Dry January? What's up with that?

We've got some answers. We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've written over three dozen cookbooks, including THE GREAT BIG PRESSURE COOKER BOOK with over 500 recipes proportioned for every size of pressure cooker on the market. (You can find it here.)

Besides talking about dry January, we have a one-minute cooking tip about a little considered kitchen staple the waffle iron. Bruce interview Nicole Niman about her book DEFENDING BEEF. And we tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:

[01:09] Our thoughts on dry January--what is it, why is it, and what's the problem?

[13:51] Our one-minute cooking tip: Pull out your waffle iron.

[15:14] Bruce interviews rancher and food advocate Nicolette Hahn Niman about her book DEFENDING BEEF.

[39:18] What's making us happy in food this week? Sumo oranges and Sri Lankan curry!

Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast

Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough.

And together with Bruce, uh, we have written, you hear this all the time,

probably three dozen cookbooks.

I don't know a lot, including the Instant Pot Bible and the Essential

Air Fryer Cookbook, uh, book written so that every single recipe is sized out.

Either appliance in the Instant Pot Bible, every recipe is sized

out for every size of Instant Pot.

And in the Essential Air Fryer Cookbook, every recipe is sized out

for every size of air fryer on the,

we love air fryers, we love air fryers,

uh, we love all these appliance gadgets apparently, but we're not

talking about any of that really.

Mm-hmm.

. Podcast, although we are talking about a gadget, which is coming

up , we're gonna actually talk about this concept of dry January and how it

started and what's going on with it.

We got our one minute cooking dip.

We have a great interview coming up and we're gonna talk about

what's making us happy in.

Food this week.

So let's get started.

Dry January.

Well, the concept originated in the UK in 2013 and it's,

how couldn't the people who invented gin invent dry January?

That doesn't make any sick.

Yeah, these are all the people that invented warm beer.

So, you know, that's fighting words with the Danes and the regions

and who invented gin Them are fighting words.

Okay.

But the, but they did invent warm beer and so that's disgust.

So a nonprofit in the,

I'm gonna tell you that that's fighting words with the Germans, but go on

, Bruce: a nonprofit in the UK

the concept of dry January in 2013 with a goal of raising money.

And I'm not sure how dry January and raising money happened, but that was a,

you probably had to sign into something, but they did it to raise money for

alcohol abuse awareness and treatment of.

Very good cause.

Yeah.

And a lot of people choose to take part in Dry in January as way to

simply drink less or reset for a month or two after all the holidays.

And let me tell you, oh, I know the holidays,

man.

Oh man.

Let me tell you that I drank like a fish over the holidays with

Bruce's family and my family.

I mean, Bruce says that one point that.

Uh, my brother-in-law and I, Bruce's sister's husband and I, at one

point we were just like two drunk old men in a bar sitting at a table

saying, oh, I have another glass.

You were was, and then we came home for New Year's Eve and we drank.

We were with friends and all of us drank a case of champagne, which was really nice.

Not.

Quite a case, but Okay.

Okay.

Seven bottles.

Seven bottles for five people.

It was, it's a lot.

It was really headache time.

Mm-hmm.

and, uh, you know, a lot of people want to, uh, reset, uh,

listen, I'm doing this too.

Wanna reset after the holidays.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know that I'm doing particularly dry January bed.

I certainly am very conscious now of cutting way back here.

I'm doing a

dryer January.

How.

I dry January.

I'm only objecting a few times.

According to the American Art Association, a 2022 national survey,

and I assume that this is in the United States, showed that upwards of 35% of

American adults of legal drinking age did in fact try out dry January last year.

Now that that's huge.

That's huge.

I wonder how many of that 35%, um, made it to the end of January.

They, they didn't report that.

They only wanted to know how many people attempted to do this.

And, and also I have to tell you, I'm being now the skeptical

PhD student that I once was.

When I look at this in c.

Upwards of 35% because 1% is upwards of 35%.

So I don't know exactly what upwards of 35% means.

Well, that,

God, that reminds me that Simpson's episode where Lisa Simpson

is out on some tour of some factory and a woman's like a percentage to all

of our profits go to Saving Wildlife.

And Lisa's like, what percentage?

And the woman's like 0%

. Mark: Yes, exactly.

That's exactly my point here.

You know, I don't know what that means, but I do know that dry January, Thing.

And I do see it on social media, I see it on TikTok, I see it on Instagram.

I see people engaging with the practice, and it's really not

a bad practice.

It's not an Anna had.

O'Connor is a health columnist for the Washington Post, and what is reported

there is that people see tangible benefits of not drinking for the month.

