FoundMyFitness - #020 Rich Roll on Self-Transformation, Environmental Impact of Food, and the Plant-Based Diet

Episode Date: January 23, 2016

Rich Roll This podcast features Rich Roll. Rich is an author, a podcaster ("Rich Roll Podcast" on iTunes), as well as founder and first person to complete the EPIC5 Challenge. The EPIC5 challenge involves completing 5 Full Iron Distance triathlons on 5 Hawaiian islands in under a week. Rich has also been a repeated top finisher in the Ultraman World Championships in Hawaii, which is a three-day, 515km (320 mile) annual endurance race held on the Big Island of Hawaii.  You can read about Rich's journey to Ultraman competitor in his book, "Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself."   If you're interested in learning more, you can read the full show notes here. Join over 300,000 people and get the latest distilled information straight to your inbox weekly: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/newsletter Become a FoundMyFitness premium member to get access to exclusive episodes, emails, live Q+A's with Rhonda and more: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/crowdsponsor

Hello, my dear friends. Today's podcast features my friend Rich Roll, which is an author, a podcaster, as well as founder and first person to complete the Epic Five Challenge. The Epic Five Challenge involves completing five full Iron Man distant triathlons on five Hawaiian islands and under a week, which has also been a repeated top finisher in the Ultraman World Championships, which is a 320-mile endurance race that is divided into three stages over three days. The first stage includes a 6.2-mile ocean swim, followed by a 90-mile cross-country bike ride with vertical climbs that total 6,000 feet. Stage 2 is 171.4-mile bike ride with total vertical climbs of over 4,000 feet. And finally, stage 3 is a 52.4-mile double marathon. Wow. With a 100% confidence,

I can say that Rich has accomplished some pretty amazing physical feats. In this podcast, the Amazing Rich and I discuss many, many interesting topics, including Rich's journey from being a self-described addict to normal but unhealthy guy to vegan and eventual super athlete. The importance of clear and specific actionable steps when you're implementing sweeping change. We discussed the recent documentary Cowspiracy and the chilling effect of agaglaws on journalism that might otherwise expose animal rights abuses by the agricultural industry. We talk about Rich's motivational shift from eating plant base for the reasons of performance to eventually being more motivated by a deeper concern for the environmental

impact and animal well-being impact of choosing to avoid animal products. The effect of the microbiome on the type or quantity of foods that you crave and how the microbiome can predispose us or, conversantly, protect us from obesity and how focusing on getting the right bacterial substrates to feed the microbiome, i.e. dietary fiber from plants, may be a more important, and more effective than focusing on what foods to avoid or to remove from your diet. We talk about the role of food in modulating the amount of inflammation your body experiences and how this can affect your recovery. The difference between plant-derived vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 and why vitamin D deficiency is so prevalent.

The problem with exclusively relying on flaxseed oil for your omega-3, this is especially problematic if you're a male and or if you have a polymorphism in the Delta Cigms. desaturase gene or the Fads 2 gene. Why algae oil is a better vegan source of the marine omega-3 fatty acids, DHA, and EPA, we discuss some tools currently available that can enable you to learn more about specific gene-nutrient interactions, the role of nitrosamines in causing damage to your DNA, and why nitrites, which are a chemical preservative, and nitrates, which are found in plants, differ in their tendency to form carcinogenic nitrosamines.

We talk about what some recent studies have demonstrated about protein consumption and the growth of cancer and much, much more. This is a great conversation that I really, really enjoyed having with Rich. But before we get on to the podcast, a few things I want to mention. It's a mad, mad world out there, and part of what I hope to do with Family Fitness is ultimately help sort some of that confusion and ultimately bring many of you through the gift of greater context onto a path towards better health and even life satisfaction. That's why I hope that you'll take the next step today. Pause this podcast, go to my website at foundmyfitness.com, and join my email newsletter where I bring a little more than just a brief conversation to the table. It only takes a few seconds, but maybe by doing so, you'll be one of those people writing to me

a few months down the road about how you read or heard just the right thing, that one thing that you needed to take it to the next level, whatever that is. finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this podcast, as well as all of my videos, my newsletters, and pretty much everything that's come out of Found My Fitness is brought to you by the crazy, awesome, wonderful people that support my efforts through crowdfunding. If Found My Fitness enriches you, make Found My Fitness this month your coffee date by going to foundmyfitness.com forward slash crowd sponsor. Once again, that's foundmyfitness.com forward slash.

C-R-O-W-D-S-P-O-N-S-O-R crowd sponsor. Now, ladies and gentlemen, on to Rich Roll. Hello, my friends. I'm sitting here with the vegan endurance athlete, Rich Roll, who many of you may have heard of because he's been on the Joe Reagan experience a couple of times. He also hosts a popular health podcast known as the Rich Roll podcast. Rich is very interesting.

He is a vegan, as I mentioned, and he's also the first man to have completed running five Iron Man-like triathlons in under a week on five different Hawaiian islands, which is pretty awesome physical feat accomplishment. You've also run something called the Ultraman, which I'm not too familiar with, but you can tell us about. So Rich really excited to have you here. I kind of wanted to start off by asking you how long you've been a vegan and why did you decide to become a vegan.

That's pretty strict diet. Yeah, it was, first of all, thanks for having me and thanks for coming all the way out to my house to do this. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. To answer your question, I just turned 49, so I've been a vegan. I transitioned to a vegan diet shortly after my 40th birthday. So it took me about six or eight months before I got fully 100% plant-based. But I began this journey because when I was 39 and kind of approaching my 40th birthday,

I was living the typical life of kind of an overworked, overstressed corporate attorney, you know, sedentary, classic couch potato. I was about 50 pounds overweight. And I was never like morbidly obese. I was never somebody that like, you know, Jillian Michaels would yell. out on a TV show or anything like that, but just, you know, heavy and like dense. And at the same time, I was kind of depressed and unenthusiastic about my life. So I guess I was having a little bit of a spiritual crisis at the same time that my health was starting to kind of ail. And I basically

was subsisting on, you know, the standard American diet, a lot of fast food, late nights at the law firm Chinese takeout and just, you know, basically whatever was in front of me to eat, whatever was most convenient. And it all kind of came to a head shortly before my 40th birthday when I'd come home late one night, working late. My family was asleep and was making my way up this staircase right here to go to my bedroom. And I had to pause like halfway up the flight of stairs. I was winded, out of breath, tightness in my chest. You know, I was like buckled over and kind of sweat on my brow and really, you know, the fear of God. Like I thought I was on the precipice of having a heart attack, you know, I was 39 years old, and I just thought in that moment, it was just one of those moments that,

you know, everything kind of crystallized for me, and I was like, I can't keep living this way. This is ridiculous. And it was similar. A big part of my story is I'm also a recovering alcoholic, and when I was 31, I had that kind of moment of clarity that you hear about with people that are in recovery where I decided to finally get sober, and I went to rehab, and that's a whole other story. but there was that moment in time where I decided like this is the day that I'm going to get sober and it changed my life so dramatically in every conceivable way and the moment on the staircase

was kind of a similar moment like I felt that sense of urgency and and more importantly perhaps like the willingness to do something about it and I was able to kind of recognize that that's a special thing like that's a precious thing and that I needed to act on that and I needed to act on it kind of decisively and swiftly and specifically, or it would just pass. And, you know, the idea of saying, well, you know, maybe I should eat better or go to the gym, like, just weren't specific enough. Those things didn't really mean anything to me. And, you know, maybe I'm a drama queen, but I felt like I had to do something dramatic,

you know, to kind of really shift the energy and kind of wipe the slate clean and start fresh. And that was really the beginning of what I didn't realize at the time would ultimately lead to eating a plant-based diet. For the next six months, I did a juice cleanse, and that was like an amazing experience. It was terrible at first, but, you know, after a week of doing nothing but drinking vegetable juice, I'd never gone a day, like 24 hours in my whole life without eating solid food. So I felt like that was like a really severe thing to do to kind of like shift my perspective and my energy.

And the last two days of that experience, I felt like this crazy resurgence in vitality. and it really was a moment in which I realized that what you put into your body really does impact how you feel. Like I never really thought about that before. And that kind of encouraged me to look more deeply into a way of eating that could allow me to feel that good all the time. Because, of course, you can't just drink vegetable juice for the rest of your life. And then it was a process of self-experimentation, really. For the next six months, I kind of played around with a vegetarian diet, but I was eating pretty much a junk food vegetarian diet.

and kind of took that all the way to the wall and wasn't losing any weight, wasn't feeling any better. I just thought, what would happen if I got rid of all the animal products and all this processed junk that I'm eating? I wonder if that would make a difference. And I kind of took a leap of faith and tried that.

And literally within seven to 10 days of making that switch, I felt like an entirely different person. And I was doing it, you know, I didn't go to the library and get a bunch of books. I didn't watch a bunch of documentaries. Like I would have saved a lot of time, I'm sure. and done things more intelligently had I done that, it was really just feeling it out for myself experientially.

And ultimately, that's kind of what led me to eating plant-based and realizing that it agreed with me, kind of set the stage for everything that came after. So really, the start of it was more of a selfish reason to get healthy. And I completely agree with you about the dramatic change. I think that some people really work that way, where it's like, you know, like you really, if you're going to, if you're going to commit to something, like you want it to be like something that's a, that's more, that you feel is going to be more

of a challenge that's really going to change your life around, you know, instead of just this little tiny step, which, you know, in some cases can help, but I think that I was just kind of interested why you chose the vegetarian way to get healthy. I think it, I think, I've thought about that question and it, it, it, it's certainly, didn't originate as coming from a place of ethics or like wanting to, you know, be more compassionate towards animals. It was very much, you know, revolved around, like, my own personal health. And I think that I latched on to vegetarianism because it seemed like such a black and white thing. And as somebody who's in recovery, what you learn very early on is, like, you're either

drinking or using drugs or you're not. Like, there's no middle ground. You can't, like, kind of drink, you know, if you're an alcoholic. Like, you just can't. And, and that, kind of black and white approach, I just sort of took that and laid that template upon diet. And vegetarianism seemed like an analog to that in certain respects because there was a simple rule, which was, you don't eat meat, right? So I was like, okay, I could wrap my head around that and sort of apply these principles of recovery and the kind of tools that I'd learned to get sober to my approach to food. And so I think perhaps maybe even unconsciously, that's why that seemed like an attractive, easy thing to do. Like it took the decision fatigue out of it,

like, okay, I'm just not going to eat meat. And that was the first step. And then it was, okay, I'm not going to eat dairy. And then I'm not going to eat all this processed stuff, which gets into a little bit more of a gray area. But I think that's initially what led me to it because it just seems so concrete in that regard. Yeah. How long did it actually take you to lose that 50 extra pounds? Like was that – you mentioned feeling good immediately.

