Stuff You Should Know - Plant-Based Diets

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

You don’t have to be a hardcore vegan to eat a plant-based diet (although you can be). There’s a whole variety of degrees people adopt phasing out meat from their plates. One kind is even called flexitarian for goodness sake. Seems pretty welcoming to us.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. For adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA and obesity, refreshing sleep may be hard to come by and who likes to lag and drag through the day? OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation that could leave you feeling tired and fatigued. Loud snoring, choking, or gasping for air during sleep

could be signs of OSA. Don't sleep on the symptoms. Learn more at don'tsleeponosa.com. This information is provided by Lilly, USA, LLC. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is a good old fashioned,

rootin' tootin' down home episode of Stuff You Should Know. Technical difficulties, please stand by. Yeah, we're a good 20 minutes late, Chuck. Because of, well, it's about to say me, it's not my fault. No, it's not your fault, it's the computer's fault. Right. Not even. But who cares about computers? This is, I mean, this is probably literally the opposite of computers, because we're talking about plants. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you, old school, Chuck, have you ever eaten a plant? I love living things, so I do not kill plants and eat them.

So are you a breatharian? That's what they are, right? Yeah, where you just don't eat. No, of course I eat plants. I, you know, Emily, I would argue has a plant-based diet. Now that I know that a plant-based diet doesn't mean that you're vegan or vegetarian, it just, and you know, as you'll see, depending on the percentage of the website you look at, a lot of people say like, you know, it really depends on how much you eat and a certain percentage, like maybe 80% of your diet

is plant-based, and that's easily, Emily, she eats vegetables constantly. She always has like a radish in her hand? No, but it's just her meals, like her meals, she'll cook like, we try to eat the same stuff, but I don't wanna sit down and eat Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower for dinner. That's a plant-based diet for sure. Yeah, but she don't want to sit down and eat Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower for dinner. That's a plant-based diet for sure.

Yeah, but she'll throw some chicken in there and some fish. So she's sort of pescatarian plus, maybe? Yeah, pescapoltarian. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of terms for all this stuff. I didn't know about a third of these probably. Yeah, they all seem to fall under the umbrella term, like you said, a plant-based diet. So like a vegan diet is a plant-based diet, but not all plant-based diets are like vegan diets.

Yeah. That kind of setup. I had never heard of lacto-vegetarian, which basically means throw out all the rest, but I'll eat dairy. Yeah, understandable. There's also ovo-vegetarian. These are terrible names, by the way. Yeah. That means that you, um, include eggs in your vegan diet. Yeah. Not oval. That would make even more sense. I think. No, it means that you include Ovo in your diet.

Yeah. Um, but I should say it's not a vegan diet at all. Like you can't have any kind of, um, animal products in a vegan diet. Not just like meat or dairy or eggs, but like vegan won't eat honey. We talked about fig wasps recently, they won't eat figs for that reason. I think some vegans, I found a lot of support behind

vegans saying like a processed wasp part in a thing is fine. Okay, I'll bet there's some that still won't. Oh, sure. Um, and then there's also lacto-ovo vegetarian. You're a vegetarian, but you eat eggs and dairy. There's lacto-ovo bacon vegetarian. And then there's what you said, Emily was pescatarian, which is, I mean, you're, you're essentially just, you know,

you're eating more vegetables than the average person at this point, if you're a pescatarian, I think. That's right. No comment on what that does to your butt. What, if you just eat seafood? No, if you eat nothing but broccoli and cauliflower all day long. Oh yeah, not just your butt,

but like the wellbeing of people around you too. Yeah, but it's very good for you. She's a much healthier human than I am. Nice. Well, not the part that you're not as healthy, but I'm glad that she is. Yeah, of course. One thing we should point out early on

is that there's a sort of exhaustive look at how much meat people eat around the world at a certain point or kind of peppered throughout. And just for comps purposes, in the United States, we average per capita meat consumption between 123 to 150-ish kilograms, depending on where you're looking. So just kind of put that in your back pocket when we start talking about other countries. Yeah, that really kind of came home to me

when I converted it to quarter pounders. Yeah, what's that? Or in Europe, Royale with cheese. That's 1,332 quarter pounders a year. That means you're eating almost four quarter pounders worth of meat a day every year at 151.4 kilograms. If only you could do that and live. Right.

That's called heaven, my friend. So clearly with those kind of numbers, the US is a meat-based culture. I mean, plenty of people here do not take part in that kind of thing, obviously. But as you'll see, many cultures around the world historically have plant-based diets and still have plant-based diets. Depending on who you ask, they might say there's about two billion meat-based eaters in the world and about four billion plant-based eaters. Yeah.

So, I mean, that's not too bad. They're really holding things up. Because, I mean, if you're... Actually, that's more than bad. They're really holding things up because I mean if you're if actually that's more than that's the majority The you're saying the majority of the world is plant-based That I'm saying two billion and four billion. I'm not I'm not weighing in on percentages. Okay Yeah, we will go around the world in a minute, but let's go through history for a little bit first Okay, because plant-based diets, especially in the West, they're kind of like a new thing.

