[Future Useless Eater]

The unhealthy diet you mean is grains. Cows healthy diet is grass & hay, etc... while their unhealthy diet is grains. Here is what a cattle ranch says...

Grain Overload and Acidosis

We don't feed much grain here at the farm. We are firm believers that cattle were designed to eat grass, hay and other forage. Our calves receive a small amount of grain over their first winter, as weanlings, just to balance their ration. Because of this fact, we don't have a problem with grain overload, but it is an extremely important subject for those who are planning on feeding grain to cattle. In addition, bread loaves, bags of snack chips and fruit can have the same effect as grain feeding. Cattle get sick or even die everyday from receiving too much high carbohydrate products of some kind or another.

[netmilsmom]

Thanks!

[ELS]

Not only what FUE said, but much (most?) of the grain that livestock are fed on factory farms is genetically modified (GMO) which means that it has been engineered to better withstand the pesticides that are used in large scale agriculture, and therefore also contains the pesticides used in growing the corn and soy. These large scale factory farms also give their livestock hormones (to "fatten" them or have them grow faster) and antibiotics (to combat the diseases that are rampant in factory farming).

A long time ago the food industry in the U.S. lobbied against coconut oil because they could not produce it here in the U.S. Coconut oil is one of the most healthy oils in existence and used to be consumed much more in the U.S. before the lobbyists got to Congress. Yes, it is high in saturated fat, but it is a natural, healthy fat. It has all sorts of benefits.

The food industry in the U.S. has been pushing high froctose corn syrup (HFCS) because it can be produced as a by product of corn production and ends up being less expensive to produce than sugar based sweetners (It is also why they push corn oil). It doesn't matter to them that HFCS is very unhealthy for humans. They put it in almost every processed food on the market - look at the food labels the next time you're in the supermarket. This is a major factor, in my opinion, as to the serious overweight problem we have. Our bodies did not evolve to consume large amounts of simple sugars.

But, corn and soy are the most heavily GMO crops in the U.S. Guess who is behind that? Can you say Monsanto? You can avoid GMO foods by checking out the Non-GMO project and the Non-GMO Shopping Guide.