Ruminant feed: from its origins to the changes made by man - [MEMBER ZONE]

In this new article from Blooness guideguide to the ideal diet, we'll be looking at how ruminants feed themselveswhich are animals destined in particular for human consumption or whose milk is sometimes consumed. We're going to take a look at the digestive system of these animals, what they are supposed to consume in an ancestral and natural wayThen we'll take a look at what humans feed them in the context of animal husbandry. At the end of this chapter, our aim is to to determine whether the feed given to cattle, sheep or goats in today's livestock farming is a diet adapted to their organism.And what impact this can have on their health and ours, depending on what we give them and how we bring them up. The ultimate goal is to know whether it makes sense to consume the meat and milk from these animals in terms of healthy longevity.

The Best Meats chapter is divided into several sub-chapters which you can find here.

All of the first part of this content will be accessible to all, and the second part will be exclusively reserved for to Blooness members.

Part 1: Podcast format (free)

Part 2 can be found below.

1. What is a ruminant? Definition and animal families

Ruminants, including cattle, sheep and goats, play a pivotal role in the development of our planet. livestock for milk and meat production. The way they are fed and raised is an essential factor influencing not only their health and well-being, but also the quality of the end products consumed by humans..

It therefore makes sense to know whether the food that humans feed them is suitable for their healthThe aim of this guide is to provide a clear and concise picture of the situation of meat-eating animals, both for their well-being and for the consequences this could have on the health of human beings who consume meat. The idea, as always in this guide, is to establish a kind of dietary ideal to optimize longevity in good healthand to move more or less towards this ideal, depending on the context, the occasion, the financial means, etc. It is important to remember that it's not about being perfect in every wayOur aim is simply to find out what would be the ideal solutions, based on currently available and accessible data, to get as close as possible to an optimal diet, whenever possible, apart from special occasions, meals that don't fit into our daily routine or guilty pleasures.

So it's important to remember that it's the 80% of what we eat that matters most in our eating habits in order to aim for an optimum, and not the occasional deviations. So it's not a question of tracking down whether this or that meat fits our criteria on every social occasion, but simply of identifying the best meats for keto-diets.Mediterranean for our health, so that we can give preference to these meats when we can, according to our means, in our daily lives.

But before we come to any conclusions, let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, let's defining a ruminantand then turn our attention to the way this type of animal digests feedWe'll be looking at the food they ate during their evolution, in an attempt to get as close as possible to their ancestral eating habits.

Ruminants mainly belong to the following animal families:

1. Cattle oxen, cows, calves, bulls and bison.
2. Sheep lambs, sheep and ewes.
3. Goats goats.
4. Deer deer, roe deer and reindeer.
5. Camelids Although less well known, some camelids, such as llamas and alpacas, are pseudo-ruminants.

In particular, we drew up the list of these animalsas well as other non-ruminant animals, in the the previous chapter, which was a simplified summary of animal families and their characteristics.

Ruminants are distinguished from other animals by their unique digestive system. They have in fact several stomachs (or stomach compartments) that enable them to ferment and digest plants very efficiently. We're about to find out, and you won't be surprised when you discover the incredible system ruminants use to digest. We're going to take a look at how beef, cows, lambs and calves digest plants, through a long process of rumination.

2. Ruminant digestion: rumination

Ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats) are unique in their ability to digest grasswhich man, for example, cannot do.

Grazing

The animal will first graze a large quantity of grass. He won't chew his grass much, but rather swallow it in long enough strands to consume as much as possible, in as little time as possible. The animal then lies down quietly, and ruminates.

Puttying

If we take the example of a cow or a steer, the plants consumed arrive at the plant's body. in the first stomach: the rumen.

The belly has a capacity of 200 liters and acts as a kind of tank where food ferments for 24 to 48 hours. They are pre-digested before being - brace yourself - returned to the mouth, to enable the animal to chew grass for a long time to crush it and reduce its size. Cows can chew for up to 10 hours a day!

Passage through the network

As soon as the food is reduced to mush they pass into the next stomach: the. It's the smallest of all stomachs, and allows the smallest particles to the leaflet, the ruminant's third stomach, and it returns the larger ones to the rumen to be ruminated again.

Back to the rumen for fermentation

When the feed returns to the rumen to be pre-digested, the cow continues to produce fermentation, which will generate energy used by the cow, and contribute to milk production. It is also during This fermentation produces methane, a gas belched from the mouth and a greenhouse gas.. We'll come back to the ecological dimension of ruminant farming later.

It is also in the rumen that the cow makes the proteins from grassother carnivorous or omnivorous animals are incapable of doing so. make protein from plants.

The finely ground food can then be passed on to the in the following reservoirs, namely the leaflet, then the abomasum.

Filtering in the leaflet

The leaflet provides additional fermentationIt filters food to prevent large grassy particles from descending, and allows sufficiently ground food to pass into the abomasum.

