Stephan Van Vliet: You are What Your Food Eats

This week on Regenerative Renegades, host Matt Maier kicks off a two-part conversation with Dr. Stephan Van Vliet, a leading nutrition scientist at Utah State University with deep expertise in metabolomics. Together, they explore how regenerative agriculture impacts the nutrient density of meat, why “you are what your food eats” is more than a catchy phrase, and what the latest science reveals about grass-fed beef, phytochemicals, and flavor.

Transcript

Prologue 1 (Melissa) 

Hello Regenerative Renegades! Thanks for joining us! I’m Melissa Larsen, Matt’s daughter. 

Last episode, Elizabeth Ries brilliantly shared her perspective on defining food values and making smart, simple food choices. We know all food is not created, made, grown and raised equally – including the nutritional profile. 

At Thousand Hills, we asked the question how is grassfed beef different from grain fed or feedlot beef? What sets it apart? Why is the flavor so much better and rich? Dr Stephan Van Vliet helps answer the questions through his groundbreaking research linking farming and grazing practices with protein nutrition. This two-part series digs into his work defining nutrient density in beef and beyond. Hope you enjoy as much as I do! 

THLG Podcast 

Hello regenerative renegades. Today we have a very exciting podcast, Dr. Stefan van Vliet. And he is a wealth of information. This is going to be so exciting to go through. Every time I talk to him, I learn more and I feel a little smarter just by being around him. So his background in bio, Dr. Stefan van Vliet is a nutrition scientist with metabolomics. 

expertise at Utah State University. He earned his PhD in kinesiology as an ESPEN fellow from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received training at the Washington University and St. Louis School of Medicine and Duke University School of Medicine. That's a lot of universities, Dr. Stefan. Dr. Van Vliet's teaching interest lies in physiology, nutrition, and metabolism. 

Dr. Van Vliet research is performed at the nexus of agricultural and human health. Hence why he's here today. He routinely collaborates with farmers, ecologists and agricultural scientists to study critical linkages between agricultural production methods, the nutrient density of food and human health. So welcome Dr. Stefan. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you for having me. 

THLG Podcast 

Yeah, you bet. So, you know, today we're going to talk about nutrient density primarily and the work that you're doing in that area. But before we get into that, which is extremely fascinating, this, you know, how how agricultural practices connect to you to nutrient density. But before we get that, can you give us the background on how you got to where you are today? I think it's a pretty fascinating story, and I'd like to share that with the 

listeners. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, so I was born in the Netherlands about 38 years ago now. So I grew up in the Netherlands and I, like many kids, I was into athletics, particularly playing soccer. And I did not grow up on a farm, but close to farmland. So I think that kind of fostered my interests subconsciously. We'd go to a farmer's market, go to our local dairy to get farm fresh milk. 

So that's kind of my upbringing. then when I was... 

THLG Podcast  

So wait a minute, in the Netherlands, do they call it football or soccer? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Well, we call it football, here we call it soccer. The time you play with your feet. 

THLG Podcast

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, makes complete sense to me. just had to ask the question. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, that's right. So yeah, I grew up playing football or soccer. And then when I was about 18, I didn't really know what to do. So I went to business school. I figured that would be a good degree to have. But during my college years, I really got interested in lifting weights. 

caught myself reading more physiology and nutrition journals. I was just interested on how to build more muscle and become healthier and things such as that. And eventually I... 

THLG Podcast 

So is this still in the Netherlands or were you in the US at this point? Were you still in the Netherlands or were you in the US at this point? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

What's up? 

I was in the Netherlands, yeah. I went to a school in the Netherlands at that time. So I didn't come up until my Masters in the Netherlands and the UK. I did my Masters actually in the UK. So I did not come here until graduate school, my PhD. Yeah. So I was doing that in the Netherlands and really interested in exercise and nutrition science, eventually getting my Masters in that. 

THLG Podcast

Okay. 

