The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1389 - Chris Kresser Debunks "The Gamechangers" Documentary

00:00:03.000 Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Kresser.

00:00:05.000 Joe, good to be back.

00:00:06.000 How are you, buddy?

00:00:06.000 Good to see you.

00:00:08.000 We are here because of the film The Game Changers.

00:00:12.000 I watched it.

00:00:13.000 I watched it today.

00:00:14.000 I watched the whole thing from start to finish.

00:00:18.000 And I have to say, before we even start, I like the guy who's in it very much.

00:00:22.000 James Wilkes, a very nice guy.

00:00:24.000 He's an excellent fighter.

00:00:25.000 He won the ultimate fighter.

00:00:28.000 And I don't think he's a bad person.

00:00:31.000 I've only had a little bit of interaction with him just over the past couple days via email.

00:00:35.000 He seems like a really great guy.

00:00:37.000 Yeah, very good guy.

00:00:38.000 Genuine.

00:00:40.000 We're just going to get into it.

00:00:42.000 Let's do it.

00:00:43.000 What was your thoughts on the film and what stood out immediately?

00:00:49.000 Okay, so a little bit of context.

00:00:53.000 You know, I think this film was the best of all the vegan documentaries that have been made.

00:00:58.000 I'll just say that up front.

00:00:59.000 I think it's pretty well done as a film.

00:01:01.000 Yes.

00:01:02.000 You know, it's got a big budget, pretty good storyline.

00:01:05.000 James Cameron, Jackie Chan.

00:01:06.000 Lots of celebrities.

00:01:08.000 Arnold Schwarzenegger.

00:01:09.000 You know, it's good graphics.

00:01:13.000 Like, it's just a well-made film.

00:01:15.000 And I think it's...

00:01:16.000 Especially for someone who doesn't have the background, you know, or science awareness to critique some of the claims, it's going to be really persuasive and compelling.

00:01:27.000 And I've definitely, you know, whenever a film like this comes out, my email inbox just blows up.

00:01:31.000 Like, have you seen this film?

00:01:32.000 Oh my God, you know, like, I'm eating meat, I'm going to kill myself.

00:01:36.000 It's just like...

00:01:37.000 It's the same as cigarettes.

00:01:39.000 Right.

00:01:40.000 And, you know, I was talking to Jamie about it before we started recording.

00:01:44.000 Like, I could set my watch to it every year.

00:01:46.000 If something like this happens and I've got to do a response, I consider it part of my...

00:01:51.000 It's part of my public service.

00:01:52.000 Do you think that they're making these films because they believe what they're saying...

00:01:57.000 Or do you think they're making these films because they are trying to convert people to being vegan and they think that distorting reality and just bending things and cherry picking data is acceptable because the long run,

00:02:16.000 the benefits of getting the world to shift over to a vegan diet, it's worth not being completely objective or honest about the actual facts.

00:02:25.000 No, I think they believe it.

00:02:26.000 I think people like, I mean, James, for example, I think he's genuinely trying to help people.

00:02:31.000 I think he's looked at the data and he just came to a different conclusion than somebody like me has.

00:02:37.000 And, you know, I mean, this is, there's something called confirmation bias.

00:02:43.000 I'm sure many of your guests have talked about, but it's a basic human tendency where we tend to only look at the data that support our point of view and discount the rest of it.

00:02:53.000 Right.

00:02:54.000 And it's, you know, even really, really good scientists have a hard time overcoming that.

00:02:59.000 Everybody is guilty of it to some degree, including me.

00:03:03.000 But I think, yeah, so I think generally the people who are making these films really believe in it.

00:03:10.000 They believe in the power of a vegan diet, you know, from a nutrition perspective, and they also believe that it's going to help save the world.

00:03:20.000 The beginning of it I thought was so strange when James talked about being injured and doing all the research he did, which seems like an extraordinary amount of, what do you say, like a thousand hours of research?

00:03:31.000 And that the thing that stood out was that the Roman gladiators, at least in this one particular location, According to the analysis of their bones, it appears that they had a vegetarian diet, that they ate a lot of grain.

00:03:47.000 That was strange, too.

00:03:48.000 I mean, first of all, gladiators were basically prisoners of war criminals, so the diet they're being fed is not— Prison food.

00:03:55.000 Yeah, it's prison food.

00:03:56.000 They're slaves that are forced to fight to the death.

00:03:58.000 They had a life expectancy of about two years once they became a gladiator.

00:04:04.000 It's interesting they featured Fabian Kanz, who is a scientist, you remember, who they talked to and definitely seemed to kind of buy into the plant-based diet idea or the idea that they were vegetarian, you know, by design or by choice.

00:04:19.000 They didn't talk to his collaborator, Carl Grossman, who's been quoted in the media saying, here's a quote, And by the way, all of the references, full bibliography, show notes, everything are at kresser.co slash gamechangers because I want this to be totally evidence-based.

00:04:35.000 People can check what I'm saying right there.

00:04:39.000 So he said, the vegetarian diet had nothing to do with poverty or animal rights.

00:04:43.000 Gladiators, it seems, were fat.

00:04:45.000 Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates such as barley and legumes like beans was designed for survival in the arena.

00:04:52.000 Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds.

00:04:55.000 Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat, a fat cushion, protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.

00:05:02.000 So they were basically fattening them up so they could survive longer in the arena.

00:05:08.000 It's not an ideal diet for fighting and muscle protein synthesis and nutrition.

00:05:14.000 It was basically to fatten them up so they could survive longer.

00:05:17.000 This seems so obvious that I couldn't believe it was actually in the film.

00:05:21.000 And it seemed...

00:05:22.000 It just seemed blatantly deceptive because everyone knows what their life was.

00:05:28.000 It's not like these were these elite athletes that were competing in the Olympic Games.

00:05:32.000 These were people that they were sending out to die for other people's enjoyment.

00:05:37.000 Right.

00:05:38.000 And the name, my Latin's terrible, I think it was hordiari or something.

00:05:42.000 It means like barley eater.

00:05:44.000 It was an epithet.

00:05:45.000 It was an insult.

00:05:46.000 It wasn't, you know, a compliment.

00:05:48.000 It was like, ha ha, you only can afford to eat barley.

00:05:53.000 So yeah, it was a bizarre way to start the film, I thought.

00:05:56.000 There could have been better ways to do it.

00:05:58.000 And let me also just say, like...

00:06:01.000 If the purpose of this film was to say, it's possible to thrive on a plant-based diet, and look, here are some athletes that have done that, I wouldn't have had any qualms with it.

00:06:11.000 Clearly there are examples of people who thrive on a plant-based diet.

00:06:16.000 If all the diet correctly can be done.

00:06:18.000 Rich Roll, we talked about last time.

00:06:20.000 Scott Jurek, who's one of the athletes in the film, seemed to do well.

00:06:23.000 Dottie Bausch, who's one of the athletes in the film.

00:06:25.000 If you really plan it well and you understand what you're doing and you're on it, it's totally possible.

00:06:32.000 No dispute with that.

00:06:33.000 But where I take issue with it is it went a step further and said this is the optimal plan.

00:06:38.000 Diet for athletes and everybody else, which, you know, even though it was a film ostensibly about athletes, it definitely crossed the line into this is the approach that everybody should do.

00:06:49.000 Yeah, I mean, they made these claims like all of a sudden people got stronger and faster and more endurance.

00:06:54.000 Like there's no evidence to support that.

00:06:56.000 There's no evidence other than their anecdotal statements of what they did.

00:07:00.000 There's no one has ever put anyone on a vegan diet and then run them through extreme endurance tests and found the significant increase in VO2 max or muscle strength or any of those things.

00:07:11.000 None of this has ever been done.

00:07:13.000 So, if it's true, anecdotally, for these people, it would have been really interesting if there was some actual data to go with that, where they showed studies.

00:07:21.000 I mean, we have James talking about his ability to do the battle ropes, that all of a sudden he could do an hour, and before he could only do 10 minutes.

00:07:29.000 Well, I find that really hard to believe, that you gained 50 minutes of your battle rope time just from ropes, and that was the only thing in the film that I found hard to believe.

00:07:40.000 You know, I'd have to let it go.

00:07:41.000 I mean, the guy's an athlete.

00:07:42.000 He's an amazing athlete.

00:07:43.000 He was a great fighter.

00:07:43.000 He's got fantastic endurance.

00:07:45.000 He has excellent martial arts technique.

00:07:47.000 I would just buy it at face value.

00:07:51.000 But there's a lot of those.

00:07:54.000 There's a lot.

00:07:55.000 I mean, we can go through it and talk.

00:07:58.000 I mean, there's that problem, which is there's no peer-reviewed evidence to back that up.

00:08:02.000 But even the anecdotal evidence is a little shaky when we start to talk about some of the athletes in the film and then also examples of athletes outside of the film who switched to a vegan diet and we look and see what happened to them after they did that.

00:08:16.000 The problem here is something that I call the vegan honeymoon, which is, you know, you take someone who's been on a standard American diet, they're eating KFC, McDonald's, etc., and they switch from that to a plant-based diet.

00:08:29.000 Well, of course they're going to feel better.

00:08:31.000 They've gone from eating absolute crap to real foods.

00:08:35.000 And so for a period of time, they're going to feel better for sure.

00:08:39.000 But then what happens over a longer period of time?

00:08:43.000 You know, not getting enough protein just in terms of quantity and not getting the right quality of protein, that starts to have an impact.

00:08:52.000 Micronutrient deficiencies, you know, vitamin A, zinc, calcium, iron, things like that take a while to develop.

00:08:58.000 So you're not going to see that deficiency.

00:09:00.000 Decline in performance happen right away.

00:09:02.000 It might take three months, it might take six months, it might take nine months.

00:09:05.000 It depends on all kinds of factors.

00:09:07.000 Genetics, health status going into it, the type of exercise and activity that they're doing, the way they're implementing the diet, etc.

00:09:15.000 So you have to not just look at what happens a month after someone goes vegan.

00:09:19.000 You have to look at what happens six months, a year after, or two years after.

00:09:23.000 And we can look at specific examples of that.

00:09:25.000 So in the absence of Oh,

00:09:50.000 boy.

00:09:51.000 Well, the problem is the amino acid profile of that steak is far superior.

00:09:56.000 The amount of protein that your body absorbs is far superior.

00:10:00.000 You're talking about a completely different thing.

00:10:02.000 This is known science.

00:10:04.000 You can get as many amino acids from plant-based proteins, but you need to eat a higher quantity.

00:10:12.000 Yeah.

00:10:13.000 Right?

00:10:13.000 That's what's important.

00:10:15.000 It's not the overall grams of protein.

00:10:17.000 It's the quality of the protein, what's the amino acid profile of the protein, and how does your body absorb it.

00:10:22.000 Again, this does not mean, like I'm a giant fan of hemp protein.

00:10:25.000 I eat that stuff all the time.

00:10:27.000 It's great.

00:10:28.000 So it's just you can't say that protein grams are equal to protein grams because they're not.

00:10:35.000 No, but it's even worse than that.

00:10:37.000 Jamie, pull up slide four if you can.

00:10:40.000 I made some graphics here because it's sometimes easier to understand when you're looking at a picture.

00:10:46.000 For the peanut butter sandwich thing, it was like there's the same amount of protein in a peanut butter sandwich as there is in three ounces of beef.

00:10:54.000 So I looked up the data, of course.

00:10:56.000 So three ounces of 90% lean ground beef has 24 grams of protein.

00:11:01.000 You get two slices of wheat bread.

00:11:03.000 We'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it's whole wheat and not white bread.

00:11:06.000 That's five grams.

00:11:07.000 Okay.

00:11:07.000 One tablespoon of peanut butter is four grams.

00:11:10.000 So you'd have to have five tablespoons of peanut butter in that sandwich to equal three ounces of beef.

00:11:16.000 That's a third of a cup of peanut butter. 0.99

00:11:18.000 That's a lot of fucking peanut butter. 0.99

00:11:19.000 You ever made a peanut butter sandwich with a third cup of peanut butter? 0.99

00:11:22.000 I probably have, but I'm a glutton.

00:11:24.000 I'm a legit glutton.

00:11:26.000 I've probably done that many times.

00:11:28.000 And that's 600 calories versus 200 calories from the ground beef.

00:11:33.000 Just for the same amount of protein.

00:11:35.000 Just quantity.

00:11:36.000 We're not even getting into quality yet.

00:11:37.000 I'm going to get into that in a second.

00:11:38.000 But we're just talking about quantity of protein.

00:11:41.000 But I think they were saying peanut butter sandwich and a cup of lentils, right?

00:11:44.000 Wasn't it the combined...

00:11:46.000 No, I think they said three or a cup of lentils.

00:11:51.000 Was it an or?

00:11:52.000 Yeah.

00:11:54.000 But the reality is it would probably be wood plus a cup of lentils.

00:11:58.000 Yeah.

00:11:59.000 Then, as you pointed out, it's all about protein quality.

00:12:02.000 And as you said, this is an established science, firmly established science.

00:12:06.000 They look at this especially like in third world countries where protein deficiency is common.

00:12:10.000 So they try to figure out...

00:12:12.000 How to address that?

00:12:13.000 What are the highest quality proteins that we can feed these people to bring them up to where they should be in terms of protein intake? 0.80

00:12:21.000 So the most recent scale that's used is called the DEIS, Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score.

00:12:28.000 So it ranks proteins according to two main categories.

00:12:32.000 One is the amino acid profile.

00:12:33.000 And as you mentioned, When it comes to protein quality, it's not just does the protein have every amino acid.

00:12:41.000 You know, this is what's a little disingenuous about the film.

00:12:44.000 They said every plant protein has every amino acid.

00:12:47.000 Well, yeah, nobody disagrees with that, but does it have enough of each of them?

00:12:52.000 That's the key question.

00:12:53.000 What's the quantity?

00:12:54.000 What's the profile?

00:12:55.000 So, the DS looks at amino acid profile, but then it also looks at bioavailability.

00:13:00.000 A protein is not worth much if you can't actually digest and absorb it.

00:13:04.000 So, it's a complex, you know, algorithm that combines all those things and that ranks the proteins on a scale.

00:13:10.000 So the DS for beef, rare beef, is 1.39.

00:13:16.000 It's among the highest scores on the whole scale.

00:13:18.000 The DS for egg is 1.13.

00:13:22.000 For peanut butter, it's 0.45, and for wheat, it's 0.2.

00:13:27.000 Those are among the lowest proteins that have been measured on the scale.

00:13:32.000 So even if the quantity was the same, the effect on your body, particularly on things like muscle protein synthesis, which is of concern for athletes, is not even in the same ballpark.

00:13:43.000 And when they're talking about the USRDA, they're talking about like how much...

00:13:49.000 The United States' recommended daily allowances.

00:13:53.000 Isn't that just to be healthy?

00:13:55.000 Not even healthy.

00:13:57.000 To be alive is more accurate.

00:13:59.000 It's the amount that's required to avoid malnutrition, technically.

00:14:04.000 I know that.

00:14:07.000 Why don't they know that?

00:14:09.000 I'm not doing any documentaries on food.

00:14:11.000 Why don't they know?

00:14:11.000 So to use that as a reference point...

00:14:14.000 I think?

00:14:34.000 I can't know that.

00:14:35.000 This is what I think it is, honestly.

00:14:37.000 There's a lot of vegan influencers, and there's a lot of people that make YouTube videos, and people who produce things like this.

00:14:43.000 And then the other folks just parrot what they say.

00:14:47.000 So instead of reading the actual studies and talking to objective Right.

00:15:02.000 Right.

00:15:13.000 I mean, it's really like that.

00:15:15.000 The ideology becomes so strong, it becomes like a religion.

00:15:18.000 And look, I've been accused of it from doing it from a meat perspective.

00:15:22.000 And I understand.

00:15:23.000 I understand that you would think that if you had an opposing vegan or vegetarian perspective.

00:15:27.000 I totally understand.

00:15:29.000 But man...

00:15:31.000 You know, we saw it with the Joel Kahn discussion, and you see it almost every time someone who's actually informed has a conversation with one of these influencers.

00:15:42.000 Like, they're not being 100% accurate, objective, or even honest in a lot of cases.

00:15:49.000 Yeah, I mean, there's a great Leon Festinger quote, I don't know if you've heard it.

00:15:53.000 A man with a conviction is a hard man to change.

00:15:56.000 Tell him you disagree and he turns away.

00:15:58.000 Show him the facts and figures and he questions your sources.

00:16:01.000 Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.

00:16:04.000 The best argument, in my opinion, is this factory farming is disgusting, and that the cruelty of treating animals like a commodity and serving them up for slaughter in these horrific conditions, these factory farming conditions, and these horrible pens that we've all seen.

00:16:20.000 That's the argument for veganism.

00:16:23.000 I agree.

00:16:23.000 But when we're talking about performance and health, this is where it just gets very frustrating for me.

00:16:29.000 Because if you want to make an argument that you should probably...

00:16:33.000 Follow a more complicated diet.

00:16:36.000 More complicated meaning that it's more difficult for you to acquire in some cities.

00:16:40.000 You have to be a little bit more careful about getting supplementation with vitamin B12 and essential amino acids.

00:16:47.000 You've got to be a little bit more careful.

00:16:49.000 If you want to maintain a healthy, robust life, it's possible to do that.

00:16:52.000 But it's a little more complicated.

00:16:53.000 And if you want to say, I want to live like that because the way I feel about eating animals makes me feel terrible.

00:17:00.000 I don't want to have any part of that.

00:17:01.000 And I found out that I can not have a part of that and I can live my life.

00:17:05.000 That's great.

00:17:06.000 But that's not what they're saying.

00:17:08.000 No.

00:17:08.000 And there's a lot of problems with that argument, too.

00:17:10.000 I want to come back and spend some time on that.

00:17:13.000 We can do it right now before we move on, because we just covered it.

00:17:17.000 All right.

00:17:19.000 So I want to go back to the RDA. I don't want to forget that, because that's super important.

00:17:23.000 Yes.

00:17:25.000 Yeah, so where to start with that?

00:17:28.000 So first of all, you know, the idea that plant-based agriculture doesn't kill animals is just false.

00:17:35.000 I mean, there have been studies that show that particularly monocropping type of plant agriculture kills animals.

00:17:40.000 Far more animals than are killed from eating cows, for example.

00:17:45.000 Insects, rodents, mice, birds, fish, all killed in the process of industrial agriculture.

00:17:55.000 And so that presents an ethical dilemma, really.

00:17:59.000 If you are saying, I'm a vegan because I don't want my food choices to involve killing animals, is killing a whole bunch of small animals Is non-mammal animals better than killing mammals?

00:18:13.000 Or what about killing more small animals than one cow?

00:18:18.000 Does size matter?

00:18:22.000 Where do you draw the line between an animal that is sentient enough or cute enough maybe to not be killed versus...

00:18:32.000 Let me clarify what you're saying, too.

00:18:33.000 You're saying more animals per meal.

00:18:36.000 So if you want to have a meal out of wheat, most likely more animals are going to die.

00:18:42.000 It's like if you have a hundred wheat meals with wheat in them, you're probably killing more animals than if you have a hundred meals with cows in them, because that's like a cow.

00:18:55.000 Yeah, I don't know the answer to that question.

00:18:58.000 I'm comparing kind of the whole process, you know, like eating animals versus eating plants.

00:19:03.000 And I don't know if that per meal comparison has ever been done, but I'm just saying that that's an interesting ethical question.

00:19:13.000 Let me give you their argument for that.

00:19:15.000 They say that most of these monocrops are to feed animals.

00:19:21.000 Yeah, that is a problem.

00:19:22.000 I mean, where I agree with this film is that conventional livestock practices are harmful to the planet.

00:19:30.000 Right, but what they're saying is that you're saying that eating a vegan diet and all these monocrops, that these monocrops are killing all these small animals.

00:19:37.000 They're saying, no, these monocrops, most of them actually exist to feed livestock.

00:19:42.000 That's...

00:19:43.000 That's not true.

00:19:45.000 If you follow this through, especially when you start talking about fake meat, what are those based on?

00:19:54.000 Soils.

00:19:55.000 They're industrial crops.

00:19:57.000 They're not grown on the family farm.

00:19:59.000 These are industrial GMO monocrops on a massive scale.

00:20:05.000 There was a great study published in the journal PNAS in 2017, and it was specifically addressing this claim of would removing animal products from our diet have, you know, saved the world?

00:20:20.000 Basically, would it reduce greenhouse gases?

00:20:22.000 Would it improve our nutrition?

00:20:25.000 Basically, they found that it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.6%, but our intake of carbohydrates, total calories, would go way up, and the incidence of nutrient deficiencies would go way up.

00:20:39.000 And they did the math and found that without animal products, domestic supplies of calcium, EPA, and DHA, which are the long-chain omega-3 fats, retinol, and B12 were, quote, Insufficient to meet the requirements of the U.S. population.

00:20:54.000 So translation, everybody would have to be supplementing with those nutrients if everyone went on a vegan diet.

00:21:01.000 And they went on to say that basically there's already a surplus of calories in the diet of 145%.

00:21:10.000 If we removed animal products entirely, that would go up to 230%.

00:21:16.000 So, because the volume of calories in food that would be required to meet basic nutrient and protein needs would be that much higher.

00:21:25.000 So, you know, there's a lot of downstream consequences that I don't think have been fully thought through, even if a plant-based diet might work for one person.

00:21:36.000 Will it scale?

00:21:37.000 If you take that to the full level of everyone eating a plant-based diet, which is the argument that is being made, does it really work from a nutritional perspective, from an environmental perspective, and even from an ethical perspective?

00:21:52.000 The environmental perspective is legitimate.

00:21:55.000 They both cause environmental damage, both animal agriculture and plant agriculture.

00:22:01.000 Industrial practices cause environmental damage.

00:22:05.000 And if you want to feed 320 million people, you're not going to do it through organic farms.

00:22:10.000 You can grow food in your neighborhood.

00:22:13.000 If you live in a small town, you guys can have a co-op.

00:22:16.000 You can have food in your backyard that you can grow.

00:22:18.000 But if you're living in a city like Los Angeles, it's highly likely your food is not coming from that city itself.

00:22:23.000 So that means it has to be grown.

00:22:25.000 And if you're going to grow food for 20 million people, you need a giant chunk of land.

00:22:28.000 If you need that giant chunk of land, even if everybody's eating vegan, that means wildlife is going to be displaced.