And that – there's, you know, a whole host of possibilities that could be, you know, why that is, one being, you know, you're now, your gut bacteria are getting more fiber, all the plant, you know, stuff where you're, you're having less inflammation. Inflammation's affecting brain function and depression, all those things. And it's really, it's cool to hear that you can experience as mood changes so quickly. I'm really interested in helping family members that I care about that are not healthy, that have, that struggle with depression. And it's hard for me.

It's hard for me to convince them that you, like, you. I have all the science in the world, and I fired it all the time at them, study after study showing how connected mood and brain function is to what you're putting in your body and just doesn't register. Yeah, the gap between information and action is vast. And if you can bridge that gap, then you have the keys to the kingdom, but that's where the hard work is. And, you know, you cannot compel somebody to be willing.

That willingness has to be self-generated. In my own experience, the only thing that's ever sort of gotten me to address or change any of my errant behavior patterns is pain, really. I mean, I was in enough pain where I was willing to do something drastic and make that change. You know, had I not been in that pain, I don't know that I could have. I think that that possibility to make a change always exists, but trying to light that spark and get somebody to do it is very difficult. But I think that, you know, you mentioned the microbiome, and I think that's a powerful kind of entry point for a lot of people, because if you, especially in the diet context, if you just start propagating your plate with a lot more sort of nutrient dense plant-based foods and foods that are high in phytonutrients and the like, that's going to repopulate your microbiome. And I'm sure you know much more about this than I, but there are these studies that show this link, this connection between the quality of your gut flora, and the cravings that you have. Like literally, you know, the signals that are being sent from the microbiome that's hijacking,

quite literally, your central nervous system to trigger these impulses to get you to feed yourself in a certain way that's going to nourish that microbiome in a certain way. So if you're eating McDonald's all the time, then that's what you're going to crave. But if you replace that slowly, even at first, with different kinds of foods, then you're going to shift not only your habits, but your cravings will come afterwards. And I found that to be kind of a very powerful thing to do. So instead of focusing on, you know, what you're not going to eat, why don't you focus on adding more of the things that are good and allowing that kind of gut population to morph accordingly. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm the same

way I like to focus on what you should eat, what you need, what your body needs, you know, the precursors that you need to, you know, function optimally, optimally, you know, all those things are really important, but it's, it's, you're mentioning the pain that you're in, and the pain being that trigger for your, that willingness to want to make a change. What I find is very interesting is that you, you know, a lot of people will take pain and seek out pharmacological means of treating the pain instead of saying, this pain, there's a reason I have this pain, there's something causing it, what's causing it? I need to stop doing that.

to figure it out and change my lifestyle, how do you think that you were able to take that path? Because that's the path that should be taken. I mean, you're a success story, right? I mean... Well, I think that, I mean, that's a psychological and cultural problem as much as anything else, because in our society, it's sort of like, you know, diagnose and prescribed. Like, oh, you're feeling this pain, we'll take this and that pain will go away. And we don't even get into the discussion of what's causing that in the first place.

So I think ultimately to get behind that and to really get into a place of the willingness to address the underlying cause and work through that, again, you know, that takes a sort of mental constitution, again, willingness to even, you know, have the desire to do that. But I think also it's really an internal job. Like for me, it's as much a, you know, a spiritual, you know, journey as much as anything else. And I think that when you're experiencing pain, whether it's, you know, it's emotional, mental, or physical, it's a signal. It's a signal for you to sort of face a lesson and work through something. And you can either take a pill and ignore that, in which case it's going to recur and probably escalate, or you can embrace it and say, what is the lesson here that I need to learn for myself, whether it's a physical thing, a diet thing, or a relationship thing, or an emotional thing. I think it's all the same in that regard. And, you know, again, in my own personal case, it was, you know, it was a situation in which I was in enough pain where I realized, like, I need to get behind this and get to the cause of, you know, what is making me not only,

you know, look the way that I look, like overweight and everything, but also feeling the way that I'm feeling. Like, I didn't want to be depressed and, like, you know, I was living in this house, look around. Like, I have nothing to, I have nothing to, you know, I have every, I had, looking out on my life, you know, from the outside end, I had no reason not to be anything, but completely grateful for everything in my life. I live an amazing life. But inside, I felt like I was dying and I was living the wrong life for myself. So I think that was as much of, you know, the sort of, you know, flame that was burning as like, oh, I need to lose weight. You know, like losing weight wasn't, it wasn't really about losing weight. It was about trying to feel

more connected to my own life. Yeah. So once you actually have decided to make this change and you started to notice these positive benefits on your mood and the way you felt. And obviously, behaviors probably started to change along with that. Then you decided to kind of go full force and, you know, you're, you know, been a being for almost a decade. And not only that, you've taken on these amazing physical feats. I mean, you started to get into endurance training and how did that start? Well, what happened was, you know, when I was sort of new.

into this plant-based way of living and eating, I suddenly had so much energy that I literally had trouble just focusing and sitting still. Like my knee was going like this. And I was like literally vibrating. And I started going outside to exercise for the first time really with any consistency in well over a decade. Initially, just because I had to burn off all this added, you know, vitality that I felt was like running through my system, I didn't have any desire to return to becoming a competitive athlete. But what happened was the more that I did that, the more I just felt connected to myself again. Like, there's all these amazing trails around here, and I'd never explored any of them. And I was just sort of feeling like I was connecting with my body in a way

that I hadn't in a very long time. Like, I was a swimmer as a kid. I swam in high school. I swam in college. And that brought me so much joy. And, you know, in our culture, it's sort of like, all right, well, you did that in college, but now you're an adult and we don't do these things anymore and that just door shuts. But I was like, this feels good. You know, like, I like this. Just because I'm 40, does that mean that I can't do this anymore? And I listen to your interview with Wim Hof, and he said something similar. Like, he said, you know, that he knew, like, when he jumped in the cold water, like, this was his thing, you know, like, he just, he knew. And he, and he, and people were saying, oh, you should be a doctor, you should be a carpenter or all these sorts of

things, you know, with your life. And he's like, he had this, he had the sort of spiritual wherewithal to go, that's not for me. Like, I don't know what my path is going to be, but it's going to be totally different. And so I think there was some of that sense in myself. And I just became so struck by the incredible resilience of the human body because I'd abused myself with drugs and alcohol and, you know, stressful job and terrible lifestyle habits and, you know, fast food diet for so many years. And literally, within a period of a few months, I felt like a different person, right? And so with that, I started to think about human potential, you know, and like, again, to Wim Hof, he's talking about, you know, the ability of the human body to do things that

defy everything these scientists said, you know, was possible. And I started to think about what I was capable of. And because I had bounced back in such a dramatic way, it kind of led me to this, you know, I started to think about challenging myself. Like, what are my capabilities? Like, if I could, if I could rebound so quickly, what if I took myself and tested myself to my ultimate limits? Like, what could I do? And I think in part, that was informed a little bit by this idea that I don't really feel like I ever reached my potential as a swimmer when I was in college and feeling like I had unfinished business there.

So that's what led me into the world of ultra endurance. Like I just became fascinated with these crazy races and these people that were doing things that I just didn't even think we're humanly possible. And I just felt magnetized by it. And just like a tractor beam was drawing me into that world. And I read an article about this race called Ultraman that I'd never heard of before. Most people know what an Iron Man is, you know, but Ultraman is essentially a double Ironman distance triathlon that over three days circumnavigates the Big Island of Hawaii.

And it's a very cool race. It's been around for over 30 years at this point. But it kind of slides under the radar. There's no media attention. There's no prize money. They don't even shut the roads off for the cycling or the running. And it's limited to just 35 athletes every year. And it just seemed like what Iron Man probably was like in 1980 when it first began,

like very pure into its roots. And these athletes were doing it really just to have this like kind of journey, you know, that transcended, you know, the M-DOT and getting the tattoo of the Iron Man on your ankle or whatever. I don't know. It just really intrigued me. And there was something that clicked inside of me, and I just thought, I'm going to find a way to do that race. And how, so you said it's like double Ironman? So what's the distance? So the distance, yeah. So day one, you do a 6.2 mile swim, and then you get out of the water. It's a point-to-point ocean swim. And then you get on your bike and you ride 90 miles, the last 20 of which is up to Volcano National Park.

It's this crazy 20-mile climb with headwind. It's like insane. Then you go to sleep. It's a stage race, kind of like Tour de France. Like you do a stage, you go to bed, you wake up the next day. The next day, the second day, you ride your bike 171 miles. And then the third day, you celebrate the whole thing by running 52.4 miles, a double marathon back and you end up where you started. Wow. So it's crazy, right? Like, when I first read about it was like, can people do that? Like, it seemed amazing to me. And you've done that. And something that I wanted to be part of. Yeah. So I did that race in 2008. when I was 42, so that would have been two years after sort of adopting the plant-based diet. And I did it in 2009 and also in 2011.

