The Rich Roll Podcast - Meatonomics: How the Bizarre, Rigged Economics of the Meat and Dairy Industries Co-Opt Consumer Choice

Episode Date: November 25, 2013

Sometimes I feel like some kind of fringe conspiracy theorist. I didn't used to be this way, I promise. But the more I delve into how things work — truly work — the more amazed I am by what I discover. I don't care if you are vegan, locavore, pescatarian, paleo, primal, high-carb, low-carb, or slow-carb. Everyone deserves to be optimally informed when it comes to how our food is harvested, distributed and marketed. And yet, quite unfortunately, most consumers lack even a basic awareness of the dynamics at play, let alone a working understanding of the formidable economic protocols that function behind the production of meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. It is incumbent upon all of us to take personal responsibility for educating ourselves about the economic machinations that dominate and drive our food system. Why? Because these forces affect all of us, irrespective of dietary preference. And because informed choice is power.  Today on the show I am pleased to introduce David Robinson Simon, attorney, advocate for sustainable consumption, and author of the newly released Meatonomics* — an important, groundbreaking and astoundingly revelatory deep dive into the potent economic, marketing, regulatory & legislative forces that support the meat and dairy industries' masterful ability to influence and downright undermine informed consumer awareness and decision making when it comes to what — and how much — to eat. David's thesis is that such consumer decisions aren't just misplaced, but in fact manipulated and compelled — often on an unconscious level — by the behemoth animal food producers who effectively co-opt consumers’ buying choices with artificially-low prices fueled by out-of-whack farm subsidies; ubiquitous, powerful but misleading marketing campaigns; and heavy control over legislation and regulatory policy at the highest echelons of government. Over the course of our conversation, David provides vital insight into how the economics of institutional animal food production hold sway over our spending, eating, health, prosperity, economy, environment and longevity. A perfect storm of almost conspiratorial circumstances that serve — in the macro — to exponentially increase (among other things): * Annual US taxpayer dollars spent to subsidize meat & dairy; * The rapid depletion of our forests & soil; * The level of greenhouse gas emissions that catalyze irrevocable climate change;  * The collapsing of wild fisheries; * The proliferation of “farmed” fisheries; * US dietary cholesterol intake; * The incidence of cancer, diabetes and heart disease related to meat and dairy consumption * Healthcare costs allocated to treat US cases of diseases related to meat and dairy consumption For a quick source-supported primer, check out David's Meatonomics Index– 40 facts and figures that paint a picture of how our meat and dairy intake has spiraled out of control since 1935. Food for thought. Thanks for checking out this post and the episode, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. Rich

Welcome to episode 62 of the Rich Roll Podcast with David Simon. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey people, welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for dropping by. What do we do here each week? I bring to you the best and the brightest, the most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, wellness, fitness, nutrition, and athletics with one goal in mind, to help you unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. with one goal in mind, to help you unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. Today on the show, my guest certainly fits the definition of paradigm busting. He is an author and a lawyer. I think he might be the first lawyer that I've had on the show other than myself. His

name is David Simon. He's got a new book out. It's called Meatonomics. And essentially what this book does is a deep dive into the bizarre economics of the meat and dairy industry. It's pretty fascinating. He breaks it down in terms of economics, the money that is spent and how it's spent to market and distribute these products to get them from the farms, particularly the factory farms, to your plate. The marketing that is entailed in doing so and how the whole farm subsidies thing comes into play to keep prices cheap and how, in fact, those prices are actually, those added costs are passed on to us. It's pretty interesting. And I think that you will be, your eyes will be opened by this discussion. So whether you're a plant-based person, a paleo person, maybe you're a McDonald's

person, I don't know. It doesn't matter. But I think it's all incumbent upon us to be educated about how our food system works, how food arrives on our plate, what is entailed in that process. And what David does is he really pulls the covers on the business. We get a look at the lobbying efforts, the marketing companies, the USDA, and how all these sort of power players conspire to convince us that we should continue to buy products that arguably are not in our best interest at price points that seem cheap and yet are passed off to us in other ways. So anyway, I'll let David do the talking.

If you're in the United States, happy Thanksgiving. Hope everybody's getting ready for a healthy version of Thanksgiving. And if you're looking for some tasty, delicious recipes so that you can feel good after your Thanksgiving meal, go to richroll.com. Julie and I put together a series up there. I think there's seven, six or seven recipes up there that you can check out. Our kids love them.

They're easy to make. They're delicious. They're healthy versions of what you would typically expect to eat on Thanksgiving. And we love them. We're easy to make. They're delicious. They're healthy versions of what you would typically expect to eat on Thanksgiving. And we love them. We're going to make them ourselves. So I just wanted to alert you to that if you haven't already visited. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time.

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and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right, so let's just get right into it. David Simon, meat and omics, author, lawyer, activist, advocate for sustainable consumption. Let him blow your mind. All right. Enjoy. Thanks for coming to the garage studio. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to meet you. We tried to hook this up quite a while ago. We had some scheduling stuff to try to make it happen, but I'm really glad to have you here today. I think your message is really powerful

and really important, and I'm glad to be able to put a microphone in front of you and hopefully reach some people with it, you know, some more people with it. Yeah, fantastic. So tell me what, you know, before we get into like your background and all of that, let's just get it out up front. What is Meatonomics all about? Meatonomics is really about a new look at the way that meat and dairy producers in this country have managed to put together a program that allows them to control consumer behavior. And I argue in the book that producers, meat and dairy producers,

have largely diminished the ability of consumers to make informed and independent decisions about what to eat. And so give me an example of what that might be. So meat and dairy producers team up with the USDA and they put together these programs called checkoff programs, just like when you check a box. And most people have never heard of these. I've talked in many cities and I asked people to raise their hands if they've heard of them and no one's ever heard of them. And yet these programs spend about $550 million a year to bombard consumers with messages like milk, it does a body good, beef, it's what's for dinner, pork, the other white meat. We've all seen those messages or heard them

or they've been on the internet or the radio or TV. They're some of the most effective marketing campaigns of all time. That's right. They comprise the fabric of our life. That is right. And we can measure their effectiveness because the checkoff programs themselves publish the data that shows their return on investment. Based on the data that they publish, there's about an 8 to 1 average return on investment. So for each dollar that those programs spend, they see about $8 in increased sales. So for that $550 million, there's about $4.6 billion in extra sales that results. So that's one of the ways that producers are controlling our behavior. Now, we don't even think about that. People go into the grocery store at five o'clock to shop for dinner. And what's going through their head is beef. It's what's for dinner. Beef,

it's what's for dinner. And you don't even know why that's the case. It's because you've been told that a thousand times in a thousand different ways, more than a thousand times. I mean, I've, I've told this story before, but, um, I was in a high school gymnasium recently, public high school and there's got milk banners hanging in the gym, you know, at a public institution. And it's pictures of young strapping, you know, high school athletes at the bench press or, you know, at a public institution. And it's pictures of young strapping, you know, high school athletes at the bench press or, you know, shooting a jump shot.

