1600s Netherlands. Something unusual happens. The Dutch break the European pattern. Instead of restricting dairy and meat to nobility, they democratise it. Not through law or revolution. Through economics. Dutch farmers develop intensive dairy systems. Small farms maximising milk production. Every farmer owns a few cows. Cheese production becomes decentralised. The result: Dairy becomes affordable for everyone. Not just nobles. Working class Dutch consume cheese, milk, and butter at rates previously reserved for aristocracy. Meanwhile, England restricts meat and dairy through land enclosure and hunting laws. France maintains aristocratic monopolies on productive farmland. Spain enforces colonial food hierarchies. The Dutch let everyone eat dairy. The physical outcomes are documented. By 1650, the Dutch are the tallest people in Europe. Average height for men: 5'6". English average: 5'4". French average: 5'3". Two to three inches taller than their European counterparts. Same time period. Different food access. Dutch children receive milk and cheese as standard diet. English children of equivalent economic class eat bread and gruel. The Dutch kids grow taller. This isn't genetic. The Dutch aren't a different race. They're eating differently. The height advantage persists. By 1850, the Dutch are still the tallest Europeans. By 1950, they're the tallest people on Earth. Today: Dutch men average 6'0". They've maintained the advantage for 400 years. What changed? Nothing. They kept drinking milk. They kept eating cheese. They kept the democratic dairy access their ancestors established in the 1600s. Meanwhile, England industrialised, created urban poverty, restricted working class meat access, and their population got shorter. The Dutch Golden Age was about trade, art, and science. But it was also about dairy. They became a global power while being the only European nation where common people ate like nobles. The lesson is obvious: democratise nutrition, improve population health, create stronger economy. But most of Europe didn't learn it. They kept their meat and dairy restrictions. They kept their short laborers and tall nobles. The Dutch proved you could have a powerful nation of tall, healthy commoners. The rest of Europe proved they'd rather have hierarchy than health. 400 years later, the Dutch are still the tallest. Still eating dairy. Still demonstrating what happens when you don't restrict animal protein by class. The experiment ran. The results are clear. Feed everyone well and everyone grows tall. Or keep feeding elites meat and peasants grain and maintain the physical hierarchy. Europe chose the latter. The Dutch chose the former. And you can see the difference in average height charts to this day.

Humans can't digest cellulose. It passes straight through us. Grass is 30-40% cellulose. 70% of Earth's agricultural land grows grass and not much else. Without ruminants, 70% of agricultural land produces zero human food. Cattle are the only way to convert that grass into nutrition we can actually use. They're not competing with human food. They're creating food from resources we physically cannot digest. This is the point everyone misses: Cattle aren't inefficient. Cattle are the ONLY way to make marginal land productive. You can't grow quinoa on Scottish highlands. The terrain is too steep, the soil too poor, the climate too harsh. But grass grows there. And cattle eat grass. Remove the cattle and you haven't freed up land for crops. You've just made 70% of agricultural land completely useless.