So you've done three times. Yeah, the third time didn't go so well. I had to DNFed on the second day. I was like spitting up blood and I had like a respiratory infection so I had to drop out. But my best performance was in 2009. So training for it, diet, you know, getting back to the vegan, you know, aspect of it. But it seemed, most people would think, you know, vegans, wow, won't they? They don't get enough, you know, certain micronutrient deficiencies, iron or, you know, protein, things like that.

So can you talk a little bit about how conscientious you are of what you're eating and your levels of certain micronutrients? Yeah, sure. I don't overcomplicate it. Like I get people sending me these emails all the time. Like, tell me your ratio of this to that. Yeah. I'm like, I don't even think it. You know, like, it's very simple.

Like, I eat a lot of whole plant-based foods as close to their natural state as possible. That's, like, general rule number one. And when I was, you know, beginning to train, like, I was just listening to my body and trying to, you know, meet its needs as I saw fit in the moment. So I wasn't following some kind of recipe or guide. But essentially, you know, I start my day with, usually with a Vitamix smoothie, you know, that's... How fun. Yeah. Yeah. It starts with a base of dark leafy greens. Like it always starts with that. So spinach,

kale, things like that, charred. And from there, it kind of builds, you know, pre-workout, beets, beet greens are always good. And, you know, berries, you know, black berries, blueberries, berries with high antioxidants, maybe some apple or orange. And then, you know, some of the more exotic superfoods, hemp seeds, ground flax seeds, papitas, which are high in iron. You know, that's one thing. worries about your iron levels. So I make sure I, you know, eat seeds that are high in iron. And I keep it simple. Like, you know, I have four kids. We're busy. We're doing a million things. I open up the fridge in the morning. I don't know what I'm going to find, you know. So a lot of times it's just improvising with what we have. And I usually find, though, that that gets me out of the door

in the morning for before my morning workout. If I'm really hungry, some gluten-free toast with almond butter or something like that is fine. And then I'm good. You know, I can go out and I train. I come back, you know, I'll drink the second half at that smoothie or make a different one. I'll supplement with some plant-based protein powders. But I don't, like, I've had a whole journey with supplements and we can get into that. You know, I don't overdo it with that at all. You know, when I first began, I was so worried about all of these things, like, oh, you're going to be deficient and all these things. And I had all kinds of crazy supplements. And over the years, I've kind of weaned myself off of those and thought, you know, do I really need these? Are these really working? Am I

spending my money, you know, responsibly. And I found that for the most part, I don't need most of those things that I thought that I did, including protein powder. Like, I really don't even do that much of that. Lunch is usually a huge salad with lots of broad vegetables in it, or perhaps like quinoa and beans. I ate lots of beans, lots of black beans, beans, beans of different kinds, lentils, quinoa, you know, things that are sort of plant-based foods that are higher in protein content than other plant-based foods. Lentils are really higher in it as well. Yeah, you can go to Trader Joe's and they have packets of like pre-cooked lentils. Oh, really?

They're like two dollars, you know. So I go in there and just grab those for lunch for a quick snack. You know, veggie burritos. My wife's an amazing cook, so she's made it a lot easier. Is your whole family vegan? Yeah, our whole family is now. And that's been a journey in its own right, you know, with the kids and everything like that. But now they are.

It wasn't always that way. But yeah, I mean, I keep it really basic. I don't overthink things. You know, when I'm training and I'm going out on a long ride, I try to bring a lot of whole foods with me or, you know, no places where I can stop to pick up bananas. Dates are always good. Almond butter again,

or maybe like an almond butter sandwich I'll bring with me in my back pocket. Liquid nutrition in a form of like a melto dextrin. You can get like 900 calories in one bottle, things like that. So what about like vitamin D? Is that something that you... I don't really worry about vitamin D. And I get my levels, my blood checked and everything. My vitamin D is fine, but I'm outdoors training a lot.

So, you know, I would imagine that that takes care of itself by exposure to the sunlight. I do supplement with vitamin B12. But a lot of the foods that I eat, too, are also vitamin B12 fortified. So I don't get too crazy worried about that either. And my B12 levels are fine. So you're obviously of luxury living in Southern California. You're still young. You have lighter skin.

So there's a lot of things that regulate the ability of your body to produce vitamin D from UVB radiation from the sun. Are there other vegetarians or vegans that sort of come to you for a template or a guide? And do you, like, have anything that you tell them usually? Because it can be a problem for vegetarians, vegans. I think deficiencies are a problem for everyone. And I think it's endemic, you know, especially. since our soils are being progressively depleted and the foods maybe aren't quite as nutrient dense as they used to be.

And so I think I encourage everybody to go get their blood checked and see where they're at with everything because it is such an individual thing. And if you are in a northern climate or a place where you're not going to get a lot of sunlight, of course, you know, vitamin D can become a problem and you should supplement. So I'm not against supplements, but I think that the approach should always be that they're supplements. They should supplement the diet that you're eating, right? They shouldn't come in the place of the food.

But I think that, you know, if you're deficient or you're prone to one of those kinds of deficiencies, of course I think it's appropriate. I don't know that vegans and vegetarians have a higher incidence of vitamin D deficiency than anybody else. You may know more about that than I do. It's vitamin D inadequacy is pretty prevalent in the United States. Around 70% the population doesn't have what's considered to be adequate levels. it's not quite deficient. Deficiency versus inadequacy, there's a little difference.

But I don't know if vegetarians or vegans and or if they take the supplemental vitamin D3 form, which is commonly, it's from lanolin, which is excreted from like the sebaceous glands of sheep, you know, so when they're making wool. Is that something you would take or is that like against the vegan rules? Like, I don't know if the sheep get harmed or anything. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know enough about that.

I probably wouldn't take that. So I would look, you know, I try to make sure that if whatever I am taking in is vegan and its origin. So it can't come from animals even if the animal's not dying or... Yeah, well, I mean, I have to know specifically in each instance how that works. And, you know, the road gets narrower. You know what I mean? Like certain things you used to do, then I'm like... Because it's different for me, next.

Like, it's been an evolution, and I think that this is kind of an important point, which is there's this idea that certain people out there are like struck vegan overnight. I don't know anybody for whom that is the case. Like, for everybody, it's a journey, you know. It's like a, it's something that you evolve into if you're inclined or if that's something that interests you. You know, so the things that I'm sort of focused on now are different than they were in, you know, 2008 or when I began. So for me, I've become a lot more interested in other aspects. of this lifestyle that originally weren't that interesting to me. And that's a whole other discussion.

But so, and now also, you know, I'm sort of this ambassador of vegan athletes in some regard, or better or worse. So I think it's important for me to kind of hold that space and to say like, yeah, I can do it without all these things, so you can too. So I can go out and be 100% vegan, 100% plant-based, and not ingest any animal products into my diet and do these crazy endurance races as just a point of contradiction to conventional wisdom so that other people can look at that and infer from that as they wish. Do you think that it seems that vegan, you know, veganism, obviously you're proving that

for endurance, at least, training that it's very, you know, possible to be a competitive endurance athlete and be a vegan. In fact, you seem to have some sort of advantage in some cases a lot of endurance training, what's interesting is that endurance trainers become adapted to oxidizing fat for energy. And I don't know, maybe a vegan diet may kind of go along with that. But do you think that someone who's say, let's say, like, your typical CrossFit guy doing the Olympic lifts and burpees are, you know, like it's a little different than an endurance athlete, Do you think they would also do well with a vegan diet?

Or do you think those are sort of different? Certainly there are different kinds of athletes, but I don't see any reason why not. I've seen vegan athletes do amazing things in all kinds of different kinds of disciplines. And I just, I was in Germany last week and I got a chance to sit down with this friend of mine named Patrick Babumian, who is a strongman athlete, a vegan strongman athlete who lives in Germany. He set a Guinness Book of World Records in Toronto in two years. It was about two years ago. I was there. I witnessed it. It was incredible. It's called the yoke, and he carried 550 kilograms, which is like 1,200 pounds, for 10 meters. So he had this giant

contraption with all the plates on it, lifted it up and, like, walked 10 meters with it. It's the most insane thing I've ever seen. He's vegan. I just did a podcast with him when I was in Germany, and he then re-broke it again with a little bit more added weight, and he's trying for another record now. And he says that he got stronger when he went vegan. So the reason that he thinks that he has improved, and it's similar to my own reasons, is that first of all, you're eating high, what's the word, high nutrient gain, high nutrient density with a high nutrient gain, foods that are very dense nutritionally, but are also very easily assimilated. and also very anti-inflammatory in general.

Like when you compare kind of the standard Western diet or a diet that's high in meat and dairy, it can be very acidic and in turn produce a lot of inflammation. And as you know, and we can get into this and you know a lot more about this than I do, but that inflammation will impede recovery. So the more kind of like alkaline your diet is, the more you kind of reduce that inflammation and can enhance or expedite the recovery process, which allows you to train harder, push yourself harder, and go longer and all these things that extrapolated out over the course of a season or a year or a number of

years can translate into performance gains. But I'm interested in your perspective. Yeah, no, I'm not sure if it's the, I don't think the mechanism is the alkaline thing. I think that's a little not really scientifically shown. But there is evidence that, for one, when you're eating a more plant-based diet, you are, which I eat a very heavily plant-based diet. I'm not a vegetarian. I'm not a vegan.

I also eat a lot of fish and, you know, chicken and not really red meat once in a while. But when you do eat a plant-based diet, you're getting a lot of fiber, for one. So your gut is a lot healthier. Your gut bacteria-like fiber. And the major source of inflammation in your body is your gut. Your gut actually... That's interesting. So when you feed your gut fiber, there's certain bacteria in your gut that metabolize the fiber

into certain components and compounds. Some of them are called short-chain fatty acids. There's other compounds as well. These compounds are actually signaling molecules that actually totally regulate your immune system. So they will make more anti-basically immune cells that prevent your own immune cells from attacking your own tissue. So they're called T regulatory cells and they regulate autoimmunity.