I can't even remember exactly what the images were, but, you know, with the milk mustache and, you know. So even if you're not looking at it, it's just subliminally, it's getting its way into your unconscious mind and it just sits there until you sort of behave without even knowing it when you're in the grocery store instinctually. Yeah, you're right.

And that example you give of the schools is great because the milk checkoff program spent over $50 million each year selling milk to schoolchildren. Right, and I think it sort of begs the question of the nexus between the USDA and what it's real, and the consumer interest and government interest. So I think that there's this sort of public conventional wisdom that the USDA is out there looking out for our interest.

And if you could elaborate a little bit more on what the USDA's function is. Yeah, well, the USDA has a complicated, really it's a two-part function, and its mission is often divergent. On the one hand, the USDA is charged with promoting meat and dairy. It literally has clients. The industry is its client base. And so when it acts through the checkoff programs to sell more meat and dairy, it's literally executing one of its missions. But its other mission is to team up

with the Department of Health and Human Services and provide dietary guidelines to Americans. And in fact, those two federal agencies, the USDA and HHS, together publish the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are the most influential set of nutritional recommendations that we have in this country. And they guide all sorts of things, school lunch programs and programs for the elderly. And that's what we base most of our own nutritional programs on.

I mean, that's where we get the idea that you need this much protein, you need this much calcium. So these two goals, on the one hand, pushing meat and dairy, on the other hand, telling people what's good for them, often come into conflict. And we see many examples of that at the USDA. It almost seems, I mean, you're a lawyer, like it almost seems, I mean, it's more than a conflict of interest. I mean, is there a constitutional argument here? Well, that's a very good question.

A lot of people have brought lawsuits against the USDA arguing that it's simply not doing its job. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM, has one pending today. That's just on the food pyramid, right? Right. And the argument is that that pyramid and the associated guidelines are misleading. Legislators routinely bring this up and say, we should bifurcate these duties. The USDA should not have both of these duties, but they're routinely overruled. The animal food lobby finds it very important for the same agency that is promoting meat and dairy to make nutritional recommendations because it ensures that Americans will continue to be told

they need to eat meat and drink milk. Well, of course, right? But it seems like there's, you know, who's the, you know, other than organizations like PCRM, who are the consumer watchdogs that are, you know, what are the checks and balances on organizations like the USDA? There really aren't, right? There really aren't. Yeah. So that's the situation. This is meatonomics, right?

Yeah. That's really the unfortunate circumstance for consumers is that our watchdog agency isin, you know, the true expense of what it takes to harvest and produce milk and dairy products and put them on your plate. We all know that you can go to McDonald's or Taco Bell, and it's essentially the same price it was when we were kids, and it's flabbergasting, which then sort of perpetuates this socioeconomic crisis when it comes to dietary habits. If you're underprivileged, it's hard to argue with somebody who's a head of a household who can go to Taco Bell and feed their family for $1010 and you're trying to tell them to go to Whole Foods. So what I, what I like is how

you went into the real economics behind this and what's really going on. Yeah. And, and just to flesh that out a little bit for, for people who may not be familiar with the, with the concept of internal and externalized costs. If I, if I take my garbage to the front of my driveway and leave it there for the garbage service to pick up and I pay them to pick it up, I internalize my garbage collection costs. But if I take my garbage, put it in my trunk, drive over to a park at midnight and dump it there,

I've externalized my garbage costs. In other words, the taxpayers pay for that. Taxpayers have to pay to pick up my garbage. And the point that I make in the book is that metaphorically speaking, animal food producers are dumping their garbage in our parks at midnight because they're offloading or externalizing the vast majority of their production costs onto the rest of us. And so explain how that works. I mean, this is, this is sort of, uh, you know, an endemic kind of entrenched system that starts with farm subsidies,

an endemic kind of entrenched system that starts with farm subsidies, correct? Yeah, farm subsidies represent a big component of that. I add them up to about $38 billion. Different people have done the math differently. That's probably one of the larger numbers. I include in my calculation things like subsidies to feed crops. Those aren't always included in that calculation. But because in this country more than half of the feed crops that we raise, more than half of the soy and corn that we raise in this country,

ends up feeding animals who are raised as livestock, we really have to include those subsidy figures. So that's $38 billion. That's a big number. That number is more than half of what all states spent on unemployment benefits to unemployed workers last year. Unbelievable. To put that in perspective. Yeah. And I think you cited a statistic, the price of a pound of chicken in 1935 versus what it is today. Yeah. So what was that again? I think it was adjusted. It was... On an inflation-adjusted basis,

chicken has come down almost 80% in the last 75 years. Right, so it was like, I think the number you had was like $5 and change or something like that. If you adjusted for inflation in 1935, and now it's like $1.34. Right, right. And that is largely the effect of chicken producers externalizing many of their costs.

They've also figured out ways to make chickens grow bigger and grow faster, and that helps a lot. But all of those, what appear to be improvements in efficiency, always drive externalized costs. So, for example, chickens get bigger faster because they're dosed with antibiotics. Those antibiotics damage our health and health care costs result. Those antibiotics end up in our rivers and streams because we eliminate them after we eat them. The chickens eliminate them after they eat them or are dosed with them. And those chemicals damage ecosystems.

So there are all sorts of costs associated with what we just normally think of as, hey, that's great, it's efficient. Right. So in terms of externalized costs, I can spend the rest of my life eating a vegan diet, but by paying taxes, I am participating in this system because I'm contributing to the farm subsidies. And if my health care costs go up and I pay that, then I'm subsidizing that as well. So I'm taking on, no matter what my personal habits are, my choices are, I'm still bearing these costs. Yeah. It's,

it's really unfortunate. Even if, even if you don't ever touch another animal food product again in your life, you will be continuing to spend money to support those who do. And so is there, you know, in your research, when you look at dairy farming, you look at beef, you look at chicken, and then you look at the fish industry. I mean, is there any one of these that stands out as any worse than the other? Or are they all kind of doing the same thing well that's an interesting question um it they they have there are higher and lower costs associated with them according to different attributes associated with them so for example um the the metrics for measuring cruelty i include i include a cruelty figure in the book,

that's determined based on what would an average person be willing to pay to end cruel practices in a particular industry. Those costs tend to be higher in the pig and chicken farming industries than in the fish and cattle farming industries. Right, people don't care about the fish as much. Yeah, that tends to be the case. So there are some minor differences like that. But for the most part, all of these industries today resort to factory methods, including fishing.