Everything from saving money to having more energy, to sleeping

better, and saving money.

Huge thing.

It is.

Alcohol is expensive.

It is.

I think it's a luxury.

Um, it might be a luxury.

I mean, yes, I know that there is very cheap alcohol and cheap wine available.

Okay, good.

Alcohol's a luxury then.

Well, I, yeah, and, and I'm, and I hope because I do this, you're

not talking $90 bottles of bourbon.

$35 bottles of bourbon.

That's a luxury.

It's a luxury.

And it's expensive.

And yes, it's better than the $8 bourbon because I drink bourbon

straight with just a little water in it.

So I'm not mixing it in a cocktail.

Mixing it.

Cocktail to me is a whole different game.

It is.

You at that point.

Now listen, Bruce has this theory, wait before Bruce is gonna say

something, but I wanna say Bruce has.

Thing.

He always says that no amount of fruit juice can cover

up the taste of bad alcohol

because bad alcohol is bad alcohol.

And despite the fact that ethanol is ethanol the part

that gets you drunk, right?

But there's only 40% of that in an 80 proof bottle of vodka.

So 60% of it is other stuff.

Right.

And that other stuff is what makes it taste bad, but in terms of it

being a luxury and saving money, whether this burn, yeah, exactly.

So the luxury part, think about even if you just drink a bottle of beer

a night, let's say you do that and it's, and it's an inexpensive beer.

Let's say you paid a dollar 50 for that bottle of beer, okay?

A night that's 365 times a dollar 50.

Well, I don't have the calculator right in my hand, but that's upwards

of 400 $8,500 right there just for one.

Bottle of beer.

So now if you drink a bottle of wine a night, or if you have other

cocktails, drinking can be expensive.

So I do see the benefit of saving some money as well as

getting some better sleep.

Yes.

And the American Art Association also points out that there are short term

benefits from Epstein, from alcohol, and they include lower blood pressure.

Because here's the thing, and you probably know this already, if you

drink that, alcohol actually lowers your blood pressure at the start.

Of when you're drinking, but then because it so dehydrates you and

because of other factors involved, your blood pressure actually goes

up dramatically after you've drunk.

So there's an initial lowering of blood pressure and then there's

a spike, uh, several hours later.

You might know this if you've drunk a little too much and wake up in the middle

of the night with your heart racing.

It's that problem of the blood pressure is.

Up because you're coming kind of on the backside of the alcohol intake, and

of course there are improvements with insulin resistance, weight loss, sleep.

I mean, listen,

oh, weight loss again, let's go back to that dollar 50 bottle of beer.

It's about 200 calories.

So even over the 30 days, so.

200 times 30, we're talking about 6,000 calories.

Right.

That's a lot of calories you saved

that month.

That's right.

And uh, listen, there are a lot of reasons to get back on

alcohol intake, but you know what?

You can do dry January without, as Bruce has already said, without doing

dry January, you can do dry urine.

Mm-hmm.

, Bruce: that's what I'm doing January.

And I do like that some of the big alcohol brands say they're getting behind this

and they're supporting this, which is really nice, except I don't believe.

Tito's made a huge, big marketing campaign that, oh, we are getting

behind dry January in there.

I'm scrolling.

I'm scrolling through Facebook videos the other day and I see this ad pop up

with Martha Stewart and she's got Tito's vodka and she's talking about dry January.

What should I do with all this Tito's vodka?

So she puts it in a spray bottle and she's cleaning her counters with it.

She gimme a braid.

She miss her plants with it, but then as she's missing it, she's licking the air

and then she a braid at the very end.

She looks at the camera and she says, oh, Martha needs a martini.

Yeah.

In other words, they're making fun of dry January.

Yeah, they were and dry.

That really irritated me.

It does irritate me.

I think that drier January is really a great idea.

I don't know that dry January is necessary for everybody listening.

If you have an issue with alcohol, of course, dry January is a fabulous way

to figure out your problem with alcohol.

Here's what I think, and here's what I really think is important for January

to make drier January work for you is be very conscious about drinking.

And I find, and I know this is very silly and you're going to think

I'm insane, but I find it's really.

Interesting to say out aloud, not just in your head aloud, I'm having a drink.

Every time you have a drink, it reminds you, even if you know, okay, like let's

say I pour myself a bourbon and then I want a little more to say out loud,

I'm having a drink on that second poor actually helps me reduce the poor.

And it actually helps me kind of pull back and think, wait,

do I really need another drink?

Be conscious, yeah.

Of your drinking.

Be conscious.

And also use a measuring cup.

Use a jigger so you know how much you're drinking.

