The Rich Roll Podcast - Celebrity Chef Rocco DiSpirito’s Plant-Based Embrace

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

When it comes to food, we've been led to believe that healthy and delicious are mutually exclusive. When it comes to eating plant-based, forget about it. Most people can't imagine their palate can pos...sibly be sated without animal products. I've worked hard to bust this myth. But I'm no chef. Good thing today's guest is. But Rocco DiSpirito is no ordinary chef. A James Beard award-winning culinary wizard, this guy is a straight up food genius. Named Food & Wine magazineʼs Best New Chef, People magazineʼs Sexiest Chef and the first chef to appear on Gourmet magazineʼs cover as Americaʼs Most Exciting Young Chef, Rocco is the author of 13 books (5 of which were NY Times bestsellers) who lorded over 3-Star restaurant Union Pacific, a New York City culinary landmark for many years (The New York Times deemed his dishes “pure genius”). Rocco skyrocketed to mainstream fame starring in a countless array of food and celebrity chef television shows, including NBC's The Restaurant, ABC’s Extreme Weight Loss, Bravo's Top Chef and Rocco’s Dinner Party, Restaurant Divided on Food Network — and even Dancing With The Stars. But it hasn't been all roses. Along the way, Rocco faced much adversity. He's battled detractors. And eventually his fast-paced, rich food-laden life caught up with him. By 38, Rocco had become seriously ill, boasting the metabolic rate of a 64-year old with an extra 40 pounds around the mid-section. His doctor told him he had no choice but to go on a battery of medications. But Rocco declined, setting his focus on healing himself with healthier food and physical exercise. It's a path that forever altered his career and indeed his life — a re-imagination of great tasting food in service to well-being; to physical exercise and the world of triathlon; and more recently to exploring the healing benefits of a plant-based diet and the challenge of creating tantalizing recipes without meat and dairy. Ultimately, Rocco walked away from the cloistered sub-culture of New York City haute cuisine. It's a move that puzzled the restaurant world, but Rocco was committed to leveraging his prodigious kitchen talents to help others achieve the vital wellness he now enjoys. Instead of opening up another bistro, he started coaching people. He launched an all-natural food product line. He founded a meal delivery service called The Pound A Day Diet. And he spends his free-time as an Ambassador for HealthCorps, visiting schools across the country performing cooking demonstrations and encouraging thousands of youth to build healthier habits. Indeed, it's a laudable mission to prove that healthy and delicious can indeed coexist. Rocco's more recent embrace of plant-based cuisine is what piqued my interest in sitting down with him. It's also the thrust of his brand new cookbook, Rocco's Healthy & Delicious: More than 200 (Mostly) Plant-Based Recipes for Everyday Life* hitting bookstores everywhere October 17. I love a good character arc. Charismatic and engaging, Rocco delivers in this super fun conversation with one of the world's greatest chefs. Enjoy! Rich

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Just give yourself 72 hours and try some of the stuff we're talking about. Just try my recipes, try your recipes, try making yourself shakes and smoothies for three days out of full fiber, no juicing, blended vegetables and fruits, and give up the gluten and the dairy and the sugar, and tell me how you feel. You'll feel a difference in about 12 hours. In 72 hours, you will definitely feel a difference. That's Rocco Di Spirito, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.
Starting point is 00:00:41 What's going on, you guys? How are you? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Thanks for dropping in on my show, on my podcast. Podcast, the world of podcasting. It's such a funny word, isn't it? I guess it's finding its way into the vernacular of the mainstream, but I also think we still got a ways to go to really penetrate culture. I just got back from Austin last night. I was there all last week. And on my way to the airport, I was talking to my Uber driver who incidentally was listening to the radio when I got in the car. And in that moment, I realized I probably taken hundreds of Ubers just in the last couple of years and not once, not on one occasion have I gotten into
Starting point is 00:01:21 an Uber and the driver was listening to a podcast. It's always a radio, not one time. So I'm talking to this guy and I start asking him, Hey, have you ever listened to a podcast? He goes, yeah, I listened to one once in a while. You know, I don't know, a couple here and there. And when I pressed him, when I asked him specifically what he liked, what shows did he subscribe to? He said he didn't subscribe to any of them. He couldn't remember the name of a single podcast. Then I said, hey, do you have an iPhone? He's like, yeah, he shows me his phone. I was like, give me that. I go, you know, this purple app that is right here on your home screen. It comes with the iPhone. It's built into your device. He's like, yeah,
Starting point is 00:01:58 I never really saw that before. I've never pressed that, which I found amazing. And so I subscribed him to my show just because as a joke, and he thought that was funny. He said he was going to listen. But my point is that it seems like podcasting is exploding. I know that it is, but I still think there's quite a bit of work to do to get this medium out to the masses. Anyway, yeah, man, that's the deal. This is a podcast.
Starting point is 00:02:22 It's my podcast. Welcome to it. The show where each week for the last five years, I go deep, I get intimate and probe some of the most compelling minds and personalities in wellness, fitness, nutrition, sports, technology, entrepreneurship. Basically, the most interesting people I can find. These are not interviews. They're conversations.
Starting point is 00:02:40 And they're conversations I think, I hope at least, matter and make a difference. Did I mention I've got Rocco Disperito on? You know this guy, right? James Beard, award-winning celebrity chef. The whole celeb chef thing. It's a weird phenomenon, isn't it? It's a fascinating, interesting cultural development that I think is fueled predominantly, in large part, by reality TV. People apparently love to watch people cook great food.
Starting point is 00:03:08 And I suppose they like the drama inherent in that subculture. And I think I always thought about Rocco solely in this context. But what I didn't realize until I started prepping for this conversation is just what an incredible savant Rocco is when it comes to cooking. There are great chefs, and then there are those that are truly touched, like food wizards. And based on some things that I read about Rocco, he's just one of those guys. He's a guy who the New York Times praised as a prodigy from the start. They've called some of his dishes pure genius. But one thing I did know about Rocco is that after many years of chefing, fancy chefing, cooking, that he put on a bunch of weight. He got unhealthy. He
Starting point is 00:03:52 became sick and tired of being sick and tired. And then he started eating and more importantly, cooking healthier, which didn't exactly go over super well initially with the highfalutin world of haute cuisine. But he believed in what he was doing. He got personal results. He ended up doing a bunch of triathlons, which is, I think, when I became a little bit more aware of him and something I personally find to be pretty inspiring. And he started turning his focus away from the fancier, well-heeled aspects of great food and started helping others get healthier.
Starting point is 00:04:25 He started refocusing his attention on health, which I think is laudable and sort of courageous, especially when you begin to really appreciate the social dynamics of the New York food scene, which is something that we get into at length. But what really struck me and prompted me to reach out to him, to do this with him, do the podcast with him, is that more recently, Rocco has really embraced plant-based cuisine. In fact, that is the primary thrust of his new cookbook, Rocco's Healthy and Delicious. It's his 13th book. I think he's written five New York Times bestsellers, if I'm not mistaken. And I was super interested in this twist, in this evolution, what led him away from more traditional cuisine first towards more
Starting point is 00:05:05 traditional quote-unquote healthy cuisine and now to the plant-based world. And that is something that we really dig into in depth in this conversation. Look, I turned 51 in a week. Did you guys hear? October 20th is my birthday. In case you haven't heard, I'm using this occasion to try to do a little good by helping Charity Water build clean water projects for those in need. Why am I doing this? Because 663 million people live without clean water. That's nearly one out of every 10 people in the world. Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. And every day, about 1,400 kids die from diseases caused
Starting point is 00:05:46 by unsafe water and poor sanitation. Think about that every single day. It's a big, crazy problem, but it's also an entirely solvable problem, a problem that together I think we can help solve. In fact, you guys already have. We've raised $28,000 so far, which is unreal. And I just wanted to thank you for that because that's amazing. You guys have reached into your pocketbooks and extended yourselves. And I thank you. Charity Water thanks you. But we're still short of my $51,000 goal.
Starting point is 00:06:15 So I really need your help. It feels amazing to give. This is the giving season. And the work that Charity Water is doing, if you listen to my podcast with Scott Harrison, the Charity Water founder and CEO, you know, is amazing. So please visit my fundraising page at my.charitywater.org forward slash richroll and consider a donation. And when the water projects are complete, Charity Water will send all of us tons of photos and GPS coordinates so we can see up close the impact and the exact community that
Starting point is 00:06:44 we helped, which is amazing. So again, my.charitywater.org forward slash richroll. And thank you so much. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering
Starting point is 00:07:19 addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety,
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Starting point is 00:08:54 Okay, Rocco. For those unfamiliar, Rocco Desperado is a guy who has starred in more cooking-related TV shows than I can possibly mention. He was named Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chef, People Magazine's Sexiest Chef, and was the first chef to appear on Gourmet Magazine's cover as America's Most Exciting Young Chef. His three-star restaurant, Union Pacific, was a New York City culinary landmark for many years, and the accolades kind of go on and on and on. So, in the course of this conversation, we cover a ton of stuff. We cover his growing up in Queens, New York, in a classic Italian-American household, how he learned
Starting point is 00:09:31 to cook and appreciate the social applications of food from his mother, making people feel loved is the why behind the how. We talk about his career arc, which began with him studying at the Culinary Institute of America at the age of just 16, which is really young, and led to stints at some of the world's finest restaurants. We discuss his personal health journey, triathlons and cooking and eating healthier. We talk about his new, almost completely plant-based cookbook, Rocco's Healthy and Delicious, more than 200 mostly plant-based recipes for everyday life, as well as his new found passion to really preach the gospel of eating an organic whole food plant-based diet. We talk about his
Starting point is 00:10:11 work helping others achieve better health, both through one-on-one coaching, through his meal planner service and his philanthropic work with Health Corps and others. We discuss the ramifications of the Western diet on the entire planet and all of its people and how it's actually not super expensive to eat healthy. So this one is really fun. Ultimately, if you know me, I love a good character arc and Rocco really delivers. This is a guy who grew up very modestly to achieve success. He has had fame, but he has also met many obstacles and detractors along the way. And I really think that what he is doing now, where he is focusing his efforts, is, like I said,
Starting point is 00:10:50 plaudible. And it was great to spend a couple hours with him. So here's my conversation with Rocco. Cool, man. You ready to rock? I'm ready. Didn't we start already? We're starting dude rocco
Starting point is 00:11:06 desperado in the house we're doing the podcast thanks for uh making the drive up here man i think they developed the the term podcast what how is this i don't know i feel like he's part of yeah i don't know but it's not a great word i'm glad that it's finally catching on i mean i started this five years ago and no one was listening. Oh, wow. So you were way ahead of everyone. And I was like, you know, what's, I mean, still people are like, oh, I heard you have this podcast, but I don't even know like how to listen to it. And I'm like, do you have an iPhone? Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:11:33 They're like, yeah. And I'm like, see that purple thing, you know, comes with the phone. They're like, oh, I've never, I've never touched that, you know. So there's still, you know, a little bit of a barrier, I think, but it's changed a lot. You know, it's changed a lot, but I think. Most of the barriers are gone. Yeah. and people look forward to them now and they have their favorites and yeah and it's cool like now it's become like blogging everyone's got a podcast
Starting point is 00:11:52 you know so i was a little i mean i wasn't like an early adopter but i definitely started mine before i mean it wasn't cool to have a podcast when i started mine um but it's been you know it's been amazing it gives me an opportunity to like get in touch with people like you and convince you to come to my house and i get to hold you hostage for a couple hours i'm like done done have you ever been out to this area before yeah yeah it's beautiful beautiful out here so welcome to la thank you thank you so much congrats on the new book thanks man thanks yeah it's great. So you came across my radar because people were saying, oh, Rocco's got this new book and he's got all these, he's, you know, exploring plant-based and he's got all these plant-based
Starting point is 00:12:32 recipes. And I was like, wow, that's a development. Like I knew your general, you know, story, your kind of evolution from, you know, a more traditional way of cooking and cuisine and then, you know, sort of gaining weight and getting unhealthy. And then I knew that you had become a triathlete and lost all this kind of weight and had become this kind of spokesperson or advocate for healthier living. But I didn't realize like that path had kind of continued and has now led you to dip your toe into the plant-based world, which is pretty cool. Yes. And that's exactly what happened as my
Starting point is 00:13:02 personal diet evolves. I I'm realizing that, you know,'m realizing that we have to move to a gluten-free diet, dairy-free diet, organic, all these things that I dared not bring up in the beginning of this journey. Because in the beginning, when I said healthy and cookbook, everyone thought it was insane. My publishers were like, you're the flavor guy. You can't do healthy. That's hospital food. Right. It's like telling an actor like you do comedies you can't do drama yeah right exactly now but we're all we're all constantly evolving and you know and i think you know i was reading the introductory introductory sections in the new book like you're very frank about that you're like look this is how i started these are the books that
Starting point is 00:13:42 i wrote and they did very well this is how i you know this is how i learned how to cook and that's what i was sharing and now i've changed and you know i look back on some of those recipes and i don't eat that way you know exactly and i'm sure they're amazing of course they are you know james beard award-winning book flavor i mean you know how many books have you written 13 books this is 13 now yeah i do that but like i appreciated your acknowledgement of that evolutionary path and it's brought you to here and us talking for sure yeah i mean you have to keep changing uh have to be dynamic have to react to what's going on around you as you fine-tune your personal health regimen you're going to learn that things will change all the time as you get
Starting point is 00:14:23 older things will change you'll tolerate less and less garbage. And the cleaner you want to eat, the more you seem to have to get rid of. But I don't like to talk about this in terms of deprivation, getting rid of things. Because if you choose healthy, it seems like there's a whole world of indulgence that's available to you. uh indulgence that's available to you when you get rid of all the packaged garbage and all the you know gluten containing foods that are you typically packaged foods you're you're all of a sudden open up to this world of fresh food yeah and that's a big world of options you know it's like it's how my grandma grandma ate and uh it's the life she provided for us she grew fruits and vegetables in her garden she had you know her own chickens
Starting point is 00:15:06 and rabbits and made her own wine made her own bread preserve her own tomatoes and i lived that way for a long time but because of ethnic self-loathing you know i rejected that 100 i went to france to learn how to cook like french people and lived there for two years and now i realized that i was like this is the this is the best thing that ever happened to me growing up with all these wonderful Italian, you know, this lifestyle that is traditional Contadina style living, you know, farmer living. I think that's right. Like we tend to think of it as being new, but it's really kind of like tracing us back to the old. Like a lot of plant-based eating is very it's peasant food you know at its core for sure for sure um and i like the idea of approaching it you know having a perspective
Starting point is 00:15:52 of what you're bringing into your life what you're inviting into your life and treating that like a new adventure as opposed to focusing on okay these are the things we're cutting out right now because that's what we do as humans we look at right we look at it from a deprivation point oh what what if i don't eat this and how am i going to live or how am i going to enjoy my food and you know for somebody who is so extraordinarily skilled in the kitchen to develop an appreciation uh for what can be done in that world i think is very cool um because i think, um, the plant-based world is full of people who kind of enter it from, you know, a strictly kind of medical health perspective or, um,
Starting point is 00:16:34 an advocacy perspective, but it's not very many trained chefs, you know, that are willing to, there's a few, you know, we have the Matthew Kenny's and those guys. Yeah. He's a painter and I mentioned him in the book yeah i noticed that i noticed that he's been on the podcast he's friends oh good great he's he's done an amazing job of bringing awareness to this world and boy was he ahead of his time yeah i know and and the results the world is catching up to him he looks so good yeah i know he's like i'm like every time i see him i'm like
Starting point is 00:17:03 you're i can't believe how vital. And I mean, he's been eating essentially raw forever, you know, and he's like preserved in a vacuum, that guy. Because I think he's like 53 or 54 now. You're 50, right? 51, yeah. 51? Yeah, I'm about to turn 51. So we're about the same age.
Starting point is 00:17:22 Yeah. Cool. And we've had kind of similar in very different ways but kind of similar journeys through our relationship to food so uh so i want to track it back but i had one final thought on that so i also want to bring up the new yorker cartoon did you see the new york cartoon no what was that oh it's two people talking and and one says to the other hey i want to stop a podcast today. Is that great? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:45 You should have that plastered. I know. There's so many podcasts now. Don't even get me started. That's a whole other podcast that we should stop doing right now. Trashing podcasters. But I had. So you had a question.
Starting point is 00:17:59 Yeah. No, I was going to tell you this quick story, which is, do you know Seamus Mullen? Yes, of course. Okay. So Seamus is a friend. Yeah. He's been on the podcast too. And when I was in New York, maybe a year ago, he's like, come, uh, come down to Tertulli. I'll cook you, I'll cook you a plant based meal. I was like, great. So I went down there and he made this incredible multi-course, you know, delight of a dinner for a friend of mine and i and i was amazed and i was like this is better than
Starting point is 00:18:27 almost anything i've ever had at any vegan restaurant or any other kind of like plant-based meal ever like how did how did you do this and he said something very interesting was that he's like listen it was kind of relates back to the point i just made a minute ago which is that people who open vegan restaurants or get involved in this movement they are um you know they're coming from yeah exactly but they weren't they're not they're not trained in the way that guys like you and Seamus are so he's approaching food and flavor and texture from a very specific culinary point of view and so he's able to do things that most people like you know can't other than people like yourself and I was like we need more people like that you know, can't other than people like yourself. And I was like, we need
Starting point is 00:19:05 more people like that to be entering this world because that's really going to change people's perspectives on what this can be like the potential in here. Yeah. I mean, that's why I call the book healthy and delicious. And I think it's a chef's perspective that uniquely prepares us to create foods that are healthy and delicious because for a long time, healthy meant not delicious. And for a long time, delicious meant not healthy. And for a long time, delicious meant not healthy. Yeah, these are mutually exclusive. Right. In my very first book, my tagline is no longer mutually exclusive. And I finally just said, let me call a book healthy and delicious.
Starting point is 00:19:31 Because that's really what I'm trying to convey here. Common sense, healthy and delicious, right? There's no reason to give one up for the other. Especially if you let a chef like me use my 30 years of experience and culinary bag of tricks to figure out how to do that for you. And that's what I do every day. I'm sort of in a lab every day, figuring out how to hack foods or not even hack foods, just cook them, uh, from the base up to be delicious and healthy. And it's like when I worked kosher catering for a long time, um, so I got through college
Starting point is 00:20:00 doing kosher catering. Some people dance, some people dance, but I did kosher catering. Some people dance. We're going to track it back in a minute. I did kosher catering. Well, you did a little dancing too. Yeah, I just never got paid for it, unfortunately. I didn't have the right G-string. You know the one that holds the dollar bills really well? I didn't have that. You didn't have that?
Starting point is 00:20:16 Well, next time. Working on it. So when I did kosher catering, me and two chef friends who started TerraChips were working for this caterer. And he would ask us to innovate because he was really interested in pushing the envelope and moving kosher catering forward. And this is mid-80s, right? And we all had worked for Jean-Georges at Lafayette. Right. And we're like, it's easy.
Starting point is 00:20:39 We just don't have to use, just don't use dairy. There's all this other stuff left when you cut out dairy. There's thousands of choices but you can't see that if you're not trained to use every ingredient on the planet and know what to do with them and how to cook them and how to prepare them so we were able to move this caterer from you know the 50s to current know, trending 1986 food, which at that time was fried vegetable chips and basil oil and that kind of thing, stuff that Jean-Georges was innovating.
Starting point is 00:21:12 And he was amazed, you know, and that was like my first lesson. And they're really, the parameters don't matter, right? If you know how to, if you have the basic skill set, parameters are nothing. You know, I just did a competition where all we had were parameters it's called guys grocery game so the game is do everything i can to make it impossible for you to
Starting point is 00:21:30 cook this food but no matter what he does figure out how to figure out how to do it right well i think i would imagine your training and your experience uh teaches you what all the rules are and how to break and then you learn how to break them, but you know what rule you're breaking when you're breaking it and why you're breaking it in that way. Right. And what you hope to get as a result. And deliciousness is obviously a number one priority for me,
Starting point is 00:21:56 even though, um, I'm writing, I, even though I started writing healthy books, flavor was still the number one goal, right? Flavor.
Starting point is 00:22:04 And then, uh uh it doesn't matter you know no one's gonna eat it so yeah that's the thing so what is the daily like what is your daily routine in the kitchen like how you said like i'm in my lab and i'm doing like what does that look like like so i have a um i have a kitchen in new york city and i have a commercial kitchen outside where you live commercial kitchen yep exactly um and i have a food delivery service it's called the pound a day diet it's born from my book the pound a day diet and uh when i wrote that book it was the first book that was a like a real diet book very strong diet promise and it promised on the cover five pounds five days right that's a huge promise to make so So of course, publishers want you to prove that
Starting point is 00:22:45 you can accomplish that with your diet. So they asked me to do a clinical trial. I did it with 12 people. I put them on the diet. I sent them the food. I made the food that was in the book. I created the calorie restriction and everything that needed to happen for them to lose a pound a day. And at the end of the week, it of course worked with everybody, right? Well, I say, of course not, because that was six years ago. I didn't know it was going to work when I wrote the book, but I ended up proving that you could, you could create a calorie deficit of 3,500 per day and you'd lose weight. And then those people said, we don't want to stop. Don't, we know that, you know, it's over, but we love this. This is amazing. It's life-changing. And I still have some of those clients so every day i'm innovating new products
Starting point is 00:23:25 new foods for my clients and delivering six to eight meals a day that helped them achieve their health health goals right for some people it's losing weight for some people it's reversing diabetes reversing um heart disease metabolic syndrome all kinds of things that's cool so i'm always in the lab working on these dishes and everyone gets a custom plan because if you don't like the food you're not going to eat it. So even though I'm cutting calories and carb correcting and removing sugars and making empty calorie carb dishes, protein heavy, so that people can lose weight, they have to be delicious, right? So I'm basically in an R&D environment every day. It's unique.
Starting point is 00:24:06 I don't know that there's anybody else with your skill set who is approaching food from a health perspective in the way that you are. Yeah, we're frightened to death to do it. We're all being made fun of. We're finally being embraced by the community and the community of chefs. And Seamus is an important yeah yeah well yeah he's got a very powerful message that's you know consistent with your own yeah for sure for sure and he's doing in restaurants and he's and there's acceptance and it gives me actually
Starting point is 00:24:34 a lot of hope uh because I've been looking for the next opportunity to maybe get back in the restaurant business and I keep telling people who come to me and ask what are you going to do I'm like you know if I do what I did in the 90s, it's been done. What I'm really passionate about is healthy and no one's ready for it. But I think people are finally ready. People are getting ready for it. I think people are getting ready for it. And just walking around New York City and seeing the proliferation of, you know, plant based focused restaurants is kind of amazing.
