Diana Rodgers, RD, LDN is a “real food” Licensed Registered Dietitian Nutritionist living on a working organic farm west of Boston. Click here to see a short video to meet Diana.She runs an active nutrition practice where she helps people with weigh…

Diana Rodgers, RD, LDN is a “real food” Licensed Registered Dietitian Nutritionist living on a working organic farm west of Boston. Click here to see a short video to meet Diana.

She runs an active nutrition practice where she helps people with weight, metabolic, and intestinal issues recover their health through diet and lifestyle. She’s also an author, host The Sustainable Dish Podcast, and the mom of two active kids. She speaks at universities and conferences internationally about nutrition and sustainability, social justice, animal welfare and food policy issues.

Diana is the Consulting Dietitian to several gyms, as well as: Nom Nom Paleo, Whole30, The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. She is also a board member of Animal Welfare Approved. Diana contributes regularly to several blogs and her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Outside Magazine, and Mother Earth News.

Learn more about Kale Vs. Cow here.

Which diet is best for humans, animals, and the planet? This is a question we will perhaps never fully answer. I can’t resist the temptation to try, and this episode endeavors to do just that.

I am continually trying to learn more about what I’m putting in, on, and near my body. I love learning about the way things work. That’s why I recently found myself at a Belcampo Farms (@belcampomeatco) Meat Camp, learning about where my most of my animal foods come from, to make sure that I have some connection to the land, people, and animals involved. I wanted to meet the meat I eat, and the farmers producing it. 

While I was at Belcamp Farms, I met #DianaRodgers (@sustainabledish), a #realfood Licensed Registered Dietitian Nutritionist living on a working #organicfarm west of Boston. She also runs an #activenutrition practice, where she helps people recover their health through diet, and hosts The Sustainable Dish Podcast.

We really hit it off at the farm, so I had to have Diana on the show to discuss all things meat, and her upcoming film project: “Kale vs. Cow: The Case for Better Meat.” At a time when many in the health and environmental fields call for a world without meat, #kalevscow makes a case for better meat – and shows how eliminating animals from our #foodsystem could cause more harm than good.

While this episode takes a frail firm stand for eating meat, I don’t take a position on other people’s dietary choices – you can eat a box of rocks for for dinner if that’s what makes you happy. This episode isn’t about right/wrong good/bad. It’s about zooming out to take an open-minded perspective on the human, animal, and planet relationship. What makes us all thrive, and most of all, what is the most natural way to live in our modern, disconnected urban environments. 

I also think it’s important to consider and understand the impact of our food buying and consumption… because sometimes the things sold to us as “better” alternatives, like #kale or #soy, can have devastating consequences.

How many animals die to turn a plot of land into a kale pasture? How many salmon lose their habitat because water is diverted for irrigation? What happens to the bears who depend on those salmon for their diet?

What is the math of clearing land to grow a single crop VS raising animals with sensible farming practices?

Just something to chew on.

“Please support the show by tagging someone you know who prefer to eat real food – and do it sustainably!

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 TOPICS DISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE:

  • Diana’s farm in Massachusetts
  • How industrial farming has killed America
  • When everyone in America grew food
  • Not being obsessed with food (what a lovely feeling it is!)
  • Ancestral health & the paleo diet
  • Luke’s love / grossed out relationship with eating animals
  • The difference between Diana’s farm & a factory farm
  • Why eating something isn’t necessarily good or evil, for any animal
  • The uncomfortable reality that everything gets eaten, even people
  • The biomimicry process on farms, from beginning to end
  • Croppable land VS uncroppable land (like central California)
  • How humans invented the modern cow and sheep
  • Taking bias & ulterior motives out of our food research
  • Why people get emotionally attached to their diets
  • The potential health risks involved with a strictly vegan diet
  • Why the recommended dietary allowance of protein is actually half of what the average American should consume
  • Chewing your food
  • Valuing life

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CREDITS

Intro music: Jeordie White
Show Production: Podcast Masters
Sound editing: Dustin Smith

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