The Climate Diet

When food is no longer made for people.

Is it even possible to find healthy food at a reasonable price anymore, or has the industry fooled us all? That’s the brutal question I’ve been grappling with over the past year.

When even reindeer are being dragged into the feed industry, it says something about how far the system has stretched.

The Hunt for Clean Food
Together with Laila, I’ve combed through the possibilities in both Thailand and Europe, searching for a place to live where we can actually get access to clean ingredients. For a long time, we believed the imported beef from Australia was the answer while we were in Thailand — that it was healthy, safe, and natural. But the deeper I dug, the more the shiny image cracked. I discovered that even what we thought was “the world’s best meat” is often just another product of an industry that prioritizes profit and climate ideology over both animal welfare and human health.

Along the way, I did find producers who guaranteed fully clean, natural, grass-fed meat. But when I saw the price tag, my heart sank. The price was so high that this food is practically out of reach for most people. It was a brutal wake-up call: Real health is becoming a luxury good for the wealthy. For those of us with regular incomes who want to eat ourselves healthy on real food, our wallets become a barrier. We’re essentially forced to choose ultra-processed food, factory meat, and farmed fish.

And this is where the most frightening part comes in: the math that authorities use to call this industrial food “safe.” The so-called thresholds for chemicals and residues are based on a theoretical model where we eat “a little of everything” and follow dietary guidelines religiously. But when real life or our budgets lead us to base most of our diet on cheap factory meat, farmed fish, and ready-made meals, the math falls apart. The total load becomes far higher than the model accounts for. And for those of us who choose to eat large amounts of clean meat — maybe half a kilo a day for health reasons — we completely blow the scale. We risk consuming doses of hormone disruptors and inflammation markers far above normal — potentially many times more than the model anticipates.

After searching the world for a place to settle — somewhere with clean water, fresh air, and natural food we can actually afford — I’m left with a conclusion as simple as it is tragic: The cleanest meat you can get today might just be the Norwegian sheep that’s roamed free in the mountains all summer and eaten pure hay in the winter. Everything else, from the Australian beef to the “climate-friendly” factory cow, seems compromised. No wonder the real farmers and local fishermen are throwing in the towel. The result of this game is that we hand over our health to a system run by climate bureaucrats and greedy food barons. It’s no coincidence that many of the country’s wealthiest people made their fortunes from food — an industry now sacrificing public health to polish climate reports and squeeze every last cent in profit.

When Nature Says Stop
Nowhere are the consequences of this mindset clearer than in how we’re treating cattle. You don’t need to be a biologist to grasp the risk — but you do need to understand what’s going on inside the animal. We need to ditch the idea of cows as production units and start seeing them as living ecosystems. A cow depends entirely on billions of bacteria in its gut to digest grass. It’s a finely tuned collaboration evolved over millions of years.

When we start adding methane inhibitors to feed, we’re deliberately sabotaging that collaboration. Specific bacteria are killed off to reduce methane emissions. But when you remove a crucial piece of a biological system, it affects the whole. It’s not like shutting off a valve; it’s like disturbing the balance of an aquarium. The chemistry shifts, and the digestive system — the engine of the animal’s health — falls out of sync.

And it doesn’t stop there. On top of this chemical interference, the industry feeds cattle massive amounts of soy, corn, and grain to make them grow faster. Cows aren’t built to eat grain in large quantities. It makes their gut environment unnaturally acidic. Imagine walking around with constant acid reflux and an upset stomach every single day. That creates chronic stress and inflammation in the body.

What we’ve done is build a system that deliberately inflicts a metabolic burden on the animals — their bodies working overtime to handle a diet they weren’t built for. We do this to make steak cheaper and the climate math look better. But the big question we need to ask is: Can an animal living with constant imbalance and stress really give us the nutrient-dense food we need?

You Are What Your Food Ate
The old saying goes: “You are what you eat.” But in today’s food system, we need to add a new layer: You are also what your food ate. For many, a steak is just a steak, and milk is just a white liquid in a carton. But biologically, it’s not that simple. The raw material carries the biology of the animal it came from — and that’s where the changes have occurred.

Humans have eaten meat for millennia, but we’ve never before eaten meat from animals that spent their entire lives in a state of metabolic strain. When a cow lives with chronic digestive stress and is pushed to grow unnaturally fast, it affects the entire organism. This creates what's known as oxidative stress in the tissues. Simply put, the fat and cells in the meat are more unstable before the animal is even slaughtered. When we eat that oxidized fat, we increase the inflammatory load in our own bodies.

Even the fundamental building blocks of the meat change. When an animal is fattened up at lightning speed on industrial feed, its muscles don’t have time to develop normally. The protein structure becomes different from that of an animal that’s grown slowly on grass. It doesn’t make the meat toxic overnight, but it turns it into a biologically inferior ingredient — something our bodies likely struggle more to process.

This becomes even more obvious when you look at the fat balance. A cow that’s been outdoors eating grass develops a healthy ratio with high Omega-3 content, which helps fight inflammation. The industrial cow, on the other hand, fed on soy and corn, ends up with a fat profile dominated by Omega-6. The problem isn’t Omega-6 in itself, but that most of us already have way too much of it in our bodies. When even “clean food” tilts the scale the wrong way, we lose the chance to restore balance. We eat meat to build strong bodies, but because the raw material has been altered by industrial greed, we risk absorbing a hidden load of low-grade inflammation along with it.