When we freehand it, we tend to always give ourselves a little

more than we might want, so there are ways to cut down on this.

And the other thing is cold Turkey isn't.

Always right for everyone.

No.

So if you're considering doing this now, even though January's almost over,

talk to your doctor if you think it might be a problem going cold Turkey.

Right?

That's what prohibition doesn't work.

No.

How long things doesn't work?

I mean, saying you can't do something just doesn't work because your psyche will

eventually snap back to say, no, I must, because the rebellion instinct will take

over and you'll eventually be back in it.

So don't do.

Make smaller changes, articulate that you're drinking.

Say, I'm having a drink.

Yeah, I'm having a glass of wine.

Think about it.

Do it consciously.

Don't just go back into the kitchen and pour another glass of wine.

Think about it.

I, I talk about this all the time with Bruce and it's, uh, it was one last thing.

I talk about this all the time with Bruce and it kind of amazed

me when I was a kid growing up.

Now I realize that I was born before the crust of the earth hardened, and I realize

I'm ancient, but when I was a kid growing up on television, People didn't drink.

I mean, you know, the, the Cleavers sat down and they drank ugh, milk with dinner.

That's disgusting.

No, it was Bewitched that really started it.

Bewitched was the show where everybody drank all the time,

and it was, they did drink a lot.

Groundbreaking that people, they drank in the office.

It was like Mad men.

Yeah.

Well, they, I mean, Lucy, it's not that people never drink.

Lucy got drunk.

Um, but as a joke, right?

And, and, and Laura Petri got drunk.

I mean, it's not that people never drank, it's that they didn't.

Casually the way they do now.

And now when I watch H B O or we stream Amazon Prime sim series,

you know, we're always watching some unbelievable beheading crime

dismemberment thing from Norway.

Everyone drinks and it's unbelievable.

E the ex expectation is everybody walks in.

Home from whatever they're doing.

The detective, whoever it is, walks in and instantly pours, pours a glass of wine.

Mm-hmm.

, and there's an open bottle of wine on the counter and everybody's just pouring

it, pouring and pouring up, pouring it, walking around with this glass of wine.

And first of all, I think it's a very lazy actorly tick because it gives the

actor something to do with their hands.

But secondly, it makes this idea that somehow you have

to walk in and have a drink.

It does.

It sets that up that this is what we should be doing.

I am a guy who loves wine and I love beer, and you know, I love

bourbon, so I'm not being anti-alcohol.

Nope.

I'm just saying that it sets this crazy president that I've walked home, I've

walked in my door and wears the wine.

Nobody ever walks in and opens a diet Coke.

They don't, no.

Nobody ever walks in and puts up a pot of coffee or makes themselves

a latte or, or gets a seltzer.

No.

Or, or, oh yeah.

Open some bottled

water or goes over to a soda stream and, and, you know, makes

a, a, a picture of sparkly water.

Nobody.

ever does that.

They walk in and there's, they, they always are just uncorking, and

then they sit around drinking all for, you know, the entire evening.

And I'm like, who does this?

Well, it also makes horrible continuity problems because in

one scene, the glass is full.

The next scene, the glass is half full.

The next shop, the glass is empty.

And so no one pays attention to how much wine's actually in their

glass.

It does.

It's really a thing.

And it, I think it's, it's also part of lazy acting.

Oh, there's my judgment on because again, a glass of wine in a hand,

actor, something to do with that hand.

And it gives the actor some way to express an emotion by how they

move the glass and all that kind of stuff, whereas they're not having to

completely rely on their body to do it.

It's, it's a whole thing.

It's kind of taken over TV and once you see it, you can't unsee it anymore.

And again, no.

Now you will see it all the time.

I just wanna say, you're welcome again.

I'm a guy who likes a bottle of wine, so it's not that I'm opposed to any

of this, it's just that I'm kind of curious about how it became, so what Wine

industry reps sold Hollywood on the idea.

Oh, that's really good.

Probably.

Yeah.

Everybody should do this.

Okay.

Before we get to our next segment of the podcast, we'd love you to Rates podcast.

We'd love you to subscribe to it.

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In rating.

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But in any event, thank you for being on this podcast with us.

As we've said a million times, we are unsupported so that we can see exactly

what we want about wine representatives in Hollywood or the American Heart

Association or the New York Times.

We don't have to watch our mouths, which is really nice.

Up next, our one minute cooking.

Break out your waffle, iron.

I'm sure you have one sitting in the back of a closet.

It's sitting in a cabinet.

Take it out.

Not to make waffles, but you can use it for so many things.

Mm.

You can use it instead of a panini press.

Mm-hmm.

to make a sandwich.