Maybe they came out of the New Age movement in the 70s and 80s. No. This is really old stuff. In fact, you can make a really good case that plant-based diets, especially like a flexitarian version, is essentially the default diet of humans. Yeah, I mean, in some cases,

or actually in a lot of cases, especially historically speaking, and still in some places today, it's sort of the de facto diet because that's what you have, and you may not have the kind of money to go get really good meat or something like that. So if you look back through time,

and you go back to say like Ireland in the 19th century before the potato famine, they were eating tons of potatoes. There were a lot of poor people in Ireland that were like, hey, we can grow potatoes. They have some vitamins and minerals. Maybe we can milk a cow and eat a little pickled herring. But other than that, we're eating lots and lots of potatoes. Yeah, for sure. This is before the famine when a potato blight came.

And when the Irish immigrants really started to come en masse to the United States in the 19th century, they were quite surprised at the abundance and availability and cheapness of meat in the United States. And that apparently dates back to colonial times, where colonists in well, what would become the United States, were eating more meat than the average person back in England. They were eating essentially the same amount of meat as

elites back in the UK. And that's the long-standing thing where meat consumption throughout history in most places is associated with a higher status, an elite status. You're wealthier because it's always been harder to come by. Well, the colonies had a lot more land, so they could grow a lot more livestock and then, hence, eat a lot more meat. Yeah. Had a lot more land, asterisked. Right. well put. Yeah, everyone knows what we mean by that.

Yeah, and you know, there's, who helped us with the original version of this? Was it Libia? No, Laura. All right, the claw? Dr. Claw. Dr. Claw. She dug up a graph basically about how Italians eat, and prior to, well, not that long ago,

they ate what you would call the Mediterranean diet now, and they just called it what we eat because that's what's around here. Right, the diet. Yeah, exactly, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, legumes, fish, cereals, not a ton of dairy or meat. But they, I believe after World War II, they started eating a lot more meat. Before that it was basically a plant-based diet because as you'll see once again, no,

no, no, Chuck, they're eating lots of fish. Plant-based diet is, we're talking about meat here, fish get a pass I guess as far as plant-based diet goes. It does not mean vegetarian or vegan. Right. And Italy followed the same trajectory that most nations do. Once they reach a certain point of prosperity, meat consumption just starts going through the roof. Whereas before in history, elites like individual groups of people who are well off or could afford meat, when an entire nation becomes well off enough, they start buying meat. Meat consumption just goes up.

So after the war, Italy followed that. And you'll see like throughout the world, the more prosperous a nation, the higher their meat consumption, almost to a country. Yeah, which a cynic might say, well, if every nation was prosperous, everyone would just eat tons of meat. And it sounds cynical, but like the data sort of says what you just said. Right.

You know? If you look at the U.S. in the 19th century, they were roundly encouraging to people eat lots and lots of meat. There was a cholera outbreak in 1832 and the US government said, eat more meat and drink more alcohol and lay off the fruits and vegetables, obviously because of cholera.

But there was also just this idea in America early on that like, you know, we're well fed and we're well bred because we eat red meat and we grow them big here in the States. We're not sitting around eating rice and grains and potatoes. Yeah, and that diet has just spread throughout the world, but again, it doesn't necessarily seem to mean because people are emulating the United States,

it just seems like the United States was following a trajectory that other countries are now, right? Yeah, and hey, what a great time to set up where countries are now, because remember those numbers I told you about the United States. We're gonna walk you around the world, everybody. Not in the way back machine. What do we call this?

When we're just currently- The go far machine. Yeah, the go far and wide machine. It still has that new imaginary machine smell in it. Nice. Modern day, jump in the go far and wide machine and come with us at first to Africa. If you look at continent wide,

the stat is about 65 kilograms of meat per capita. I wonder about that number because if you break it down per country, South Africa, they eat about 65.2 kilograms compared to, let's say, the Democratic Republic of Congo at just over four kilograms, who's eating more red meat in Africa than South Africa to make that average 65? I don't know. One thing that I recognized from researching this is that there are so many stats that are so different

and estimates that are just so different and don't understand why it's so hard to track something like meat consumption. Like we've got that so commoditized that, I mean, I don't understand how we can't track it. Even for the United States, you rattled off three different estimates for how much meat the United States eats. So who knows, Chuck, who really knows whether any of these numbers are correct or not? Well, no one's ever asked me how much meat I eat.

I could skew that to... Oh, really? Have you? Oh, I get that all the time. Usually because I have like a big chunk of like steak in my teeth. No, no, no. I mean like an official study.

Like I don't know how they do any of that stuff. It's sort of like weird black magic to me. But we do know that generally speaking, West African nations eat a little more meat, it's a little more meat heavy than East African nations. But even in West Africa, that's again, I mean if the average per capita was 65 kilograms, that's like less than half the United States per capita.

