The Rich Roll Podcast - Reinventing How To Feed The World

Episode Date: March 23, 2015

Right now this spinning land mass we call Earth is host to over 7 billion hungry human mouths to feed. Our current set up for handling this relentless, growing need isn't just problematic, it's broken, outdated technology that is making us sick and decimating the planet at an unfathomable rate. If we want to preserve a vibrant planet for future generations, it is imperative we find better, more innovative, more economic, more compassionate, more sustainable ways to sate the population. This is a long way of saying it's high time for a paradigm shift. If you listened to my podcast with Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn – the guys behind the highly compelling documentary Cowspiracy (I implore you to check out both the podcast and the film if you haven't already), then you already know that industrialized animal agriculture is our #1 environmental threat — far more deleterious to planetary health than transportation or fracking and the current leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution and habitat destruction. Adopting a plant-based diet is the single most powerful thing we can do as consumers to take a stand against this insanity. But to truly solve this problem we need to first acknowledge that we have a serious protein fixation. Facilitating a mass cultural shift away from our strong preference towards an animal-centric diet requires more than a simple plea to go vegan. To truly break the paradigm we need phenomenal food alternatives with mainstream appeal. Products that aren't just more sustainable and consciously harvested, but inventive products that rival, if not altogether outdo our appetite for beef, chicken, fish and eggs in not just nutritional content, but in flavor, taste and texture as well. The good news is that there are super intelligent, highly motivated people hard at work on just this — innovating brand new ways to improve human health, positively impact climate change, address global resource constraints and improve animal welfare with products, which for lack of a better phrase, simply taste good. Ethan Brown is one such innovator. Conceived in 2009 as a potential solution to problems he saw with the meat industry, Ethan founded Beyond Meat with a singular goal — to produce plant-based food products that would essentially replicate meat in an effort to render some of the downsides of the meat industry obsolete. In the same way last week's podcast guest Joshua Katcher implicitly understands that ethically manufactured garments must outmatch their less sustainable comparisons in fashion flair, Ethan understands that to win mainstream hearts and minds, his food products need more than satisfy the palates of enthusiastic carnivores. Backed by heavy hitters like Bill Gates and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, it's not a stretch to say Ethan is well on his way to achieving this goal. Food impresario Alton Brown called Beyond Meat's Chicken Strips “more like meat than anything...

So if you're going to go to the trouble of rebuilding meat from plants, why not just make it so much better that it's desirable? That a guy or gal who could care less about all the external reasons to do it does it because it's something that's desirous. That's Ethan Brown, and yes, this name is Rich Roll. I am your host, and this is the show where together we learn how to live and be better. So to do this, week, I engage the best and the brightest, the most forward-thinking paradigm busting minds across all categories of life, health, and excellence to help you discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Thanks so much for everybody who has subscribed to this show on iTunes. Thanks for spreading the word to your friends, your family members, your coworkers, your colleagues. Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. And thank you

so much for clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. All right, you guys, listen up. We have over 7 billion people on the planet that we got to feed. over 7 billion people on the planet that we got to feed. And what are we currently doing about it? We got problems. We got problems with this. Industrialized animal agriculture is outdated tech, you guys. So if we want to stick around on this spinning rock and do it in a healthy, sustainable way, we're going to have to find better, more innovative, more economic, more compassionate, more sustainable ways to neutrify the population. So this week, I got Ethan Brown on the show, and today we're going to talk about it. He's the guy behind Beyond Meat, where they're doing some pretty cool stuff in the plant-based

food universe. This is a good talk. It's a discussion about how we can take an innovative Silicon Valley approach to reimagining food and our food system. And so that's coming up in a couple minutes. 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 addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and

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If you listen to my podcast with Kip and Keegan, those are the guys behind the documentary Cowspiracy. That was episode 91. If you missed it, if you missed it, I implore you to check it out. Please check it out. But if you did listen to that, then you already know that industrialized animal agriculture has got big problems. It's the number one contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. It's the number one contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. It is the number one contributor to species extinction, ocean pollution, water waste, rainforest destruction. I can go on and I can go on. But the point is clear. We need constraints, and improve animal welfare along the way. And the good news is that there are some really intelligent, highly motivated people very hard at work on this crucial issue, and Ethan Brown is one of them. So Ethan founded his company Beyond Meat in 2009,

and the idea was to foster a potential solution to problems that he saw in the meat industry, to produce plant-based products that replicated meat, and to attempt to eliminate some of the downsides of the meat industry in the process. And you know that I'm a whole food plant-based guy, and I've never really been a big fan of the so-called fake meat products. But at the same time, I have to say that I also recognize the importance of forward-thinking textile innovation in this space, particularly with respect to people who are transitioning to a more plant-focused way of eating. are transitioning to a more plant-focused way of eating. Because look, you got to create something that tastes like chicken or something that actually tastes like a hamburger if you want to recruit people into being more open to this way of eating and living. That's just a reality. And I think there's something to be said for trying to disrupt our current system from within, from the inside out. I'm not alone in this idea. Beyond Meat is backed by some really heavy hitters, some guys you might have heard of, guys like Bill Gates and Biz Stone, who's one of the founders of Twitter. And I have to say that I really respect what Ethan is trying to accomplish.

I was pumped to visit his facility in El Segundo, Southern California, kind of near the airport, LAX, not far from where I live, and to learn more. So this is a great discussion. It's a discussion not just about our current food system and how we can forge a better way, but it's also a really interesting look into the road of a true entrepreneur, what it takes to create not just another startup, but how you foster, how you fertilize an idea and bring it into fruition, an idea that could potentially and truly change the world. So let's drop in on Ethan at Beyond Meat and see what's what. Yeah, so the cookbook, it really is focused on, you know, the average modern family. You know, the guy who, like, can't help, you know, from pulling an In-N-Out burger on the way home from work.

Right. And really addressing, like, the concerns of just the average modern family. Right. So it's more expansive than this is a vegan cookbook for the vegan people out there. Sure. Who already have, you know, dozens and dozens of options available. We talk about that broader target all the time. I'm extremely appreciative of the, I feel like, a very supportive core consumer group that we have,

vegans and vegetarians, which I am, of course, in. But it's that much broader target of American consumers who feel there's something wrong with their diet and want to make a change, but just aren't willing to do the kale and quinoa diet every night. And they're busy. you know, do the kale and quinoa diet every night. And they're busy, you know, like they're not going to go home and dial up, you know, Dr. Michael Greger's nutrition facts videos, you know, like they're going to watch Dancing with the Stars and be with their kids and do what average normal, you know, Americans do.

So how do you communicate with that person and convince them that, you know, there's a better way or a healthier way. And I think it's about, it's about, well, for what you do, it's gotta be about taste and it's gotta be about convenience. I think for us, here comes the burger. Yeah. Thank you so much. Oh, look at that. It looks like, uh, like little sliders. So these are the slider version. So is this the Manhattan Beach Project burger? Yeah, this is the beast. Is it still super secret? No, no, this is out.

Oh, it's out now? It just went to Whole Foods. It's not in all Whole Foods yet, but it's... Right. And what's good about this burger... That's ridiculous, man. Thank you. That tastes so much like a hamburger, I can't even believe it. Thank you.

So what's awesome about it is, and this gets back to sort of how do you answer that question about, you have families that are, you know, they want to eat in a more healthy manner, but they're, you know, just not able to basically make an investment and commitment to embracing a fully whole plant-based diet. And so what we've done is thought about, okay, how do you think about why people first started consuming meat? And the way that I approach this is to look sort of historically through, even through evolution, like why did we abandon a more plant-based diet and go towards being carnivorous? And it was really around nutrient-dense food. It was purely about efficiency.

You know, we went from literally having to chew about 12 hours a day to being able to pull meat off of animals that had been game for other predators. You know, we initially were not predators, right? We were scavengers. And that gave us a really nutrient-dense source of food. And, you know, it allowed us to do other things. Our brains developed. You know, we had more time for other things. We created, you know, complex social networks, et cetera.

And so the notion that we're going to go back to consuming leafy vegetables only, I think is not accurate, right? I think it's something that we want to incorporate more into our diet, but there's something within us that is really familiar with the nutrient density density of meat. And so for me as a vegan and vegetarian, it's really important to redefine meat. And so I've said, I think before that I think about meat in terms of its constituent parts. And it's really five things. It's amino acids, it's lipids, it's carbohydrates, minerals, and water. That's what meat is. You can get hung up and say that meat has to come from a chicken, cow, pig, or some other animal. And that is certainly true. But if you look at it scientifically and say, okay, what are the constituent parts of meat and how are they organized?

You can arrive at a really nice place because you can pull all those constituent parts, amino acids, lipids, et cetera, from plants and you can organize them in the exact same fashion that they're organized in muscle. So then it becomes semantics. Like, okay, it's the same stuff. It's organized in the same way, but it came from plants. Is that meat or not? And for me, that is meat. And I think you're able to then separate meat from flesh. It is interesting how that definition is becoming fluid. Like I was at Chipotle the other day with my kids going through the line and getting our bowl of whatever. And, and, uh, the person behind the counter said, uh, you know, what kind of meat do you want on that? I said, I don't want to, I don't want any, I don't want any meat, uh, but

I'll have sofritas, you know? And then she says, well, that's meat. And then I'm like, all right, well, am I going to have an argument now about what's meat and what's not? And Tyler, my oldest, was like, it's not meat. Or no, it was trap meat. And he's like, he wants to engage. He's like, that's not meat. That's made out of something. That's not an animal product. And then she got irritated. In her mind, these are on an even playing field. What does that say culturally about where we're at right now? Yeah, I think Chipotle has done a fabulous job. And the most recent statistic I heard was that the sofritas are 5% of sales in California for Chipotle.

