked the guy. I don’t agree with everything he does. I don’t think he’s got his feet on the ground with everything. But he’s pretty legit.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, funny. All right, any parting words?
Robb Wolf
I’m just honored to have you as my partner on a bunch of these projects. And I frequently have kind of gotten more air play for a variety of things or significant airplay. But you have been the guiding light and the like, moral and intellectual framework behind so much of this stuff, like I wanted to do this, but you were really like the squeaky wheel that made it happen. So I can’t thank you enough for the work that you’ve done. And I’m really stoked that you are also carving out some space so that you can you know, put your leverage in the spots that you feel like are the most important.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Aw, thank you so much. Well, your support has been really critical for me when… we never would have made it on the Joe Rogan without you being a co-author on that. And I know how many people that reached like, I still get messages all the time. And it’s always nice for me to collaborate with someone. It helps me keep going. And yeah, it’s been it’s been really fun working with you and hopefully we’ll do more stuff in the future. Thank you.
Robb Wolf
Sure.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hey everyone, Diana here. I wanted to let you know that after many years and over 1 million downloads of the Sustainable Dish podcast, I’ve decided it’s time to direct my attention to other projects, including the Global Food Justice Alliance. It’s been a true honor to interview so many important leaders in the health and agricultural fields. And I’ve loved every minute of it. So, October 31, 2023, will be the last episode. Thank you so much for all of my dedicated listeners out there for your attention, your time. Thank you to Emily, my podcast editor, and to James Connolly, my co-host. Be sure to follow me at Global Food Justice and also at Sustainable Dish. You can get my newsletters, help contribute to the mission that I’m working on to make sure that all people have access to nutrient-dense, animal-sourced foods. Thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