They make, you basically increase hematopoises. So you make more blood cells. You're making more red blood cells, which is really. relevant for endurance athletes. You're making more of the good type of T cells, natural color T cells. You're making less of the T cells that are causing inflammation. So having a more plant-based diet absolutely does affect inflammation, but I don't think it's through that alkaline. Right, right. That's interesting. I mean, the thing that I've kind of experienced myself and I've heard from so many athletes, CrossFit athletes, strength athletes, you know, speed and agility

athletes is that they can train really hard, they don't get as sore or sore at all, and they're able to bounce back much more quickly. And they're less likely to miss out on training because of overtraining or injury or illness. Well, that's, yeah, one thing that affects, you know, recovery is inflammation. And when you are, when you're, for one, when your gut's healthy, and it is a lot easier to get a healthy gut. You know, I know a lot of people that eat meat out there. I'm not saying meat's bad.

I'm just saying that your gut likes fiber. It likes fiber. It's simple as that. It likes it because it metabolizes it into something that regulates your immune system. And that's scientifically proven. It's been shown in dozens of studies. It's pretty much consensus. And we don't talk enough about fiber.

Most people are walking around fiber deficient, but they're obsessed with protein. Really, protein deficiency really just isn't the thing anybody should be worried about. But you should be worried about your fiber intake. I agree. We just don't, that should be much more part of the conversation, I think. Yeah. It's something that I think is a real strength of having a, a, more vegetarian-like diet is the amount of fiber you're taking it.

And it's part of the reason why I have such a heavy plant-based diet is because, you know, not only talking about the performance gains that you get by making sure your immune system is, you know, is the best it can be. So you're making more anti-inflammatory cytokines. What does that mean? Well, it means when you're exercising and you're working out really hard, you're causing inflammation because that's part of what exercise does. It causes inflammation.

So you're getting that inflammation, but you immediately have this anti-inflammatory response. And it happens sooner. So it's not, you know, you're basically not going to have your immune system then spiral out of control where then it starts to damage your muscle tissue because you have that counter, anti-inflammatory counter sooner, sooner than, you know, someone. someone who doesn't have a good diet who's basically immune systems not being regulated well. And it does really happen at the level of the gut. The gut is very important for your immune system. And that's something that scientists are now starting to realize and it's making

its way now into the popular media and also into the general public. So I think that's something extremely important is gut health. And not only, like I said, not only for performance games, but also for longevity because inflammation has been identified as a driver of the aging process. You know, normal aging, just living every day, our cells metabolizing carbohydrates or fat, whatever it is we're giving it, you know, to make energy. That whole process, breathing in oxygen and eating food to make energy causes damage. It's inherent. You can't avoid it. If you want to live, you're going to damage your cells.

It's just going to happen. And inflammation accelerates that process. It causes more damage. And the major source of inflammation in the body is the gut, not only because it regulates the immune system, but also because it is where we have all the bacteria, it's where our largest concentration of immune cells actually are. So when we start to have an unhealthy gut, when the gut barrier breaks down for several different reasons, then our immune cells go crazy, start firing cytokines, which are

inflammatory. So anyways, I think that's one. One really major strength about a plant-based diet is the fiber. And the other thing is that if you look at vegetarians, they tend to have, there are certain micronutrient deficiencies that are common. You mentioned vitamin B12, which is one, you know, B12 is found, it's more highly concentrated in animal meat. Well, I mean, it used to be, I mean, really, it's, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't vitamin B12

a microorganism that propagates in the soil. And so it used to be that even if you were just eating plants, like they weren't washed off, they weren't as sort of sanitized as they are now, and you could get your B12 that way, but now our soils are so depleted, so now it's kind of become a thing. I mean, I sort of resist this contention or this argument that, like, a vegan diet is by definition, sort of a deficient diet because you have to supplement with B12. Yeah, okay. So it's not a microorganism, but it's made by microorganisms.

So microorganisms, including in our gut, make it. And guess what? Fiber, actually I've done... And the animals have it because they're eating, they're basically, their noses are in the dirt all day. I don't know exactly why all the animals have it, but that, yeah, that would make sense. It's... Okay, so I don't think plant-based diets are like, or vegan diets are like inherently

micronutrient deficiency. In fact, if you look at the data, many different vegetarians and vegans have more of certain micronutrients, folate, vitamin K, magnesium. I mean, these are all, you know, vitamin C, vitamin E. Vegans and vegetarians have a much higher concentration of these very important micronutrients. Vitamin K is extremely important. Magnesium. Half the country doesn't get enough of, you know, so I don't think by definition a plant-based

or vegan or vegetarian diet is a nutritionally deficient diet. I think there's certain ones they have to make sure they're getting, and there's certain ones they're getting more of than other people that aren't getting enough of these, eating enough vegetables. So it really just depends. It's like, well, some, you know, vegans do you have to get a little more B12. They have to get a little bit more, you know, iron. But, you know, lentils are higher in iron.

There's a lot of, if you just know and think about what you need to eat, you can get your zinc from cashews. Caches are higher in iron. are higher in iron. I mean, you can find, you know, plant-based and nuts and seeds and, you know, things that are good sources of these micronutrients that you don't get if you're not getting the meat. But if you're eating a lot of meat, you're not eating a lot of processed foods and meat, you're not getting enough vegetables. Guess what? You're going to be deficient in a lot more micronutrients, to be honest. So I think that it's just a matter of knowing which ones and

making sure you're getting a dietary source of them, making sure if you're not getting a dietary source that you are taking a B-12. And, you know, back to the B-12, our gut bacteria make it. And there are certain gut bacteria that when you, like, for example, you take in antibiotics, which are loaded in meat and that we can get to that in a minute. But, you know, you kill off a lot of your own bacteria that make B-12. So, you know, there's the whole, what you want to have your gut healthy. Well, how do you get your gut healthy, you give it the right components. You give it the fiber. You gut likes fiber. It really likes fiber and like, you know, anything that's going to allow it to make short-chain

fatty acids, which are actually essentially what fuel all the gut cells inside your intestine, line your intestine, fuel it. They prefer short-chain fatty acids as their source of energy over anything else. So glucose, anything, they want these short-chain fatty acids and how do they get them? Fiber. So, you know, there's that. And that's one thing that vegetarians do get a lot of fiber. And I myself make a very, you know, I make an effort to make sure I'm getting enough fiber.

And I eat a lot of plants, a broad spectrum of them, different colors. I make something very similar every morning, charred, spinach. I always have those, the green base, you know, where it's spinach and charred and kale and then a carrot, tomato, some berries and different variations of it. I like the chia seeds because you're also getting some of the omega-3s, you know, which which, by the way, that's another thing that, you know, certain, that can be a problem for some vegetarians and vegans is, you know, because there are three types of omega-3, right? Alpha-linolac acid, which is a L.A. Icosipenta noica acid, which is EPA, which is a major

marine source, right, is how you get EPA and DHA, dooxyenoic acid. And EPA and DHA are very important for, you know, for combating inflammation, but also for every cell structure. You need DHA for every cell membrane, particularly in your brain. So you can convert ALA into those, but it's not very efficient. Women can do it much better because estrogen, at least premenopausal women can do it much better because estrogen activates the enzyme that converts it into it. And there's gene polymorphisms, which are variations in sequence of DNA, which changes the function or changes the function of the gene in a way.

So some people have ones that they can't convert ALA into EPA and DHA very well. So you really have to measure something. Yeah. So how do you know if you're one of those people though or not? Well, you can do a genetic test, 23 and me measures them. So they look at those gene polymorphisms. You know, it's something that's... It used to be $99.

They just raised the price to $199, those bastards. But they're now free and clear... They've cleared up all their issues with the FDA. Some of them. Yeah. So now they're only gonna... So basically they had stopped giving health reports. So they would, you could test for your gene polymorphisms and then they would interpret the data for you and say, okay, this is what this means for hundreds of them.

Right. But now they're only going to do 36 major diseases. So you still, you know, you're going to get some information from them. But there are other sources out there that have tools like Prometheus, which allow you to interpret the data if you don't know anything. It's like $5 and it tells you, you know, kind of what you. your data means and then they delete it after like 40 days or something. Oh, wow. Interesting. That's great. Yeah, I'll send you, I made a video on it and have a PDF where I kind of explain it if you're interested. But that's one way. And then the

other way would be to get your blood levels of omega-3. You can measure EPA and DHA. If you're eating a boatload of chia seeds and flax seeds and all these walnuts and, you know, good sources of ALA and yet you're still like very low levels of EPA and DHA, that might be a sign that you Yeah, interesting. So then genetic test would be the next logical step, right? But that's also something I think that vegetarians and vegan should consider because they're very important micronutrients. They're both very important.

So I kind of wanted to get in some of the issues that you said now the reason why you're vegan or some of the reasons why you're vegan have expanded and that it's been a journey where, and that makes sense where it's like, I think that if I were to become a vegan, which I'm not, but if I were, I think that once I started doing it, I'd want to find more interesting reasons, you know, why I should continue doing it. And then you sort of seek it out. And then if there's enough evidence to go, oh, this is a valid reason why I should, I'm going to continue to do it. So it's sort of like validating your own lifestyle. Yeah, I think that it's definitely evolved for me. I mean, I think it was a,

it was really an epiphany for me to be able to perform at such a high level in my 40s, you know, as an athlete in ways that I never would have previously imagined that I could and to do it on a plant-based diet. To me, told me, whether or not, you know, humans ancestrally are omnivores or herbivores, and we can dispense with all of that because to me I'm like, well, we're not obligate omnivores. At least I'm not. You know, I know that. And once I kind of, that realization dawned on me. Then I started to get interested in our food system. Like I was very, like most people, very divorced from where our food comes from,

how it's manufactured, distributed, et cetera. You just cast a blind eye to it. And the whole system is set up to prevent you from really understanding it or being in touch with it to the point where there are ag gag laws. It's actually illegal to really even look into it. What? Well, the aggag laws that prevent you from, you know, sort of filming what goes on in slaughterhouses and all that.