That's amazing. Isn't that amazing? Usually they kind of do something like that. Not they, meaning Chipotle, but just businesses. They'll light a little pilot project and it flames out and doesn't work and they just go back to you know doing whatever yeah so so it's a tremendous success and um you know i think it gets back to this notion of uh let's let's focus on providing nutrient-dense foods and uh you know in the in and what we do is basically want to provide those in,

in the form of, of meat. And, uh, you know, if, if we're able to use the same inputs, able to organize them the same way, uh, able to give the same, uh, you know, uh, experience on your, on your teeth, uh, then I think, you know, it's a pretty good argument that is meat. Right. Well, that's the trick, right? Like, how do you create that texture and that taste and that consistency? And it's an extremely, you know, delicate, almost art form, right, to try to mimic that. You can hear the noises of the steer, the extruder in the next room with mad scientists hard at work. And that's really what we're after is the animal takes a really long time to do that. You know, the chicken takes about six weeks.

If it's a pig, it takes about six months. And then first year, even longer. And all they're doing is pulling plant matter and then organizing it in the form of muscle. And so if we can do the same thing and do away completely with the animal, I think that's pretty exciting. You know, I love the quote by Henry Ford that he wasn't trying to make a faster horse. We're trying to do something that does the same thing for everybody. Gives them a nutrient-dense, delicious

source of food for the center of the plate, and we're just trying to do it differently. It's interesting how we initiated this conversation with you saying sort of the evolution of, you know, the human beings kind of appetite for meat began with, uh, sort of this, you know, crash course with efficiency, right? Like, well, it's a very nutrient dense food. It became more efficient to sort of, you know, catch, capture this animal and cook it for food. Um, but the great irony is that now it is so inefficient, right? You know, we've developed this taste for it, and now what really kind of began as a delicacy is now the focus of every single meal, front and center, et cetera. And yet it's the most inefficient food to create for human consumption. So let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, so on our packaging for the Beast Burger, I think it's on the top, we have a question that says,

you know, you've evolved. Isn't it time for your meat too, as well? You know, and, you know, over the last two million years, you know, we've gone through these dramatic changes of, I'm talking about earlier, our brain went from 600 cubic centimeters to 1,300 cubic centimeters. You know, we went to standing upright

and, you know, formed these incredible civilizations and everything else. Yet the protein that we eat is basically the same, you know, and it hasn't gotten any more nutrient dense or any better. It's, in fact, probably gotten worse through industrial agriculture, right? Well, I think, yeah, I mean, of course it's gotten worse. It's gotten a lot worse. Yeah.

And so, you know, why allow that? And everything else about us is a story of innovation, whether it's going from the landline to the iPhone, you know, going from internal combustion engine to electric vehicles with the most desirous one being a Tesla. You know, we've done all this innovation, all these things. But with animals, we haven't. And so it's really time to do that. And that's what we've tried to do. And to me, it's fascinating, this concept of can you decouple meat from flesh? And scientifically, it's absolutely possible.

And you're seeing innovation in a variety of ways right now from the guy who is impossible food. Yeah, it's crap around. Like the blood taste i mean it's it gets like almost creepy you know what's happening and growing growing out you know growing it in petri dishes and sort of non-sentient you know biological flesh and all this weird stuff goes on so you know there's a little bit of a frankenfood kind of you know discussion that has to be had around this sort of stuff. But at the end of the day, it really is time to innovate. And I think what's so interesting is that the approach

to solving this problem is not coming from within the traditional industry. In the same way that Elon Musk is innovating the automobile from the technology side of things as if he were a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. It's folks like yourself and the guy at Impossible and Josh Tetrick up in San Francisco who are similarly approaching this problem from a technology perspective, not the traditionalist perspective. You mentioned Pat and I think very highly of him, and I'm friends with him. I think the work he's doing at Apostle Foods is really interesting, and it's very similar to what we're doing,

and there's plenty of space for everybody. But it's interesting that you say that, about there's not a lot of disruption from within. So back in, I founded the company in early 2009, and in 2010, before, I was basically just doing friends and family and funding through my own limited means. And I was approached by a very large food company, two of them actually. And they were household names. And I went to visit one of them at their headquarters.

And we were talking about about they wanted to use some of the products we developed and potentially do some either investment or whatever. We're talking about their research and development team for their vegetarian line of food. And this is a product you've consumed a lot of. Anyone who's vegetarian probably has. And the research team was one half of one person. I don't mean literally half a person, but like, you know, one full-time person was splitting their time. Wow.

So, you know, we think about this, the reason we call this place the Manhattan Beach Project is we think about it as serious a problem as that World War II team was working on, you know, back in Chicago. We wanted a sense of urgency. We fundamentally believe that animal agriculture is the number one contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and that it has to be somehow resolved. And so the scientists we pulled together here we think are some of the best in the world, and we wanted to put together the resources and the investment to give them the capabilities they needed to solve this problem. And so it's just different. You know, a food company thinking about it is, hey, we have to satisfy the pesky, you know, vegetarian 13-year-old girl in the family.

Right, the annoying one. Right? You know, that's what they were looking at. And we were thinking more about how do you reset the American dinner table? How do you get it so that plant protein earns a rightful place at the center of the plate as the protein for the family? Well, it's an approach to looking at our entire system of how we produce food for human consumption and realizing this needs to be dismantled and disrupted and rebuilt from the ground up. Because if you look at it,

or if you've seen the movie Cowspiracy and I know like sort of the UN study in the 2009 study that came out shortly thereafter really haven't you know they informed your desire to form this company they informed the the spine and backbone of that movie really shows you like this is broken like it's not it's it's it's a system that is that is destroying our planet at an unfathomable rate and creating foods that are making us sick. And you can go down the line from species extinction to rainforest destruction and devastation to, you know, water pollution. Right. You know, the destruction of our oceans, like all the way down the line, like it doesn't make I don't care if you're, you know, a tree hugger or not. Like if you're an economist, you look at this and you say, this makes zero sense.

If you're an alien who beams down to the planet Earth and says, how are they creating food for consumption? You're like, this is not sustainable. Are they insane? It is insane. And we're doing it only because that's the way we've only done it. And we have this voracious appetite for this kind of food that sort of entrenches the status quo. No, it is something that we dramatically need to change. And you mentioned Elon Musk, and I am a fan of what he's been able to do with the Tesla. And I think about that a lot because I

have looked at over the years arguments that try to obligate people to consume plant-based foods. And I find them uninspiring and somewhat ineffective. In fact, I had the opportunity to sit down with a pretty well-known cardiologist at Stanford Medical. And he was warning against emphasizing too much the health benefits of products. He said, because I can tell you that I have patients in my office who I will say, you have to stop eating meat, red meat. And they'll still do it. And he said, so, you know, and you can make the health argument. You can make the environmental argument. All of which have logic completely on their side.

And consumers will ignore it. And what I love about what Elon did was he made people desire the electric car, right? And that's what we want to do. Make it sexier, make it faster, just make it like the best car available. Right. And so this whole thing about going zero to 60, you know, faster than internal combustion engine, I actually think that's very important. The insane mode, UD.

Yeah. You know, I mean. Have you driven one? I have. Do you own one? You have one? I do not have one. You don't have important. The insane mode. You D. Yeah. You know? Have you driven one? I have. Do you own one? You have one? I do not have one. You don't have one. No, no, no.

You've driven one, though. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's the greatest driving experience you're ever going to have. So if you're going to go to the trouble of rebuilding meat from plants, why not just make it so much better that it's desirable? That a guy or gal who could care less about all the external reasons to do it does it because it's something that's desirous. And so the beast is really our first effort to create that experience for people where we've said, let's put this thing on steroids.

Insane mode. Yeah, beast mode. You have to hit, yeah, exactly. And so let's do more protein than beef and more iron than steak and more maggots than salmon. Let's do all these things that a cow could never do and see if the consumer has an interest in that. And so far they have. And I think it's only beginning. If you break apart the complexity of animal muscle and you think about it in terms of those five parts, and then you start to rebuild them, uh, really fascinating things happen because you can infuse,

uh, that, that protein, uh, with things that an animal could never do. And so, um, for us, it's a wonderful journey about, about creating this more nutrient dense product for people. It's so, uh, layered and, and complex too, because you have to have like sort of culinary experts. You have to have these like, you know, these chemists, crazy mad scientists, people like all working together to create something that is, you know, healthy, more efficient, more cost-effective, and ultimately, like you said, like more palatable and desirous than what's currently available? So our three major goals for 2015 in the research and development area, I think, speak to those points. We're working very hard on a raw ground beef, which would allow consumers to, you know,

have a malleable, uncooked version of plant-based protein that they can turn into burgers, that they can grill, et cetera. And one of the poster boards out here articulates those goals for our science team. And then the second one is around low cost. It's coming up with alternate sources of protein that fall outside of ones that I think people are familiar with, whether it's the soy protein or pea protein. We're looking at everything from yeast. In fact, there's a brewery across the street where we pick up their discarded yeast,

and you can crack that open and take the amino acids out of it and use those. They have a higher amino acid score than beef. Yeast does from the cast off of beer. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, that is incredible. Isn't that incredible? So, so we could create, uh, a very inexpensive product that utilizes yeast, uh, that, that has a protein score and amino acid score that is higher than beef. Um, and so when you start to think about that and you start to think about, okay, well, what if you think about the plant kingdom as feedstocks for protein? And I think about it conceptually, like if you think about pastures and you think about

transitioning pastures into fields of protein, what are the best fields of protein? Best in what way? Highest yielding, nitrogen fixing crops, things like that. You can grade them on yield, on sustainability. The coolest things come to mind. You can use lupin, you can use camelina. Mustard seed has a lot of protein. Tobacco leaves have a lot of protein. Once you get away from meat has to come from animals and you start thinking about the plant kingdom, you can pull from a huge variety of plants.