Mm-hmm.

, you could take two pieces of really nice.

Bread, butter the outsides.

Put a piece of chocolate between the breads and make yourself a

hot, crispy chocolate pocket.

Mm-hmm.

You could do so much.

You could take a piece of puff pastry and shove it in the waffle iron, and

just make a crispy, crunchy dessert.

You can even make eggs.

You don't have to take out a pan.

You scramble on egg.

You heat up your waffle iron, you pour it into the waffle iron, you close it.

It's a super easy way to make omelets.

I have to tell you, especially if you use tic spray on the waffle iron, it

is a super easy way to make omelets.

We have an.

Chapter on using a waffle iron as a shortcut tool in our book, the

Kitchen Shortcut Bible, and it really kind of blew my mind about

everything that we could do from making cauliflower, savory, cauliflower

waffles to omelets, to paninis.

It's a.

Great shortcut tool in your kitchen.

Up next Bruce's interview with our friend Nicolette Neiman, who we met years ago

when we were writing a goat book, and she's the author of Defending Beef,

which is now out in a revised edition.

Bruce has got a great interview with Nicolete.

Today I'm speaking with Nicolette Han Naiman, attorney Rancher and an

advocate for sustainable food production and improved farm animal welfare.

She is the author of Righteous Pork Chop and Defending Beef, the Ecological

and Nutritional Case for Meat.

Hey, Nicolette, welcome.

Hello.

Thank you.

It's good to.

Your

book Defending Beef pretty much makes us rethink everything

we've been taught to believe is wrong with raising and eating beef.

I have to start with why is that important to you?

Oh gosh.

Well first of all, I hope it does do that.

, . Cause that was definitely my goal.

If we think of the grazing animals on the land and on our plates as

something that's just expendable, you know, that we could just get rid of

it and there won't be any downs to it.

Why not?

Why not just do that?

You know, in the sa, you know, in the side of caution, let's just get rid of , let's.

Rid of beef and cattle and then we don't have to worry about the, you know, the

problems associated with them anymore.

The problem with that approach, and I might have actually thought that was

not such a bad idea, you know, when I started all of this 20 years ago.

But the more I've learned, the more I've worked on it and the more I have lived

and been part of a ranch and gotten to know many ranching and farming people

around the world, the more I have come to believe very fervently that the grazing

animals play a unique, and I would even say, Indispensable ecological role.

So they, we really need to have them on the landscape.

And beef is not just delicious and wonderful food, but it's also

extremely nourishing and it's the kind of food that we need more of.

There needs to be, More real food, more deeply nourishing food, you

know, fewer processed foods, fewer chemicals in our food system.

And I think, and we've kind of moved our diet in the wrong

direction, in the industrialized parts of the world at least.

And so it's, it's a very important subject and one that I think

we've just gotten it so wrong.

Well, the overall premise of your book is that cattle are good

for the environment, and we'll get to that in a minute, but also that.

That butter, that cheese are healthy foods.

So let's start there.

Since that runs counter to what most of us have been told the past few decades,

why shouldn't we avoid red meat and dairy?

Well, I think there are two key parts to this.

First of all, we've had several decades of information that we've all been exposed

to suggesting that it's bad for us.

Mm-hmm.

, and I think that's basically wrong.

But the other part of it is that what I was just saying about the need for

nourishing real food and more of that and less of so much of the kind of convenience

food, processed food, fast food.

You know, energy bars, , all the things that people are eating

more and more of now, you know, more and more processed foods.

So beef kind of is, is this really important food in terms of its

nourishment and the nutrients that it provides and the quality of the

nutrients it provides, but also the arguments against it are basically wrong.

We had this idea that kind of emerged in the middle of the 20th century from.

Certain scientific research that was being done and certain things that were

being said in the, you know, sort of the public health arena and the medical

arena, that heart disease, and especially heart attacks and heart disease, all the

problems related to heart health, but also other health problems were increasingly

believed to be linked to saturated fat.

Mm-hmm.

. and maybe other aspects of red meat, but there was a lot of focus on saturated fat.

We've also, of course, heard a lot about cholesterol in the second half of the

20th century, and things like eggs, you know, in addition to red meat, those

were all foods that we began to believe.

Increasingly because of things that were coming out in the mainstream media.

Mm-hmm.

were bad for us, even though these were foods that had been eaten

by humans, you know, literally kind of since time immemorial.

So there was a dramatic sort of rise in heart attacks and other sort of diet

related diseases in the mid 20th century.

So they were looking, you know, people were looking at the public

health community in the medical community for explanations.

And O.

One thing that actually really surprised me, I didn't know this until

I did the research for this book.