THLG Podcast 

okay. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

in England, working in a muscle physiology lab as well in the Netherlands. And then I did my PhD in Gnecology, lot of work focused on muscle metabolism. what I really started to get interested into nutrient density was at that time, because we were doing studies with whole eggs and egg whites and sort of paradoxically saw that the whole egg was actually better for building muscle. And that was attributed, at least we think, to the 

THLG Podcast 

Hmm. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

all those nutrients that are within the egg yolk, which contain all the vast majority of vitamins, carotenoids and other, choline, other bioactive compounds. then as I sort of progressed through this, what's the obvious way to increase the nutrient density of an egg is by what you feed a chicken. So that's kind of how I rolled into it. And then within medical schools, you know, we weren't really studying a lot of, lot of. 

THLG Podcast 

Mm-hmm. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

nutrition or the link between nutrition and disease. Not even collaborating with any agricultural scientists. I started to do that and rolled into it like that. It has led me to my current position as the Director of the Center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State where we do a lot of work in the clinical nutrition and agriculture and how to relate to each other and by growing. 

or by the way we raise our animals and crops can we make ourselves healthier. 

THLG Podcast 

So is there a lot of collaboration even today going on between nutrition, agricultural practices, and medical community? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

I would say it's more than 10 years ago, but I don't think it's the norm quite yet. mean, there's like green shoots here and there of maybe, you know, certain hospitals or even like school lunch programs that source from farmers directly or more regenerative agriculture, but it's not, it is certainly not the norm. But I'd say it is a growing field and rapidly evolving. 

THLG Podcast

Okay. 

THLG Podcast 

So you truly are a renegade then. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

I guess so, yes, you could, yeah. 

THLG Podcast 

Yes. That's awesome. You you spark some memories when I was in college, I got into weightlifting as well. So we have that in common. And for one brief semester until the hard science classes hit, I was in exercise physiology as a, as an undergrad degree. So I have just a tiny bit of understanding of, of at least that interest between nutrition and performance. Right. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, that's right. And now, well, still have the interest in it, the nutrition and performance of cows, right? So, yeah. 

THLG Podcast 

Yes. Yes. Yes. For sure. Yeah. So, so that's where you were now. You start to unpack how you conceived of the study that you're currently leading and, how that came to fruition. And then we'll eventually get to results, but I think it's interesting to, you know, it'd interesting to hear about how this was conceived and how, how, how hard or easy or what was the path on. 

on launching this, designing and launching this study. 

Stephan Van Vliet

Yeah, I mean, if we backtrack a little bit, it was kind of random how it first happened because while at Duke, while I had an interest in agriculture and nutrition, just a personal interest, would often, like I said, still shop at farmers markets, still go to farms to get dairy and just visit grass-fed beef farmers to get meat directly. But it was at Duke really, one day I got a call by two gentlemen, 

THLG Podcast 

Sure. 

THLG Podcast

Mm-hmm. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Fred Provenza and Scott Kronberg, which are two scientists, older scientists close to retirement or Fred is retired already, but they spent their career looking into how different grazing practices or feeding behavior in ruminants impacts their health really. And one thing that they indicated that they were looking to collaborate with a human nutrition scientist for a long time, because they felt that that piece was missing. 

THLG Podcast 

Thank you. 

THLG Podcast 

Mm-hmm. 

THLG Podcast 

you 

Stephan Van Vliet  

I was presenting to a beef commission for a different grant, nothing to do with grass-fed or grain-fed beef, but Scott heard that and then gave me a call. Scott and Fred asked me, Stefan, do you want to collaborate on some of these things? So we wrote about 15 or 16 grants. The first 15 did not get funded, number 16 did. So that was a few years in, but I mean, it's work that was close to my heart. 

THLG Podcast 

No. No. 

Stephan Van Vliet

So we had some federal funding for that. We got federal funding for that to work on this on a variety of farms, mainly in the South, where we were doing paired research between grass-fed beef or pastures and then paired crop fields, which would be producing feed crops, commodity grains often used in feedlot finishing. 