And to me, that's really exciting. What do you say when somebody says to you, well, yeah, I mean, you can mimic these amino acid profiles and hybridize these plants and some kind of crazy food. But you just can't compete with the quality of protein that you're going to get from an animal because nature has mastered that and humans need that. Right. I just think they're just not informed. I mean, I think the science says everything else, right? Science says that we know what the amino acids are and we understand what they're contributing and we understand where to get them. And in fact, we understand

where to get them at even higher levels than what we can get in an animal's muscle. So to me, probably the biggest obstacle that we face is not scientific, it's cultural, and it kind of speaks to what you're talking about. We ascribe as humans a tribute of value to animal protein that far exceeds its nutritional value. It's emotional. I love these studies, and they're debatable and they're controversial, but some animal behaviorists will say that

chimpanzees withhold meat in exchange for sex and i just love that because it's like reminds me of the modern dinner date like if i were to take i don't know let's say my wife out and our first date was like i offered her like some small salad you know she's not allowed to eat until no i'm saying like if i had offered a small salad her reaction to not allowed to eat. No, I was saying like, if I had to offer a small salad, her reaction to me would be very different than if I offered her like a beautiful steak. Right. Right. You know, so there is something about the provision of meat, uh, and, and, and the cultural, uh, significance of meat that, that we, we have that I think is, uh, something that needs, needs to be thought about. Uh, and so for us as a, as a, um, for us as a sector, plant-based meat, we cannot try to fight that.

We have to embrace the trappings of meat. And again, to me, it gets back to let's try to provide products that are more desirable than animal protein. Yeah, it's really a psychological equation. It's almost like I feel like you need to hire a staff psychologist to sort of evaluate. There's this, you were getting at it before when you were talking about somebody can get up and pontificate

about the health benefits of meat or the environmental benefits of moving away from a livestock-based economy, all these sorts of things. But they don't trigger consumer behavior change. So what is going to do that, right? Like, how do you bridge that gap between information and action? You can intellectually understand, like, I know I need to stop eating In-N-Out burgers, but, you know, what's going to actually make you do that? Right.

So up the street right now, there's an In-N-Out burger. I can guarantee if we went there, there'd be a line. Of course. Absolutely. I mean, every time I go by, there's an absolute, you know, it's, so to me, it's about innovation. It's what, you know, no one's out there defending the landline anymore. Right. The landline is part of our culture.

We must keep using the landline. That's because the iPhone is just better. That experience is better for people. And the same goes for the automobile. I mean, people aren't arguing that horse-drawn carriages should be around anymore. So you have to provide the consumer with something that's even better than what they were getting. And I think where the sector has failed before is trying to make too many arguments around not only the health benefits in a negative way, in the sense of saying, this has less cholesterol, this has less saturated fat, et cetera. That doesn't compel people. What compels people is

innovation and being able to get new, more, have something that's exciting. When you talk about innovation, I mean, if somebody, if a novelist was scripting this story, there is no more perfect setting than where we are right now in El Segundo. I left my wallet in El Segundo. It took me a long time to get used to the idea of putting an office here because of that song. Oh, really? Yeah.

So Repo Man soundtrack. You saw Repo Man, right? That was like one of the first i love that record many years before i ever visited el segundo but it's actually a really cool little town you know there's some funky little shops and it's in some respects even though it's so close to kind of the beach and the airport it's unaffected you know know, like it has little ma and pa shops and stuff like that. But literally across the street from here is a gigantic Chevron oil refinery. And there is no more, you know, there is no industry or infrastructure more emblematic of like old economy or, you know, kind of how we've traditionally done things and an industry that needs disruption more than the oil business. Right. Yeah. And what's interesting about that is that oil is it's potential energy. Right. It's it's fuel for transportation. And here you are across the street doing something completely

different, creating potential energy in the form of food or fuel for human beings. And that juxtaposition, I think, is super. It's, it's really neat to me that you mentioned that because my own background, uh, I was working on, um, fuel cells for, for a long time, for almost 10 years. And, uh, it was over frustration as I learned more and more about livestock, uh, that I started the company because, um, you know, the company because we would go to these conferences and there would be long discussions about increasing the efficiency of a lithium ion battery by like one half of one half of one half of one percent. And the Department of Energy would be like, we will spend a billion dollars to do that.

And then everyone would go out to dinner and they'd have steak dinner. And after a while, if you start to understand the impact of livestock, it's like lunacy. Yeah, it's the classic example of putting all your well-intentioned energy in the wrong direction. Right. And there were very bright people working in that field, engineers

and business people and everything else. But almost nobody was willing to sort of take on the issue of livestock and climate. And my initial interest in the field as a child was around animal welfare. I mean, I just wasn't comfortable with the way animals were treated. But as I got older and started to understand particularly the climate implications, it just seemed absurd to me that there wasn't a concerted effort in Manhattan Beach project to take the animal out of the production chain because it will do more good.

I always say the single most important thing you can do as a consumer is change out those three or four ounces at the center of your plate. More important than the car you drive, the house you own. Well, let's explore that. I mean, you know, we're sitting here. We both know the statistics. You know, we've seen conspiracy. We kind of, you know, have an understanding of that.

But let's say somebody is tuning in. They're not familiar with this kind of thing. Like, you know, lay a little foundation for that. There was a guy by the name of Robert Goodland who I got to know when I was in school. He was a friend of my dad's who was the chief. No, he was the lead environmental advisor at the World Bank. And he was a super impressive guy. I mean, like, just had a great presence about him, was a really large man,

and could just command a room. He was a scientist, you know, and he wasn't working with Sierra Club or, you know, for any left-leaning organization. In fact, he was working for World Bank, which is often demonized by the people that would be supportive of this view. And he took on the process of trying to come up with this complete accounting for the greenhouse gas emissions associated with livestock, and that's the 2009 report that you mentioned, livestock. And it was fascinating to see that buildup,

because one of the things he counted, which the UN didn't, was the fact that there's an unnatural number of animals on the Earth's surface. And they're all breathing. And when they breathe, they respire carbon. So you can do a lot in terms of engineering new types of animals and things, but you can't engineer one that doesn't breathe. You know? Yes. So sort of a catch-22. Respiration is required, whether you're a single-celled organism. Right. So sort of like, so sort of a catch 22 respiration is required.

Whether you're a single celled organism. So sort of like shit. Like, so how do we figure that one out? So that was just one of the others. Like he studied the UN and didn't study the composition of soil changes and all that stuff. Anyway, so a lot of debate around that. And I've always heard people say, oh, that number is too big, et cetera. But I've never heard a credible argument as to why that number's not right. But whether it's 20 percent, 51 percent. Right. 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions

are attributable to livestock agriculture. And this is in a culture where we've sort of always been under the impression that the biggest contributant is transportation, right? And transportation balances out at like 15 percent or something like that. Yeah, between 15 and 18, depending on. Right. And when we or something like that. Yeah, it's between 15 and 18, depending on. Right. And when we're talking about greenhouse gas emissions, there's the carbon emissions, which is really what transportation is all about. And then there's the sort of less talked about methane, which is what the agriculture is. And so people kind of shrug it off and laugh about it, like, oh, it's cow farts or whatever. But it actually is like it's a huge freaking problem.

Yeah. And so, you know, Robert, he died tragically at the end of 2013, coming home from the Himalayas and just had an issue and condition that was on. It's very tragic. But before he did, he really left this clue, I think, about how to save our planet. And that is to disintermediate, take out the animal, to figure out how to create meat directly from plants. And it's, you know, again, it um, you know, I, again, it's scientifically possible. The question is, you know, can we get the culture? Uh, can we get, can we get folks to buy into it? Can we get folks to think about, okay, I'm having beef, chicken, uh, uh, lamb or whatever, and it's been created directly from, from plants. Um, we'll see. Right. I'm a hundred percent sure. Soylent. Yeah. Yeah. So soylent

is a, yeah, that's a different question. No, I know. But it's, it is this kind of, you know, it conjures up this post-apocalyptic world, whether it's going to be utopian or dystopian, the idea that we can no longer feed the planet, you know, and this is something that we need to be thinking about. And I'm, you know, that's obviously what gets you up in the morning and kind of drives your daily decision tree. But this idea that, you know, we can't continue to feed human beings the way that we've been doing it for much longer. I mean, we're reaching the tipping point if we haven't already passed it in terms of the

devastation that it's creating. So how are we going to continue to do this and do it in a new and innovative way that's healthy, that's more environmentally sound and sustainable? And I think that the kind of tension that exists around the subject is that there's a longing to go back to local agriculture. And that longing is countered by the rapid race we have toward 9 billion people on the planet. Yeah, there's this idea that grass-fed beef is more sustainable. What is the reality of that? I love that discussion because we have a farm that's still in our family back east,

and one of the people who have been a very good partner to us over the years recently proposed doing that to putting grass-fed beef on the property and so had an opportunity to look into that and I managed to, you know, really my dad managed it but we participate together and the, you know, we ultimately said no but I had an opportunity to look at the contribution of the protein that we use in this beef burger relative to the contribution of grass-fed beef to carbon emissions, to greenhouse gas emissions rather. And a pound of the pea protein that we use, which is grown in really rich soil in France, is 10 times more efficient from greenhouse gas emissions than a pound of grass-fed beef. So this burger has this core protein in it, right,

is one-tenth of the carbon contribution that grass-fed beef would have. Right. And how does the carbon contribution of grass-fed beef would have. Right. And how does the carbon contribution of grass-fed beef balance out against the carbon contribution of conventionally raised? So it is a very controversial subject, with some saying that it is the most benign form and others saying that it's exactly the opposite. So I don't think there's a... There's no consensus on that. I mean, my, my sort of like, when I kind of ponder it,

like it sounds on its, on the surface, like, oh yeah, it must be more sustainable because it just sounds nicer. But when you think about if there's anything that factory farming does really well, it's create the most efficient system for raising this animal in the least amount of time to get it to a point where it can turn into food so it's on the planet for as short as possible whereas a grass-fed animal is going to be around longer which means you're going to have to feed it longer and give it more water and all these sorts of things so in my mind that means that sounds less sustainable yeah so i think we have to define what sustainable really means like what are you actually talking about and those would would certainly, those would be the critics.