There were actually a number of competing theories that were kind of emerging from

medical and public health experts, and the idea that this was really attributed

to saturated fat was kind of one idea.

Mm-hmm.

, and there were other ideas, one of them being the idea that the rise

in processed foods, and especially the addition of sugar and the

greater percentage of diet that's.

From sugar.

Mm-hmm.

was another one of the competing theories, and the thing that really surprised

Main Rain Research was to find that the idea of saturated fat actually being

the culprit and then primary problem in the modern diet was kind of, it

kind of won the day from a number of.

Kind of reason that are really not scientific . That's not to say there was

no scientific basis for it, but the reason that that argument became the prevailing

paradigm are not based on science.

And so what's been happening in the last couple of decades is

there's been a really serious reexamination of how that idea came to.

you know, sort of be so widely accepted.

There's been a lot of reexamination of the initial studies and the subsequent

studies, and even though there seemed to be some, some suggestion

in the research for a long time.

That's saturated fat and cholesterol were contributing to di re related diseases.

I believe that the consensus has shifted pretty dramatically and that there's

a pretty widespread acceptance now, especially among younger practitioners,

w people that are, you know, in their seventies and eighties that

practiced medicine or public health for a long time under these idea.

Are not necessarily ready to give those up.

But there's a lot of evidence that now suggests that when you have saturated

fat that's basically non oxidized and it's not in processed foods and it's just

basically whole real foods, things like butter and eggs and fat that's found in

whole pieces of meat, that there's nothing inherently unhealthy about those foods.

And in fact, , there's a whole line of diet studies and, and writing

that suggests that they're actually an essential component in the diet,

partly because they add to how satiated we feel when we eat, and

so they help prevent overeating.

And so when, when all this has been sort of reexamined, I, and I go through

it in a lot of detail in the book in terms of the specific studies, but

that's kind of a summary of what's happened on that side of the question.

So let's go back for a second to mid 20th century when that idea

that saturated fats were the culprit and there were other ideas coming on,

but that's the one that caught on.

Well, there's political reasons.

Why do you think that was the culprit that was named?

What I sort of believe happened and what I theorize in the,

you know, the case that I build in the book is that there was a, a kind of a

battle between certain individuals that were arguing the different theories

and the theory that was the sugar idea.

Which was coming from probably a number of different quarters, but in

particular from a, a physician named Dr.

Jukin in, in the UK in England.

He was a prominent, very well-respected medical researcher who became

increasingly persuaded that sort of processed foods in a particular sugar.

It was the primary culprit in the rise in a lot of diet related diseases, and what

ended up happening to him is, Amazing.

It's really reminiscent of the initial attempts to try to regulate tobacco.

There was a very deliberate attempt to discredit him, and the sugar

industry itself got very well organized and they tried to marginalize him

personally and to try to prevent his research from being discussed and.

Tried to get him uninvited from conferences and in fact they did succeed

in this to a large degree and tried to prevent publishing of his work.

So there's been a lot about that lately that's been written and, and people like

Robert Lustig, U S F, who are trying to expose the danger of sugar are are

talking a lot about his work and the fact that he was kind of a pioneer in

this, but his voice was basically, You know, squelched based on the money and

the power behind the sugar lobby and the industry, just as early attempts to,

you know, expose the danger of tobacco.

Very same kind of playbook.

And then you had, on the other hand, keys who wrote this very famous seven

countries study, which seemed to show that in those countries where

people ate the most saturated fat, There was the most heart disease.

So it was like a really simple idea of correlating these two things.

There's been a tremendous amount of research and analysis of that initial

work and subsequent works in the last couple of decades showing that there

really isn't a very strong connection, and in fact that, that he had actually

begun with a much larger body.

data from 22 countries and he deliberately pared it down to seven

countries, , because he wanted to show a strong correlation.

And if you included all of those countries, there would've been

almost no correlation at all.

Wow.

And so the subsequent, you know, analysis, sort of epidemiological

research and also the clinical work that's been done for decades now,

trying to show this link is pretty.

Pretty weak.

And in fact, there's a lot of counter research now and some of the, I think

most, most important research is some of the studies that have shown, if you

take out the processed meats mm-hmm.

so things like, let's say deli meats and bacon and ham, even though those things

are delicious, , you know, many of those things have a lot of added ingredients.

And of course there's a lengthy process that happens to those meats and their

preparation and so, , take those out.

Cause very few meat studies do that.

Hmm.

Uh, when you do that, the, the correlation between meat and any diet

related diseases entirely vanishes.

