This Plus That

Meat + Health with Kate Kavanaugh

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Kate Kavanaugh (she/her) is trying to figure out what it means to lay the groundwork. For herself, for human health and ecosystem health alike, for farmers, for the next generation, and beyond. After many years as a vegetarian, Kate’s health began to decline precipitously. She turned to meat for answers and found an entire world of curiosity before her. She noticed that through holistic management, farmers were working to restore ecosystems and grasslands with the help of ruminants. This seemed intimately connected to her own health journey and—curious to help restore the Western grasslands she called home through regeneratively raised meat—she opened a whole-animal butcher shop, Western Daughters, with her now-husband in 2013.

Blending her knowledge of regenerative agriculture, nutrition, anthropology, health, and biology, Kate is now in the midst of yet another life change spurred on by meat. She moved to a farm where she grows almost all of her own food, lives with the rhythms of nature, and explores the question of what it means to lay the groundwork through her podcast—the Ground Work Podcast. When she’s not exploring the intersections of human and ecosystem health, you can find her playing with goats in the sunshine.

In this episode, on the intersections of Meat + Health, we talk about:

  • [08:02] The paradox of life and death: they can coexist together and one is required for the other.
  • [22:39] The brilliant thing about ecology is that we are attracted to things that are more beautiful and taste better.
  • [47:21] The difference between Kate’s view on agriculture and conventional agriculture. 
  • [57:29] Why contradiction doesn’t exist in the universe. 
  • [01:21:45] Life thrives in edge zones within an ecosystem. 
  • [01:30:48] Is the reason why so many people have health issues that we’ve replaced fat with sugar? 
  • [01:37:04] Kate and I both like complexity and nuance, which sometimes makes us exhausted people. 
  • [01:50:03] Death is not bad in nature. It strengthens the soil and our bodies. It’s all part of a bigger ecosystem.  
  • [01:55:51] Why Kate’s community and her new podcast, Ground Work, fill her up.

    • Prefer to see this conversation instead? Watch the full episode on YouTube. You can also find more on our conversation and links to everything we discussed by checking out this episode’s show notes.

    Listeners can find Kate online, at:

    Ground Work Podcast
    Ground Work Collective
    Western Daughters
    Personal Instagram
    Ground Work Instagram
    Western Daughters Instagram

    You can also find meat from a regenerative farmer near you by going here—a search engine of more than 2,000 regenerative farms with a robust set of filters in order to find exactly what you want.

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    Podcast Production Credits:
    The Podcast Babes

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    This Plus ThatBy Brandi Stanley
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