00:22:34.000 The area where you're growing crops, it's going to be a monocrop culture.

00:22:39.000 You're not going to have all these plants living together like they do in the wild.

00:22:42.000 That's just not how you grow food for 20 million people in a very specific area.

00:22:46.000 You just don't do that.

00:22:48.000 Yeah, I know you had Joel Salatin on the show a while back, and Alan Savory talked a lot about this.

00:22:55.000 One of the biggest issues right now is soil.

00:22:59.000 Soil erosion.

00:23:00.000 Soil is eroding.

00:23:02.000 The FAO has said we only have about 60 harvests left if soil continues to...

00:23:12.000 Yes.

00:23:30.000 Even if we decided, hey, let's just plant soy and corn and, you know, plant plants everywhere.

00:23:37.000 We couldn't because it's too rocky or hilly or the soil is not adequate to do that.

00:23:42.000 But it could be used for livestock.

00:23:44.000 There's a thing that they keep saying that you brought up slightly.

00:23:47.000 You touched on it a little bit earlier.

00:23:49.000 The thing is that greenhouse gases and they were talking about the greenhouse gases from meat.

00:23:56.000 And it's just a fake number.

00:23:58.000 I mean, it's over the top not true.

00:24:01.000 The specific number is 9% for all agriculture, all agriculture, including growing crops.

00:24:08.000 The vast majority of all of our greenhouse gas issues are coming from transportation and from industry.

00:24:16.000 This is undisputable.

00:24:18.000 So this is where I wonder, too, about whether it's...

00:24:21.000 Is this disingenuous?

00:24:23.000 Are they not aware of what's happening here, or is it disingenuous?

00:24:29.000 So here's the thing.

00:24:31.000 Here's what they did, Joe.

00:24:32.000 So the specific number in the film, they say greenhouse gas emissions from cattle are 15%, and they compared that to 14% for all of transportation.

00:24:44.000 But the problem with that is that they're using the full life cycle analysis for livestock.

00:24:51.000 So that means the carbon needed for feed, for transport, for processing the cattle, not just emissions, not just methane burps from the cattle.

00:25:02.000 Whereas for transportation, they're only looking at what are called direct tailpipe emissions, just the emissions that come out of the tailpipe.

00:25:08.000 They're not looking at the carbon needed to manufacture the vehicle, the cars, the buses, the airplanes, the inputs for making the fuel, the fuel production and distribution, the final use of the fuel.

00:25:21.000 That life cycle analysis for transportation hasn't been done just because it's enormously complex and it would be a phenomenally big number.

00:25:28.000 The EPA has estimated that something around 80% of the greenhouse gas emissions comes from industry, basically fossil fuel.

00:25:37.000 So it's not an apples to apples comparison.

00:25:40.000 They're doing the full life cycle for livestock versus just the direct emissions for transportation.

00:25:45.000 Well, if we look at just the direct for both...

00:25:48.000 It's 5% for livestock globally and 14% for transportation.

00:25:52.000 But in the U.S., it's only 3.9% for livestock because we have more efficient practices here versus 14% for transportation.

00:26:01.000 So not even in the same ballpark.

00:26:04.000 And it's just, yeah, I mean, they can just say that in a film.

00:26:08.000 Most people will hear that and nod their head because they've heard those numbers before.

00:26:11.000 But the devil is always in the details.

00:26:13.000 What's going on is what you see in a lot of these videos where only one person gets to talk.

00:26:20.000 One person who has a specific agenda gets to cherry pick the data and distort it and then put it on the film.

00:26:26.000 And you can accuse us of doing that right now because both of us are clearly on the same page.

00:26:30.000 And I would be happy to have James come in with you afterwards.

00:26:35.000 We did it with Joel.

00:26:37.000 James is way more reasonable than Joel and not slimy.

00:26:41.000 So I'd be happy to do that.

00:26:43.000 And I think that when it's all said and done, I would just like people to be informed.

00:26:51.000 And everyone is going to have their own ideological bias.

00:26:56.000 Everyone's going to have their own preference.

00:26:58.000 But to make poorly informed decisions, or that's being kind.

00:27:05.000 To be more blunt, deceptive, Information, forming your decisions, and having health consequences because of that, to me, pisses me off and freaks me out.

00:27:17.000 The health aspects are not being represented accurately.

00:27:23.000 Yeah, it particularly bothers me when kids are involved. 0.93

00:27:27.000 There was a case recently where I was going to tweet it, but I was like, God damn it, I can't even tweet it. 0.62

00:27:33.000 It's so sad, where a child had died from malnutrition because the parents were feeding it a vegan diet, and all the other kids looked like they were starving to death, too. 0.99

00:27:40.000 And then the social workers came in, and it's a goddamn nightmare. 0.96

00:27:45.000 I mean, if you hear about that from people that are starving their kids on a regular diet, they're just either extremely poor or they're monsters, and they're treating their kid terribly. 0.99

00:27:56.000 These people don't seem like they're bad people.

00:27:58.000 No, they believe in what they're doing.

00:28:01.000 They're trying to do the right thing.

00:28:02.000 That's the scariest part about it. 0.98

00:28:04.000 You're seeing that this diet, again, you can do it correctly, but it's fucking complicated. 0.98

00:28:10.000 It's hard. 0.98

00:28:10.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:28:11.000 Just one more thing on the greenhouse gas question.

00:28:14.000 All the numbers I just gave you were from conventional methods, you know, like basically CAFO beef.

00:28:25.000 When they have looked at regenerative, holistically managed livestock, they've found that it can either be carbon neutral or even a carbon sink.

00:28:33.000 So there's a guy who's written some papers on this, Richard Teague.

00:28:36.000 And in his 2018 paper, which again you can find on my website, thecressor.co slash gamechangers, he found that these larger, more complex, holistically managed sites can sequester between 3 to 4 and even up to 7 tons of carbon per hectare per year.

00:28:55.000 So these holistically managed beef operations are actually removing carbon from the atmosphere.

00:29:02.000 How does that work?

00:29:03.000 How are they doing that?

00:29:04.000 This is a little out of my wheelhouse, but it's part of the whole methane cycle, the natural biogenic cycle.

00:29:12.000 And this is important to understand, the difference between transportation, which is basically taking out fossil fuels that have not been part of that natural cycle for millions of years and then just emitting them into the atmosphere, With the carbon,

00:29:28.000 the biogenic carbon cycle, you have methane, you know, cows are burping out methane.

00:29:34.000 Methane goes up into the atmosphere, and then via hydroxyl oxidation, it's converted into CO2 and water vapor.

00:29:44.000 Then the plants take in CO2, and then via photosynthesis, they convert it into food, basically.

00:29:52.000 And then the cows eat the food, and the whole cycle keeps going.

00:29:57.000 And this is a natural cycle?

00:29:59.000 This is not something you have to use equipment to achieve this?

00:30:02.000 So it just has to be a certain amount of plant life in their area?

00:30:06.000 So the way that...

00:30:07.000 I mean, like Joel Salatin, for example, from Polyface Farms and Savory Institute, they basically educate farmers on how to rotate their livestock.

00:30:18.000 Again, this is not my area of expertise, but rather than just having the cattle...

00:30:22.000 Stay in the same place the whole time, like in a feedlot.

00:30:26.000 They're moving the cattle around, the cattle are pooping, then they bring the chickens to where that was, you know, where the cattle were, and they move it around in a way, again, that I don't fully understand, but the effect of this is that the amount of carbon that is sequestered from the atmosphere is greater than the amount of CO2 that is emitted.

00:30:51.000 And these life cycle analyses have been done and published in the literature.

00:30:55.000 It's true that right now that type of holistically managed livestock is not very common, but that doesn't mean that it's not what we should be doing.

00:31:07.000 This is the thing.

00:31:08.000 With the film, I agree with the problem, the premise, which is that the feedlot beef production is a nightmare.

00:31:16.000 It can be bad for the environment, and we have to do something about it.

00:31:21.000 Where we disagree is what the solution is.

00:31:23.000 They go to a plant-based diet or fake meat or lab meat.

00:31:27.000 I go to regenerative, holistically managed livestock.

00:31:31.000 Okay.

00:31:33.000 So, this animal, the regenerative livestock production, doing it in this method, is that sufficient to feed everyone?

00:31:43.000 The production?

00:31:44.000 I mean, how much land do you need to do something like this?

00:31:47.000 So, I knew you were going to ask that question, and I talked to Savory Institute about this, and a few other people, and basically...

00:31:58.000 One response is it's the only way we're going to feed everybody because, as I mentioned, there are only 60 harvests left because of soil degradation.

00:32:07.000 So continually trying to scale up industrial plant agriculture with soy and corn and all of these kinds of crops is going to further degrade the soil.

00:32:18.000 And at some point, we're not going to have any soil left.

00:32:21.000 That's an important factor, right?

00:32:22.000 We should talk about this, that you need compost, and you need fertilizer, and you need something that replenishes the soil.

00:32:30.000 And doing these large-scale monoculture crops, when you have these enormous areas, they're just depleting, right?

00:32:38.000 They're just pulling, and then they have to add.

00:32:39.000 You can't make something from nothing.

00:32:41.000 That's the thing.

00:32:42.000 We're not choosing between, like, you know...

00:32:47.000 One really good alternative and one terrible alternative.

00:32:50.000 That's not a choice, like you were saying before the show.

00:32:53.000 That's not even a choice.

00:32:54.000 You just obviously do the right thing.

00:32:57.000 We're choosing...

00:32:57.000 It's like, on the one hand, if we try to scale up plant agriculture in an environment where, according to the FAO, our soils are in only, quote, fair, poor, or very poor condition, and we only have 60 harvests left due to rapidly deteriorating...

00:33:14.000 Soil due to erosion and nutrient depletion, then we desperately need new methods of restoring healthy soil.

00:33:21.000 And if we can do that with regenerative, holistically managed livestock, which has been shown in the scientific literature to be possible, then that may be the only way we can feed everybody.

00:33:32.000 So we would need to almost have a reversal, if that was the case, and have more animal agriculture than plant agriculture.

00:33:41.000 But not the way it's being done now.

00:33:43.000 Right.

00:33:44.000 So they would have to be like Joel Salatin set up.

00:33:48.000 Yeah, so we need three things to happen.

00:33:52.000 One would be we need to return all the croplands that are being used to feed livestock and feedlots right now to grassland.

00:34:00.000 And number two, we need to put all unused land like the rocky, hilly soil or land that can't be used for plant agriculture into production with animals.

00:34:11.000 And number three, farmers and ranchers would need to adopt regenerative practices, you know.

00:34:18.000 So I'm not saying – this is an enormous undertaking.

00:34:21.000 We're not – we're talking – but so is feeding the world with plant-based agriculture.

00:34:26.000 Right.

00:34:26.000 Whichever direction we go, we're talking about – I understand what you're saying.

00:34:31.000 We're good to go.

00:34:46.000 I don't know for sure.

00:34:47.000 I think the number I read was something like 2 or 3%, so very low.

00:34:51.000 Very small.

00:34:51.000 Yeah.

00:34:52.000 That makes sense.

00:34:54.000 Many, many people prefer grain-fed meat.

00:34:57.000 They like it fatty and sloppy.

00:35:00.000 I mean, that's what it is, right?

00:35:01.000 A lot of people like that.

00:35:02.000 Well, what's interesting, and I didn't even know this until a few years ago, even feedlot meat is mostly grass-fed.

00:35:11.000 It's just what happens in the last 5 or 10% of the process.

00:35:17.000 So it's like 90% grass-fed and then it's grain-finished.

00:35:21.000 And that grain-finishing gives it the marbling that is what you're talking about.

00:35:25.000 It makes the animal sick.

00:35:26.000 Yeah.

00:35:27.000 I mean, they're not supposed to eat that.

00:35:29.000 Really, that's what it is.

00:35:30.000 And we've gotten addicted to animals eating things they're not supposed to eat and the way their flesh comes out.

00:35:35.000 Yeah, I mean, a lot of that is they're eating things like soy cakes, which is a byproduct of soybean oil production.

00:35:44.000 Soybean oil consumption has grown like a thousandfold in the past 120 years.

00:35:49.000 It's now the...

00:35:50.000 The number one edible oil that we eat.

00:35:53.000 Because if you go into the supermarket and you look at any food label, it's soybean oil, soybean oil, soybean oil.

00:35:58.000 So the oil is valuable.

00:36:00.000 And then they take the cakes that are left over from the oil production process and feed them to cows.

00:36:05.000 And so, yeah, they're eating stuff that they wouldn't normally have eaten in that scenario.

00:36:10.000 Yeah.

00:36:10.000 So both scenarios, as you said, are almost insane.

00:36:16.000 Feeding everyone.

00:36:17.000 And then also, like, what do we do with the animals?

00:36:20.000 If we're going to stop eating meat, like let's say if this entire country stops eating meat, what do we do with the animals?

00:36:26.000 We give them birth control? 1.00

00:36:26.000 Make them die of old age? 1.00

00:36:27.000 Do they go extinct?

00:36:29.000 If they don't go extinct, who houses them?

00:36:30.000 Who feeds them? 0.65

00:36:31.000 What do we do with them?

00:36:32.000 We never eat them? 0.82

00:36:33.000 How do we kill all the wild pigs? 0.98

00:36:34.000 I mean, another question is what do we do with the feed, the things that we're feeding the animals?

00:36:39.000 If that stuff decomposes, it releases carbon into the atmosphere as well.

00:36:43.000 But at least when you feed it to animals, you're taking food that is inedible to humans, like I'm not going to eat soy cakes.

00:36:50.000 I think you are.

00:36:51.000 Grass, fobs, corn stalks, leftover grains after you make whiskey and other types of alcohol.

00:36:58.000 You feed those to cattle.

00:37:00.000 They upcycle that into highly nutrient-dense and bioavailable protein.

00:37:05.000 What James said a number of times in the film was cattle or animals are just the middleman.

00:37:10.000 I'm like, exactly.

00:37:12.000 Exactly.

00:37:12.000 Yeah.

00:37:41.000 Out of this ideology, whether they believe it or not, you know?

00:37:43.000 The thing is, like, we can go down that road of, we can say, okay, so this film was made by James.

00:37:48.000 You know, James Cameron was one of the filmmakers.

00:37:50.000 He also is the owner of Verdient Foods, which is a pea protein company.

00:37:56.000 And he said he has the goal of it becoming the biggest organic pea protein company in the world.

00:38:01.000 He's invested $140 million into it.

00:38:04.000 His wife, Susie Cameron, is finding a chain of vegan schools.

00:38:09.000 So, you know, from one perspective, that's conflict of interest.

00:38:12.000 You know, this is an agenda-driven film.

00:38:15.000 It's not a dispassionate, objective look, you know, scientific look at the vegan diet.

00:38:20.000 But, you know, I mean...

00:38:24.000 You can make that argument about just about anyone at this point.

00:38:27.000 Is it that surprising that a vegan film has a bunch of vegan medical experts in it?

00:38:32.000 Is it surprising that those experts invest in what they believe in and that they write books about it?

00:38:37.000 I don't think so.

00:38:38.000 But it's important to know that and to not confuse a film like that with a scientific work.

00:38:46.000 And that's my problem with this is...

00:38:50.000 What is it?

00:38:50.000 The American College of Lifestyle Medicine?

00:38:52.000 I have to look this up.

00:38:53.000 One of these organizations is offering CEUs to doctors who watch this film and complete a quiz. 0.91

00:38:58.000 That's absolutely ridiculous.

00:39:00.000 This is not peer-reviewed science. 0.96

00:39:03.000 This is not...

00:39:05.000 Something that doctors should be getting CEUs for.

00:39:08.000 What is a CEU? Continuing education units.

00:39:11.000 So basically, doctors have to do, any medical professional has to do a certain amount of continuing education.

00:39:18.000 Generally, you go to an accredited seminar or class or whatever, and that's how you do it.

00:39:26.000 But they're actually offering those for doctors who watch this film and complete a short quiz.

00:39:33.000 Wow.

00:39:34.000 Yeah, that's freaky.

00:39:36.000 So I don't know if we talked about this on the con show or one of the previous ones.

00:39:40.000 Yeah, it was American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

00:39:42.000 Well, they were founded by Seventh-day Adventists at Loma Linda University.

00:39:48.000 The Seventh-day Adventist Church, do you know about this?

00:39:51.000 They're vegetarians.

00:39:51.000 Yeah, so one of the founders was Ellen White, and she taught that meat was a toxic substance and that flesh should be avoided because it increases our carnal urges.

00:40:03.000 Holla! 1.00

00:40:05.000 It was a moral religious thing at first.

00:40:09.000 And then one of the other, an early Adventist church member, Lena Cooper, she co-founded the American Dietetic Association, which is still to this day one of our major dietetics organizations.

00:40:23.000 And she wrote textbooks that were used in dietetic and nursing programs all around the world for 30 years.

00:40:29.000 So we have this weird...

00:40:37.000 Do the seven-day Adventists have better health overall in general?

00:40:42.000 They do.

00:40:43.000 But the argument is often made that that's related to diet.

00:40:47.000 Well, it could be that it's related to, you know, part of their creed is to eat healthy whole foods, but they also don't smoke, they don't drink, they're advised to exercise.

00:40:57.000 So, it's kind of like the Dean Ornish studies where, you know, you put together all these interventions, one of which is a low-fat diet, and then you say that the benefit was because of the low-fat diet.

00:41:08.000 What you're referring to is the study that showed that, and this is what vegans like to say, that vegan diet is, and Joel loves to use this one, a vegan diet is the only diet that's ever been shown in a study to reverse heart disease.

00:41:22.000 But what this study actually shows is these people had terrible diets, they smoked and they drank, and then they put them on a vegan diet, no smoking, no drinking, and exercise, and what do you know?

00:41:36.000 Their health improved.

00:41:37.000 But it's not like we have a corresponding diet where they did the exact same thing and gave them an omnivorous diet with like grass-fed bison meat and then showed a similar set of tests and showed a decline or showed a better performance by the vegan diet.

00:41:55.000 You have all of these factors that are compiled together.

00:41:58.000 Quitting drinking, quitting smoking, quit eating shit food, eating a vegan diet, And exercise.

00:42:04.000 And stress reduction and community support, all of which we know have an impact on heart disease. 0.95

00:42:10.000 That is the study.

00:42:11.000 So when they say that a vegan diet is the only diet that's ever been shown to clinically reduce heart disease, that's not really true.

00:42:21.000 It's disingenuous.

00:42:21.000 And the other thing about that study is that the baseline characteristics of the control group versus the experimental group were totally different.

00:42:31.000 Experimental group weighed 34 pounds more than the control group.

00:42:36.000 So they were more overweight.

00:42:39.000 They had more weight to lose.

00:42:41.000 They were less healthy.

00:42:43.000 I mean, that study would be thrown out today.

00:42:46.000 What year was the study from?

00:42:47.000 This was 1998. Yeah, well, this is the problem when conversing with Joel about this.

00:42:52.000 And by the way, the reason why I had him on, and I know people think I'm biased, and I am.

00:42:56.000 I'm biased.

00:42:57.000 My perspective is that you're correct, and that all these other Marxists and Rob Wolf and all these other folks, I think they're correct.

00:43:04.000 An omnivorous diet is the way to go.

00:43:06.000 But I had him on to try to pursue this path of objectivity, to try to give him an opportunity to express what's incorrect about what you're saying, and it didn't work out for him.

00:43:19.000 I mean, by everybody's account that I saw that he lost that debate.

00:43:23.000 So, I mean, you brought up a point which I think is the crux of this whole thing, which is context is everything.

00:43:29.000 And the problem with a lot of the research on plant-based diets and, you know, low-fat diets and all this is they make the implicit assumption that a diet that includes meat that is like where the context is KFC, McDonald's,

00:43:46.000 you know, cheese doodles, Coca-Cola, the whole standard American diet is the same as a diet that includes meat that's completely whole foods based, you know, like the way you eat, the way I eat, you know.

00:43:59.000 Lots of vegetables, fresh nuts, seeds, starchy tubers, whatever.

00:44:05.000 If you ask 100 people on the street, my guess is 100% would say those are obviously different.

00:44:11.000 But the way that research treats them is they're the same.

00:44:14.000 Exactly the same.

00:44:14.000 Because the correlating factor, the main factor is meat.

00:44:17.000 Yeah.

00:44:17.000 They don't control for any of those other things.

00:44:20.000 It's ridiculous. 0.88

00:44:21.000 Now... 0.89

00:44:21.000 That's changing. 0.89

00:44:22.000 So there have been studies that have been done over the past few years that are looking more at diet quality rather than just the quantity of specific food ingredients or foods like meat.

00:44:33.000 And what those studies are universally saying is that quality is what makes the difference.

00:44:39.000 So, a great example, we talked about this with Joel, are the studies on looking at omnivorous versus vegetarian and vegan diets and lifespan.

00:44:49.000 But instead of just looking at the general population that eats meat, they tried to find ways to, like, at least...

00:44:57.000 Right.

00:45:02.000 Right.

00:45:11.000 They're saying, let's look at people who shop at a place like Whole Foods and then let's compare lifespan between vegetarians and vegans and omnivores.

00:45:19.000 Well, guess what?

00:45:21.000 Both groups live a lot longer than the general population, but there was no difference in lifespan between people who ate meat and vegetarians and vegans.

00:45:29.000 The premise is that meat is poison.

00:45:31.000 And so when you add meat to these studies, that people with meat...

00:45:36.000 Well, they're eating poison.

00:45:37.000 And the people without meat, look, no poison. 1.00

00:45:40.000 But what about all the other shit? 1.00

00:45:42.000 This is what's so crazy about it. 1.00

00:45:44.000 How can you have a study where you don't take into account how many people drink or smoke?

00:45:48.000 And you just add the meat.

00:45:50.000 It's insanity.

00:45:51.000 That's the healthy user bias.

00:45:53.000 This is the problem and what makes my job so difficult is people have heard that meat is bad for 50, what, 60 years, you know?

00:46:03.000 So someone can say meat is bad.

00:46:06.000 That's three words.

00:46:06.000 And for me to unpack that, I have to talk about healthy user bias.

00:46:10.000 I have to talk about problems with data collection and food frequency questionnaires.

00:46:15.000 I have to talk about relative versus absolute risk.

00:46:17.000 You know, I mean, people are just like, what?