Starting point is 00:25:03 Like, I just love going there. And every time I go, there's new places all over the place and you know new organic fresh pressed juice i mean this is like everywhere there right all within walking distance so you know maybe it's not as penetrated into you know certain areas of america as it could be there's still tons of work to be done and we're going to get into kind of what that work looks like and, and some of the things that you're doing in that space. But, but in terms of New York city, come on, dude, it's time, right? It's definitely, you got to step back into this.
Starting point is 00:25:32 So I'm excited to see you, you know, it's timing. It's the right, I know it's the right people and partners and all that kind of stuff. But I think the world, I think the world would be excited if you, if you could figure that out. Well, I'd like to like i'd like to think i can agree with you on that um i think the the issue for me is um how to make it commercial and and broad enough so that a lot of people can participate in it for some reason that's always the expectation of me from others yeah i'm very happy doing something super small and you know making it available to a very tiny you know population but um that's not interesting to other people you know investors and big restaurant
Starting point is 00:26:11 chains you know obviously they want they want stuff that they can scale well it's a conundrum for you because as somebody who i mean look you're a legitimate celebrity. You have a very high profile and that gives you the power to communicate with a massive number of people. And if you're in the kitchen, you're focusing on serving a very, you know, just a select small number of people. I think that aspect of what you do and who you are is important, but trying to figure out how you balance those two ways of, of kind of, um, you know, serving people with your talents is a tricky equation to solve. It seems that way. It seems like it's been tricky. Um, I'm very happy doing my small client, my private client business and, you know, definitely changing lives there. We've,
Starting point is 00:26:56 I've had people lose a hundred pounds, get off, you know, loads of medicine, um, that are 72 years old that don't no longer need their diabetes medicine one client his blood pressure dropped so so fast that his doctor couldn't titrate his medicine quick enough to keep up with it uh-huh and so he ended up passing out and he's like yeah that's that happens with people he was over medicated he thought it was the food he thought oh you're not feeding me enough food you're not giving me i was like no you you're getting 100 grams of protein you're getting this amount of healthy fats this matter i know the macronutrition down i have i have every client's macronutrition memorized down to phytonutrients sometimes and uh i'm like no you should check with your doctor
Starting point is 00:27:38 you probably don't need to take that medicine anymore and lo and behold he checked with the doctor and he's like you don't need this anymore. And, you know, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about that. It was 90 days after he started. That's crazy. I hear so many stories like that and people go to their doctor and their doctor is like, what are you doing? I've never seen this before. How is this happening? Like, this is a miracle, you know, and they can't even believe that this is actually occurring.
Starting point is 00:27:59 Poor doctors. Poor doctors. It's changing. There's a lot of good doctors out there. But like, yeah, there's a there's a big curve there i think that needs to be yeah um that needs to be addressed obviously i'm a big fan of doctors i've been relying on them to take care of my parents my whole life and myself um but the ones that are starting to become integrative medicine doctors and use you know functional nutrition and uh food are the ones who I think are laying the path to the future.
Starting point is 00:28:26 They're receptive and they understand it. They're laying the path to the future. Yeah, and they're creating those protocols that you're working on. So you're actually working with people on a one-on-one basis. Yes, it's more than one-on-one. It's very close. So I end up being their health coach. By design, this is a 360 degree fully integrated
Starting point is 00:28:45 program you get um a customized menu plan i have you wear fitbits and use smart scale so i'm i'm remotely monitoring how much how many calories you're burning how many steps you know what your you're sitting in bed at night going online like what's he doing right now i know exactly it's not that bad it's not that bad and some people are afraid uh you know they don't know how much information their scales would give me. But if you use like a Wything scale, it'll give me their BMR, body fat percent, which is, of course, the most important metric for me, the body fat percent. Because the total weight is meaningless without knowing the body fat percent. So I have small data from wearables and smart scales that allow me to be predictive and prescriptive with
Starting point is 00:29:26 their menus so if they did a lot of cardio today i know they need more carbs tomorrow typically i'm on a lower carb keto kind of plan for most people because most people have eaten way too many carbs in their lives and yeah so um so that's one part of it and then i'm available 24 7 for my clients to coach them and and talk them out of buying a pound of Skittles at CVS at 2 a.m. That's cool, man. Which has had – that's a true story. Yeah. So therapist, chef.
Starting point is 00:29:53 Yeah, they call me their prebi. I know. You're like – yeah. Usually like somebody who would be doing that, there's like, okay, the doctor handles this and then we outsource the food to this person or whatever. But like to take all of it, to shoulder all of that for people, that's a lot. It's, you know what, it's a lot or not a lot. I'm not sure. I am the most fulfilled I've ever been in my life. I feel like I spent all my, my, all those years of my life, most of my life learning how to cook to do this. Now, I feel like that was the preamble to this phase of my life because without those cooking skills,
Starting point is 00:30:24 I could not do this, as we discussed already. Without having the deep background in the culinary world that I have, I couldn't make these foods so that they were 78% or 80% less calorically dense and no sugar. It would be impossible to figure those things out. Right, right, right, right. Well, that's an interesting arc because I would imagine when you're immersed in the world of, you know, celebrity chefdom, that's a very ego inflating, you know, kind of in certain respects, like, you know, self-involved kind of universe, right? And then to be kind of in this more service role, like, yeah, well, I don't know, like I want to get into what that's like, but, but, you know, then to be kind of in this more service role like yeah well i don't know
Starting point is 00:31:05 like i want to get into what that's like but but you know then to be kind of in service to these people who who really you know not only need you know what it is that you're providing them but whose lives are being so profoundly affected by that is like that's an there's nothing better than that i'm so grateful for it and you know it all happened by accident i didn't you know create a deck one night and say hey i got a great idea for a business let me go fund it and you know it all happened by accident i didn't you know create a deck one night and say hey i got a great idea for a business let me go fund it and let me go do you know it just happened organically and the pound a day diet book was the beginning of that um and uh it's still going six years later i still have many of the same clients and they tell their friends and it's all worked
Starting point is 00:31:41 out really well word of mouth what i would love to do more than anything is to be able to get this wisdom and know-how and program and food to the masses because it would solve so many of our problems. I'm sure you've talked extensively about how eating a plant-based diet would solve the health care crisis that we have in the United States. It would solve the Middle East peace issues that we have, the dependence on foreign oil. I mean, it's literally the solution to almost every problem we talk about on CNN every day. It checks every box. It really does. And yes, I do talk extensively about that.
Starting point is 00:32:16 I mean, just keep going on this. I don't think people realize the tentacles and how far-reaching they are. The Western diet is destroying the world and our lives and creating all these problems that we don't need to have right and we're exporting it all over the world like i traveled all over the place i've been in saudi arabia pakistan like crazy places i've given talks and i and i meet with these people parents whose kids are obese and they're experiencing
Starting point is 00:32:42 these kinds of um health issues you know diabetes obesity heart disease for the first time in the history of mankind because you drive down the street like it's too hot they're at malls all day and there's just fast food outlets there and they're playing video games and like yeah and that's what they're eating and and they're like why is everyone all of a sudden fat you know and they're like and they don't they don't know how to deal with it in the way that we're learning how to deal with it now and uh so this is a global issue on the health front and of course on the environmental front economic front literally on every front right this is the source of so many problems um if cheap processed food wasn't in such high demand we wouldn't have the monsanto issue we wouldn't have the pesticide issue i mean it's it just it boggles the mind right right and you and i are
Starting point is 00:33:29 thinking we live like this this is the solution if everyone would just do this it would be so simple right you've taken the red pill in the matrix right yeah it's the blue pill or the red i don't know i don't know the right one the right whatever one yeah you took it and then but then it's but but if you haven't taken it it's it's difficult you know to convince yeah exactly because everybody's got to kind of arrive on that on their own yeah and your example can only serve so much right yeah the example is very strong though don't we shouldn't underestimate the power of the example yeah but i think i think it it uh it begs the question of how you communicate with the world right right? And the way in which, like, how do you
Starting point is 00:34:05 deliver this message in a way that it can be received and is palatable? And, you know, just in reading the forward materials in your new book, it's like, it's very clear you're speaking to mainstream America, the average person, like, look, here's the story. You know, I'm not telling you this. I'm not telling you that. Here's a couple of things that I've learned. Maybe, you know, broaden your perspective a little bit, like take a, take a baby step here. And there's a trust. Like if you do this, like you're, you'll see results. And then you're going to want to take that extra step, but you're not, you're not pushing people. You're not judging anyone. So I think it's really important to be conscious and aware and mindful
Starting point is 00:34:40 about the words that we choose and the manner in which we try to spread this healthy message because it comes off it can come off as preachy or judgmental or you know and that's just that's working at cross purposes with what you want to achieve right right right i mean you want you want to get on your soapbox and shout as loud as you can and you'd be in evangelical but and there are people that do that and i think you need all those voices you need every kind of voice but i think because you have you know this audience of people that spans you know every demographic like there's a responsibility that comes with that like okay how am i gonna what you know how how am i choosing to communicate with these people or a deep desire it's not not yeah not as much as a responsibility it's like i've i got the red pill i want to give
Starting point is 00:35:24 you the red pill. I figured it out. This is so cool. I can't believe that you can go from having the metabolic age of a 68-year-old man when you're 38 to an 18-year-old. And I did that in a year. I went from being seriously ill and getting serious advisories from my doctor who have dr michael hammer i'll never forget the day he's like okay after all these years of you coming in here and telling me you've got problems and me telling you you're paranoid and you're healthy and you're young you finally
Starting point is 00:35:55 have problems you're you've got things to worry about you're gonna be in big trouble right i know your family history there's heart disease on both sides. You were like 38, right? I am? Really? What? You know, I was 40 pounds heavier. I was all fat. I was, you know, eating the foie gras, drinking the red wine, living the life of a chef. You know, it's a super indulgent world. But we're eating organic food from the market, right?
Starting point is 00:36:19 I went to Union Square Market the entire time I ran Union Pacific. We bought the best ingredients. It just turns out that those are, you know typically high in sugar and the dishes the resulting dishes are typically not not good for you um but i think all across america and the world doctors are having those kind of conversations with 38 year old men and women or 40 whatever yeah and it's only the rare individual that has that light bulb moment that wakes up right really fundamentally changes their relationship with food and lifestyle right
Starting point is 00:36:50 i had that experience you had that experience but a lot of people are you know there's a lot of people who will just say well this is genetic i'll go on these statins i'll try to like do a little bit better but they don't really alter their lifestyle that much so you know was it what was it with you like did were you just did you just scare the shit out of you so i remember it so clearly he he he told me i would have to take three medications and he gave me the prescriptions and he also said as a throwaway of course you can change your diet and lifestyle and be more active and eat better and And this will all be, this will all go away. I tell all my clients that, but no one ever listens. And I was like, Oh, this will go. I, all I heard was this could go away.
Starting point is 00:37:31 And I thought, I, all right, what would tell me about the medicine? So there was some statins and some blood pressure meds that cause all kinds of side effects. And he started to tell me, you know, about the side effects. And when he got to, you know, certain side effects, I was like, okay, the sudden death, the depression, suicidal thoughts, you know, the anal leakage, those are all fine. But, you know, there are some other ones that I just cannot accept. And I'll leave it up to your imagination to figure out which one I'm talking about. But I was like, at 38, I don't want to be faced with impotence. That's just mind-boggling, right?