Right, yeah. I'm guessing from what I could tell, the United States leads the world in meat consumption. I'm sure. Most other countries, depending on where they are, are gonna eat a lot less. But again, like you said, Africa is not some single monolith. It has a bunch of different variation.

Asia is the same way. On the whole, Asia eats far less meat compared to one another. Some eat more, some eat less, and you get all sorts of weird little statistical blips that come up from that. Yeah, if you look at the top 10 countries around the world with the highest rates of vegetarianism, India and Taiwan are on there. So two of the top 10 are in Asia. Japan and China, they aren't on the list of top 10 percentage vegetarian-wise, but they eat a lot less meat than the US

at an average per capita consumption under 75 kilograms. Yeah, and Taiwan's a good example too. It has a very high percentage of vegetarians, but it also has a really high per capita meat consumption too. So it's just basically wacky over there. Yeah, and this is another, like if you look at Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam,

they're all under 20 kilograms. In Thailand is it like 25 and Laos at 30. So, I mean, that's way less than the 75 average in Japan and China. Yeah, I would guess Thailand, and I'm not sure about Laos, but I would guess Thailand is wealthier than probably Myanmar or Indonesia. I don't know about Vietnam,

but I think a lot of it also has to do with the religious, like what religions are predominant there too. Yeah, which we'll get in, well, actually, we should take a break before we do that, but we'll talk about India real quick because they have the highest proportion of vegetarians in the world. Close to 40%, 38%, 39% are vegetarian in India,

for obvious reasons. And 6.6 kilograms of meat per capita, compared to as many as 150 for the US. Yeah, exactly. That's very low. It is very low. All right, we promised talk of religion, because who doesn't love that?

But this is religion as it relates to diet, because depending on your religion, there may be a lot of rules and restrictions on what they say you should eat, because of a bunch of reasons. Sometimes it shows like purity, sometimes it's like no, it shows how dedicated and faithful you are.

Sometimes it's like, hey, you get it following rules. Don't eat this on this day. And let's see how you do with that. But for whatever reason, there are plenty of religions that have rules sort of surrounding meat, for sure. Yeah, some of the most famous ones are kosher. It's a big one where you have to actually separate certain kinds of food, like you separate meat,

you separate dairy. There's also restrictions and guidelines on how animals are slaughtered. So it's not particularly vegetarian by nature, keeping kosher is. But it makes you so much more mindful that a lot of people just eventually end up being vegetarian just by following a kosher diet. Um, there's also halal is very similar.

It has all sorts of permissions and bands and stuff like that on what animals can be eaten, but it's different in that, like there's no shellfish allowed or birds of prey, but you can eat rabbits. Um, but they're, they're both similar-ish in that you really have to pay attention to what you're eating if you're a genuine adherent of this religious diet that's being prescribed to you. Yeah, and if you're wondering, like, well, how does that affect the rate of vegetarianism in Israel?

They are second behind India. That's not the only factor, of course, but I think the highest percentage of veganism is in Israel too, which is, yeah. I don't know why that surprised me, but it did. Okay, good, noted. There's, I think, so this is another thing too. Like a lot of people just end up being default vegetarians because of their religious diet.

And another good example is the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church, which we talked about in our Holly Selassie episode, I think. They have 200 days a year that are considered fast days where you just can't eat meat, but you can eat plants. So I mean, for all intents and purposes, you're at least the majority of the year a vegetarian if you're Ethiopian Orthodox. I wonder if 165 days a year they just party down on some steak. Probably. What, Seventh Day Adventist? It's not a requirement to be a vegetarian,

but they're like, it's not a bad way to live. They kind of endorse it. Yeah, remember they grew like, it's not a bad way to live. They kind of endorse it. Yeah, remember they grew out of that whole William Keith and John Kellogg movement of the 19th century. Yeah, they endorse the movement generally, but about 36% end up lacto-ovo vegetarians,

and then 16%, I'm sorry, an additional 16% eat plant-based diet with maybe a little fish, maybe a little bit of meat. Yeah. Buddhism is very connected to vegetarianism, like a straightforward religious decree like kosher. Instead, it's linked to nonviolence, right? So if your religion forbids violence, you can't really cut the head off of a chicken and eat it very easily. People still do in Buddhist countries, but it's much more, or it's much less common and frequent.

And in fact, apparently in Japan, from 675 to 1872, meat was essentially banned in that country because of the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism. You gotta wait on that chicken to die of natural causes. You just follow it around like a buzzard. He's not looking so good. Yeah, he looks a little peaking. Hindu is, I love that word by the way. Good, I'm glad I used it.

I heard that word last night on the TV show, The Pit, and I realized I just don't use it much. You know what I like that's similar is peckish. I like peckish as well. Yeah, me too. Maybe our musical duo should be peaking and peckish. Oh my God. That is, you just won the band name contest,

Chuck, for all time. But everyone would be like, who's peaked and who's peckish? Like, I think Josh is peaked and Chuck is peckish. It wouldn't matter. We could both be. It would depend on our mood on any given day. Or perhaps we are both peaked and peckish. Yeah. At all times. We're always hungry and we're always not looking so good. looking so good. Hinduism at almost 80% eats a plant-based diet, but they, again, it's not required.