00:46:19.000 Well, that's the problem with any of this data. 0.99

00:46:22.000 It's one of the beautiful things about being able to talk about it on a podcast with a moron like me is at least you're getting a conversation where people are going to ask questions like, what the fuck is he saying? 0.99

00:46:31.000 So I get to ask you that and then people get to hear it. 0.97

00:46:35.000 You know, this is a very strange time when it comes to information, because so much of it is available, but almost too much.

00:46:42.000 And then when you realize, when you start trying to study nutrition, there is so much to learn.

00:46:49.000 There's so many factors, and there's so many biases.

00:46:53.000 I listened to your interview with Matt Tybee and the point, I was thinking about it because you were talking about it politically, how we're just living in echo chambers now.

00:47:02.000 So you go on social media, you're Republican, you're only going to see stuff that caters to your view.

00:47:10.000 And the algorithms are even optimized for that because they know that you'll click on that more and that will lead to more ad dollars.

00:47:17.000 But it's similar with nutrition.

00:47:20.000 So, you know, if you're vegan, you go on YouTube, you're going to see a ton of vegan videos and vegan perspectives.

00:47:25.000 Same with your Facebook feed, etc.

00:47:27.000 And to be fair, it's the same for, you know, people who are into keto or low-carb or carnivore or whatever they're into.

00:47:33.000 It's the same thing.

00:47:34.000 So you're just getting this reinforcing...

00:47:37.000 Confirmation bias, you know, supporting access to information.

00:47:42.000 That is a weird thing about social media algorithms, whether it's YouTube algorithms or Facebook or any of these things, is that they're giving you what you want to see, which you would say, oh great, well that's what I want to see.

00:47:54.000 There's so many counter-arguments, especially when you're talking about nutrition science.

00:48:01.000 There's so many discussions on both sides of the fence, and it seems like both sides are preaching to the choir.

00:48:07.000 Yeah.

00:48:08.000 Well, you know, I mean, we're biased, as you said.

00:48:13.000 My story, as a lot of people know, is I was vegan.

00:48:17.000 Somebody said on one of the videos, you are the most vegan-sounding non-vegan ever.

00:48:22.000 Yeah.

00:48:25.000 Well, I mean, yeah.

00:48:26.000 I was a vegan.

00:48:27.000 I was vegetarian.

00:48:27.000 I was a raw food vegan.

00:48:29.000 I was a macrobiotic vegan.

00:48:30.000 I have a lot of friends who are vegan.

00:48:31.000 I have patients that are vegan.

00:48:33.000 I have nothing against vegans.

00:48:34.000 And I totally get the reasons that people become vegan.

00:48:38.000 But I, like many others and my patients and my community, my health was harmed by that.

00:48:44.000 How was your health harmed?

00:48:46.000 Can you explain to people?

00:48:48.000 Yeah, I mean, I lost weight, and as you can see, I don't have a lot to lose to begin with.

00:48:53.000 My digestion got really screwed up.

00:48:56.000 I got depressed.

00:48:57.000 I'd never been depressed.

00:48:58.000 Like, I've never been a person who gets depressed.

00:49:01.000 I felt anxious.

00:49:04.000 You know, it just was clearly not working for me.

00:49:07.000 And again, that's not to say it can't work for some people.

00:49:10.000 Do you think the cause of depression had something to do with the diet because of the lack of cholesterol?

00:49:16.000 B12. Hormones.

00:49:18.000 Iron.

00:49:18.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:49:21.000 But, you know, now, like, I mean, it's funny, too.

00:49:24.000 I don't actually, I make a point of not reading comments, usually.

00:49:28.000 Yeah.

00:49:29.000 But occasionally I come across them on Twitter or something.

00:49:30.000 No, this is something a comedian told me.

00:49:33.000 So that's why I thought it was hilarious.

00:49:35.000 So, you know, people are like, oh, he's such a, you know, he's going to get on there and just low carb, low carb.

00:49:41.000 That's total, like, I don't, I'm not a low carb guy.

00:49:44.000 I never have been.

00:49:45.000 In fact, I'm in trouble with the low carb community because, you know, I push back.

00:49:49.000 I don't think it's right for everybody.

00:49:51.000 I don't think it's right for performance.

00:49:53.000 I don't see any evidence that for elite athletic performers that it's the way to go.

00:49:58.000 And I don't know anyone that's an elite athletic performer that follows those diets.

00:50:03.000 Maybe endurance runners.

00:50:04.000 I was going to say Zach.

00:50:06.000 Yeah, I was going to say Zach.

00:50:07.000 And Zach flies in the face of all this stuff.

00:50:10.000 And, you know, if you want to include someone like that guy that ran the Appalachian Trail in 48 days or whatever he did, which is no small feat for sure.

00:50:19.000 But, I mean, Zach Bitter ran... 0.94

00:50:23.000 He ran a 100-mile race in 11 hours and 40 minutes, which is fucking bananas. 0.96

00:50:32.000 And then kept running, I think, after that. 1.00

00:50:34.000 He's a savage. 0.89

00:50:36.000 He eats ribeyes. 0.98

00:50:37.000 That's what that guy eats.

00:50:39.000 He talked about it.

00:50:40.000 The main food in his diet is ribeye steaks.

00:50:43.000 He's mostly keto.

00:50:44.000 So, yeah, I mean, anyways, my point was just, like, I'm not super dogmatic.

00:50:49.000 I'm just, like, I'm interested in what works for the most people, essentially.

00:50:54.000 And, you know, you mentioned Scott Jurek. 0.97

00:50:58.000 A Belgian dentist shattered his record by five days a couple years ago, and that guy was eating, like, Snickers and tons of crap. 0.99

00:51:06.000 So, I'm not saying that...

00:51:08.000 He shattered his record by five days?

00:51:10.000 Yeah.

00:51:10.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:51:11.000 I'm not saying that that's what you should...

00:51:15.000 I'm not saying that's what you should do, but I'm saying there's more to athletic performance than food.

00:51:20.000 I guess that's not really deceptive, because he did break the record.

00:51:22.000 When he broke it, he did break it.

00:51:24.000 Yeah, he broke it.

00:51:24.000 He's a phenomenal athlete.

00:51:26.000 I don't want to take that away from him.

00:51:28.000 And then, like, Michael Phelps, you know?

00:51:30.000 Guy's Pizza.

00:51:31.000 Guy eats 12,000 calories of sugar, French toast, pizza.

00:51:37.000 Usain Bolt in the Beijing Olympics, when he shattered those records, he ate over 1,000 chicken nuggets, I think somebody calculated it.

00:51:47.000 That's amazing.

00:51:48.000 There's more to it than diet.

00:51:49.000 I think when you're at that level of performance, you are burning off such an insane amount of calories.

00:51:55.000 Almost doesn't matter.

00:51:55.000 You're working so hard.

00:51:56.000 You can almost eat anything.

00:51:58.000 When you're in that mode.

00:52:00.000 Yes.

00:52:00.000 This is obviously not comparable, but when we did Sober October last year, we had this fitness challenge.

00:52:05.000 I was doing cardio.

00:52:07.000 No joke.

00:52:08.000 Minimum five hours a day, sometimes six and seven.

00:52:11.000 It was insane.

00:52:11.000 And I was eating everything.

00:52:12.000 Boxes of cookies, bottles of soda.

00:52:15.000 Probably lost weight, too.

00:52:16.000 Yeah, I did.

00:52:16.000 Well, not really, because I lifted a lot of weights, too.

00:52:18.000 I kind of maintained.

00:52:20.000 Maybe I lost a couple of pounds, but I was drinking, like, giant, like, Cokes.

00:52:24.000 Like, I was drinking, like, cream soda. 1.00

00:52:28.000 I never drink that shit. 1.00

00:52:29.000 But it's like, my body wanted sugar. 1.00

00:52:31.000 It's like, give me some sugar. 1.00

00:52:31.000 You just did seven hours on a fucking elliptical machine, you asshole. 1.00

00:52:34.000 It was so ridiculous. 1.00

00:52:36.000 But those guys are working out even harder than that. 0.92

00:52:39.000 So imagine what Phelps...

00:52:41.000 If you need 12,000 calories, you're not getting it with paleo and you're not getting it with vegan diet.

00:52:45.000 That's important.

00:52:46.000 That's important.

00:52:47.000 So let's rewind a little bit to the protein, the RDA. Yes, RDA protein.

00:52:51.000 That's super important.

00:53:11.000 That's based on outdated nitrogen balance studies for determining the RDA. And there's a newer method called the Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation Technique, or IAAO. And this suggests that the RDA should be 1.2 grams per kilogram.

00:53:27.000 And again, just the basic minimum, bare minimum, not optimal.

00:53:30.000 It's now gone up from 0.8 to 1.2.

00:53:34.000 And if you use that number, if you pull up slide 8, Jamie, that's only enough for an adult that weighs less than 130 pounds.

00:53:45.000 Really?

00:53:48.000 So, sorry, you know how he said, and James said in the study, the average vegetarian gets 71 grams a day, which is not only, you know, the RDA, but 70% more.

00:53:59.000 That's using the 0.8 number.

00:54:01.000 But if you use 1.2 grams per kilogram per day, then a lot of people are going to be protein deficient on a vegetarian diet.

00:54:10.000 Yeah.

00:54:11.000 And we're not, again, not talking about optimal amount for athletes.

00:54:14.000 We're just talking about the RDA basic bare minimum.

00:54:17.000 And when you say vegetarian, you should say vegan, correct?

00:54:19.000 Because you're not talking about egg protein.

00:54:21.000 You can get...

00:54:21.000 No, this study was vegetarian.

00:54:23.000 They weren't referring to vegans.

00:54:24.000 So you actually could get egg protein.

00:54:27.000 Yeah, and dairy.

00:54:29.000 Right, but eggs are far superior in terms of their amino acid profile than vegetables.

00:54:35.000 Yeah, so for vegans it would be different.

00:54:37.000 I brought up eggs to a friend of mine.

00:54:39.000 I was saying this really recently, why don't you try eggs?

00:54:43.000 And they looked at me like I was talking to them about poison.

00:54:47.000 There's plenty of people that are vegan or vegetarian and you bring up eggs to them and they look at you like, why would I eat an egg?

00:54:53.000 Yeah, so that's, you know, 1.2 is the RDA, if you use this newer method.

00:54:59.000 But for athletes, James, to his credit, does acknowledge in the film that athletes need more protein than regular non-athlete people.

00:55:09.000 But he doesn't say how much more.

00:55:11.000 So, again, if you use these IAO methods, they've used this newer technique to look at athletes, and they've found that the range...

00:55:19.000 I think?

00:55:41.000 Yes.

00:55:42.000 Which has been the common recommendation in that community.

00:55:46.000 You mean one gram of protein?

00:55:47.000 Sorry, one gram of protein.

00:55:49.000 Not one pound. 1.00

00:55:49.000 Holy shit. 1.00

00:55:51.000 Can you imagine? 1.00

00:55:52.000 One gram.

00:55:53.000 And in fact, even Arnold in the movie says, I weighed 250 pounds.

00:55:57.000 I used to eat 250 grams of protein.

00:56:00.000 That's the recommendation.

00:56:01.000 That's the standard in the bodybuilding community.

00:56:02.000 And it turns out that's actually based on science.

00:56:04.000 You know, so a 200-pound athlete would need 200 grams of protein a day.

00:56:10.000 And Jamie, if you pull up slide 10, this is what you'd have to eat on a vegan diet to get that amount of protein.

00:56:16.000 And again, we're just talking about quantity.

00:56:18.000 We're not talking about quality.

00:56:20.000 So 200-pound athlete, that's me.

00:56:21.000 I weigh 200 pounds.

00:56:22.000 200-pound athlete, so you would need to eat.

00:56:23.000 So show me what I'd have to eat.

00:56:24.000 Three cups of cooked lentils, three cups of chickpeas, two cups of quinoa, three ounces of almonds, three slices of silken tofu, and ten tablespoons of peanut butter.

00:56:36.000 That's the whole day?

00:56:37.000 That's the day. 0.90

00:56:38.000 I could fuck that up in a day. 0.95

00:56:40.000 Yeah, you could.

00:56:41.000 But the problem is the Dia score for all of those, like the bioavailability and the amino acid profile would be horrible compared to meat, eggs, dairy.

00:56:53.000 Yeah.

00:56:53.000 So what would I have to do?

00:56:54.000 Because I know they've done this study.

00:56:56.000 There was a study that I'd read or had heard about, I should say, where they compared rice protein to whey protein, and they found that at a certain level of grams, like whatever it was, they had an equal effect.

00:57:12.000 Is it lutein?

00:57:13.000 Leucine.

00:57:14.000 Leucine.

00:57:15.000 The muscle protein synthesis.

00:57:16.000 Yes.

00:57:16.000 They had an equal effect.

00:57:18.000 I should give credit to the video that I was watching.

00:57:21.000 This gentleman, I was watching this video today, Dr. Ryan Lowry.

00:57:27.000 And they were saying that what that means is that Correct me if I'm wrong.

00:57:33.000 Once you hit a certain level of leucine, it's a point of diminishing returns and there's no added benefit to having more leucine in your diet.

00:57:43.000 So if you hit whatever it is, I think it was 48 grams or something like that.

00:57:47.000 When you have 48 grams of this and 48 grams of that, you put the two of them together, it's essentially the same effect.

00:57:56.000 Well, I'm not sure about that, but I mean, leucine is very important for anabolic signaling and muscle protein synthesis.

00:58:04.000 It's the essential amino acid that's thought to be the most important for that, and it's low in plant proteins.

00:58:12.000 And the other issue with plant proteins that you have is that they have limiting amino acids.

00:58:19.000 So these are amino acids that actually interfere with muscle protein synthesis.

00:58:24.000 Because the levels are so low in that food.

00:58:26.000 So lysine is a limiting amino acid in grains like wheat and rice.

00:58:30.000 Maybe there was leucine and lysine discussion maybe there.

00:58:34.000 And then methionine and cysteine are limiting in legumes like soy.

00:58:38.000 So, Jamie, on slide 6, I made a chart comparing the amino acid profile in beef to several different plant proteins like white beans, soybeans, peas, and rice.

00:58:48.000 What you can see there is beef is higher in every single amino acid than every plant protein that's compared there with the exception of soybeans are slightly higher in tryptophan than beef.

00:59:07.000 Look at leucine. 0.95

00:59:09.000 So beef, it's 2.23 versus 0.58 for white beans, 1.3 for soy.

00:59:17.000 Soy is higher in leucine than any other plant protein, which is why it's often used.

00:59:22.000 And then like 0.3 for peas and 0.01 for rice.

00:59:28.000 If you get to a certain number or a certain level of all these, so if you ate enough food that you would pass a certain marker, Would it be possible to have the same effect by eating cooked peas or soybeans?

00:59:41.000 It is possible, for sure.

00:59:43.000 But you have to eat a higher number.

00:59:44.000 You have to eat an enormous amount of that, as you can see, because of the levels.

00:59:47.000 And this is why a lot of vegan bodybuilders and athletes end up using protein powders, because you can get to those amounts...

00:59:55.000 Easier by using the powders.

00:59:57.000 And you can also blend, like, you know, 70% pea with 30% rice to get the right amino acid ratio easier with powders.

01:00:07.000 So, like, Patrick Baboumian is a good example of that, you know.

01:00:11.000 Did you see the video that Bobby Geist made?

01:00:14.000 No.

01:00:15.000 So, there's actually a video...

01:00:18.000 Oh, is that the one that you sent me?

01:00:19.000 Yes, I did see that.

01:00:20.000 There's a video that Patrick made himself of his own diet on what he eats on a daily basis and it turns out to be a boatload of protein powder and just shakes with all kinds of powders and supplements and things like that.

01:00:35.000 Yeah, we can go through it.

01:00:36.000 So he starts with a bunch of different supplements in the morning, multivitamin, nutritional yeast, zinc, glucosamine, magnesium, calcium, B12, and iron.

01:00:45.000 Then he has a protein shake with soy protein powder, creatine, and beta-alanine, which probably is because he's aware of the research showing lower levels of muscle creatine and carnosine in vegans.

01:00:58.000 Beta-alanine and creatine would address that.

01:01:02.000 Then he has a post-workout smoothie with soy or pea protein powder, glutamine, beta-alanine, creatine, and dried greens.

01:01:09.000 And then his first solid meal of the day is fried falafel, french fries, soy sausage, fried peppers, and tomatoes.

01:01:17.000 And then he has some more protein shakes and smoothies throughout the day.

01:01:22.000 So I don't know.

01:01:23.000 That doesn't strike me as a super healthy way to eat.

01:01:26.000 What problem do you have with that?

01:01:30.000 Well, first of all, I think we should primarily get nutrients from food whenever we can.

01:01:34.000 I'm not against supplementation.

01:01:36.000 I think there's a role for it, of course, especially with things like vitamin D that you might not be able to get enough of from food or therapeutic supplementation if you're dealing with a health problem.

01:01:46.000 But eating a diet that is not sufficient in the amount of nutrients that you need and then using supplements to address that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

01:01:57.000 Well, in his situation, he's got a very unique situation that he's a strength athlete.

01:02:03.000 That's all he's doing is trying to lift really, really heavy things.

01:02:07.000 So he needs to maintain a certain amount of bulk.

01:02:09.000 He needs to have an enormous amount of protein.

01:02:12.000 Yeah, an enormous amount of protein.

01:02:14.000 He's very heavy.

01:02:16.000 And that sport is also a steroid sport.

01:02:21.000 I mean, it's just one of those sports where it's like bodybuilding.

01:02:24.000 It's a steroid sport. 0.52

01:02:25.000 Mm-hmm.

01:02:26.000 So you're eating massive amounts of quantities.

01:02:28.000 You're taking chemicals.

01:02:30.000 Yeah, it might not be the healthiest thing.

01:02:33.000 But it's also like just the sport itself might not be the healthiest thing.

01:02:37.000 I mean, you've seen them carry people on the – he was doing that in the film.

01:02:41.000 That's not good for your back.

01:02:42.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:02:43.000 That's fucking crazy. 0.99

01:02:45.000 But it works for what he's trying to do. 0.99

01:02:48.000 Obviously, it's working for what he's trying to do.

01:02:50.000 There's no dispute in that.

01:02:52.000 See, what he's doing is almost like the intelligent way if you want to be vegan and do what he's trying to do.

01:02:57.000 I don't know if he could eat just vegetables and pull that off.

01:03:02.000 He couldn't.

01:03:02.000 But that's kind of the point.

01:03:04.000 There are a lot of other strongmen that do.

01:03:06.000 Like Robert Oberst.

01:03:08.000 That you had on the show.

01:03:09.000 Yeah, he just eats meat and rice.

01:03:10.000 Right.

01:03:11.000 That guy eats pounds and pounds of beef and rice.

01:03:14.000 Simple, you know, accessible form of carbohydrate and a lot of protein.

01:03:18.000 And it's an unfair comparison, and Oberst talked about him on the podcast before.

01:03:22.000 He's much larger.

01:03:24.000 A lot of the strongmen are huge.

01:03:25.000 Like the guy who played Gregor in Game of Thrones, right?

01:03:30.000 Yes, he's one of them.

01:03:31.000 He's like 6'8 or 9".

01:03:32.000 Yeah, he's enormous.

01:03:33.000 And Patrick is not.

01:03:35.000 He's not nearly that size.

01:03:37.000 He's 5'6 or 5'7 or some things.

01:03:38.000 So the comparison between him and a guy like Oberst in those legit top of the food chain, strongest man in the world competitions, it's not comparable.

01:03:49.000 Totally different weight class.

01:03:51.000 Robert is enormous.

01:03:52.000 He's so much bigger.

01:03:53.000 But the problem is, in the film, they don't make that distinction.

01:03:57.000 And they try to pretend that this guy is one of the strongest men in the world.

01:04:02.000 He's not.

01:04:02.000 He's very strong, no doubt.

01:04:04.000 And he definitely has broken some records in some competitions and have different weight classes. 0.99

01:04:11.000 But you're not talking about a guy who wins those Magnus von Magnussen fucking competitions where they're carrying trucks and shit. 0.92

01:04:19.000 Well, I mean, I guess my point, too, was, like, is it the best example of how an athlete can thrive on a plant-based whole foods diet? 0.96

01:04:27.000 Well, I think it is, though, because for him, for his size, you know, to be a guy who's 5'7 and is carrying that fucking enormous amount of weight, he's obviously doing something that's very impressive, and he's doing it while he's on this vegan diet.

01:04:40.000 And again, I mean...

01:04:43.000 Discounting all the illegal supplementation, because I don't think it is illegal in that sport.

01:04:48.000 You kind of have to do it if you want to get that big.

01:04:52.000 But if you want to do it and do it as a vegan, he is showing you that it's possible.

01:04:56.000 So in that sense, I defend what he's doing.

01:04:59.000 Because I think that he...

01:05:00.000 That's the only way in that...

01:05:01.000 But this is a very sport-specific area of performance. 0.99

01:05:05.000 He's just talking about lifting insanely heavy shit. 0.99

01:05:08.000 And he's doing that and thriving on a vegan diet. 0.99

01:05:11.000 Yeah, no doubt, you know, enormously strong and he's succeeding.

01:05:17.000 I would argue that he might do even better if he was eating, you know, more nutrient-dense food and he might need to take fewer supplements and drink less powder.

01:05:28.000 Yeah, but I think from his perspective...

01:05:30.000 That's my bias.

01:05:30.000 I'm more like a whole foods person and, you know, that's where I'm coming from.

01:05:35.000 Another problem that I had in the film, especially in relations to sport, is the Nate Diaz-Conor McGregor comparison.

01:05:41.000 First of all, Nate Diaz is not a vegan.

01:05:43.000 Nate Diaz eats fish and he eats eggs.

01:05:46.000 And he does try to follow a whole food vegan diet, I think, during camp.

01:05:53.000 So I would have to talk to him about that.

01:05:55.000 I know he's done interviews talking about that, but I've definitely seen him eat fish.

01:05:59.000 I watched him on the Anthony Bourdain television show and he was eating fish.

01:06:03.000 I know he's eating eggs.

01:06:05.000 He doesn't eat land animals.

01:06:06.000 I think what he does is avoids red meat.

01:06:09.000 Well, fish and eggs take care of it. 0.99

01:06:11.000 Yes.

01:06:11.000 Because, you know, fish is actually higher often than meat in terms of protein, ounce for ounce.