So to me, that kind of thing is extremely compelling in suggesting that we've

really gone down a, you know, the wrong path altogether in the way we've looked

at this issue from a health standpoint.

Now let's talk about cattle being good for the environment.

Your numbers add up to the fact.

That there are only slightly more cattle today than from much of the past century.

So expressions like overgrazing sound more like fear mongering than fact.

Is that true?

Yeah, I started out the book just kind of going through some of the,

some of the actual data as far as the numbers of animals and also the amount of

these foods that we're consuming because there's, there's a kind of a, you know,

again, sort of popular narrative that we're eating more red meat, we're eating

more eggs, we're eating more butter.

Just more saturated fat and that we're having a rise in all these

diet related diseases, and also this correlates to lots more of these farm

animals on the landscape and kind of causing all this environmental damage.

Hmm.

Well, the reason that it's so important to just look at the raw data is that

that story in and of itself, , it's kind of a house of cards because when

you look at the numbers of cattle, for example, on the land, it's slightly

higher today than it was, let's say a hundred years ago, but not much.

And the reason for that is because even though we're producing a lot more

meat, and we're producing a lot more milk today, you know, as a nation,

but the reason the numbers are not.

Dramatically greater in terms of the actual numbers of cattle and inventory

is because the numbers of dairy cattle have gone down dramatically.

The reason for that is increased production per animal, and I actually

have some real concerns about the, you know, how far that's been pushed.

Yeah.

But that's just the reality of it.

There have, there are far fewer dairy cattle.

Today in the land and there were a hundred years ago because each individual animal

produces about six times more milk.

So a great deal.

More milk.

Again, I'm . I'm not a big fan of that.

You know that breeding to that extreme and I have real concerns about that.

But we are in fact, Having a lot fewer dairy cattle because of that.

And then the number of beef cattle in the, in the United States has increased,

but not as much as people think.

So it's, so if you add up all the cattle together in the United

States, it's slightly more, I think it's something like 20% more total.

So it's a lot smaller of an increase than people tend to think.

And when you actually look at all of the farm animals together, so if you include

sheep, goats, bison, pig, And except for poultry, because those are small animals

that are, you know, kept in buildings and they are raised in huge numbers.

The numbers of poultry have increased dramatically in the last,

you know, century or especially the last half, half century.

But the, if you added all the sort of large farm animals that people

believe have a large ecological impact, The numbers have actually declined.

So because, and that's because the numbers of sheep have gone way down.

I mentioned the number of dairy cows have gone way down.

We also have fewer mules, oxen, horses, you know, all these animals

that used to be used for work on farms and still are in other parts of the

world, but not that much in the us.

So if you think of sort of like the mass of farm animals on the landscape in the.

that has actually declined.

Hmm.

So these are just really important facts for people to think about when

they're talking about this issue.

And then similarly, on the dietary side, we see that there was kind of

a peak of red meat consumption in the mid 20th century, but that's actually

been going down for quite some time.

And the total number of eggs that people eat is lower.

The total amount of saturated fat that people eat from animals is down

about 20% over a century, Rico, you know, so all of these numbers show.

Sort of popular myth that, you know, we are eating more animals, we're raising

more animals, we're getting sicker.

It's just not true.

So that, you know, you can just start right out by saying, , forget those ideas.

They're wrong,

and you give us those points that we're eating less.

Meat to begin with.

Yet, as a nation, our health is not necessarily improving.

So clearly something else is going on.

And as you say, all the processed food definitely is a problem.

And when it comes to beef, I mean that's real food.

It's very nourishing and satiating too.

So part of what I've sort of gotten more and more intrigued by

in the last, you know, several.

As I've thought a lot about this stuff is, and as I've been reading and I've

read a lot of books about all this stuff, and people like Gary Tabs and

Nina Tik Holtz, who, who they just so compellingly, you know, present this

idea that because we've taken so much of the good fat and protein based on

animal-based foods out of the diet mm-hmm.

or, you know, we've deemphasized it, we've sort of pushed it

to the side of the plate.

We've told people again and again, you know, . Pasta to me is a good example.

If you're eating a lot of pasta and you're putting, you know, like, and I used to do

this myself when I was a vegetarian, you'd put a big pile of pasta on the plate and

then like a little bit of sauce, you know?

And what I've realized is if you have a good.

Healthy meat sauce that you've made with beef, for example, and you are going to

eat, you know, spaghetti with meat sauce, . You're probably gonna have a healthier,

more satiating, more nourishing meal if you have a relatively small portion of

past and a lot of meat sauce on top of it.

And I've actually done that exact transition in my own diet.

But what we've done as a nation is we've told people, and this has kind of happened

throughout the westernized world that we.

