Stephan Van Vliet: Our Hidden Hunger

This week on Regenerative Renegades, host Matt Maier continues his conversation with Dr. Stephan Van Vliet, a leading nutrition scientist at Utah State University with deep expertise in metabolomics. In Part 2, they dig into an omnivorous diet, why cravings don’t meet our true needs, the nutrient decline in modern agriculture, and how whole foods and regenerative systems offer hope for the future of food.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, regenerative renegades. We're glad you're back with us. Dirk, and this episode gives me hope. I hope you enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

I mean, I 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? Yeah. So you have to, but the deepness of flavor is perhaps also something that you need to become accustomed to. And perhaps within the U.S. society at the moment, we're more adapted to the corn-fed beef.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

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 breastfed 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. producing a great steak but then on the other side it's like oh 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 it people say well describe it for me once like well it's a fuller flavor it probably has more texture than a mushy grain fed steak you're gonna have to chew it most likely and but the flavor and 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.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah, and that flavor profile that you described, Matt, that is actually phytochemicals that people are tasting. They're tasting. So that's it. We study that from a 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 mean, you could argue I study it, but, you know, 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 cheeses, 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 that data as a human nutrition scientist, I'm thinking like, hey, 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 people 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 benefits so this comes back to this connection between health and flavor and

SPEAKER_02 3:57

and really you know to me it's kind of like survival like if something's really good for you to have it taste, have it reflected in the taste is awesome. And, you 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 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.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah, it is all connected. And I think the most thoughtful example could be if you pick a fresh strawberry in a season locally because obviously it's strawberries yeah it tastes great right and otherwise it might taste a little bit bland and I think carrots are the same thing is that is it hard to maybe get children to eat carrots perhaps but then a fresh carrot grown in a rich soil I mean I argue it tastes like candy yeah that's right

SPEAKER_02 5:02

yeah my dad has used that phrase for cherry tomatoes out of our garden my whole life. It's like, go out, pick the cherry tomatoes. They're like candy. He says it every year. I hear him every year say it. He's still alive. God bless him. But it was exactly at our garden, those vegetables. And then when you're forced out of season to go buy them at the grocery store, you're like, okay, I can eat this, but I'm not craving it. I'm not going, oh, I'm going to have another one of those. That's really good. And that's anything, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, you know, grown in that rich soil which we need to regenerate in this country. But yeah, you know, you try that, there's nothing else like it.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

No, and also this speaks back to humans, right? Because, I mean, yes, we're using modern scientific techniques to look at that. But, I mean, humans would have not have survived if they could not link flavor to health, right? Very cool, yes. So a lot of it is just putting scientific data behind it, but it's, you know, if in the lab... If in the lab we eat that strawberry, right, ourselves, and then eat the other strawberry, then without running it through a mass spec, we would do it. But, I mean, we can observe it already. It's not like, you know, like it's not magic either, right? And then, yeah, you test it and you see, well, all these compounds are like threefold elevated in this strawberry, which is not surprising because that's the flavor. It gives flavor to those compounds or to those foods as well. And the same thing– like with grass-fed beef, which I understand is a little bit, and flavor and taste is subjective, but what we can say is that grass-fed beef is more complex.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yes. Yes, definitely more complex. So that makes me think we've all heard anecdotally about how the level of nutrition in an apple or pick your fruit or food or whatever over the past, I don't know, 60, 70, 80 years, whatever the time period is of our more industrialized agriculture. So that has happened. We all know that we've heard there's less nutrition and that maybe that's a link to obese because of the craving for the nutrition encourages us to eat more calories. But do you have any data or insights from a scientific standpoint about, A, the causes of that and, B, the levels of that deterioration of nutrition?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah, there is some interesting work on that for sure within both studies from the UK and the US. And these studies have predominantly looked at minerals because minerals, we've been able to measure those fairly easily since probably the 50s or so. And what that shows is that you see a decrease in various minerals ranging from 20, 50% or something like that. This could be related to soil health, but it could also be related to selecting for high yielding varieties so this is commonly referred to as the dilution effect which is quite literally you have diluted it because let's say the blueberry that you used to grow is this big and now it's this big so it has more water it is bigger it yields better but it has the same amount of absolute amount of minerals but you just increase the size of the blueberry uh twice or you increase the size of the carrot right so this is so it's it's partly This dilution effect due to breed selection. The other part could be due to also depletion of nutrients within the soil. So it's probably a combination of the two. So I think moving forward, if you ask me, it's finding a balance between nutrient density and yield. And if we can strike a balance to that, I think we are in a good spot for sure. Is it... Is wheat a good example