01:06:17.000 It's also very high in collagen, which is super important for recovery and repair, and explains lack of collagen probably explains why a lot of vegan athletes get injured, which we can talk about more later.

01:06:28.000 And then eggs, as you know, are super, you know, they're really high on the DS scale, they're bioavailable, lots of other nutrients, so...

01:06:37.000 Here's another problem with that whole comparison.

01:06:38.000 First of all, Nate Diaz is a fantastic fighter.

01:06:41.000 He's a long-time mixed martial arts veteran.

01:06:45.000 He's outstanding in all areas.

01:06:47.000 He has a fantastic submission game.

01:06:49.000 His brother, Nick Diaz, is one of the best in the world.

01:06:51.000 He's also outstanding.

01:06:53.000 And his brother, Nick, I believe, is vegan.

01:06:56.000 He's probably a better example.

01:06:57.000 Even though Nick hasn't beaten some of the top fighters in a few years, back when he was in Strikeforce, he was top of the food chain.

01:07:04.000 He's an elite fighter, for sure.

01:07:06.000 I'm not sure if he was vegan back then.

01:07:07.000 I'd have to ask him.

01:07:09.000 But the point being that Nate is an exceptionally skilled athlete, and he was coming into that fight on extremely short notice.

01:07:19.000 So he was most likely following his off-camp diet, which is eggs and eating fish and things along those lines.

01:07:27.000 And I think he said he was partying in Mexico. 0.99

01:07:29.000 So who knows what the fuck he was doing. 0.98

01:07:30.000 It was like 11 days out. 0.99

01:07:31.000 They call him and they set up this fight.

01:07:34.000 I forget how many days out it was, but it was a very, very short amount of time.

01:07:38.000 Was preparing for a 155-pound fight against Rafael Dos Anjos.

01:07:43.000 So he was reducing his caloric intake, dropping his weight down to try to make this 155-pound weight class.

01:07:50.000 It's a big cut for him.

01:07:51.000 So when you do that, you are in anticipation that the person you're fighting is also doing that.

01:07:57.000 So you both kind of agree that you're going to be in a certain weakened state when you actually weigh in at 155 pounds.

01:08:03.000 So was that like two weight classes below his normal?

01:08:06.000 Well, let me keep going.

01:08:07.000 So he's...

01:08:07.000 That was the first and only time...

01:08:09.000 Well, except the rematch with Nate was the only time that he's fought at 170. So they made a decision to fight at 170 instead of 155 because Nate did not have time to reduce his calories and cut the weight.

01:08:22.000 And it takes a long time.

01:08:23.000 It's a slow process of...

01:08:25.000 Nate is a big fella.

01:08:26.000 He walks around probably over 200 pounds.

01:08:28.000 Easy.

01:08:29.000 And he drops weight.

01:08:30.000 And he didn't want to drop that much weight.

01:08:31.000 He's a big guy, man.

01:08:32.000 He's big and long.

01:08:34.000 And Connor was dropping his weight down to 155, so he's 10 days out, and he just starts packing on food, eating as much food as he can.

01:08:42.000 Not only that, but stylistically, Nate's a nightmare for him. 0.99

01:08:48.000 Nate has a fucking evil submission game. 1.00

01:08:50.000 He's tough as nails. 1.00

01:08:52.000 His endurance is always fantastic because off-season, he's always doing triathlons, and he's always doing endurance sports.

01:09:00.000 I mean, he's in phenomenal shape, and his jiu-jitsu is many levels better than Connors.

01:09:05.000 I mean, he's a legit top-of-the-food-chain MMA black belt in jiu-jitsu.

01:09:09.000 So they have this fight.

01:09:11.000 Connor gets tired.

01:09:12.000 Nate beats him up, gets him on the ground, submits him, and they're saying this is a victory for veganism.

01:09:17.000 What they don't say is, five months later they fought and Connor beat him.

01:09:20.000 They fought again.

01:09:22.000 This time they had a full training camp.

01:09:24.000 Connor prepared, and it was a very close fight, I should say.

01:09:27.000 You could have scored it either way.

01:09:30.000 I mean, it was a really close fight.

01:09:32.000 Razor thin.

01:09:33.000 But the fact remains, Connor beat him in the rematch.

01:09:35.000 So they leave this out of the narrative.

01:09:37.000 I'm Oh my god, the vegans are dominating.

01:09:39.000 Look, vegan dominated.

01:09:40.000 But this is a last minute fight.

01:09:43.000 Conor goes up in weight.

01:09:45.000 Nate Diaz steps in and takes care of business and wins the fight.

01:09:49.000 It speaks more to how good Nate Diaz is than a vegan diet.

01:09:53.000 Right.

01:09:54.000 And it doesn't take into account that four months later or five months later, whatever it was, he loses.

01:09:58.000 And he's not vegan.

01:09:59.000 Yes, and he's not vegan.

01:10:00.000 He follows it sometimes.

01:10:02.000 There are a few other examples like that in the film where you catch a certain window of it, but they don't show what happens afterwards.

01:10:09.000 We talked about the vegan honeymoon.

01:10:10.000 So, Brian Jennings, the boxer, they talked about he went vegan in the end of 2013. He was 17-0 before he was vegan, and he's 7-4 after that.

01:10:24.000 So, you can't say that that's because he transitioned to a vegan diet, but you can't also say, nor can you say that veganism improved his performance.

01:10:33.000 I mean, objectively, he's gotten worse since then.

01:10:37.000 Well, the argument against that would be that he's moving up into the upper echelons of the heavyweight division, and it's filled with killers, like any combat sport.

01:10:46.000 And that as he got in, many fighters don't make it.

01:10:49.000 They get in.

01:10:50.000 He lost to...

01:10:53.000 Wasn't it one of the Klitschkos?

01:10:54.000 Yes.

01:10:55.000 I think he lost to Vladimir.

01:10:57.000 I think he lost to Vladimir Klitschko in a decision, and he handled himself very well.

01:11:02.000 It was a very good fight for him.

01:11:03.000 He looked real good.

01:11:04.000 But yeah, I mean, that upper, when you get to these Andy Ruiz, Deontay Wilder, I mean, killers.

01:11:11.000 It's like most people that get up into that division, they start losing.

01:11:14.000 He's a good example, too, of this principle of context being everything.

01:11:19.000 Because he said in the film, my early years growing up in Philly, the only thing we knew was spinach in a can, collard greens and Popeyes, KFC, everybody frying chicken.

01:11:28.000 I grew up not even knowing about half these other vegetables.

01:11:31.000 Asparagus, to me, just came out like five years ago.

01:11:34.000 Right, right.

01:11:35.000 Again, vegan honeymoon.

01:11:37.000 Going from a crappy standard American diet to a whole foods diet, I don't doubt that someone's going to feel better.

01:11:44.000 But would you have felt better, like you said, eating some grass-fed bison and some eggs along with all of those plants?

01:11:51.000 That's the question.

01:11:52.000 Yes, that is the question. 0.99

01:11:54.000 And this is the real purpose, my real purpose for getting involved in these fucking discussions over and over and over again. 0.97

01:12:02.000 I want people to understand that there's nuance to this. 0.98

01:12:07.000 And there's also biological variability.

01:12:10.000 There's some people that are...

01:12:12.000 They can get along on certain diets easier.

01:12:15.000 There's some people that have a horrible time with seafood.

01:12:17.000 There's some people that have a horrible time with certain grains.

01:12:20.000 We are all different.

01:12:22.000 We come from an enormous planet where your ancestors developed and your genes developed in different parts of the world.

01:12:30.000 We're all different.

01:12:31.000 But what we know about nutrition, it is so important that we are honest about what we know.

01:12:38.000 This is the problem I have with a lot of these documentaries.

01:12:41.000 They're not honest about what they know.

01:12:43.000 They're only giving you little snippets and cherry-picking data and doing things like the study that showed that the vegan diet can clinically reverse heart disease.

01:12:52.000 You're using all this deception.

01:12:55.000 Pretending that the gladiators chose to eat gruel. 1.00

01:12:58.000 Like, this is how we're going to kick ass. 0.99

01:13:00.000 We're just going to eat barley. 1.00

01:13:01.000 The fuck out of here. 1.00

01:13:02.000 This is nonsense. 1.00

01:13:03.000 And they know it's nonsense. 0.99

01:13:05.000 Either they know it's nonsense or they just fucking slap some blinders on their head and just plow straight ahead and ignore anything that conflicts with any of these thoughts that they're expressing. 0.99

01:13:15.000 I mean, there's so many examples of this in the film. 0.99

01:13:17.000 One was this lettuce has more antioxidants than salmon or eggs.

01:13:23.000 Well, so what?

01:13:25.000 I mean, we're not saying don't eat lettuce, right?

01:13:29.000 I mean, I've always argued that the optimal diet includes both plants and animal foods, and there's reasons for that.

01:13:36.000 Plants contain some nutrients that animal foods don't, and animal foods contain nutrients that plants don't.

01:13:42.000 You've been very consistent about this.

01:13:44.000 Eat both of them, right?

01:13:45.000 Yeah, I mean...

01:13:45.000 An orange has more vitamin C than a beefsteak.

01:13:49.000 Right.

01:13:49.000 That's just how it goes.

01:13:50.000 But we could just easily say a serving of salmon has 716 times more selenium than lettuce and provides 100% of the RDA of B12 where lettuce provides 0%. 0.67

01:14:01.000 But I'm not going to say that because that's ridiculous.

01:14:03.000 I'm not trying to get people not to eat lettuce.

01:14:05.000 Exactly.

01:14:06.000 You're not on team...

01:14:08.000 And there's another thing that's going on right now, these carnivore folks, which I find fascinating because they are as ideologically driven as vegans.

01:14:17.000 We have the anti-vegans.

01:14:19.000 It's like we have Antifa and then we have the alt-right.

01:14:22.000 Now we have the carnivores and we have the vegans. 1.00

01:14:25.000 And both of them dig their fucking heels in the sand. 0.99

01:14:27.000 And both of them are committed to thinking that their side is the only way to go. 0.99

01:14:33.000 And Rhonda Patrick has talked about this many, many times when people start discussing negative aspects of eating food, particularly plants, because of stressors.

01:14:43.000 And she's like, no, there's actually...

01:14:45.000 An effect where your body's reacting to them that's beneficial, much like when you get in a sauna, your body reacts to the heat, it's actually beneficial for your health.

01:14:54.000 That's hormesis. 0.98

01:14:55.000 Yes.

01:14:55.000 That's how exercise works, right?

01:14:57.000 You lift a weight until you can't lift it anymore, your muscle tissue breaks down and it rebuilds stronger the next time.

01:15:03.000 So these folks that are talking about don't eat vegetables, because vegetables give you these things that are bad for your body, like, okay, are you sure?

01:15:11.000 I mean, there's a lot of work to be done here, folks. 0.85

01:15:13.000 There's a lot of fucking research to be read into, and there's a lot of conversations you have to have with people far more educated than you and the subjects. 0.80

01:15:20.000 I think often as humans we have a hard time differentiating between our own experience and what works for us and then larger, bigger picture. 0.98

01:15:31.000 So take someone who has a severe autoimmune disease, they go on carnivore, their symptoms disappear.

01:15:37.000 That's pretty compelling.

01:15:39.000 It's really understandable why they would be passionate about that and why they would want to continue that approach.

01:15:46.000 But again, like I said before, we're not always choosing between one great alternative and one terrible alternative.

01:15:52.000 It is interesting to me, though, that one thing that we have been lied to about is that you need vegetables.

01:15:57.000 Because you don't need it.

01:15:59.000 Just much like with the RDA, you need a certain amount to not starve to death.

01:16:04.000 You don't necessarily need vegetables.

01:16:07.000 There's a whole community of people out there that's thriving and not eating a single piece of vegetable.

01:16:13.000 It's really interesting.

01:16:14.000 The problem is we just don't know what happens long term there.

01:16:18.000 I got my eye on Sean Baker.

01:16:20.000 Look, I want to be clear.

01:16:22.000 It might be fine.

01:16:23.000 It seems like it is.

01:16:24.000 I don't know.

01:16:25.000 I'm just saying we don't know.

01:16:26.000 So you're introducing an element of uncertainty because if you look at it from an anthropological perspective, every group of people we've ever studied in human history has eaten both plants and animals in different proportions.

01:16:40.000 What about the Comanches?

01:16:41.000 What about the Comanches?

01:16:41.000 One of the things I was reading about the Comanches, or as I was listening to this audiobook, what is it called?

01:16:50.000 Summer moon, Empire of the Summer Moon.

01:16:53.000 It's amazing.

01:16:54.000 I'm recommending it too much. 0.98

01:16:55.000 I've got to shut the fuck up about it. 0.97

01:16:57.000 But one of the things they talk about is that the Comanches ate very little berries or fruits or vegetables. 0.99

01:17:02.000 They mostly just ate buffalo.

01:17:03.000 Well, the Inuit also ate very little, especially during the winter.

01:17:07.000 But they went to great lengths to trade for plant foods, and in the summer they ate more plant foods.

01:17:13.000 So the proportions vary.

01:17:14.000 You know, the Maasai, for example.

01:17:16.000 Yes.

01:17:26.000 Very, very heavily.

01:17:32.000 So hunter-gatherers got about 70% of their calories from animal foods and about 30% from plant foods.

01:17:38.000 So that's percent of calorie.

01:17:39.000 That's not looking at a plate because animal foods are more calorie dense.

01:17:43.000 So it still might be two-thirds of the plate is plants and one-third is animal foods if they use plates.

01:17:50.000 But that's the rough percentage.

01:17:53.000 But it would vary from place to place.

01:17:57.000 We don't know of any group...

01:17:58.000 That exclusively and by choice, not from living in a marginal environment like the Arctic, but by choice, ate only animal foods for a long period of time.

01:18:08.000 And a lot of the research that we have, the clinical research, suggests that plants have some useful nutrients, especially some fibers that can feed the beneficial gut bacteria.

01:18:17.000 There are studies showing that Extremely low-carb diets can have some maybe not great effects on the gut flora.

01:18:23.000 So again, it could be fine, but we just don't know.

01:18:27.000 And so you're adding an element of uncertainty there.

01:18:29.000 That's all I'm saying.

01:18:30.000 So there could be a carnivore honeymoon, as it were, just like you're talking about the vegan honeymoon.

01:18:36.000 So your contention, and this is my belief as well, is that most human beings fare better on an omnivorous diet.

01:18:43.000 With both plants and animal foods.

01:18:45.000 Yes.

01:19:13.000 Right.

01:19:14.000 And I'm sure most of these athletes that are following a vegan diet, like you were talking about earlier with Patrick, they're taking protein powders.

01:19:22.000 So they're allowing themselves to get a large dose of protein to fulfill their requirements simply and easily in a shake form rather than having to wolf down four or five bowls of protein.

01:19:33.000 And if they're not, they're probably not doing that well.

01:19:37.000 So we have like all these stories of NFL and NBA athletes that went vegan and then stopped because they were not able to maintain their weight or they got injured and they weren't able to recover.

01:19:49.000 In the show notes for this, I have many, many examples of pretty high-level NBA and NFL athletes.

01:19:55.000 Just read off with you.

01:19:56.000 Cam Newton is one of them, right?

01:19:57.000 Cam Newton is the most recent one.

01:19:58.000 So he went vegan in February.

01:20:00.000 He had the worst season of his career.

01:20:02.000 He had minus two yards on five carries in the first two games, and he rushed for more than 30 yards, 33 yards a game only once in his last nine starts.

01:20:12.000 How Cam Newton's vegan diet may be hurting Panthers quarterback play in injury recovery.

01:20:17.000 What is this on?

01:20:18.000 What website is this?

01:20:19.000 This is his notes.

01:20:20.000 Oh, it's your notes, but it's from a website.

01:20:21.000 No, it's from a website.

01:20:22.000 Yeah, there's references.

01:20:23.000 And then he developed a Liz Frank injury in his foot.

01:20:28.000 That's a broken foot, right?

01:20:29.000 It's a broken foot and really hard to recover from.

01:20:32.000 And some people think it certainly could be career-ending.

01:20:37.000 I mean, if you lose 10, 20 pounds, that's a big deal for a high-level athlete because the studies have shown that that can interfere with muscle protein synthesis.

01:20:48.000 It can also increase inflammation and make recovery more difficult.

01:20:52.000 But the other thing is if they're not eating the protein powders, they're not taking collagen, for example, a vegan source of collagen.

01:21:00.000 Collagen is critical for muscle recovery and repair.

01:21:03.000 And it's hard to, you know, you can make some collagen, but I think a lot of people on a plant-based diet, if they're high-level athletes and they're not really getting collagen coming in, it's going to be difficult.

01:21:16.000 When Travis Barker was in a plane crash, he was, like, severely burned, and they were having a hard time getting him to heal, and he started eating meat in order to heal, because he's a vegan.

01:21:27.000 I mean, he owns, what's it called, Crossroads, in a really amazing vegan restaurant in L.A., and he talked about it on the podcast.

01:21:36.000 He was just wolfing down beef jerky, just trying to eat meat in order to get his body to heal.

01:21:41.000 That couldn't have gone over well.

01:21:42.000 With the vegan community.

01:21:43.000 Well, I mean, he was just being honest.

01:21:45.000 I mean, Travis is super, super honest.

01:21:47.000 He's just saying.

01:21:48.000 But he chooses to not eat meat other than that.

01:21:51.000 He just did it to recover.

01:21:52.000 And then once he recovered, he went back to his normal vegan diet.

01:21:55.000 So you have Djokovic, who's best tennis player of all time, probably.

01:22:00.000 When he first went dairy-free and gluten-free, he was number one in the world.

01:22:05.000 He went vegan.

01:22:07.000 Ranking dropped to 22, which was the lowest he'd been since he was a teenager.

01:22:12.000 And then he started adding fish back into his diet and, you know, back up to number one.

01:22:20.000 You have Damien Lillard from NBA. He went vegan for five months.

01:22:27.000 But then he added animal protein back to slide 35, Jamie.

01:22:31.000 He said, I did it, but I started to lose a little bit too much weight with all the games and practices and all that.

01:22:37.000 I had to balance it out, so now I've been mixing it up a little more, having vegan meals and still mixing it up with other stuff.

01:22:42.000 So it sounds kind of similar to Nate, you know?

01:22:45.000 Mostly vegan, but adding some animal foods back in there.

01:22:50.000 You had Tony Gonzalez, Hall of Fame, tight end, went vegan, and three weeks later, there was an article about this.

01:22:59.000 It's in the show notes.

01:23:01.000 The 100-pound dumbbells he used to easily throw around felt like lead weights, the article says.

01:23:06.000 I was scared out of my mind, Gonzalez said.

01:23:08.000 He had lost 10 pounds.

01:23:10.000 He ended up adding small amounts of animal protein back to his diet.

01:23:14.000 You've got Gerald McCoy, NFL. He said, quote, the explosiveness wasn't sustainable because I didn't have that extra oomph that I needed because of the lack of the type of protein I was taking in, so I just added a little bit of animal protein back in my diet, and it's given me that oomph back.

01:23:29.000 No, again, we're talking about elite athletes with very specific nutritional requirements because they're asking a tremendous amount of their body.

01:23:37.000 I mean, these guys could probably need like 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day to function well.

01:23:42.000 And of that, you know, if they weigh 250 or 275, they need 250 to 275 grams of protein and it should be high in leucine.

01:23:51.000 Yes.

01:24:07.000 I don't know.

01:24:08.000 It varies.

01:24:09.000 I mean, I've had patients who went vegan and within two months they were in really dire straits.

01:24:15.000 And there are people who go vegan and they're fine for their whole life.

01:24:19.000 Hormones are a big one, right? 0.97

01:24:20.000 And why is that?

01:24:23.000 Everything, you know, micronutrients really run the show.

01:24:26.000 I mean, of course, the macronutrients, protein, fat, carbohydrates are important.

01:24:30.000 And as I said before, you know, if you're 200 pounds, the average American weight is male is 200 pounds.

01:24:38.000 And so if they're in a vegetarian, they're consuming the average number of grams of protein.

01:24:43.000 That's less than the updated RDA. We looked at that on that slide.

01:24:48.000 So I would argue that even for the average person, protein could be a problem, both quantity and quality.

01:24:54.000 Most people are getting plenty of carbohydrates and enough fat, so that's not an issue.

01:24:58.000 Then it comes down to micronutrients.

01:25:00.000 So think B12. That's the thing that came up in the film a number of times.

01:25:05.000 So we should talk about that a little bit because there was some actually just factually inaccurate information about B12 that I want to correct.

01:25:14.000 So, the claim...

01:25:16.000 This is slide 55, Jamie.

01:25:19.000 James said B12 is not made by animals.

01:25:23.000 It's made by bacteria that these animals consume in the soil and water.

01:25:28.000 Before industrial farming, farm animals and humans could get B12 by eating traces of dirt on plant foods or by drinking water from rivers or streams.

01:25:36.000 But now, because of pesticides and antibiotics and chlorine that kill the bacteria, this vitamin even...

01:25:42.000 That produces this vitamin.

01:25:44.000 Yeah, that produces this vitamin.

01:25:45.000 Even farm animals have to be given B12 supplements.

01:25:48.000 That's just all false.

01:25:49.000 That's all just factually wrong.

01:25:51.000 So first of all, B12 is made by bacteria, but animals don't get it from consuming soil and water.

01:25:58.000 The B12 is made by bacteria in their gut.

01:26:01.000 So in ruminants like cows, in the rumen, which is a chamber in the stomach, the bacteria convert cobalt that they get from grass that they eat into cobalamin, which is B12. And then they are foregut fermenters.

01:26:19.000 So they can absorb the B12 the bacteria produce in their intestines and utilize that themselves.

01:26:26.000 Primates, including humans, also have bacteria that make B12, but we're hindgut fermenters, so we cannot absorb the B12 that our own gut bacteria make.

01:26:36.000 Well, that's not exactly true.

01:26:38.000 Chimps and gorillas can, but that's only because they eat their own poo. 0.80

01:26:43.000 So that is one potential strategy for meeting your B12. I hope you didn't just put that out there.

01:26:50.000 You can be coprophagic. 0.91

01:26:52.000 We will find ethical poo eaters. 1.00

01:26:54.000 There's a whole community now of Reddit.

01:26:56.000 Ethical poo eaters is now a new subreddit. 0.99

01:27:00.000 So we cannot get B12 from our own gut bacteria.

