INGREDIENTS:
What does that ingredient on your label actually do in your body, and why is TikTok so mad about it?
On Ingredients, we pick one nutrient or ingredient at a time and unpack it from every angle: biochemistry, physiology, public health, and the social media discourse that shapes how we feel about food.
Hosted by Susana, a registered dietitian, and MJ, a public health person, this podcast is where evidence meets everyday eating, and nutrition trends get a much-needed reality check.
Find Susana here:
TikTok and Instagram: susana.ritchey.rd
Bluesky Social: susanaritcheyrd.bsky.social
An Everything is Public Health Production
Website: https://www.everythingispublichealth.com/
INGREDIENTS:
Meat
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Who knew the carnivore diet has sub-categories? And was does it have to do with toxic masculinity? Join us as we discuss the media and political climate around meat and meat-centric diets.
Find Susana here:
TikTok and Instagram: susana.ritchey.rd
Bluesky Social: susanaritcheyrd.bsky.social
Music Credit:
Pixabay: TVARI - Tokyo Cafe
An Everything is Public Health production.
Say MJ, have you ever wanted to experience the fusion of a chicken wing and an espresso martini while meeting a fraction of your protein needs?
SPEAKER_01I need you to understand the words chicken wing, espresso, and martini should not be in the same sentence.
SPEAKER_00I felt that way initially.
SPEAKER_01What is this?
SPEAKER_00Okay, let me back up a little bit. So on March 5th, Buffalo Wild Wings.
SPEAKER_02Um, I'm too great start.
SPEAKER_00So apparently on March 15th, Buffalo Wild Wings is releasing the wing-flavored espresso proteini, which sounds horrific. But when I read the description, the cocktail is infused with Buffalo Dry Rub. I was like, that's not as bad as like actual chicken flavor. Like I've had a coffee-flavored burger, and that was nice.
SPEAKER_01Okay, it's very different to reverse the order, right? Coffee-flavored burger is you're infusing notes of coffee into the meat. A wing flavor coffee martini?
SPEAKER_00You're forgetting.
SPEAKER_01Realistically, that's like what a chicken tender.
SPEAKER_00It is upsetting that like people would go to a wings place and get their protein from liquid. From the martini.
SPEAKER_01Instead of the actual chicken. Okay. Wow, what fresh hell is this?
SPEAKER_00You know, after our last episode where we talked about protein-packed items, I mean, this is perhaps the most dramatic example I can think of.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I want to be in the boardroom of whoever pitched this and why it got approved.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I guess it was like a room full of people like me where they were like, I've had a coffee rubbed burger.
SPEAKER_01You're thinking way too highly of them. Like these are definitely a bunch of, I'm gonna say, these are definitely a bunch of men in a boardroom who probably aren't as diet or nutrition conscious as you. So please don't elevate them and please don't degrade yourself in the process.
SPEAKER_00I have to say, as a dietitian, to think that this comes out of a health trend, and we have now created a chicken wing cocktail.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, peak America.
SPEAKER_00Pretty devastating. Just the darkest parts of America.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's manifesting in these weird cocktails anyway.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to meat. Kind of a part two for protein. A continuation of our previous episode where we discussed protein with a sharper focus on society's growing obsession with animal products, and an obsession that often defies every ounce of reason, as we just saw and as we'll see later.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think we decided to split this episode into two because it does feel very different. Even though meat is in the protein category, we felt like it deserves its own space because it certainly has mutated beyond just what the protein craze has mutated to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it feels like protein could have like seven subcategories, but meat is probably going to be like the biggest one that we need to address.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's start like how we do every episode. Let's start with the boring science part. What is meat? And I guess more pertinently, what is not meat?
SPEAKER_00Right. So, meat, as we all know, it's technically the flesh of an animal. It's made up of predominantly muscle, fat, and connective tissue. Super gross to think about, but it is what it is, yeah. It is what it is. It also, of course, includes organs like heart, liver, kidney, tripe, brain, tongue, all those fun things that we don't always eat so much of.
SPEAKER_01Any sort of flesh is meat. We don't eat as much organ meat as perhaps some other cultures, but definitely globally, these organ products are also consumed.
SPEAKER_00So the question of what is meat might seem kind of silly to define such an obvious term, but it's actually been contested a good bit because of these kind of encroaching like plant industries or even lab-grown meats, where for like advertising, marketing purposes, like who's allowed to use the word meat has even been kind of a topic of debate.
SPEAKER_01Big proponent of artificial lab-grown meat. I think it's you get all the fun without any of the cost. So big ups for it.
SPEAKER_00And you don't have to, you know, hurt animals, which some people care more about than others. Personally, that would be a reason why I would like to me, lab-grown meat sounds pretty like sketchy, but I would do it for a cute cow.
SPEAKER_01I definitely remember there was a lot of lobbying by the meat industry to not allow them to use the term meat.
SPEAKER_00Same thing with milk. I mean, you'll still see like almond milk. A couple companies tried to be like preemptive about it. Like there's that company malt, M-A-L-K. Then there's some spell milk with a Y.
SPEAKER_01Or just drink, almond drink or soy drink.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01But it's all like lawyer stuff, not really something that we need to get into. We'll let the lawyer sort that one out. But yeah, big ups for artificial lab-grown or plant-based meat. Delicious.
SPEAKER_00For our purposes here, we will stick to the simpler, the most obvious definition, which is just the flesh of an animal. From a macronutrient perspective, um, macronutrients being our carbs, our proteins, fat, meat tends to be highest in protein, with the proportion of fat varying pretty significantly, depending on what cut of meat, what animal you're talking about. So for example, obviously bacon or even farmed salmon is going to be like fattier than something like a chicken breast or beef tenderloin. We won't get too into depth here because this is about protein, but meat does tend to contain mostly saturated fats. Some meat contains more polyunsaturated fat, like a fish. So salmon and cold water fish tend to be really good sources of polyunsaturated fats known as omega-3s.
SPEAKER_01Pretty much protein and fat is what you find in meat.
SPEAKER_00Right. You could argue there's some glycogen or storage forms of glucose.
SPEAKER_02I feel like that's negligible.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. If you want to scare a carnivore, though, you could tell them that there's a little bit of glycogen in there.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Use words they don't know, which it seems like they don't know a lot of words, so it'd be pretty easy.
SPEAKER_00More on that later.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So in our last episode on protein, we talked a bit about amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. We also discussed that there are nine essential amino acids that we can get from food.