Starting point is 00:38:05 And I'm like, I can change this. Let me go try to do that. I said, give me six months. Let me try to change this. And I'd been working with a trainer, a really nice guy. And just coincidentally, right around in the same six-month period, my chiropractor, I have scoliosis, I've been working with a chiropractor forever,
Starting point is 00:38:23 asked me to help him with a charity. He said, can me with the with this charity i'm doing it's called the cup i'm like sure yeah no problem i'm thinking 500 portions of you know tuna at some you know catering event where you know a grazing event where they invite a thousand people so a few months later he's like are you ready for the triathlon like what's what's that what's a triathlon he stuck that in yeah he like yeah you signed up for that remember the grandage cup it's a triathlon it's a sprint uh i was like well tell me about that what is that he's like well you gotta you know you gotta swim bike run i'm like okay um and my trainer uh who's never done a triathlon was really big muscly guy
Starting point is 00:39:01 not triathlon right not like a lean like a runner yeah not like you uh we were like okay let's do this right so we started training and we both did it we fast forward a few months later we finished last and next to last yeah i won't tell you who was last and it was next last but um and we got you know the athena group swam by me in the water like i was standing still you know these women over women over 60, right. And they're pink caps. And I was one of the first waves to go. So, and try speak.
Starting point is 00:39:28 We're talking about waves. I'm sure you'll listen. In the Hudson or where was it? Todd's pond in Greenwich, Connecticut. Yeah. Yeah. I did.
Starting point is 00:39:35 I did New York as well. One swim in that Hudson river is enough. It's enough. Have you done that? Get your immunization shots. I did. I got hepatitis immunization. I got,
Starting point is 00:39:44 yeah, you have to get a whole battery shots i i haven't but i've had friends that have done look don't that's the manhattan marathon island so they go all the way around like 28 miles all the way around okay sure sure and i remember this is when i was living in new york like early like 89 90 my roommate who swam with me in college he wanted to do it and they give you this handbook and it has all the dangers what it's like right it's like when you're up in the harlem river and you have to get like 20 shots and all this kind of stuff and apparently there was some like by the george
Starting point is 00:40:12 washington bridge there's some giant suck hole like yes yes that's right that's right and like all this insanity and then he got like a infection he got some like urinary infection afterwards and he he refused to believe that was because he spent you know 12 hours like swimming in that water so yeah only one infection he was very lucky so luckily for us on the new york city try it's only uh 800 meters and it's downstream and it's very fast and you're out of the water in 18 minutes it was the first time i had uh mouthwash in my transition you did yeah and i used the whole bottle yeah and i couldn't get that taste out of my mouth anyway uh try war try to do the first triathlon so i did my first triathlon and it was the best day of my life i got i crossed the finish line it took me um three hours to do a
Starting point is 00:40:55 sprint which is insane obviously as you know and but it was it was a happy statement i never had felt more accomplished and um i had to walk most of the three miles. But we finished. You got it done, man. I got it done, right? You're only in competition against yourself in a triathlon, even though it's a team sport. And then, of course, I fell in love with the gear. The gear is so compelling, right? I mean, the gear is so much fun.
Starting point is 00:41:16 You can go out of the rabbit hole with that forever. Oh, I'm still in that rabbit hole. Right. And then every year, there's new, you know. How many grams I can eliminate off my kit today. And then someone mentioned St. Croix, Ironman St. Croix, 70.2. The steepest hill in all of triathlon, you know, it's 21%. Right.
Starting point is 00:41:37 The beast. I'm like, I have to do that. That is, for me. Beautiful course, too. Gorgeous, yeah. Great, great course. For me. Beautiful course, too.
Starting point is 00:41:43 Gorgeous, yeah. Great, great course. The hill is so punishing, you know, that half the people just get off their bike and walk up. And you can barely walk up the hill because it's switchbacks. And your cleats sliding. Yeah. So I started training for that. And then at the same time, it seemed just like all the forces in my life were pushing me down this path. At the same time, my friend Ben Silverman, who doesn't live far from here, actually.
Starting point is 00:42:04 Right, the TV guy. Producing loser said hey we'd like you to come on and teach our contestants how to make healthy food and i was like great okay well i'll do that and i did a few seasons of that and so so between my chiropractor and the triathlon and my doctor and ben and it's everyone was pushing me down this path and I just sold my restaurant and, um, I really enjoyed being able to take care of myself again and having the time to do that. Cause it does require a certain amount of time, right? Especially when you're transforming from a fat frat boy to a dude who can do
Starting point is 00:42:35 a triathlon, right? Yeah. And if you're in the kitchen, uh, the restaurant that you own, you ain't doing, you're not doing any triathlons probably.
Starting point is 00:42:43 Right. No. Seamus, Seamus makes it work he gets out and rides almost every day different world right now it really is a different world how does he do that he makes it a priority and he's really talented you know super talented and he's able to energize and motivate people and um he's telling his story really well and and people are believing it you know and the times are different in 2005 In 2005, this story fell on deaf ears. When I would tell people the story, their eyes would roll back in their head,
Starting point is 00:43:09 and they'd be like, okay, when are you going to get back into the restaurant business? Who cares about this healthy stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could barely sell my first healthy book. No one wanted it. It took two years to sell. I said, this is what I learned training for triathlons, that you can transform all these lovely dishes into healthier
Starting point is 00:43:25 versions of the their former selves and they'll still be delicious in many cases more delicious right lobster bisque was my first like such an easy sell to me because there's plenty of people writing books about you know healthy healthy diet cookbooks but there aren't too many people that have the skills they were doctors and they were yeah exactly and they find some chef to like supplement their book with recipes but that's that's very different from you know the world that you're coming from yeah if that now some usually it's some it's some awesome hippie who's growing their own food somewhere and i say hippie as a term of endearment i mean i love i gotcha they got that yeah in the 60s they understood how life should be lived communes growing their own food organic right remember that yeah we were we were very young obviously
Starting point is 00:44:09 at the time but my sisters who's 11 years older than me was a hippie oh yeah definition and they if we just continue to live like that we'd probably all be in better shape but i think the world is more ready for a guy like shamus and a guy like me. And, um, he's, you know, luckily he has a restaurant where he can offer indulgent food. You still use dairy and gluten, but also offer all these other foods that a lot of people are interested in. So when someone like you comes, it's not like, you know, which, which bad choice do I make tonight? Which is the least of the bad choices. Right, right, right. So let's track it back, man. let's take it back to queens queens sure yeah so uh growing up in the 60s and 70s in jamaica queens the um the cultural center of america yeah kidding it is well in some way it's incredibly diverse yeah so queens is one of the most diverse parts of the United States.
Starting point is 00:45:05 There's thousands of nationalities. There's millions of people. I did grow up where hip-hop was born, so I'm pretty proud of that. You know, run DMCs from there, 50 Cent's from there, lots of Russell Simmons, lots of important figures in hip-hop. I have Russell on the podcast. Yeah, cool. Yeah, and he's all about green and healthy and yoga.
Starting point is 00:45:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah so what was that like growing up there it was it was um such a delight i was the catholic school kid who had the maroon blazer and the tie that said presentation of the holy virgin or something on and i had to walk through a very dangerous park that was next to a methadone clinic you know so either you're you're with meth heads or heroin addicts or i mean it was like pick your danger which which one do you who who do you want to beat you up today you know the druggies the the gangs um it was wild man it was i still can't believe I grew up there. Yeah, that's, I mean. It was the center of the crack epidemic. I mean, it was wild. But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?
Starting point is 00:46:12 And I had this wonderful family, and my mom would make this amazing food every day at home. And so, you know, I'd be out in this world where we could eat Jamaican beef patties and taste great Chinese food and Japanese food and other foods from the Caribbean. So in terms of my palate, my worldview was very expanded by the time I was 14, just from eating stuff in the neighborhood. And you just, and you learn how to cook from your mom. Yeah, of course. She's no question. The person who helped me recognize that cooking was an important skill and watching her, uh, be this wonderful human being and have this great social life and always using food to help facilitate it. I mean, she used food in, like, quite literally to facilitate her social life on buses. She would take out food from her purse and give it to strangers.
Starting point is 00:46:59 Oh, yeah? Wow. It was usually chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano and homemade bread, and they were like, you know, they thought she was crazy. But then they would taste it and be like, whoa. That's like an only in New York thing, you know? On the bus, perfect strangers. My mom was like, hi, honey. How are you?
Starting point is 00:47:11 Hungry? Right. That's amazing. They would look at her like, mom, is it okay to talk to this crazy lady? And, you know, she was a sweet old Italian woman. So she didn't look threatening. And she'd give them like a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano out of her bag. Not joking.
Starting point is 00:47:24 And so she made friends. I watched her make friends her whole life and um so what she taught me was the most important lesson of the hospitality industry right is that it's the space between people the magic that occurs in that space that's what we do for a living in the hospitality business in the restaurant business we attempt to make people happy and enrich their day and provide them with some loving gesture that makes them feel special right creates connection between people we don't cook that's secondary tertiary to what the real job of a person in the hospital hospitality industry is which is to make people feel loved and happy and and cared for and uh you know old school italian mom from italy who came here when she was 30 she was raised on that
Starting point is 00:48:05 you know and that was just natural to her um so that was the most important lesson that i learned from her and i to the day she died i learned it from her and she you know retaught it and retaught and retaught it with her actions um and you have to it's very important to have that because if you don't have that uh a passion for that you can't do the difficult stuff, which is the cooking and the learning and the slaving away at the stove. It's the why behind the how, right, and the what. Exactly. So you've got to have that why. So when did it –
Starting point is 00:48:33 It's just too hard without a bigger purpose, right? It's just too hard. There's just too many hours and too many cuts and burns and scrapes and falls and pitfalls and successes and failures, and it's too hard to get the skills we didn't have youtube i didn't you know if i want to learn how to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen i couldn't look it up on google you'd go to france yeah i had to go to spain and work for fran adria and beg him to let me work with him for two years um so so queens was interesting we lived there until i was about uh 12 13 and then we moved to long
Starting point is 00:49:07 island where I went to uh I immediately got into cooking very seriously my first job was in a pizzeria my second job was in a pizzeria my third was in a bagel nosh so I was always in food didn't did you know though early on that this was going to be your path at 14 I did not at 11 yeah at 11 I just wanted to buy love gun by kiss right and that's why there's a great story with that right like what's the story with you like wanting to get this album from kiss or oh you read the story okay so if assuming your listeners aren't going to be bored to tears by this i'll tell it um so i love gun came out i was a huge fan of kiss my mother thought they were literally devils right so think you know 50 year
Starting point is 00:49:44 old italian woman 1977 yeah i remember that i mean we're the same age i remember that time right you know yeah yeah it was it was like uh subversive to be like a kid and be in the kids yeah and i had my room was covered in kiss posters for like literally on the ceiling on all four walls i had played i played kiss albums all day long. Detroit Rock City, loud as possible. I would try the makeup. My mom thought I was losing my mind. I wanted to go to the concerts. I remember someone took, I bought,
Starting point is 00:50:16 I saved up money for the first time they appeared in Madison Square Garden and my ticket disappeared. To this day, I think it's my mom who took it and makes sure I didn't go to that concert. So she said, I'm not going to give you money to buy this record from these devils. You wanted this record. You got to go to work and make the money yourself.