SPEAKER_02 9:05

of that, where the breeding, the hybridding of wheat has raised the gluten levels and also decreased the nutrient density?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah, you end up increasing the protein content, increasing the starch content, and it has to do with, there's no blaming the farmers or industry for that. What are you being paid for? You're being paid per ton of wheat or ton of corn. You're not being paid for nutrient density. If you were being paid for nutrient density, then that dilution effect would not do very well. We

SPEAKER_02 9:42

got to get there. We got to get there to that nutrition. What's the value of the food that you're producing, not the volume of the food that you're producing?

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah. And, you know, this also feeds in. I mean, there's some suggestion of that within the literature. I mean, you can see this more so within animals. Going back to a cow, right? A cow will overeat. on its ration to obtain the nutrients that it needs. We noticed from rodents in animal work that rodents would overeat to get the nutrients. In humans, that could also be the case. Why do we eat more calories? Because the calories that we're eating have less vitamins and minerals and other phytochemicals. So if we are like any other animal, and we probably are, we just do slightly better on a math test, but other than that, metabolically yeah slightly better that's right although depending on the scenario that you look at right I put my in terms of survival in the wild I probably put my money on a pig but on a math test I would put it put my money on a human but you know other than that we're not metabolically that different so it is it could be it's really hard to prove these things out in humans because we live complex lives and have a bunch of other things going on right but

SPEAKER_02 11:04

It makes sense. It makes sense. Cravings, you know, are real. Why do we have the craving? You know, what are we actually craving besides calories? We feel hungry, but what are we hungry for other than just pure energy?

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah. And this is called, in the literature, it's called hidden hunger. It means that you get this paradox where people eat a lot of calories, they are overweight and obese, but they have a micronutrient deficiency. And that is is obviously a very strange thing, if you think about that, because that is a modern phenomenon, where you're adequately fat in terms of calories, but you're not adequately fat in terms of micronutrients. And this is, again, there's some initial work, and this is extrapolating from the literature, but we know these phytochemicals have antioxidant effects, they protect us from metabolic disease, and those have also gone down quite considerably within our diets. I know metabolic disease, such as heart disease and obesity, diabetes, cancer, they have multiple reasons for it. But potentially one of the reasons could be is that we're ingesting less phytochemicals within our diet because our foods are now less phytochemically rich. So we have a larger... More processed. Yeah, more processed indeed. And as a result, it probably plays a role in the rise of metabolic disease.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Isn't there a link with... the Western diet, if you just talk Western diet for a little bit and the omega-6, omega-3 ratio, but when cultures move from their native diet and start to adopt more of a Western diet, I think these go hand-in-hand, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

They do go hand-in-hand, and you can especially see it with folks that switch quite rapidly. Let's say you have interesting studies from people from Southeast Asia that then move over maybe to the US, and they abandon their traditional diet within one generation. You see that the health deteriorates really, really fast. And there's some nice work in native peoples as well that show that. I mean, don't get me wrong, even amongst Northwest Europeans, your health will go down the crapper eventually. But since we ate refined grains probably a little bit earlier, we're a little bit adapted to that. But yes, The standard Western diet, no one seems to get healthier from that. And the reason is, I think if you ask me, is that two-thirds of it is ultra-processed foods. And in terms of ultra-processed foods, we're not talking about like fortified almond milk or tofu or something like that. That's probably pretty good for you. But it's, you know, cookies, pastries, pizza, TV dinners that are– probably not as nutritious as the fresh thing there's a lot of maybe

SPEAKER_02 14:10

you know fake meat

SPEAKER_01 14:12

maybe yeah or fake meat I don't know I mean I wouldn't say like the studies would not suggest that that is unhealthy per se but it would also what it does suggest is that it's not a one to one nutritional replacement compared to beef because you have a similar protein content but there has been two trials done on that that suggest that it is it is with good health at least in the short term obviously long term we don't know because the nutritional profiles are so different but and you could argue that maybe eating a more like artisanal black bean burger or just some you know legumes or some actual black beans might be might be better for you perhaps I don't know and there's probably a benefit of eating maybe those black beans with some beef because they are very much traditionally different and to top it off and Israel really comes interesting the synergy of food let's say you make a chili and you put in both beans and beef actually the iron uptake from the beans is improved because of the presence of that beef and this comes back again to sort of the work that we do in a metabolomic space we don't really know what type of nutrients are responsible for that it's called the meat factor it basically means that if you have meat with certain plant foods you can actually increase the uptake of iron and zinc from those plant foods because of the unidentified compounds within meat that can actually help with that. It's probably, I mean, it's a guesstimate, but people have hypothesized that it might be choline, it might be other cofactors that are within the meat that can actually aid in the absorption of non-heme iron from plants. And that, of course, is really interesting and speaks back to the benefit of consuming an omnivorous diet where one plus one is not two, it's three, right? Because you're able to better capitalize on the nutrients within the plant when you eat this with some ground beef in your chili.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

That's awesome. So, the bottom line is, instead of making your steak a salad, put steak on your salad.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

I would say that that is, yeah, I would argue for that, that the omnivorous diet is arguably the, you know, if I look at it from a human nutrition standpoint, and we do food profiling both on animal-sourced foods, but also in crops. There's overlap, but they're also very much different. And if we accept, and there's a lot of studies that suggest that the dietary diversity or phytochemical diversity is associated with good health, I personally do not see why you want to exclude either one if you're able to consume both. Because you get just this synergistic effect where they are complementary to each other. And so nutrients are found in plant sourced foods other nutrients are found in animal sourced foods and certainly even though if a cow is consuming or goat maybe that's a perfect example plants that are purple right flowering plants they get anthocyanidins they might transfer them into metabolized versions but I would still say that goat meat is maybe not a proper replacement for just eating a blueberry yourself, which would also provide you with anthocyanidins. But as I mentioned, the goats would eat plants that most humans would consider weeds. And for a goat, that is just feed. And with cows also, you could arguably train them to, but you could probably speak better to that than I can, train them to consume certain plants that may be initially considered unpalatable or not preferred. For sure.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

For sure. You know, I got a question a couple of days ago in a presentation I was giving from a vegan who had that diet, had a vegan diet about eating beef. And he had stated, well, I quit eating beef because of the environmental effects and use of water and numerous, you know, more environmental factors, not considering nutrition really. And that's, I just wanted to point out that it's not the cow, it's the how on its practices, because when you are grazing cows, cattle, for example, you know, there's so much beneficial impact on the land that they're grazing as far as regenerating soil, providing wildlife habitat, improving the water cycle, so then improving the organic matter in the soil so the water can be absorbed by the soil, that really the beef is a byproduct of all the benefits of just that managed grazing on the land. And that if you're concerned about that, really just make sure you're eating pastured or grass fed or the type of beef that allows it to have this positive impact, pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, for example, by having more green days and more photosynthesis happening and putting that carbon in the soil helps to regenerate it. But they're just such a, the animal, the cattle are such a fantastic tool for what I believe we need to do in our food system that I'd really want to urge people to think about that and not just take the one fell swoop and say cattle bad. Not going to eat them. They're just bad for everybody. They're bad for the environment, bad for our water, all of that. So it's more nuanced than that in what I've witnessed.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, I would agree with those nuances. And certainly, given the environment that we have created, I think it's probably– the right thing to find a balance between wildlife and then also managed grazing because yes we do have we have created roads we have created infrastructure we have created homes right so uh so it which makes the rewilding part a very important piece because that's obviously the argument that people would uh would would uh give you um but um maybe within well i know you're a little bit outside of an urban environment but still a uh habited environment uh if you were able to manage animals and use that for the good I think that is a viable way and we need to certainly find a good balance on that and again it's like yes I agree cow and the how and then also but here I'm maybe playing devil's advocate and I can certainly appreciate that Matt from because it's easy talking for me because I'm not raising goats in my backyard but you know the multi species is also I think a key thing and even and I don't know how we maybe get consumers to do that certainly more popular in Europe is that also having very efficient herbivores in there like geese and duck and rabbits and things such as that right like that also exploit different niches and there's a lot of studies to suggest that yeah you can really stick enterprises on the same field and produce more pounds of however you want to put this pounds of meat or pounds of food or in this case we make the argument for nutrient density but that also more, more, more nutrient dense, but that, that does require a shift because obviously people would say sometimes, and you know, it's all modeling of course, is that, yeah, we cannot have all cows out on pasture. Uh, and, and maybe, maybe that's true. Uh, but there are studies that would suggest that integrating multiple herbivores, you, and, and stake those on the same land, then, uh, you are able to hold more herbivores, but that would also require, uh, people to, uh, uh, eat other sources of meat and typically there needs to be you know a well maybe maybe consumer preference can switch typically there needs to be a large scale cataclysmic event that that forces people to start eating rabbits right and knock on wood let's hope that does not that's not the reason for that to happen but you get my point right it's it's yeah I do