SPEAKER_01That we have to get from food.
SPEAKER_00We have to get them from food. And I wanted to touch on these again briefly because a lot of people advocate for animal-based protein because it's considered high quality. So this is technically true, but what does it mean? So we base the dietary quality of a protein on the degree to which it contains all of the essential amino acids. So a high-quality protein would be complete with all nine amino acids. The highest quality protein tends to come from animal sources like meat. And Jim Bros have, you know, historically been very quick to point that out. To be fair to plants, though, there are a few exceptions. Quinoa and soy are examples of plant-based proteins with all nine essential amino acids.
SPEAKER_01Plants not having all nine essential amino acids is only a problem if you only eat one plant.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. That is key here. It is pretty irrelevant. And I feel like the only reason we're talking about this is because of the Jim Bro carnivore conversations where people use that word quality.
SPEAKER_02Don't take them too seriously.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think the word quality is a bit misleading because normally quality means something is good, right? Or better. In this case, quality doesn't necessarily equate to the most healthy. Sometimes incomplete or lower quality proteins can be incredibly health promoting. So if people eat a variety of plant proteins, they'll get all of the essential amino acids pretty effortlessly. For instance, beans and rice are individually incomplete, but they are complete when combined. They come together, they provide all the essential amino acids. Same thing when it comes to something like whole grain bread and peanut butter. People used to think you had to pair sources like this together at each meal. This is not necessary.
SPEAKER_01Why did they think this?
SPEAKER_00No, that was like the 80s vegetarianism. They thought you had to like pair together? Yeah, it's like beans and rice, peanut butter and bread, because you have to have a complete protein at each meal. What was the rationale?
SPEAKER_01I can't okay, whatever. The 80s is a wild time.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and I could be like wrong on that timeline, but that's my perception.
SPEAKER_02I believe you.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely not true. Your body is a lot more resourceful than that. So not necessarily as long as you eat a variety of foods within a few days. The day, week, it'll be fine. However, we might run into like in under-resource countries where people only have access to maybe a stash of rice or a specific type of bread, they might not be getting all the amino acids that they need.
SPEAKER_01Like they have the calories, but they don't have the nutrients, which you see in a lot of poorer countries. And for no reason that I'm mentioning this, a lot of war-torn countries would also have issues of famine where they have the calories because they have like flour and rice, but they don't have the nutrients. And in this case, they don't have the essential amino acids if that's all they have.
SPEAKER_00So the people who bring it up, the gym bros, are probably not the people who are at risk of not getting all of the amino acids that they need.
SPEAKER_01If anything, they're eating too much.
SPEAKER_00So people tend to have pretty strong opinions of what constitutes a good protein source, high-quality protein sources. As I said, people tend to misunderstand the term quality and they think it means animal-based protein is better. People also tend to debate whether eggs or peanut butter are good protein sources. And you will see so many of the most irritating takes of people saying that eggs aren't a good source of protein, or even more offensive to me, that peanut butter isn't a good source of protein.
SPEAKER_01Why? Why did I say this?
SPEAKER_00It has to do with protein efficiency per calorie, essentially.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Less to do with the amino acid composition, but more because if you have a limited amount of calories that you're allowing yourself, something like peanut butter doesn't just have protein, it also has fat. So per calorie.
SPEAKER_01Oh my God. Are we getting into the freaking calorie counting stuff?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know what? It makes sense if you are a gym bro and if you're trying to make the gains with, you know, and staying like whatever, I don't know, cut.
SPEAKER_01I just feel like we shouldn't take dietary guidance from gym bros. I feel like that's just a rule of thumb.
SPEAKER_00They tend to like extrapolate and think that if that's what's important to them, that it's important for everyone else.
SPEAKER_02But it must be good, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But like just because it's not a good protein, quote, good protein source for a bodybuilder does not mean that it is not a good protein source for a child or a teenager or a cancer patient or an elderly person. Like, people have different needs, and those foods do have plenty of protein.
SPEAKER_02I oh my god.
SPEAKER_00I've gotten on my soapbox several times on Instagram and been like, the word good is subjective. I don't know. I get very angry about it.
SPEAKER_01I can see why you get very angry because to me, this is like peak mansplaining where you take something that's like kind of true, and then you extrapolate an entire theory around it, and then you're like, no, no, no, this is gospel. Yeah, and you see that here the extrapolation of because it's good for me, who's someone who's like actively trying to build muscle and cut, and I have the ideal body type. Therefore, it's it has to be good for everybody because but of course everybody will want to look like me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I feel like some people, maybe like the exercise physiologist who is kind of recommending people avoid peanut butter, might understand this, but the dozens of people following him don't, and then they regurgitate that information and it just Yeah, peanut butter is bad. That's just kind of blasphemous for me.
SPEAKER_01It is. It's just such an innocent food.
SPEAKER_00We could have a peanut butter episode. Does that count as an ingredient? I guess just peanuts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maybe in the future when we run out of macro things to do, we'll do peanuts. Okay, so they're blasphemous about eggs and peanut butter for essentially no reason.
SPEAKER_00Right. So I I feel like this is just sort of an introduction to the strong opinions that surround our protein intake. But I feel like if we kind of zoom out a little bit, there's more to the conversation, like why this is such a dramatic topic fraught with controversy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I guess we'll move on to part two of the episode, which is why are we dedicating an entire episode on meat when we already did one for protein? And this is when you absolutely ruined my life by telling me the stuff that you found on the social media space.
SPEAKER_00You're not gonna like it. So, as you probably know, meat is a massive industry, and meat lobbies completely alter the landscape of our country. Just like the NRA has ensured that guns are prolific in our country, various meat-centric lobbies ensure that meat stays very central to American life.
SPEAKER_01This is not an accident.
SPEAKER_00No, and just very recently we saw the 2026 dietary guidelines for Americans were so transparently immensely influenced by the meat and dairy industries. I would encourage anyone to literally just Google conflicts of interest 2026 dietary guidelines for Americans. And it's just, I mean, it's wild.
SPEAKER_01It is wild and so openly against everything I would know about diets and nutrition.
SPEAKER_00It's just like sitting right there. Yeah. It astonishes me. Not really. It was actually very expected.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's so sad the timeline we're living in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, almost all the authors had industry ties to meat and dairy, and we can see that reflected in the guidelines that they provided. If you look at that upside-down pyramid, it is filled with animal products and they take up a lot of space.