But I mean, I view all of that as, you know, it's rearranging chairs. I mean, it's just... Right, like, let's have different conversations. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing, right? We can't feed the people on the planet that way anyway, so that becomes an elitist thing. And that's the hardest part for me, is the the, the, the folks, we talk about this as there's a sort of a donut hole in our core consumer, uh, group, which is there are people who really love what we're doing, but don't want to eat our product, you know, because,

because they have access to, uh, you know, the, the organically grown chicken and, and, uh, they have access to a grassfed beef that they think is better for them in the planet, right? And so there's a group of people who sort of appreciate what we're doing but feel that our food is processed versus more naturally grown meat. Well, let's explore that, you know what I mean? Because I think that's sort of the way that this whole thing began with, you know, it sort of the the way that this whole thing began with you know it doesn't matter what company names are out there but most of these products the sort of quote-unquote fake meats out there are meats that are high or fake meats that are

high in gluten or in soy products and are highly highly processed and cause sort of problems with digestion and energy level you know and all kinds of things. Like, you know, I'm, I'm like a whole food plant-based guy. Like I didn't, you know, I just went straight to that and I've, I've acclimated to that. And, and so I don't, I don't feel like I'm missing anything by not having a burger, but I also understand that, you know, 99.999% of the population, you know, they want that or they need that, or they feel like they need that in order to transition to a more plant centric approach to their diet. Um, so I, as I've mentioned many times to you, I thought your book was, was just fantastic. And I can't remember what was in your book or just a conversation we've had, but anytime I've had like two or more

Clif bars in a single day, I think of you, Didn't you say that for a while, when you first started training and stopped consuming animal protein, you relied a lot on a Clif Bar? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely evolved. Initially, yeah, I had this fear, like, oh my gosh, I'm not eating animal products anymore, and I'm pushing my body to places I've never taken it. I really need to make sure that I'm meeting my nutritional needs. And my pantry just proliferated with all sorts of crazy supplements and powders and all that kind of stuff. And then I had kind of a moment of like, do I really need this stuff? Like, what am I doing? And slowly weaning myself out of it to just do this experiment to see like, does this stuff matter? And noticing like, you know what?

Like, it actually really doesn't, I actually feel better without it. Now that's not to say that I don't think that you should, you should sort of obviate supplementing your diet with, you know, some protein powder. If you're training really hard, maybe you're not eating all that crap. I just think, you know, you need to get, you need to focus on getting that from your real food. And I think supplements have their place place but they're called supplements for a reason they're they're supposed to supplement your diet they're not supposed to take the place of you know what you're eating on a daily basis what would be the what would be if you were to to completely embrace the supplement world like what would be the word then for regular food if yeah i

know i don't know like that would be this yeah that is Some inverted situation. Well, I mean, we're almost there. You know what I mean? Like even at I was at a Kings game last night. I took my daughter to her first hockey game and just walking around observing like what's available to eat at like a place like that. The same same experience in an airport or any kind of big public place, a mall. And you realize, like, what are people lining up for? What are they getting? Like there was really very, very little that I could eat there. There were a couple of things that I could get, but to see what people are preferring and then to see how you're just blasted with advertising while you're sitting in your seat, you know, just trying to watch the game. And it's just, there's,

there's like, you know, hovering drones with like, I mean, you can't like, and it's just there's there's like you know hovering drones with like i mean you can't like and it's all like doritos and mcdonald's and you know the the fiesta whatever and it's um it's all fake food you know it's like it isn't it isn't real it is a it is where we are on the precipice of living you know idiocracy you know it's really remarkable so one of the things that we're doing, the process question is a really important one to me. And it's important, obviously, because I want consumers to properly understand our products.

But it's also important because my own family consumes an enormous amount of our products, including my growing children. Slide the mic up a little bit. So, yeah, including my children. And what we're doing this year to try to explain that better to consumers is really borrowing a page from what Chipotle has done with their farm-to-table videos. And we're going to walk the consumer through each part of our process, including where our crops are grown and how they're grown and who grows them. of our process, including where our crops are grown and how they're grown and who grows them. And so it's not, you know, it's going to be very similar to what you've seen when you look at these sort of romantic, you know, local beef or chicken stories that Chipotle tells, right?

But in our case, I will make the argument, and I think it's right, that we are far less processed. our case, I will make the argument, and I think it's right, that we are far less processed. And I want to prove that out by explaining to the consumer what the steps are. And for this Beast Burger as an example, it starts with these peas, which are nitrogen-fixing crop. They're grown in very high-, they protein, uh, is separated through an aqueous, a water-based process. Um, and, uh, you know, just like you'd separate fiber from a pea. Right. Not like starch.

Using like acids that you would use to create whey protein or something like that. Right. And so, um, and then, you know, and, and each of the, there's a lot of choiceful ingredients in our products and, and they're, they're, they're, they're derived in ways that I'm very comfortable showing the consumer. And so we want to explain this concept of if you're taking protein directly from the field and putting it at the center of the plate, we obviously do run it through a process, right? And our process is heating, cooling, and pressure. That's all it is. And our process is heating, cooling, and pressure.

That's all it is. It's taking protein that's in, and I'll use two words that aren't necessarily completely accurate, but I think they're, for illustration purposes, correct. Let's consider the protein that's coming out of plants to be disorganized. And we are, by running it through heating, cooling, and pressure, organizing it in the same general fashion that it's organized in muscle. So we're realigning it. And that's literally through heating, cooling, and pressure.

For texture purposes? Exactly, yeah. To create that fibrous texture, to create those muscle striations. And so we're not applying chemicals to it. We're running it through a process that's very similar to the process used for pasta. Um, and we've just manipulated the heating, cooling, and pressure parameters, uh, to, to, uh, to create this fibrous texture. Um, next then is, okay, how do you layer in lipids so that they have the same distribution as lipids in an animal's muscle? And that's, that's more complex. It's things like tendons and stuff will have both proteins and fats around them that we then need to try to recreate the distribution

within the, quote, muscle that we're creating. And so it's this process of taking protein directly from the field, running it through heating, cooling, and pressure, and getting it to the consumer's plate. And then we'll ask consumers to contrast that with the process of how meat gets to their plate. And I would make the argument that it's a tale of two processes, and ours is the better one. So, right, I mean, it's actually less process than what is required to put that meat in that package in the grocery store. Exactly, exactly.

And it's a process that they're going to be more comfortable watching. And that's, you know, we did this thing back. You don't have to worry about ag-gag law. Right. What you're doing. Although that would be kind of funny to kind of institute one. But no, so we did do that press release back when there was a big salmonella scare here in California for that purpose. do that press release back when there was a big salmonella scare here in California for that purpose. And then it stands today that, you know, at any time someone with very little notice can call us up and ask to come to do a tour of our plant. And we'd like Tyson and Purdue and

others to, to, to have the same policy. It's an outrage that you can't see where your food is made. Yeah, it is. And, uh, and so anyway, so, so for people to point the processed, uh, challenge at us, I find that to be remarkable given the food that they're willing to eat. So if I'm looking at the nutrition facts panel for this burger, for example, what am I looking at in terms of ingredients and then sort of the profile? Right. So I'm just extremely excited about this burger, uh, again, because I'm hoping that it's offering more and it's in this, in the, in the vein of, of, you know, like we'd look at these iPhones versus the landline, it's,

let's create something that's just better. You know, let's not try to mimic. Let's, let's just go ahead and say, okay, we've unlocked this ability to create meat from plants, let's go ahead and give something really special to people. And so this is, it's pea protein based, but it has an enormous amount of other plant-based nutrients in it. And the kind of top line claims are the ones that I've mentioned around more protein than beef, more iron than steak, more omegas than salmon, 24 grams, 23 grams. Yeah. No, I think that you're right in the piece you read, it was 24. Um, and then, uh, more omegas,

more omega threes and salmon, more calcium. So it's just like where, you's just like, where could the weaknesses be, and let's address them. And so it's really, we have these three, I mentioned the center of the plate campaign that we have this year, and it's really the tenets of that campaign are three things. One is to prove out the taste and texture of our products, so do as many samplings and as many shows and media appearances where people actually try our products and have on-air honest reactions um so that's the first and the second is really demystifying plant protein and that's the farm to table work we're doing to try to explain our process and where it's coming from and whether

you let consumers decide on what process is best ours or industrial agriculture and uh and then and then the third is to to head-on the perceived weaknesses of a plant protein diet. And that's where we said, okay, we want to have more protein than beef. We want more iron than steak. So we wanted to just obliterate those potential concerns that consumers might have about the product. Right. You still get that, yeah, but still argument. You know what I mean?

