Book Review: Sacred Cow by Diana Rodgers and Robb Wolf

Introduction

This is a book that needed to be written a long time ago. I think inherently most people know that well raised beef is both healthy for us and for the environment. Prior to the 1940s red meat was generally where most people's protein came from. Since then however, red meat consumption has actually been decreasing while chicken and carbohydrate consumption has been rapidly increasing. Part of the reason might be the propaganda (the authors did not use that word but I am willing to use it) surrounding red meat and how it’s bad for both health and the environment, neither of which is true, which the authors do a great job pointing out. The book is broken down into 3 main sections, nutrition, environment, and ethics.

Nutrition

I think this section is the easiest for me to break down since I have been talking about this for a long. Just to get it out of the way, there is really not a major nutritional difference between grass finished and grain finished before. Now that that’s out of the way, the benefits of beef are countless. Beef is loaded with B vitamins, Iron, zinc, magnesium, copper, cobalt, phosphorus, nickel, selenium, and chromium. Not only that but it has a very good fatty acid profile compared to poultry and pork. A 4 ounce serving of sirloin has about 140 calories and 30g of protein which really can’t be beat in terms of nutritional value. Compared to some other foods, you need 330 calories of eggs, 570 calories of whole milk, and 700+ calories of soy milk to get 30g of protein.

Enviorment

Although I worked briefly on a farm, this is a subject I was not very familiar with, and the authors did a great job breaking this down. I don’t think I am going to do this section justice but I do want to highlight a few key points. First, contrary to popular belief, the largest sources of greenhouse gasses are from energy and transportation. In terms of methane specifically, cattle only represents 2% of total emissions (transportation and energy are both at 28%). Next there was a study done on White Oak Pastures Beef that showed that total emissions were -3.5 compared to chicken which is actually +6 and conventional beef is +33. Nutritionally it’s hard to argue that grass finished is better, but environmentally grass finished done correctly (meaning consistent rotation in the grasslands) has incredible environmental benefits. There are a lot of other key points in this section, such as monocropping leading to top soil depletion, while properly managed cattle are able to restore the soil into healthy land, among other things, this book is worth buying just for this section.

Ethics

I think the propaganda machine was effective at making eating beef seem unethical, since they can’t make a valid argument that beef is worse nutritionally and environmentally. However this too is an illogical argument. The best explanation is to talk about how monocropping actually works. First the farmer tills the soil, which kills worms, mice and other animals that live there, then the pesticides kill insects and poison the animals that eat those insects. Then during harvest the tractor that’s used to harvest these animals kills all the small mammals, like rabbits, that happen to be in the way (organic farms are not a whole lot better). To quote the authors…

“At the end of the day, blood is spilled, and lots of harm is caused in the production of produce. It’s impossible to limit the idea of least harm to flesh on the plate. If you know that your actions will cause death as a side effect, and you still do it, then you are causing death. If you didn’t intend to kill something, but something is killed as a know side effect of your actions, does this somehow make it OK?”

I think this says everything that needs to be said about this section.

Conclussion:

This book is an amazing read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in nutrition, health, environment, and agriculture. Spoiler alert: you can grass finish all the cattle in the United States, it’s totally sustainable and actually beneficial for the environment.

Link to buy Sacred Cow by Diana Rodger and Robb Wolf on Amazon

Cover Sacred Cow by Diana Rodgers, and Robb Wolf