"Beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be protected." requoted by Michael Mauboussin on the Tim Ferris Show, March 3, 2023
The three books referenced a couple weeks ago resulted in me leaning into topics best summarized into two areas:
- Humans evolved by eating meat. Human thriving requires meat.
- Testosterone has dropped significantly in a generation or two. Both scientists and armchair scientists suggest this is diet, lifestyle and stress-related. Reduction of testosterone leads to significant health issues and reduced quality of life.
- A reduction in sleep quantity and quality increases mental health issues on a daily basis and especially near the end of life.
- The discussions are interesting around keto or longer fasting and the resulting autophagy to help reduce cancer growth. I've never fasted more than a day. Apparently, 3-7 days of fasting every quarter are ideal for cancer-preventing autophagy. Initial insights from Dr. Peter Attia's new book shed more clarity on this topic and suggest the drop in muscle mass from fasting is less than ideal later in life.
- Increasingly I'm exposed to loud 'experts' that suggest seed oils are the leading cause of human health degradation in the last couple of generations - obesity, diabetes, etc. There is a call to return to animal-based fats. After listening to other opinions it sounds like it comes down to preference and avoiding processed foods that trigger cravings.
- The health outcomes of Mikhaila Peterson on a carnivore diet are hard to ignore. I have a person dear to me with auto-immune issues and it makes me wonder if such a diet would improve things.
- Plant-based diets consist of highly processed ingredients, seed oils, and monoculture crops. Living creatures certainly perish by large numbers while we grow and harvest soybeans and peas.
- Why are alarms not going off about sugar and highly processed food? What kind of society are we experiencing when Lucky Charms is considered more healthful than ground beef or eggs? What else are we wrong about?
- In 2014 I heard a podcast that discussed how the human gut microbiome is so under-researched. Doctors spend almost no time on diet and its impact on health in educational programs.
- What impact is the "Social Experiment" with curated content skewing information dissemination about human health? Am I just seeing more content within my dogmatic space because it's accurate or it keeps me scrolling? Do vegans see the same meat-based information I'm exposed to?
- The main (only?) way to improve soil quality naturally is with manure.
- Herbivores are better than humans at turning biomass into a digestible bioavailable product. Evolution has optimized herbivores and omnivores to co-exist.
- Food Fix, a book by Dr. Mark Hyman, mentioned it takes eating a regenerative-raised beef burger or two to offset the carbon impact of a plant-based burger.
- Rangeland and healthy soils are fantastic carbon sinks. I witnessed 20 years ago how proper grazing can significantly improve pasture yields and topsoil depth.
- Some land is only suitable for animal agriculture. I had a blessed childhood raising beef. Our land quality and short seasons could generate feed well enough but were not productive in fruits and vegetables. I suppose we could grow a lot of oilseeds and grains - but these generally are just base ingredients in processed foods.
- Meat is the densest source of nutrients and calories.
- It is dogma that cows farts are a significant issue. Methane does not last as long as carbon dioxide.
- It is possible to believe in climate change while disagreeing its impact is catastrophic. It may actually be a net benefit to global flourishing until we create the technology that stabilizes carbon emissions.
- Climate change communication is biased to focus on the worst conclusions. While the consensus that climate change is real is around 97%, there is no scientific consensus on the impacts. The benefits of fossil fuels are excluded from the debate. The result is poor decision-making in societies.
- Alex Epstein's book explains that climate change increases the average temperatures of winter, more than it impacts summer temperatures. It also explains that major weather events have not increased damage - GDP-adjusted damage comparisons suggest it's been flat. Human deaths from climate events, however, are significantly reduced. Think more jungle-like future rather than a more desert-like future. My paraphrasing doesn't do the book justice on such a polarizing topic. Does Alex have a heavy security team? He must be really hated by some people. I think his rare voice standing against the global tide is beneficial for all of us.
- It is not clear that carbon emission is near the top of a list of environmental issues. Biodiversity, pollution, war, and poverty are all bigger environmental issues. Increasing fossil fuel costs will lead to more deforestation, dung and low-quality coal burning in parts of the world. Would it be fair to say at least 2-3 billion citizens already need to choose food over energy? How many North Americans are eating poorer quality food so they can drive to work?
- The more people are removed from food production and urbanized, the more open they are to false assertions.
- Is there a political advantage to creating fear around climate change? It's fun and exciting to build grand energy projects and make assertions about net-zero by 2050. Costs are someone else's issue (... our children and grandchildren) while results will be hard to measure in a lifetime, let alone during politicians' average work life. It's fun and politically profitable to hang with Leo and glorify Greta. In Canada, there is strong suspicion our current anti-fossil fuel bent also disproportionately reduces the influence of the western section of the country.
- We need so much more energy globally by 2050 than we produce today. The idea that we can do this with solar and wind leading the effort is preposterous.
- If net zero is an earnest goal, where is the political courage to build nuclear projects? It is clearly the only real current solution to get there while keeping energy affordable for most of us. How easy is it to build a hydro dam or an LNG plant in the western hemisphere? How easy it is to build a mine to extract the ingredients to make batteries? Let's stop making bogus declarations and advise populations on real plans, including making even just a couple of difficult decisions now.
How did my last several points feel? Am I a caveman or asking good questions? What are the personal/professional/political risks involved with suggesting our climate-saving popular dogma is ill-placed? How do we treat people with different or dissenting views? How are our listening skills on such topics?
Bringing this back to meat - I feel there are ways to save the world by creating meat in better ways. It will look different than today. Better information and stories about farmers making meat with a holistic view of its environmental surroundings will help preserve our capacity for good agriculture. Animal agriculture means better soils and more healthful diets. Animals help us utilize more bio-material.
Let's also build a meat processing culture that rewards our workers with decent pay and societal pride. The hardest-working people I've met work in meat plants. 40 years ago this was an excellent career.
I also want us to hold politicians and decision-makers more accountable for what I call "societal authenticity". The best of them are exposed to a broader truth than the rest of us. But how many of us believe we are hearing the whole story?
Politicians are extensions of ourselves - how many of us behave the way we think we should for our long-term interests?
This was not a soapbox, just topics and questions I want to spend more time on. My life experience certainly biases me toward meat-based diets and I care about the environment. In the part of the world I live, animal agriculture seems well suited for the land and environment.
And I am willing to learn and test this belief, not protect it.
In the upcoming weeks, I'll be summarizing recent scientific articles on the role of meat to start to add more substance to these topics.
