Let feed and food be our medicine

The health of livestock, humans, and environments is tied to plant (phytochemical) diversity. Health is enhanced when livestock forage on phytochemically rich landscapes, is reduced when livestock forage on low-diversity pastures or eat high-grain rations in feedlots, and is greatly reduced for people who eat highly processed diets. The shift away from phytochemically and biochemically rich plant and animal foods to processed foods enabled 2.1 billion people to become overweight or obese and increased incidence of diet-related disease.

Circumstantial evidence supports the hypothesis that phytochemical richness of herbivore diets enhances biochemical richness of meat and dairy, which is linked with human health. Among many roles they play in health, phytochemicals in herbivore diets protect meat and dairy from protein oxidation and lipid peroxidation that cause low-grade systemic inflammation implicated in heart disease and cancer. Yet, epidemiological studies critical of red meat do not discriminate among meats from livestock fed high-grain rations as opposed to phytochemically rich diets.

While conventional agriculture adds 25% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, regenerative agriculture can play a sizeable role in mitigating climate change. Of 80 ways to diminish these effects, regenerative agriculture—managed grazing, silvopastoralism, agroforestry, conservation agriculture, and farmland restoration—jointly rank number one as ways to sequester GHG.

We can enable human and planetary health by forsaking processed foods and by sourcing, growing, and eating wholesome foods. We must learn we are members of nature’s communities. What we do to them, we do to ourselves; only by nurturing them can we nurture ourselves.