01:27:05.000 And if there is any B12 in soil, it's only from manure that's come from animals.

01:27:11.000 There's also zero evidence that B12 is fed to cattle, and there's no evidence that humans have ever been able to meet their B12 needs from just eating soil and water.

01:27:20.000 If you pull up slide 56, Jamie, Jack Norris, who's a vegan dietician, you know, we don't agree on a lot of things, but I appreciate his rigor with the science.

01:27:32.000 He has a big article on B12 and I don't know where to go with that claim because it's demonstrably false,

01:27:55.000 even from the perspective of a vegan registered dietitian.

01:27:59.000 Yes.

01:28:00.000 Yeah, I don't know why he said that either, but I just think that that's something he probably heard, and he was probably having a conversation with someone, and they told him that, and he just repeated it.

01:28:10.000 Or maybe one of the doctors on the show brought that up.

01:28:14.000 People repeat a lot of these things, and then they become dogma.

01:28:18.000 So here's the other thing.

01:28:23.000 We're good to go.

01:28:41.000 There's four stages of B12 deficiency.

01:28:43.000 I don't want to go too far in the weeds here, but basically serum B12, which is the marker that's usually used, only goes down in the fourth and final stage of B12 deficiency.

01:28:53.000 There are other markers that will go out of range earlier that are more sensitive and detect those earlier stages.

01:28:59.000 So the most sensitive marker is holotranscobalamin or holotc.

01:29:03.000 So, in a study in 2013, this is slide 58, Jamie, they compared B12 depletion according to holotranscobalamin levels in vegetarians, vegans, and omnivores, and you can see the results here.

01:29:19.000 Only 11% of omnivores had B12 depletion, 77% of vegetarians, and 92% of vegans.

01:29:27.000 That's a pretty big difference.

01:29:28.000 That's a big difference.

01:29:29.000 That's a big difference.

01:29:30.000 And B12 is responsible for energy.

01:29:32.000 That's one of the reasons why when people are feeling sick, they get a B12 shot.

01:29:36.000 Well, it's also required for the myelin sheath in our nerves.

01:29:39.000 B12 deficiency can cause serious and even irreversible neurological damage.

01:29:44.000 A lot of the harm that happens with kids on a vegan diet comes from B12 deficiency.

01:29:50.000 It can decrease fluid intelligence.

01:29:52.000 It can cause neurological damage that's not reversible even after they start eating meat again.

01:29:58.000 Maybe that's what's going on with them in this information.

01:30:00.000 Maybe they have legitimate neurological damage.

01:30:03.000 Is that possible?

01:30:03.000 It's possible.

01:30:06.000 One more, if I can, because I'm just passionate about this because it's super important.

01:30:11.000 Slide 59. So homocysteine is a marker that is also more sensitive than serum B12. It's a sticky inflammatory protein that's associated with heart disease and dementia.

01:30:22.000 So 9 out of 10 comparisons that looked at B12 levels or homocysteine levels in vegetarians and omnivores found higher homocysteine levels in vegans and vegetarians.

01:30:32.000 Higher means worse, and it means more B12 deficient.

01:30:36.000 And in fact, the studies, they said the prevalence of hyperhomocysteemia, which is high homocysteine levels reflecting low B12, among vegetarians may actually be higher than among non-vegetarians already diagnosed with heart disease.

01:30:52.000 So this is kind of a big deal.

01:30:54.000 It's like the B12 issue is serious, and even folks like Jack Norris, to their credit, do acknowledge it and strongly recommend that people who are on a vegan diet supplement.

01:31:04.000 So if people watch this film, you know, I'm glad to hear James saying that vegetarians and vegans should supplement.

01:31:14.000 I don't think omnivores need to, usually.

01:31:17.000 You can watch that film and get the idea that B12 is maybe not that big of a deal.

01:31:23.000 It's a big deal.

01:31:25.000 A lot of the film was reenactments as well.

01:31:28.000 When James was sitting there with the knee braces on, that was not after his surgery.

01:31:32.000 I thought he was vegan in 2011 or 2012 or something.

01:31:36.000 When he's in the film, when they're filming him, he's sitting there doing his research.

01:31:41.000 I don't think they filmed him while it was happening back in 2012 after the injury.

01:31:47.000 One of the things that I thought was well done about the film was that they took someone, James, on the journey of starting as an omnivore and then having these realizations and turning into a vegan.

01:32:01.000 But the problem was...

01:32:03.000 That journey happened long before the film was made, I think.

01:32:06.000 So that was a little disingenuous, too.

01:32:08.000 Well, that's why I'm saying he's sitting there with those knee braces on and he's going over his research and just happened to have a camera crew there while he's learning how to heal himself.

01:32:16.000 And I'm like, hey, man, I know what you're doing.

01:32:18.000 I don't know.

01:32:18.000 I mean, that's a narrative device.

01:32:20.000 It's good filmmaking.

01:32:21.000 Even the rope thing.

01:32:22.000 Even the rope thing.

01:32:23.000 I mean, I'm watching him do the rope thing.

01:32:25.000 At the end, like, ooh, boy, I'm done.

01:32:26.000 You just did an hour. 0.98

01:32:27.000 Bro, if you did an hour, you'd be fucking drenched with sweat and you'd be exhausted. 0.98

01:32:33.000 They sprayed you or something. 0.98

01:32:35.000 But it's fine.

01:32:36.000 I believe he really did that.

01:32:37.000 I don't believe he's a liar, but like...

01:32:39.000 I mean, like you said, he's clearly an amazing athlete and ripped and super capable.

01:32:47.000 And this was an agenda-driven film.

01:32:52.000 It's meant to persuade and convince people.

01:32:54.000 Well, that's why it's weird because that's clearly acting.

01:32:59.000 You're recreating these moments.

01:33:01.000 Right.

01:33:01.000 But it's marketed as a documentary.

01:33:04.000 Because he's talking about it having just happened right after he switched over to a vegan diet.

01:33:08.000 All of a sudden he could do an hour on the battle ropes.

01:33:10.000 And then they're filming them.

01:33:12.000 Yeah.

01:33:13.000 I'm like, come on, man. 0.98

01:33:14.000 There's no fucking camera crew where that happened. 0.97

01:33:16.000 You're redoing this. 0.99

01:33:17.000 Yeah.

01:33:18.000 I mean, I get it.

01:33:20.000 This is how you show the footage, you put it out there, and it makes it a little bit better for people to swallow and get.

01:33:27.000 And I like the scenes of him doing the self-defense demonstrations, because you get to see he truly is a fantastic martial artist.

01:33:34.000 He really does know his stuff.

01:33:35.000 Absolutely.

01:33:36.000 There's a lot of great aspects to that.

01:33:38.000 Like I said, I like that guy a lot. 0.99

01:33:39.000 But there's a lot of fuckery in this movie, man. 0.99

01:33:43.000 So, I mean, a couple of the most ridiculous things from the movie... 0.99

01:33:47.000 You can get to boners? 0.99

01:33:48.000 We can get to boners. 0.97

01:33:51.000 So, slide 64. You probably remember this morning. 0.74

01:33:55.000 This was the guy who's, like, in Africa.

01:33:58.000 He was a former Special Forces sniper, I think.

01:34:01.000 Yes, yes. 1.00

01:34:02.000 And he says, this whole fantasy we need to eat meat to get our protein, it's actually bullshit. 0.99

01:34:06.000 I mean, look at a gorilla. 1.00

01:34:07.000 A gorilla will fuck you up in two seconds. 1.00

01:34:09.000 What does a gorilla eat? 1.00

01:34:11.000 I just do the same things as these big gray things out here that we're trying to protect, elephant and rhino.

01:34:17.000 That's just, it's a nonsensical argument. 0.99

01:34:19.000 You know what will fuck you up even faster than the gorilla? 1.00

01:34:22.000 A human who has a gun that eats McDonald's and KFC. I'm serious. 1.00

01:34:28.000 What is a gun?

01:34:29.000 It's a tool.

01:34:29.000 How did we develop tools?

01:34:30.000 Because we started eating meat and fish, and we came down out of the trees, and we weren't spending more than half of our waking hours eating leaves and low-calorie fruits.

01:34:41.000 Comparing our digestive... 0.99

01:34:42.000 What we should eat with a gorilla is just asinine. 0.98

01:34:45.000 That's a problem because they bring that up all the time. 0.99

01:34:47.000 They say, we have the same digestive gut tract as an herbivore.

01:34:53.000 That's just not true.

01:34:54.000 Also, just objectively false.

01:34:58.000 For a gorilla, the largest volume of their digestive tract is in their large intestine, which is ideal for breaking down tough foods, fiber, seeds, and those kinds of plant foods.

01:35:08.000 Whereas in humans, the largest volume of our digestive tract is in the small intestine, which is better for absorbing nutrient-dense bioavailable foods like meat and cooked foods, cooked tubers and things like that.

01:35:22.000 A gorilla, in order to get the amount of protein that gets them strong and ripped, they eat 40 to 60 pounds of food a day, and they're eating for more than half of their waking hours.

01:35:33.000 So it's really, you know, that's just not comparable at all to compare us to...

01:35:39.000 We also have different genes.

01:35:41.000 It's the same thing when they're talking about oxes, like strong as an ox.

01:35:44.000 There's a myostatin issue, right?

01:35:46.000 Yes.

01:35:47.000 The genes are programmed to carry more muscle.

01:35:49.000 So, yeah, that's Patrick Babumi, and he says, you know, people ask me, how did you get strong as an ox without eating meat?

01:35:56.000 Yeah.

01:35:56.000 Have you ever seen an ox eating meat?

01:35:58.000 Well, I say, have you ever seen a human with six different stomachs standing in a field eating grass for 14 hours a day? 0.98

01:36:07.000 That's ridiculous. 0.99

01:36:08.000 It is ridiculous. 0.99

01:36:09.000 To me, those damage the credibility of the movie. 0.92

01:36:13.000 Well, it's just sound bites that sound cute.

01:36:15.000 Like people go, yeah, have you ever seen an ox eat that?

01:36:18.000 Eat what a gorilla eats.

01:36:19.000 That's what I do.

01:36:20.000 Yeah, plant-based.

01:36:21.000 Yeah.

01:36:22.000 Right.

01:36:23.000 It just, to me though, that's like the quality of the argument being made.

01:36:27.000 It really does.

01:36:28.000 There's no one there like you to dispute it.

01:36:29.000 That's the problem.

01:36:30.000 You know, that's why I bring you aboard.

01:36:32.000 I mean, and then there was the anthropologist woman.

01:36:35.000 You remember that scene in the end where she, that's where I really started rolling my eyes because she was making the arguments that humans have always followed a plant-based diet.

01:36:44.000 Did you remember that part? 0.95

01:36:45.000 Silly. 0.98

01:36:46.000 Okay, so we're going to start with that. 0.96

01:36:50.000 So, I mean, we've got isotope studies that show that humans have been eating meat for at least two and a half million years.

01:36:56.000 And if you go back even before we were really actually human, there's a lot of evidence now that our chimp ancestors were also eating vertebrates.

01:37:06.000 One of the biggest shocks for people has been the observation that chimps hunt and they kill other monkeys and other animals and eat them.

01:37:15.000 I mean, it kind of blew apart this whole idea of primates only eating plants.

01:37:22.000 If that happened, if an animal evolves complex behavior like hunting or tool use in order to eat certain food, it means that food has a lot of value or else that behavior wouldn't have evolved.

01:37:38.000 But then we have bone collagen studies.

01:37:42.000 Let me see if I can find this slide, Jamie.

01:37:46.000 So that's 47 and 48. So bone collagen isotope studies are much more accurate than some of the previous methods that were used.

01:37:55.000 And the earliest hominids that were studied with these were Neanderthals. 0.69

01:38:00.000 So there's three studies that have been done in Neanderthal groups ranging from 130,000 to 28,000 years ago.

01:38:06.000 And then they compared those isotope levels with contemporary species.

01:38:11.000 And they found that Neanderthals were similar to top-level carnivores.

01:38:15.000 So they all derived the vast majority of their protein from animal sources, likely to be large herbivores.

01:38:21.000 And then on the next slide, 48...

01:38:23.000 Why does it have...

01:38:24.000 Hold on a second.

01:38:25.000 Back up.

01:38:25.000 Why does it have a pterodactyl flying in the background?

01:38:27.000 Why are they bullshitting us? 1.00

01:38:29.000 Does those fucking things live 60 fucking million years before? 1.00

01:38:33.000 That's so stupid. 1.00

01:38:34.000 You know, there's a limit to what stock photography can come up with. 1.00

01:38:38.000 I know, but all you have to do is snip that part out, you asshole. 1.00

01:38:41.000 Why do you have a guy walking on two feet with a fucking piece of meat on a stick? 1.00

01:38:46.000 A big stick of meat. 1.00

01:38:46.000 That's so stupid. 1.00

01:38:47.000 And he's obviously not a Neanderthal, too. 1.00

01:38:50.000 The skull is the wrong shape.

01:38:51.000 Yeah, the skull is the wrong shape, right?

01:38:53.000 Yeah.

01:38:53.000 That's double crazy.

01:38:54.000 So that's a homo sapien, which is only 500,000 years ago.

01:38:58.000 Bad stock photo.

01:38:58.000 Well, let's talk about homo sapiens.

01:39:01.000 So on the next slide, there are two stable isotope bone collagen studies that have been done with modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens.

01:39:11.000 And the first group was 13,000 years ago in southern England, and the second group was 30,000 to 40,000 years ago in La Gravette, which is in France.

01:39:19.000 And they also found that they were, you know, carnivores, mostly large herbivores, but the French group consumed a more diverse mix of protein, including seafood.

01:39:30.000 So the fossil record clearly, clearly indicates that humans were eating, you know, humans and Neanderthals, you know, homo sapiens and Neanderthals, all of our hominid ancestors were eating a lot of meat. 0.84

01:39:41.000 And she wasn't using any evidence to cite this either, was she?

01:39:44.000 She was using that lame anatomical argument that we have, you know, relatively flat molars like herbivores do, and we don't have claws, we don't have sharp canine teeth.

01:39:55.000 But guess what?

01:39:56.000 We've got forks, we've got knives.

01:39:58.000 And we've got fire.

01:39:59.000 We've got fire to cook our food. 0.97

01:40:01.000 Yeah, and we had fire for a long fucking hour. 0.93

01:40:02.000 We have these adaptations that make those anatomical characteristics that a lion or a carnivorous animal has unnecessary for us. 0.95

01:40:13.000 I mean, that's just like Anthropology 101. So they just found someone who's vegan who's also an anthropologist.

01:40:20.000 Yeah, one anthropologist, and then they rewrite the whole history of animal food consumption among hominids. 0.96

01:40:27.000 Yeah, and the argument that human beings over two million years ago, the doubling of the human brain size corresponds with the learning how to hunt, consuming more meat...

01:40:37.000 The appearance of tool marks on bones corresponded directly with the doubling of brain volume, the reduction in our gut volume, which indicates a move to a more nutrient-dense diet, the increase in the volume of our small intestine relative to our large intestine, and then what's called the gracilization of our jaw,

01:40:53.000 which means our teeth and jaw became less robust, And that's thought to be an adaptation to more digestible, nutrient-dense, bioavailable food where we're not like chewing cud or chewing on leaves or low-calorie fruit like a gorilla is all day.

01:41:08.000 And this argument about nutrient density, this is why that term is very important because people always want to use that for plant-based foods, nutrient-dense, plant-based foods.

01:41:18.000 Meat is far more nutrient-dense per calorie, per ounce, per amino acid profile, With essential nutrients, yeah.

01:41:28.000 So essential meaning nutrients that we can't manufacture on our own and that we absolutely need.

01:41:35.000 Organ meats are actually at the top of the list in terms of nutrient density.

01:41:40.000 Organ meats and shellfish take the cake.

01:41:42.000 Then you have herbs and spices are actually pretty high too.

01:41:46.000 And then you have other, you know, muscle meats, eggs, all those things.

01:41:50.000 Foods like grains and legumes tend to be towards the bottom of the list, you know, with vegetables in the middle.

01:41:57.000 Right, but that sounds good.

01:41:59.000 Nutrient-dense plant-based food sounds good.

01:42:01.000 It sounds like you're doing the right thing.

01:42:03.000 And this is like where this lingo is coming from.

01:42:05.000 I mean, this is where I argue that plants do belong because plants do have certain nutrients, phytonutrients, fibers, and things that actually don't feed us but feed our gut flora that I do think are important.

01:42:18.000 Even though they're not considered essential like vitamin B12 or vitamin A, you know...

01:42:24.000 Vitamin D or something like that, I do think they're still important and they play a role.

01:42:28.000 What I'm talking about is the difference between caveman altering its diet or ancient man altering their diet and this doubling of the human brain size corresponding with consuming more nutrient-dense foods.

01:42:40.000 What that means is meat.

01:42:42.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:42:43.000 Meat, fish, and fish as we saw with some of the modern humans who are living in coastal regions.

01:42:48.000 But these more bioavailable nutrient-dense foods, definitely. 0.52

01:42:52.000 Now, what other silliness?

01:42:55.000 So this is the anthropology argument that just doesn't seem to fit any of the state-of-the-art science.

01:43:01.000 It doesn't fit.

01:43:02.000 Yeah, it completely contradicts.

01:43:04.000 So then there was the whole section that you probably remember about chicken and fish causing cancer, dairy products causing cancer.

01:43:13.000 They started to just...

01:43:14.000 It really kind of went from just like you can do well on a plant-based diet as an athlete to like animal products are horrible and are going to kill you, which was a big leap.

01:43:26.000 So they had one study, James Wilkes says, you know, research funded by the National Cancer Institute found that vegetarians who had one or more servings per week of white meat like chicken and fish more than tripled their risk of colon cancer.

01:43:41.000 Well, that's scary.

01:43:42.000 You know, I don't want to triple my risk of colon cancer.

01:43:45.000 But again, if you look at the totality of the research, slide 42, Jamie, 2017, a meta-analysis of 16 prospective studies with almost 2.5 million participants found no increase in cancer risk from consuming fish or poultry.

01:44:03.000 And then you have a statement from the American Cancer Institute itself saying, So where's that coming from then?

01:44:21.000 One study that looked at Seventh-day Adventists who added some of those foods back into their diet.

01:44:29.000 This is a perfect example of healthy user bias because Seventh-day Adventists are not supposed to eat meat.

01:44:34.000 So if you have a Seventh-day Adventist who's rebelling and eating meat, Then what else are they doing that is also not healthy and not following the dictates of that healthy lifestyle?

01:44:48.000 They didn't take that into consideration?

01:44:50.000 They didn't ask them whether they're drinking?

01:44:52.000 That was a six-year study in the Seventh-day Adventist cohort from 1976 to 1982. And it was what I call them SDA rebels. 0.52

01:45:01.000 They're supposed to eat vegetarian, but they add meat.

01:45:04.000 So what else are they doing that's confounding that?

01:45:07.000 And the reason why this is relevant is this is the only study that we know of that does show a correlation between...

01:45:13.000 There might be other individual studies that do, but this is why we have these large reviews.

01:45:18.000 This one looked at 16 studies with 2.5 million participants and found no association.

01:45:24.000 And then that's why you have groups like the American Cancer Institute who say...

01:45:28.000 You know, they make this recommendation.

01:45:30.000 Well, I mean, people were up in arms at the most recent recommendation that people have been told to avoid red meat.

01:45:38.000 Oh, yeah.

01:45:38.000 And then they said, well, actually, there's no risk at all eating red meat.

01:45:42.000 We're taking that off of the list of foods to avoid.

01:45:45.000 And everybody went apeshit. 0.89

01:45:46.000 They just went apeshit. 0.98

01:45:47.000 Let's talk about that. 0.99

01:45:48.000 For lack of a better term.

01:45:49.000 Yeah, they did.

01:45:50.000 They freaked out.

01:45:51.000 Yeah.

01:45:51.000 Because it conflicts with the dogma.

01:45:54.000 Absolutely.

01:45:55.000 And this was...

01:45:56.000 This was a five-paper review.

01:45:58.000 So it wasn't just one paper.

01:46:00.000 It was five papers all in one review.

01:46:02.000 It was millions of participants.

01:46:05.000 They reviewed all of the available literature on red meat and its relationship with any disease, heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes.

01:46:16.000 It was dozens of studies following people for up to 35 years and millions, again, millions of participants.

01:46:24.000 They looked at randomized controlled trials.

01:46:26.000 They looked at observational cohort studies.

01:46:29.000 They looked at all kinds of outcomes, total mortality, cardiovascular, cancer, etc., And they found, quote, only low or very low certainty evidence that red meat causes any kind of disease.

01:46:42.000 And then in the editorial, in the Annals, which is what it was published, Annals of Internal Medicine, the journal it was published in, they said, quote, this is slide 19, Jamie.

01:46:55.000 Over and over again, they, the authors, stressed that even if the results were statistically significant, their certainty was low and the absolute differences seen were small and potentially confounded.

01:47:07.000 Meaning, could have been that they were smoking more or drinking more or not exercising or whatever.

01:47:13.000 Right.

01:47:14.000 The editorial also said, this is sure to be controversial, but it's based on the most comprehensive review of the evidence to date.

01:47:22.000 Because that review is inclusive, those who seek to dispute it will be hard-pressed to find appropriate evidence with which to build an argument.

01:47:29.000 Unless you have a nice documentary.

01:47:31.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:47:32.000 You can just put in whatever fucking evidence you want. 0.99

01:47:34.000 Ignore it. 1.00

01:47:35.000 Yeah.

01:47:36.000 The really frustrating thing for people is also recommend it's unprocessed and processed.

01:47:42.000 So the dogma has always been, well, just stay away from processed meat and you can avoid.

01:47:48.000 Yeah, because some studies showed no difference with fresh, but some difference with processed red meat.

01:47:53.000 I think you could make a stronger argument that too much processed meat might be harmful because of things like nitroso compounds that are formed, etc.

01:48:03.000 But even then, you have to consider context.

01:48:06.000 Most people are eating hot dogs with buns.

01:48:08.000 French fries and big gulps.

01:48:12.000 It's probably a different effect than having bacon a couple times a week with your whole foods diet or having some salami and nuts.

01:48:22.000 Not the same as eating fake processed meat all the time.

01:48:28.000 And one of the things that's weird about this whole conversation is there's a battleground.

01:48:34.000 So like a volley gets thrown out there like this.