More than half the fish that we eat in this country today is farmed, which means it's basically raised on a factory farm for fish. And all of those factory farms share that common theme that they externalize the vast majority of their costs, environmental damage and subsidies. Right. Yeah, you make a very interesting argument on the harvesting of fish. And, you know, I know a lot of people who they're very interested

in eating a plant-based diet, and maybe for the most part, you know, they're 80%, 90% plant-based. But they'll say to me, yeah, but I just, you know, I've got to have that piece of salmon every once in a while. I feel like I need it, you know, or, you know, I've got to get my omega-3s or what have you. And you had some interesting ideas about that too. Yeah, unfortunately, I hear that a lot, too. And what we find in the two ways of producing fish, either capturing it in the wild or farming it, is that they both damage the environment in different ways.

So fishing, commercial fishing, which is the predominant method of capturing fish today, has already decimated a third of the planet's fish stock, or what are referred to as fisheries. And some scientists expect that by the middle of the century, all of the commercially fished species that are out there today will be gone as a result of commercial fishing operations. And fish farming, for its part, while it's often touted as sort of the future of food production, has all sorts of problems of its own. It causes eutrophication, which is a process which results from fish feces literally concentrating in the water and causing algal blooms and hypoxic zones. Fish are dosed with chemicals too, just like land animals, to prevent the spread of disease. So there's antibiotics in the water that damages local ecosystems. Unfortunately, they both have problems.

And then there are all sorts of places to get omega-3s that don't involve fish, like flax and walnuts. Right, of course. But I think you had said even that fish that are factory farmed really actually don't have very much, if any, omega-3s in them. So there's a lot of misinformation revolving around that. That's right, because omega-3s come from vegetation that grows in a marine environment like seaweed and kelp and and fish and factory farms are often fed things like corn and soy and they just corn and soy don't have omega-3s in their appreciable quantity so they're not going to get the same thing that they're

feeding the cows yeah it's just incredible yeah uh-huh what is this the state of of uh legislation in terms of you know overfishing our our oceans i mean is that is there anything to keep that in balance or the problem is it's an international issue and there's just no there's no international consensus on how to approach it the u.s subsidizing uh subsidizes fishing pretty heavily but we are by far far not the most aggressive subsidizer of fishing. China, Japan, and Russia subsidize fishing much more aggressively than we do. And when you've got countries around the world spending over $50 billion to subsidize a practice that otherwise would be money losing, it's very hard to control what amounts to a continued sort of decimation.

And, you know, I think that it's become very popular lately, which in some ways is a really good thing, to, you know, this priority on eating locally, locavores, whether it's people that are eating on a paleo diet who are interested in getting their beef grass-fed, or, you know, the same thing with the fish that they're eating, going to the farmer's market, making sure that, you know, the sort of carbon footprint of the food that they're purchasing comes from nearby to reduce that. And so, you know, from your book, there's a lot to be said about some sort of misinformation in this world as well, right? Yeah, and while I don't want to discourage people from the idea of consuming products that are raised locally, because I do think it's a good idea,

I do point out in the book that it is very easy to overlook the much more important components of food production, which tend to be in production, processing, and preparation, which together account for like 70% of food's carbon footprint, and to focus on transportation, which only accounts for 11%. So there are all sorts of examples that show that when you add in the bigger carbon footprint items, that show that when you add in the bigger carbon footprint items, it's often more environmentally friendly to import food from vast distances. Because the focus really is usually on transportation, right?

If it comes from far away, it must cost a lot and have a huge carbon footprint. That's right. But you're saying the bigger carbon outlay is the harvesting itself? The process of producing it, which, for example, in New Zealand, where sheep are raised often using renewable energy like geothermal and solar and wind-powered technologies, and they're not raised in factory farming conditions the way they might be in England. The math works out to be that it's more environmentally friendly for the British to import sheep from New Zealand because of the way that they're raised in New Zealand, which is environmentally friendly, than to eat their own sheep,

which are raised right down the street in a factory farm. Amazing. So this is like sort of in a factory farm. Huh, amazing. So this is like sort of painting a bleak picture here, right? I mean, what are we to do? Well, it's painting a picture that is trying to address some of the arguments that people throw out to say that, well, if you don't think meat can be raised sustainably, try this, try local, try organic. And I think what I've done in the book is to show that there really is a fundamental sustainability problem with trying to provide meat to meet our current level of consumption in this country. meat to meet our current level of consumption in this country.

And because the rest of the world is trying to catch up with us, soon we'll be having this problem on a worldwide basis. And yeah, there are some things we can do. Such as? Well, we can eat less. People can eat less meat and dairy, or they can decide to give them up completely. And that's, as somebody, one person on a plant-based diet to another, that's certainly something that I'm sure you can decide to give them up completely and that's uh is uh somebody one person on a plant-based diet to another i'm uh that's certainly something that i'm sure you can relate to and obviously there are all sorts of benefits that that are associated with that health

benefits environmental benefits um ethical benefits to the animals right um you know it's an interesting time because there is this movement, particularly among young people, that are really interested in permaculture. They are interested in the environment in a way that maybe our generation was less interested until maybe now. And this idea of, you know, grass-fed and all this kind of thing that's very much of the moment. And I think that that is obviously a move in the right direction. But I think when we're looking at the population of the planet, that it would be impossible to feed the planet the way that we're feeding them now, the extent of meat and dairy products, and do it in any kind of sustainable fashion.

Like, there just isn't room for that, right? Exactly. any kind of sustainable fashion like there just isn't room for that right i mean exactly it if if the rest of the world wanted to eat uh the same the same amount of meat that we consume per capita in this country we would be we would need another two-thirds the the mass of the planet just to provide the space to to raise the feed and and graze the livestock to produce those animals. So we don't have it. It's an unsustainable diet. Right. And we've arrived at this place where we're eating,

I think the number you cited was, was it 1935, when the average American would eat 100 pounds of meat or meat and dairy a year? 100 pounds of meat, yeah. 100 pounds of meat. And now in 2011, it 100 pounds of meat, yeah. 100 pounds of meat. And now in 2011, it's 200 pounds. That's right. Right? Yeah.

And so when you sort of look back, like if you're an archaeologist and you're studying this behavior pattern, is it just the sort of advent of farm subsidies and the USDA and these lobbying efforts that are responsible for this? Or what was the impetus for this increase? I believe and argue in the book that the most important reason why American consumers have doubled our consumption in the last 75 years is that prices have come down.

As we discussed, the price of chicken has come down something like 78%, ham is down 50%, steak is down 25%. And, and the, the, the law of demand says as prices come down, consumption goes up. And I really believe that that has been the effect of those prices coming down that, and to go, to go back to an earlier theme, that is one of the ways that producers manipulate us. By keeping prices artificially low, they get us to buy a lot more of these goods than we would otherwise. Yeah. I mean, I think it's really, the thing that really gets me is the sort of underhanded nature of the marketing aspect of it that kind of eludes us. We just, we just sort of, you know, we don't really realize what's going on right underneath our feet.