So I got interested in it. that, and I started to learn more as I was sort of on this journey to really understand, like, how industrial agriculture works and specifically industrialized animal agriculture. And anybody who looks into it, you know, is going to be horrified. You know, as inherently compassionate people, you know, I think that we would all be sensitive to, you know, this system that is a, it's a horror show, right? I feel terrible for the humans that have to work in it, and I feel terrible for the animals that suffer as a result of it.

And it made me kind of go, well, why are we even doing this? Like, I'm doing great without this. It felt like incumbent upon me to learn more about it. And so I got interested in that. And that led me to be more interested in the ethical arguments behind it as well as the environmental arguments behind it. There's a documentary that I'm involved in. I'm a producer on that just came out. It's on Netflix called Calspiracy.

Leonardo DiCaprio is an executive producer on it. And it's really a really great documentary. It's very entertaining as well, but it basically takes a look at the impact of animal agriculture on the environment. And it's very interesting. And it's an aspect of the environmental conversation that has really gone under addressed. Because when you really canvas the biggest contributors to global climate change, you know, we talk about transportation, we talk about, you know, carbon emissions from, you know, all the vehicles and, you know, the ills of that. But we never talk about the impact of raising all these animals for our food has on the environment. And the truth is, is that animal agriculture is the number one culprit when it comes to almost

every single man-made environmental ill on the planet, everything from like species extinction to ocean pollution to, you know, rainforest destruction. We're destroying the rainforest at the rate of like one to two acres a second. It's crazy. water usage. Like we're here in California, it could not be drier out. It's a crisis. As consumers were told, we need to, like, take shorter showers and we can't water our lawns. But consumer water use amounts to, like, 5% of all water use. The vast majority of water goes to animal agriculture. It's crazy. Not just to go to the animals, but to raise all the crops that were feeding

to the animals, right? And when you break it down, it's like 660,000. gallons of water to produce a quarter pound of, you know, a quarter pound patty of beef and a thousand gallons of water to produce one gallon of milk. So in other words, like raising animals for food is incredibly inefficient, right? We have to create so much, you know, so many resources have to go into raising these animals for us to eat them, that it's incredibly wasteful. And the sort of impact of that on the environment is incredibly deleterious. So I got really interested in all of these issues, you know, land use, all these sorts of things. And when you look at, you know, swelling global population, you know, the idea that we're going to hit 11 billion

people by 2100, we just can't continue to feed the planet the way that we're doing it. It's not sustainable. We're destroying the planet at an unfathomable rate, and we're just blind to the impact of it. And because the meat and dairy industry is so powerful and they're lobbying, you know, efforts are so impactful, it prevents government from really doing anything about it. And it prevents public awareness of these issues that I think are really important that we should all be considering. So for me, there's a, you know, it's kind of been a journey from being very focused on performance to being more focused on, you know, what is our kind of obligation to, you know, to the planet to live more sustainably and more compassionately. And when I feel myself thriving without

without participating in this system, like that makes me want to spread that message, you know, and it feels really good to kind of opt out of that in some regard and to say, you know what, I'm not going to participate in that. Not only do I not have to, I actually am, you know, taking out an insurance policy against all of these chronic diseases that are killing people by the millions. You know, you look at the health statistics, like 70% of people are obese or overweight. One out of every three people is going to die of a heart attack and they're predicting that by 2030, 50% of Americans are going to be diabetic or pre-diabetic. It's insane. It's insane that so many people are sick and these lifestyle diseases are easily preventable and in many cases

reversible through some pretty simple diet and lifestyle alterations. And eating plant-based is a pretty good way to make sure that you're not going to succumb to a lot of these problems that are unnecessarily afflicting too many people. And so when you add in like the health, the health equation, the environmental equation, and the ethics of not participating in the death of all these animals, to me it's like it's a no-brainer. You know, it's a no-brainer to me. And it's amazing that by making this one simple decision, you know, I think as consumers, it's very easy to feel disenfranchised. Like, oh, my vote doesn't count. Doesn't matter who's president. Same old thing. It's always going to be the same. But by saying, okay, I'm going to eat plant-based, you're actually, that's a pretty

profound impact on the environment. You're saving all this water. You're saving all these resources. The carbon emissions go down. You're preventing yourself from becoming a statistic to one of these health disorders. And you're saving animals' lives. Like, it checks every box, in my opinion. So I just feel like that would be one thing if you had to suffer to do it. and be some kind of martyr, but I feel like I'm thriving and doing great. So I don't feel like I've given anything up. And my life has been nothing but nourished and improved by making this decision. I was actually reading one of your blog posts on like the 10 best reasons to adopt a plant-based diet.

And a lot of them were what you were just talking about, you know, the water, the impact on, you know, CO2 emissions, all these things that I don't usually think about. probably because it's so disturbing that I don't want to think about it. So I started trying to find references and looking them up. And I started to find scientific studies stating exactly what you were saying. And I was like, wow, this is, you had some statistic on there that was like if every American in the United States stopped or just took away one serving a chicken a week. Right. It would be like, it would be as if 500,000 cars were taken off the road.

Right. Right. It's crazy. To me, I'm like, yeah, I'm, first of all, I only eat like one serving a week, so, you know, but it seems like, well, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to make sure I don't eat two servings a week, you know, because I think that's a pretty profound, like, I'll have moments when I'm on the highway and I'll see like some like semi-buss with all the exhaust coming out, you know, and I see it and I'm just like, it

triggers something and I start to get really sad and depressed. And then I imagine all the trucks and all the cars all around the world doing it and, you know, spiral into this OCD link. But anyways, I think that the water as well, especially in California, this is a huge issue. I mean, in addition to the impacts on the environment, which are much more profound than I had previously known. So thank you for that blog post because it really did. She made me think. And I'll watch the documentary, Calspiracy. And if you go to cowspiracy.com, I think it's forward slash facts or they have a facts thing there.

They have all the studies and you can go through all of these things. It's really well laid out to. Yeah, references for everything. That's what I was really looking for. Because I know you could geek out and just go deep. Totally. Yeah, so I was looking for it. I was actually going to email you and be like, do you have reference with that?

Anyways. But the other issue is, you know, even let's say like you're the kind of person that you're like, well, I don't really care about the animal welfare and well-being and all that. like, you know, some people like, they just, they don't, right? The other issue is what these animals are fed and what they're given and then what we're eating, right? Right. The pesticides, the antibiotics, it's an absolute horror.

Antibiotics are like. Yeah, it's crazy. And, you know, like, you know, what about all the glyphosate that goes into all the feed that they're eating? Like, what is the impact of all of this, you know? And just the confined circumstances under. which all of these animals are living, you know, the disease and the, it's just, it's crazy. It's crazy.

So I was trying to think of a solution. I was, you know, people say, well, being a vegan is hard work. Being a vegetarian is hard work. But being an omnivore is hard work. It's hard work. Health conscientious omnivores like myself, I, you know, we tend to try to eat meat that, you know, unless we're Joe Rogan and out hunting our meat, which is ideal. You try to eat grass cows that are grass fed because you don't want a cow that's given

a particular corn. I mean, you know, also they're fed like leftover body parts of like other animals, I mean, which is disgusting. They're given antibiotics prophylactically. I mean, it's like 90% of the antibiotic use in the United States is agriculture. Agriculture, yeah, of course. Agriculture. And that stuff gets into our system and impacts our gut microbiome, it impacts obesity, all these different

things. So, you know, eating, and most Americans eat meat that is not grass fed. Right. You know, you've got a small percentage of people that are like, oh, I need the grass fed meat. I want the free-range chicken that are eating grass and insects and not eating a bunch of corn, getting a lot of, you know, like, you know, omega-6 fatty acids and all sorts of problems. But, you know, so it's hard work to be an omnivore too.

Right. And also, I mean, I think, of course, eating grass-fed is certainly better than you. conventionally raised meat, but I think it's a, you know, it's in some respects, it's an elitist solution to the problem because we can't feed the planet with grass-fed meat. There's not enough land. Exactly. So there's one thing that animal agriculture does very well, industrial animal agriculture does very well, it's economies of scale. The least amount of resources to blow that animal up into a big fat animal that you're going to want to put on your plate in the shortest amount of time.

Right. When you're talking about a grass-fed animal, they're using a lot more resources, tons more land, tons more water. They keep the animal alive longer. And there's not as much food, and they're eating longer. So the amount of resources that go into that calf

are going to exceed what is happening on a conventionally raised, you know, sort of cattle farm. So it doesn't really add up. So it's still not sustainable. So the environment, yeah, it's less, sustainable, actually. And it's weird because it's counterintuitive, but when you run the numbers on it, you're like, yeah, it makes you feel better because you feel like you're making a more ethical choice or you're doing something that sounds greener, but it's actually less green, which is interesting.

Yeah. So it may be healthier for the person eating it, but it may not be healthier for the environment, which brings me to the next solution. That's the meta. It is, it is. I mean, what is health? It's our individual health. It's the altruistic path. Well, well, how healthy are we if our planet is dying. So there's our individual health, like the health of the, you know, we're the microorganism and the earth is the macroorganism, right? So if a choice that we're making for our own personal health is at the expense of the greater health of the planet in which we live, and we care about the longevity of this environment that we live in for our children and the like, I think that has to play into the mental calculus, right? And so, you know, what that means is,

is you're asking somebody to kind of make a decision that perhaps is not in their immediate sort of short-term self-interest, which is hard. And that gets into altruism and all that kind of stuff. But I think it's important to talk about because when we talk about health, health isn't just the proportion of micronutrients and phytonutrients on your plate. It's a much larger conversation than that. And I think it begs the question of, you know, kind of our scientific approach to all these things. So you as a scientist.

and somebody who plies the scientific method is, by its very definition, and necessarily so, reductionist, right? You have to take one thing, look at it, and analyze its impact. But as you know, nutrition, health, the environment, all of these things are a grand interplay of, you know, countless infinite variables that all are interdependent on each other. So to extrapolate one and focus on that really means sort of not really honoring the greater picture. And I'm not to say that I have the solution to that, but I think when we talk about health and we talk about nutrition, we need to think more holistically WH, you know, like with a WH, than maybe we're sort of inclined to intuitively do.