01:48:37.000 Like boom! 0.98

01:48:38.000 It's okay to eat red meat.

01:48:39.000 And you see the other side scrambling to refute the evidence and then fire back with all these epidemiology studies that show that red meat can kill you and red meat's causing you to age quicker and red meat kills your boners and red meat does this and does that.

01:48:52.000 And it's like there's a religious war going on.

01:48:57.000 It's the same thing we were talking about earlier.

01:48:59.000 Now, when you have some kind of political event or some event that happens, it gets spun.

01:49:03.000 You know, if you go watch CNN, it's going to get spun one way.

01:49:06.000 If you go watch Fox, it's going to get spun the other way.

01:49:09.000 It's the same event, but you have these totally different interpretations.

01:49:12.000 Yeah.

01:49:13.000 What else was a bummer?

01:49:16.000 Well, you want to talk about the boners?

01:49:18.000 Sure, let's talk about the boners.

01:49:20.000 I found that to be entirely hilarious, ruthlessly unscientific, and like the whole thing with the guy saying, you know, I'm going to eat what a gorilla eats.

01:49:33.000 I mean, they're showing this guy who's protecting rhinos who are being slaughtered for their horns.

01:49:39.000 Like, what does that have anything to do with eating meat?

01:49:41.000 Yeah, they're morally equating that with eating...

01:49:44.000 Exactly.

01:49:45.000 Well, what they're doing is...

01:49:46.000 It was pretty obvious what they were doing there.

01:49:47.000 Yes.

01:49:48.000 Even though they didn't say that, that's what they were doing.

01:49:50.000 They're attaching themselves to an indisputable cause.

01:49:54.000 Yeah.

01:49:55.000 You know, I mean, everybody wants people to stop shooting rhinos for their horns.

01:49:58.000 Everyone does. 1.00

01:49:59.000 If you don't, you're an asshole. 1.00

01:50:00.000 Don't eat meat. 1.00

01:50:01.000 What?

01:50:01.000 How'd you get that in there?

01:50:03.000 You guys snuck that in there. 1.00

01:50:04.000 What the fuck did you do? 1.00

01:50:05.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:50:05.000 Yeah, so for those who haven't seen the film, the boner experiment, if we're going to call it that, it was Aaron Spitz, who's a urologist, and he puts penis rings on a bunch of NFL players, 1.00

01:50:21.000 and then he measures the effects of different meals on their erections, both the circumference, I guess, the size of the erection, the duration, and the intensity of the erections.

01:50:34.000 So he feeds the players burritos with meat in them and then he feeds them the same burrito with like a plant protein.

01:50:41.000 I'm not sure what it was, tempeh or something like that.

01:50:44.000 I think it was beans.

01:50:46.000 Was it beans?

01:50:47.000 Okay, maybe.

01:50:48.000 And then he claims that the athletes who ate the pure plant burritos had 500% more frequent erections and also increased strength of erections.

01:50:57.000 So what can we conclude from this experiment?

01:51:01.000 Absolutely nothing.

01:51:02.000 Because it was just an experiment that was made up and done in a film.

01:51:05.000 It was not peer-reviewed.

01:51:07.000 It's not scientific at all.

01:51:09.000 That's the whole scientific system.

01:51:12.000 Well, here's how it could have been scientific, right?

01:51:15.000 If they did it in different orders.

01:51:18.000 So they put the... 0.99

01:51:20.000 The penis band on the dudes one night. 1.00

01:51:24.000 They had them eat whatever the fuck they had them eat. 1.00

01:51:26.000 I think it was steak burritos. 1.00

01:51:28.000 And then the next night, they put the penis bands on them again, and they have them eat beans. 0.99

01:51:33.000 And so they say they got more erections. 1.00

01:51:36.000 Did you guys jerk off in between then? 1.00

01:51:38.000 Did you guys have sex? 1.00

01:51:39.000 Did you get used to having the penis band on? 0.99

01:51:41.000 When you slept with it the first time, did it bother you? 0.99

01:51:44.000 Did it interrupt your sleep?

01:51:45.000 The second time, were you more comfortable with it?

01:51:47.000 Did you guys try to reverse it?

01:51:49.000 One day, the first day, on a different group of people, give them the band and make them eat a vegetarian diet.

01:51:54.000 Then the next day, give them the band on the second day and make them eat steak.

01:51:58.000 Did you switch that up?

01:51:59.000 You can ask any number of questions, and that's the whole point.

01:52:03.000 Of science.

01:52:03.000 That's why we have science.

01:52:05.000 That's why we have a process of peer review.

01:52:07.000 That's why we have reproducibility, meaning even if one group comes up with one finding, it's not really worth much until somebody else reproduces that.

01:52:15.000 Something like 90% or more of scientific findings are not reproduced.

01:52:21.000 That means that we can't trust them, so. 0.97

01:52:24.000 I would like to know if they were asked to not engage in sexual intercourse or masturbation during that time period because that would make sense that they were getting more erections and more fuller erections the next day, especially the young guys that are savages out there playing football. 0.98

01:52:39.000 I went to look at research. 0.71

01:52:40.000 Is there any peer-reviewed research that shows that plant-based diets are better for erectile?

01:52:48.000 We're good to go.

01:53:05.000 Right.

01:53:13.000 Right.

01:53:27.000 Yeah, it's just deceptive.

01:53:28.000 Totally.

01:53:29.000 But, you know, it does show that those guys did get more hard-ons under that circumstance.

01:53:35.000 But as you said, what does that mean?

01:53:37.000 What does it mean, and can we even trust it?

01:53:40.000 I mean, frankly, given some of the other stuff in the film...

01:53:43.000 Right.

01:53:44.000 Can you trust it?

01:53:45.000 Can you trust that?

01:53:45.000 Right.

01:53:46.000 I mean, who's to say, right?

01:53:48.000 There was another thing that was deceptive, or at least it confused people.

01:53:53.000 That's when they made them eat a bean burrito, and they checked their blood, and then they made them... 0.99

01:54:01.000 I was just sitting there shaking my head going, what in the fuck are you doing? 0.99

01:54:05.000 This has nothing to do with health. 0.98

01:54:06.000 So again, not a peer-reviewed experiment, something that was a controlled study in any way, just something that they did in the film.

01:54:15.000 So yeah, they fed the burritos with meat, without meat, and they measured their blood afterwards.

01:54:22.000 Big surprise if the people who ate meat, which has more fat and more saturated fat, had cloudier blood.

01:54:28.000 Well, that's normal.

01:54:29.000 That's just naturally what you would expect from the process of eating feet.

01:54:33.000 You will temporarily have more fat in your blood.

01:54:35.000 It has nothing to do with health.

01:54:37.000 So what is the big question.

01:54:38.000 Right.

01:54:38.000 Might actually be better for you.

01:54:40.000 Might be better for you.

01:54:41.000 And so then I went and I thought, okay, well, what does the peer-reviewed research show about animal protein and endothelial function?

01:54:48.000 Because their claim was that eating the animal protein reduces your endothelial function and increases inflammation.

01:54:55.000 So there was one...

01:55:04.000 There are a couple studies that show a low-carb diet impairs endothelial function, but they tend to be short-term, like four weeks.

01:55:10.000 I look for longer-term studies.

01:55:13.000 There was a 2009 study that followed subjects for 12 weeks, and they found that a low-carb diet actually improved endothelial function, whereas a low-fat diet decreased it.

01:55:23.000 And then there was a 2007 study that followed subjects for a year, and there was no change in endothelial function on a low-carb diet.

01:55:32.000 There's strong evidence that high blood sugar and insulin resistance impair endothelial function.

01:55:38.000 So a low-carb diet that would lower your blood sugar and improve insulin resistance would be expected to improve it from that perspective.

01:55:46.000 So again, when you look at the actual science, the actual peer-reviewed research, you don't see that relationship that they're talking about.

01:55:53.000 They didn't even, I mean, when they're showing it to you, it's just scare tactics.

01:55:57.000 They're not talking about what that means.

01:55:59.000 It's persuasive.

01:56:00.000 You know, people see it and they're like, oh my god, the blood is cloudy.

01:56:03.000 Even the football players were in the experiment.

01:56:05.000 They were like, oh wow, I'm not going to eat my KFC or Popeyes anymore.

01:56:09.000 And I'm like, well, you probably shouldn't, but it's not for that reason.

01:56:12.000 Right.

01:56:13.000 Well, saturated fat is the demon, right, that keeps getting addressed.

01:56:16.000 Explain why saturated fat is not only healthy, but probably necessary.

01:56:24.000 Well, I don't know that it's necessary, but I would say that, you know...

01:56:28.000 Well, I should say cholesterol is necessary.

01:56:30.000 Well, cholesterol is necessary, and our body makes it, too.

01:56:35.000 Actually, most of the cholesterol that we have in our body, we manufacture.

01:56:39.000 It doesn't come from the diet.

01:56:41.000 About 30% comes from the diet.

01:56:43.000 About 70% we make.

01:56:46.000 The exact ratio varies depending on the person.

01:56:49.000 Some people are hyper-responders of dietary cholesterol, so they'll absorb more from food.

01:56:54.000 But it plays a vital role in the body.

01:56:58.000 There's a genetic disease called Smith-Lemley-Opitz syndrome, which results in severe cholesterol deficiency, and it's fatal.

01:57:07.000 So you die with not enough cholesterol.

01:57:11.000 I'm not, however, one of these people on the other end of the spectrum that thinks, hey, if your cholesterol is 450, don't worry.

01:57:17.000 No problem.

01:57:19.000 Just write it off.

01:57:21.000 I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

01:57:24.000 And it's biological variable.

01:57:25.000 It's variable, yeah.

01:57:27.000 And I see this.

01:57:30.000 I've been working with patients for over 10 years.

01:57:32.000 I test every single person that comes through the door with a full lipid panel.

01:57:36.000 And I have people who are doing keto, super low-carb diets who have totally optimal normal cholesterol.

01:57:43.000 And then I have people who go from eating, you know, a moderate-fat diet to like a high-fat keto or low-carb diet, and their LDL-P goes up to 2,500 or 3,000, and their LDL cholesterol goes up to 300. So,

01:58:01.000 yeah, I mean, what I can, I think what, stepping back a little bit, as we talked about this with Joel, but cholesterol for decades was, it was the boogeyman, you know, it was like, that led to like egg white omelets and boneless, skinless chicken breast and,

01:58:17.000 you know, bagels with nothing on them when I was growing up.

01:58:21.000 And now even the- Margarine.

01:58:25.000 Margarine, oh my God.

01:58:26.000 I can't believe it's not butter.

01:58:28.000 Yeah, sure.

01:58:29.000 I thought it was better than butter.

01:58:30.000 Hilarious.

01:58:31.000 Which rats won't even eat if you leave it out in the garage.

01:58:34.000 Really?

01:58:34.000 Yeah.

01:58:36.000 Really?

01:58:37.000 Yeah.

01:58:39.000 Rats eat batteries.

01:58:40.000 They won't eat margarine?

01:58:42.000 That's what I've heard.

01:58:42.000 I've never done this experiment.

01:58:44.000 We need to do an experiment.

01:58:44.000 You should do it.

01:58:45.000 Otherwise, we're pushing out disinformation as well.

01:58:47.000 Propaganda.

01:58:49.000 So yeah, you know, the U.S. quietly actually removed the limitation of dietary cholesterol.

01:58:56.000 They used to limit it to 300 milligrams now that they don't have that anymore because the evidence didn't justify having that in the dietary guidelines.

01:59:04.000 We were the last industrialized country to do that.

01:59:06.000 Every other country had done that years ago.

01:59:09.000 But because, you know, how entrenched that was in our country, and I think, you know, they don't want to lose credibility.

01:59:17.000 It's like they've been saying not to do something for so long, then to turn around and say, actually, there's no evidence to support that.

01:59:25.000 You lose face.

01:59:26.000 And when people talk about saturated fat and they talk about it as being only a meat or animal diet issue, one thing that I always like to bring up is avocados.

01:59:39.000 Yeah.

01:59:40.000 There's a certain amount of unsaturated fat and saturated fat.

01:59:43.000 Every food has all three fats in some proportion.

01:59:47.000 So you have saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated.

01:59:50.000 And dairy products are actually the only category of foods that consistently have more saturated fat than any other type of fat.

01:59:59.000 Pork, for example, often has more monounsaturated fat than saturated and even sometimes lean beef.

02:00:06.000 And what's really interesting about that is that studies consistently show that full-fat dairy, which would be like the highest saturated fat class of foods, is associated with reduced risk of heart disease,

02:00:21.000 reduced risk of diabetes, reduced weight.

02:00:24.000 And all kinds of other improvements.

02:00:26.000 Full-fat dairy is?

02:00:27.000 Is this raw dairy, like raw milk?

02:00:31.000 They're not differentiating like that in the studies.

02:00:34.000 Just any full-fat dairy.

02:00:36.000 Why do you think so many people are lactose intolerant then?

02:00:38.000 Because that's an issue.

02:00:39.000 And I think I seem to have it a little bit.

02:00:42.000 My nine-year-old daughter definitely has it.

02:00:44.000 Well, so it wasn't until 11,000 years, 12,000 years ago, we didn't raise animals for dairy.

02:00:51.000 So there was no need that we only had to digest lactose while we were breastfeeding.

02:00:57.000 So like in a hunter-gatherer culture, as soon as you stop breastfeeding, you no longer had the need to digest lactose.

02:01:05.000 And so our bodies are efficient.

02:01:07.000 We stopped producing lactase, which is the enzyme to break down lactose.

02:01:20.000 We're good to go.

02:01:29.000 Started to spread, and now it's about one-third of the world has lactase persistence, which means they can digest lactose all the way into adulthood, and two-thirds don't.

02:01:41.000 And it depends a lot on your ancestry.

02:01:43.000 So two-thirds people are lactose intolerant to some extent.

02:01:46.000 Wow, that's interesting.

02:01:48.000 So the people who tend to be lactose tolerant are people of European, particularly Northern European descent.

02:01:54.000 Like lactose tolerance or lactase persistence approaches like 97% in Scandinavia.

02:02:01.000 So Denmark, Norway, Sweden, they can almost all...

02:02:04.000 Digest milk.

02:02:05.000 And then East Africans, so you have like the Maasai, you know, people who've been raising cattle for a long time tend to have that capability, whereas like in Asia, other parts of Africa, and other parts of the world, not as much. 0.55

02:02:20.000 What difference, if any, does it make when it's not homogenized and pasteurized in terms of your digestion?

02:02:27.000 Because for me, I don't have a problem with raw milk.

02:02:30.000 Raw milk seems to be easy for me.

02:02:32.000 Yeah, I think there is a difference.

02:02:33.000 I mean, it contains enzymes in it that help you break down the lactose.

02:02:38.000 So that can make a difference.

02:02:40.000 But, I mean, just...

02:02:42.000 I would love to see research that further differentiates the health benefits of dairy according to whether it's organic or whether it's homogenized or not and all that.

02:02:51.000 But even just talking about dairy as a whole category...

02:02:54.000 I mean, you had Dr. Walter Willett in there saying, there's evidence of high consumption of proteins from dairy is related to higher risk of prostate cancer.

02:03:03.000 The chain of cancer causation seems pretty clear.

02:03:06.000 But if you bring up slide 44, Jamie, there was a 2019 study.

02:03:11.000 Largest review of dairy ever been done before.

02:03:14.000 It was 153 meta-analyses that they reviewed.

02:03:19.000 So not just individual studies.

02:03:20.000 They reviewed 153 studies that were also reviewing other studies.

02:03:25.000 And 84% of the meta-analyses on dairy showed either no association or an inverse association between dairy and cancer, meaning when it's inverse, it means people who ate more dairy had lower rates of cancer.

02:03:38.000 So it's frustrating to see someone make a claim like that, and then you go and you look at the full totality of the research and you see a just exhaustive study like this with 153 meta-analyses.

02:03:54.000 And 84% are showing no relationship or a beneficial effect of dairy on cancer.

02:04:00.000 Why wasn't that mentioned in the film?

02:04:02.000 Well, it's consistent with the way the message is being distributed through the entire film.

02:04:06.000 It's a propaganda movie.

02:04:08.000 I mean, that's essentially what it is.

02:04:10.000 Yeah, so...

02:04:11.000 It's like reefer madness for meat.

02:04:14.000 I mean, it really is.

02:04:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:04:17.000 So...

02:04:17.000 It's kind of crazy.

02:04:18.000 It is crazy.

02:04:19.000 I mean, there's...

02:04:21.000 The thing that's hard, I mean, and this was true with Joel, is like that was three and a half hour plus debate.

02:04:28.000 I don't know how long we've been going now, and we've even barely scratched the surface of like what we could say about the movie.

02:04:35.000 Yeah.

02:04:36.000 And...

02:04:36.000 It's frustrating because these kinds of movies leverage this rhetorical effect called the illusory truth effect, which is basically if you repeat something enough times, it starts to sound true.

02:04:50.000 And politicians are great at this.

02:04:52.000 Trump is actually a master at this.

02:04:56.000 So, you know, meat is bad, meat is bad, meat is bad, meat is bad.

02:04:59.000 We've heard that so many times that someone can get on, make a film, and just include one little tidbit of information and say meat is bad, and it seems like, oh, that's true.

02:05:09.000 But then to break that down, we're here for...

02:05:13.000 Two and a half hours and we're just getting started.

02:05:15.000 Yeah.

02:05:16.000 That's the trouble.

02:05:17.000 Yeah, that is the trouble.

02:05:18.000 And it's not nearly as visually enticing.

02:05:21.000 It's just you and me sitting here talking.

02:05:23.000 Where's the pretty girls running track and everybody laughing and having a good time eating falafels? 0.97

02:05:30.000 There's how many vegan documentaries that have been made?

02:05:33.000 Like a lot.

02:05:34.000 What the Health, Cowspiracy, this one. 1.00

02:05:36.000 How many pro-regenerative agriculture, holistically managed, healthy, nutrient-dense meat movies can you think of?

02:05:46.000 I can't think of any.

02:05:47.000 Yeah.

02:05:48.000 So there's one coming, fortunately.

02:05:50.000 It's called Sacred Cow. 0.99

02:05:51.000 It's coming out next year.

02:05:53.000 Rob Wolf is involved in that.

02:05:56.000 I was interviewed by it.

02:05:58.000 Diana Rogers, who's a registered dietitian, is making it. 0.84

02:06:02.000 She's also a regenerative farmer. 0.99

02:06:04.000 So it's a very interesting perspective.

02:06:07.000 Having someone who knows the nutrition side and who's also...

02:06:11.000 Actually using those kind of regenerative, holistically managed practices on her own farm.

02:06:17.000 You know, but it's not...

02:06:18.000 James Cameron's not behind it.

02:06:20.000 It's not going to have Arnold in it.

02:06:22.000 You know Arnold's eating a steak right now. 1.00

02:06:25.000 That motherfucker, he's full of shit. 1.00

02:06:27.000 He just wanted to do... 1.00

02:06:27.000 James Cameron's like, look, we're doing The Terminator. 1.00

02:06:30.000 I really want you to be a part of this.

02:06:32.000 I'll do it.

02:06:33.000 I mean, only vegetables from now on. 1.00

02:06:37.000 This steak was just bullshit. 0.99

02:06:38.000 I shouldn't have eaten it. 1.00

02:06:40.000 I want to catch that motherfucker, Fogo the Chow, with that little chip on green, just hacking at... 1.00

02:06:46.000 Look at him. 1.00

02:06:48.000 I mean, this thing is why it's so big.

02:06:51.000 The thing is, he didn't become Mr. Universe by eating, drinking soy protein shakes.

02:06:58.000 Well, I mean, again, he's eating steroids.

02:07:00.000 That's what he's eating.

02:07:01.000 That's what he was eating.

02:07:02.000 But he was eating also 250 pounds of beef protein a day.

02:07:06.000 Not quite that much, but grams maybe.

02:07:09.000 250 grams.

02:07:10.000 He wasn't eating five cups of lentils to do that.

02:07:16.000 No, he wasn't.

02:07:17.000 That's the other thing, too.

02:07:18.000 You have to recognize with this movie, like...

02:07:21.000 A lot of the people who were amazing athletes, they didn't start out vegan.

02:07:27.000 They weren't born to vegan parents and then were vegan growing up and then had all these amazing records and performance.

02:07:38.000 They built their strength or their agility or their speed or whatever on a diet with animal products.

02:07:45.000 And then at some point, they became vegan.

02:07:48.000 And, you know, maybe their performance continued and they continued to do well like Scott Jurek or Dottie Bausch.

02:07:54.000 Or maybe they had the vegan honeymoon where they did well for a while and then they declined.

02:07:58.000 Or maybe they just declined like some of the NBA and NFL athletes we talked about.

02:08:03.000 But this is a critical point because there are key developmental periods when we're kids and also in utero that if you're not getting the nutrition you need then, it's going to carry through to your whole life.

02:08:18.000 And so it's like, what did your parents eat?

02:08:21.000 What did your mom eat when she was breastfeeding you? 1.00

02:08:24.000 What did you eat as a young kid?

02:08:26.000 So we follow that whole argument through.

02:08:28.000 If everyone becomes plant-based, It's going to have a huge intergenerational impact on performance.

02:08:35.000 It's not like people who built their strength and performance eating meat and then they go vegan and they do okay for a little while.

02:08:41.000 It's like, what are the consequences of that happening to everybody?

02:08:44.000 What are the consequences of growing up nutritionally deficient?

02:08:47.000 Yeah.

02:08:48.000 Of the mom starting that way and then getting pregnant and becoming deficient during pregnancy and then the baby being breastfed by a mom who's nutrient deficient and then the kid being fed a vegan diet and developing B12 deficiency which then has irreversible effects.

02:09:05.000 Are there any top of the food chain world champion vegan athletes?

02:09:12.000 Like the best of the best.

02:09:14.000 There's no vegan UFC champions.

02:09:17.000 There's no world champion vegan boxers that I'm aware of.

02:09:21.000 There's Ilya Ilyin.

02:09:23.000 Do you know him?

02:09:24.000 No.

02:09:24.000 He's the weightlifter that's, I think, in the same weight class as Kendrick Ferris, who was in the film.

02:09:30.000 Mm-hmm.

02:09:32.000 And two-time Olympic champion, where I don't think Kendrick has won, he's not won a gold medal.

02:09:39.000 But he was stripped of his titles because he tested positive for steroids.