It's just like, hey, why don't you do this? That kind of thing. Heavily suggested maybe. Yeah, it's also, I mean, especially since the Hindu Nationalist ruling party took over the Bharatiya Janata party BJP. They have been enforcing like really strict rules that are Hindu in nature against eating meat so much so that people have been beaten People I think one person at least has been lynched for eating meat or being associated with the meat trade specifically beef because cows are considered sacred in Hinduism.

And also similarly, in India, vegetarianism is linked to social status. Yeah. In basically complete contradiction of what it's like in, say, the West, where, you know, eating meat has long been associated with being an elite or having high status. Vegetarianism is in India, apparently.

All right. Flip-flopped it. I love it. Yeah, and if you're like, wow, 80% of Hindus are vegetarian, it's pretty impressive. Prepare for this. Janes, these are the people who are so against hurting or killing anything that they have little hand dust brooms that they carry with them to dust off seats before they sit down so they don't accidentally kill a bug. 92% of them and 59% of Sikhs in India are all vegetarians.

And I guess 8% of Janes are bad Janes. I guess so. I mean, like, how would you show up to, like, the Jane meeting and show your face? Yeah, or show up to a Jane party with a rack of ribs. Right. That's probably not, that's probably frowned upon, I would say.

I would think so. All right, so if, and of course I'm kidding, no offense to any Janes out there. No, of course not. I'm sure they'd show up and be like natural causes, and everybody would be like heck yeah. Right. So if you're gonna eat a plant-based diet,

it can look many different ways, depending on what you're into. We found some information from Harvard Health, and obviously one thing that you're gonna do is eat lots of veggies like Emily does. They say like, hey, fill half your plate up with veggies and vary the color. Don't eat just like a bunch of green veggies.

Like eat veggies of all stripes and colors. Get you some anthocyanins, why don't you? Yeah. Also, the way, so these are like, if you want to start to get into vegetarianism, these are some easy ways to kind of slide into it. Another one is changing the way that you think about meat. Rather than it being the center or the star of the meal, just kind of put it to the side.

Like it doesn't necessarily have to be a thumb size piece of steak. But I mean, if it more, you know, kind of evenly resembled the grain or the greens on your plate, that would make a lot more sense. Yeah, I'll have the cream spinach, a side of broccoli, and a thumb of steak. Right. It's funny. So I used thumb.

So have you ever heard that thing about a portion of meat being no bigger than the palm of your hand? For like, that's the healthy way to eat meat? Yes. I don't think I've heard that, but I could see that. So not just that, if you cup your hands, that's your serving of fruit and vegetables,

and then your thumb is your measure of fats, like a nut butter or something like that. There's a name for all this. It's called the Zimbabwe hand jive. I've done that dance, but I did not know that was an eating scale. Well, so this guy in 1993, Dr. Kazim Mouji, came up with this way of doing it.

It's been widely adopted, but I had no idea that's what it was called. It's a great name. What I had no idea that's what it was called. It's a great name. What I do, we host a lot of, especially in the spring and summertime of people when we go to the lake and just at our house here. We throw dinner parties, we just do a lot of that kind of stuff.

And aside from being exhausting, one thing, I'm just kidding, it's actually a lot of fun, but one thing I do, and this goes along with how you think about meat and how much meat you have is I don't cook up 20 chicken breasts if there's 20 people there. I cook up a bunch of whatever kind of cut of chicken and or steak, sometimes I'll do a couple of

meats and I will just, I will slice it all up on a big platter and then you can just get a portion of something rather than saying like, here's a gigantic chicken breast on your plate that you now feel responsible for. Right. And people seem to really like that, you know, like maybe I'll have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then the rest is our veggie sides. Nice. Yeah, so that's a tip from Chuckie.

Yeah, you should just set up a carving station and ask to see each person's thumb size. Yeah. That'd save you a bunch of money. Totally. So let's see, what else? Oh, another good one is to choose different fats, avocados, olive oil, stuff like that,

and then just cook at least one vegetarian meal per week. Dip your toe in the pool. Yeah, and if you start doing these kind of things, it's actually really easy to find yourself down the road, like just doing it without thinking about it, and more and more meals throughout the week become vegetarian, because we'll talk in a minute about why people do this, but a lot of people stop eating as much meat

for health reasons or because they wanna lose weight. And if you just kind of start, like you said, dip your toe in like this, it just becomes kind of second nature over time. Yeah, you can get used to something like that. And I think what you'll find, if you think you need meat because it's more filling, that's just not true.

You get plenty full eating all that other stuff. So you can give it a whirl. I do that stuff every now and then. Whole grains at breakfast is great. This is basically, again, what Emily does, a lot of oatmeal, buckwheat, barley, quinoa, eat like a horse, but not as much as a horse. No.

