 Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. Many of us are feeling helpless in the face of the current pandemic, but the good news is there are things we can do right now to reduce our risk of falling seriously ill and dying from COVID-19 and preventing even greater infectious disease threats in the future. Today we ask, how do we prevent the next pandemic? And the answer has to do with changing our food system. Infectious diseases are emerging globally at an unprecedented rate. Literally hundreds of new pathogens have emerged, re-emerged over the last few decades, and what we eat is responsible for most of the new diseases that have jumped from animals to humans. In response to the torrent of emerging zoonotic or animal-to-human diseases, three of the world's leading authorities— the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations, and the World Organization for Animal Health— held a joint consultation to determine the key underlying causes. First on their list was the increasing demand for animal protein. The greatest swords of Damocles dangling are the H5 and H7 bird flu viruses blanketing much of the earth. A bird flu pandemic could be devastating, given their current upwards of Ebola-like flip of the coin death rates. Given that the emergence of these deadly bird flu viruses, H5N1 and H7N9, are linked to intensification of the poultry sector, there have been calls for the deindustrialization of animal production. For example, as suggested here in the annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, we're placing large industrial units with smaller farms with lower stocking densities, potentially resulting in less stress, less disease susceptibility, less intense infectious contact, and smaller infectious loads. Maybe they're the ones that could use little social distancing. The American Public Health Association, the largest and oldest association of public health professionals in the world, has called for a moratorium on factory farming for nearly two decades now. Maybe COVID-19 is the dry run we needed, the fire drill to awake us from our complacency and reform the food system before it's too late. But if, as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations visualized it, the next pandemic starts with increased demand for poultry products before ending up with human-to-human transmission. Maybe we need to move beyond just giving these animals some more breathing room and the Journal of the American Public Health Association goes beyond just calling for a de-intensification of the poultry industry, questioning the prudence of raising so many animals for food in the first place. It is curious, therefore given the pandemic threat, that changing the way humans treat animals, most basically ceasing to eat them, or at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten, is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure. Such a change, if sufficiently adopted or imposed, could still reduce the chances of the much-feared influenza epidemic. It would be even more likely to prevent unknown future diseases. That, in the absence of this change, may result from farming animals intensively and killing them for food. Yet humanity doesn't even consider this option. However, thanks to food innovations, this may be changing. Have you looked in the dairy case at the supermarket lately? Some of America's largest dairy producers have recently filed for bankruptcy due to the constellation of new consumer choices. I was peripherally involved in the largest meat recall in human history. Remember the footage of the cows getting forklifted? A hidden camera investigation at a California slaughter plant for spent dairy cows led to a recall of nearly 150 million pounds of beef for violations of food safety rules meant to protect the public from mad cow disease. Downed dairy cows, a too sick to even walk, were being dragged to slaughter with chains into the federal school lunch program. You don't have to worry about contaminated cattle brains in your oat milk, though. Plant-based milks are a no-brainer. But you can see what I'm saying, right? Yes, you can pass public health regulations to stop the cannibalistic feeding of slaughterhouse waste to dairy cows, or you can just provide the public better alternatives and let the market eliminate the risk entirely because there's no prions in plans. HIV AIDS likely rose from people slaughtering primates. 30 million people wouldn't be dead right now if we were eating meals from bushes instead of bush meats. We can't get coronaviruses from cauliflower. There is no flu in falafel production, no matter how tightly you crowd the balls together. What I'm saying is our food choices don't just affect our personal health, but our global health, not just in terms of climate change, but in terms of stifling pandemic risk. There's been a tremendous surge in interest in diversified protein sources given the increasing consensus that reduced meat consumption is critical for addressing both the climate crisis and our burgeoning epidemics of lifestyle diseases. Eating less meat may not only help save the world, but could help prevent the loss of more than 10 million human lives a year. To their credit, in 2016, the Chinese government recommended that citizens cut their meat consumption in half, in part to reduce their growing rates of chronic disease. A completely plant-based diet might reap 30 trillion dollars from the health benefits alone, and that would be just from the lowered rates of chronic diseases, like cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, not even factoring in the decreased catastrophic pandemic risk. What we eat doesn't just affect our personal health, but our global health in more ways than one. Making healthier choices could also help mediate the next coronavirus epidemic, not only at the source by sidestepping wet markets, but by also decreasing the rates of comorbidities found to increase the risk in all the deadly coronaviruses— SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. Consider the underlying risk factors for COVID-19 severity and death. Obesity, heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and chronic pulmonary disease inversely all studies of vegetable protein is superior to animal protein in terms