That you could tell people all day long, yeah, but this is better and has more in there. Yeah. Yeah, but still. Yeah, let me have it in an Alperger. Yeah, I know. So that's always going to be there. So real quick on that kind of, how do you make people passionate about your product that ordinarily, if they're not already inclined to be?

And two things we're doing along those lines. One is we've hired the architect of the Got Milk campaign, a guy that I'm really fond of, Jeff Manning. Diabolical evil genius, that guy. Right? So he's a guy. You're embracing the dark side. The dark side of the force here?

Well, can I tell you what? So I used to get so frustrated. You go to any gym in America, right? And there's like Derek Dieter up on the wall with a milk mustache. Or any high school, any public school.

That's what I mean. So I said, how does one protein, how is that allowed? We know why it's allowed, the milk board and everything else. But I said, I want,

okay, I can't change that, but maybe I can play too. Right. That was the idea. So like, let's get the guy who did, wow, that's interesting. So we hired him. Okay, and he's been great. Okay, so idea. So like, let's get the guy who did. Wow. That's interesting. So we hired him. He's been great. OK, so so. But, you know, that campaign was, you know, kicked off in the in the early 90s.

Right. So it's a little bit dated. So we said, OK, so we want to increase. We want to improve upon that campaign in the presence of social media in today's world. So we, we are also, we also brought on the, the one of the key guys behind the beats campaign. That's why I was joking about beats when I first sat down, because I loved what they did,

where they basically made it part of the athlete's culture. And so we married these two guys and said, I want you to basically do a got milk campaign around plant-based protein, but do it in a way that's lifestyle integrated in a way that beats to it. And that's pretty interesting. Yeah. It's exciting. And so instead of having, you know, and I've argued a lot with, with, uh, CPG marketers, you know, consumer packaged goods marketers that say, you know, you got to just do the tried and true. You got to go on Oprah. You got to go on Ellen and, you know, talking head nutritionist. I said, that's not going to compel and motivate and excite people. Right, right,

right. You know, I want, I want, uh, you know, uh, Dustin Brown of the Kings to be talking about this. I want that, you know, I want those types of people to be embracing this because food is so emotional. You know, you can, we talked about this before, you know, doctor can tell you, you got to stop consuming red meat. Very few people are willing to listen. Right. Well, a couple observations. The first and most prominent is, goes back to this idea of kind of being outside the traditional sort of infrastructure of the industry that you're in and trying to disrupt it from a different perspective, kind of as an outsider breaking inwards.

it from a different perspective, kind of as an outsider breaking inwards. But also there's this idea, this necessary idea, I think, that is required when you want to create massive seismic change, which is you have to work with the infrastructure that exists. You have to work within the system. You have to take the meeting with McDonald's. You have to understand that these are tenets of our culture and to sort of in a punk rock way, say, I'm, I'm not going to deal with that is to be myopic to not only the, the opportunity that's present, but to the, you know, to, to, to, uh, embracing the real change that's possible. I mean, you have to, you have to work within what we have here. Right. And I think that what we've, I've been asked a similar question before about, you know, how do you, you know,

are you confrontational toward the meat industry? And my answer is always the same. It's just not enough time. You know, there's just not enough time. Like, is it a serious problem? I mean, this is, I, again, get back to why we call this the Manhattan Beach Project. You know, there's a very limited amount of time left to try to right the carbon imbalance we have. And so to sort of take outrageous stances and alienate people, it's just not the right approach.

We have a very limited amount of time to solve this problem, and I think we're going to get there by being cooperative versus being confrontational. Yeah, so quite possibly having a Beyond Meat burger at McDonald's could be far more impactful culturally and environmentally than sort of attacking McDonald's. Right. So but it's tricky. Right. As somebody who's yourself, you're a longtime vegan person. You're an animal rights advocate and you've got to sit across the table from somebody who created the got milk campaign. You know, and I don't care that you grew up on a dairy farm. Like you have an opinion about that. Right. So how are you like reconciling? That must

create like a lot of conflicting emotions and dissonance in you. Yeah, no, it's, it is interesting. And, and, uh, I think part of, uh, my, my personal background is I actually, so our dairy farm was a hobby farm for my dad. So I actually grew up closer to you, but he would have us out there weekends, summers, but I grew up in the city. So I was on the farm, but not of the farm. I don't know if you know what that means. And by the way, like, it seems like every other plant-based vegan person that i have on the podcast grew up on a dairy farm really well so i guess there's a lot of dairy yeah i know you're bethesda maryland we went to rival high schools we have friends from the same town growing up we didn't even get into

all that we can get into that in a minute but go ahead but yes so so um i i uh yeah, this issue of being willing to, so I worked a long time, for example, with Hillshire, you know, and I went to see how they make their sausage and it was hard. You know, as an animal rights person, that wasn't pleasant. And a lot of the motivation for this company is emotional in the sense that as a dad, my wife is from a rural part of Pennsylvania. Her dad's a hunter, and it was not an easy transition. And we still have a sort of, you know, she's not vegetarian. And so for my kids, particularly when they're much younger,

they're 9 and 10 now, road trips, we would have arguments. We'd go into a particular member, one in particular, going down the I-95 corridor, there's not a lot of vegetarian options for kids. What's that one town where all the fast food restaurants are that everyone stops at? Yeah, well, it's like, or just those. In Pennsylvania. Yeah, or just, turnpike rest stops with Nathan's hot dogs and stuff like that. And so we went to Subway and I remember my wife, you know, maybe this is a little too much to share on a podcast, but we'll skip this part. Go ahead. Yeah. She like insisted they get animal protein. And I think one of them ordered ham.

assisted they get animal protein and i think one of them ordered ham and we have uh six pet pigs so i was just like floored by that i was like how can you do that you know how can you but i saw her as a mom being like trying to look out for the best interest of kids you know and in her view right and so it was it was almost sickening to my stomach to do it. And I sat there and thought, okay, we'll pick my battles. So I think I did it. And it was very, very difficult to follow through on it, and it just motivated me, that type of situation, to say there's got to be a better choice.

There's got to be a better choice. You know, there's got to be a better way, uh, to, to feed your family. Um, and so, uh, you know, for me, this whole quest of how do you make this accessible to mainstream America? I'm far less interested in, you know, I think as you are, you know, in, in, uh, the folks that, that can, can afford to, to, uh, you know, that on the Hamptons or in Marin, you know, to eat a certain way. I mean, that's not the way you're going to solve the world's problems. So for me, it was very personal. It was how do I create something? I feel the same about milk today.

With milk, milk is particularly bothersome because, you know, have you heard the New Got Milk campaign? particularly bothersome because they're you know have you heard the new got milk campaign it's a you know a an athlete in their you know 20s probably calling back to a child who's six and saying you know thank you for having had milk every day i grew up right and and and so you know it doesn't even get into the chocolate milk thing yeah that's right right well so but it does in the sense it's so interesting at the end of the commercial it's like mom and dad if your child won't drink milk put a little flavor in it right isn't that incredible it's almost like like what is going on it's like it's like an ad that you would think like if you take a step back and look at it and you think this is like an ad from 1952 yeah like are you kidding me like they're trying to convince you that chocolate

milk is a health food like all i see is a bunch of guys sitting around a boardroom going, Oh, we got to do something about all these plant-based milks. We're losing market share. I got it. Let's, let's, uh, let's reinvent chocolate milk as, as an athletic recovery food, you know, like, and let's, let's create a whole campaign around that and to see every and throw a ton of money behind it and a ton of advertising and every, and, and people like the taste of chocolate milk, so it's an easy sell, and there you go. Yeah. It's just amazing. So if we didn't have our hands full with this process of rebuilding meat from plants,

I would 100% be doing the same with dairy. Because I just think it's incredibly harmful to the environment, you know, dairy cows and, uh, and you know, if you believe the China study, it's not that good for you. So, uh, all right. So embracing the system to the extent that it can be a vehicle for change on a mass level brings up other stuff. I mean, there was this story recently, a couple of weeks ago, uh, about, uh, Jamie Oliver getting into a little bit of hot water because he was meeting with Bill Gates.

I don't remember the details of it, but I just remember, um, there's, there was sort of a to-do about it because Bill Gates is involved with certain, you know, sort of hybridized plants and GMOs and is sort of embracing one aspect of GMOs that makes what he does controversial in his quest to feed the planet. Sure. And so suddenly sort of Jamie Oliver is a bad guy. Right. Right. I get that. Right.