Shouldn't eat very much meat and that we should be eating a lot of grains.

And these other, you know, things like bread, you know, filler foods,

bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, and we, and we've eaten a lot more of that.

So our total carbohydrate consumption has gone up.

Our total processed food consumption has gone up.

Our consumption of animal fats and red meat and eggs has gone down.

So I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that we're eating more

to try to feel full and to feel fully nourished because we're also eating.

Again, foods like rice and pasta are fairly low in terms of how

much nourishment per calorie is provided, so you don't end up

feeling full satiated, and you also don't end up feeling nourished.

So your body is sort of.

Continuing to signal you that you need to eat more.

And so you do.

And when you look at how many calories per person that we're eating

in the United States right now per day, it is hundreds of calories

higher than it was 50 years ago.

So I think all of this stuff is related and you know, this whole idea

that we've been telling people for so long, they should eat less meat.

It's really misguided and it has had some very serious downstream effects on our.

. Bruce: You mentioned a few times during

It's not a big secret, but it is interesting that as a rancher for

decades, you were a vegetarian.

So why did you make that choice?

And then why did you decide to come back around and include

beef in your diet again?

Yeah, I was raised in omnivore.

You know, my parents were omnivores and they were really interested in health and

the connection between diet and health.

They always, my mom had a big garden and used to bake her own bread and

make her own yogurt, so she, she was really, you know, very hands on in

terms of, Eating and food and cooking and baking and taught us about that.

So I had this idea from really early on that if you were trying to be healthy, you

know you were going to eat real food and make as much of it yourself as possible.

But they did kind of get caught up in, as so many people did in

the 1970s and this idea that.

fat was bad for you.

And I remember this idea being talked about a lot in my household

that we shouldn't eat too much fat and we shouldn't, you know, just

have butter as a treat on Sundays.

You know, kinda thing.

and, and I actually kinda remember, you know, the margarine coming

into the house and my parents kinda saying, okay, so usually you should

eat the margarine on Sundays.

You can eat the butter.

You know, so they were like really focused on all this stuff and by the time

I reached college, I started to feel.

Probably if I wanted to be a good environmental steward and

also eat the healthiest diet, I should eat very little or no meat.

So you sort of fast forward, I kind of stuck with that for, you know,

a decade or so, and then I started working for Bobby Kennedy Jr.

In New York as an environmental lawyer.

He asked me to work on the issue of meat production and concentrated

animal production as an environmental issue and water quality issue.

So it's, at first it's kind of reinforcing my beliefs that, you

know, oh yeah, from, you know, meat is better for the environment, basically.

To summarize it briefly and then.

Just a couple months into the project, I realized, wow, it's so different

depending on how you're doing it.

It's, I was going to just beautiful farms like Paul Willis's farm in

Iowa, which was one of the first ones that I visited and I was seeing.

You know how his animals were le leading good lives.

He was, he had a very ecologically vibrant farm.

He's done this huge prairie restoration and, you know, he raises all these

different kinds of heirloom tomatoes in his gardens and, and it's a place

that, you know, the, the neighbors.

Are thrilled is there, you know?

Yeah.

And then in contrast to that, I was going to um, sort of the worst kind

of factory farm operations in North Carolina and Missouri and seeing

these, you know, very depressing kind of metal buildings or these huge

waste lagoons out back, you know?

No, you know, no good thing was happening in terms of.

You know, the, the water quality was getting, you know, affected

by it in a negative way.

Odors were being caused, the neighbors were outraged, you

know, so it, it, it just couldn't have been more of a contrast.

Right.

Um, and so I started feeling like, you know, we need to make this distinction.

And the work that I was doing was trying to do that, but I stuck with

my vegetarian diet for a long time.

And when I married Bill Nyman, You know, c e o and founder of Naiman Ranch and

Rancher, and, you know, someone who really was living and breathing with

cattle and, and meat, and people thought I would re-exam my diet, but I, I was

more and more convinced that animals were important in the food system, but

it wasn't affecting my own personal.

Feelings about what I wanted to eat.

Mm-hmm.

. And over time that shifted very gradually because we had children.

I wanted to raise them as omnivores because of how I've always believed that

meat is healthy food, especially for people that are growing and developing

and, and then when I reached age 50, that's when I decided, you know, I

need to make sure that what I am eating is really supporting vibrant health.

It's not just good enough to.

maintain, you know, I need to mm-hmm.

my, I knew for, you know, from lots of different things, personal experience and

observations, as well as lots of reading that my, I knew my bones and I knew my

muscles were gonna begin to be challenged, that I was gonna be hard to maintain those

things and that I was gonna be getting.