This is a big one for me, Chuck, is eating fruit for dessert, because I don't ever eat something and like a meal of any kind and not think like, okay, now I have to have something sweet. Oh, really? I just can't not do it. My brain just is wired that way. I am too. like, okay, now I have to have something sweet. Oh, really? I just can't not do it. My brain just is wired that way.

I am too. Yeah, okay, so if you just eat like an apple or some strawberries or something like that, it just short circuits that. It does it for you. Yeah, I have just retrained my brain to where I don't seek that. And it's not like I was eating dessert every night.

Like the only time I literally have dessert, like a dessert is kind of, either if a bunch of people are out to eat and it's an occasion or maybe on vacation or something like that. But it's not like even eating out in a restaurant, we never eat dessert like that. But I have found just one square of dark chocolate

scratches that itch in a nice way. That always feels like a punishment to me. Why, because it's just one? Just one and it's dark chocolate. Oh, you don't like dark chocolate? It's fine, but it's not going to short circuit that dessert. You know what, I used to not be into dark chocolate,

but I love it now. Yeah, good, I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. I'm gonna cut the legs out from under you in a little while then. But I don't do that every night, but I'll still, you know, when I want that, when I find myself like,

God, I gotta have the sweet thing tonight, I'll do one square, sprinkle a couple of little dabs of sea salt on top, and that does it for me. My God. Why don't you live in Brooklyn? I know. Cause I don't have a mayonnaise store.

Greens too, obviously, like leafy vegetables, salads, just eat as much stuff. Like I love a salad. Emily, she grows that stuff and prepares fresh salads, makes her own salad dressing. She's gotten more into cooking. She never used to do stuff like that at all, but I found myself eating

a lot more salad these days. Right. And then the last one is after you do all these things, eat more vegetables, eat a vegetarian meal once a week, eat a salad for dinner. This is actually the key to the whole thing. Go to bed really early so that your normal breakfast will come much more quickly.

I don't eat breakfast, but yeah. That was a joke, by the way. I know. I get it. Okay. Well, thanks for the laugh support. You want to take a break and then come back and talk about why people become vegetarian or vegan? Sure. Okay. Well, we'll be right back again. Music

Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should know Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without your knowing. If anyone's ever said you snore loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.

OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at Don'tSleepOnOSA.com. This information is provided by Lilly USA LLC. Okay, Chuck, I think I promised before we left that we'd talk about why people become vegetarian. I already said health reasons, which we'll get into more in a little while. But a lot of people just do it because it's just healthier. Like if you want to eat healthier, most people don't like double or triple

down on fried chicken, like you instead start turning to plants, you know, like people just start eating more plants and it's almost intuitive. I don't think it even has anything to do with the nutritionist set in the United States, convincing people like plants are healthy. I just feel like we just intuitively know that that is healthier than eating like a steak or again fried chicken. Yeah. I feel like there's a place for fried chicken. I'm not knocking that. No I mean as you know it's my favorite food and I just you know. I heard you. I gotta gotta pick and

choose with that stuff but it's not removed from my life. Thank goodness but you're gonna get lots of vitamins and minerals and fiber and antioxidants in your veggies If you eat legumes if you eat if you're a vegetarian you probably lots of legumes and chickpeas and lima beans and stuff like that Soi, you're gonna get lots of protein, amino acids, lots of fiber and antioxidants there, and also no cholesterol, which is, you know,

I have cholesterol problems genetically speaking, so, and a lot of people do, so that's a good way to get your cholesterol down. Yeah, and there's a lot of variety in just legumes alone, like rather than do you want the chicken or the fish, there's something like 20,000 species of legumes, And I didn't know this, I ran across this Chuck, there's a category of food called neglected and underutilized legumes. The saddest legume.

They even have an acronym for NULs, right? And there's apparently a ton of legumes that are found around the world that are known to like local cuisine that are just waiting to be adopted to kind of make the plant-based diet even more varied. Yeah, I mean, I ate, there's 20,000. I probably have had five. Yeah. Actually, maybe more, but no, no, no. No, I know what you mean. Yeah. Actually, maybe more, but no, no, no. No, I know what you mean. I just had a night, so one of the ones I found was the Bambara groundnut.

You would make a trillion dollars if instead of a mayonnaise operation, you opened a Bambara groundnut operation in Brooklyn. I mean, you would make so much cash, dude, overnight. People just like saying groundnut. Yeah, but that Bambara really sells the groundnut, if you ask me. Yeah, for sure.

Obviously, we've mentioned the concerns with red meat, but with beef and pork, people have been calling for years for less of that in your diet, and health practitioners and doctors, because obviously, heart attack, stroke, cancer, all the things that can lead you in that direction once you eat too much red meat. Yeah, and the medical consensus is, and remains so,

that eating red meat, too much red meat, is bad for you. Like, it just leads to all sorts of negative health outcomes, like stroke and heart attack, heart disease, things like that. The problem is, despite that consensus, studies still come out fairly regularly that question that idea that say, no, that's not necessarily true. And they usually get shouted down. But it's enough that it makes like some people question that. Like some people question that. I feel like because the medical consensus is that for now, it's probably okay to kind of follow that philosophy

that less meat is healthier than more meat. Yeah, for sure. Another big, big reason is animal welfare and just maybe your moral values as a human. That is a lot of people switch over to vegetarianism or veganism because the modern factory farming system in the United States is a horror show. And everybody knows this. Some people do it anyway. But it's a big reason, you know, like vegans are like, no, all animals have a right to life and a right to freedom

and we're not doing it right here in the United States, so I'm not gonna take part in it. Yeah, that's a whole subcategory of veganism called ethical vegans. And I think that they could shoulder their own episode because the whole philosophy behind it and like the way that they live their lives, it's really interesting.