So it gets tricky, right, from a PR perspective. Like how do you make the right move when your heart's in the right place and you need to be an entrepreneur and grow a business? Like how do you, what are your rules of the road for navigating that? And this kind of gets into the entrepreneur aspect of like what you're doing. So I read as much as I can on the social media side of things, comments about our products and company. And one thing that allows me to stop reading a comment, because I don't think it's reasonable,

is if they make a negative comment about Gates and GMO. I just stop reading. Because I've had really just a blessing and an opportunity to sit down with him a couple of times and to get to know his team pretty well. And, uh, the guy is so thoughtful and, and his, his efforts are so important. Um, what was that first meeting? Like it was unbelievable. How did that come down? How did that happen? It was great. So, so, um, I, I took investment early on, uh, did after two and a half years from, uh, from, um, uh, Kleiner Perkins. Um, and that in and of itself was an amazing experience. Which for people that don't know, like top shelf venture capital, like if you want to be funded by anybody, like these are the guys that make stuff happen. So, so I had some offers from some other VCs as a funny story. So my, uh,

I called up a buddy of mine who had done some business with them before. And he said, even if you fail miserably and are fired, he said, having them invest in your company will be a really good thing for you. So I was like, okay, that sounds pretty good. But they— Because there's this imprimatur that, like, you know what you're doing. Yeah, and they just move at a different rate. And so the good thing that I can say, I've been working there for four years now, and I don't think I'm a typical CEO of a company that they deal with,

companies that they deal with, and I can say they've done absolutely everything they said they were going to do, everything. They've been a remarkable group of people. The two guys that really went out on a limb for me were a guy named Mulder Sponde and then someone named Ray Lane. Ray was the COO of Oracle for a long time and is from rural Pennsylvania and, and just a really open, interesting guy. Um, but, but so I, I took some investment from them and it was the right, it was at the right time. It was at the point where I was going back and forth from Maryland to Missouri, and we were living up in western Maryland by our farm.

And my money had gotten so low that I was, like, staying in motels in St. Louis that were, like, you had to sign a waiver that you had no guns on you and stuff like that. So I was like, I better get some help. Because St. Louis is near your facility in Missouri. Yes, I'd fly. Where you have all your extruders and all. Exactly. So I would fly out of St. Louis and drive to, go from BWI to St. Louis and then drive to Columbia.

But so it took money from them and a lot of support and help and encouragement. And again, very positive things about them. And it's not like it's been, you know, all roses for the last four years. It's been hard, you know, building business art and I've made mistakes and, and, and done things that I wish, you know, I could go back and make different decisions and, you know, it, it, so, so it, they've been great, you know, uh, helping me to, to, you know, kind of paying my tuition basically as I learned how to do this.

And anyway, so they introduced me to Gates, and I had an opportunity to sit down with him. And when they prepped me for the meeting, they were like, all right, you've got to be really careful, because he's very mathematically oriented, you know, and so you've got to make sure that you understand all the equations and everything. We had a bunch of stuff about efficiency and things like that. He said it's very likely he'll find something in there that is potentially wrong. So are you going up to Seattle? Where did this go down?

He came down to Northern California. And what was hilarious was, first of all, I didn't wear a suit. I wore nice clothes, but not a suit. And there was a group that was meeting with him before I went in, and they were all wearing suits when they came out and they were all like crumpled suits they looked so dejected i was like oh my gosh i really am about to go in there and just get killed i went in and as you can tell the one telling the story is that he was the nicest guy ever he was the nicest guy i mean he talked about his kids he kept asking us whether there was animal

protein in what he's eating he says said, is this some sort of hybrid? Is it part plant, part animal meat? He said, no. And I think the food spoke for itself. And his big observation was, if you can drop the price of this below meat and you can get global quickly enough, you can make a real contribution to human nutrition. And that was great. So then we met with him again again and then he made an investment

and uh and he's been great i mean he and has he been like and like so along with that investment does that come what comes with that i mean does he sort of call you up and say hey man you know what's going on over there i wish but not really he has some guys that do that for him. He's got his men, his dudes, right? But it's funny, like, the whole experience is really interesting.

Like, you go to their office up in Seattle and it's like, there's nothing on the door. It's like, it reminded me, when I worked with Fuel Cells,

I used to work with the Defense Department somewhat because they were early adopters and you'd go to some of their offices and there'd be nothing on the door. You mean like,

the door of the building or the door of his actual office? His suites. Right. To get into his, you'd have no idea that gates anything's in there it's sort of interesting like sort of like charlie and charlie right right all right but back to this idea that like you dismiss anything where somebody's sort of criticizing his you know gates's perspective on gm i mean like gmos is a that's a subject matter that I talk about on the podcast. It's something that I think we're, you know, we're, we're just learning about, we have a lot to learn about and we're not sure what we're dealing with exactly. And so I think, you know, my, my, you know, my call to action is always sort of like caution is advised,

you know, as we're learning about this. So, you know, what is, what is Bill Gates doing? What is he not doing? Like, what, What is your perspective on his involvement and how we should kind of perceive his investments and his advocacy in this quest, this very public quest, to kind of solve this world hunger problem that we have? I mean, without getting into the kind of very specifics on his views on GMO, I can say that to the average pundit or online critic, I can guarantee you he's thought about it more than you, you know, and that he has taken into consideration the risks around it and has a pretty decent grasp on it. But there is also some hype around GMO that's important to understand. So one of the reasons that it's so costly to get GMO certified is that, particularly the GMO certification project,

has cast such a wide net on what is considered genetically modified that it's hard to do things that are practical. And I'll give you an example. So Whole Foods doesn't offer or is now trying to restrict the sale of GMO within their store. One of the restrictions on GMO products through our process is if you use a genetically modified organism to create something else, and that which has been created doesn't actually have GMO in it. So we use an enzyme, for example, in one of the flavorings that we've considered in the past. But it's not in the flavoring itself. It's just used as an enzyme to help create something. I see. That's considered a catalyst agent for... Exactly. So here's the rub.

Cheeses are done that way. A lot of milk is done that way. So... Because you're using bacterias or whatever, right? Yeah. And you're using modified enzymes. What's a good example? All laundry detergent most likely was generated using enzymes that are genetically modified. But seventh generation, I'll bet you, uses a genetically modified enzyme. So it's sort of like, okay, where do you draw the line? Yeah, it's, it's, uh, you know, like anything else, once you start to really look into something, it's more complicated than it may seem. Yeah. And I don't have, I shouldn't speak on incumbent upon all of us to be conscious of the choices that we're making and to educate ourselves to the extent possible to, like, know what's also creating oligarchies and kind of vertically integrated, you know, enterprises along with it that, you know, it's not hard to kind of think, well, this is, there's something dastardly about this that we should really be, you know,

conscious of. Yeah. So having, having settled that, I mean, we are like, you know, none of our products have GMO elements in them and we're, we're completely committed to that. I mean, to non-GMO, I mean, you know, to non GMO, I mean, you know, I, I, I share your caution around it, that, that, uh, but you know, it's, it's not one of my issues basically. You know, I mean, what's that song? I got 99 problems, but yeah.

But GMO is not one right now. Right now. Yeah. Well you got big bill on your shoulder. Right. And speaking of like, you know, fancy partners, where does, where does Biz Stone come into the equation? Yeah, he's great. Twitter founder. Have you done a podcast with him? I have not. I would love to.

You know, it's funny. I was at Disneyland. I took my daughter for her birthday last December, her and a couple friends. And we were at the hotel. I forget what it's called. and a couple of friends. And we were at this, the hotel, I forget what it's called. It's kind of attached. We, we, we got like a hotel room and I'll stay to do it overnight. And I'm down in the lobby in the morning and I see biz and his wife and their son. And I'm like, I'm around Hollywood people all the time. Like, I don't, I don't care. You know, and I see this stone, I'm completely starstruck. And I wanted to go say hi, and I just could not bring myself to do it.

Really? He would have loved to have met you. So anyway, well, maybe you can hook us up. Yeah, I'd love to have him on the podcast. He'd be amazing. I'll send a note to him. But yeah, I was too self-conscious and embarrassed to approach him. Well, he was having family time.

I didn't want to interrupt his day. Right. But anyway. So he he was having family time. You don't want to interrupt his day. Right. No, he's... But anyway. So he's a super good egg. And yeah, Biz is just a really interesting guy, as is Ev Williams. His co-founder there. Obvious, right? Yeah.

Like, so this company that they now have. Yeah. Two of the main guys that founded Twitter, for people that are listening who might not know who these guys are. Yeah, they're both... And I think it's people ask sometimes, why are these guys investing? And I think it's part of a new generation of investors that really want to put their funds toward things that they believe in. You know, they truly, truly believe in this.

And it's remarkable. I mean, I talk about this as, as, uh, being part of something as much bigger than myself. And, and, uh, you know, as a Victor Hugo quote, uh, there's nothing more powerful than an idea as time has come. I feel I'm just lucky to have been able to, to be part of, I mean, I really do like it to, I feel that sort of momentum about it, you know, that, that, um, and I've been, I've done other things in my life where it's not present at all. And you can really feel the difference where you realize that you're working towards something and you can articulate it in any spiritual terms or in any other way. But you're part of a momentum that far exceeds your own movement.

That's got to feel good. It does feel good. It feels great. And I asked Ev after Twitter went public, I said, how do you feel an obligation now, like having all this cash? And he said, 100%. Absolutely. Sort of like he's

been put in this incredible position, you know, and, and that's the way that these guys approach the wealth that they've been able to create. So in this, to kind of extend this analogy of the potential energy of the oil refinery next door and the potential energy of of the pea protein and the extruder that's on the other side of this wall, the potential energy of that kind of financial resource to put it to good. And I think, listen, I wouldn't be sitting down here talking to you because you're just an entrepreneur who's got a food company. Like, we've got real problems, and there's something visionary about what you're doing that has huge ramifications outside of whether you can turn this into a large, profitable company or not. Because we've got to figure out how to feed people, and we've got to figure out how to hit the brakes on, on, on the, the rate at which we're destroying our precious planet. Yeah. For me, this is a solution. This is like, this is a no brainer solution. So I just, I, I, I, I think a lot about this, um, evolutionary process of, of, of, of how we started consuming meat and how we might start consuming the plant-based meat.

