Matthew Hayek, Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, Christian Bugge and Simone Højte discussing how to promote sustainable food systems in Denmark, Europe and abroad

Thanks to @matthewhayek.bsky.social and co. for today's climate dialogue in CONCITO about the true environmental costs of food production. Strong evidence on the benefits of reducing livestock and promoting plant-rich diets, and good discussion on how to make it happen 🌱 #dkgreen #foodsystems

Happy to host this climate dialogue with Matthew Hayek on "The true cost of meat and Denmark's role within the global food system" in CONCITO next Friday at 14:00-15:30 🌍🌡️

#dkgreen #dkfood #foodsystems

Come see me present on food system environmental costs if you're in Copenhagen next Friday, March 27! Register for a seat here: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

?...I shared a headline about a blue state utterly failing to regulate its livestock farms' manure.

It's easy to forget when the stories about the Trump admin buying off its opponents arise, that's it's *our money*. These geniuses think that instead of us *receiving* money from a foreign company & also getting cheap energy, we should *pay our own money* to...lose energy. It's madness.

Municipal biochar can work bc cities are willing to pay a "pollution tax" eliminate PFAS. For farmers, energy for drying would require more money, bc manure is already a legal, low-cost fertilizer. This doesn't work w/o drastic changes in regulation. And free straw feedstock won't scale nationally

You didn’t engage with the problem at all. You just hand-waved away the biggest issue: drying.

Manure is a tricky problem *because it is wet*. The latent heat of vaporization is massive. It takes about 3-10x more energy to dry out a ton of manure than to move it even 100 km away. Drying is of course a prerequisite for low-temperature combustion.

I don't see manure pollution covered by enough scientists

Industrial livestock reduces climate emissions per weight of meat, milk...

But it massively increases the concentration of manure seeping into nearby groundwater, rivers, reservoirs.

What are the costs of damages here? How do they compare?

👏

Five ultra‑processed foods you should keep buying, according to a dietitian Ultra-processed foods aren’t all unhealthy. A dietitian shares five UPFs she happily eats—and why they can fit into a balanced diet

Some better resources than my rantings are www.bbc.co.uk/food/article... and www.theguardian.com/society/2023...

Who killed the pedestrian? Was it someone who held her up at gunpoint after the car happened to crash?

Private money cannot replace public funding of science Who should pay for American science? In the current political climate, many are looking to the private sector to compensate for cuts in public funding. At the Harvard School of Public Health—particula...

Great piece by @naomioreskes.bsky.social. I've personally had more success with philanthropic funding than gov grants, but I work in an (unnecessarily) controversial area of researching food and climate. When public funding dwindles, we all lose. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is great news! I can't wait to explore the data once it's available.

When they don't realize the picture on the right actually has a greater carbon opportunity cost 😪💔

Opinion | We Shouldn’t Want to Eat Like Our Great-Great-Grandparents

"While eating too many highly processed sugary and fatty foods is bad for you, research has also shown that many ultraprocessed foods, such as yogurt, whole-grain bread or...plant-based burgers, are not linked to worse health outcomes and may even be beneficial." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/o...

Opinion | We Shouldn’t Want to Eat Like Our Great-Great-Grandparents

Great going @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social "the bagel’s cream cheese, made velvety with carob bean gum and shelf-stable & mold-free with potassium sorbate, is ultraprocessed. But the idea that ultraprocessed foods are categorically unhealthy is an oversimplification." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/o...

Column | Good news: We saved the bees. Bad news: We saved the wrong ones. Honeybees have never been in danger of extinction. But scientists are finding that they can accelerate the demise of native bee populations.

Nice to see some higher-profile coverage of what entomologists have been saying for years: if you're keeping honeybees, esp without sufficient plantings, you're outcompeting native bees, who are the pollinators that really need saving. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Grateful you're sharing and spreading awareness! Much luck and strength to you as you continue the fight.

TikTok video by Dr Idz (MBBS, MRes, Dip IBLM)

Ben Bikman is another one of the "Scientific Review Authors", the ad hoc committee behind our new Dietary Guidelines. Here's a video of him lying about vegetarians having smaller brains www.tiktok.com/@dr_idz/vide...

I have many thoughts on this paper but for starters, these proponents of the UPF concept have a lot of nerve basically arguing "it is the empirical evidence that's wrong for contradicting our theory," as though they have some long-accepted theory about the world like gravity or natural selection

Misleading narrative of “healthy” ultraprocessed foods A focus on “healthy” ultraprocessed foods is overstating benefits, legitimising industry narratives, and obscuring the priority of reducing overall consumption, argue Leandro Rezende and colleagues ...

The ultraprocessed food conversation has well and truly jumped the shark. Now its proponents are opposing fortification, urging us to ignore the nutritional properties of foods, & conflating the extent and purpose of processing. Put this schema out of its misery already.
www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Sadly, the authors call out plant-based meats in the first sentence of the paper. H/T to @mbolotnikova.bsky.social for showing me this, and the bad takes on it from Michael Pollan + the NOVA creator. 5/

Don't fall for it. Nutrients ofc won't tell you the relative healthiness of food groups; that's a strawman now. Neither will pet theories (hypotheses) or trendy labels like NOVA. We need *human health outcomes* and their well-established risk factors from actual experiments. 4/

But that is not what this paper is about. They're discarding entire domains of nutrition research. But it's fine to throw the baby out with the bathwater if the bubble bath was ultraprocessed. 3/

The authors say that nutrional science is overly concerned with nutrients. True, that may be the case, and we are indeed finding that the whole foods that those nutrients are wrapped up in actually substantively matter for outcomes. 2/

Misleading narrative of “healthy” ultraprocessed foods A focus on “healthy” ultraprocessed foods is overstating benefits, legitimising industry narratives, and obscuring the priority of reducing overall consumption, argue Leandro Rezende and colleagues ...

This paper, brought to you by the nutrition team who created the NOVA system & "ultraprocessed" foods, argues "don't worry about nutrients, bc even the idea of healthy processing food contradicts our narrative; any evidence that says otherwise is wrong". 1/ www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Savouring Truth: Exposing Disinformation in the World of Alternative Meats This chapter analyses the deceptive tactics employed by the Center for Consumer Freedom’s (CCF) Clean Food Facts campaign, an astroturfing effort targeting

The "Clean Food Facts" campaign of the Center for Consumer Freedom, which is funded by the meat industry, is an #astroturfing effort targeting #plantbased meat alternatives thru manipulative strategies: the illusion of credibility, emotional #manipulation and… (1/2) doi.org/10.1108/978-...

Crucially, high income repeatedly offer consistent dietary guidance whether or not they quantitatively weigh GHGs & other enviro impacts. Here is Canada, which doesn't, next to Germany, which does. Little red meat, some low fat dairy, lots of plants, incl. plant protein sources, & water 4/

Based on direct health impacts alone, not environment, the DGAC reviewed all evidence & still found that red meat and animal fats should be reduced, and replaced with plant proteins. Read in Part E, Chapter 1 here 3/ www.dietaryguidelines.gov/2025-advisor...