And something I ran across that they counter is the idea of carnism, eating meat, not being normal. And we just take it for normal. And they, they question that. They're like, who said that eating meat is normal? And that that's like why people like me can feel bad when I pass like a truck full of cows on their way to the slaughter on the highway and then still go eat like a cheeseburger that same day that we just kind of have this idea that carnism is normal and vegans are like,

no, that's not true. So I found that fascinating. I kind of wanted to get into it a little more. Yeah, for sure. I'm So I found that fascinating. I kind of wanted to get into it a little more. Yeah, for sure. I'm not gonna tell that story. Mind fleeting is another one, which is exactly what it sounds like. Just instead of falling into a pattern

and I'll just eat that because that's what I've always eaten or grab that thing that's quick and brainless to put in my mouth. Grab it by the horns. Yeah, to really just have a heightened awareness of what you're eating, what's going in your body, and every impact from your health

to what it means to the world and to that animal. Just being more mindful is another reason that people will go to a plant-based diet. Yeah, I think that's how people get to that from like religious mandated diets. Yeah, and we'll put environmentalism in its own category because there's a whole section on that, but that's another reason.

Okay, let's pick up health outcomes. Let's dive into that a little more. So one of the things that people figure out pretty quickly when they become vegans in particular is that you can get really unhealthy, really quick just eating food that qualifies as vegan food. There's a ton of processed vegan food out there. A lot of times a lot of sweetener, including just sugar, is added. And just basically eating packaged food or even french fries, as long as they're cooked

in vegetable oil, those are vegan and everyone knows that french fries aren't really good for you. So there is like a whole kind of blind alley that you have to watch out for when you get into veganism. Yeah, I'm not a vegan, but I can still say, word of caution if you go that route that you have to be more active in meal planning.

What you really want to do is eat whole foods and eat real foods. If you're like, I'm going to go vegan and just sort of buy the ultra-processed stuff that is technically vegan, you're not doing yourself any health favors. I mean, you're still doing, as far as your moral values are concerned, you're doing right by that, but you want good outcomes all the way around. So just lean toward whole foods and the Mediterranean diet, which again, people around the Mediterranean just call it eating. That has roundly been shown over the years to be kind of the one of the ideal diets that you can lean toward.

I would say the ideal diet. I mean, as far as health outcomes go, like, I can't imagine how much this diet has been studied. And result after result shows that, like, some kinds of cancers, diabetes, cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, like these things are all lower in people who eat like a Mediterranean diet, like that's just what they eat, than people who don't, especially regular meat eaters. Yeah, for sure. As far as the end of it, you know, we'll kind of go through a little bit about like who's deficient in what, depending on what you eat. If you're looking at protein and saturated fat, you're going to have, obviously, if you're

a meat eater, you're going to have the highest intake among anyone, and the lowest is going to be among vegans. That just makes a lot of sense. If you're a vegetarian or a fish eater, you're going to be somewhere in the middle. And vegetarians are more likely than meat or fish eaters to have, as a result, inadequate protein intake. And vegans even more likely to have inadequate protein intake, I think, more than vegetarians.

Yeah, that's a long-standing chestnut in the, I guess, I don't wanna say bodybuilding communities, people who work out hardcore, that you can't possibly be ripped as a vegan. And our Stuff You Should Know listener, Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein, the guitarist for The Misfits, he is just vegan to the core,

and he is totally ripped. And in fact, he has his own protein powder called a vegan monster protein where you can get ripped yourself if you want to and still be a vegan. He has his own protein powder called Vegan Monster Protein, where you can get ripped yourself if you want to and still be a vegan. I think ripped vegan is, that's gotta already be a band name. Oh, I wouldn't, yeah, maybe that's his sideband,

his folk sideband. Yeah, ripped vegan. You might have a vitamin B12 deficiency if you are a vegan, because plants don't have B12. I think 52% of vegans are B12 deficient, 7% of vegetarians, and if you're a meat eater, you have a less than 1% chance of being B12 deficient. That's a big deal, too. I mean, like, that is a well-known problem for vegans and vegetarians because B12 is used for red blood cell production, cell wall production, nerve function, DNA production, and it's just not in plants. It's in meat, it's in fish, it's in dairy.