SPEAKER_01A little fun fact the food pyramid is actually like two editions ago. We gave up the pyramid, I want to say more than 10 years ago. It changed to a plate because it was a more accurate representation of like how people eat. And the food pyramid has this history of it was created in Sweden. Do you know the story of how the food pyramid was created?
SPEAKER_00I don't think so.
SPEAKER_01The food pyramid was created in Sweden as a guidance of how to eat in order to be alive. Like it was a rationing thing. Like we have like a limited amount of like food supply. So here are the guidelines like you should eat this and you will meet your survival.
SPEAKER_00It's like a bunker pyramid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like a bunker guideline. But America took that and ran away with it and be like, no, no, no. We need to eat a lot of grains and we need to eat a little bit of meat. But then we retired it because it doesn't make sense. Like you should be eating way more vegetables than what the food pyramid suggests, for example.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I'm gonna have to Google. You said Sweden.
SPEAKER_01Let's life fact check this out. Swedish origin. Amid high food prices in 1972. Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare developed the idea of basic foods that were both cheap and nutritious, and supplemental food that added nutrition missing from basic food. Yeah, it was a rationing philosophy. Here are the things that you need to eat to survive. You could kind of see it in the design of the pyramid.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01The bottom is like cheap stuff, grains. You gotta bulk up on those, and then you add some meat and vegetables on top of it. The point is, we retired it. So an inverted pyramid that they propose in 2026 is two levels of wrong because they brought back something that we've already retired and they inverted it.
SPEAKER_00It's a very clear like example of propaganda because they are pretending that we have been using that original food pyramid up until 2026, which is which is simply not true. I have been a dietitian for over five years now, and when I was even in college, we didn't learn about the food pyramid. Ever since I have been in higher education, we've been talking about my plate.
SPEAKER_01So they debut this industry-lobbied food pyramid that's clearly not based on any science.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, the guidelines themselves, it's also kind of weird. They say like limit your saturated fat to less than 10% of your calories, and then they just have like all of this animal fat in the picture, and you're like, well, that seems inconsistent.
SPEAKER_01Their entire ideology is full of hypocrisies and including food.
SPEAKER_00Right. They didn't have the evidence to support it up, and the document is like somewhat, I don't know where their boundaries are for what must be evidence-based and what isn't.
SPEAKER_01They don't care about evidence.
SPEAKER_00But, anyways, so the food pyramid is fairly on trend. We have been seeing things move in a more meat-centric direction. You can hear my explanation a bit from the last episode. I think just that um after sort of the plant-based era in the 2010s, we saw some of the lawsuits I talked about earlier. And then we see sort of some new diets focusing more and more on meats and lots of social pushback on sort of the plant-based vegan movements. And there was a point in time where we started seeing the keto diet, and I was like, oh my God, this is the most extreme diet I've ever heard of. This is as bad as it gets.
SPEAKER_01So you agree because when that came about, and a lot of my friends were trying it, and I'm like, I can't say much because I didn't go to medical school. I'm not like a registered dietitian, but just from me taking basic biochemistry, I think this is a terrible idea.
SPEAKER_00Well, and you know, we won't go into the keto diet too much.
SPEAKER_01Not in this episode.
SPEAKER_00There are occasional medical situations where it's reasonable.
SPEAKER_01They keep citing them, and I'm like, do you think you'll benefit from that, that very niche situation?
SPEAKER_00And even in that niche situation, when you've got a child with epilepsy, they have to fail like several medications. Like this has to be like medication-resistant epilepsy because it is such a difficult diet with so many side effects and like problems. Like it's not just like everything's perfect. It's like, oh, now you have all these new issues to deal with. So I thought that that was like as bad as it was gonna get.
SPEAKER_01Little did you know.
SPEAKER_00No, I wish for the days of the ketogenic diet.
SPEAKER_01That was a beautiful we'll do a keto episode in the future. So we have unfortunately gotten past keto into something worse.
SPEAKER_00Into the dumpster fire, that is the carnivore diet.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it makes me cringe. Yep. Carnivore diet. You know, it's tied up in some insult.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I feel like the gender, the self-esteem, there's so much to that.
SPEAKER_02Like alpha male.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Like, if you have to be a predator, that's scary. That's not good. Like, one thing I've learned haphazardly is there are sort of like different tiers of the carnivore diet. There's different levels of extreme, sort of like vegetarianism. You've got like vegan, lacto-ovo, vegetarian. It's sort of the same with carnivores.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Some are more extreme than others. So a more typical carnivore diet would include animal products like meat, fish, eggs, and some dairy. Strict carnivore probably is not going to have the dairy components.
SPEAKER_01Oh, they're cutting out eggs and dairy.
SPEAKER_00The common carnivore, at least like the influencers I see on social media, a lot of them have like butter. I remember one of my college professors said one of her students was eating like six eggs with the shells at a time.
SPEAKER_02That can't be healthy.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I feel like something really bad could happen with the shells for sure.
SPEAKER_01Oh boy.
SPEAKER_00But that's theoretically, that is a more inclusive diet than some of his friends who wouldn't even have eggs.
SPEAKER_01I can't imagine cutting out. Like you're restricting to a carnivore diet, is already you're losing out so many other food groups. I can't imagine cutting out eggs and dairy too.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if does the name Jordan Peterson or Michaela Peterson like mean anything to you?
SPEAKER_01Unfortunately, I do know who they are. They really gotta go away. They're so bad. We can't get into who they are too much.
SPEAKER_00The first time I heard about Michaela Peterson, though, it was because she was at the was it the White House? She was at that round table with RFK Jr. and Casey Means and like all of these people.
SPEAKER_02Like Baja grifters.
SPEAKER_00Yes. But it's like these people are like in an elite political circle. Anyways, they are the creators of the lion diet, which is more strict than carnivore because you can only eat ruminant meat.
SPEAKER_01Why? You can't even eat fish.
SPEAKER_00I didn't want to learn the why. You can eat beef, lamb, goat, elk, bison, deer, salt, and water.
SPEAKER_01So no chicken or pork or fish.
SPEAKER_00Right. No eggs, no dairy. That makes um Paul Saladino with his animal-based diet sound a little a little better. Do you know Paul Saladino?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Unfortunately, I know I don't want to know these people, but unfortunately I do. So two things. One, I wonder how many people actually stick to this because it's I feel like you would see negative effects relatively quickly.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I mean, even with just like traditional carnivore, not the lion diet, that's actually what happened to Paul Saladino. He was on the carnivore diet for, I don't know, like I think five years. And he started to have like some bad symptoms. He was not feeling well.