And the extent to which we're being, you know, I don't know. I don't know if we're being lied to, but we're certainly being pushed or maybe manipulated. Yeah, sometimes you're being lied to. I mean, what would be an example of that? I mean, in your research what would be an example of that in your research here's an example in 2009 we had an epidemic

of swine flu in this country and it started in April and ended up killing 12,000 people and hospitalized a lot more than that the pork industry was not happy that it was being called swine flu and they literally leaned on the USDA to change the name.

And the federal government has the authority to change the name of the disease. So what happened was Tom Vilsack, the secretary of the USDA, appointed by Obama, called a press conference in the spring of 2009, and he announced, this is not swine flu this is h1n1 oh yeah and he went on to say we have a he his message was focused on the pork industry it wasn't even focused on americans or americans health he said we are concerned about the pork industry we want the we want the pork workers to know their jobs are safe and that that industry is going to be fine. This is not swine flu.

It's H1N1. And I actually quote him in the book. There's a great quote from him in the book. Now, why do I call that a lie? journal Science, which is a peer-reviewed, prestigious, and published journal, 13 scientists from around the world published their study on swine flu. And they conclude that swine flu actually does start in pigs. And it's a zoonotic disease, which is to say it starts in pigs and spreads to humans. And they go on to say that by ignoring its zoonotic origin, by ignoring the fact that it starts in pigs, we subject ourselves to further risks of similar diseases in the future. And when our own government misleads us about where a disease comes from and how it starts, that's dangerous for us.

Right. Yeah. You didn't see the same thing with bird flu. They didn't change the name of bird flu, right? I'm sure they would have loved to. And if it was associated with chickens, you can be certain they would have changed the name. How did this all begin for you? Like, what got you interested in this world? Well, five or six years ago, I sent an email to... I had just either gone vegan or was on the path of going vegan,

and I sent an email to a bunch of friends asking them what they thought of a factory farming video that I included a link to. And I got all sorts of responses, but the one that really intrigued me was from a friend who was a dean of a major law school. He wrote that the imagery that he saw in the video was certainly disturbing and deplorable, but in his view, it was illegal. And that meant that it was exceptional, it it was anomalous it didn't represent a systemic problem and it didn't it didn't concern him for that reason because yeah i mean anyone can take film of illegal activity that's that's not the standard i didn't know how to respond to that because i just didn't know what the law was uh concerning farm animals but uh i started to look

into it and what I found shocked me. And that was that in the last several decades in this country, animal food producers have embarked on this very aggressive legislative agenda to essentially emasculate all cruelty protections that once applied to farm animals. They've passed ag-gag laws. They've passed what are called cheeseburger laws. They've passed what are known as food defamation laws. What's a cheeseburger? I mean, I know about the ag-gag laws, and we've talked about that on the podcast before,

but I've never heard of the cheeseburger laws. Cheeseburger laws. We now have these in half of the United States and the United States. A cheeseburger law is a law that says a plaintiff cannot recover against a manufacturer or retailer of food under the theory that food caused the plaintiff to become obese or to suffer an obesity related disease so on the one hand you might think well

that's great you know we don't want these crazy lawsuits anyway. People will be out suing McDonald's because they're a few pounds overweight. However, it's important to remember that it is exactly this sort of ability to bring lawsuits which has led to major reform in the tobacco industry. And $400 billion has been extracted from big tobacco in this country in the last few decades and paid to state Medicaid agencies because of the ability to bring lawsuits like this. It's also resulted in all sorts of public education and new awareness. And we've, in this country, gone from smoking at a rate of about one in two people to about one in five people. So we've significantly reduced our smoking in this country.

one in five people. So we've significantly reduced our smoking in this country. By preventing this kind of lawsuit as it applies to food, we are foreclosing our ability to accomplish the same sort of result down the road when new facts emerge, as they likely will, that show that producers are engaged in some sort of tortious behavior to mislead people about food being good for them. Yeah, I mean, it has to pivot on the misleading aspect of it, right? I mean, these tobacco lawsuits really pivoted around warning labels, ineffective warning labels,

misleading warning labels, or just misleading information about the product in general or failure to warn about the health hazards so in the in the context of cheeseburgers or beef or chicken or what have you you know what is the responsibility of the manufacturer the producer to warn and what would that warning warning be you know what i mean it's a little bit like how do you even how do you approach that well today it's today that question sounds absurd because culturally it's crazy to think that a cheeseburger is not good for you or that a wedge of cheese is not good for you or that a nice healthy chicken breast is not good for you. But give that time, in 20 or 30 years, as the medical community, among others, become sort of more receptive to the idea that animal foods might, hey, guess what,

they might not be good for us. We will probably change how we look at that. And there certainly might be some basis as that evolves to look at some of these manufacturers. I mean, look at when in the 1950s, cigarette companies promoted ads that said things like, smoking, four out of five doctors believe that smoking is not dangerous. It doesn't cause cancer. There are no ill health effects associated with smoking. And that's exactly the same kind of clinical literature that Chekhov-funded research programs are putting out there today. And I think it's likely that as medical science catches up with

sort of the rest of us in the next few decades, we'll start looking at meat and dairy differently from a health perspective. Right. Well, there's a lot of people that would say, how dare you, David Simon, to say that there's nothing wrong with a nice chicken breast or a piece of salmon, and you're telling me that this is damaging my health. It's anathema. Yeah, I know. It's crazy.

Well, in the last 30 years, hundreds of studies have emerged that show fairly conclusively, and certainly people differ on this, but the studies are in the prestigious peer-reviewed journals, like the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and New England Journal of Medicine. They say that animal foods cause disease, predominantly cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, but also, you know, a list of others like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and gout, arthritis, et cetera. Yeah, I'm with you, but you know, there's a, there's a lot of people that listen

to the podcast that come from all different walks of life. And, and, you know, I think it's just the message to the listener really is just, you know, it's a comment upon you to do your own research. You know, I don't think David or I are here to tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but you know, you really need to take control and responsibility for your own decision-making power about what you put on your plate and how you vote with your dollar. So check out some of those, you know, if you were going to direct somebody to something they could read, you know, of course your book, but anything beyond that, what are some of the things that have influenced you? T. Colin Campbell's book, The China Study,

is certainly a great place to start. That's my sort of foundation for the nutritional perspective on animal foods that I have. But I also, in the book, I cite over 700 endnotes. Many of those are studies that are really easy to Google, and you can read the abstract for free. If you pay a few bucks, you can get the whole study. All right, good.