So you really have to pay attention to that and basically take B12 supplements all the time to make sure you don't become deficient because it's not good. Yeah, for sure. Here's one thing though, and this is something that was controlled for BMI even. If you're a vegetarian or vegan, you have a kind of a remarkably, a remarkable statistical risk or higher risk, I guess, of getting bone fracture than a meat eater. And especially when it comes to your hips, the risk of hip fracture with vegetarians, you have a 25% higher risk of fracturing

your hip as a vegetarian, controlling for BMI again, and vegans, 131% higher chance of hip fracture. Yeah, so part of it is that B12 deficiency because B12 helps produce bone, and so bone density. But I also wondered if vegans typically get less protein, and therefore have less muscle mass. On average, obviously you can get ripped as a vegan, but not everyone does.

If you're more susceptible to falling, you can lose your balance more easily, because you have slightly less muscle mass than a meat eater, and then with less bone density, if you do fall, you're more likely to break a bone. Just my, I wonder. Yeah, yeah. I did mention cancer, you know,

I think we often talk about heart attack and stroke and stuff like that, by eating too much red meat, but cancer is another factor that I sort of briefly mentioned, but if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you have a 10 to 18% lower risk of cancer than meat eaters. Although, all cause mortality,

that's another good band name, man, that's three band names. All cause mortality. Still the best is peckish and peaked. All cause, see, that can't be our band name because I can't even say it at the end of the show. All dash cause mortality was not different, which is surprising, between vegetarians and meat eaters and vegans.

Yeah, another thing that surprised me is that vegetarians have a 20% higher risk of having a hemorrhagic stroke. So we should say all of this data came from a 2021 analysis of this British cohort of 65,000 Brits that have been followed around since the 90s. So they managed to look at 20,000 vegetarians. So this is a pretty robust study, and they found that they have a 20% higher risk of stroke. They couldn't determine that for vegans. I think they only had like 2,500 in this cohort,

but for stroke at least, they weren't able to figure out how that affects vegans. You would assume that it would be an even higher percentage for vegans. But a hemorrhagic stroke is where blood vessels in your brain start bleeding. Again, that would make sense because B12 helps fortify cell walls.

And I would think the lack of red blood cell production would have something to do with that too. So I think what we're trying to say, the upshot is it's not just like a slam dunk that you're going to be healthier or your lifetime health outcomes are automatically gonna be better, but still, I mean, it's just, if your overall, or sorry, if your all-cause mortality

is going to be the same, then I don't know. I think that kind of makes an argument to eat whichever makes you feel best. Yeah. That's just a weird stat. Yeah, it is. The all-dash cause. Yeah, I don't know.

I can't explain it. Maybe someone will have some more information on that. But earlier we did promise an entire section on the environmental impact of eating animals because that is yet another reason. And obviously people have all kinds of reasons and it's usually a combination of all these things. But we're learning just,

it's become plainly obvious more and more. This isn't the kind of thing I think that, especially in America, people like to look at a lot in the past. But it seems like in the last 15 years or so, people are sounding the alarm, like, hey, besides ethical concerns and health and all that other stuff like raising animals is to eat is kind of a

or the way we do it is a disaster for the environment. Yeah so there's a lot of misleading stats out there that compare the amount of kilogram kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the kilograms produced of something, right? That doesn't make any sense because a kilogram of broccoli is a lot less as far as food being spread among people than a kilogram, 2.2 pounds of beef, right? You can feed way more people with 2.2 pounds of beef than you can with 2.2 pounds of broccoli. So other people- Like one and a half people.

Exactly, at best. Yeah. But so some people have said, well, let's just alter it a little bit. So we'll measure the kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions for every thousand calories produced. And so that makes it a lot more apples to apples comparison. Yeah. But even still, when you alter it like that,

the numbers essentially come out the same, which is that meat production has a much larger carbon footprint than almost any kind of plant production. Although there are some surprises, like for example, your beloved dark chocolate has a larger carbon footprint than producing poultry or pork Chuck How do you feel about your dark chocolate with salt on top of it now? I didn't kill that chocolate You know coffee and chocolate are two pretty notorious

You know Environmental disasters as well on the on the non meat side for sure, for sure. For sure. The reason why, apparently, is demand. There's so much demand for chocolate that the deforestation that results to create more fields for cocoa production, that just is what's giving it such a huge footprint. And I think coffee is relatively the same. Overall, though, I found a 2019 study from Sustainability, the Journal, and they basically said vegetarians have 33% lower greenhouse gas emissions based on their diet than meat, and a vegan diet has 53% lower greenhouse gas emissions.

It's just, that's just how it goes. Yeah. And if you're like, well, I like eating some meat. The biggest offenders there are beef, lamb, and mutton. Yeah, I thought that was weird. Beef produces 60 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram, and a kilogram of poultry is only six.