SPEAKER_02 22:22

and then you know that links to just financial survival I get quite a few young people that want to let lifestyle of homesteading and raising their food, but they also need to earn a living. And that path is not by, if you're starting off with no land and no real attachment to any kind of legacy land, the way to survive is to actually stack those enterprises. So if you had 10 acres, okay, what species could you put on 10 acres, stack them, produce the meat of whatever it is, vegetables, fruit, honey, Now, that's the way to financial survival. It's not by buying cattle and a bunch of land. That whole industry is really difficult to enter and to turn a profit even if you do enter it. So that's what I encourage people to do is exactly what you described, which actually works great for the environment as well. So it's great that those two, financial survival and the beneficial effects to the environment, work hand in hand.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Yeah, and I think that's so important, especially with land prices these days, indeed. If you have a smaller amount, then you're kind of forced. And usually those things are what move the needle. I hate to say it, but usually it's like when people change when they need to change, right? Or when the environmental factors forces them to change. I mean, I often talk to farmers so often that have gone down the path of regenerative agriculture is that they were forced for some reason to do that, right? Like either for financial reasons financial reasons or other reasons. It's like, okay, I need to switch over my business in order to remain viable. And then, so I think that's a fantastic path. And indeed, you know, you have this synergistic, you create a synergistic effect for sure where it's likely that your plant diversity increases. It benefits the bees, right? If you're producing honey, that honey is going to be more nutrient dense. Maybe forages grow faster, then the cow is going to benefit from that and you get this like synergistic effect and I think that part is that you know when I speak to ranchers and I think that's where the research will need to head in the future is that you probably empirically observe that that is the case and I hear that from a lot of farmers that empirically observe that but then if I go back to my office and read the literature that is not immediately clear there is some work in there but you know I convince myself I can definitely convince myself within half an hour that grass-fed operation I just was is the worst thing ever for the environment, right? But that probably means we're not capturing. If I look at, you know, modeling on an Excel spreadsheet, right, where it's like, okay, needs this much water, produces this much greenhouse gas, uses this much land, but it does not capture all of those nuances you just described. And I think that complexity needs to be incorporated into research and trying to capture... Yeah, how that does. And hopefully that can also then help with policy. But in order to move the needle on food policy, we do need hard data. But it is, of course, I mean, you know, like I said, if you're testing grass-fed beef outside on pasture or feedlot beef, then I cannot be a complete surprise that that yields a different metabolic profile, a different nutrient density profile, because the diets are just day and night different.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Well, and on that whole stacking of enterprise, I just crossed my mind is something we realized last year. We've got honeybees on the farm, right, in various locations. And the man that manages them, you know, was wondering why we were producing more honey than other locations. And what I realized was because we're mimicking nature on how we graze the land and we allow the plants to recover, we could have a plant bloom three or four times in the growing season, but left to its own devices without any grazing or disruption, it would bloom once and then it would be done for the season. So we have red clover blooming in September because we let it rest for 45 days from the last time it was grazed, which then the honeybees love because they're getting this, this, you know, um, food source, um, multiple times moving around and they just, you know, they find it. We don't have to have to show them anything, but if it's there and readily available, they keep working as long as it's there. We haven't even begun to understand not only the benefits, but just how everything works symbiotically in nature when you can get as close as possible to replicating it.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, no, I agree. And that's something we can definitely observe. And that's why I also feel to an extent is that I mean, it's very likely that people, populations, or generations before us, or even civilizations before us, had figured these things out. Otherwise, we would not have survived, right? Because there have been plenty of agricultural civilizations before this that had very elaborate systems and probably knew, why did people figure out across the globe that maybe, you know, think about it like here in Native America, right? Or Native Americans, like the three sisters, like squash and beans, and You know, like you have beans and rice that go well together and squash that grows well and, you know, it has agricultural benefits. So it's

SPEAKER_02 28:05

likely that... Can you just explain that a little bit for people who aren't familiar with the three sisters concept?