The Math Error That Gambles With Your Health
Once we know that the raw material is biologically weakened by industrial practices, the authorities’ assurances that the food is “safe” become even harder to swallow. Because that safety is based on a calculation with a fundamental flaw.

We’ve already established that we eat far more than the models account for. But the real problem is what that food consists of for most people. It’s the salami on the sandwich, the hot dog at the gas station, the meatballs at IKEA, and the burger at McDonald's. This creates a double hit: First you get meat from an animal that lived in metabolic distress, and then that product is ultra-processed with even more additives from the factory.

This leads to what researchers call “the cocktail effect.” The safety limits are set for each substance in isolation. But no one tests what happens in your body when you mix the sum of pesticides and additives from industrial feed with the inflammation load from the meat itself — and then top it off with the chemicals from processed foods. When the dose is high over many years, we effectively become walking experiments. The government’s stamp of “safe” is based on an average that doesn’t exist in real life.

When the Body Says Stop
This is where the seriousness really sinks in. When we zoom out, we see a disturbing trend in public health. We may be living longer than before, but let’s be honest about why: It’s largely thanks to a healthcare system that’s excellent at patching us up and keeping us alive — not because our bodies are getting healthier. Quite the opposite. Despite all the knowledge and medications available, people seem to be increasingly vulnerable to chronic illness.

We see a high incidence of autoimmune diseases where the body attacks itself. Metabolic issues, digestive disorders, and hormonal imbalances like severe PMS and rough transitions into menopause have become common for many. At the same time, a large portion of the population struggles with obesity and mental health issues. The common thread for many of these problems is imbalance and inflammation.

Is it a coincidence that this pattern is emerging at the same time our food is being radically transformed? When we feed the body a cocktail of chemical residues, ultra-processed filler, and meat from animals that themselves lived under metabolic stress, the body responds the only way it knows how: It goes into defense mode.

This triggers a state of constant, low-grade inflammation in our systems. The immune system becomes confused because the building blocks we give it — the fats and proteins — are of altered quality or drive inflammation. Our gut, which should be our first line of defense, struggles to handle food it no longer recognizes as natural. The result is a body that never gets to rest. Many of the symptoms we dismiss today as “lifestyle diseases” may in reality be direct consequences of eating industrial food that’s fundamentally incompatible with human biology.

The Dangerous Paradox
Amid all the talk of emissions cuts and quotas, there’s a paradox almost no politician dares speak of: A diet designed to “save the planet” might end up undermining the very health we need to live sustainably.

Have those in charge even considered what it costs society — and the environment — if public health continues to decline? A population where more and more people are chronically ill and dependent on care consumes enormous resources. Hospitals, widespread use of medications, disposable equipment, and complex logistics all leave deep climate footprints. It’s a vicious cycle: We risk sacrificing our health to improve a climate ledger through food production, but end up with a social and environmental cost that outweighs the gain.

Even though the causes of modern diseases are complex, we can’t ignore that food plays a central role. When industrial food and meat from metabolically burdened animals make up an increasing share of our diet, we’re ignoring a major risk factor. True sustainability must begin with a healthy human body. No one can save the planet from a hospital bed.

Back to the Real
So what now? For me, the answer has become clear through this journey. We can no longer sit back and blindly trust that government approval means food is optimal for humans who, in practice, base much of their diet on it. We have to take the responsibility back — not because we’re paranoid, but because the system is built around an average that doesn’t exist.

And maybe part of the answer is closer than we think. In the hunt for clean meat, Norwegian sheep stand out as one of the last realistic bright spots. These are animals that still largely live the way nature intended: roaming freely in the wilderness all summer, eating grass, herbs, and heather, and often being fed hay and other natural winter feed. Sheep are hard to squeeze into a fully industrialized regime, and for that very reason, they’ve retained their biological robustness. They may be the closest thing we have to metabolically healthy food in this country — without becoming a luxury item or requiring imports from the other side of the world.

At the same time, reindeer show how fragile this balance has become. Reindeer herding is, by nature, one of the most extensive forms of food production we have — based on free-ranging animals and natural grazing over vast areas. When conditions are right, reindeer meat is among the least processed and biologically cleanest meats available. But reindeer also illustrate how far the system has stretched. Climate change, encroachments on grazing land, and external pressures have made the industry more vulnerable, and at times more reliant on emergency feeding and technical fixes. That doesn’t make the meat “bad,” but it does break the illusion of untouched nature. Even here, it’s become a compromise.

And that’s the point. It’s not about finding the perfect animal or flawless meat. It’s about understanding where the lines are — and who’s still closest to them. Reindeer meat is a limited niche product, expensive and hard to come by. It can never be a solution for the masses. Sheep, on the other hand, still represent a rare alignment of biology, availability, and affordability.

But this is about more than swapping animal species. It’s about reconnecting with the farmer. We need to seek out the people who produce our food, look them in the eye, and ask how the animals actually live. We need farmers more than ever — but we need the ones who dare to protect biology and say no to tinkering with nature for short-term profit and politically polished spreadsheets.

It’s time to stop being passive consumers and start asking the uncomfortable questions. It’s time to demand food that builds health — not just food that fits into a political Excel sheet. Because your health isn’t a bargaining chip in a climate game — it’s the foundation for everything else.

In the end, it’s simple: Your body never lies. Follow it — not the system.