If a cow derives all the nutrition she needs to create milk from green leaves, wouldn't it makes sense for us to skip the cow and just eat leaves ourselves?
It makes sense.
Until you understand the difference between humans and cows.
Does this green grass and clover make your mouth water? If not, then you must not be an herbivore.
Herbivores are Specialized
Do you know what cows eat?
If you are a smarty pants and shouted out grass! You are wrong. Even for grass fed cows.
Cows swallow grass, which feeds a vast host of bacteria and microbes in their specialized gut. Cows digest those bacteria, and compounds produced by those bacteria. So even though cows swallow vegetation, the nutrients they need come from bacteria that have eaten those plants. In a sense, cows are eating bacteria.
Mammals are not capable of getting all the nutrients they need directly out of plants--at least not without the help of bacteria. If not for the specialized, complex digestive system that herbivores have developed, and the bacteria that they hold, herbivores could not survive on a diet of plants.
Cows thrive eating food that is inedible to humans.
Big Mama
Have you ever noticed how big of girth a cow has? That's not because they are fat--even cows that are thin and boney have big barrel bodies.
Cows are so big around because they have four stomachs, and one of those stomachs, the rumen, is huge. Rumens can hold 25 to 50 gallons of grass. That's 200 - 400 pounds of leafy greens. The rumen acts as a storage and fermentation vat for the plants that they eat.
During its time in the rumen, bacteria begin working on the grass, breaking it down in a way that human guts cannot. Energy is extracted from fibrous cell walls that would pass through you and me as insoluble fiber.
Vitamin B12 is created by bacteria in cow guts. Humans do not have bacteria capable of creating B12. We need to consume it from an outside source.
How Much Salad Can You Eat?
As mentioned above, a rumen can hold 200 - 400 pounds of plant material. How many pounds of greens do you eat in a day?
Of course, humans are much smaller than cows. Doing some simple math, if a 1,000 lb cow eats 200 pounds of fresh grass daily, that would be the equivalent of a human who weighs 150 pounds eating 30 pounds of greens daily.
An average head of broccoli weighs 1 pound.
The USDA recommends that we eat 5 servings of fruit and veggies each day. If you eat five 8 oz servings, that's only 2.5 lbs of veggies.
Can you eat 30 heads of broccoli per day? You would have to eat almost 2 heads of broccoli during every waking hour. Of course you wouldn't eat only broccoli, you would surely mix other fruits and veggies in. The point is, it's an enormous amount of plant food.
Omnivores and Carnivores
Healthy carnivores have narrow waists. Picture a wolf or a lion. Does it have a big barrel shaped body like a cow? No, its waist is much smaller than its chest. That is because their guts are more similar to humans, who when healthy, also have narrow waists.
Animals designed to eat animal products (omnivores and carnivores) do not need the impressive digestive system for breaking down large quantities of plant material like herbivores do.
Food from animal sources is much more concentrated and easily digested. You don't have to eat nearly as much bulk to get the nutrition you need.
And it has everything you need, including B12.
It is also important for us to have healthy guts. I would go so far as to say that having a healthy gut is the most critical factor affecting your general well being. A healthy human gut is different than a healthy cow gut. We will never have 4 stomachs, or develop the ability to break down plant fiber. That is because we are designed to be omnivores, and get what we need from both plant and animal sources.
Eating in Harmony with Nature
Cows are able to graze land that is not accessible to other forms of agriculture. They can graze steep, wooded places that you would never get farm equipment into. When managed well, they enhance the ecosystem, improving habitat for wildlife.
Cows on pasture eat dozens of herbs every day. Those herbs, many of which are considered medicinal, impart much of their good properties to the milk that cows make from them.
I am so grateful to my cows for providing me with delicious, nutritious milk. I have a beautiful relationship with them. I take good care of them, and they take good care of me.
Raw milk is a regular part of my diet. I love knowing that I am getting vibrant nutrition from it. It makes me feel good.
Nerd Corner
Did you know that not all herbivores are ruminants? There are other strategies animals have developed for extracting nutrients from plants. Horses and groundhogs are what we call "hind gut fermenters". Rabbits are cecotrophs, meaning that they eat their poop so it gets digested twice. Every type of herbivore has some specialized way of breaking down plants to get the nutrients they need.
Comentarios