THLG Podcast  

Mm-hmm. Yep. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

And then I got in touch also as that work started to come out, it turned out that there was a big interest in that. I got in touch with the BioNutrient Institute, by Dan Kittredge, and we kind of started to talk from that and then decided to do a larger commercial profiling study of beef within the North American market, both grass-fed and grain-fed to understand the variation and what is the source of that variation and do certain practices. 

THLG Podcast 

you 

Stephan Van Vliet 

consistently result in nutrient-dense beef. So that's when the project evolved. And even during the project, was a lot of involvement or evolvement, should say. Initially, our work was doing metabolomics, which is the study of metabolites. Metabolites of an animal, many of which can serve as nutrients to us, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and other phytochemicals. The phytochemicals often derived from the metabolism of the plant. 

THLG Podcast

Yep. 

THLG Podcast 

you 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Sure, so the study that we launched with the BioNutrient Institute is called the Beef Nutrient Density Project. And within that project, we invited farmers across North America to submit samples to us, three ribeye steaks, as well as soil and forage samples, for us to analyze and to make those linkages between soil health, forage quality, and beef nutrient density. 

It also entails extensive surveys asking about... 

THLG Podcast

I also remember collecting manure. Cow potters. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

That's manure, that's right. That's right. For the gut microbiome sequencing of the cattle. That's right. So that's another part of it as well to understand how plant diversity and soil health relates to the gut microbiome of the animal. Right. Cause that's at least the linkage between the, or at least the proposed linkage between a healthier soil microbiome and a healthier. 

microbiome of the animal, whether it's us as animals or cows. So yeah, so that's the work that we did there. We collected nearly 400 samples from over 300 farms. What was interesting about that study though is that I think in terms of grass-fed beef, we mostly got the crème de la crème because obviously the people that wanted to submit samples 

THLG Podcast 

Mm-hmm. 

Okay. 

Stephan Van Vliet  

were oftentimes ranchers and farmers that felt like their practices were really beneficial to the health of the land and the health of the animal and nutrient density. so actually what was interesting near the end of that study, we also went to grocery stores and just bought grass-fed beef off the shelf and some from some online retailers because I felt like we were, yeah, we were studying the creme de la creme in many ways. 

Almost everyone in an Omega 6 to 3 ratio will out of around 2 to 1, which is a really strong ratio in grass-fed beef. 

THLG Podcast 

Yeah, I've used that number a lot actually. And being one of those farmers or ranchers that submitted samples, I, you know, I yearned to find out what was, what I would talk about was the value in the package. What's the true value in this package? Cause everyone wants to talk about price and there's always downward pressure on price in beef and all commodities. And so I was, I was like, okay, yeah, let's find out more. And I, know, and we've got brethren in 

industry that we're thinking the same things. And just to explain, there are ways to raise grass-fed beef where they're not necessarily grazing and consuming a diverse diet of forbs and legumes and grasses. You can feed them in a feedlot and feed them such things as distiller grains that's had the starch taken out and still call it 100 % grass-fed beef. So we're 

We're in the middle of that kind of arm wrestling, but I tell consumers just understand the practices that are happening and then we'll know from there.

THLG Podcast

So it seems to me that there's been some improvements in technology over the last X number of years. I don't know exactly, but that has made it more financially feasible to actually measure each of the components in protein or beef or any product really. So that kind of 

that measurement of the level of nutrients in any subject matter, any piece of food? Can you explain that a little bit? has that happened? that accurate? What's the depth of measurement that you can actually do with these samples? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, mean the measurement of depth that we can do on nutrient samples or food samples has increased considerably over the last few years, that is true. mean, the technique that is typically used for that is called mass spectrometry. Then either depending on the sample, you use liquid or gas chromatography. In gas, would vaporize the sample or burn the sample. That's a way of measuring fatty acids, things that are volatile. 

liquid chromatography you could measure things like phytochemicals, B vitamins, fat soluble vitamins, etc. And certainly improvements in that technology allows us researchers to look at this in indeed more cost effective ways and in further depth. Another important part I think also is that 

Traditionally, for instance, when people measure B vitamins, they would measure each B vitamin separately, making it pretty arduous process. But in newer methodology, you can measure multiple B vitamins within a single run, and you can measure fat-soluble vitamins within a single run, and we can now measure about 500 phytochemicals in two runs of the sample. 

