Nourishment

This book unfolds a long and brilliant argument drawn from Provenza's decades of academic research and experience with domesticated ruminants—cows, sheep, and goats. Turns out these animals are not dumb. 

In healthy pastures and rangelands Provenza illustrates their ability to select a diet of plants that provide sufficient calories, balanced nutrients, and perhaps most important, a mix of plant-made compounds that underpin normal immunity. Provenza calls this "body wisdom." 

Like ruminants, we too have body wisdom. But, the steady infiltration of ultra-processed foods into the human diet challenges body wisdom with mixed messages. While our brains get high, our cells… show more.

Fred Provenza gives reason after reason for why the meat we eat can be so much better and all the ways that what is currently sold is failing.

Most of what is available in stores and restaurants lacks phytonutrients. The meat often has low levels of healthy fats and acids, which are crucial for a healthy diet. But when animals eat from the open range, everything changes.

Provenza also writes about climate change’s perverse impacts on farming and how extreme heat saps the nutrients from plants.