But you compare that to a kilogram with just some English peas. That's under one kilogram of greenhouse gas emissions produced. So you might think that as far as water consumption goes, the plants would far outpace like a meat diet because you've got to water vegetables. But generally, there are just a few plant-based foods that have a bigger water footprint than beef. Yeah beef is just the worst offender of all but livestock, raising livestock in general, apparently one-fifth to one-quarter of all the water used by humans goes to raising livestock, which is nuts. But the

reason why is because not only do you need water to keep that head of cattle alive until you decide to kill it, you also need water to grow the grain that you feed that head of cattle. So they're just consuming all over the place, especially as far as water is concerned. Yeah, and just so you know, there are like zero sort of vegetables that outpace beef. The two that do outpace beef that I was referring to

are chocolate and almonds. Yeah, and who considers an almond a vegetable? Come on, give it up. And I think as far as lamb and mutton go, the two other biggest offenders in the meat category, only cashews, pistachios, and hazelnuts consume more water to produce than lamb and mutton. Hazelnuts are so great. Far and away the best nut. and the nuts consume more water to produce than lamb and mutton.

Hazelnuts are so great. Far and away the best nut. Oh, you think? Not the ground nut? I haven't had one yet. Well, peanuts apparently are a ground nut. I have not had the Bambara ground nut yet, so I should wait and reserve judgment. Yeah, peanuts, they grow underground, right? Yup, they're a ground nut. I can see Jimmy Carter holding a big thing of peanuts and roots with dirt falling off of them. RIP and God bless that man. That's right. The U.S. maintains about 9 billion, 9 billion

livestock to get the meat that it needs or wants I guess is the better way to say it. And if that grain went to humans, it'd be enough for 840 million people that have plant-based diets. Yes. And there was another thing that I came across that I was kind of surprised by, totally makes sense, is if we en masse as a species, humans, essentially abandoned livestock production, beef production or meat production, in favor of a plant-based diet, just basically globally, the chance of communicable diseases developing would drop drastically.

Because 75% of emerging communicable diseases are zoonotic, which means humans get them from animals, and we make our closest contact with animals through the livestock industry. Yeah, and at petting zoos. Yeah, I mean as long as it wasn't grown in a lab, you can kiss communicable diseases goodbye. Yeah, the other environmental disaster of raising livestock, and this is more and more lately, is the habitat destruction to raise all these animals.

You're talking about extinction of plant and animal species and thousands more being threatened in the years upcoming because of habitat destruction. And it's also true for some kinds of agriculture. We've talked about palm oil cultivation being a big problem for a lot of stuff, specifically orangutan populations, or at least by example.

But beef, once again, is the biggest factor. Beef drives 41% of tropical deforestation globally, whereas palm oil and soy, which are two sort of offenders on the other side, are only 18% combined. That's all, just 18% of deforestation. Yeah, but I mean, the one takeaway here is beef bad. It's what's for dinner and what ruined the planet. Yeah, I mean, it's far and away leading the way in all the bad categories, you know?

It really does. So yeah, I mean, we've just kind of touched the surface, especially on the environmental impact. There's a lot to dig into there if that interested you. But I feel like we gave some good reasons for people to adopt a plant based diet. I don't know if I'm going to fully, but I'd like to think it's I'm kind of part way there already. Yeah, I eat more vegetables now. I'm kind of part way there already. Yeah, I eat more vegetables now.

I eat way less red meat than I used to. Yeah. For just like all the reasons that we talked about. Yeah, I've cut my four quarter pounders with cheese every day in half and I eat both halves. Since Chuck kind of laughed at my last joke, I think everybody that means we should probably slog along to listener mail.

That was a real laugh. That was a, oh, Josh laugh. Yeah, I know, I love those too. All right, this from a Smithy, because of us, actually. Oh yeah, I saw this one. Hey guys, I've always had a bit of an interest in metalworking, and as of about five years ago, I've had an interest in your show.

I'd say your show has been the longest running podcast of my life actually. I remember listening to your episode about blacksmithing four years ago and that kind of set off the domino effect of me getting really into blacksmithing as a hobby. I'm definitely one of those that like to collect hobbies with most passing in about six months and I never pick it up again,

but not true with blacksmithing. I've stuck with it since your episode came out and I'd like to say I've come a long way with it. I've attached a few pictures of my work, which was very good by the way. Starting with early works and all the way to the two I completed about a week ago. Thought you might be interested in seeing

how your show kicked off one of my favorite hobbies I've ever had, so thanks for that. And that is from Tate Avent. And you can find Tate. Just look up Tater Makes, T-A-I-T-E-R-M-A-K-E-S, and check out Tate's work. Well, thanks a lot, Tate. That is awesome.

Congratulations on your awesome hobby and getting so good at it. And we really appreciate you letting us know that we had some sort of small, tiny impact on you. We love hearing that kind of thing. If you want to be like Tate and let us know that we had some small tiny impact on you, please send it via email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Let's talk about moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity. Doesn't sound familiar? Think about how you've been sleeping lately. If you've had nights where you've been told you snore loudly or choke or gasp for air and then wake up feeling tired, it may be due to OSA. In the US, moderate to severe OSA effects around 24 million adults. Many are adults with obesity and most cases remain undiagnosed and untreated. Don't sleep on the symptoms. Learn more at don'tsleeponosa.com. This information is provided by Lilly USA LLC.

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