THLG Podcast 

Yeah. 

THLG Podcast

Wow. So how many, like if you get 500 different phytochemicals and you can do the fatty acids and you can do the vitamins and minerals, like what's just a rough idea of how many different, I don't know how to describe it, components that you could measure? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, I mean, if it go all out, it could probably measure like 500 to a thousand components, but it's important to note that each one of those tests, even though we can do multiple V vitamins in the same run, it's still a completely separate extraction and a completely separate run. So the extraction of fat soluble vitamins is done differently from... 

B vitamins is not differently from fatty acids. It's not differently from minerals. It's differently for protein. So it's still to reach that you still have to run probably about eight essays or so to get all of that.

THLG Podcast

Okay. 

THLG Podcast 

I don't know. 

THLG Podcast

So in this study, what are you looking at? What have you narrowed it down to? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

So, well, wouldn't say we narrowed it down. What have we expanded it to? It's probably a better way of framing it. But, because... 

THLG Podcast 

Okay. I was thinking narrow down from the universe down to whatever. Yeah. Okay. 

Stephan Van Vliet

Yeah, that's right. Now, initially we're doing untargeted metabolomics, so you just get an insight into amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, and other, a number of phytochemicals, not as many because they're small molecule metabolites and it really needs a targeted approach to study that. But once we saw that and we were about, I think about 100 samples into the study, we switched to more targeted analysis, which did mean that we would then do 

separate assays for the fatty acids. So minerals and heavy metals were measured. So fatty acids, minerals and heavy metals, B vitamins, fat soluble vitamins and phytochemicals. 

THLG Podcast 

What's an example of fat soluble vitamins? 

Stephan Van Vliet

This would be A, D, E, and K. Yeah, that's right. As well as other compounds like that method allows for the measurement of cholesterol as well. So it gives you an insight into fat-soluble nutrients there and as well as several carotenoids. 

THLG Podcast 

A, D, E, and K. Okay, yeah, I recognize those. 

THLG Podcast

Okay. 

THLG Podcast 

Can you talk a little bit more about phytochemicals because I, you know, when we've had a conversation and you explained that it is possible that the phytochemicals are picked up by the animal and then in the meat and then picked up by humans. And can you explain that process a little bit and how that's beneficial? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, so plants are a rich source of what is called phytochemicals. The word phyto comes from plants, but it really refers to nutrients other than protein, amino acids, fatty acids, and vitamins and minerals, which you could consider typically primary nutrients. And then the phytochemicals, they were once labeled secondary nutrients. People call them secondary because that's probably what made up 98 % of the plant, but people did not really understand what they were doing. 

THLG Podcast 

Wow. in phytochemicals, and sorry to interrupt, but there's vitamins and minerals and everything that are under the umbrella of phytochemicals. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

This could be things. 

Stephan Van Vliet  

Yeah, well, typically people don't put them under the umbrella of phytochemicals, because that would be considered primary nutrients, because it was long understood that vitamins and minerals and amino acids and certain fatty acids are crucial to life, are vital to life. And then you've mapped out maybe 1 % of the plant and then the other 99 % of compounds, which were dubbed 

THLG Podcast 

Okay. 

Stephan Van Vliet

plant secondary metabolites. And these are things such as polyphenols, anthocyanidins, which make the blueberry blue. But they do more antioxidants, that's right. Yeah, antioxidants are secondary, but yeah, but quite important to the plant because arguably, and to people, yeah. Yeah, and to people as well. And we've been obviously evolved on eating both animals and plants and arguably. 