You know, heavier in terms of my weight if, if I didn't, you know, really watch

what I ate and be really careful, which I'd never been a problem, you know, going

up, you know, up to that point in my life.

So I started re-examining what I was eating and I felt that meat actually would

be an invaluable component, invaluable part of my diet if I wanted to have.

The best nutrition.

And then when I started to eat meat again, which is about three

years ago now, I was very surprised how much I enjoyed it right away.

like, like it was like, this is delicious.

Why was I not eating this all these years . And I'm really, really glad

I've reintroduced it into my diet because I feel like it's a delicious

satiating food and I'm really surprised how much I'm enjoying cooking.

The foods that I grew up with.

Mm-hmm.

things that my mother used to make.

Things like goulash that she with beef, goulash that she used to make,

which is so delicious and I didn't eat it for 30 years and now I'm eating it

again, preparing it for my boys and passing on that tradition to them.

So, . It's been very satisfying and really happy I decided to do it.

Well, you are practicing what you preach.

Yes, exactly.

, Nicolette Han Neiman, I can't thank you enough for this amazing

book Defending Beef, for spending time with me talking about it.

And thank you for your work and thank you for your time.

Oh, thank you so much for inviting me, Bruce.

These interviews are so informative to me.

I'm so glad that we do them.

Bruce schedules them.

The reason that Bruce is always interviewing them is because basically

in the division of labor in our world, he's taken it over, uh, to

kind of schedule the interviews, and so then he interviews these people.

I do occasionally, but mostly it's kind of become your job.

Also, I edit the podcast so it's easy for me to edit the interview

while I'm editing our podcast.

It's, it's really fascinating.

And Bruce does it by Zoom.

You should, these things are all done by Zoom.

They are done by Zoom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you'd be interested in like, seeing the videos of Zoom, let us

know because, you know, we could open up a Patreon account and for a fee

we can let the videos be available.

Well, we could, it, it, it's, they're done by Zoom because that

way we find that the conversation is more natural if you're looking at the

person and they're looking at you.

Uh, I did an interview a while back and this person.

Turn his camera on.

And then I ask him too, because at first the interviewer is very stilted and you

know, you can read each other's body cues.

Mm-hmm.

facial movements.

You can see when the other person wants to talk.

It's so much easier to do it as a zoom affair.

And then of course, Bruce just rips the audio off.

The Zoom.

Yep.

And uses that.

It's very easy, but still, and nonetheless, they're

always so grandly informative.

Okay.

Our final traditional segment on the podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark,

what's making us happy in food this week?

You go first.

Sumo oranges are back and I am.

Thrilled.

We were in the supermarket yesterday and I'd been, I'd been really

lamenting no good fruit, cuz this is the worst time of year for fruit.

The berries are all coming from South America and Mexico and melons forget it.

And a citrus or Florida fine.

I can get my little oranges, but I forgot about sumos and

they are the best oranges ever.

And they're only in the supermarkets like in January and February and we were there

and Mark said, oh look what's there.

So I got a.

Big bag of Sumos and they're making me happy.

They are very good.

What's making me happy is Sri Lanka and curries.

I have to say, we had a Sri Lankan cookbook author from

Australia on the podcast.

Oh, months ago, six weeks, two months ago.

Something.

You can go back and check out the, oh, Tom Carey.

Yep.

And she's an Aussie and she has a, uh, collection of restaurants

or just one restaurant?

She has a restaurant called the the Lankin Filling Station.

Okay.

In Sydney.

In Sydney, and we had to run the podcast and it got Bruce

obsessed with Sri Lankan food.

Mm-hmm.

, and he's been making Sri Lankan curries.

I had a Sri Lankan fish curry last night.

It was super sour, it was hot, it was delicious.

We ate it over a long, really long grain white rice.

This white rice that Bruce buys at this Indian store that the grains.

Like an inch and a half long.

The rice is insane.

The rice is actually imported from Pakistan, and I've never

seen Buzz Maridi rice that long.

It was amazing.

It was really insane.

It, I love Sri Lanka and curries.

Check out Longen food if you're interested, or that old episode

of the podcast if you wanna hear the interview with the author.

The Sri Lanka and curries are just kind of amazing in.

Of their flavor profile, because it's not the traditional

curry that you might think of.

It's much more sour and it's also pretty hot.

Mm-hmm.

, they're really good.

And coconut, coconut, coconut, basically what that chef told me in the interview is

that Sri Lankan cooking would not exist.

Sri Lankan culture.

Could not exist without the coconut.

Oh, there you go.

Well, that's our podcast for this week.

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