That's very interesting. I want to talk about a possible solution in a minute, but to get back to you're talking about the interconnectedness between, you know, health and nutrition. health of our environment, the planet, you know, there have been studies that have shown, and even more recent ones that just came out a couple of days ago, showing that the healthier you eat, the more your brain switches to, like, long-term planning. Like, you're able to, there's more activity in that part of the brain. That's interesting.

That's super interesting. Right? So these things are interconnected, and the opposite was true. Like, so when you're not, when you're eating unhealthy, when you're eating junk food, the stuff shuts down. Yeah, because you're numbing out. Because you're eating addictively, you're eating to medicate, right? You're eating to, like, disconnect.

Like, you're eating to, like, numb yourself to whatever's going on. So, of course, you go into, like, sleep mode. You go into, like, shutdown mode. And you don't care about anything, right? Like, what, you accept dancing with the stars or whatever's on TV. Yeah. Okay, so the solution. All right.

I'm curious to see, get your opinion on this. So, being a scientist, you know, I'm kind of into all this technical stuff. But we now have the capability and capacity to grow meat in the lab. Like meat that texture-wise is meat, tastes like meat, but it's grown from stem cells. And so in the case of meat, most of the time, it's muscle tissue, right? Right. Muscle tissue. So scientists can take a stem cell from a cow muscle or moose, whatever, and without killing it,

and grow it in a culture medium that has all these types of nutrients and growth factors that can make it become a certain type of muscle tissue. And then it begins to like arrange like a tissue and do all these things. Right. But ultimately, you know, there's going to be lab grown meat, which means, I mean, it's kind of gross to think about it. It still grosses me out to like think about it. But one, it's going to solve the problem of this whole, you know, meat agriculture industry.

I mean, it's just that, it's non-sustainable, like you said, by the year 2050. There's going to be 11 million people or 251 or something. There's going to be 11 billion people, sorry. And that's just, we can't feed them all. We can't do it. And with all the, it's going to use up the resources we have. It's going to destroy our environment. And two, you don't have all the antibiotics given to the animals.

You don't have all the growth hormones, all the crap that's put in. It's not going to be there, right? So it's going to be lab grown. Would you ever try a lab grown piece of meat? That's such an interesting question. I haven't really thought. It doesn't appeal to me at all. It doesn't appeal to me.

Yeah, it sounds weird and gross. I applaud, like, technological advances to try to solve these problems that we have, to create solutions that are more sustainable. So I'm all about that. You know, for me, it's like I feel like there's so much energy being put into, to, you know, kind of creating meat analogs. But, but, you know, we were talking originally about sort of symptoms and causes, like getting to the root problem, like going, like, so I think before we even get to that

issue, taking a step back and saying, and taking a look at, like, why we're so obsessed with meat to begin with, you know what I mean? Like, maybe we should talk about that first. Like, I feel like I've no desire to eat lab-raised meat, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't, it's nothing, it's, I don't need it, you know what I mean? Like, why would I eat? that, I'm doing fine the way that I am, why do we feel such a need that we have to have, like, so much meat?

Yeah. Like, so let's talk about that first. Yeah. Secondarily, I think it's an interesting ethical question, too. It's like it's animal tissue without consciousness. So what does that mean? It's almost like a philosophical thing. It's a weird thing to wrap your head around.

And I think it's an interesting approach to the solution. And I have no doubt that they'll figure it out in the same way they're figuring out, like, how to create, you know, hamburgers out of pea protein that have some kind of solution in them that actually gives it that bloody taste, that meat. Like, it's bizarre, like, trying to, putting all this energy in science into creating something that tastes exactly like something else, rather than just saying, well, why don't we just move over here where we're growing all this food and not worry about that rather than trying to copy this thing.

It's a lot of people that like me. Yeah, I know. I know, they do. They do, right? I know. And I think that, you know, to the expectation, like, I can't, I can't, you know, I can't be under the impression that everyone's going to do what I'm doing. I understand that.

Like, you have to create solutions for people that are accessible to them that are appealing enough. Like, so, you know, that veggie patty that tastes like a hamburger is a great step to get somebody to, you know, rethink what's on their plate and maybe not eat meat at every single meal every single day as the focus of their plate. Like, I think that's a good thing. Ultimately, you know, I think when somebody starts to shift and their microbiome starts to shift, those kinds of meat analogs become less interesting. But that's for everybody to go on their own path with. Would you be happy? So you personally wouldn't feel compelled to be eating the lab grown meat.

But I think to the extent. Like knowing that it's going to have a better impact on the environment. Of course. Of course. So I think that's a, yeah, listen, to the extent that that can, you know, save a lot of animals' lives and, you know, take a step forward to preserve our environment or move in a better direction, like, you know, I'm supportive of that. Yeah. I still think it's weird, though. It's like I have to sit with it and really think it through, like, I don't know that I've spent enough time really thinking deeply enough about it, though. You know, the guy that originally came up with a theory before it was ever even, this was, you know, done was back in, like, the early 1900s. I forgot his name.

And then back in like the 1950s or something, some scientists was like able to like keep like some sort of piece of a chicken growing in a dish for like 10 years. Something crazy. We're like that sort of seeded this whole theory of, oh, maybe we can grow me. Right. And then stem cell technology came and, you know, boom. I know. It's a crazy time.

Totally. And these stem cells are, the muscle ones are important for, you know, a lot of medical reasons, you know, repairing muscle damage, muscular dystrophy, lots of uses. But you did bring up an interesting point, and that is the health aspects of meat. And do we need to eat this much meat? And I think based on the science, I don't think we need to focus on eating so much meat. We need to focus on getting the plants and getting all the right micronutrients and getting the fiber. And when you do that, you end up eating healthier and you end up not eating processed foods,

eating this, you know, really refined sugars, which are really bad for you. You know, you end up not eating those things. One, because when you start to, like, eat healthy, you feel, at least I do, I feel, like, deprived of, like, if I go somewhere, I'm traveling and I can't get all my veggies, like I usually, and maybe I'm a little crazy, but I feel like I'm like, I'm like, aging myself. I'm like, oh, God, I'm not getting all my nutrients. I need these parts to keep running, you know.

All these different biochemical pathways in my body, they need magnesium, they need folate, they need selenium, they need all these vitamin K, they need all these nutrients that are found in plants. My gut needs the fiber, my gut really needs the fiber. If I don't get enough fiber, I mean, I can tell when I'm traveling. So, you know, people in general, they don't need that much, you don't need that much protein. Obviously if you're like wanting to bulk up and doing the weight training thing, then your protein requirements are a little different, but your goals are also different, you know. So I think depending

on what your goals are. And with the meat, you know, there was a study that came out, well, the press release came out yesterday where the World Health Organization basically classified processed meat as a group one carcinogen or group one, meaning it's got components in it that are cancer-causing to humans. And that's not something. And that's not something. something that's new. I mean, there are dozens and dozens of studies that have been published over, you know, the last few decades that have shown not only correlative data where they're looking at people that are eating processed meat and cancer incidents, which is always written with many different errors. I mean, because correlations never show a causation,

right? But there's also been mechanistic studies where they've doveen into what's in the process meat and they've given it to animals and try to figure it out exactly what's going on. And, you know, one of the major problems with processed meats is they're loaded with nitrites, which are preservatives. But the problem is that nitrides can form nitrosamines. They can form nitrosamines in our colon. And also they can form nitrosamines when they're in contact with water and heat. So if you've got some bacon that has nitrites and you're frying it in front,

pan and the water, you're forming nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic. So they're mutagens, meaning when humans consume them, they cause damage to the DNA of a cell that's in contact with it. In this case of eating it, the first cells that come in contact with it are your gut, right? Colon. So they basically damage the DNA in such a way that it can lead to a cancer cell. So it damages in such a way that it can potentially lead to cancer cell.

in such a way that it can potentially lead to cancer. Now, there's a lot of different factors that are going on depending on all the other dietary factors in your life and lifestyle. These are very important, right? But these nitrosineans are carcinogens. That's a fact. And nitrites form them. They form them in the gut, bacteria in our guts and also when you put them in water and heat

and things like that. Nitrates, which people like to often use as the counter, well, they're in plants and they also can form nitrosamines, which is true. But nitrates, which are everywhere in nature, they're in all plants and they're all over the place, they tend to form nitric oxide and not nitrosamines. And the reason for that is because plants also are packaged with a whole other bunch of nutrients and micronutrients. And the plant was designed a certain way. And so the high vitamin C content, which are in all green leafy plants, all fruits,

vegetables, they all have vitamin C. The vitamin C present there shifts the pathway to nitric oxide. And so it tends to not form nitrosamines. And that's why eating plants, you end up getting more nitric oxide when you eat them, which is good, because it's good for vasodilation. It helps endurance, right? You're getting more red blood cells, more oxygen. So the nitrates are in plants. It's really not a good counter argument. And when I hear that, I know people haven't dug into the mechanism, like you don't understand. But so really, nitrides, I think processed meat is a terrible thing to eat on a daily basis. You know, once in a while it's fine.

You want to grill out and have your hot dog on whatever, Fourth of July or whatever, you know, I mean, it's, you obviously wouldn't, but I might, you know, I tend to avoid them. Like, I rarely, like, I don't go out and eat processed meats because I know that I know that it's not good for you, especially to eat on a daily basis. So, and then there's other problems with meat, you know. And what is it, the amy, the hypocyclic amines? What do they call it again? Well, those are nitrosamines.