SPEAKER_01Of course not.
SPEAKER_00So he decided to add some fruit and honey. And that's what is kind of the animal-based diet.
SPEAKER_01Oh man. If it isn't the consequences of your own actions. Oh boy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So now he eats fruit and honey in addition to meat and dairy. So he's rounding out his diet. Maybe in a few years we'll hear about a few more food groups.
SPEAKER_01Maybe in a few years we'll hear how maybe he has some other health affliction that forces him to eat vegetables and fiber. Who knows? We do know that unfortunately. Colorectal cancers are on the rise, and I'm sure not eating any fiber in his diet is gonna come back to haunt him.
SPEAKER_00There is no fiber in these diets by design because they're afraid of quote anti-nutrients, and fiber is something that you don't absorb. It has anti-nutrients, and they're afraid of that.
SPEAKER_02I mean, they're anti-nutrients.
SPEAKER_00They're genuinely afraid of fiber. So after his health issues, he sort of created this less intense version of the carnivore diet called the animal-based diet. I mean, he became known, his name was Carnivore MD. So, I mean, he is one of the people who made the carnivore diet incredibly popular.
SPEAKER_01And now he can change his handle.
SPEAKER_00He might have. That's a great question. What is he on social media?
SPEAKER_01Did he change his handle because now he can't do the El Carnivore diet because of his health issues?
SPEAKER_00I don't think he's like animal-based diet MD. So I don't know where we stand there.
SPEAKER_01Oh, how the tables have turned.
SPEAKER_00But one of the most like fascinating things to me is his supplement line that he co-owns with the liver king, who, if you look up the liver king.
SPEAKER_01Don't look up what the liver king is. You don't need that in your life.
SPEAKER_00He convinced everyone that he got his manly physique through the carnivore diet. Guess how he got his physique.
SPEAKER_01Well, I know how he got his physique. Didn't he get busted for steroids or something?
SPEAKER_00He did, yes. Um, but no, he still has a thriving supplement company. Um, it's called Heart and Soil. It's the wild west in carnivore world. It kind of appeals to the protein mania for sure. But I think also this like immature man-childism.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, man-child.
SPEAKER_00Like the kids who never liked vegetables, then turning into adults, instead of just saying, like, I'm gonna eat some because I'm a grown-up, they decide it's unhealthy. And they actually genuinely have videos about not wearing shoes, not brushing your teeth, not wearing sunscreen. And I'm like, these are the things my brother wanted to do when he was eight.
SPEAKER_01Like there is something there. Like, I can't quite pinpoint what it is, but you absolutely nailed it with the term man child because you look at these behaviors and you can't help but think, Did you not develop past 15?
SPEAKER_00Like, they're just creating these strategic excuses to not do things that they don't want to do and pretending they're science.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the most egregious part is pretending that it's like serious and not just like their own whims.
SPEAKER_00And it is the most counterculture group of people I can conceive of. I mean, these are the videos where people are eating like raw meat, raw eggs, aged urine.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that is just sticks of butter. And they're extreme and rare, but like you may actually come across them. It's not so rare that you'll never meet a carnivore.
SPEAKER_01Because I think with the RFK Juniors, I hesitate to call it leadership because he's definitely not doing any leading, but with his like Maha circle taking power, these are no longer fridge. No, like these are now quote unquote endorsed by the establishment, whatever that means.
SPEAKER_00I mean, Paul Saladino took raw milk shots with RFK Jr. in the Oval Office.
SPEAKER_01Yes. How none of them got sick is my conspiracy theory is that they actually pasteurized it so that no one would get sick.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's like Paul Saladino's logic with the fruit and honey and it's still being animal-based. Actually, he has like a video and it's like animal-based pasta and it's just spaghetti squash. So to me, I feel like his raw milk is actually just like boiled milk, probably.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01What is there to say about this? This is so much nonsense. Yeah, so the different levels of the carnivore diet is definitely ruining some people's lives. Hopefully, not too many people. Hopefully, people with common sense will look at this and be like, this is just an unsustainable diet.
SPEAKER_00But there is like a very real group of people who are having their lives ruined. Like, I'm in a group called Carnivore Cringe, and they just screenshot like people in That's a fun group. I don't know, on Reddit or in Facebook groups for carnivore diets. And a lot of people are like, I just had my like triple bypass surgery, like carnivore for they're like, my LDL is 500. I don't know what's going on. I've been doing the diet. And then they get gaslit, and people are like, Oh, you just have to like keep going. Like, you have to do XYZ more.
SPEAKER_01You see this pattern with most of these Maha grifts. Like, you're not doing it right. You see that excuse a lot.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Including here, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01My God. I didn't realize the carnivore diet has layers. And I also didn't realize I pulled solidino failed. That's also very funny.
SPEAKER_00I have like this weird amount of empathy there. I cannot understand it. I just I don't understand myself sometimes.
SPEAKER_02You are too nice.
SPEAKER_00I'm sad for him sometimes that he made his entire name Carnivore MD.
SPEAKER_02And then he can't even stick to that.
SPEAKER_00But I'm also happy that he um was honest. My standards are too low.
SPEAKER_01Susanna, your bar is way too low. You're way too empathetic, which I guess makes you a good person, but also it's like it's bad. You're giving them way too many chances.
SPEAKER_00No, I can recognize it's dysfunctional.
SPEAKER_01Oh boy. Okay, so the carnivore diet. Certainly don't try that at home, no matter what.
SPEAKER_00Eat your vegetables. That's always going to be the moral of the story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. So the carnivore diet, I I don't know if you noticed, listeners, but when we talk about the carnivore diet, one gender predominates that conversation. Let's try to break that down a little bit. Uh, we can talk about meat and animal protein without talking about toxic masculinity because unfortunately, this innocent little macronutrient is tied up with a whole bunch of terrible beliefs and behavior, as we've seen with Jordan Peterson, Saladino, and RFK Jr. and a bunch of these weird carnivore influencers or whatever. A core component of toxin masculinity is the belief that masculinity requires having a bunch of muscles, and therefore we must eat a bunch of protein in the process. The evolution of this is the obsession with protein, first with the protein powders and putting proteins and everything that we discussed in the last episode. But some people, like Paul Saladino and Jordan Peterson, takes this one step further and they have an obsession with meat.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like with protein powder for men, you see it marketed as a way to build muscle. For women, you see it marketed as a way to lose weight.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like it's definitely a little overboard with how prevalent it is, but at the end of the day, it's still normal, quote unquote.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01It's still within the realms of like, yeah, this is a supplement that people take.