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah, I mean, it's just like, you know, and it comes back to growing plant diversity in the past when you would grow multiple crops together and there's especially a large body of register that's growing like beans and squash, for instance, together have very beneficial effects for soil health, but also for the plants. And then if you likely incorporated that with other plant sources as well, you get this synergy. And so I think we're seeing that in modern science is that a polyculture of plants is typically better for soil health. It is better for biodiversity. And what we're finding out now is that typically that healthy competition or maybe it's even a partnership, because that's how I would describe it as a partnership, is actually beneficial for the plant. But in our current days, we grow most of the things in monocultures. And that is actually not the best way. And maybe another analogy to use is that this healthy competition, if you are running a marathon by yourself, you probably run slower than if you have a couple other people running with you, right? And you can benefit from each other and feed on each other. each other and motivate each other. And maybe in plant chemistry, there's arguably something similar going on. And then putting an animal on top of that as well, that capitalizes on that synergy is something that we can, I think, observe empirically

SPEAKER_02 29:39

and see it. Well, I think it's just fascinating that whole, that burgeoning study of those relationships that the plants have when there's diverse plants and how they're sharing resources, basically, you know, from what I understand, why Yeah. native plants more grasses and we get a cocktail of 20 plus plants well we see that field that we converted from monoculture to diverse grassland perform better in all different types of weather that happens in happens in a year that that that's the plants figure it out if they have enough tools at their at their ready

SPEAKER_01 30:48

yeah yeah no that that that's that's true and and it also in the down on a pasture you see this with like multi-species so you know, maybe you have various legumes in there with, uh, with, with, with other grasses or, or as he said, you need three sisters, right? You had like corn and then with, uh, with, with, with a legume in, uh, uh, uh, as well. And then with squash and beans, right? Uh, beans as, as, as legumes. And, uh, so you, you see this, uh, this synergy happening too. And I think that's why within that beef study actually is one of the strongest correlations that we found with, uh, the nutrient density of beef, uh, was plant diversity, especially with regards to phytochemical origins and omega-3 profiles. I mean, biological systems are inherently messy and we probably understand not even half of it. But we did a series of correlations and really one correlation that did shake out was the plant diversity piece with nutrient density and suggesting, and perhaps it's not surprising, is that you get better fatty acid profiles and you get a more diverse diverse array of phytochemicals within that. And even more so than maybe your traditional soil measures of soil organic matter, of total exchange capacity. It's also not that simple that there's more zinc in your soil equals more zinc in your plant or equals more zinc in your beef. It was not that simple. That correlation wasn't there. In fact, there's some work to suggest that if you have less zinc in your soil, you got more in your plant. And so you get this paradox maybe, but on a whole, on the group level, what we did find in that beef study is that managing within a given eco-region, it has a biodiversity versus managing it as a commodity crop field, you would see on a group level, better soil health, more soil organic matter, more minerals, better total exchange capacity in those fields that were measured as... That's

SPEAKER_02 32:51

so huge. That right there is... The study and the education is just the diversity introduced has soil health implications, positive soil health implications that then get transferred to the meat product, whatever the meat product is, in this case, beef. And then that gets transferred to the beef. And so there's a reason why we need that diversity. It's reflected in the beef. It's reflected in the flavor. And then it also continues on into the human health regime. It's amazing. It's really amazing. I have to emphasize that because it's almost unreal. I remember the first time when I read that ratio, that correlation that you found between the diversity and the six to three fatty acid ratio. I was like, what? I would have never guessed that. I'm not a scientist, but I would have never guessed that correlation.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Yeah. I mean, what it probably is related to this, Green plants are very rich in the omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid, the plant omega-3. And if you can keep your pastures greener and you can have more diversity, you end up with just more omega-3s in your forages. And that translates one-to-one to the omega-3 content of the beef. That's clear. An upcoming paper that will come out one of the students made a really nice graph that's basically, we look at what's a concept called omega balance, because it's a little bit more intuitive and easier to display, but it basically is the proportion of omega-3s to total polyunsaturated fatty acids. So it would be omega-3s, the proportion of omega-3s to total omega-3s and 6s. And you see that in a green plant, this is about 70%. So 70% of all PUFAs, polyunsaturated fatty acids, is omega-3s. And then you see this, I mean, it goes through the rumen, so it's not like 70% omega-3s into four, it's equal 70% omega-3s into beef, but it goes to about like 30 or 40%. And then you have like the TMR down here with a low omega balance, so low in omega-3s, and you can draw a straight line to the beef there that is also low in omega-3s. And