THLG Podcast 

Yeah. Antioxidants are, antioxidants are secondary in science. Wow. 

Sure. And to people, right? And to people. Yeah. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

animals that ate a wide diversity of plants. 

THLG Podcast 

so we are what our food eats. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

We are what our food is, that's right. And what's so unique I think about animals or in ruminants also, but also monogastric is that a cow can eat plants that you and I cannot consume either because of the high lignin or cellulose content, which our stomachs cannot digest. But they contain many what would be considered quote unquote medicinal. 

THLG Podcast 

Mm-hmm. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

compounds or beneficial compounds, these phytochemicals. And it could be polyphenols, could be certain alkaloids, terpenes, you name it. Oftentimes antioxidants in layman's terms. What's nice about the animal and what we really learned from the study or found out in the study is that the animal actually takes these phytochemicals from the plants and turns them into antioxidants that are already within the form of a mammal. 

What we learned a lot from actually, believe it or not, is by looking at what is in a woman's breast milk, what type of phytochemicals are in there, because they are being transformed and metabolized. And what we found was is that the animal, indeed, it takes these phytochemicals from the plants and turns them into pre-processed versions that are very similar. 

THLG Podcast 

Mm-hmm. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

or actually exactly the same as those found within our bodies. So the animal takes kind of that work out of it. And it's not to say that our gut microbiota and our liver can also transform them, but it provides an additional avenue by which antioxidant phytochemicals are obtained. 

THLG Podcast 

Stephan Van Vliet 

And not only do they benefit the animals' health by having antibacterial, antimicrobial effects, antioxidant effects, they can potentially have similar effects to us as well. So that was a major finding of that study. And those compounds probably make up 98-99 % of the plant kingdom and arguably the reason why you eat kale. 

or blueberries is not for its protein content or its caloric content, right? Kale barely contains any calories, but people know kale is healthy for you. And why is it healthy? It is due to the plethora of plant secondary metabolized, these phytochemical antioxidants that are found within the kale. Now, if the cow consumes the equivalent of kale, a different plant, it will also take those up and you will see a flow from the forage 

to the animal and now we are performing human nutrition trials to see if those mammalian antioxidants that become available within the animal can actually have a beneficial effect on us. 

THLG Podcast 

So it is possible, I could make the statement, that you could eat a salad by eating a steak. Can I get away with that? Can I get away with that? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, so you can eat a salad that you cannot eat yourself and you can have the cow eat it for you. But I would put forward the argument that we can obtain a lot of beneficial nutrients from direct plant food consumption as well, of course, right? When we eat salad or kale or... 

THLG Podcast 

Okay. Okay. 

THLG Podcast 

Sure. Okay. Yep. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

whatever carrots, blueberries. But we can obtain additional and oftentimes unique compounds from unique plants that we would otherwise not have access to by cycling that through an animal. And I think that's the key part. 

THLG Podcast 

So when you say animal, is that chicken, hog, ruminant, any animal that's consuming these plants? Ruminants obviously force stomachs to do certain processing that we can't do with cellulose or whatever. But is every animal able to do something like that or do they have to be a ruminant? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

No, every animal is able to do something like that. I would say that the rumen is unique and can digest certain forages that perhaps monogastric like chickens or pigs are not able to capitalize on as well. So the rumen is certainly unique in that. another benefit I think of... 

perhaps pigs and chickens, I they also forage, also consume bugs, they also consume maybe certain phytochemically or omega-3 rich feeds, maybe byproducts of industry. And so I do think monogastrics have a unique role to play as well. And arguably in a multi-species system, you can bring the best out of both. 

