In this episode of Functional Medicine Research, I interview Robb Wolf about his new book and documentary Sacred Cow. We had a great conversation dispelling some of the myths about meat and saturated fat as well as climate change, plant-based diets, sustainable agriculture, veganism, cattle and methane, and the ethics of eating animals.

This was a well-rounded interview packed with information that should help people make better decisions about what they eat but also become educated about the facts around meat. I highly recommend watching the Sacred Cow documentary and reading the book which goes into tremendous detail on these issues.

Full Transcript of Sacred Cow with Robb Wolf Interview

Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome, everyone, to "Functional Medicine Research." I'm Dr. Hedberg. And I'm really looking forward to my conversation today with Robb Wolf. And Robb is a former research biochemist, and he's a two-times "New York Times," "Wall Street Journal" bestselling author of two books, "The Paleo Solution" and "Wired to Eat." And he coauthored a book with Diana Rodgers, which we'll be talking about today, called "The Sacred Cow," and that explains why well raised meat is good for us and good for the planet. Robb has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world via his top ranked iTunes podcast, books and seminars. He's known for his direct approach and ability to distill and synthesize information to make the complicated stuff easier to understand. Robb, welcome to the show.

Robb: Doc, a huge honor to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Hedberg: Great. Yeah, I had Diana on last year. And we talked a little bit about plant-based diets and meat and things like that. And then since then, we've had the "New Sacred Cow" book that you co-authored, and the documentary, which is excellent. And so, why don't we begin by...I'd really like to focus on helping the listeners understand some of, you know, the misunderstandings and the truths and the myths about eating meat versus plants and things like that. And so why don't we start with a discussion about why meat has become a scapegoat. And I think, and you can expand on this, of course, but I think part of this probably goes to Ancel Keys' work in the 20th century, his promotion of misinformation on saturated fat. Can you take us from that point up to where we are now, and why you think meat has been getting such bad press?

Robb: Yeah, you know, it's interesting and worth noting the book covers the health, environmental, and ethical considerations of a meat or animal product-inclusive food system. You know, so the raising and the selling and the slaughter and the whole deal. And all of those points are important, and all of those points have some really interesting, historical antecedents, I guess, kind of describing why in different cultures meat would become vilified to varying degrees.

And like, food is an interesting cultural tool for defining self from non-self. Like, if we look within the Abrahamic religions, there are some very specific delineations of what is and is not allowed within, say, Judaism versus Christianity versus Islam. And we see similar things within different Buddhist traditions and whatnot, so I mean it...Or even just within Christianity itself, you have like the Seventh Day Adventists versus, you know, certain rules and followings within Catholicism, you know. And so, it's interesting that food is a powerful tool for defining self from non-self. And not infrequently it is the beginning point of creating out of accepted groups of people. Like, there's some pretty ugly historical examples of where the different food practices of one religion or one type of people start being used as a means of, kind of, ostracizing and, kind of, walling those folks off.

But we have these three different pieces that if we're really gonna do diligence on this topic that we have to address. And, you know,