And I would just love to be part of a group of people that in their lifetime created that plant-based meat that actually allowed for the transition. You know, I mean, I think that would be huge, you know, in, in terms of the evolution of how we eat and of who we are as, as, as, as a race. Um, well, the worst case scenario is we're not going to have any choice. Yeah. You're going to be sitting here going, well, I got this stuff over here. Right? How do you like me now?

Yeah, American drug lord over here. How do you like me now? Well, I mean, look, I've known you a couple of years, and I've seen the company kind of continue to grow. And you're no stranger to kind of making the rounds on the morning talk shows and, you know, the Charlie roses and all that kind of stuff. And I've, I've heard you interviewed many, many times on television. Um, and something that, that I think is interesting that kind of happened not that, not that many months ago was this article that turned up an outside magazine that did really kind of an

extensive profile on on you and and the mission and the company and my perspective as somebody somebody just on the outside looking in is it looked like that really hit a nerve and went viral in a way that some of these other you know you you think like you're sitting there on national television talking to charlie rose like everybody's you know watching this and that's going to make an impact yeah but it seems to me that this article might might have been the thing that really kind national television talking to Charlie Rose, like everybody's, you know, watching this and that's going to make an impact. But it seems to me that this article might, might have been the thing that really kind of captured people in a way that everything else that you've done prior didn't. That, I mean,

it's incredibly you say that because that's exactly, exactly how I feel about this article. And I think one is cause Rowan is a great writer. The way he opened up the articles. I love the thing about like smashing my Hummer into like a... But, you know, and I think it's borrowing a page from Elon Musk's playbook. It's let's create something that is just flat out better.

And I think that's what people can be excited about, about that article and about this product, is, you know, it's an innovation. It's not trying to just be like beef. It's trying to be something better. And, you know, it's something that will help people perform better, feel better, live healthier, happier lives. And I just want to stay away from, as as much as I can from negative advertising around. And I mean, negative in the sense of like, you know, less cholesterol, uh, less saturated fat. Those are important claims, but they don't motivate and excite. And I really want to

excite people to embrace this the same way they embrace an iPhone. You know, it's, it's new, it's exciting. It's, it gives them more, it's better. Um, by the way, we have a product that I think I really want to talk to you about when I can talk more freely about it. But it's one of the largest meat companies in the country in their category coming out. I know it's about the end of this year. That's pretty vague. I don't know what that means. And it's for gym bags. It's for gym bags? It's for gym bags.

It's jerky. Oh, wow. Interesting. It's awesome. It's really fibrous texture and structure of it are awful. That's interesting. Well, the timing is good. I mean, this what what is going on with like the beef jerky market suddenly became this big artisanal, you know, sort of, you know, kind of thing.

So that's interesting. I don't know if you've ever seen this book, but when bookstores were more common than they are now, but it was profiled for a couple of years back in the 90s, and it was an African-American guy, and I just love the title of it. It was him in a business suit. I can't remember his name right now, but the title of the book was Why Should the White Guys Have All the Fun?

And it's him being successful and everything else, And I thought that's a really good point. And for me, it's the same thing about, you know, uh, uh, being vegan versus being a meat eater. You know, like I want to have all of the opportunities to have protein and to have an awesome juicy burger on a grill. You know, I don't want the fact that I'm considering climate and the welfare of an animal to you know i don't think you have to make that choice i think you can have plant-based meat that is as good and so this question of you know with the jerky for example yeah jerky tastes good and it's convenient and we've come up with a plant-based one that's pretty good yeah and i think ultimately consumers they want to feel good about the companies that they're supporting. And that's why, you know, we keep bringing it back to Tesla.

But, you know, you can, of course, that's a very elitist product. You know, it's an aspirational product for almost anybody. But it basically checks every box, you know. And anybody who makes that kind of enormous investment in an automobile can actually feel good that they're supporting something that they can feel good about. You know what I mean? And if you can create that on a more sort of average consumer level. Accessible level. Yeah, then I think that's really important.

And you see it now. I think it's all emblematic of this Internet culture that we're in where we demand a greater level of transparency in everything that we're doing. We want to know what's going on and we should know what's going on. And the internet has really fueled that like young people, the idea that, you know, a company is not going to tell you how they do something like that doesn't even, that doesn't even like translate, like, what are you talking about? You know what I mean? Like they're used to knowing everything about everything right in the palm of their hand whenever they want it. So so I think that that when we're talking about outdated technology versus new technology, this is really the direction that we have to move in.

And you're seeing it with the nonprofit like the NGO world, right? Like where people that are giving money to these charities, they want to see the through line. Like, where is that money going exactly? Is this going towards office space, or is this actually getting into the hands of the people that want it? And that level of transparency has created a whole new level of interesting nonprofits out there that didn't exist prior to this sort of demand for transparency. Yes, transparency. It's true. for transparency. Yes, transparency. It's true.

And one thing that social media and handheld units and everything has done is, paradoxically, this advance in technology has brought people closer to factory farming. It's allowed them to see very easily what's going on within the farm in a way that 10 or 15 years ago, one student couldn't send it to another on their handheld. Today they can. They get a video and they can go viral. And so it's bringing people closer to a process that previously they weren't able to see. Right.

And industry is being held to this standard of, you better walk the walk that you're talking. Right. And if you don't, we're going to find out about it, whereas previously, like, you can say whatever you want. Like, you know, we're never going to know what's really going on. Yeah. And so that makes for an interesting mix.

Yeah, it is. So it's an interesting time we're in, and I think from us, you're going to see more and more of products like the beast that that that try to differentiate around not only having a meat like experience, but delivering more. Right. I want to talk a little bit about the entrepreneur aspect of, you know, kind of what you do. And what's so interesting is like every great startup story, it's like, you know, the founder meets the co-founder and this partnership strikes up. And in your case, you know, you have this magical moment, or at least this is how it's sort of documented, you know, in the press where you meet Fu, Fu hung Shay. Is that how you say his name? Yeah, exactly. Sounds like, sounds like a bond villain. Right. And then this idea is born, and, uh, and here you are, you know, I just had to point that out. I thought that was humorous,

but if you were like to, do you ever speak to young entrepreneurs? I mean, what is the message that you could, you know, if somebody is listening to this and they're in the throes of starting their own business or entertaining the prospect of launching into an, uh, an entrepreneurial kind of endeavor, you know, from what you've learned and the road that you've walked, you know, what have you, what, what is the wisdom that you impart? you've walked? You know, what have you, what, what is the wisdom that you impart? Yeah. I mean, it's, um, you know, uh, it's personal and, and, uh, um, you know, basically like most wisdom born from mistakes, you know? Um, so what, um,

you know, when I was in my twenties,s, I was in a relationship that I really wanted to fix or get out of, basically. So I didn't know how to do that. And so I went to see a therapist about it. And obviously, you get there, you start talking about other things. And so I was talking about my career as in my late 20s and and I said you know I really want to start a plant-based McDonald's like I just drives me crazy that you know I think I referenced the I-95 corridor before this is ridiculous as you know the white stuff and the chicken McNuggets not really chicken anyway that beef is terrible quality like why can't you just have plant-based meat and McDonald's and the guy is like you got this you just have plant-based meat and mcdonald's and the guy is

like you got this is in georgetown wisconsin avenue you gotta do that you absolutely do that all right man that's awesome so i left and of course didn't do it i went right in back into the energy field i switched jobs and went into the energy field. And, uh, the reason that I did was that I felt that, you know, I had some educational background and training and came from, you know, your dad's an attorney, right. Um, and you became an attorney. Yes. I did the same thing. My dad's, you know, is, is a professor and, uh, in, in the field of the environment and everything. And I went into that field and felt that like trying to open like the plant based McDonald's was sort of like a hippie thing to do that wasn't serious enough. Well, also, I think growing up in D.C., you know, it's you're not it's not really there's not a lot of entrepreneurial flair, you know, that's instilled in you as a young person.

Yeah. Like you're, you know, stay in your lane, young man. You know, go to your nice school and get good grades and like do the right thing you know like you're not you weren't encouraged to go like yeah create something new and different and it's interesting you mentioned that uh dc and everything and and so both being in that context and then in the context of having dad is in the on faculty and professor professor and everything, recognition was not through like new products, it was through like papers and research and stuff like that.

And so I was working at the time on electricity restructuring and working on how to basically create a better framework for states to deregulate in order to bring on more alternative energy. And I did, I wrote a report on that that got a lot of recognition with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. And so I felt like I was doing everything that my dad basically expected of me. And just to become this restaurateur with weird McDonald's was just not serious enough.

And also, being very big, I had this fear that I would be viewed like Lenny in Mice of Men, like stroking a little rabbit. Just sentimental. Because I loved animals. I didn't want to hurt them. And that was my thinking at the time. It just drove me crazy. I thought, there's got to be a better way to do this.