SPEAKER_02 35:16

TMR for listeners is like a grinder of grains and things to make a ration for a feedlot beef, but just one. explain that. That's right. Yeah, that's super fascinating. I'm so glad you're doing this work. Okay, before we wrap up, first of all, I've made a note that I want to buy my cheese and dairy from Europe. So just because of the practices. But I'd like to talk a little bit about it. It seems like there's this real awakening happening linked to high omega-6 ratios in the Western diet that leads to consumers' desire to reduce seed oils and increase animal fat. We've seen it in our business. I've never really seen anything quite like this takeoff. And I'm wondering from your perspective what you can say about that.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

Yeah, I'd say my interpretation of the literature and some of the findings that we've made, probably the big issue in the human diet is the absence of omega-3s that's probably more concerning the absence of omega-3s or low intakes of omega-3s is probably more concerning than higher intakes of omega-6 but I also acknowledge that there's a yin and yang involved in that in the sense that if you are consuming more omega-3s you're probably consuming less omega-6s and they also compete for the same pathway within our body so there is a relationship between them but it does seem like if you it does seem in very correlation studies, it seems like that the absence of omega-3s is much more related to cognitive function, cardiovascular disease risk than perhaps the high omega-6 intake. But if you are bringing down your cedar oil intake or omega-6 intake, probably by definition, you're going to up your omega-3 intake. So I think that is the main thing also that we found. And an interesting part on this is that, yes, the omega-6s in grass-shed beef are a little bit lower, but they're not That much lower. But what does make a two, three-fold jump is the omega-3s. And that's why you get this beneficial omega-6 to 3 ratio in grass-fed beef. And another important nuance to this is that we actually did a study where we fed everyone foods from regenerative or pasture-based systems versus from conventional systems. But we gave them whole foods. For me, as a nutrition scientist, it's hard to... give them, you know, feed them all the processed foods. Now actually we're doing a follow-up study on that where we actually just give people only the meat and the eggs. And we are telling them, just consume your habitual diet as you normally would. But in this other study that was funded by the Green Acres Foundation, we gave them whole foods exclusively. So we also gave them all their produce. And just not consuming a standard American diet was by far the major driver for their health what we found in that study was is that even if you

SPEAKER_02 38:33

the fact that they were eating whole foods

SPEAKER_01 38:35

just eating whole foods yeah yeah and even they were consuming feedlot beef but they still got healthier because they just weren't eating like a bunch of ultra processed foods so that that got them there what thing that we found the study though and this was like seven weeks on his diet is that the regenerative diet got them to a healthier level of blood work. So less triglycerides, better other lipoprotein profiles, cholesterol profiles. They got them there a little bit faster. So that is the thing. So maybe that means that if you consume a regenerative, you know, foods from regenerative agriculture for 30 years, maybe that has a benefit. But just not consuming a standard American diet will probably get you 80, 90% of the way there. So that is an important part because the circuit omega 63 profile of people at baseline was 60 so 16 to 1 16 to 1 yeah 16 to 1 but just putting on all foods diet even on the conventional diet with feedlot beef and conventional chicken and pork it got them to an omega 63 ratio of 11 okay within 7

SPEAKER_02 39:51

weeks big percent reduction

SPEAKER_01 39:52

that's a big percent drop yes they already had a drop but if you consider it like feedlot beef still has an omega-6 to 3 ratio of 8. So it's still a lot better than, it just tells you how poor the standard American diet is to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

So the standard American diet is more processed, less whole foods, more fried foods probably, more processed foods. So making a meal at home, starting with whole foods as your ingredients is probably a real key to improving your health.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

It is, even if that means you cannot afford grass-fed beef, yes.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

So I think that's, that's the key part. Uh, indeed that's, uh, that was a major, major finding. And of course, I mean, it's not to say that grasshopper we've talked about, I mean, definitely on paper, the nutritional profile, uh, looks improved. And, and I would probably hypothesize that over a longer periods of time, these things were, uh, may make a difference. Uh, but yeah, in, in a seven week trial, it was just like, it was so overwhelmed by just seven weeks. That's a, that's a fast turnaround. It's a fast turnaround. That's what's so fascinating. And we've seen this now in two studies. If you take people off a sound American diet, you can, uh, their blood work, which probably like creeps up into not so favorable ranges over 20 year period. You can, you can undo a lot of that in like two months.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