The leaflet will also exfiltrate certain micronutrients such as sodium and phosphorus, as well as water. Sodium and phosphorus are recovered from the blood and returned to the rumen via saliva.

"Real" digestion in the abomasum

Finally, once in the abomasum, the food is subjected to a series of hydrochloric acid and numerous digestive enzymes, secreted by this famous abomasum, which acts like the stomach of other non-ruminant animals such as dogs, pigs and humans. The abomasum thus continues the slow digestion of proteins and lipidsThe food then passes into the small and large intestines.

During digestion, nutrients (lipids, proteins...), carbohydratessalts minerals...) pass into the bloodstream. As with human beings, these elements serve to maintaining vital functions of cows and ruminants in general, such as growth, tissue maintenance, energy requirements, etc., and milk production.

Conclusion on rumination, a very long digestion process

In short, rumination means that ruminants don't have to spend all day in a meadow chewing grass. It allows them to store grass in their rumen, to chew it under coverThis limits the amount of time spent grazing on grasslands, at the mercy of predators. Indeed, before the domestication of ruminants, there were no herders to protect these animals from predator attacks.

There are a number of things that are absolutely remarkable about ruminants, and cattle in particular. First of all, the length of their digestion, which is particularly long, which shows that these are animals with a long life span, and that it's important to respect this long life span, as we'll see just after with the way in which humans have sought to speed up these processes.

Then, the division of this digestion into four compartments, and finally their ability to extract maximum nutrients from plants, turning them into proteins and nutrientswhich is totally impossible in humans, for example.

Here again, we note the importance of feeding these animals grass and natural meadow plants, as these are foods that they are able to digest in the most natural way possible, as a result of their evolution. However, as we shall see shortly human beings, in their quest for limitless progress, to try to "hack" the cow's digestive system.and, more generally, the ruminants and animals it breeds, in order to improve yields, charge attractive prices and meet consumer demand for volume and price, to the detriment of product quality, and, above all the health of these same consumers.

But before we look at the sometimes counter-productive improvements made by the industry, let's take a look at what ruminants and cattle naturally eat.

3. Ancestral and natural ruminant nutrition

Ruminants are specialized herbivoreswhich are capable of consuming large quantities of forage difficult for other species to digestAs we have just seen, ruminants feed themselves through rumination. In the wild, long before human intervention, ruminants evolved to feed themselves. a diversity of plants they found in natural grasslands.

They grazed a wide variety of herbs, leavesThese are wild grasses that grew naturally in meadows and are very hardy, hardy plants.

They also consumed woody plants (in other words, stronger plants that produce large quantities of lignins, the organic macromolecules that give plants their strength). These woody plants could be, for example small shrubs.

This natural diet varied with the seasons and soil types, but one thing is certain: these animals had access to a varied florawhich enriched their diet, contributed to the development of a rich intestinal microbiotawhich is essential for good digestion and optimal health, and which also encourages pasture biodiversity.

Ruminants naturally adapted to the cycles of the seasons, with richer grazing periods in spring and summer. shorter winter periods. These seasonal variations favoured natural regulation of their weight and health.

Today, the natural diet closest to what the ruminant may have consumed in the course of its evolution, and the most ideal, could well consist of the following plants:

• grass;
• wild grasses ;
• from pulses such as clover and alfalfa, which grow naturally in meadows;
• aromatic plants such as dandelion, plantain, chamomile, yarrow and nettle;
• young shrub shoots ;
• or flowers.

The problem, as we shall see, is that we have sought to accelerate the growth of ruminants in order to consume the products of their breeding, such as milk or meat, in response to strong demand and affordable prices. And we've done this even if it means interfering with the natural feeding habits of these animals, for better or for worse.

That's exactly what we're going to find out in the rest of this content, where we'll see how humans have sought to optimize animal feed, what they've been able to feed cows to improve milk production, and the consequences this has had on product quality and human health.

We'll take a look at this in the section reserved for Blooness members:

• the two "complementary" feeds that humans give to ruminants and that pose problems for human health;
• the question of GMOs, genetically modified organisms;
• the inflammatory profile of meat from more or less intensive livestock farming;
• the environmental problem of monocultures used to feed animals;
• the health problem of weedkillers used in monocultures ;
• the problem that antibiotics given to animals pose for human health;
• the balance between the natural grass fed to the animals and the use of complementary products added by man;
• in which countries animals are given the best feed;
• what feed is given to cattle (beef) and sheep (lambs) in France ;
• what are the consequences of intensive livestock farming on the nutritional quality of meat and therefore on human health?
• and finally, what are the sustainable, health-enhancing alternatives?

I might as well tell you that it's a major contents of the Blooness Guideand that it is the pivotal chapter that will enable us to draw up a comprehensive the best meats to be consumed in keto-mediterranean diets, and more generally in any kind of human diet. Ready to go? Let's get started!