So that's plenty for people. That'll keep people busy, right? So, I mean, you know, back to the sort of legislative landscape, the thing that really gets me are these anti-gag laws, you know, and I had Gene Bauer in here from Farm Sanctuary, and we were talking about it at length and you know just from a first amendment perspective and i know you know you're interested in first amendment issues it's just it it amazes me that a law could get passed that would prevent you from speaking out about a certain practice that is occurring in an industry no matter what the industry is or what the practice is. Yeah, it's ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. And the best thing that I can say about

ag-gag laws today is that it seems that they are on the radar of state legislatures now in a way that they weren't a couple of years ago when they first started to be introduced. So seven states have them now and 13 states have defeated them. And I, and I think that we, that maybe we're seeing a level of visibility and awareness that will result in their being defeated routinely in the future. You never know, especially in the big farming states like, you know, Iowa, North Carolina, et cetera. Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, but you think, you know, we're in California, you know, we, you you know we're in california you know we you know we're all interested in you know we're eating sprouts all day right out here in crazy california but we couldn't even get a gmo labeling uh you know initiative past year so i know unbelievable and

i i live in the county that defeated that by the widest margin i think it was two to one in my county were you did were you involved in any activism around that? Yeah, I mean, I did what a lot of my friends did, which is, you know, we went out and signed up voters to get it on the ballot. And I also participated in some marches, carrying some signs and stuff like that. I actually thought it was a shoo-in. In fact, the early polls show that it had a 30% lead over the no's. Do you have, I mean, in your research for the book, did you, you know, what are the economics and the marketing tactics behind how Prop 37, you know, sort of transpired? And for the listener who might not know what we're talking about or who's new to the show, Prop 37 was a voter initiative.

And essentially it was an initiative so that food products, food manufacturers would be required to label food products if they contained GMO content, GMO ingredients, right? Right. And that was it. It's really just a labeling thing. And the Monsantos of the world kind of marshaled their lobbying efforts to defeat this measure based upon arguments that range from it was going to drive up the price of the food or, you know, what were some of the other arguments that were used to. and Monsanto, PepsiCo, some other companies ended up spending something like $50 million to defeat that.

Now, I had written that part of my manuscript. This was before the book went to the publisher. I had to rewrite it. I had written, based on a number of polls that show that consumers want to know about GMO, that there was a widespread preference among consumers in this country for labeling. And after the defeat, it wasn't just California. It was some other states where Monsanto came out in strong form and got these measures defeated. I had to reword that

because big money is capable of getting its message across more effectively than those without the same resources. Right. And it's amazing because the argument is so weak and it's still prevailed. It's like the cost of your food is good. Why? Because of the one sort of tenth of a gram of ink that you're going to have to add to this label?

I don't understand, like, where is the cost? You know, where are these hidden costs that are going to drive the price up here? Right, right. I think the basis for that argument was very, very shallow. And yet, you know, effective, obviously. Yeah, it really works. People respond to anytime something is going to cost somebody money people people respond to that oh they're on it right yeah yeah just like that all right so back to um the story you had sent this video out to this um dean of this law school and got this reaction about well that's fine but that's illegal and and i take it your research sort of led you down this path where you started to realize, actually, these things aren't illegal. This is like common practice in many states. It's common in every state today in this country and in virtually every province in Canada and

really in every Western country where animals are raised in industrial conditions that farm animals essentially have no protection whatsoever from cruelty. The way these statutes are worded, and in states that don't have the statute, it's typically based on judicial decision-making that is known as the common law. If something is generally accepted as an agricultural practice, that is, if a number of farmers in the community are doing this, then by definition, it's not cruel. So what these are called, the generic term for these is customary farming exemptions or CFEs. What these customary farming exemptions do is they essentially take from state legislatures the authority to decide

what constitutes animal cruelty, and they turn over that authority to the to the farmers who are raising the animals themselves that's that's the analogy is that is like letting nursing home operators decide what constitutes elder abuse and you can imagine that if that decision were up to the operators of nursing homes all of a sudden we almost nothing would would be defined as elder abuse of course yeah so how did it i mean is So how did the law end up that way? At the legislative level, it was through lobbying. And at the judicial level, I assume that it was through sort of economic arguments. The common law historically has only protected animals as economic units, has not protected them as beings that have rights and has never recognized that

they have the right to be free from cruelty. So when the law looks at an animal as an economic unit, much as your laptop or your car, if the owner of that economic unit can make an argument that it's economically beneficial to treat that animal in a particular way, then judges respond and say, okay, yeah, that's fine. So for example, it's legal in every state to castrate an animal without anesthetizing him. That would cost about 25 cents, which might seem like nothing. But if you're a rancher and you raise 100,000 animals a year, that works out to $25,000. And that's a lot of money. So economically speaking, it's not something you're going to do. And the law will support you on that. The law say yeah you don't you're entitled to run your business to make a profit and so and so this is kind of the

impetus for you adopting a vegan diet initially right it was it was sort of this this ethical argument learning more about these inhumane practices for me that was what did it yeah Right. And this was 2008? Yeah, 2008. 2008. But you've also experienced some health benefits from this, yes. I did, yeah. And I didn't even go into it with that in mind. But when I went vegan, I had a body mass index of about 25, which put me right at the threshold between a healthy weight and being overweight. I had high cholesterol. Uh, I had GERD or acid reflux and all those, uh, my weight dropped 17 pounds. My cholesterol went from 200 to 140 and, uh, I haven't had a problem with acid reflux ever since. Were you on statins before?

No. In fact, this is a weird irony. My doctor put me on the Atkins diet for my cholesterol. Can you believe that? Wow. And initially it actually worked because, well, I can't tell you why because I'm not a nutritionist. I think it was just because I was paying much more attention to what I was putting in my body than I ever had before. And my cholesterol dropped maybe down to 180.

But long term, it went the other way. And my cholesterol just went back up. It was right around 200. So it wasn't high enough to warrant being on a prescription drug. But it was at a level that clinically is right at the threshold. Are you familiar with these new statin recommendations that are being made? Have you read up on this lately? Yeah, I saw that.

I mean, this sort of dovetails into your economics argument kind of perfectly, right? It just brings another gigantic organization into this, which is the pharmaceutical industry and their investment and interest in sort of getting as many people as possible onto these drugs, right? I mean, am I a crazy conspiracy theorist for submitting that? No, I think you're right. And the medical community supports that too because doctors make more money when people go to visit them and get prescriptions written for them than if they tell people to eat a healthier diet and they never see them again.

So yeah, and that's been, we're certainly not the first people to point out those strong economic benefits in both the medical and the pharmaceutical communities. Yeah, it's amazing. I was at the supermarket last night, I was at Whole Foods last night picking up a few things and I ran into this guy just shopping for his family. And he's like, oh, I listen to the podcast. You know, like I, I, somebody had told me about you and, you know, I tuned in and I've gone plant-based and, and I got off my statins and like my doctor couldn't believe, you know, couldn't believe it.