Okay, that's what you're talking about, right? And then there's also polycyclic amines and polycypic carbon carbonyles, which happened with what about the heed and the sort of implications for promoting IGF1, like there are other aspects of it as well. So IGF1 has nothing to do with heem, but. Those are two different things that are going on with. One of the things, so there have. have been studies linking protein and meat consumption to cancer incidents. And there was a really well-done study published last year by Volta Longo's lab at UCLA.

And he's been doing a lot of research in this area. He's a very good scientist. He does, he always, you know, he does studies on humans that are correlative, so epistemological studies, but he backs them up with mouse data and then he goes into like cultured cells and he teases apart all the mechanisms. So he doesn't just make an association. He first makes the observation, he finds the correlation, and then he goes into the mouse model and he gives them a certain diet, controls everything, and then he goes and dives even further

into all the biochemical and molecular pathways in different cultured cells. So, you know, which is why he always ends up getting like a really high impact scientific publication, like nature or science. So he's always publishing in those really high impact journals. So a study that he published last year was, it was looking at a really high impact, you know, I forgot the timeframe, but it was, you know, people that were eating, you know, protein, me, and it looked at the, you know, how much they were eating and correlated it to their all-cause mortality. So they're looking at cancer or they're looking at different cardiovascular-related diseases.

I'm not sure they were looking at neurodegenerative disease, but they were definitely looking at those two. And they found that people that eat and, you know, eat more meat, how to hire all-cause mortality. They had more cardiovascularities. They had more cancer. And that was the real main thing. They had more cancer. But it was a certain, it was people that were older, but not too old. So once you got to a certain age, like above, I don't remember exactly 55 or something like that,

the opposite was true. So protein became more important. Protein intake was inversely correlated with mortality. So the higher the protein intake, the lower the auto cause mortality. And I think that has a lot to do with frailty. And as you get older, you fall down and break a bone. You know, muscle mass is also very important indicator of all cause mortality. Not everyone that's vegan is training like you is, you know, very aware of making sure

they are maintaining the muscle mass and staying physically fit. So protein does become important as you're getting older because you don't want to break the hip and then takes you out, you know. So, but what was interesting about this study is that they went into animal models and they gave animal models cancer. So they basically injected them with some tumor cells, various, types of cancer, and then they gave them either high protein, low protein diet, and they looked at the tumor growth. So it wasn't like feeding mice protein initiated cancer, which is a very different point.

So there's something that initiates cancer and there's something that can then promote it to grow. And so IGF1 is a growth factor that's, it's important for muscle growth, it's important for neuronal cell survival, it's important to make new neurons. I mean, you want IGF1. You want it to repair damaged muscle. You want it to make new neurons. And when you're a kid, you want it to grow.

However, as you become older and you have accumulated a lifetime of damaged cells, let's say you're eating a diet that's high and refined carbohydrates and sugars, damaged cells, you're eating a bunch of processed meat, things that are causing DNA damage. You don't want damaged cells to keep growing. You want them to die. Right. So the IGF-1 is really like throwing gasoline on the fire. Exactly.

Exactly. So it's all about the context. And so these mice that were given a high-protein diet, the tumors grew faster. Duh. Their IGF-1 was going up. IGF-1 is a major promoter of cancer. It can allow cancer cells to grow and thrive. And when we have a damaged cell, our body knows it.

And our body goes, oh, wow, this is not good. If I don't kill this guy, it's going to potentially become cancer. So it kills it. But you know what IGF1 does? IGF1 comes over and it's like, oh no, don't die. No, no, we're cool. We're cool. So it like overrides that whole inherent pathway that we have, you know, in our bodies

that are protected against getting cancer. So IGF1 can be very bad. But it all depends on the person. So if you have someone that is, you know, very health conscientious, that's an omnivore, people that are not eating processed foods or fine carbohydrates, not eating a bunch of processed meats, They're eating their healthy meats and they're getting a lot of plants, a lot of micronutrients, they're exercising. They're doing all the right things to minimize the amount of damage, to minimize their inflammation,

they're getting enough fiber, all that stuff. You know, IGF1 is not as much of a problem for those people as it is for the person who is eating meat and all the other bullshit. Right, right, right, right. Interesting. You know, so I think that's something very important to keep in mind is the context. So when you've got these big headlines that come out, they say, eating meat causes cancer. Well, not exactly.

Right. You know. Well, I think it's a, yeah, I think it's hard to talk about this study and the press release. I mean, the internet exploded yesterday, right? Right. But this news. And what's just as amazing as these scientific results in these studies is the conversation that's swirling around it, right?

and the sort of participation of journalism in that dialogue. So we're in this clickbait culture. So there's this sort of commercial drive to create these sensational headlines that don't necessarily accurately reflect what the study actually says. I feel like you're like one of the few people who's actually qualified to pontificate on what these studies mean actually, but most people aren't. They're just going to read the headline and they're going to draw their conclusion and they're not going to really get into it.

And it's been interesting to watch kind of over the last 24 hours how, you know, these different camps are sort of, you know, solidifying their positions. So you have the like bacon-loving, low-carb people who are, you know, basically throwing the predictable, you know, barbs out there about how it's correlative and like blah, blah, blah, it doesn't mean anything, which is sort of an argument you can make about any kind of most nutritional studies, because that's the very nature of how they're done, right? And then I saw a funny headline, unlike, a parody site, so something like in the wake of the WHO press release, vegans, 250% more likely to be, you know, snarky or something like that, you know what I mean? So it's like both sides can

participate in this dance that's going on around it. And of course, you know, it's not like eat a piece of bacon and you get cancer. It's certainly not that. But I think also to say, to dismiss it out of hand and say this is meaningless and doesn't require us. to even look at it and is lacking merit is ridiculous as well. I mean, I think that this was a consortium of scientists that spanned not just the WHO, but these other organizations over 10 countries. I think they looked at 800 studies. And, you know, that dealt with many populations of people. And of course, you know, you can't control. They're human beings. You can't control for every variable. It's impossible to do so. And I think they even did try to control for certain

co-factors, and that actually made the statistics less dramatic in doing so. And they still were able to come up with these correlative figures of, you know, what was it, 18% for every 50 grams of processed meat, more likely for, was it colon cancer? Colorectal cancer, 17% per 100 gram of red meat for a couple other pancreatic cancer, I think a couple other ones, whatever. So you can parse that out and draw from it what you will. But I think at the end, of the day, like what I take away from it is saying, yeah, well, this is something that there's, there's clearly some risks associated with this, and we need to, like, you know, take a look at that.

Yeah, I think you bring up some really important points, you know, one being obviously the problem with the sensational journalism, which instigates this. But then there's the people that have their own belief in their view, and they, you know, instead of thinking more like a scientist and going, okay, like, I want to understand what's really going on here, they're just like, no, I want to eat bacon or no, I want to eat tofu. You know, so it's like you get this war. Or they've been promoting a certain perspective for so long, so they're very invested in that. Right. That's a big problem. That's, you know, and that's, it's something that I really

really, you know, I have to like look at that as well. Right. Absolutely. I'm a vegan athlete guy. So I go, well, what part of this is, where am I being dogmatic and when am I, you know, it's important for me to be open-minded and to really, you know, use my intelligence to look at everything critically and objectively. Right. I mean, you have incentive to believe it, right? You're like, oh, yeah. Yeah, of course, but, you know, like, you know, the snark doesn't get anyone anywhere. No, it doesn't. I'm not participating in that at all, you know. That's absolutely. And I think the, and I think the headlines are inflammatory. They are. They always are. And, you know, it's... The same thing with butter is back, you know, and then you just flip sides on that one, you know?

Yeah. We talk for, like, days on this. We talk for days. But I think the bottom of the bottom. But I think the bottom line is that there are interesting mechanisms going on here that scientists need to continue to explore people. The general public needs to be aware of possible correlations. And when you have something like with the nitrites and nitrosamines and you know that these polypsychic, you know, carbonyl groups are formed when you have the heat. And, you know, it's something to keep in mind, you know, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, you know, to go, okay, wait a minute.

So if I'm damaging myself this way and I'm doing all this other stuff, maybe that's, you know, maybe that's not good. So it's something that I think is important to just have in your awareness. And for the scientist, you know, it's time to go to work. We need to continue to look at this. And, you know, another thing to bear in mind is that there's a greater play going on in the sense that there's a lot of, you know, talk about vested interest, not just the people that that adhere to a certain position nutritionally,

but the just sheer economic forces behind all of this. So here we're dealing with relatively objective-minded scientists, who I'm sure there's some politics in there, of course, but it's not like they're being funded by the meat and dairy industry. And the amount of money, what was the figure? It's something like, the meat industry is like an $890 billion industry. Like, you know, there's a lot of money to be made in this business.

And when their bottom line is being threatened by studies like this, you know, I guarantee you that there were a lot of backdoor sort of conversations that took place in this World Health Organization situation where they were being pressure probably, you know, with regard to what these statistics were going to be by politicians. And so the fact that they still came out and said this, I think, is very powerful. And you have to really understand that there's a gigantic system at play that has a vested interest in having people believe that certain foods that are unhealthy for you are indeed healthy. And so what we're seeing right now in many ways is very analogous to the tobacco industry and how they handled it. So the meat industry issues their press release. This is nonsense, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, they're sort of, you know, lining up their arguments to refute all of this because it's a threat.

It's a threat to their business, right? Yeah, of course. So. I haven't kept up with that. I haven't seen what their response was, but I was curious. I was like, what are people working at, I mean, people working at Subway, don't give a crap, but what are, what's, because that's all processed meat, right? That's like cold cuts.

I mean, that's full of nitrites, I think. I mean, I don't, maybe they have meat that's not, you can be. buy meat, but that to my, that was the first thing I thought of was all these, like, sandwich places that are serving all these processed meats. I was like, oh, man, I must be freaking out right now. But you know what? This has been, I talked about this on, like, a year ago on when I went on Joe Rogan's podcast, talk about nitrides and processed meats and how it leads to nitrosamines and

cause cancer. It's not, like, scientists have known about this. It's just now getting out there. Like, this is new. This is like breaking news. It's not. It's really not. It's actually quite old.