SPEAKER_00Right. No, I certainly have bought protein powder in my life. Like that is reasonable.
SPEAKER_01But the obsession with meat has breached that realm of normality. Today we're focusing on meat specifically. And boy, is meat tied with the far right. And genuine question for you, Susanna, as you are more plugged into this maha propaganda machine than I am. How often do you see these like Maha and big wellness grifters when they talk about meat? How often do you see them talk about how women need to eat more meat? And of them, how many of them are women who are advocating this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there's certainly more male influencers in the carnivore space. There is one that comes to mind, steak and butter. Is it gal? Yeah, steak and butter gal.
SPEAKER_01Why are their names all so cringe?
SPEAKER_00I mean, she just will chomp on butter for the cameras and okay.
SPEAKER_01You included a picture for me.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, it's actually a video. It's the part where she's talking about her took a screenshot.
SPEAKER_01Is she eating butter?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, quote, her favorite energy bar, and it's just a massive thing of butter.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so for listeners, I'm looking at a relatively young, relatively thin woman in a bikini top, and she is just eating a chunk of butter on the beach. On the beach. I mean, is it possible that this is her actual diet, or is it like she's just eating this for the camera and then behind the scenes she's like doing other things? Because she doesn't look like someone who eats butter.
SPEAKER_00No, I have questioned that a lot. I have seen her talk a little bit about like how her mother-in-law is like upset by her diet or something like that. I don't know. So there might be layers, and if I watched it enough, she might convince me that she is on the carnivore diet. But also, like, it is in my mind that like, is this just for views? Because she's certainly making a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like I don't know. I mean, I guess technically, if you do the calories right, you could eat butter and be incredibly fit, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I mean, you're getting full quickly.
SPEAKER_01That's true. Maybe this is her diet. Who knows?
SPEAKER_00But to answer your question, like, I do feel like we're I see a lot of women, the way women talk about it in the Maha space is more like, oh, I'm like a pioneer frontiers woman, and we're going to use all these parts, and like it's a holistic, wholesome vibe.
SPEAKER_01Right. Even within this space, you can see the gender difference. Even like carnivore diet women, they're not talking about eating meat the same way that carnivore diet men are talking about eating meat. You also have another picture that you included here for me. Um, who is this one from?
SPEAKER_00This was some some random thing. I think it's just striking to show they have an attractive woman in a tank top and it says beef babe, and then a less in shape woman with kind of I don't know, her hair is kind of messy.
SPEAKER_01Like unkempt.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. That's the word, and she's animal-based. What's the difference?
SPEAKER_01Wait.
SPEAKER_00So the animal-based woman is saying, I eat so clean, but I just can't lose weight no matter what I do. And then beef babe says, You're still addicted to sugar. Fruit and honey count, babe. So I guess this is like a contrast between your strict carnivore and your animal-based.
SPEAKER_01Right. She's making fun of an animal-based diet person, which is already a wild stance to be. So this is a more extreme version. Like you can't even touch sugar, fruit, and honey.
SPEAKER_00But I think I included it because you do see like this feminine depiction of this like attractive woman eating a piece of steak. Not a piece, an entire like an entire steak. Right, an entire steak in her hands. So it's becoming, I mean, maybe that's a good thing, but it's becoming more It's not a good thing. No, it's not a good thing. I can rationalize anything.
SPEAKER_01You can rationalize anything, and that's kind of scary. Like, this is not the type of gender equity that we want. This is women being dragged down to the level of men, and we never want that. So it's overly male, but even the two examples of women promoting this, I'm seeing male traces. For example, the picture of the beef babe and animal-based revolves around clean eating. The animal-based person said, I eat so clean, but I can't lose weight. Like, even in this version of the carnivore diet, the feminimity is still there because it's tied with like the crunchy movement, which is like very much like a feminine space. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Even their version of this is gendered. And do you know what a pick me girl is?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're both chronically online. How do we like well? It started from Gray's Anatomy when Meredith Gray was like, Love me, choose me, pick me. That's where that's from. But it's describing women who want male validation, is like the simplest way that I can picture it. And the two pictures that you've shown me, they are both women who are one is drawn, but the other one is just dressed because she's a picture of a real person. But these are very much like male gays. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, that's very true. They've either kind of designed themselves to look favorable for men, or they were literally the illustration could have just been a man.
SPEAKER_01Like you just swap it out. You see that here in that they are women doing this, but they're definitely not addressing other women.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think you're right.
SPEAKER_01They're addressing men. So you see this gender dynamic in food. Women influencers in this Maha space tend to talk more about milk, making things from scratch to crunchy movement, while men influencers talk about the carnivore diet, eating raw meat, and cooking outdoors on a grill, eating things that you hunt.
SPEAKER_00They all eat on cutting boards. That's like aesthetic.
SPEAKER_01That's like a huge trend. They're eating on cutting boards for some reason. Like, get a plate, dude.
SPEAKER_00Not wearing shoes.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Always topless for no reason. So you see this genderness in this space. And I just want to say before I get into the no pun intended, the meat of this food does not have gender. The fact that humans prescribe gender to food is an example of why gender is such a social construct. Like it's all made up. Like there's no reason why a steak is a man's food.
SPEAKER_00Or salad is, you know, like a feminine thing to order.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there's no reason why salad is a feminine food, but we apply gender to everything. Gender is ubiquitous, and you see that in food. I want to answer the question, or at least try to answer the question. Why is meat so tied with masculinity? And that is very difficult to answer. But before I get into it, why do you think meat is so tied with masculinity?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's actually a really good question. I feel like my answers are very like tied to the 21st century.
SPEAKER_02That's okay.