And he just said, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. But it was completely unfamiliar territory to this doctor. Like, what? Like, this diet change has actually managed to reduce these numbers so that you're off this drug? It seems like it should be the first thing that should be explored, but it's a sort of knee-jerk, let's write the prescription. Yeah, it really does. It's a sort of knee-jerk, you know, let's write the prescription. Yeah, it really does. In fact, I have to admit, when people tell me that a relative or a friend has cancer, I often ask, and did their doctor recommend any diet change as part of their treatment?

And usually the answer is no. And it always stuns me. Like, really? I mean, wouldn't you think about eating less red meat at least? Now you're getting radical. I mean, forget meatonomics. Now you're out of control. Yeah, I know.

I know. So how did we get, what is the history of the farm subsidies and how did this all come to pass? And how did we get to this terrible crisis point that we're in now? And how do we get to this terrible crisis point that we're in now? Well, farm subsidies grew out of the New Deal and FDR's desire to stabilize the farm industry. We also had some dust bowl issues in the 30s that resulted in major problems for most farmers in this country. Originally, the idea was not subsidies, but supply management. Supply management is a technique where you hold goods back in order to keep prices steady,

and then you allow those goods out on the market at a time when prices have gone up, and so you sort of control both supply and price in a healthy way. And we practiced that in this country substantially for a long time, right up through about the time that Reagan was in office. Some people might remember government cheese. Reagan is sort of remembered for giving out these huge orange blocks of cheddar cheese. I remember that.

Yeah. I didn't get one, but I know some people who did. And there was sort of a push during the Reagan administration to do away with supply management. It was seen as sort of too much government involvement, and we should let the market run itself. Unfortunately, this particular market doesn't do well running itself. People just don't have the right incentives. What happens is when prices of agricultural goods drop a bit, rather than dialing back production, which would be a good way to allow those prices to move back up,

farmers actually respond by increasing production. So it creates this vicious cycle where the prices go lower and lower. Why do they increase production? Well, because it's sort of every person for him or herself, and that's just the way we think. So if you're running a farm and you see your revenue go down slightly, you respond to that by thinking, I'm going to have to produce a few more units in order to increase my revenue. But it works the other way around. And with everybody responding in the same way, it drives the prices down across the board.

That is one of the main reasons why the government has had to step in with all sorts of subsidy programs. And these programs are so complicated. Most people have never even heard of the names. You know, they have things like cyclical crop insurance and milk loss contracts and irrigation subsidies. And then they have these, these technical and lengthy names,

but they work out to these huge amounts of money and in ways and in places that we never had any idea. And so, but I mean, over the years, we've gotten to this, you know, it seems like the volume just continues to get turned up. I mean, how does this evolve into this behemoth that we now have that is sort of unmanageable and, youable and seems impossible

to alter? So every four to five years, Congress passes a farm bill. I think we might be in a stage where it's six years this time because this particular farm bill is taking forever. But it averages about five years, and that farm bill routinely includes these massive subsidies and because there is so much other stuff in the farm bill most significantly including food stamp allocations uh what's now called snap or the subs uh supplemental nutritional assistance program because all these other programs have been worked into the farm bill there's a little something for everyone. There's log rolling. There's kind of you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And so if you're from a state

where you want to make sure you get your food stamp benefits for your people, you've got to agree to the subsidies that are going to the people in the farming states. Everybody hates them. I mean, routinely, one of the points I make in the book is that you try to find some commentator saying something good about subsidies, it's impossible.

Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, everybody across the board says they're terrible. And yet, for some reason, every time a farm bill passes, they're there again. They're dozens of billions of dollars. I mean, if tomorrow all the farm subsidies went away, would our economy collapse, or would it self-adjust quickly?

I mean, what would happen? I think you would get different opinions on that from people in the farm industry, but I think it would adjust pretty quickly. I think prices of goods would go up a little bit, not significantly. I show some math in the book that suggests that the prices of animal foods might go up by three or four cents on the dollar. Nothing to prevent people from continuing to buy at the levels that they do now. And we would just have a significantly lower tax burden. Right.

significantly lower tax burden. Right. So the example you use in the book is if you're buying a McDonald's hamburger or a Big Mac, right, it's four bucks. It's about four bucks. It's been a while. It's actually,

I think it's more like five now. Is it really? That's gone up. Subsidies are not effective. Yeah, well, they are to some extent. So that's your internalized cost, right? You buy your Big Mac, let's say $5.

Yeah. But when you tack on the externalized cost, it was somewhere more like $11, right? Yeah, actually like $13. The true cost of what it takes to create this product for you. That's right. So every time McDonald's sells a $5 Big Mac, if it's $5, which I think is a fair average, about $8 of costs are externalized on top of that so that that Big Mac ends up costing

society something like $13. Right. How does that break down? How do those externalized costs get allocated across the board? The majority of them are health care related. And the, again, controversial, but the clinic literature that shows that animal foods are responsible for some portion of clinical cases of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease

suggests that animal foods might be driving about a third of those cases. So what I have done is come up with a number in the book that takes our total cost to treat those cases in this country and allocates the portion attributable to consuming the high levels of animal foods that we do. So of that $8, probably $6 would be healthcare costs. Probably a little under a dollar would be subsidies. A little under a dollar would be environmental costs. And the remaining pocket change would be associated with cruelty and fishing, which is not applicable to a Big Mac mac but it just is an average number right yeah i mean it's it's it's fascinating to look at those statistics um but then i think about human behavior and it's sort of like well that's that's fascinating but my big mac's still five bucks you know like is that going to modify any kind of personal choice or behavior patterns

and and how do you get people to think differently about these products and modify their behavior, their choices? Well, that's where I think institutional change comes in. And I recommend an institutional change in the book that would give people better incentives and allow them to make choices about foods that they buy that are more reflective of the economic realities. Yeah. I mean, I think that you have to win the game, you've got to play the game,

and you have to create a profit motive somewhere along this chain where somebody is significantly incentivized to implement the kind of changes that are going to eventually radicalize this system. I mean, and it seems to me that the best way to do that is to go to all these CEOs of these huge companies and go, look at how much you're spending on health care. Like if you could just get your employee force healthier, you're going to reduce those costs substantially, and your net revenues, your annual net revenues are going to be increased. It's not going to cost you very much, but implementing kind of programs, like I know PCRM has done that. They had a really successful one with GEICO.