Starting point is 00:50:36 And I thought, that's amazing. I can do that. I can go to work and make my own money. That's so cool. I don't have to beg you for money anymore. So that's what got you into the pizzeria? so the next day we went out looking for work uh we went went to jamaica avenue and queens and hillside avenue these big avenues that had millions of shops and i walked in and out of every store with her and like by the 10th store a guy named sal
Starting point is 00:50:57 said well i'll hire you no problem you'll work here you'll you know scoop italian ice you'll grate mozzarella you'll open cans of tomato sauce help me make pizza serve fountain soda at the counter pay 50 cents an hour work 60 hours a week right it's like bingo this is great that's 30 bucks you know and at that time having a dollar 50 in your pocket was a lot of money so making 30 bucks was was huge so i worked that first week i made my 30 bucks i bought uh some girls by the Stones, Love Gun, the Down in Jamaica album. I can't remember that. Down in Jamaica, there are lots of pretty women. That's not Jimmy Buffett, is it?
Starting point is 00:51:39 No, it's close, though. So I bought three records, took my mom to Coney Island, which was a big deal for us. And had a Chinese food lunch out, which was a big deal for us because we weren't really allowed to eat out. And my dad thought restaurants were, you know, he wisely thought restaurants were not a good place to go get food. Especially when we had wonderful food at home. So that started me working in restaurants. And the next summer I worked in another restaurant. And then at 14, I started working full time after school.
Starting point is 00:52:07 And was there like a light switch that went off? Or were you like, this is going to be my life? Or was it just a slow acclimation to being in this world where it just seemed like a foregone conclusion? There was an absolute moment where I made a decision. So I was on the wrestling team. I wrestled 145 in high school. And I cooked after school. I decided I wanted to not just work
Starting point is 00:52:25 weekends and not just work summers so i was at a place called the new height park in and um you know making like close to minimum wage back then you can get away with not paying people minimum wage and uh i was working at a proper restaurant it wasn't just a pizzeria that they had you know real meal service real banquet hall and it was run by these old school german dudes and they made head cheese from scratch you know stuff like i was learning real cuisine and there was a guy there who was at the cia the culinary institute of america he happened to work there at the same time and um he was always telling me about it and you know going on and bragging about being at the cia it was such a big deal back then to be in the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America.
Starting point is 00:53:08 It was the only school of its kind, really, at the time. There weren't thousands of cooking schools back then. And this was like the Harvard of cooking schools. Impossible to get into. I had to wait a year on a waiting list to get into that school. Yeah, but you still ended up there when you were 16, right? Yeah, I did somehow. Like, you had to be the youngest person there.
Starting point is 00:53:25 Definitely one of the youngest students in graduate school. But you were trying to get in there when you were 16 right like you had to be the youngest person there definitely one of the youngest but you were trying to get in there when you were 15 i was yeah so i so once i decided so um one day my coach in wrestling said uh you have to make a choice you can't cook and wrestle because you know we work out before school after school and on the weekends and that's when i was going to work and i tried to do both for a few weeks a few months and i you know i was missing wrestling practice i was was late for work. And it seemed like I remember it as the same day. It was probably a few days apart. But my chef said, you have to make a choice.
Starting point is 00:53:53 It's got to be cooking or wrestling. You can't do both. And my coach said, it's got to be cooking or wrestling. You can't do both. And I remember thinking, it's going to be cooking. I'm much more excited by cooking. And so I quit wrestling. And that was the day I decided to become a professional cook I was about 14 and then I started talking to the guy who was at the CIA and learning
Starting point is 00:54:13 about how to enroll there and getting accepted there and I learned that you needed you know documented in 1600 hours of document experience you need to recommendation letters so I started to do all that and uh in 1986 i i attended the cia yeah and i was 16 turning 17 and it was you know uh incredibly life-altering the the discipline and just the amount of information we were that was thrown at us was just for me like heaven heaven right yeah and so did you have to leave high school to do that? Like how'd that work? So I didn't have to drop out. What I did is I went to summer school so I could accelerate.
Starting point is 00:54:49 Oh, wow. Yeah. So I graduated early in order to get into the CIA earlier. So you were committed big time. I was 100% committed. I should have been committed actually because no 14-year-old should be working that hard. It's insane. But it's almost like a crazy, like that level of commitment at that young of an age, it's
Starting point is 00:55:04 almost like you're channeling some crazy past life. You know, like this is like, this is what you've like, this is what you've been doing ever since that time. So, you know, that's amazing to. I never did anything else. Yeah. I mean, at 14, when you're enjoying getting your arthritic hands from peeling shrimp under cold water for many hours a day and burning and cutting yourself and you want more and you're asking to work more and like you're begging them to let you peel onions you're committed yeah you're in yeah and you walk into a room on my first day i walked in they were making head cheese so there's imagine a big wooden table with pig's heads that had just been boiled to the point where
Starting point is 00:55:38 they fall apart being picked uh of all their bones and hair and teeth and wild stuff right put into tureens as as a vegan you're probably your stomach's turning and also the vegan audience is gonna be like their stomachs are so we've traveled a long way but this is part of the world of you know haute cuisine this is like what you learn when you're in this when you're yeah so if you're fortunate you walk into that and you're like cool this is awesome you're it was meant to be right it was meant to be so what do you you know for people that that don't have any familiarity with like the skill set that you learn as a result of you know undertaking that kind of experience like what is it that you learn that most people don't understand about what it
Starting point is 00:56:23 means to like be a chef at that level? That's such a big question. There's so many answers I could give you. I think one important answer that I should offer you is an understanding of flavor. So flavor is basically science. We have flavor receptors on our palates. We have papillae that recognize certain flavors. Sour, salt, sweet,
Starting point is 00:56:45 bitter being the main four. Of course, umami is a fifth now. When I wrote my book, Flavor, the first book I wrote, I talked about how umami was an emerging concept, but now it's established. So learning how to balance those four flavors in food after preparing food creating tension and resolution in that dish so that when people eat your food they're excited there's tension tension meaning meaning like is this gonna work is this gonna be delicious there's is there enough sour salt you know just like sweet and sour food you know how it creates tension and then when it if it works well there's a resolution just like a beautiful piece of music or even art or uh anything that's crafted from your hands um you want at least if you're going
Starting point is 00:57:33 to be a chef that's going to give create dishes that give people pause um there's got to be tension resolution and food for it to be interesting if i didn't have tension and resolution i would have been a very good craftsman and made very good solid food but it wouldn't have enabled me to have a restaurant where people came to eat my food right it would or seamus wouldn't be able to do what he does because when you ate that dinner you were blown away right yeah his mastery of the senses is what enables him to do that so ultimately after cutting myself a thousand times and cutting my nails off and burning myself and you know uh you know we we when you're learning how to use all those tools you're hurting yourself a lot for the first few years and so if you're willing to go through that um you end up with a set of hand skills that are incredibly
Starting point is 00:58:20 important you understand how to cut and prepare every ingredient, every piece of meat, fish, vegetable. Those are basic skills. A lot of people just skip nowadays because they saw how to make the ice cream with liquid nitrogen on Google. Um, but those having a deep understanding of, of the craft puts you in a place where when you're challenged to make something that has no sugar and no empty calorie carbs and is high in good fat and high in protein, uh, that typically requires sugar, you know how to do it. Yeah. You have this tool box. Yeah. You can work around it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when I make pasta today, I, uh, you know, I'll get a plant-based protein and I'll mix it with fiber. I know that psyllium fiber gels in contact with water, so I've already got a paste there.
Starting point is 00:59:10 And I'll add some protein powder and I'll create this mixture that when I dehydrate will become a sheet of pasta. And you know that it's going to have the right consistency and texture and flavor palette and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's wild stuff. Or if it doesn't, I'll know what to do. I'll know that something has to happen for it to get to that point and I'll keep working on it until I get to that point. I've got a vegan donut now that I'm very proud of. I've been working on for more than a year.
Starting point is 00:59:35 It's one gram of sugar. It's got seven grams of protein. It's made with five vegan ingredients. And I think it has the potential to change the world. That's great because I think one thing that's interesting with the kind of explosion of interest in in plant-based eating and vegan cuisine is that you have the you have the sort of concomitant explosion of like super unhealthy vegan foods like they finally figured out the desserts you know there's tons of like amazing ice creams and cupcakes and like that stuff's great once in a while.
Starting point is 01:00:08 But, you know, taste wise, some of it is indistinguishable from the real thing. And you're like, well, this is vegan, so I'll just eat it. And it's like, actually, there's like a ton of sugar. You know, it's like just because it's made out of plants and not animals doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be healthy. and not animals doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be healthy but but i think you know it gets people to a certain place but i think it also is is you know redirecting people down the wrong path for sure so the idea of coming up with a donut a vegan donut that actually you know satisfies those you know the flavor desire and is the donut crazy craving yeah the whole planet seems to be obsessed with right now. I know. Figure that out.
Starting point is 01:00:45 Like, there's the key. Like, you're going to unlock the universe with that. Yeah. I mean, this is a donut that has a nutritional profile that you could live on this donut. You could eat this donut all day long and you'll get enough fat, carbs, and protein in perfect balance, you know? I mean, what donut does that? Hurry up with that, man.
Starting point is 01:01:01 No, I've got it done. I need to get to the next step. I have to send you some and you'll have to let me know if you like and yeah i love it i like to try those out and then i you know i glaze it i call them dirt donuts i glaze it with glaze it with um yacon syrup which is um this great i'm sure you're familiar with it and probably all your listeners are but for the four people that come to this podcast because i'm on it that aren't aren't already in your world explain it it's a tuber like it's originates from Peru and it's a tuber that produces this syrup that looks a lot like molasses and um it's got
Starting point is 01:01:30 a glycemic index of one one one is almost the lowest yeah glycemic index right stevia has a glycemic index of zero and it's a non-nutritive sweetener but yacon syrup is a nutritive sweetener it has calories but these are good calories these are really good calories so how do you get a vegan donut to look and feel like a glazed donut you use you know very popular in the raw vegan world yacon syrup or coconut nectar raw of course um really big fan of raw products um and then i top it with goji berries and pistachios and all this wonderful stuff that's in this world yeah exactly, exactly. It should hopefully end up being the healthiest donut ever created. But I love taking everyone's favorite top 10 list junk foods and just flipping them into something that's actually good for you.
Starting point is 01:02:15 And I think that's what chefs like Seamus and I need to be doing just to prove to people it's healthy and delicious. You can live on this. You should live on this. There's no reason for you to go to Krispy kreme and have 10 of those donuts you know so you complete your tenure at cia and then you go off and you're in france yes i go go to France. One of these amazing chefs all over the world. Almost a month after graduating. Yeah. Worked with Dominique Session for two years. Had to work in an American burger joint to pay my bills. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:52 Yeah. I also didn't have a visa. That's a whole other story. So, I mean, when you were in Paris? Yeah. So, you're apprenticing. I'm working at Cactus Charlie's. I'm talking about.