SPEAKER_00And just sort of like fitness and muscles and like men want to see those like gains in fitness and protein is helpful for that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00But I feel like it has to have deeper roots because I don't think that this is that current of a thing. Like when I think about like, I don't know, I also imagine mid-20th century, like men eating steak and like coming home to smoke a cigarette and eat a steak. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, cigar and steak, whiskey, like food has been gender for a long time, and this is definitely not new. But we can agree that meat is very much gendered towards the male gender.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I looked into this, and yes, meat is closely tied with masculinity, and it's not a new thing, but the form that we know of today is largely a modern phenomenon. Prior to the 20th century, while meat and masculinity were related, it is not as intense as today because, for the most part, most people were just happy to have food in general. Meat being associated with maleness is seen mostly in the fact that hunting and butchering are male professions because those activities require a little bit more physicality and society was a patriarchy already. So those professions just sort of got sorted into the male space.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I should have gone to the like men are the hunters.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but even then, that's like in the acquisition of food. But once food gets processed, that genderness is not as stark as we know it today, because again, most people are just happy to eat. This is prior to abundance that we have in the 20th and 21st century. So in that era in the past, most of the genderness of food is mainly in play with the upper class because they have the option to choose what food they want to eat. So an example of this of the genderness in food in that era has a lot to do with upper class etiquette culture. What is and isn't ladylike. For example, because women are delicate creatures, quote unquote, they should eat delicate food to be more ladylike. But there's where you see most of the genderness. It's mostly um etiquette and pressures placed on women. And men can sort of eat whatever they want because they're men and we live in a patriarchy society. Like no one cares about what they eat. And then the 20th century rolled around, improved availability of calories, shifting beauty standards, and evolving gender norms changed the Western culture's relationship with food. The genderness of food in this century got hypercharged, and advertisers were central to this. I can't find anything that points to a specific moment or like a trend or a period of time when this happened. It's very much like a slow and gradual shift. But one contributor to the genderness of food is diet culture, something that I'm sure you are intimately familiar with.
SPEAKER_00Yes, just a smidge.
SPEAKER_01Women are encouraged to be thin, and therefore, what kind of food would be prescribed to the woman gender in that case?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean salads. See, my problem is now I'm going to like practical advice, which is like protein. But no, yeah, salads, things that don't have a ton of calories and yeah, and what doesn't have a ton of calories? Fruits and vegetables, soup.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Not eating fat because people think eating fat means you gain fat.
SPEAKER_00They did in yeah, the 90s, the 80s.
SPEAKER_01They did in the past, and they thought that, oh yeah, whatever you eat turns into stuff on your body, which is again not how biochemistry works, but they believed it. Because of that, a lot of advertisers started to pick out certain categories of food and targeting them towards women because of diet culture. And as a result, the genderness of food naturally developed because if these food are women or ladylike food, then obviously the other types of food are manly food and like male foods, right? And this is when you get dads are in charge of the barbecue. This was a big cultural shift that happened in the 50s and 60s when men came home from the war, all the advertisers said, Oh, you know, women should be a stay-at-home mom, and then dad go out and make money, right? Like all that nuclear family stuff. Food was definitely a part of it when the advertisers were doing this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. It persists, you know, like it does. My husband is so much better at cooking meat than I am. Like it's just the stereotypes. Well, I was a vegetarian in college when I was like learning to cook.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that makes a big difference. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Those were like formative cooking years, and I just I tried.
SPEAKER_01It is a different set of skills.
SPEAKER_00So even in my own relationship, he tends to do like salmon and steak.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes the stereotypes are unfortunately true. But I would say don't think of it like that, but think of it in the reverse. Like your husband probably not as good as cooking vegetables because it's again, it's a different skill set. But yeah, I can't pinpoint to something specific. I try to find it, but it was really just a gradual change, mainly because of advertisers and diet culture and like what is manly? Well, protein is manly. Oh, what is protein? Well, animal. There's also that psyche of hunters, and I'm the predator, and I need to eat meat because that's what predators do. There's also that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like that's a very like current, like you said earlier, incel culture.
SPEAKER_01I just Yeah, this is what wolves eat.
SPEAKER_00Beta males who really want to be alpha males. And so they think they have to eat their way to the top.
SPEAKER_01Which again is such a harmful philosophy to believe in. Also, not true. That's not how wolves work. They've debunked that decades ago. There's a phrase in Chinese that I always found silly, but in the context of today's big willness landscape, I think is quite pertinent. The phrase is called eat blank, enrich blank. So an example of this would be eat kidneys, enrich kidneys. And you can insert whatever body parts you want into these blanks. Like if you hurt your hand, you would need to eat some like chicken feet or pork trotters, and so on and so forth. You eat the body part that you want to heal or buff. And it's cool to see concepts like this be present across cultures because that's kind of what the meat craze is advocating. Like, if you want big muscle, you must eat big muscle.
SPEAKER_00This is so this is Paul Saladino and the liver king. I think they were like culturally appropriating this Chinese phrase when they perhaps created their supplement line. I don't know if you've ever seen their products.
SPEAKER_01I don't want to, but you're gonna show me anyway.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I'm gonna show you some.
SPEAKER_01Okay, show me.
SPEAKER_00Let's see. Let's start with uh the thyroid one. What? Grass-fed thyroid plus is specifically formulated to support healthy thyroid function. Da-da-da-da-da. And it is 100% grass-fed thyroid liver and kidney. So they're just like, oh, your thyroids messed up. Eat some thyroids. Here's some desiccated thyroid.
SPEAKER_02Oh boy.
SPEAKER_00So they are taking like animal organs. And if you go on their website, they basically just they sell you these animal organs to help your ailments. So speaking of, you know, masculinity, they have one supplement called uh whole package. Guess what that is formulated to support?
SPEAKER_01That's not subtle at all. Let me guess, is it like a cow's penis? Is that what's in there?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Uh, it is grass-fed. Don't worry, grass fed and finished, testicle, liver, and whole blood extract.
SPEAKER_01That's gross.
SPEAKER_00From presumably a cow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It is, it is funny to me that they could just eat it, but they know that men probably can't cook that well, so they have to package this in a supplement.
SPEAKER_00Well, where are you? I know, like in other countries, you could probably easily go to a grocer and find more of these meats. I don't know where you're gonna go get a bovine testicle.
SPEAKER_01That's true. You know what? You are absolutely right. It's hard to get these essays where you were Ralph's.
SPEAKER_00And then they also had a her package.
SPEAKER_01Oh God, what is that?
SPEAKER_00It is grass-fed ovary, uterus, fallopian tubes, liver, and kidney.
SPEAKER_01I bet this doesn't sell as much.
SPEAKER_00I bet you are absolutely correct. Though I have seen like kind of an increase in the desire for animal-based prenatal vitamins.
SPEAKER_01Why? So unnecessary. Just eat normal vitamins.
SPEAKER_00I had to create a video on that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I bet you did.