A new book, Dr. Van Vliet's seven week challenge.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Yeah, that's right. Well, the challenge becomes after that, which is sticking with it.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

Sure. You got to continue, but you can do something in seven weeks.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Yeah, it is. It's, Yeah, it is amazing. Yeah, yeah. But it tells you how forgiving the body is. And it also tells you that it's never too late. Like you can, indeed, like

SPEAKER_02 41:36

have,

SPEAKER_01 41:37

yeah, even in your 50s, 60s, right? And you can probably, at least from a blood work perspective, like I said, maybe people had elevated glucose for like many years, but then from a blood work perspective, you can not see that. Typically, you cannot, you know, like you have prediabetes and then you cannot say cure diabetes. But yeah, you can bring it in remission into the sense where it's, if you don't go too far, there can definitely be some issues with the pancreas and things like that. If you don't take it too far, you can go back to a level where it's like it never even happened.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Wow. You know, and that mirrors nature. So our bodies are resilient if we just adopt the right things based on what we learn. But nature is the same way. You know, we can degrade a piece of land for 70 years and just take, take, take, take, take, till, till, spray, everything. But you know, you give me seven years and I'll fix it. I'll get it to being regenerative and being much more productive than it was before those seven years. And that's after 70 years. So there is hope. There is hope. And, you know, maybe that's how we can wrap up is, you know, what do you see for hope? And I think that's the study that you're just talking about in the seven weeks is a great start. But is there anything else you'd like to add as far as how What brings us hope for our food system and our health going forward?

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Yeah, well, what brings me hope is that, you know, at some point we do have to turn the corner on this. And I see this big increase in people wanting to know where their food comes from, how this is grown, what is the farmer behind this, and what is the nutrient density within this.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

What are the practices? It's like I say, it's not enough to know your farmer's name is Joe. You got to know his practice. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 43:39

that's right. when we were forced to have integrated systems because we couldn't put a bunch of synthetics inputs onto our fields. But anyway, not to get too much off a tangent, is that this idea of rekindling this knowledge and this movement where more people, consumers are becoming more educated, there's more data that comes out about like, hey, you know, like you said, I didn't know plant diversity was linked to omega-3 profiles and now we're also finding that plant diversity is linked to phytochemicals and those phytochemicals enhance the flavor of your beef and your strawberry and I think having that knowledge well A could potentially drive the consumer and B can also perhaps ultimately drive policy and get a bigger adoption of this and I see this too where bigger players within the retail space are also starting to pay attention to this now as well and perhaps wanting to know more about food sourcing because the angle there may be indeed better for the environment but then also creating flavors arguably even more so than health, flavor is the reason why people eat the foods that they eat. So if we can improve flavor that way I think that is what gives me hope that this is a movement that continues to grow.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Well, it's such important work. And I know in my 35 years of being involved in food and farming, agriculture in some way, I totally agree that the wind is at our back. People are starting to ask more questions about where their food is raised, how the practices that went into raising their food. And there's so many benefits to just asking those questions, voting with your dollars, and then the policy and the mindset. sets will shift and we see it happening. So I'm glad you see it happening as well. It's happening in our lives and our business on this end. So thank you very much because it's your data, your studies that are going to help open those eyes. It's so important. There's so few people doing it. And so you're a rock star in the industry, Dr. Van

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Fleet. Thank you so much. But I do want to acknowledge that it is not just me. There's a lot of people that that contribute to this. A lot of collaborators within this space. So it's definitely a team effort. And also, of course, farmers such as yourself that are doing this movement and are stimulating research into that. So thank you for that. I sometimes think that a lot of what I do is just, how do you say it, putting some data behind or testing a notion that farmers oftentimes already have.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Well, it's true. But without the data, it's just anecdotal, Matt's saying or whatever. So, you know, a farmer's knowing it, but the data is so important. The study is so important. And you're, you know, what makes you such a pleasure to work with is that you're so kind and so humble. And yes, it's a team effort. We got team on this end, you got a team on that end, and there's broader teams working on this. So together, you know, let's make this place better than we found it. Again, I'm so appreciative. Thank you so much, man.