Starting point is 01:03:03 Are they like the polarity of those two things yeah avenue raymond pontu it had western swinging doors that was the entrance of the restaurant in paris i went there to work with great french chefs joel robertson one of my heroes at the time who i got to meet and actually work with a little bit because my chef worked for him uh you know fulfilling a lifelong dream of working with the great European chefs, which is what you had to do back then in the early 80s. You had to do that because we didn't have the amount of great chefs that we do now in America. Now you can go to any town, just about anywhere, and there's probably going to be a pretty good chef cooking really good food. But back then you had to travel and get your creds right those are your creds and going to europe
Starting point is 01:03:47 was an important credit so i ended up working at cactus charlie's to make my 6 000 frank minimum wage 6 000 francs a month and uh and i work for free for dominic session yeah and what did you you know what do you learn when you work underneath you know a guy like that you mostly shut your mouth and do a lot of looking and observing and doing what you're told. Those days, the rules were absolute. There was a king and you were a subject. And you know what? I was totally fine with that because the education that I was given as a result of being a willing participant in that ridiculous scenario was so valuable and hard to obtain otherwise.
Starting point is 01:04:31 Impossible to obtain otherwise. Now, again, of course, you can learn these things on Google and YouTube and you don't have to go through that torture. But there's probably something about going through that, that when you burn in that flame, you're coming out other side like pretty well fortified for anything that's gonna come out in your direction yeah right to use a game of thrones reference yeah when you come out the unburnt and uh learn the the superpowers because part of what we do is dealing with you know complete chaos and, um, having a stomach for adversity is a really important skill and, and, uh, character trait. If you're in the restaurant business and you can't figure out how to jump over hurdle after hurdle after hurdle, you're done. You're, you're, you're dead on day one. Well, also I would imagine, even though it is a, you know, it's a
Starting point is 01:05:19 kingdom and there's a King, like there's still, it's still contingent upon you know how how developed your people skills are right because if you can't run your team in a functional way you're in trouble right so you can be as talented as anybody with what you put together on that plate but if you don't know how to communicate and like work with others like it's not going to last very long right so yeah it's it's interesting that you say that. So that's very true today. Back then the way the form of communication that was most prevalent was simply example. So you, you watched, you had to watch, you had to watch, you weren't allowed to ask questions. Really. You had to learn from watching and trying. And if you messed up, you'd, you'd hear about it, but if you did right, you wouldn't hear a word. And that was not being
Starting point is 01:06:00 spoken to or yelled at was a great thing. Silence was perfect. Yeah. No news is good news back in those days. Um, now there's a lot of catering and, you know, catering to people's needs and, you know, uh, traditional mentor mentee relationships where you're nurturing and teaching and handholding people through the processes. But back then just wasn't enough time and you just had a quietly observed for years right you know for years and um if you could when your time came up and the guy who did the fish station was sick and they asked you to step in if you could do it you're golden if you couldn't and you weren't weren't watching this you're out goodbye good luck go elsewhere or stay in the dish room keep peeling carrots or whatever it is you're doing but there's something beautiful about that process and i think you're you're about to speak to that um understanding what it takes to learn these deeply important
Starting point is 01:06:56 skills and that sacrifice is a part of it but the rewards are so worth it you know because these are um skills that are so deeply ingrained now you know i can i can access them so easily and it helps me every day you know and i see people who don't have the skills didn't do this process struggle too you know and and come to people like me and seamus and say well how do you do things? And I think it's going to be, I think what's going to finally make what you do and I do mainstream is, uh, enough chefs and medical, uh, doctors getting into the business and collaborating to create medically sound. And I'm talking about real real real integrative medicine not
Starting point is 01:07:46 traditional western medicine medically sound um examples of food that will reverse the the problems and the disease that we develop from the western diet chefs and doctors i think are the key yeah i think there would be i feel like there needs to be bridges built between those two worlds like don't they live in they live in different universes right these people are not talking less and less by the way yeah yeah yeah but i think they're i work with an integrative doctor that i use with my clients and you know he's really into the food and you know the mark hyman's of the world are out there now and frank litman litman of course yeah mine is jeffrey morrison and um and you know they're starting to bring these worlds together and i think that's going to be
Starting point is 01:08:30 super important because i think as a chef if you you need the credibility of someone in medicine almost to convince the person who's dabbling in healthy well it's symbiotic you know the doctor needs the guy who knows how to make this stuff amazing you know so these two things can mutually benefit from being more deeply embedded with each other i think yeah well let's talk a little bit about um you know i want to yeah what have you been wanting to talk about there's lots of stuff i want to talk about yeah i mean you know about the fact that i have your wife we can uh i know that's super she just she's here so i wanted to meet her i saw her was she in new york a few months ago she was doing an event yeah yeah yeah i wanted to go to that event i did cool she'll be delighted um yeah she's super excited and she's finishing up uh jesus she
Starting point is 01:09:19 well our first book was plant power the plant power way but she's just delivering uh the plant power italia so she's just delivering the Plant Power Italia. So she's doing an Italian plant-based cookbook. So I'm sure. Amazing. That's the next one I'm working on is a Mediterranean-based diet.
Starting point is 01:09:32 Because, you know, they've been doing this for a long time. Right. Yeah. This is a beautiful book, by the way. So, yeah,
Starting point is 01:09:37 that was our first one. Are these your children? So, uh-huh. Wow. Some of them are just hanging around here. Some of them are at school. Four?
Starting point is 01:09:44 I don't know where they are. Yeah, four kids. Nice job, my friend. Our nephew lives here as well. And they're all vegan? Everybody's vegan. Amazing. Plant-based.
Starting point is 01:09:51 Is that the rule? It's not really the rule. It just, that's how it evolved. Did you have to, at some point, like advocate for your position when they got old enough to learn that they could argue with you? It wasn't really kind of like that. It was more like, well, like you, like't really kind of like that it was more like well like you like i was 50 pounds overweight and i was stuffing my face with with fast food and yeah
Starting point is 01:10:11 julie wasn't totally plant-based but she was super healthy and her relationship with food is in check and then i made my changes and i went totally plant-based and then julie kind of got on board with that over time and then we just we never made an announcement it was just we we got rid of all the junk in our house and started replacing it with healthy stuff and julie's an amazing cook and is that prior to them coming to the planet well well our two older boys are 21 and 22 so they uh you know they had been eating and they're like they're my stepson so they're they would go to their dad's house and eat differently and then they would come here and we would eat plant-based but we didn't say like you can't whatever like she julie just made amazing food and then over time that's just what they preferred and then
Starting point is 01:10:51 before they knew it like oh i guess this is how we're eating you know and indoctrination and we never like when they go to their friend's house it's not like oh you can't eat this like eat whatever you want like we're this is the way we're eating here right and just over time it just became that's clear to them this is the better path yeah it's better and i feel better and i prefer it and that's just kind of how it's happened and every kid has had their own different version of that story and some have taken longer or whatever and have their you know different kinds of uh you know different kind of learning curve but that's that's what we do so you're not having those moments where they're bugging you to take you take me to mcdonald's no no no never like our our two are our girls who are 13 and 10 have never had mcdonald's
Starting point is 01:11:31 great that's great never had mcdonald's so yeah and they've been they've been vegan their their whole lives so cool yeah and that i mean they've had you know they've gone to a birthday party and had cake or pizza it's not like that but it's just basically this is the lifestyle that we that we lead and they're totally on board you are they advocates now too do they realize they're in a position to be advocates and yeah i think that's slowly starting to come along with our 13 year old i mean they go to the school around the corner called muse and it's plant-based oh it's that james cameron and julia cameron julia not julia cameron um suzy uh james's wife started it with her sister rebecca and you know they're ardent plant-based environmentalist or whatever so that's plant-based lunch made at the
Starting point is 01:12:12 school amazing food wow and so basically it's like every kid that goes there that's what that's the way it is and so and they teach environmentalism and so they're you know they're they're being you know kind of uh educated from that perspective. And I think that naturally will instill in them as they age a sense of advocacy and responsibility. Obviously, you picked the school, and that was a very wise choice. So having that obviously makes it much easier. Because isn't that the big problem when kids start going to school and seeing other things? Of course.
Starting point is 01:12:42 They come home and like, I want this! Well, school lunch is a disaster. And that's one thing I want to talk to you about. know a lot of what you do is in this advocacy space sure sure i mean you know dealing with you know how can we get our kids healthy healthier like how can we change the food paradigm in the schools and and how can we um address this massive problem of food deserts and unhealthy foods in you know the socio-economically challenged uh you know communities that that you know proliferate across the world i mean you're from jamaica like so you know there's a lot of people that i would imagine you see on a daily basis and they're getting their food from bodegas and that's pretty much it right and this is like
Starting point is 01:13:22 driving bodegas still sell plantain right and they sell yuca and they sell lots of do they a lot of them sell just crap they do too they're liquor stores basically a lot of them i mean i'm not calling it a bodega i'm just saying like the corner 7-eleven you know what i mean like they definitely don't sell this is where you know farm subsidies are are you know keep the cost low on these snack foods and these processed foods and sodas and fast food and the like and when you're tight on a budget and you got a bunch of kids like you're gonna eat the cheapest thing so you're gonna be the quickest to be the most unhealthy you're gonna have the highest incidence of these chronic lifestyle illnesses and it's a it's a vicious cycle
Starting point is 01:14:02 that is further driving the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots. And at the core of this, the very center of this is food, right? And so I know you've done a lot of work in this space. How do you think about these issues? I definitely am spending a lot of my time advocating for better food policies in schools with several charities, Health Corps, Wellness in Schools, Eating America, Food Bank. Charity and charitable work has always been a part of my life. Again, my mom's example at the Rosary Society, my Catholic school, and fundraising that she participated in, it was always something we did.
Starting point is 01:14:39 So it wasn't something I got into as an adult. I've always thought that this is a this is a part of a human's life right doing charitable work and um about 15 years ago i had to sort of pick because as a chef you're asked to do lots of charitable work and it's it's an easy ask right you donate a dinner you donate something you can you can help people raise money very easily very quickly and it's it's fun you know people get to experience a dinner cooked by a chef or come into a restaurant or whatever. So, um, and we're, we're giving by nature, right? We're chefs. We could, we feed people and we want to give everything away.
Starting point is 01:15:13 We none of us want to charge. We, we'd give everything away if we could in a heartbeat. And many of us do, uh, much of the sugar of our partners. So, I don't know. When you went to Seamus' place, did he give you 15 things you didn't order? Probably. Of course. Because that's how we are. I can't even remember whether he charged me.
Starting point is 01:15:32 He might have not even let me pay for it. I'm sure he either comped you or comped half the bill or something. I'm sure. Hopefully his partner is not listening. partner is not listening uh but so uh i had to make a choice and my choices were to focus on food insecurity and advocacy and education regarding food and so that's how i ended up really laser focused on health core which is dr oz's foundation where they bring healthy to high school students and wellness in the schools who's partnered with the doe of new york city which took them 10 years to do and now that they've partnered up they're in uh 30 uh they're in front of 30 000 kids a day
Starting point is 01:16:13 i think in new york city and they're now in like five states and they're growing very quickly seamus is involved with them as well um so what they do it's's very, very, seems innocent, but super sneaky. They were, the deal they made was they would create the salad bar menu. Every New York City school has a salad bar and you get $1 a day per student. And that sounds like nothing, right? But a dollar is actually a lot if you spend it properly and you buy local seasonal food, which we can do in New York City because we do have eight months of growing and a great farmer's market. So in their salad bar, they sneak in all this healthy plant-based food, and kids just like it because kids are not stupid.