THLG Podcast 

Yeah, that's interesting. I was just reading an article this morning about how, the, know, from a farmer's perspective, the symbiotic nature of grazing sheep, hogs and cattle all in kind of sequence. And that that benefits the land and the efficiency of grazing and production. But in addition to that, then we could make the statement that by grazing 

those different species that they're picking up nutrients maybe that we would not be able to pick up on our own and then it gets expressed through their meat. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, that's a correct statement. And if you look at the literature of ecology, there's probably no good reason to not do multi-species grazing. But I can also appreciate the labor involved as a farmer. But there's many studies that suggest that co-grazing sheep and cattle or goats and cattle actually, it allows you to have ecological benefits. So benefits for soil health, benefits for the land and 

because they exploit different plants, sheep and goats, they eat different plants than cattle. So by that nature, you can also typically produce more food per acreage, right? And then if you have chickens on it as well that maybe eat some of the black soldier larva or other things within the cow patties, pat that down, you get this ecological effect, but... 

THLG Podcast 

for 

THLG Podcast  

Yeah. 

THLG Podcast 

Yeah. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Insects are actually also a very good source of omega-3s and various vitamins and minerals. So that could be another way of increasing the nutrient density. So yeah, you get this synergistic effect where the 1 plus 1 plus 1 is not 3, but it's maybe 5 or 6. So you get an additive effect. 

THLG Podcast

Wow. That is, that's awesome. You know, on, on our farm, do, we do rotate chickens around during the growing season. We have tried goats, but I have to admit that the neighbors don't like it when goats get into their yard and they're very difficult to keep in. So we have to work on that one a little bit. They're, they're cute as heck and they, do a great job on invasive species and brush, but there is a practical component of, okay, how much fencing can we build to keep. 

Stephan Van Vliet  

Yeah. 

THLG Podcast  

goats in. So maybe we can continue this then in this comparison on ruminants. It's very interesting of what they're able to consume and how that's passed on and foods that we wouldn't normally eat. But what happens when you take a ruminant and you feed it a diet that is more starch-based like corn? 

versus the diverse diet of a diverse grassland forage. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, the cow will start to reflect that and it's not as nutrient dense. We tested for instance corn as well as stolen mixed ration which would contain a lot of corn and some roughage, some hay or silage. And corn is not a very good source of plant secondary metabolites, not a very good source of antioxidants. Provides energy, provides protein. But you see about a two to three-fold reduction in certain phytochemicals in 

grain-fed beef compared to grass-fed beef. So, yeah, two to three times, two to four times, depending on the compound. mean, sometimes it ranges as high as 20 times, but on average, that's about the number. And so what you see is that these compounds, it's the diversity of beef, the diversity of compounds within the beef is also very much enriched. 

THLG Podcast 

a two to four, what do you say two to four times or? 

THLG Podcast 

Okay. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

What we initially learned from this work or what we based it upon is that the French and Italian scientists were doing a lot of work in the 90s and 2000s looking at how grazing animals through mountain pastures could impact the phytochemical richness of cheese. Because these phytochemicals, besides having antioxidant effects, they also give flavor to it. So it's the terroir. we make a parallel to wine, for instance, you want wine from certain regions because you can... 

taste the terroir, the territory, the land, right? And essentially the same thing happens with beef or the same thing happens with why does the Sardinian sheep farmer go through the trouble of grazing certain mountain pastures so that their peccarino has a certain flavor profile, a certain depth to it. And that is essentially what's happening here as well. And you have to kind of see it like this also. 

from an animal health standpoint, right? Let's say if we have humans and we would give them a total mixed ration three times a day that is particularly starch-based, or we let the human loose on a buffet from which they can select 50 different plant foods, they can select multiple animal source foods, who would be better able to nurse themselves? It would be the human that has access to that diverse 

mixture of foods. Now, the cow is just another mammal and it holds up for a cow as well. So if you look at the of the metabolic profile of the grain-fed cow, it does start to reflect a little bit more of a... How do I say this diplomatically? More of a... 