SPEAKER_00It obviously did not contain folic acid.
SPEAKER_01So oh, the one that actually prevents neurotube defects, that that one?
SPEAKER_00Right. The one that's actually like the one nutrient that yeah. So, no, I think you're totally right on that um this is very gendered.
SPEAKER_01I don't even know where to go from here. Like, it's so silly. I stand by that. It's hard for them to buy these organ products, but also like as someone who is somewhat into cooking, like cooking organ is actually a very difficult thing to do well. These men don't know how to cook. Like, let's be so for real. Like, they can't handle organs. Come on.
SPEAKER_00I think liver is probably the only one people are actually like trying the carnivore crowd. I people are normalizing liver.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, you know, if they're eating organ meat that Is sustainable, I guess. That's a silver lining. Like they're eating more parts of the animal that otherwise would have gone to waste. I don't know. I'm making excuses for them.
SPEAKER_00I think you're right because I think the wealthy carnivores are actually eating more of the animal and they're all into regenerative farming. The problem is that most people cannot afford to like implement the carnivore diet in that way.
SPEAKER_01It's the same thing as like living off the land. It's like, where'd you buy the generator? Where'd you buy the solar panels?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01So the connection between meat and men is not imagined. Surveys and polls consistently found that men, on average, eat more meat and also, on average, are less likely to eat less meat, become vegetarian, or become vegan. They also found a correlation between how much an individual embraces traditional gender norms and how much meat they consume, which is not surprising. Like the more gendered you are in terms of maleness, I guess, the more meat you tend to consume. The fun part of this survey is when asked follow-up questions about meat and gender, some of these men got weirdly defensive. Like some of these men are like, no, no, no, I I eat meat uh because it it has nothing to do with my gender that I eat meat. It tastes good, and this is just my preference. And it's the same energy as someone who's like an incel but is also deeply closeted. Like they get so defensive when pressed. So you talk about this, like this supplement line from now deeply unwell, liver king. I think he's in a hospital, but he's not well, and Paul Sout, you know, who also has health problems. Yes, they have a Hearst package, but the Hearst package is very much about fertility, like it's not about muscle growth or anything. Yes. On top of food being gendered, for some reason, muscle is also gendered, which is so wild. Like, muscle should not be gendered. Our society and culture has turned muscle into something that's a male concern, but women have and need muscles too. Like a big part of their right-wing maha obsession with animal protein is related to their culture war on gender. They have a moral panic about gay people and trans people, and it's important to them to use all avenues of their propaganda to reinforce this gender binary, and that includes food. It's also related to the conservative incel culture, as they are obsessed with like the alpha maleness nonsense. And what do predators eat? I've mentioned this before. They eat meat, so men must therefore eat meat. It's an ideology kind of rooted in violence, which is very concerning.
SPEAKER_00Right. No, that is super concerning that people want to be like people think that you have to be powerful to be like physically powerful to be actually influential.
SPEAKER_01In a civil society, which is like, why? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, we don't need that anymore. Maybe if you were hunting, that would have been helpful, but uh we don't need to have brute strength for the most part.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, none of them mature past the age of 15, and they're all like this fantasy version of my teenage brain is how society works.
SPEAKER_00But it makes sense. So I think the underlying thing that we haven't really mentioned is just that like conservative states are agricultural states. So a ton of the lobbying funds for conservative politicians comes from big ag. And even the um, even plants that are grown, like grains.
SPEAKER_01Is for meat, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Half of grains that are grown in the United States go for animal feed. So it behooves all farmers for you know meat to do well. And so it is very natural that the Republican Party is more meat-centric, pro-meat, because these states, their economies sort of revolve around that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so everything is sort of connected in this like right-wing space. The lobbying power is there, the need to reinforce cultural and gender norms is there and sort of just all intertwine together. The other problematic undertone of this genderness of muscle is sort of the background misogyny. Because if you think being a man means having big muscles and people without big muscles are inferior, what do you think of women?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, that's a brutal point.
SPEAKER_01And this is reflective in the language they use. They call non-strong men soy boys.
SPEAKER_00Right, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01It's worth pointing out that to them, the greatest insult to a man is comparing them to a woman, which says everything that you need to know about how they feel about women.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that and just the response to the Epstein files, but you know, we can't otherwise we'll be here for four hours.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that entire site is problematic. And I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with men wanting to have big muscles. If that's how you want to look, go for it. The toxicity is if you believe having big muscles is necessary for masculinity, because then that runs into several issues. For example, all of us age, and with aging, we naturally lose muscle mass. Does that mean as you age you become less of a man? If you have a disability and you can't participate in bodybuilding because of it, are those men not men? Or if someone simply doesn't want to spend time building big muscles, they'd rather do other exercises like running. If you look at all the marathonners, none of them are bulky because they can't be bulky if they're running marathons. Does that mean lanky runners are not men? When the gender ideals is restricted to something that's so narrow and rigid, it's not a healthy thing for people to believe in. And you will despise people who fail to reach that ideal, including yourself, when you eventually one day can maintain your muscle mass.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which that muscle wastes away really quickly in times of illness and aging and surprisingly quickly. Yeah, I mean, shockingly quickly, as I just witnessed, it was is incredible how we go through our muscle mass, and we're all I mean, most people will have situations in their lives where that happens.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I broke my arm last month and my forearm is less big now, even though it's only been a month, and you can physically see that my arm is thinner.
SPEAKER_00I guess it's fair that like naturally men tend to have more muscle mass, but I guess our society has taken that to mean that the more muscle, the more manly.
SPEAKER_01Whereas really, I mean it's gender is a social contract, it's all made up. And you brought it up. On average, women tend to be smaller than men, their fat and muscle distribution is different. And in general, that's because their main sex hormone, women's main sex hormone, isn't testosterone. So their muscles grow and behave very differently than men, but this doesn't mean that they don't have muscles, right? Women have muscles too. Women need muscles as well. Muscles should not be gendered, neither should food. Food should not be gendered. This is just a fun thing. My wife works out a lot, I don't at all. I'm very much a couch potato, and even though she is in every way more fit than I am, her muscles don't visually reflect that, if you know what I mean. I still look bulkier despite not having worked out a day in my life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sometimes strength doesn't look a certain way. Like muscles can be very subtle, um, but you see, with different types of athletes. So the fact that like men are pushed to have very like bulky muscles, whereas women are pushed, you know, women are pushed into Pilates so that they have lean muscles.