That just seems to me to be like a no-brainer i think it's a great idea why why can't um health health insurance companies provide a discount for people on a plant-based diet well now why would they do that okay let me rephrase it yeah Yeah, yeah. How about this? Because the CEO of the healthcare company goes golfing with the guy from the USDA, right? Right. Well, we know that if, for example, if you apply for life insurance, if you smoke, your premium is going to be higher, right? So we know that the insurance companies are at least aware of some of these risk factors. We know that the insurance companies are at least aware of some of these risk factors. One way to approach this might be to say, look, if you get your cholesterol checked every year and it is always below X, name a number, 160, you're entitled to a 10% discount on your health insurance.

I like it. It's objective, and it doesn't even refer to what your diet is. And it's objective, and it doesn't even refer to what your diet is. It just says that if, for whatever reason, your blood cholesterol level is below this threshold, we think you're going to be less at risk for disease. And by the way, clinically, that's completely supported. And as a result, we're going to pay less in doctor visits on your behalf,

so we're going to charge you a lower premium. David Simon, you're in the healthcare industry. Come on. Make this happen. How do we make this happen? Well, I wish it were that easy. I know that people have proposed this before. In fact, I've written some emails to some health insurers in the past. I think it's coming.

I mean, I really do. It's just a matter of time and acceptance in the past. I think it's coming. I mean, I really do. It's just a matter of time and acceptance in the medical community. Right. I interviewed this woman, Deborah Zakey, who's sort of, she's like the godmother of wellness.

She is the founder and proprietor of a place called Rancho La Puerta. It's over the border in Tecate, like in Mexico. It's like the first wellness resort in the country. And like her legacy and wellness goes back to like the early thirties. She's an incredible woman who's now like 91. And she held,

um, a government post in DC for 17 years. And it's like, you know, she's rubbed elbows with all the presidents and all this kind of stuff. And her big idea, which I think is kind of brilliant, is, listen, you've got to create your own lobbying group that is just as powerful as these other lobbying groups. The only way to do that, it's like the kale lobby isn't going to do it, right? The broccoli lobby, like you've got to

get all these fractured groups that are all kind of on the same page in terms of wellness, health, nutrition, these various subject matters, and get them to all agree, at least on the bigger picture, and pool their resources so that you can go to Washington and you can butt up against, you are you ever going to have a center of gravity with enough heft and magnitude to get anything done, at least in the current system? Yeah, that's a very good point. So how do we do that? Well, there are groups that are working on it. Humane Society of the United States, or HSUS, has a huge, big budget, over $300 million a year. And they are very effective. They're certainly the most effective advocacy group at the legislative level for animal-related issues. It's different from the kale lobby. The agendas don't always match up, but I would say

that they're getting a lot done. the current farm bill has a rider attached, which would essentially eliminate state level protections from animal cruelty. And HSUS has been very vocal in opposing that version of the farm bill. And if it weren't for them, who knows? That thing might be passed already. Right. I mean, there's some, there are some good things in this farm bill, are there not? I'm not intimately familiar with what's, I gotta tell you, it's, it's changed. It's changed so much that, that I can't even stay on top of it. I, I'll, the main thing on my radar at the moment is this writer related to, um, which would essentially eliminate prop two in California. And for those who don't know, prop 2 is the most important animal welfare legislation in this country

in the last hundred years because it mandates that animals have to have the space to turn around and to live in some moderate degree of comfort. The current language that has been attached to the Farm Bill would essentially eviscerate Prop 2 and make it go away. So it would literally make the conditions much worse. Like the penned up conditions of these animals, they wouldn't even be able to move enough

to turn around. That's right. I mean, a sow, a female pig, mother pig, spends her life in a gestation crate in which she's unable to turn around, unable to even reach or touch her piglets. And Prop 2 would change that, but if Prop 2 doesn't take effect as planned in 2015, it's going to be status quo. So I'm not familiar with Prop 2. So Prop 2 passed, but it doesn't go into effect for another year? It passed a few years ago, and it was given an effective date of January 1, 2015.

I see. It hasn't gone into effect yet, but the big animal food producers are doing everything in their power to get it sort of eliminated before it ever takes effect. sort of eliminated before it ever takes effect. Right, and the rationalization to eliminate it would be they can just pack more animals into a more cramped space? Yeah, well, I mean, the legal rationalization that is being used at the legislative level is that the Commerce Clause requires that states don't burden each other. And so if California says animals have to be raised in a certain way, that affects suppliers in North Carolina who might, you know, otherwise not be able to ship

their product to us. But the economic rationale is just as you state that it's much, it's much more cost effective if you're a producer to raise animals in the, in the closest space possible. And that's, that's how, that's how you maximize your profits. Right. So, excuse me, back to the sort of through-line narrative of you sending this video to the dean of this law school and being very interested in this issue. I mean, how does that transform into you being so interested in the economics behind how these industries work that would compel you to write a book about it? Okay, so as I sort of dug deeper and found this legal framework that surrounds the factory farming industry,

it was ag-gag laws, it was the cheeseburger laws that we talked about, it was these customary farming exemptions, eco-terrorism laws. It was just this, a framework is really the best way to describe it. It's a cocoon that surrounds meat and dairy producers and it provides them with very significant economic benefits because it is these laws

that allow them to externalize their costs. These laws provide the legal basis for them to shift their cost to society. To the consumer. Once I sort of keyed in on that, I thought, well, there is some literature out there which talks about the costs associated with manure remediation, for example, or the costs associated with you know manure remediation for example or the costs associated with climate change remediation and no one has ever added up all these numbers as they apply to factory farming so maybe i should do that and see what the number comes out to and it came out to a pretty big number so i thought there's uh there's a book there interesting and so how does that so you just start writing it or how does this like – like, I'm interested – just as a fellow writer, like, I'm always interested in the story of how a book is birthed.

Well, let's see. I – first, I wrote a proposal, and then I got an agent. I don't know how you – This is the textbook way of doing it. Yeah. No, that's – well, yeah. Well, I got the interest of an agent first who then said, you need to write a proposal because I didn't know anything. Okay. So you knew enough to write a proposal first. I actually talked to another writer who had written a book in this genre, Melanie Joy, who wrote a book called Why We Love Dogs. And she advised me.

She told me how to do it. Right. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have had any idea. So, yeah, I wrote a proposal. I sent it out to a few agents. I got very fortunate to get an agent I really liked at a New York agency. She made all kinds of recommendations to change the proposal, as I'm sure you've gone through too. And what emerged was sort of the outline for the book. And once a publisher

accepted it, then I just sort of fleshed in the missing parts of the outline. Right. And when did you, when did it came out? How long, how many, like four or five months ago? It came out just in September. Okay. So just in September. So how has it been? You've been on the road doing the book tour. Been traveling, doing the book tour, mostly East Coast, some California stops as well. The book has been about a half a dozen publications have reviewed it, all favorable, and that's been nice.

Some of them are bigger names than others, but the Huffington Post is a big one that said, anyone interested in the politics of food should have this book. Veg News said it was riveting. Some other good stuff like that. Good. Has Mark Pittman read it? Not yet, but I think it's on his desk or on its way to him. Probably with a lot of other books.