And so all those reasons were super compelling from from my heart and I ignored them all. And, uh, and so over time it just ate at me just year after year, just like, you know, just, uh, my passion was in it. Uh, but I was working in a awesome for the best company in the world. I felt in the fuel cell sector Valid power systems, publicly traded, reported to the CEO there, had a great job. But I just kept feeling like I wanted to go do this. And so finally, you know, I just got frustrated enough that I wasn't listening to my heart, that I started to basically make investments in some restaurants that I thought had some chance of doing something interesting in plant-based protein. And from there, I started to realize the problem wasn't the restaurants, it was the quality

of the protein. And we were, so I got involved with one which was importing a lot of product from Asia, from Taiwan. And they were good, but not good enough. And so, I said, well, what if I could help create something, knowing something about technology and scaling up stuff that was actually more like meat that was, you know, use these amino acids, lipids, everything else and built it, really rebuilt it from plants. And I, you know, so I, there's a story about the internet, you know, I just started researching at night, like who was doing that, you know, and, and there were,

there's, I met, I spent a lot of time with the guys who are doing in vitro meat, you know, cause I thought that was kind of interesting for a while. But they're saying in the fuel cell industry that fuel cells are good for the future and they always will be. And it's basically a knock against the fact that they're constantly about to commercialize. They're never, you know. And I felt that way about in vitro meat. I was like, do I need another project that's just, you know. It's going to be 30 years if that before it.

And the fuel center is very adept at like pushing out like every five years. You know, it's going to be 2015. It's going to be 2020, you know, et cetera. So I didn't want another project like that. And then I also had to set an issue with, I love the simplicity of, well, why don't you take amino acids and fat from plants and just rebuild them, you know, in the same architecture? So the guy that was doing that was Fuheng Shea and someone who passed on the way in here, Harold Huff. And they'd been doing it for about 15 years.

And they were doing a great job. So I called him up and said, can I come in and look what you're doing? And, you know, if you had tried to have this podcast with Fu Hung, it would have been about 30 seconds. The guy, he just is so shy. Yeah, but you've got to have that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So him and Harold are just awesome people.

And let me tell a quick story about them. So we worked together for about a year and a half. And I ended up quitting my job to be able to do it full time. And first I became a consultant and then quit altogether. Started the company. And Time Magazine ran an article in early 2010 about the platform they used. And I was up at our farm. And a neighbor came to me and said,

did you read about these guys in the Midwest? It sounds like they're doing something just like you're doing. I was like, oh, shit, that's Fuhon and Harold, the way he described them. They were like University of Missouri or something? Exactly. He said that, right. He said, yeah, there's some guys at University of Missouri doing exactly what you're doing. And I'm like, that's what I'm doing.

And I went to the top of our hill to get cell coverage, and I called Harold. He's here now. And I said, Harold, what happened? This is our project. How could the university do this? And he said, well, the PR department said these guys were coming down. They didn't give us a lot of information about it. And he said, but I guarantee you that you have my word that we'll do this with you.

But after that ran, they got called. But the implication was that this was going to be university owned. Like I'm trying to, the implication was that what I thought was a secret project that you were working on with these guys is suddenly became like national news. And it was a very favorable article and everything. And, uh, and so after the article ran, but premature and not, we didn't, we didn't paper anything. It was three guys working on a project. And so they got calls from major food companies, major, major companies saying, can we do this? And this is the thing about the Midwest.

They said no. They said, we already got a guy. I just thought that was incredible. I thought that was incredible. Yeah. Not just the two inventors, but the university brass themselves. Interesting. Yeah.

So my panic. Good Midwestern people. Like, have they been out in LA? Forget about it. Right. So my panic. Sell you down the river, buddy. Born of DC.

You know, backstabbing. Machiavellian politics inside the Beltway. You know, power plays. When he said, I got your back, he meant it, you know? And so. Like, that's the guy I can be partners with. He established that this guy is to be trusted. Yeah.

So he's here now, Harold. And he drove to Cumberland, Maryland, where our plant was initially back and forth, I don't know, half a dozen times from Missouri to help us set up the facility and everything. And now he's out here. And he's just a stand-up guy. So it's great. That's great, man. Yeah, that's really nice. So if you could give yourself some advice, like when you first had the idea to start this company and now where you're sitting now, what would the advice be?

Oh, drink more milk. Drink more milk. I'm kidding. Spend more time at the pub across the street. You know, I guess one of the things that's been hardest for me to learn is, you know, if an entrepreneur, you want to get excited about different ideas and can get kind of, you must have this in your career, like where you get excited and it's a process of saying no to things,

and I probably have said yes to too many things. And in terms of like, you know, as I think about our product suite, the reason that these things are on the door, the three, you know, the raw beef, the chicken 2.0, which is an effort to improve our chicken, and then the low cost is, you know, these guys aren't allowed to work on anything else. And it took me a long time to learn that, you know, the power of focus.

It's something people talk about. You've got to be focused, et cetera. But you're like, yeah, okay. But this is super interesting, and there's plenty of hours in the day for me. Right, right, right. And I guess the process of maturing, you just learn that the focus is enormously important. And so it took me a long time to understand that. Yeah, I think as you get more successful, that becomes more important, too.

Because more opportunities are presented to you, I'm sure, all the time. People are calling you. They want you to do this or that. Yeah, so that was that. And then I think just, you know, this process of my, in my career of listening to, to my heart more, um, sounds absolutely goofy and, you know, sort of Zen like, but, but it's a hundred percent true. And I think, quite honestly, that's why this company is and will be successful. Because you're doing it because of that reason. And you have a call to action that comes from deep inside you. It's not like, hey, I came up with this idea that I can make a lot of money at. This is of personal importance to you.

importance to you. And this is a potentially, you know, huge thing that could change the habits of millions of people. And that comes a great responsibility. And I think a responsibility for you to, you know, be authentic to that mission. You have to be. And, and, uh, you know, I think about this as a father a lot. I'm sure you do too. Um, how do you get your kids to be less stubborn than you were? You a lot. I'm sure you do, too. How do you get your kids to be less stubborn than you were? You know, how do you know? Because, I mean, it's not like people didn't tell you that, you know, particularly where you went to school or I went to school. You know, I mean, it's a pretty sophisticated people around you that know how to think about things.

And, you know, you just still fall into that trying to do what you think someone else thinks you do or, you know, or just not listening to your heart. Even though, even though from an early age, if you have supportive people around you, they'll tell you to do that. But there's some other overriding thing that stops you from doing it.

Not sure what it is. Listen to your heart. Yeah. I think that's a good place to end it. All right. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you.

That was awesome. I appreciate it. If people want to end it. All right. Thanks so much. Yeah, thank you. That was awesome. I appreciate it. If people want to check out Ethan and Beyond Meat, you guys are on Twitter at Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat, the products are at Whole Foods. They're at, what are the other? Thank you for letting me know. So we're at Whole Foods. We're at Safeways, which out here.

Safeway. Which is Bond and Rouse. And then all the way through to Target. We're in the southeast. We're in Publix and HEB in Texas. And we're in about... Target nationwide? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We're about 7,000 stores now. And growing pretty quick. So no Unilever lawsuit coming your way yet? Yeah. So no Unilever lawsuit coming your way yet? No. Who's the likely candidate or have they learned from that experiment?

Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of nice publicity for Hampton Creek. You know, the Cattlemen's Association at some point. I mean, I think these claims. Because once you're, I mean, what triggered that is just, you know, being in that many stores. Now you really are, you're a legitimate real threat to market share. And once that happens, you're playing with the big boys now. And what does that mean? I've offered Purdue and others to put our process into their facilities and produce for them. Again, it gets back to this why we're doing this,

and they've never responded. That's interesting. That's kind of like Elon Musk saying, I'm making my IP public, because he knows he'll just out-innovate everybody. That's how I feel. So people say, well, why do you talk so publicly about what you do? I'm like, who's going to do it?

Somebody has to do it. Someone has to be crazy enough and just intense enough. It's like you were swimming. You had confidence that you were just crazy enough to do the things you would do. And I know that about myself and this company

that like, shit, if there are other companies out there that are as crazy as us about trying to get this done, that's awesome. Let's go toe to toe, you know? I like that, man. That's what you got. Yeah. I love that. That's perfect, man. Now that is the real good place to end it. No, uh, it's inspiring, man. And I wish you only the best. And, uh, I can't wait to kind of see what's next and watch you and the company grow. And I encourage everybody out there to give it a try. If it's new to you, embrace it.

And let's fix this problem together, man. Let's do it. Thanks, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. Peace. Plants. Exactly. Yeah, I left my wallet in El Segundo. Left my wallet in El Segundo.

Left my wallet in El Segundo. I gotta get it, I got to get it. All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that. Good dude, good talk. If you're into learning more about Ethan and Beyond Meat, I would definitely suggest reading that piece on outside.com. There's also some great additional pieces

on the Fast Company and Forbes websites, and I'll put all the links up to those articles in the show notes at richroll.com on the episode page. Please send me your questions for future Q&A podcasts. We have not forgotten about that. We are going to be doing more of those soon. Send those to findingultra at gmail.com. If you want to find out all the information, education, products, tools, resources, and inspiration you need to take your health, wellness, fitness, diet, self-actualization to the next level, go to richroll.com. Check out our nutrition products, our education products, and yes, our garments, which are all made with 100% organic cotton. If you like the podcast, please give us a review on iTunes and pick up the free app to listen to episodes older

than the most recent 50 you see on iTunes. You can get that in the app store. It's just the Rich Roll podcast app. Thank you for supporting the show. Keep telling your friends, keep using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com and for sharing your enjoyment of this content on social media, particularly Instagram. I love the pictures of you guys and where you're listening to the show. So please keep doing that. Tag me so I see it. I can throw some love your way and I'll see you guys next week. Peace. Plants. Thank you.