Starting point is 01:16:56 Kids see a pear, and if you can get them to try it, they'll recognize that this fresh local pear tastes really good. And part of being an ambassador for Health Corps is visiting schools. I visited hundreds of schools, met with thousands of kids. I used to bring my food truck to the school. They're receptive and they're into it and they get this. They're frightened to death that their parents are going to die of diabetes. So these kids are like, the analog might be you and i in the 70s worried about our
Starting point is 01:17:25 parents smoking i don't know if that was an issue for you but it was for me and so i used to hide my dad's cigarettes and put snaps in them so they exploded when he smoked them and we did everything we could to get him to stop smoking now kids are trying to get their parents to eat you know less sugar so their diabetic syndrome you know the the disease and the symptoms aren't affecting the family as much. Because when you have serious diabetes, type 2 diabetes, you know, your whole family's feeling this, right? You have symptoms that are, you know, basically causing disturbances in everyday life. Of course. The ripple effects of that are unbelievable.
Starting point is 01:18:00 And, you know, it's difficult to change the habits of, you know, a 55-year-old man or woman who's been doing a certain thing in a certain way their entire life. Not if I can get them the donut. I know. Not if I can get them the donut. And what you do, I'm not saying it's impossible. You and I both change. But, you know, for a lot of people, this is hard. But kids, you know, they're dialed in, man.
Starting point is 01:18:21 They're interested in sustainability. For sure. They understand organic. Like, they get it. interested in sustainability. For sure. They understand organic. They get it. It's not a hard sell. So even in New York City, not the West Coast, where you're hyper aware of all this, and there's a really big difference, by the way.
Starting point is 01:18:35 I'm not sure if you're aware of that, but even though New York City is super progressive, we're not talking about this stuff as much as you guys are, and there aren't plant-based schools to send your children to there is one in queens is there i went there and did a one early on in my podcast i forget ps oh that's forget the number to know um first vegetarian public school in the country that's incredible i think i call it vegetarian but essentially it's plant-based there's a there's an organization called i'm forgetting it right now i'll put it in the show notes healthy school lunch for kids in new york healthy i forget there's a
Starting point is 01:19:09 woman named ann uh her name is escaping me right now but they're doing amazing work trying to shift the school lunch you know sort of uh systemically and this school they were they had hanging gardens in the in the um on the athletic vertical on the basketball court yeah vertical gardens hanging in the classrooms and in the library and like it was kind of integrated in the whole culture wow um but that's the outlier you know what i mean like that's the example we all aspire to that but we're dealing with bureaucracy and lobbying and you know regulatory policy and all of these things that are driving these decisions. And there's a lot of money to be made. These contracts that get signed for whatever provider is providing that food.
Starting point is 01:19:52 There's people in the state and federal legislatures that are trying to make sure that they get that contract, and that contract stays, and a lot of that is shit food. But it's changing. It's changing. Our nonstop blabbering is working. This talking and talking and talking with people who are not interested is starting to have an effect. People are starting to see the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Forget about just plant-based, but a healthy lifestyle.
Starting point is 01:20:17 They're seeing it in the behavior of their children. They're seeing it in their co-pays of prescriptions on a monthly basis. You know, those costs start to add up after a while. copays of prescriptions on a monthly basis you know those those costs start to add up after a while and you know when people tell me um i have a big family i can't afford to feed them healthy i always say well what does it cost you when you lose the you know your top income earner at 50 years old what does that cost your family over 30 years it's tough to think of all the costs i know it's tough to get people to motivate themselves that like oh well you're going to pay for it now you're going to pay for it later because you're going to be sick but people
Starting point is 01:20:46 are like yeah yeah well i'll deal with that well they're paying for it sooner because uh type 2 diabetes didn't exist in the 60s when we were kids that that was extremely rare i think i think it was called early onset right yeah it's a disease we essentially recreate juvenile and juvenile diabetes early onset right yeah um and it's it's now more and more prevalent and people are realizing that you can fix it with food and we've got guys like dr oz on tv every day advocating for this stuff uh and other people like him uh and i think the message is finally getting around i think what we need to do is work on providing people with the actual food you know like get get the how do we make it more affordable i mean there is you know to kind of preface this there is a sense uh or an idea that you know healthy living
Starting point is 01:21:34 wellness you know like wellness is sort of rich people yeah it's like an elitist thing you know you're talking we're talking about spirulina and cordyceps and crazy you know super expensive superfoods it's like how can we make just simple healthy eating you know predominantly plant-based plant-based whatever like how can we get people who really need it the most and can't afford it access to these things so i don't know what people are saying that I must be missing, but when I go to the farmer's market in New York city, they're taking snap. They're, they're discounting. Oh, they take snap. They take snap at every market in New York city. They're doubling the dollar. Sometimes they're doing offers where every snap dollars worth $2. And just for the listener, snap is essentially food stamps.
Starting point is 01:22:21 Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, it's nutrition assistance programs. That's a federal program for people who can't afford to buy food for their family. Um, so they're making it very, very compelling to use their snap funds at the farmer's market versus the bodega where you would typically buy a bottle of Fanta, right. With, with your snap money. Um, so there are places and there are opportunities. You just need to hear this stuff from guys like us or learn about it at the market but when i'm at the market i see a lot of um people from communities that we think of as the ones that are typically affected most by um the the notion that healthy is only for wealthy people and they're they're buying smart they're buying smartly they're buying vegetables and
Starting point is 01:23:04 they're coming at the end of the day sometimes when the farmers are giving away the food, basically, because they don't want to go home with all their food. They have these $1 bags at the end of the day that are like 5, 10 pounds of greens and tomatoes and whatever it is that they don't want to take home. So it's a change of routine, I think. I don't really believe that a pound of broccoli is more expensive than a pound of Hot Pockets. If you do the math in terms of edible product potatoes yeah i mean plant what
Starting point is 01:23:32 i love one thing i love about plant-based foods is that plants are much less expensive than meats and i can make these donuts for little to nothing you know using chickpea flour, right? And it's inexpensive stuff. So I need someone to make the case to me that living healthily is only for the wealthy and more expensive because I just don't see it. It doesn't make sense on the merits. It exists if you're going to Whole Foods and Erewhon. Whole Foods was the issue. Now everything's cheap at Whole Foods. It's no longer going to be the issue.
Starting point is 01:24:04 This is changing now with Amazon. But I think you're right. I think Whole Foods helped create this notion that that's how you live a healthy lifestyle. You have to go to Whole Foods. But it's just not the case. There are farmer's markets in every city in America. And if you live in a food desert, you're probably living in a desert of every kind. So you're probably driving around a lot to go to work or elsewhere. And you're probably living in in a desert of every kind so you're probably driving around a lot
Starting point is 01:24:25 you know to go to work or elsewhere um and you're passing opportunities you know it's really mindset and uh learning how how much damage you're doing to your children if you're not making the case making a choice to feed them healthy foods um you're going to pay pretty soon it's not going to be 50 years down the road you know your child is going to have accelerating yeah yeah exactly it's crazy i think i uh the stat that i saw that was by 2030 30 of americans are going to be uh diabetic or pre-diabetic and i can't remember what the childhood rates are for that but childhood it's one in five now it's going to be one in four by the end of the decade unbelievable you know there was like did you see i think it was just last weekend new york times
Starting point is 01:25:09 did a documentary on the impact of uh the impact on ultra processed foods on brazil like all these yes i did see that it's incredibly well done yeah and you're just seeing like how it's just wreaking havoc on this culture yeah you know, because they're adopting our habits. Local food that their mothers or someone at home would have cooked. Yeah. When Mexico eclipsed America as the number one most obese country in the world, I almost cried because every time I've been to Mexico, I've eaten the most wonderful local food I've ever had in my life.
Starting point is 01:25:39 I mean, they have a cuisine that is so rich and so delicious and all based on local ingredients, hyper-local ingredients. There are parts of Mexico that don't even know about the ingredients that are in other parts of Mexico. The same is true in Italy. Unfortunately, Europe is changing. You know, I talk about the Mediterranean diet a lot because it's, in my opinion, one of the best examples of a sustainable-for-life diet pattern that works, basically, and doesn't leave you feeling like you're deprived but that's changing too you know the spain and and italy are starting to develop obesity issues
Starting point is 01:26:12 it's crazy it's even starting to encroach on blue zones you know where the people have lived you know it's like it's it's a global issue and it's not a small thing yeah you know we're talking about this is the balance of of you know the well-being of our species yeah and we're just propelling ourselves down this path that is just decimating our health and depleting our resources we kind of acclimate it we acclimate to it as as if it's just a new normal you know know, it's like, this is just the way human beings act and look and eat now. And it's not. We need to take a step back and really look at what we're doing. And I think, you know, maybe it's uncomfortable for, you know, some people to have to look
Starting point is 01:26:57 in the mirror and hold themselves accountable for their habits and their behaviors. But this is your life, man. And, you know, I think we all need to take greater personal responsibility for the choices that we are making. And, and to the extent that the problem seems so daunting and unsolvable, like we're just, who am I? You know, I'm just a dude. Uh, you know, everybody votes with their dollar and that dollar counts and we live in a capitalist society. And if you start buying, you start buying almond milk and not dairy, the economy is going to shift around that. And we're already seeing that.
Starting point is 01:27:29 There's a lot of momentum. And I'm excited. Are you optimistic? How do you look at this? After this hurricane cycle and the wildfires this year and the earthquakes, I'm a little less optimistic. But it's been quite a season. But I'm definitely optimistic because I do see what i care about in food growing not shrinking and i do see i do see and hear more people talking about it more people interested in it um you know when i when i pitch these books
Starting point is 01:27:56 to publishers now they want what i what i used to have a hard time selling they're looking for that now and um when i talk about a vegan donut people are excited you know it's not like eyes roll back in their head anymore and like oh rocco enough with your hospital food my my chef friends thought i lost my mind and went off to make hospital food right that's how they described what i was doing what do they think now uh i have to ask them but i think based on the number of chef friends who are now in their 50s and asking me for help uh-huh i think that their opinion has changed a little bit. What do you think about the whole culture of celebrity chefs as somebody who's walked through that world? So I think there are a lot of wonderful things that came out of that movement.
Starting point is 01:28:36 One, chefs have been able to impact the collective American palate in positive ways. Not always positive, but many and mostly, I would say positive. The fact that there are farmers markets everywhere, again, you know, the ones that disappeared in the 60s that are all back, I think, as a result of chefs, you know, looking for better local seasonal ingredients. You know, the fact that there's a yuzu flavored Snapple, I even like to take a little credit for because I was one of the first chefs to use yuzu in uh the early 90s um so i think we have we have a voice and um people like to listen to us because we're fun we we cook food and we celebrate and we do it 24 7 and so i'm glad that we have a voice um i don't think we're celebrities in the sense of you know real celebrities that go to the emmys and do the red carpet and yeah but there's a
Starting point is 01:29:26 we're people that are looked to for guidance first of all you're you are a celebrity so there's that but like also there was there was kind of like i don't know what happened in the culture but like suddenly whether it's reality tv or whatever it is like there was a thing where suddenly like these chefs who were doing amazing work who were kind of doing it you know had their followings and and had notoriety in in that subculture were suddenly you know sort of foisted on the public and and there was kind of a you know a fever around that that i don't know if it's still like that maybe it's i've been i've been asked since the 90s when is this chef thing going to end it's still going on i don't think it's going to end i think we're part of the permanent fixture you know we're part of american pop culture or culture in general and that's a good thing because
Starting point is 01:30:09 we're food advocates and we're people who are charitable and we're people who like to make people happy so that that's a really good thing um in terms of the celebrity alone aspect there isn't a chef out there who really is known for being a celebrity they all learned how to cook at some point most of them and they either had restaurants so we're working people you know we're not we're different we're different than uh a youtube star or you know that that ilk do you know what i mean yeah and i think it's great that i think it's great that we were given an opportunity in the 80s starting with wolfgang puck and emerald and to address america as as a as an audience because we have good things to say important things to say
Starting point is 01:30:57 we're we're a positive force you know we gotta wrap it up here but uh let's uh so many things i want to tell you i feel like i just said, tell me. We don't have to stop. So many things. Wow. Oh, the book. Yeah. I have a new book. Shameless plug.