Yeah, I think he's got some competition. Everyone wants him to read the book. to read the book. Well, yeah, I mean, I just think that you, like, I see a future in you, you know, getting up in front of large audiences, whether it's at business schools or universities, to speak this message, because it's really important. You know, forget about vegan, whatever. It's just, we need to be educated about what's really going on with the business of food, whatever your preferences are, and to understand the economics behind how food arrives on your plate and who is really profiting and the messages that they want you to know and the messages that they don't want you to know so that everybody can make a more informed choice. And

the economics aspect of it, I mean, you're the first one to really kind of delve into that, do a deep dive on that. I would think like you should be on the college tour. Yeah. Well, and I've, I've spoken to a few academic institutions and people about, about the possibility of doing that as well. I think it's, I think the book is just sort of getting out of the radar and as it as it is it evolves and increases in visibility you know i'll be doing some more of that yeah good yeah so but but you're still full time job general counsel for a health care company yeah you want to keep doing that are you going to be you want to be a full-time uh vegan wellness wellness animal rights advocate um i i prefer the latter it just doesn't pay as well as the problem.

No, it doesn't. The general counsel gig, yeah, I think it's probably a little bit more secure. Yeah. And I can't complain. It's actually a good job. I don't have to work

nights and weekends the way a lot of lawyers do, so I don't have that headache. Did you start and did you ever work in big law firms? When I first started practicing, I worked in downtown L.A. at a pretty big firm for a few years. So I've got that under my belt.

Which one are you going to say? You don't want to say. I can say it's Nossum and Guthner, Knox and Elliott, about 100 lawyers. You're a litigator? I was a transactional lawyer. And I continue to be predominantly transactional although I do a little bit of litigation today right

yeah the big law firm life wasn't for me so I gather I know it's not for many people you know the only thing is

if you stick around long enough and make partner then you know you make so much money that you're you got the gold in the handcuffs but for most people it's hard to

emphasis on handcuffs I don't know for me like's hard to... Emphasis on handcuffs. I don't know. For me, I just, I don't know. I looked around at the partners and maybe, listen, if you're wired for that and it makes you happy, that's great. More power to you. But I saw a lot of unhappiness.

I saw a lot of money being made, but I saw a lot of unhappiness. Maybe I was just seeing my own unhappiness. I don't know. But that's cool. Well, I mean, I hope that you can find a way to continue to, you know, sort of spread the word. Yeah, thanks. You can't be distracted by your general counsel.

I know. It's a job. You know, that's cool. So where are you? Are you have any any speaking gigs coming up or any places where people might be able to gather to hear you give your talk? Well, on Tuesday, the 26th, I'm actually giving a book talk in Costa Mesa at a market called the People's Seed Market at Bristol and Baker in Costa Mesa. And information on that is on my website, meetonomics.com. and that's information on that is on my website meetonomics.com the the next big thing i'm doing is uh i'm doing some other stuff that's not on the it's not fully

planned yet but i've been invited to talk at uh dr mcdougall's uh advanced uh wellness program which is in santa rosa fantastic colin campbell will be there michael gregor um some other big names that's great have you met uh michael gregor yet big names. That's great. Have you met Michael Greger yet? I have, yeah. He's great. He's the best. I saw he was on your podcast. He was, yeah.

He was 007. I love that. Oh, yeah. Did you notice that? No, I didn't. That's great. He's my favorite. I love that guy.

And then I did another podcast with him. We were both at Summerfest in Pennsylvania, which was another event. And my freaking computer blew up in the middle of it and I lost the file. No what happened I dropped my hard drive like that night or whatever and lost the file so tragic but he's

yeah I love that guy so that'll be good that's great. Oh and Caldwell Esselstyn will be there too so yeah these big names in nutrition. I have not met those guys. I've just met Dr. Greger. The grand poobahs of the plant-based movement. Very cool.

Well, good. Well, thanks for dropping by the podcast today. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, you're an inspiration. Your message is powerful. And people, go out and get this book, Metanomics.

You can get it everywhere right amazon barnes and noble all those places that's right so the best way to do that though is to go to richroll.com and use the amazon banner ad and then buy it on amazon and that helps support the podcast but you should go to metanomics is it dot com or dot org dot com dot com um you've got some really interesting blog posts up there that are related to the book and more information about David. And yeah, man, what else? You're on your Metanomics on Twitter. Yeah, that's right.

Anywhere else people? Facebook.com slash Metanomics. Also on Facebook is Dave Simon. You'll find me there. Cool. Are you going to write another book? Yeah, but probably not one with 700 end notes. The research killed me on this.

How long did it take you to write it? It took me almost four years. Wow. Yeah. That's a big one. A long time. So you're in your gestation period now. Right.

You got to recoil and regroup. Yeah. I know the feeling. Exactly. Well, good, man. I appreciate you coming by. I know the feeling. Exactly. Well, good man. Uh, I appreciate you coming by.

I appreciate the message. So thanks man. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Peace. You too. Plants. That's it people.

That's the show. I hope you enjoyed David. He was awesome. Definitely check out his book. If you want to support the podcast mission, the Plant Power Revolution, here's what you do. First of all, sign up for my newsletter at richroll.com. And if you're going to buy anything on Amazon, holidays are coming up. You got to pick up a gift or two. Click on the Amazon banner ad at richworld.com. Won't cost you anything, nothing, zero,

but they'll kick us a few extra bucks, and we appreciate that. You can donate to the podcast, a buck here or two. You can do it weekly. You can do it monthly. The amount of your choice. The podcast will always be free, though. So we appreciate the support.

If you're enjoying the show, tell a friend. That's it. If you're really inspired, leave us a comment on the iTunes page. The comments there help us a lot, and we appreciate that. What else? We got some products at richworld.com. We got our digital e-cookbook, Jai Seed, 77 pages of awesome plant-based recipes. We have our meditation program, guided meditation, series of MP3s.

We have our plant-based recovery formula, Jai Repair. I got a vitamin B12 supplement, Jai B12. We got a lot more stuff coming. I'm gonna get the t-shirts up in time for the holidays, for gifts. And speaking of gifts, maybe you want to help a loved one learn more about eating a plant-based diet. We have our online course at mindbodygreen, mindbodygreen.com. Three and a half hours of streaming video content and online community, all kinds of good stuff. Really proud of this online program,

The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition. Check that out if you haven't already. And you can gift that to a friend too. Makes for a great holiday gift to reboot for the new year. So you can go into January energized, pumped, psyched to unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. That's it, people. If you're in America, have a great Thanksgiving. I'll catch up with you the following week. And for everybody else out there, thanks for listening. We love you guys. Peace. Thank you. you you you you you