I think the point really, ultimately. Like, you know, it's important for me to say that, that, you know, I'm not here to tell anyone how to live their life. Like, I'm not here to say, you should do this or do that or you need to be vegan. It's like, that's not my business, right? I can share my experience. If that is interesting to people, I'm happy to talk about it. But ultimately, everybody needs to take responsibility for their own decisions about how they're going to live. And I think it's just, like, studies like this and kind of what's happening in the conversation that's occurring, the conversations that are occurring right now, just make it incumbent upon everybody to,

do their own research. Like, look into it. Read the study yourself. What is your conclusion? Don't just read the headline. You know, understand that, you know, there is an avenue for you to expand your own horizons. And, you know, I don't, I mean, when we were kids, like, there was no internet. You know, if you wanted to research something like this, that was like a, you're, like, in the basement of some library looking at microfeach. And now you have all of, anything you want to know with 10 minutes on Google, you can find out all kinds of incredible information. So, avail yourself of that resource and educate yourself. Yeah, as much as you can. Obviously, it's difficult to, it's a lot of bad information on Google

as well, but you're right. Especially with these studies. Who's going to read stuff? Like, it seems like so many, so much research now is funded by special interest groups. And only someone like you is going to take the time to actually read the full study rather than the abstract and to try to figure out who's doing the study and who has to gain and who's being paid by who. and all this kinds of stuff. It's not just about who's funding it. I think the bigger elephant in the room is the lack of funding.

And what drives scientists to publish quicker and be sloppy with their data is the fact that their career depends on it. So because there's such great competition for the little bit of money, most of the money in science is coming from the NIH. So it's government, taxpayer dollars, right? And we only get so much every year. And so there's not a lot of money. And so in order to get that little piece of money, you have to have this whole, you know,

like you have to have a ton of publications. You have to have good ones. And in order to get something published, you need to get data. In order to get data, I mean, it takes a long. I took six years to get my PhD. You know, I got a nature cell biology paper, which is very prestigious. But it took me six years. And it took me six years because science is hard.

It fails. You've got to figure it out. You've got to work through that. You've got to problem solve. I mean, you're trying to tackle complex problems. Now you're a podcaster. I'm telling you, it's like there were so many times where I was just like, I can't do this. This is, I mean, I'm like digging into like figuring out like the molecular proteins and interact

and how they're interacting and what time frame are doing it inside of a cell, which is inside of the mitochondria, which is inside of a tissue, which is not an organism. and how they're all interacted together. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, wow. You know, so my point is, is not that to complain, but kind of. It's that, you know, science right now is in a bad place because of the lack of funding. And so, you know, something like 40% of scientific publications can't be replicated,

which means people are just getting data. And, you know, there's a lot of times when you get data and you can't repeat it. And it's just artificial, meaning it just happened because you did something. It seems like it's given the same. weight in the conversation, because if you research a particular issue, you're going to find studies that contradict each other, right? And it's sort of like, well, he says this and he says this, so I guess they don't know when, in fact, maybe one is an incredibly robust study, and another one is like, you know, nonsense. Exactly. But unless you're Rhonda Patrick, you're not

able to decipher the distinguishing factors, and then it gets propagated across the blogosphere and by journalists who are lazy or don't have the time or what have you to really, you know, parse the facts. And here we are where we have access to so much information. But, yeah, I mean, it really is confusing. You know, and it's sort of like... You're talking me up at thinking, but you're right. You know, it does take a lot.

And a lot of these conflicting data, you know, like one says X, the other one says Y. Well, well, who do I believe? You know, you really have to look at a large body of evidence. and not only in that field, but in other fields, because then you can start to figure out, oh, there are certain gene polymorphisms that changes the way, you know, this, you know, vitamin D gets converted into the active hormone. And so even if you give them a supplement, they're not making the vitamin D. That may be why this.

And, you know, so there's all these intricate, you know, mechanisms and interactions going on. And, you know, I'm not the only one that can parse through it. There are a lot of good scientists out there. But it's hard. And I see a lot of people out there that, you know, will read an abstract or read a study and they're not a scientist and they just, they just spew out stuff and they're, and they are causing more problems. Now, there's a lot of good people out there that aren't scientists that can make good decisions and can figure things out. So I'm

not saying you have to be a scientist, but. But what you're doing is so important because you're, you're translating this information to the public, right? So there's a lot of scientists out there and in their own communities and circles, they know what's going on, but they're not communicating to public. And they could be like, oh, yeah, that's all crazy what it says in Time Magazine or whatever. But like, so who's the one he's going to correct the record? You know what I mean? And so I think that makes your role all the more important, but also that carries like a lot of responsibility with it, you know, to like get it right. No joke. Yeah. It's like, it's like huge responsibility. And I'm sure you feel the same type of responsibility because you're sort of this poster, you know,

child for, you're not really a child, a poster athlete for these vegan athletes for people that are that are vegans or vegetarians that, you know, are wanting to be competitive athletes. They're probably looking up to you. And so some of the information that you put out there, you probably very, you probably are very concerned about getting right. But like you said, it's not your, your job to, you know, tell people what to do. It's your job to kind of make them think.

And that's actually something that you made me do with that blog. post that was listing the 10 reasons why. You know, I ate mostly plant-based diet based for health reasons because I'm trying to get all these micronutrients and fiber. But you really did make me think about some of the impact on the water usage and the CO2 emissions. I mean, these are things I care about, you know, the species extinction. I mean, I'm drinking like plastic bottle of water right now and I was talking to my husband,

you know, we're staying at my mom's and she doesn't have a water filter on her sink, which is ridiculous. I got to get her one. But we have one, so we don't, we're not using these plastic bottle. Like single-use items, yeah. And then I look at the waste and I'm like, it's like, it's disturbing. Just to see what we've used in like a wink. Right. It's disturbing. And you do it without thinking about it. Totally. Totally. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a latent inhibition and it's something that you get used to. It's something I became very familiar with in graduate school, and I'm totally rambling on here. But I used to, when I was in graduate school, I used to do a lot of mouse work and I'd have to kill mice and then for medical reasons. So it's probably against your

beliefs, but I'd have to kill mice and I'd kill them and then I'd harvest their organs, their livers, their thymus, their spleens. And I would do a bunch of experiments to figure out different immunological types of things and all this metabolic blah, blah, blah stuff, right? And I would do that like, you know, definitely a couple times a week, three times a week. I'd go and kill a mouse. At first, it was really hard. The first time I did it, you gas some with CO2 and you watch them suffocate. And it was very disturbing and I couldn't watch. And then as I started to do it more, it was like nothing.

I got to the point because I was doing this for years where I would just go and I kill a bunch of mice and cut them up, open them up. And it was like nothing. I didn't even faze me. And then I stopped doing those experiments and I shifted to doing something else for like, you know, a few months, like half a year or something. And then I went back to having to like do these mouse studies because I was getting my paper published and the reviewers were at.

asking for all these specific experiments. So I went back to kill a mouse, and all of a sudden, I was very sensitive to it. Yeah. Like, it was the first time. It is. It goes back to that idea that I think we are all hardwired to be compassionate. Like, we don't want to kill things, you know. It's just we become creatures of habit, you know, and we just sort of go on this autopilot,

you know, living this matrix lifestyle without really questioning, you know, the grand paradigm of why we're doing what we're doing. And that's applicable to everything from, you know, the plastic water bottle to the car you drive to the, you know, the iPhone. Like, we don't, it's like, do you spend time thinking about how your iPhone arrived in your hand? Like, it's probably a horror show. You know what I mean? But this is the, this is the, this is the culture that we live in. So then it becomes, you know, a question of how can we just, how can we do better? How can we make better decisions that help us live a little bit more gently on the planet in certain ways. And it's not about being perfect.

And it's, you know, and I certainly stand on no high horse because I'm vegan. I just flew, you know, to Europe and back in an airplane. You know, it's like, and I use an iPhone and I drive a pickup truck. So it's like, you know what I mean? Like I'm in no position to judge anybody else. And that judgment is, you know, is violence. on others as well. So I think that to the extent that we can be more compassionate and understanding with each other and that if anything, we turn that spotlight on ourselves and just focus on

improving ourselves and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and why they're not seeing the world that way that you would like them to see, I think we might get onto a better track. Awesome. You know, it's so true. When you turn the light on to yourself and you start to understand and analyze what your motives are, what your intentions, why you behave the way you do, you begin to become more compassionate and understand others. And then it's a little easier. And I really have enjoyed this discussion, Rich, like you're a super cool guy. I really, really enjoy talking with you. Yeah, thanks so much for coming out here and doing this. And I can't wait to have you on

my podcast. It's going to do it again. I know. It's going to come to your house to do it. Right, right? It's going to be fun. I look forward to it. So you want to, I mean, people can find you, you know, you wrote a book, things like that. Yeah, sure. So, um, easiest way to find me is, is richroll.com, my website, the podcast, Richroll Podcast. I wrote a book called Finding Ultra, which is my story. It's a memoir. A lot of nutrition information in there and the appendices about what I eat and why I eat the way that I do. This spring, my wife and I wrote a cookbook called The Plant Power Way, which is basically a plant-based cookbook and lifestyle guide. It's 120-plus plant-based recipes. Oh, nice. Super yummy and delicious and awesome. And you can find those on

Amazon or wherever you buy books. Right on. And I'm just Rich Roll on Twitter and Instagram and all those places, whatever. All right, Rich. Very cool. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much. Really enjoyed it.

Cool. Thank you so much for listening, you knowledge hound you. Can't get enough. Does the podcast push all the right buttons? Go get on my newsletter and get my podcast summaries, my deep dives onto niche topics, my in-depth articles, and all of the great nonsense by signing up on my newsletter. Go to Found My Fitness. com, throw your email in that sign up box and click submit. You can think of my newsletter as the

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