THLG Podcast  

Couch potato. Come on, say it. Say it. it. Yep. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Couch potato, yes, say it, yes, a couch potato, that's right. Or someone who is on more of a less diverse diet, right? Or a grain-based diet. So where's the cow that is out on pasture has more of these phytochemical antioxidants? And I'm certain, this is the part that I'm quite certain of, Matt, is that I don't know how this impacts human health yet, but we can clearly see that it benefits the health of the cow. There's less oxidative stress. 

There is less things such as inflammation. There is better mitochondrial health, which I realize is also in part impacted by the effect that the cow on pasture can move more. Of course, it's able to engage in innate behavior. These are non dietary factors that definitely play a role, but the cow on pasture looks more like an athlete and the cow in a feedlot looks more like a couch potato. 

within a human and that was very eye-opening. 

THLG Podcast  

Yeah, that's so fascinating. I just think that's so great. But it makes sense because that, like you said, that animals are moving around, it's exercising when it's out on a pasture, it's finding what it needs to eat. It's getting these plants that can be medicinal or whatever purpose that they need. And then the other animal is basically force fed. If it wants to eat, it has to eat this that's put in front of it. 

----------------- 

and there isn't a lot of moving around and so the end result would seem to make sense. Now I've also read recently about what they call late day deaths in a feedlot and that is at the end of their finishing time that there's an increase in morbidity or death at that time which to me seems to imply that 

whatever is happening prior to that is kind of leading it down this road of not exactly exceptional health but actually detrimental to their health to the point of where deaths increase. And to juxtapose that with what I witnessed with grazing animals that have access to a wide variety of forage, whether it's growing season or stored for winter feeding, we don't 

We don't see that, you know, the animal will live, I think, as long as is typical for an animal in which could be 15 years, could be 20 years. But there isn't this increase in death at a certain point in their life other than really old age. So it just kind of a little light bulb went off. It's like, OK, well, what's going on in that environment? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Bye bye. 

THLG Podcast  

that would allow or that would lead to an increase and I guess it's quite an issue in feedlot management. you heard of that? 

Stephan Van Vliet  

Not per se about that, but that's an interesting point, but it's also not surprising to me because if we take the parallel to a human, let's say the human is 18 years old and they're gonna be on a Mediterranean diet or some other whole foods based diet for 30 years, by the time they're 50, they're gonna be a lot more metabolically healthy than the other person that goes on a standard American diet and does that. By the time they're 40, 50, they will have... 

potentially pre-diabetes, they would have other issues with metabolic syndrome. So it is not that weird to think that a cow just being another mammal, if we do that to a cow, that we would see a similar phenotype. And certainly it's only 120 days or 150 days in a feedlot. So what you can see is that, you know, there's no... 

Diabetes in cows is not really something you can diagnose or something like that. But what you do see, if you profile feedlot beef versus grass-fed beef, the grass-fed beef has healthy mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cells. It has healthy glucose metabolic regulation. It has low oxidative stress. And conversely, the grain-fed animal starts to show impairments in glucose metabolic health. It has mitochondria that are not as healthy. 

It shows more signs of oxidative stress. It sounds more signs of lipid peroxidation products that within humans are associated with issues with metabolic health, with metabolic disease, with cardiovascular disease. So it is not that surprising that you start to see this phenotype. You just don't see it play out fully. Well, it seems like in some cases, as you described, that you do see it play out, but you... 

and oftentimes you just don't see it play out in metabolic disease per se within a cow, but given enough time, could definitely see it happen. 

THLG Podcast 

Well, and they crutch them up with sub-subtherapeutic antibiotics and other treatments that kind of hold them up as a crutch to get them to live long enough to kill them, basically, just to cut to the chase. So can you, can you illuminate, since you have some, you were raised overseas and, and there's, there's countries in Europe that do not allow our conventional beef to be imported. 