02:09:44.000 So once again, you know, what's happening, it's hard to say.

02:09:48.000 He was pulled from the film because of that, right?

02:09:51.000 Yeah.

02:09:51.000 He was pulled from the...

02:09:53.000 Or was he in the film?

02:09:54.000 I believe he was originally supposed to be in the film now that you brought this up.

02:09:58.000 Yeah, that's not a good narrative for them, right?

02:10:00.000 And then they had like Tim Sheaf, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly.

02:10:04.000 He's like the free runner parkour guy who was going to be in the film.

02:10:08.000 And then he had this very public I'm not vegan anymore because it was destroying my health video on YouTube.

02:10:15.000 He ate a piece of salmon and had a wet dream for the first time in a decade.

02:10:18.000 Right.

02:10:19.000 Like, okay, buddy.

02:10:20.000 I mean, it was like... 1.00

02:10:22.000 Poor bastard. 0.99

02:10:22.000 Yeah, it was... 0.99

02:10:23.000 Fucking starving. 0.99

02:10:24.000 He was doing everything. 1.00

02:10:25.000 He did a 30-day water fast.

02:10:27.000 Yeah.

02:10:28.000 Like, he tried everything to stay on the vegan diet.

02:10:31.000 It wasn't like, oh, it's hard.

02:10:32.000 I'm going to eat salmon.

02:10:34.000 I should also tell you, he thinks the earth's flat.

02:10:36.000 Oh, does he?

02:10:37.000 Yes.

02:10:37.000 Uh-oh.

02:10:38.000 Yeah.

02:10:39.000 I bet that could be the vegan diet. 1.00

02:10:40.000 All those years rot in his fucking brain. 1.00

02:10:42.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:10:43.000 Well, one of the main guys, you know, the anthropological argument that humans are herbivores because we don't have claws and sharp teeth?

02:10:53.000 That all comes from Milton Mills, a 1987 paper from him.

02:10:57.000 He's an emergency room physician.

02:10:59.000 He has no training in medical anthropology or comparative anatomy or anything like this.

02:11:04.000 He is a creationist.

02:11:07.000 So he thinks that we were just built this way and with these teeth and the way by God.

02:11:14.000 Yeah, that whole why don't we this?

02:11:17.000 If we are a carnivorous species, why don't we this?

02:11:21.000 How come we don't have the teeth to do that?

02:11:24.000 You know, how come you can't just grab a squirrel and eat it?

02:11:27.000 I've actually heard a guy say that. 1.00

02:11:28.000 Well, hey, fuckface, how come you can't eat lentils? 1.00

02:11:31.000 You gotta boil them. 1.00

02:11:32.000 They're like, what are you talking about, man?

02:11:34.000 Try eating cassava without cooking it.

02:11:36.000 You'll die.

02:11:36.000 Yeah, you'll die.

02:11:37.000 Cyanide.

02:11:38.000 Poisoning. 1.00

02:11:38.000 Yeah, it's like that argument is so stupid. 1.00

02:11:40.000 There's a lot of plant-based foods that are only consumed after lengthy cooking. 1.00

02:11:45.000 Yeah.

02:11:46.000 I mean, going back to your question, I'm sure there are high-level vegan athletes.

02:11:49.000 But the thing is, a lot of the people who are commonly referred to, like the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, they're not vegan.

02:11:55.000 Yeah.

02:11:56.000 Yeah, why do they have that in the film?

02:11:58.000 They showed them in the film, and I was like, wait a minute, they're not vegan.

02:12:01.000 Because people often call them vegan, and they occasionally will have periods of veganism, I guess.

02:12:07.000 Do they?

02:12:07.000 But they're not vegan.

02:12:09.000 They eat meat, they eat animal products.

02:12:12.000 They look like meat eaters.

02:12:13.000 Tom Brady is another example.

02:12:16.000 Another one who looks like a meat eater.

02:12:17.000 Who really does eat a lot of, predominantly plant-based, I guess, but eats meat, especially in the winter.

02:12:25.000 The Williams sisters are They're so powerful. 0.55

02:12:27.000 I mean, it would be a great catch for that team if they were vegan.

02:12:32.000 Look at the athleticism that these girls have. 0.99

02:12:35.000 But nope.

02:12:36.000 But it was weird.

02:12:37.000 They didn't say they were vegan.

02:12:38.000 They just showed them.

02:12:39.000 And so you're like, oh, they're the best.

02:12:41.000 They don't need to say it.

02:12:42.000 They just show them and that's it.

02:12:44.000 Well, same thing with Arnold.

02:12:45.000 He's talking great about veganism. 0.99

02:12:47.000 I can't run fucking tea right now. 0.99

02:12:50.000 Carving into a nice juicy ribeye. 0.99

02:12:52.000 Come on, show me a picture.

02:12:54.000 What is he doing? 1.00

02:12:54.000 Oh, that fuck? 1.00

02:12:56.000 Epic Mealtime. 1.00

02:12:56.000 He did a video with them like five years ago, eating an 80,000 calorie steak and egg sandwich. 1.00

02:13:01.000 Jesus Christ, Arnie.

02:13:03.000 When is this?

02:13:04.000 Ostrich eggs?

02:13:05.000 A couple years ago.

02:13:06.000 Oh, that's five years ago, bro.

02:13:07.000 That's a long time ago.

02:13:08.000 He could be all vegan now, I guess, but...

02:13:10.000 I doubt it.

02:13:11.000 He was doing this while they were doing the new Terminator movie.

02:13:15.000 Yeah.

02:13:15.000 It's a James Cameron movie.

02:13:17.000 He's not stupid. 0.99

02:13:19.000 Holla at your boy. 0.96

02:13:20.000 And even if he is now, he wasn't then when he accomplished all of his athletic achievements.

02:13:27.000 Yes, of course.

02:13:29.000 But that's where it's weird, right?

02:13:30.000 It's like he did everything spectacular with meat, and now he's saying, you don't need it.

02:13:37.000 Yeah.

02:13:38.000 Two years later, he's part-time vegan, he's saying in this article now.

02:13:42.000 Now?

02:13:42.000 After the film?

02:13:44.000 Two years after that epic mealtime thing.

02:13:45.000 Oh.

02:13:46.000 Part-time vegan.

02:13:47.000 That's a funny concept.

02:13:49.000 How are you part...

02:13:51.000 I'm sure vegans would take issue with that.

02:13:54.000 I heard a guy arguing with someone about this once.

02:13:56.000 I talked about this.

02:13:57.000 He said, I'm 90% vegetarian.

02:13:59.000 And this was his argument.

02:14:00.000 Vegetarian is the way to go. 0.82

02:14:01.000 I'm 90% vegetarian. 0.99

02:14:02.000 Like, bitch, that's 0% vegetarian. 1.00

02:14:05.000 That's right. 1.00

02:14:05.000 You don't understand math. 1.00

02:14:08.000 You don't understand math. 0.99

02:14:09.000 It's even more ridiculous with vegan because there's a whole ethos obviously around it. 0.98

02:14:14.000 I'm 90% on fire. 1.00

02:14:16.000 Bitch, you're on fire. 1.00

02:14:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:14:21.000 Oh man, that doesn't make any sense. 1.00

02:14:23.000 It's so stupid. 0.99

02:14:24.000 Like I said before, all it takes is a little, because like organ meats and shellfish and fish and eggs are so nutrient dense, you don't have to eat a lot of them to get to meet your nutrition needs. 1.00

02:14:35.000 Yeah, I've had this conversation with vegans too about mollusks.

02:14:38.000 And I was like, you know, I've heard it argued, and Sam Harris was talking to me about this, that you can actually make an ethical argument that mollusks are more primitive than plants.

02:14:46.000 And that plants actually exchange more information through mycelium, through their root structure.

02:14:50.000 They actually communicate with each other.

02:14:52.000 More evidence of intelligence. 1.00

02:14:53.000 Yeah, mollusks are an older creature, and they're just dumb hunks of meat you can scoop out of a container. 0.99

02:15:00.000 We're good to go. 0.99

02:15:20.000 Yes, that's pretty impressive.

02:15:24.000 And that's always been associated with male virility.

02:15:27.000 Zinc is super important for so many different functions.

02:15:31.000 For boners, they should have done that test, right? 1.00

02:15:33.000 Eat a bunch of raw oysters. 1.00

02:15:35.000 Imagine that, like eight times more than the guys who were eating plants with a ring around their penis. 1.00

02:15:40.000 What else is going on with this film that drives you crazy? 0.99

02:15:43.000 Well, I mean, going back to the whole environmental argument, I mean, that's another big one.

02:15:48.000 We didn't get a chance to talk about that as much with Joel, because it would have been nine hours instead of four hours.

02:15:55.000 His way of communicating is just so frustrating.

02:15:58.000 It's so...

02:15:59.000 Awkward.

02:15:59.000 Car salesman-y.

02:16:01.000 So one of the most common claims is like, you know, cattle are eating all of the human food.

02:16:06.000 So like, you know, corn and things that we could feed the world with.

02:16:11.000 Yes.

02:16:12.000 Well, the reality is 86% of what cattle eat is not edible by humans.

02:16:17.000 We talked about that before.

02:16:18.000 They're eating soy cakes and grass and fobs and things that we can't Digest and absorb.

02:16:23.000 But I think the argument would be that if you just grew the same, use that same area to grow human food, you could do that because we're using that area to grow cow food.

02:16:32.000 Well, so you replace the feedlot beef with grasslands and then you have naturally, you know, holistically managed cattle there and then you take the land that we can't, as I said before, 60% of land you can't grow crops on.

02:16:48.000 So you can't say that.

02:16:50.000 You can't say we can just take everywhere that we could have livestock and plant.

02:16:54.000 I'm not even saying that.

02:16:55.000 Anywhere we have monocrops where we're growing food just for feeding cows, you could grow, say, tomatoes.

02:17:02.000 That's one option.

02:17:03.000 But the other option is to use that land for grasslands, which could make it a carbon sink rather than having still emissions coming from mono-industrial agriculture.

02:17:14.000 I understand what you're saying, but I mean, if I was on the other side, I would argue, well, wouldn't it be easier to just grow human edible corn in that place instead of...

02:17:23.000 No.

02:17:23.000 No?

02:17:23.000 No, because corn is ridiculously low in nutrient value.

02:17:28.000 Or something else.

02:17:29.000 Yeah.

02:17:29.000 Or soy or whatever.

02:17:31.000 Yeah.

02:17:33.000 If you look again at this idea that animals are the middleman, yes, that's not a bad thing.

02:17:39.000 That's a good thing.

02:17:40.000 If you look at the conversion ratio of feed like corn, which is super nutrient poor, you know, corn is low in protein.

02:17:48.000 It doesn't have many nutrients at all.

02:17:50.000 2.6 to 2.8 kilograms of corn get converted into 1 kilogram of beef.

02:17:56.000 So even in that 14% of human edible food that livestock are eating, they're converting it to highly nutrient-dense, bioavailable protein that humans can eat.

02:18:08.000 And if you do the conversion with just protein instead of by weight of food, they take 0.6 kilograms of corn or other low-value protein and convert that into one kilogram of very high-value nutrient-dense protein.

02:18:24.000 So it's always more nuanced than the argument makes it seem.

02:18:30.000 Yeah, that is the point.

02:18:32.000 The water is another example.

02:18:34.000 Yeah, I was going to bring that up next.

02:18:35.000 So, you know, 2,400 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef is the typical claim that you hear.

02:18:41.000 What you don't hear is that the vast majority of water, even from feedlot beef, 94% is green water, which means it's rainfall.

02:18:50.000 Only 6% is groundwater, like from irrigation.

02:18:54.000 For pasture-raised beef, it's even more significant.

02:18:59.000 97% of the water for pasture-raised beef comes just from rainfall and 3% from irrigation.

02:19:06.000 If you only think about blue water, like irrigation, it requires 280%.

02:19:15.000 We're good to go.

02:19:26.000 Wow.

02:19:26.000 But you don't hear that.

02:19:27.000 No.

02:19:28.000 In the film or in these arguments at all.

02:19:31.000 And again, it speaks to what you're saying.

02:19:33.000 These are nuanced issues.

02:19:34.000 These are nuanced issues and the devil is in the details.

02:19:38.000 And so we're talking about with cow...

02:19:42.000 Again, we have to stress that only somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3% of all cows are grass-fed, grass-fed.

02:19:49.000 Yeah.

02:19:49.000 The ones that are eating grain are consuming more water, but even then it's still less water than they're saying.

02:19:56.000 Exactly.

02:19:57.000 And less than some other commonly eaten vegan foods.

02:20:00.000 Especially almonds.

02:20:01.000 Almonds are particularly, they're very resource heavy, right?

02:20:05.000 Absolutely.

02:20:06.000 Yeah.

02:20:07.000 But sugar? 0.95

02:20:08.000 I mean...

02:20:08.000 Yeah.

02:20:08.000 That's crazy, huh?

02:20:09.000 Yeah.

02:20:10.000 Yeah.

02:20:11.000 What else about the film?

02:20:15.000 Do you want to talk about fake meat?

02:20:17.000 Sure.

02:20:18.000 A little bit?

02:20:19.000 Yeah, let's talk about that.

02:20:20.000 It wasn't covered as much in the film.

02:20:21.000 But I think it's important for someone like you that really understands it to talk about it so people get...

02:20:25.000 This could be a standalone clip.

02:20:27.000 So just for people who aren't aware, there are companies like Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat that are promoting this idea of fake meat that tastes like meat, but it's made typically from soy.

02:20:39.000 So Impossible Burger's main ingredients are GMO soy, coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors.

02:20:45.000 Beyond Meat is pea protein isolate, canola oil, refined coconut oil.

02:20:51.000 So Impossible Burger has publicly criticized holistic land management or regenerative agriculture and saying, ah, it's not really that different.

02:21:00.000 In fact, sometimes the emissions can be even more than feedlot beef.

02:21:05.000 But there was a third-party lifecycle analysis, full lifecycle.

02:21:09.000 So they looked at the whole process, not just methane emissions from cows burping, but the whole process.

02:21:15.000 At White Oak Pastures, which is a beef operation.

02:21:19.000 It's a Savory Institute hub.

02:21:21.000 So they're following the Regenerative Savory Institute practices.

02:21:24.000 And they found that their beef operation was a net carbon sink.

02:21:28.000 So again, it actually sequestered carbon from the atmosphere.

02:21:32.000 It was not emitting carbon.

02:21:33.000 It was, you know, carbon, not neutral.

02:21:37.000 It was taking carbon out.

02:21:39.000 Can I pause you for a second?

02:21:39.000 This is something I forgot to bring up earlier.

02:21:41.000 One thing that solves the methane issue with cows is just to add a certain amount of seaweed to their diet. 0.91

02:21:49.000 When you add a certain amount of seaweed to their diet, apparently it mitigates the methane issue.

02:21:54.000 I don't know about that.

02:21:56.000 See if you can find that, Jamie.

02:21:57.000 That's something that was offered up as a response to...

02:22:01.000 And I don't think it's a large amount of seaweed.

02:22:03.000 I think it's a fairly small amount of seaweed in percentage to the overall diet.

02:22:07.000 I think the amazing thing about the regenerative livestock or holistically managed beef, though, is it can actually restore grasslands.

02:22:16.000 It can restore the soil and improve the soil.

02:22:18.000 So you're not only producing this amazing nutrient-dense bioavailable food source, you're actually improving the soil and helping to reverse this really dramatic, threatening problem that we're facing of soil erosion.

02:22:31.000 Here it is.

02:22:31.000 Seaweed could help make cows burp less methane and cut their carbon foot hoofprint.

02:22:35.000 LOL. Diet supplemented with red algae could lessen the huge amounts of greenhouse gases emitted by cows and sheep if we could just figure out how to grow enough.

02:22:45.000 So I guess that's the issue.

02:22:46.000 You have to wonder what kind of energy is being used.

02:22:50.000 So back to this.

02:22:51.000 So this life cycle analysis at White Oak Pastures showed that this holistically managed beef actually removes carbon from the atmosphere.

02:23:00.000 Now this was the same company that performed a life cycle analysis for Impossible Burger.

02:23:06.000 On their fake meat.

02:23:08.000 And what they found in that analysis was that the fake meat was less of a greenhouse gas emitter than feedlot beef, but it was still actually an emitter.

02:23:20.000 Whereas the holistically managed beef was taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

02:23:24.000 It was the same company.

02:23:26.000 So, you know, if we're going to give them credit for the analysis they did for Impossible Burger, we have to give them credit for the analysis that they did for White Oak Pastures.

02:23:37.000 The other thing with Impossible Burger, so the primary ingredient is called soy leg hemoglobin, or SLH. So this is a bioengineered protein additive that adds meat-like taste and color.

02:23:50.000 It does not meet the basic FDA generally recognized as SAFE, the GRAS designation, because it's not a food or even a food ingredient.

02:23:58.000 And there's a document that you can get.

02:24:01.000 I think it came with the Freedom of Information Act.

02:24:03.000 It's online.

02:24:04.000 I have the reference in my show notes.

02:24:06.000 And in the discussion in this document with the FDA, Impossible Foods admitted that up to a quarter of its heme ingredient was composed of 46 unexpected additional proteins.

02:24:17.000 Some of which are unidentified and none of which were assessed for safety in the dossier.

02:24:22.000 Impossible Burger put the product on the market despite admitting to the FDA privately that they haven't done adequate safety testing.

02:24:29.000 And according to these documents, quote, FDA believes that the arguments presented individually and collectively do not establish the safety of SLH, soy leg hemoglobin, for consumption, nor do they point to a general recognition of safety. 0.97

02:24:45.000 So they don't know what the fuck it does. 0.90

02:24:47.000 What's in it. 0.98

02:24:48.000 But it doesn't mean it's bad.

02:24:49.000 It doesn't mean it's bad.

02:24:50.000 Just haven't done adequate safety testing, in the opinion of the FDA, to release this as a food product.

02:24:56.000 The company that did the tests on this Impossible Burger versus the Regenerative Beer, what is that company again?

02:25:02.000 Qantas International.

02:25:04.000 And so they're the ones who released the information for both studies.

02:25:07.000 Both studies.

02:25:07.000 It was the same company that did it for Impossible Burger, and then they turned around and did it for White Oak Pastures, and they found Impossible Burger is still emitting carbon, whereas White Oak Pastures is taking it out.

02:25:18.000 Yeah, I think that's very critical.

02:25:23.000 Yeah, and there was an article criticizing fake meat by this woman, Dana Pearls, who's part of an environmental organization called Friends of the Earth, and she says, quote,"...instead of investing in risky new food technologies that are potential problems masquerading as solutions,

02:25:40.000 shouldn't we be investing in proven, beneficial, regenerative agriculture and transparent organic food that consumers are actually demanding?" The only issue that they would have with this is yes, but now you're talking about killing animals, and we're absolutely morally and ethically opposed to killing animals.

02:25:56.000 Yeah, I mean, we go back now to this 2018 paper that I mentioned earlier that examined the impact of plant agriculture on animal deaths and found 35 to 250 mouse deaths per acre.

02:26:09.000 Mouse deaths?

02:26:09.000 Mouse deaths.

02:26:11.000 Deaths of mice.

02:26:13.000 And up to 7.3 billion animals killed every year from plant agriculture.

02:26:18.000 If you count birds killed by pesticides, fish dust from fertilizer runoff, plus reptiles and amphibians, poisonings from eating toxic insects from the pesticides.

02:26:27.000 What's the number?

02:26:28.000 7.3 billion animals killed every year through plant agriculture.

02:26:32.000 So, in terms of life...

02:26:34.000 There's far more life taken by plant agriculture than there is life taken by animal agriculture, even factory farming.

02:26:44.000 Oh yeah, we're not killing 7.3 billion cows.

02:26:47.000 Right, so the question is, do we value the larger animals more?

02:26:53.000 Are fish and insects less significant life forms than mammals?

02:26:57.000 Are small mammals like root rodents less valuable than larger ones like cows?

02:27:01.000 Is it better to kill many small animals for foods like grains and legumes which aren't very nutrient dense and don't meet our nutritional needs than fewer large animals that are super nutrient dense?

02:27:13.000 I mean, I'm not claiming to answer these questions, but I think they're questions that haven't been adequately raised and addressed in this ethical argument.

02:27:21.000 They haven't even been breached.

02:27:22.000 And this is one that people dismiss offhandedly.

02:27:26.000 These are lies by meat eaters to justify their consumption.

02:27:30.000 But what you're saying is...

02:27:32.000 You could make an ethical argument that killing an animal explicitly to eat it is ethically different than animals being killed as a sort of side effect of plant agriculture.

02:27:44.000 I'm not saying that that's a valid argument, but I've heard that argument.

02:27:48.000 I don't think it's a valid argument, because once you're aware of it, you're doing it the same.

02:27:51.000 It's like the argument that I've had with people when they say that I don't kill animals, but I eat meat, therefore it's better than what you do, because I hunt.

02:28:01.000 And I say, no, you're killing an animal with your credit card.

02:28:03.000 It seems backwards. 0.71

02:28:04.000 You're killing an animal.

02:28:05.000 You're just hiring someone to do it for you. 0.98

02:28:07.000 You'll still go to jail for murder if you hire someone to shoot somebody. 0.52

02:28:11.000 Right.

02:28:11.000 And you're more disconnected from the whole process.

02:28:14.000 It's even more bizarre.

02:28:15.000 The whole thing is very, very strange.

02:28:17.000 I think that's very important, though, that you listed those numbers, that data, because that's irrefutable and it's one of those arguments that comes up that they just want to bury their head in the sand about.

02:28:28.000 If you're buying agriculture, unless you have your own organic farm where you are 100% aware of every single aspect from seed to plucking and cooking, if you're not, if you're buying from large-scale agriculture,

02:28:44.000 you're a part of the death machine.

02:28:47.000 Right. 0.81

02:28:47.000 That's right. 0.81

02:28:48.000 And you're also part of the environmental destruction machine because these huge industrial scale monocropping operations are incredibly harmful for the environment.

02:28:58.000 And if you, again, you think of pea protein, that's an incredibly processed food.

02:29:06.000 First of all, just growing peas at the scale you're going to need to have the world's largest pea protein company.

02:29:14.000 And then all of the processing that needs to happen from taking a pea to an isolated protein powder, which involves fossil fuels and all kinds of industrial processes, that is not an environmentally friendly process.