Starting point is 01:31:14 Talk about the book. Yeah, so I have a new book. We'll talk about it a little bit at the outset. But yeah, go into it, please. It's over 200. The official subtitle is over 200 mostly plant-based recipes for everyday life. So, uh, I, what I want to do with this book is not ply you with diet theory, not tell you about the keto diet, the Mediterranean diet, the paleo diet, the dash diet. My, my readers get it. They
Starting point is 01:31:35 understand there's lots of diet theory and lots of ways to biohack and, and, you know, break into the system and get your body to do crazy things. Um, but really what's sustainable over a long period of time is just cooking healthy food. And I'm talking about common sense healthy, right? We know that there's too much sugar in our diet, so I don't use any sugar refined sugars in this book. Um, I don't talk about it in the beginning very much, but I don't use gluten. I don't really use dairy in this book, except for I break for Parmesan Reggiano. And I find that for most people, when you're making pasta out of like pea protein, you have to have Parmesan Reggiano to get them to eat it.
Starting point is 01:32:13 But your wife's version of Parmesan Reggiano is going to save me. I was going to say, you got to like check that out. You might be revising that for your next book. I do. So the book is actually 248 recipes. So it's a proper cookbook. It's the first proper cookbook in eight books. Um, and I believe that there is something in that book for every single person who wants to cook at home and live a healthier lifestyle. And these are super simple recipes in every, every book. Uh, every recipe has a picture, which is super
Starting point is 01:32:39 important. Um, my readers keep telling me they want more recipes and more pictures. That's all they keep telling me. And so I'm delivering what you've been asking me for um and the pictures are hyper focused on the food extreme close-ups it's it's food porn at its best yeah well there's there's certainly no shortage of plant-based recipes in there too and i'm excited to try them out it's super cool yeah that you there's a few meat dishes yeah you gotta can't you can't throw the baby out with the bath water i I know. We'll get you there. We'll see what the next one. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:33:07 Check in with me in a year, man. I'm going to get you 100%. Trust me, I pitched it. I pitched it. They're like, you're a little resistant. They're like, don't lose your entire audience. You're losing the thread completely. But it's cool, man.
Starting point is 01:33:19 And I appreciate the work you do. And it's been a cool journey to kind of watch from afar. And nice to meet you i think uh it would be great to kind of um round this out and and let people go with um you know some some wisdom around uh trying to help people like you work with these clients one-on-one you're seeing it on the front lines like people that are struggling with food and trying to find their way through it you know somebody's listening and they're stuck and they're like i hear it all like i understand it like i just you know how do i take that first step what do i do like how do i how do you know how do i put that that first foot forward like
Starting point is 01:33:53 you know help me throw me the life yeah so the prequel is the hard part the prequel is always the hard part and i i talk about this a lot with my clients getting to the point where you're making a conscious decision to change your life right that's the struggle once you've made the conscious decision it's usually fairly easy it has to be self-motivated it has to be a self-driven thing it has to be an internally you know and hopefully not always motivated by something catastrophic your doctor tells you right unfortunately that's what happens most of the time um but you know what just give yourself 72 hours and try some of the stuff we're talking about. Just, you know, try my recipes. Try your recipes.
Starting point is 01:34:26 Try, you know, making yourself shakes and smoothies for three days out of, you know, full fiber, no juicing, you know, blended vegetables and fruits and give up the gluten and the dairy and the sugar and tell me how you feel. Because you'll feel a difference in about 12 hours and 72 hours, you will definitely feel a difference. Right. And you'll get to a point where when you add that stuff back you feel a negative difference you start to feel really bad once your body's cleaned out and detoxed yeah so what you're doing is you're you're you're getting people to connect with how they feel physically if you're just eating junk all the time that you acclimate to that that's your normal right you
Starting point is 01:35:01 lose touch with how you can feel yeah right so creating that connection so if you're one of those people that's always tired and cranky and you're overweight and your clothes don't fit and uh you're super self-conscious and you know you're sick of that give it a try of nothing to lose you know go to go to negative calorie diet try my three-day cleanse it it's a cleanse with food so it's not one of those crazy juice cleanse where you eat nothing um try you know i don't know the first 10 pages of plant power way i'm sure has a great plan just try it and and and then tweet me and tell me you don't feel a difference i dare you i dare you to tell me you don't feel a difference because you will one
Starting point is 01:35:40 important thing is to drink a lot of water very important that people don't realize we need to be our muscle is the only part of our body that burns calories and if it's not fully hydrated it One important thing is to drink a lot of water. Very important that people don't realize we need to be, our muscle is the only part of our body that burns calories. And if it's not fully hydrated, it doesn't work. And so drinking a lot of water is super important through any of these processes. As you detox, water will keep you sane. Nice, man. Rocco's healthy and delicious. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:36:00 Comes out October 10th? Is that? 17th. 17th. Right on that. When will this air? What's that? When will this air uh i'll look at the calendar i'll try to i'll try to orient it around um when it comes out yeah cool no worries man yeah but probably around that same time that'd be great cool man yeah thank you this
Starting point is 01:36:16 is really wonderful superman awesome good talking to you high five uh cool so you can find rock is pretty easy to find on the internet rocco dispirito on twitter or instagram whether you like it or not all good man you got any triathlons coming up are you are you still so back surgery two years ago no been yeah yeah three exploded balls oh man yeah so running is definitely another question i can bike still but it i have to refit my bike now. Uh-huh. Yeah. You live in Manhattan? Yeah. You do? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:36:50 So where do you, do you go up like up across the bridge? Up in Miami. I do that a lot. Yeah. I do up and down to the bridge from, I live all the way downtown. So upper west side. Yeah. Cool. Plus out in Long Island.
Starting point is 01:36:58 Yeah. All right. Nice dude. But if you're eating, you know, one thing, it's 90% food, right? You know this. Yeah. I think the game is 90 food so if you're eating well you don't have to you know do a triathlon to get into shape you
Starting point is 01:37:13 don't have to do any of them it's wonderful to do and definitely something you should try if you're into it but you don't have to go do bar class and do all these crazy things uh if you're if if you're just eating well because you'll get to 90% of your goals with a change in diet, a profound change in diet for most people. And if you are doing all of those things and you're not paying attention to how you're eating, it's not going to work out. You're going to end up one of those people like my clients
Starting point is 01:37:37 who say, I work out all the time. I can't lose weight. It's because you can't out-train a bad diet. You just can't. Good talking to you, Matt. Yeah. Cool. Peace. Lance. a bad diet you just can't so good talking to you man yeah cool peace glance all right pretty cool we did it i dig that guy hope you guys enjoyed that conversation you know
Starting point is 01:37:54 it's funny rocco and i were talking before the podcast just about stuff and life and what i do what he does and what julie does i was telling him about Julie and her food and her books. And he took a look at this cheese is nuts. And he's like, oh, I have this book. I love this book, which I thought was super duper cool. Julie was out at the time at the beginning of the conversation, but she came home like right at the end, right when we were finishing our conversation. And she let him taste a couple of her cheeses that she was working on.
Starting point is 01:38:25 And he tasted them and he just like lit up the guy, like just smiled from ear to ear. And he gave her like this huge bear hug. And I just thought that was kind of an amazing moment for, for Julie to be recognized by such a great, well-trained chef like Rocco was a really special moment. In any event, if you want to learn more about Rocco, RoccoDispirito.com. He's at Rocco was a really special moment. In any event, if you want to learn more about Rocco, RoccoDispirito.com. He's at Rocco Dispirito on all the Instagrams and the Twitters. He's easy to track down. So give him a shout, let him know what you thought of the conversation. Please check out the show notes on the episode page at Richroll.com. We got tons of links to take your edification beyond the earbuds. So how's your plate looking? Are you guys eating
Starting point is 01:39:03 more plants? Are you inspired to get more plant-based after listening to Rocco, but you don't know where to begin. You're not a big cookbook person. You don't know what to do in the kitchen. You're lacking the tools or maybe just, I don't know, a little bit of a helping lending hand to get you started and to keep you inspired on this journey. Well, you might enjoy our new meal planner. When you sign up, you get thousands of plant-based recipes right at your fingertips, unlimited meal plans and grocery lists. We're now metric system compliant. Everything's totally personalized and customized based on your goals and your food preferences and your allergies and your time constraints. It's very mobile friendly. We have an amazing customer support team, experts, not people who
Starting point is 01:39:43 don't know what they're talking about. I'm talking about people with graduate degrees, athletes, moms, people who live and breathe this stuff available to you to answer all your questions. We even have grocery delivery in some 60 odd metropolitan areas. We're getting great feedback. People are really enjoying this. It's life-changing stuff, people. I'm really telling you that this is a great thing to explore if your plate has caused you consternation. You can learn more by going to meals.richroll.com. It's basically $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. Totally affordable.
Starting point is 01:40:16 And I just love it. I'm really proud of it. I think it's an amazing service. And yeah, check it out to learn more. Meals.richroll.com or click on the meal planner on the top menu at richroll.com. A final reminder, my 51st birthday is coming up. I really want to reach my $51,000 goal to build clean water projects on behalf of Charity Water. So please visit my fundraising page at my.charitywater.org forward slash richroll. We've already raised
Starting point is 01:40:44 $28,000. It's amazing. Thank you guys so much. It's incredible. We're going to be helping so many people and it feels great to give. It really does. It is the giving season. So I implore you to be generous, check out my fundraising page and consider a donation. Again, my.charitywater.org forward slash rich roll. If you would like to support this show and my work, share it with your friends on social media. No brainer. Leave a review on Apple podcast. Subscribe at that subscribe button. Very important. We have a Patreon set up for those who want to financially contribute to what I'm doing, and I really appreciate that up through my birthday, though. I would appreciate any considered donation to go to Charity Water. I think that's a better
Starting point is 01:41:21 source of those funds right now. Uh, if you would like to receive a free short weekly email from me, I send one out most weeks. I missed again this week cause I was in Austin. It was just so crazy. Anyway, it's called roll call. Uh, I usually send it out Thursday, but I started sending it out on other days. In any event, it's pretty regular five or six things I've come across over the course of the week that I think are informative, inspiring, usually a couple articles, documentaries, videos, products, things like that. I now have a huge list of things I want to put in roll call. So I think next week's going to be pretty beefy. In any event, thank you to everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and
Starting point is 01:41:59 production, help on the show notes and for the interstitial music. Sean Patterson for help on graphics. David Zamet for his photo portraits and video. We are preparing a video for this Rocco episode that I'm going to be sharing with you guys soon. And theme music, as always, by Annalena. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here soon. We're going to do a midweek podcast this week, I believe. It's going to be great. So check it out. And until then, be well, live well, peace, well, live well. Peace, plants. Namaste. Thank you.

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