Can you explain a little bit what the thinking is that goes into preventing that product, that beef product to be sold in those countries? 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, I mean, I think it also is part of preference and maybe protecting local food culture. Certainly you can buy in the Netherlands, you can buy American steaks. But I mean, what most a lot of Europeans grow up with. 

THLG Podcast 

Yeah. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

is eating pasture and animal-sourced foods. So you probably come accustomed to the taste of animals out on pasture. For instance, in the Netherlands, while there is stall feeding, it is very common to let the animals out on the pasture. And we are a big dairy producing nation. And in order to produce true farmer's cheese, gouda, which the gouda we actually get in the Netherlands, it has to be from animals raised on pasture. 

It has to be produced according to a specific recipe by law and the milk needs to be unpasteurized. Why does it need to be unpasteurized? Because it retains more of these phytochemicals and thus the flavor and the depthness. And there are interesting studies that people that grew up in maybe Ireland or in other parts in France or in Italy where passion animals or fruits are more common, you also become accustomed to that flavor. So there's a dietary preference for that because 

THLG Podcast  

Yeah. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

I mean, think many people would argue that maybe the best steak they ever ate was grass-fed, but the worst steak they ever ate was also grass-fed, right? So, yeah, so you have to, but that deepness of flavor is perhaps also something that you need to become accustomed to and perhaps within the U.S. at the moment, we're more adapted to the corn-fat beef. 

THLG Podcast  

I would agree, 

THLG Podcast 

Absolutely. I mean, we're very accustomed to that style, that type of beef and other practices that went into it. I know when I sample consumers in grocery stores, I warn everybody, first of all, to your point, anybody who's really tried numerous grass fed steaks has probably had a bad experience because of really, there's a host of reasons, but primarily genetics and finishing were not adequate on the forage. 

for those two matching up and producing a great steak. But then on the other side, it's like, wow, they put that product in their mouth and like, wow, this reminds me of a steak I had at grandma's 50 years ago. 

You know, and it's it's so fun to see that because people say, describe it for me once. Well, it's a fuller flavor. It probably has more texture than a mushy grain fed steak. You're going to have to chew it most likely. And but the flavor and the moisture level and the meat and all that, I just I'm very, very biased. I understand that. 

But it is, we are accustomed to that and it would be really nice to play a role in changing that and giving people at least the option of trying something else. So. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

Yeah, and that's flavor profile that you described, man. That is actually phytochemicals that people are tasting. They're tasting. So that's it.  

We study that from my health perspective and that's maybe my bias because I come at it from a human nutrition standpoint and I'm not a food scientist. So I don't study flavor or things such as that. Well, I you could argue I study it, but 

THLG Podcast  

THLG Podcast 

Wait. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

We come at it from this standpoint of phytochemicals, from the health side of things, but the literature, coming back to the French and Italian literature on the Jesus, they do not so much come at it from a health standpoint, but more from a flavor standpoint. That's what they were interested in, but then when I looked at the data as a human nutrition scientist, I'm thinking like, wait a minute, these are compounds that have... 

antioxidant effects, anti-inflammatory effects. They can improve cardiovascular health. When you throw them on a cancer cell, they maybe are able to reduce tumor growth. Not to say that grass-fed bees will prevent cancer. I want to make that 100 % clear. But I mean, these compounds that are in there, they have potent health benefits, potentially. Definitely have potent health benefits within the animal. That part I feel comfortable stating. But they also have potent flavor. 

THLG Podcast 

Wow. 

Right. 

Stephan Van Vliet 

benefits. So this comes back to this connection between health and flavor and you can. 

THLG Podcast 

And really, you know, to me, it's kind of like survival. Like if something's really good for you to have a taste, have it reflected in the taste is awesome. And, know, somehow we've got to this place where, well, if anything's good for you, it's probably going to taste bad. But the way nature designed it, the way it's designed is if it's full of those phytochemicals, it's it's going to. 

be more flavorful and hence you're going to desire that more, which is going to help your survival, right? I mean, it seems like that's all connected.