“The demonization of animal food is almost entirely unfounded,” claims Paul Saladino, MD in a recent YouTube video short. Saladino, a board-certified medical doctor, is the host of the Fundamental Health podcast and the author of The Carnivore Code and The Carnivore Code Cookbook. As Dr. Saladino explains on his website, “I believe in questioning our assumptions about health and nutrition”.
Go Natural Education shares this commitment to questioning assumptions and examines Saladino’s claims from Why Cows Are Not Bad for the Environment, a video you can find on his YouTube channel. Excerpts from the transcript of his video appear below in bold. Commentary from Go Natural Education follows.
A vegan diet has not been shown to be better for the environment. Plant-based agriculture alone would be catastrophic for our environment and our ecosystems.
If everyone on Earth ate a vegan diet, our need for quality soil – and for specific types of soil – would be tremendous. For example, the protein and fiber-rich soybeans that are used in meat substitutes like tofu need well-drained, non-sandy soils with a pH of 6.5 or above. This is at the higher end of the optimal pH for plant growth, but soil can have a pH that ranges between 3.5 and 10. In the United States, the acidic soils of the East and the alkaline soils of the West aren’t optimal for additional crop production.
Soil can be amended, of course, but consider how the farms that would raise more soybeans, corn, and vegetables usually operate. Industrial agriculture applies significant amounts of chemical fertilizers to add nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to soil. This can boost plant growth but at the expense of harming the soil microbes on which plants depend. Because only 30% to 45% of inorganic fertilizers are absorbed by plants, this can lead to agricultural runoff that pollutes water resources and harms aquatic life.
If we don’t have land that we can grow food on, we have lots of land that we can graze animals on. And that can increase the carbon-carrying capacity of that soil.
Soils contain approximately 75% of the carbon on land – an amount that’s three times more than what’s stored in living plants and animals. To increase the amount of carbon that’s sequestered in soils, farmers can switch to low-till or no-till practices, plant cover crops instead of leaving fields fallow, and apply compost to fields. These practices are not typical of the large-scale agricultural enterprises that would probably raise all of the additional plants for an all-vegan world.
Cows, however, can help farmers to restore depleted soil. When it’s not deposited in excessive amounts, manure enriches the soil with organic matter and is a fertilizer that’s slowly released. Farms that practice rotational grazing also help the environment because the hooves of cows stimulate plant growth at the roots. This is at the heart of regenerative agriculture. Cows that don’t stay in one place for long won’t denude the landscape of vegetation, and keeping the landscape covered with grasses prevents soil erosion and reduces runoffs that can harm water quality.
Note: Part 2 of this series will be published next week.
Hi,
This supporting information helped me to understand the statements made in this video.
Looking forward to part two.
Thanks Steve