SPEAKER_01And she's commented on this on multiple occasions. Like she would say things like, it's so frustrating how easy it is for men to build muscle. And that's generally true. Like, I don't need to work that hard to get some mass going. And that has nothing to do with how fit I am or how strong I am. That's just a part of the biology, you know? Um, so just really quickly, we talked about like why meat is associated with masculinity. We talked about how problematic that is, but what are some of the public health implications for this carnivore diet? Oh, just saying that makes me want to vomit, but this like meat craze. I mean, you could probably point out some of these are like quite obvious. What happens when we eat a lot of protein?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, from like a nutrition health perspective, when you have too much like red meat, particularly meats with more saturated fat, we could be concerned about heart disease. It's also correlated with elevated risks of cancer, particularly processed meats, but also if it's displacing fiber in your diet, like we are absolutely seeing with the carnivore diet.
SPEAKER_01Still so funny to me. Anti-nutrients.
SPEAKER_00That's yeah. I mean, these are the top causes of death cancer, stroke, heart attack. And you know, it is displacing other things in your diet. So vitamin deficiencies or even toxicities, like we're seeing people going crazy with vitamin A.
SPEAKER_01Fast soluble, which means you can't pee it out.
SPEAKER_00Right. It's it's a whole different like can of worms. Interestingly, the animal-based space really is obsessed with vitamin A.
SPEAKER_01And so, yeah, like from a dietary perspective, the carnivore diet or animal-based diet is just not healthy for you the long term. You really should have like a balanced meal. And like we said in the beginning, colorectal cancers are increasing. So make sure you get your fiber intakes. Um, and it's hard to do that when you eat meat.
SPEAKER_00And to be clear, we're not necessarily, like from a nutrition perspective, meat is very nutritious. It's just that it is part of a nutritious diet, it's not the only thing on your plate.
SPEAKER_01Make sure just you eat a whole range of things. From the other side of the public health perspective, like we talk about diet, but the other side of public health is there is some inherent risk in eating raw meat, which some of these carnivore people seem to love to do. Raw meat is just unnecessarily risky. Food poisoning is very real, and so are parasites. So you really shouldn't be eating raw meat if you can avoid it. And I have a mini rant to go on, a mini soapbox, if you will. A lot of people will say, What about beef tartar? What about like medium rare beef? Like, what about sashimi? Do you know the answer to that? I feel like you do.
SPEAKER_00I mean, they're sushi grade like fish, like there are certain ways to minimize risk, but then also sometimes we're just taking calculated risks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's a blend of both for sure. I'll start with the easiest thing to address. Like, oh, what about eating medium rare beef? Medium rare beef is cooked. Just because it's a little pink in the middle doesn't mean it's not cooked. The internal temperature guide for beef, I want to say, is 145.
SPEAKER_00That sounds right.
SPEAKER_01I could be wrong. Whatever that internal temperature guide is, if you cook meat to that internal temperature that's safe, it will look red. Like that is cooked. Just because it has red doesn't mean it's not cooked. Now, regarding beef tartar and sashimi, it's all about the process of preparation. What makes raw meat dangerous is not the protein fibers themselves, but what's touching it. So when they're making beef tartare and sashimi, there's a whole list of protocols and process that they use to ensure that the surfaces are clean and the way that they prepare it is sanitary and stuff. So just because beef tartar and sashimi exist doesn't mean there's no risk in eating raw meat. You don't know the protocols to make that safe. So when you make it at home yourself, it's kind of sketch. And it's definitely not the same as like eating beef tartare in a restaurant.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. And I'm seeing people like age their meats and like do weird things that are absolutely not food safe.
SPEAKER_01The trends are no, definitely not. At a societal level, eating meat is just bad for us all because of the environmental damage that the meat industry has. It's a massive source of carbon emission and it's notoriously resource intensive. So to be more sustainable, we should be collectively eating less meat from an environmental standpoint.
SPEAKER_00And it really is scary to see there's a lot of counter-arguments from the like animal-based industry and carnivores in order to try to offset this guilt of eating a very energy-intensive diet.
SPEAKER_01So, what do they say?
SPEAKER_00Well, here's let me send an example, another one of these annoying AI-generated pictures, right?
SPEAKER_01Okay, let's see. We have two people, one person who's obviously drawn ugly for very obvious reasons.
SPEAKER_00Ugly vegan with a carrot on her shirt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the ugly vegan with a carrot on her shirt says meat is murder, and the other hot woman in the tank top with meat heels written on her chest says monocropping kills entire ecosystem. So, yeah, this is the type of false equivalency that we see the oil industry gets up to as well.
SPEAKER_00Like, this is obviously ridiculous because 50% of that monocropping feeds meat, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you can measure sustainability in different metrics, like how much water is consumed, like how much energy. And like, of course, like, yes, almonds do take a lot of water. Like there is variability there, but a lot of the arguments are just it's false equivalency. Right. It's a big stretch, and it's industry doing their best to manipulate and justify.
SPEAKER_01It reminds me of like the oil industry saying, like, your electric vehicles are increasing lithium mining. And I'm like, yeah, but like you're dumping oil into the ocean. Like, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00No, I remember actually being worried about like all of these car batteries, which you know, in my lifetime, I'm not sure that that's going to be a problem.
SPEAKER_01It is a valid criticism. It just doesn't make any sense when coming from big oil. You know what I mean? Like coming from anyone else, I would take them seriously. But coming from big oil is like, no, you got nothing to stand on. Yeah. Anyway, so that's the meat episode. Yikes. God, these people, I hope they change their ways because either they change their ways or their diet's gonna kill them.
SPEAKER_00I mean, given Paul's animal-based pasta is spaghetti squash, I feel like we're making progress.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but do they think that they're changing, or are they still stuck in the delusion that this is coherent with their worldview?
SPEAKER_00What if we just rename fruits and vegetables to be like beef?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, wait. What can we rename um broccoli? That's a tough one. Doesn't look like any animals. Ooh, a sheephead. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Okay, alright. We're gonna need comments here or some ideas for renaming fruits and vegetables to be more masculine.
SPEAKER_01To get the men to eat it.
SPEAKER_00We're not marketing professionals.
SPEAKER_01No, not at all. And nor do we want to be because they have done some serious damage.
SPEAKER_00Unless you're listening to our podcast and you're a marketing professional, we appreciate and respect you.
SPEAKER_01In that case, please help us.