02:29:28.000 So, you know, is that better for the planet than having cows that are, you know, being raised on land that couldn't be used for growing plants or other crop production and rotating the...

02:29:53.000 It's a proven system than scaling up industry to make more powders.

02:30:01.000 Yeah, scaling up industry to make pea powder and killing untold numbers of rodents.

02:30:08.000 Or birds and destroying natural habitats because if you clear a field for peas, it doesn't have the normal natural features.

02:30:16.000 You don't have the habitat for those animals anymore.

02:30:18.000 I think it's so significant that you're talking about these regenerative farms because that really is the only way you ever get the nutrients back into the soil.

02:30:26.000 There was a book that I read many years ago called Dead Doctors Don't Lie where Dr. Joel Wallach talked about the mineral depletion of our soil and that this is something that they've known forever that's like a slow degrading of the nutrient density in the soil.

02:30:42.000 I mean, that's one of the things that keeps me up at night.

02:30:45.000 Seriously, like soil and water.

02:30:47.000 If we don't have soil, we don't know of any way to restore soil once it's gone.

02:30:53.000 So we have 60 years of soil left?

02:30:55.000 60 harvests left.

02:30:56.000 Is that years?

02:30:57.000 I don't know.

02:30:59.000 A harvest is probably more than once a year, I would guess.

02:31:03.000 Really?

02:31:05.000 I don't know.

02:31:05.000 I'm not a farmer.

02:31:06.000 Not a farmer either.

02:31:07.000 Yeah.

02:31:08.000 Even if it is...

02:31:08.000 I think it's once a year.

02:31:10.000 But I mean, even if it is once a year?

02:31:12.000 Yeah.

02:31:12.000 Basically.

02:31:15.000 It's still... 0.98

02:31:15.000 60 years is fucking terrifying. 0.98

02:31:17.000 That's terrifying. 0.99

02:31:18.000 I knew an asteroid was coming.

02:31:19.000 Yeah.

02:31:19.000 I got an 8-year-old daughter.

02:31:20.000 Yeah.

02:31:21.000 That's her lifetime.

02:31:23.000 There'd be no food and cannibals running through the streets.

02:31:26.000 But we'll have fake meat.

02:31:29.000 I don't even know if we will by now.

02:31:30.000 We won't because you have to grow soy to get that.

02:31:32.000 What will we have?

02:31:34.000 And we'll have no more fish left either.

02:31:36.000 What else?

02:31:39.000 Let's see.

02:31:45.000 Oh, there's so much.

02:31:50.000 I just don't know how anyone's going to refute this.

02:31:52.000 Like I said, I really like James a lot.

02:31:55.000 If he decides to come back and come and sit with you after hearing this and watching this, I don't know what he could say.

02:32:05.000 Well, you know, it's like you said, when a new study comes out with the meat, then you get the whole group of people pointing to all that epidemiology again saying, look, this study says meat has a higher risk of cancer.

02:32:19.000 Then we have to do the whole thing again.

02:32:21.000 Healthy user bias, food frequency questionnaire, context is everything.

02:32:27.000 That's why it's like, oh my god.

02:32:29.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:32:31.000 I think we've hit most of the main points here.

02:32:35.000 Anything else stand out in your mind from the...

02:32:38.000 No.

02:32:38.000 Can you watch it just this morning?

02:32:40.000 Oh, okay.

02:32:41.000 So I'd be remiss if we don't at least touch on these.

02:32:44.000 So, you know, you said before, like, the argument against red meat has always been like cholesterol and saturated fat, right?

02:32:51.000 And it was interesting in this movie, they didn't really talk about that very much, right?

02:32:56.000 They didn't talk about cholesterol a lot.

02:32:58.000 They probably forgot.

02:32:59.000 They didn't forget, I'm pretty sure.

02:33:02.000 I think they're actually acknowledging that those aren't super defensible positions at this point.

02:33:09.000 And so they switched over now to the new kids on the block, which are TMAO, new 5GC, and heme iron.

02:33:18.000 So there was a guy who said, let's see...

02:33:24.000 Dr. Scott Stoll, that's slide 18, Jamie.

02:33:27.000 So he says, in animal products, you're getting protein packaged with inflammatory molecules like new 5GC, endotoxins, and heme iron.

02:33:35.000 When we consume animal products, it also changes the microbiome, bacteria that live in our gut, and the bacterial species that have been shown to promote inflammation, overgrow, and begin to produce inflammatory mediators like TMAO. So I'll briefly address each of those.

02:33:49.000 But before I do that, I want to just say a word about mechanisms versus outcomes.

02:33:54.000 So nutrition research can focus on outcomes, which is like number of heart attacks or number of deaths that happen in a population over a given period of time, or it can focus on mechanisms, what caused those outcomes, right?

02:34:07.000 So if you use the example of red meat, early, you know, they saw in these big observational studies that people who ate more red meat We know that that was because of healthy user bias.

02:34:20.000 It wasn't, you know, accurate finding, whatever.

02:34:22.000 But so then they start going trying to figure out what are the mechanisms.

02:34:26.000 And so initially, the mechanism was saturated cholesterol, then it was saturated fat.

02:34:31.000 Now those are not as defensible.

02:34:32.000 So they're moving on to these new mechanisms.

02:34:35.000 Well, research on mechanisms is not very convincing if the outcome isn't there.

02:34:41.000 So you had that large paper that was just published, the five papers in the annals, that showed basically no evidence that red meat is correlated with any disease.

02:34:51.000 So why are we even bothering looking for all these mechanisms that explain why red meat causes disease when we've got this exhaustive study that says that it doesn't?

02:34:59.000 Yeah.

02:35:00.000 But let's humor them and talk about these mechanisms for a minute.

02:35:04.000 So, NU5GC, that's a sugar.

02:35:08.000 Basically, it acts as a signaling molecule.

02:35:10.000 It helps distinguish self from not-self.

02:35:13.000 Most mammals produce it.

02:35:14.000 Humans don't.

02:35:15.000 But, like, cows do. 1.00

02:35:17.000 So, when we eat the cow meat, you know, beef, or drink milk, we get some NU5GC in our tissues.

02:35:24.000 This is the theory.

02:35:25.000 And then our bodies attack it in an autoimmune response.

02:35:27.000 So, basically...

02:35:29.000 The idea is that new 5GC in meat causes an autoimmune response and that increases the risk of disease.

02:35:35.000 The problem is that hasn't been proven at all.

02:35:38.000 A 2003 paper found that feeding people large quantities of new 5GC didn't actually increase their serum levels of new 5GC. So that's a problem.

02:35:48.000 If you have studies showing that eating it doesn't actually increase it in your blood, Then it doesn't really make much of a difference.

02:35:55.000 And then you have groups like the Maasai.

02:35:57.000 You could not design a diet higher in new 5GC. They drink blood and milk from cows and they eat cow beef.

02:36:08.000 And they have extremely low rates of cardiovascular disease.

02:36:12.000 And they look great.

02:36:13.000 I mean, they're ripped.

02:36:14.000 They're like all thin.

02:36:16.000 They don't look like people that have autoimmune disease and are dying early.

02:36:21.000 All right.

02:36:22.000 So that's new 5GC. Then we have heme iron.

02:36:24.000 So this is the form of iron that's in beef and other animal products.

02:36:28.000 So it is true that heme iron forms these compounds called N-nitroso compounds and toxic aldehydes that are implicated in colon cancer.

02:36:36.000 But again, context is everything.

02:36:38.000 So slide 22, Jamie.

02:36:41.000 Studies have found that chlorophyll-rich foods, like plants, basically, if you eat them along with iron-rich foods, that cancels out any potential harmful effect of heme iron.

02:36:53.000 So this is a study right here.

02:36:55.000 So that would be a great point to a...

02:36:57.000 Omnivorous diet versus a carnivorous diet.

02:36:59.000 Exactly.

02:37:00.000 This is what I was talking about before, where there's a lot of clinical evidence that suggests that plants play an important role.

02:37:05.000 Yes.

02:37:06.000 Do I know for sure?

02:37:07.000 No, I don't.

02:37:08.000 But I'm just saying this adds an element of uncertainty.

02:37:10.000 So yeah, green vegetables, red meat, and colon cancer. 0.88

02:37:13.000 Chlorophyll prevents the cytotoxic and hyperproliferative effects of heme in a rat colon.

02:37:18.000 There was another thing that they talked about earlier that I just remembered while you were talking.

02:37:22.000 They were talking about fuel and the difference between carbohydrates for fuel and protein, that protein does not provide you with fuel for muscles, which is not true.

02:37:34.000 There's something that happens when your body eats protein that it can break it down to glycogen.

02:37:38.000 What is that called?

02:37:40.000 Gluconeogenesis.

02:37:41.000 So that process, they just ignored in the film.

02:37:44.000 And the woman spoke about this.

02:37:48.000 Who was it that spoke about it?

02:37:49.000 I don't remember who spoke about it.

02:37:51.000 I think it was a man.

02:37:53.000 Dr. Loomis or something?

02:37:55.000 Whoever it was that was speaking about it.

02:37:57.000 When they were speaking about it, they were speaking about it like...

02:38:02.000 Like, well, here you go.

02:38:03.000 Like, this is just a fact.

02:38:05.000 Case closed.

02:38:05.000 Yeah, case closed.

02:38:06.000 Your body needs carbohydrates to convert to glycogen.

02:38:11.000 And that's not true.

02:38:11.000 Everyone who knows, like, if you eat too much protein on a ketogenic diet, it'll knock you out of ketosis because your body will convert it.

02:38:20.000 Yeah.

02:38:21.000 Everyone knows that.

02:38:22.000 Yeah.

02:38:23.000 So that was a huge omission or oversimplification.

02:38:27.000 I think you said this before and I agree with you.

02:38:30.000 For people who are doing explosive types of activity like MMA or CrossFit or basketball or something like that, they're going to typically do better with carbohydrate, a substantial portion of carbohydrate in their diet.

02:38:46.000 Whereas, we're seeing a pattern now of endurance athletes or endurance activities.

02:38:52.000 A lot of those people can thrive on a very low-carb diet.

02:38:56.000 Zach Bitter is one example, but there are others.

02:38:58.000 He's not just thriving.

02:38:59.000 He's killing it. 0.99

02:39:00.000 He's murdering it. 0.99

02:39:01.000 He's literally a world champion at running.

02:39:04.000 100 miles in under 12 hours, which is just...

02:39:07.000 It's insane.

02:39:08.000 That pace is bonkers.

02:39:11.000 And again, that guy's doing it on ribeyes.

02:39:13.000 And he does take...

02:39:15.000 He was talking about how he ups his glucose before these significant events.

02:39:19.000 Yeah, he's not...

02:39:19.000 I want to be clear.

02:39:20.000 I've heard him talk about this.

02:39:21.000 He's not full-time keto all the time.

02:39:24.000 He knows what he's doing.

02:39:25.000 He knows that as he's approaching competition, he needs more glucose.

02:39:29.000 Replenishes glycogen stores.

02:39:31.000 Extremely scientific approach.

02:39:32.000 Absolutely.

02:39:33.000 But it's not true to say that you don't need protein for muscle.

02:39:39.000 I mean, protein is all about muscle synthesis.

02:39:42.000 You can't do muscle protein synthesis without protein.

02:39:46.000 So that was weird.

02:39:46.000 Well, also, hasn't it been shown, I think, Lane Norton, BioLane, was talking about this in his debunking of the Game Changers.

02:39:55.000 It's actually been shown that glycogen absorption, or they get more recovery, that's what it was, from carbohydrates mixed with protein than even carbohydrates alone or protein alone.

02:40:09.000 That's why post-workout nutrition often is suggested that you have both protein and carbohydrates.

02:40:15.000 Yes.

02:40:15.000 So there's one more slide I want to show on the heme iron thing, which is 23 and 24. So this is the largest meta-analysis of heme iron studies.

02:40:24.000 And again, for people not familiar with the term meta-analysis, it's where you look at a bunch of different studies that have been done and you analyze them together.

02:40:32.000 It's considered to be a very high-quality form of evidence.

02:40:35.000 So they looked at all significant studies through 2015, and they found a significant association So what does that tell us?

02:40:53.000 Go to the next slide, please, Jamie.

02:40:57.000 Well, if you eat heme iron in the context of a super crappy standard American diet, it's associated with cancer and a problem.

02:41:05.000 But if you eat heme iron in a European diet, which is less crappy than the US, it's not.

02:41:12.000 This is a perfect example, again, of context.

02:41:15.000 Also, Europeans, they don't have grain-fed steak.

02:41:19.000 Yeah, it's a different quality meat, but I think it's probably more likely that they're not eating that as much.

02:41:24.000 Yeah, there's far less grain-fed, grain-finished beef over there.

02:41:28.000 When you eat it, it's really evident when you have a steak over there.

02:41:33.000 So TMAO and then gut microbata, and I think we're done after that.

02:41:37.000 Okay.

02:41:37.000 Unless you've got more.

02:41:39.000 No, I think we did enough.

02:41:41.000 So TMAO, this is a molecule that's generated from choline, betaine, and carnitine in the gut by a microbial metabolism.

02:41:50.000 And some previous studies showed that taking carnitine supplements and taking choline supplements does increase your blood levels of TMAO. In omnivores, they went up by like 37 micromoles per liter and in vegetarians,

02:42:06.000 27. And that was used to argue that vegetarianism was healthier because they didn't see as big of an increase in TMAO in response to this carnitine and choline challenge.

02:42:20.000 The problem is that research has not shown that eating whole foods rather than taking supplements increases TMAO significantly, especially eating meat and eggs.

02:42:29.000 There was a study in 2014 showed you needed to eat four eggs in order to raise TMAO at all, and the max rise was only 3 to 6 micromoles per liter compared to 27 or 37, which I said from supplements in some,

02:42:45.000 and 10 to 15 in others.

02:42:46.000 And then slide 25, Jamie, this 1999 study tested the effect of 46 different foods on the urinary excretion of TMAO in six different subjects.

02:42:57.000 And eggs and red meat, as you can see, are barely even registering on the scale there.

02:43:03.000 Whereas 19 of 21 types of seafood raised TMAO, and halibut raised TMAO 53 times more than eggs did.

02:43:13.000 Wow.

02:43:13.000 Yeah, the number.

02:43:14.000 Look at that halibut graph.

02:43:16.000 It's crazy.

02:43:17.000 And the cod.

02:43:17.000 So here you have this argument, okay, TMAO is bad.

02:43:21.000 We shouldn't eat red meat and eggs because of TMAO. But halibut raises TMAO 53 times more than meat and eggs.

02:43:28.000 And if you look at the research on seafood consumption, it's almost universally associated with...

02:43:33.000 Positive outcomes, you know, lower risk of cardiovascular disease, lower risk of death from early causes, all of the rest of it.

02:43:39.000 So how do we reconcile that here with this TMA argument?

02:43:44.000 Nobody has ever explained how to reconcile that.

02:43:48.000 So again, interesting mechanism, but the research is not really persuasive.

02:43:55.000 It seems like it's poorly understood in the cherry picking data.

02:43:58.000 The other thing is that back in the original paper by Dr. Stan Hazen about TMAO from 2013, this is slide 26, Jamie, he said the high correlation between urine and plasma levels of TMAO argues for effective urinary clearance of TMAO. So what that suggests is that even if we eat TMAO,

02:44:19.000 our body clears it out pretty quickly in the diet.

02:44:22.000 So if TMAO is high, it's probably because of other factors.

02:44:26.000 And studies have found at least three.

02:44:28.000 One is insulin resistance increases TMAO levels via an enzyme in the liver.

02:44:34.000 Well, we know that about one in three Americans probably have some form of insulin resistance.

02:44:39.000 You know, 70% are overweight, 40% are obese.

02:44:42.000 So it's possible that just being an insulin-resistant, overweight American increases your TMAO. It's got nothing to do with meat.

02:44:50.000 Gut microbiota, like disrupted gut microbiome, and studies have also shown that SIBO, bacterial overgrowth in the intestine, can increase TMAO levels.

02:44:59.000 A ton of people are dealing with that, we know.

02:45:02.000 And then kidney disease, which of course happens in people who have diabetes.

02:45:06.000 Now 100 million Americans have either pre-diabetes or diabetes, can also increase TMAO. So you've got all of these factors that just have to do with, again, crappy lifestyle, being overweight, being insulin resistant, nothing to do with meat.

02:45:23.000 Last point.

02:45:25.000 So there was a whole section in the movie about the meat ruining your gut microbiota.

02:45:32.000 And I think we're referencing two very low-carb diet studies that did show a decrease in key species of protective bacteria and also in butyrate production.

02:45:42.000 So this is also one of my questions about carnivore or super low-carb diet for a long period of time.

02:45:51.000 But again, context is everything.

02:45:53.000 That's not necessarily the effects of meat.

02:45:56.000 That's the effects of not eating plant foods.

02:45:58.000 And there was a good study, slide 27, Jamie, that really established this.

02:46:04.000 So it was a 2019 study in PLOS One, so it's free, full-text access.

02:46:09.000 You can go look it up.

02:46:11.000 Gut microbiome response to a modern Paleolithic diet in a Western lifestyle context.

02:46:16.000 So they took, I think they were Italians, and they had one group that was on a, they put a group of them on what's called modern Paleo diet, you know, so obviously we can't recreate the Paleo diet,

02:46:33.000 but just what we all talk about when we say Paleo, And they found, quote, an unexpectedly high degree of biodiversity in modern paleo diet subjects, which well approximates that of traditional populations like the Inuit, Hadza, Matzis, and Peru.

02:46:48.000 So they found that eating a paleo diet made your gut microbiota look like a hunter-gatherer microbiota.

02:46:54.000 And by paleo diet, what we mean is meats and vegetables.

02:46:57.000 Meat, non-starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds, fruits and starchy tubers like sweet potatoes.

02:47:04.000 So people who ate that diet had a microbiota that resembled hunter-gatherers, which have the best microbiota. 0.96

02:47:11.000 Studies have shown that their microbiota is what we want to have.

02:47:15.000 So this study shows it's not about the meat, it's about what you eat with the meat.

02:47:19.000 Which only makes sense.

02:47:21.000 Because we know what feeds the microbiota.

02:47:23.000 Fiber.

02:47:25.000 Is there anything in this movie that they got right?

02:47:30.000 To end on a positive note?

02:47:33.000 Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with them on the problem.

02:47:37.000 Like, I think feedlot, CAFO, beef, and livestock production is not the way to go.

02:47:43.000 Right.

02:47:43.000 I think it can be environmentally destructive.

02:47:47.000 It's just from there, where they went with the solution is not where I go.

02:47:52.000 They go to plant-based vegan diet.

02:47:54.000 I go to regenerative, holistically managed livestock, you know...

02:48:01.000 Shifting the food production to smaller scale or at least shifting the method of plant production so it's less industrialized and doing things that actually can improve soil quality and sequester carbon from the atmosphere rather than scaling up more industry and more technology.

02:48:21.000 Well, I hope this acts as a guide for people that are confused by this, and I hope people recommend this, because this is probably as thorough a breakdown as anybody's ever done on that documentary.

02:48:31.000 And I just wish people would stop doing this.

02:48:34.000 I really wish they would just follow the actual science, even if it's inconvenient to their dogma.

02:48:38.000 And it's a real problem when people don't.

02:48:41.000 It really is, because it's confusing for folks, and there's a lot of people who suffer health consequences because of that confusion.

02:48:47.000 Well, it's a shame, too.

02:48:48.000 I know we've talked about this with Joel.

02:48:51.000 I think actually vegans and people who are recommending what we're talking about now have a lot in common.

02:48:57.000 You know, we want better methods of food production.

02:48:59.000 We care about the environment.

02:49:01.000 We care about animals and animal welfare.

02:49:04.000 We just reach different conclusions about, you know, from looking at those problems. 0.93

02:49:08.000 And we probably have more in common with the average American or person in the world who's just not even thinking about it at all, is eating processed and refined crap and doesn't care. 0.85

02:49:18.000 We have much more in common with the vegans.

02:49:19.000 The difference is these people, like the people that made this documentary and like Joel, they want to ignore evidence that flies in the face of what they're trying to promote.

02:49:29.000 And they do it with really frustrating and deceptive methods.

02:49:32.000 And that's what I thought when I watched this film.

02:49:35.000 It was hard for me to watch the whole thing.

02:49:36.000 I'd watched little clips of it before and I kind of had gotten a review of it and knew what it was all about. 0.99

02:49:41.000 But watching the whole thing, like sitting there going, what the fuck, man? 1.00

02:49:45.000 Come on. 1.00

02:49:45.000 I was on an airplane. 1.00

02:49:47.000 I told you this before.

02:49:49.000 Because I knew I had to be in an environment where I couldn't just run away and turn it off.

02:49:54.000 But I was like laughing out loud at parts and kind of like wanting to shout at others.

02:49:59.000 The boner part?

02:50:00.000 The boner part, the peanut butter and jelly, the peanut butter sandwich.

02:50:03.000 Because you knew the difference.

02:50:04.000 Because I knew right off the bat, you know, there were just a lot of things that were funny, but sad.

02:50:11.000 Well, Chris, thank you for doing this, and James will have you on if you really want to do this.

02:50:16.000 He's game.

02:50:17.000 Okay.

02:50:18.000 Well, after this breakdown, I wonder how game he's still going to be.

02:50:21.000 Yeah, I wonder how game I'm going to be.

02:50:24.000 You let me know, okay?

02:50:26.000 Because you're the only guy for this job.

02:50:27.000 I'm running like seven and a half combined hours on this topic recently.

02:50:31.000 I know, but listen, you're doing the world a gigantic service.

02:50:33.000 Thank you.

02:50:34.000 And I truly, truly appreciate it.

02:50:35.000 Well, thank you for having me on.

02:50:36.000 So please tell people one more time the website.

02:50:38.000 Cressor.co slash gamechangers for all the references, bibliography, studies, and the show notes.

02:50:43.000 Chris Kresser on Twitter and Instagram.

02:50:47.000 Why do I say Twitter that way?

02:50:48.000 Twitter.

02:50:49.000 Twitter and Instagram as well.

02:50:51.000 Same thing, right?

02:50:52.000 All those places.

02:50:52.000 Thank you, Chris.

02:50:53.000 Really appreciate you.

02:50:54.000 Thank you.

02:50:54.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - November 21, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1389 - Chris Kresser Debunks "The Gamechangers" Documentary

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