Can We Replace Seed Oils With Beef Tallow?

Dr. Anthony Gustin runs through the math in this twitter thread—reproduced here for readability.

Dr. Anthony Gustin runs through the math in this twitter thread (reproduced here for readability):

Original tweet here.

Between these lines all is quoted.

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24% of our calories come from seed oils! 😳 

My dream? Use regenerative beef tallow to replace all seed oils. In fryers, at restaurants, in sauces, packaged food, everywhere. 

This would transform public health and save the planet. 

But is it possible? Let's do some math.👇

Context first: 

Why tallow? It is healthy for humans and the planet. Managed properly, it's the only truly sustainable way to produce fat.

Regeneratively raised cattle restore ecosystems, sequester carbon, & support small local farmers while producing healthy fats for humans.

Why no seed oils? 

They're grown in industrial monocrops and  destructive to the environments. 4 of 5 top GHG emitting crops are seed oils.  

They destroy our health and are connected to obesity, heart disease, cancer, neurodegen, AMD, & more, and only benefit corporations.

Alright, math time. 🤓

How much seed oil do we consume in North America alone per year? 

23 million metric tons, or 23 billion kilograms (~51 billion pounds). Per. Year. 🤯 

This figure is rising rapidly and predicted to be 72.6 billion lbs by 2026.

"The North America vegetable oils market was valued at 22.89 million tonnes (MT) in 2018 and is projected to reach 32.89 million tonnes (MT) by the end of 2026" 

How much tallow could we get if we rendered ALL the fat from EVERY single beef cattle per year into tallow? 🐄

• 30 million cattle harvested per year

• 150 pounds of fat trim per carcass

• 90 pounds of tallow yield rendered from fat 

30mm x 90 = ~2.7 billion lbs of tallow possible

Uh oh! There's only 2.7 billion lbs of tallow possible per year, to replace 51 billion lbs of seed oils consumed per year.

That's only ~5.3% possible seed oil replacement.

And this is using ALL cattle, most of which are grain-fed and conventionally raised (I do not support).

P.S. The US currently produces only ~100 million pounds of tallow per year. 😬

Unfortunately we can't add the ~2.1 billion pounds of butter produced in the USA each year because it's already being consumed. 

Even if it were additional supply that was replacing seed oil consumption, it would still only be another 4% replacement.

Is lard an option? Nope. 

99% of all pork (even pastured) is fed corn and soy, so lard FA profiles are worse than canola oil. This is terrible for the environment as huge monocrops are needed to support high PUFA lard. 

We do not have a scalable regen pig option on the table.

Alright, well we need more grazing animals to improve ecosystems, provide nutrient dense meat, & build our top soil back anyway, great! 

But we'd need at minimum ~20x more cattle (with 100% utilization of fat) to be able to match yearly seed oil consumption. 

Is that possible?

Grazing currently takes up 741 million acres in the US. If we 20x'd this, we'd need 14.8 billion acres. 

But we only have 1.9 billion acres of land in the lower 48!

Even if we had an 8x improvement of land use utilizing rotational grazing instead of conventional, it won't work.

A fair argument would be that we don't need to be eating all of these seed oils. Over consuming them is why we're fat and sick in the first place, right? 

But even if we consume 10x less oil, we can still only replace 50% of it with tallow if we used EVERY SINGLE head of cattle.

I'm starting to do work on how much high-quality real food can scale to support the food system (regen meat and tallow, eggs, butter, avocado, coconut, etc.) and it is looking pretty similar to the grim calculations above.

This is clear: We need as many people as possible buying and consuming regenerative ruminants, and all parts of them (bone broth, organs, tallow, hides, etc), so we can get as much nutrition while improving ecosystems as we can. 

But it's not enough.

We have essentially two options: 

1. Focus only on the ability to grow regen food and ignore the 95%+ of seed oils and watch billions die from hunger

2. Try to find some solution to bridge the gap between maximizing local regen food supply AND provide better alts to seed oils

If we focus on option 1, corporations are going to continue to pump these seed oils into our food system & profit at all costs. 

I personally have a hard time standing by watching our population be involuntarily poisoned, knowing that real food isn't an option, & doing nothing.

So, option 2 it is for me. This is why I'm working mostly now on trying to scale regenerative practices and products as fast as possible AND working on other alternatives that will help replace destructive seed oils. 

I'll be chatting far more about all of these projects soon.

Feel helpless after this math? Don't fret! Here's what you can do: 

• Know & support your farmer 

• Buy regenerative animal products

• Eat local

• Stop eating seed oils

• Share this information with friends & family 

P.S. You can find local farms here: 

https://nearhome.groundworkcollective.com

The convergence of health and sustainability issues we face as a species is undeniable. We need as many people working on problems like this as possible.

If you have any clear solutions to replace seed oils with regenerative sources that I'm not thinking of, I'd love to hear!

If you want to stay tuned on all of the projects I'm working on follow along here @dranthonygustin or subscribe to my newsletter with 130k+ other people here:

http://dranthonygustin.com/thefeed/

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