of lower rates of heart disease, and type 2 diabetes and lower blood pressure than animal protein. Here's a meta-analysis published a few months ago on diabetes risk in animal protein consumption. For hypertension, meat, including poultry, may contribute to a higher risk of high blood pressure. Meat may even be associated with impaired lung function, increasing the risk of lung diseases like emphysema. The same diet that can help you survive this pandemic can also help prevent the next. So instead of propping up the meat industry to the tune of $100 million taxpayer dollars a month and forcing meat plants to stay open, pandemic proof your diet. Thankfully, expanded options are now hitting the meat case as well, no longer a niche market for vegetarians. Major meat producers have started blending in vegetable proteins to make hybrid meat products, like Purdue's Chicken Plus Nuggets or Tyson's Whole Blend Sausage Links. Smithfield, the world's largest pork producer, recently debuted an entire line of plant-based products. Hormel has a new plant-based line to the purveyors of spam, now believed in the power of plants. From a few weeks ago, this headline, KFC, to roll out Cargill's Plant-Based Chicken Across China. Talk about a cultural revolution. And we're not talking about Tofurky. Cargill is America's largest private corporation and one of the biggest meat packers in the world. How many fewer curly-tailed viral mixing vessels are there now that Dunkin' Donuts has a meat-free breakfast sausage? How many fewer hens are packed beat-to-beat now that egg-free mayo has taken the sandwich spread sector by storm? Corn, a brand of meat-free meat made from the mushroom kingdom, opened a single facility that can produce the meat equivalent of 20 million chickens per year. These products may not be the healthiest from a personal standpoint. A doughnut sandwich without pork is still a doughnut sandwich. But, hey, swapping an egg-free omelet from Tim Hortons and from a pandemic standpoint, zero risk. Doesn't necessarily have to be plants, though. Researchers are seeking alternative protein sources everywhere. Can't think of any possible alternatives to cow's milk. How about cockroach milk? Could be healthier than cow's milk and, hey, no lactose, no dairy allergy problems? An important alternative. I mean, I can't imagine anything else you could make milk out of. And gluten-free, too! The only downside, evidently, was the flavor. But the researchers, perhaps funded by Big Bug, chalked this up to the fact that the judges knew there were cockroaches in the bread, and so they were all just biased. I think I'll stick with the plants. But if you're like, you'll have to pry that pork chop from my cold, dead hands, we may be able to have our meat and eat it, too. An even more innovative approach to pandemic prevention was suggested by Winston Churchill in 1932. In an article in Popular Mechanics entitled 50 Years Hence, he predicted that we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium. And indeed, the prediction is becoming a reality. Instead of taking a cutting from a plant and growing vegetables, you're taking a sample from an animal and growing meat. Potentially, lots of meat, like maybe a billion pounds from a single sample. Indeed, in terms of efficiency, growing meat straight from muscle cells could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water use by as much as 96% and lower land use by as much as 99%. But when you factor in pandemic risk, the benefits to human health of a slaughter-free harvest could arguably rival those to planetary health. Food safety has been considered the primary human health benefit of such an approach. There's been a six-fold increase in food poisoning over the last few decades, sickening tens of millions of Americans every year, and contaminated meats and animal products aren't the most common cause. So, when the cultivated meat industry calls its product clean meat, that's not just a nod to clean energy. Food poisoning pathogens like E. coli, Campylobacter, and Salmonella are due to fecal residue, traces of which are found on most poultry sampled in the United States in about half of retail ground beef and pork chops. They're intestinal bugs, so you don't have to worry about them if you're producing meat without intestines. You don't have to cook the crap out of meat if there's no crap to begin with, just like you don't have to worry about brewing up new respiratory viruses that could kill millions of people if you're making meat without the lungs. A culinary choice in South China led to a fatal infection in Hong Kong and subsequently to 8,000 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, and nearly 1,000 deaths in 30 countries on six continents. If only we had learned our lesson then, we may be one bushmeat meal away from the next HIV, one pangolin plate away from the next killer coronaviruses, and one factory farm away from the next deadly flu. Tragically, it may take a pandemic with a virus like H5N1 before the world realizes the true cost of cheap chicken. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to NutritionFacts.org forward slash testimonials. We may share it on our social media to help inspire others. See any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here? Please go to the Nutrition Facts podcast landing page. There you'll find all the detailed information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. For a vital timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics, you can order the e-book, audiobook, or actual book of my latest book, How to Survive a Pandemic. For recipes, check out my How Not to Die Cookbook. And if that's not enough, my How Not to Diet Cookbook will be out this December for everyone on your gift list and all proceeds I receive from the sale of all my books goes to charity. NutritionFacts.org is a non-profit, science-based public service where you can sign up for free daily updates, and the least in nutrition research via bite-sized videos and articles. Everything on the website is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorship. It's strictly non-commercial. I'm not selling anything. I just put it up as a public service, as a labor of love as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition.