The Rich Roll Podcast - Rip Esselstyn: In Plants We Trust

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

A cornerstone of this podcast is celebrating the power of a plant-based lifestyle. Today we do just that with one of the movement’s most influential founding fathers. That father is none other than the great Plantstrong pioneer himself, Rip Esselstyn—returning for his second appearance on the podcast for a continuing dissertation on all things plants. If you caught our first conversation in December of 2017 (RRP 336), you already know Rip and I go way back. As swimmers we crossed paths as teens, later as college rivals, then decades thereafter as plant-based athlete and advocate allies. From the outset of my journey, he’s been a steady source of inspiration, encouragement and wisdom. An incredible mentor. A lighthouse. A loyal friend. For those unfamiliar, Rip was a three-time NCAA All-American backstroker at the University of Texas. After graduation, he spent a decade as one of the premier triathletes in the world. He then joined the Austin Fire Department where he introduced his passion for a whole-food, plant-based diet to Austin’s Engine 2 Firehouse in order to rescue a firefighting brother’s health. To document his success he wrote the national bestselling book, The Engine 2 Diet, which shows the irrefutable connection between a plant-based diet and good health. Thus began an illustrious career as a multiple New York Times bestselling author, in demand public speaker, health advocate, and food entrepreneur—catapulting the fledgling plant-based movement into mainstream adoption. Not enough? At age 56, Rip broke the master’s world record in the 200-meter backstroke. Today we pick up where we left things in 2017. More Rip. More plants. More awesome. Given Rip’s OG status, it was only fitting that today’s exchange was conducted OG style. No fancy studio. No cameras. Just two guys and two mics seated at Rip’s breakfast table in Austin. An old school, back-in-the-day podcast. Of course, we discuss the many benefits of a whole food plant-based diet—the Planstrong lifestyle as he calls it. In addition, we review the exploding popularity of this movement. How to rewrite your relationship with food in the new year. Plant fueling strategies to perform athletically. And how to leverage the nascent power within to positively and sustainably change our lifestyles for the better. We also dissect his recent world record-setting swim. What the future of the plant-based movement looks like. And the story behind his brand new food company titled, of course, PLANTSTRONG. To read more, click here. You can also listen on YouTube, Apple Podcasts & Spotify. Stick around to the end, because things take a compelling turn towards the spiritual and esoteric—personally my favorite part of this conversation. As you will soon discover, Rip is a good dude. A loyal, solid friend. And sincerely passionate about helping people eat and live better. Peace + Plants, Rich

So I tell people if you want to eat strong food, you want to eat a whole food plant-based diet. Eating foods as close to grown as possible where you know you're getting the most kick-ass form of protein. All proteins originate from plants. Most people don't know that. And it's like the Goldilocks form of protein. It's not too high in the sulfuric-containing amino acids that are going to promote inflammation, leach calcium from your bones, raise cholesterol levels, basically burden the dickens out of your kidneys and your liver, right? So that's one thing. You got the best form of protein as opposed to the protein that you're going to find in red meat, chicken, fish,

any of those meats, right? We now know that one of the most powerful things that you can do to create a rock-solid immune system is to start eating a whole food plant-based diet. And now the 10 times the number of cells that we have of bacteria that reside in our microbiome, we're creating a healthy microbiome and it is going to help us defend against the litany of chronic Western diseases that are out there, inflammation, all these things. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Did I mention that Rip Esselstyn is here?

No, of course I didn't because I just started talking, but I'm mentioning it now, or I guess I did mention it a moment ago. Anyway, whatever, it's true. The plant strong man himself is in the house back for his second spin on the pod, his first being episode 336, basically half the canon ago, back in December of 2017. As some of you may remember, Rip and I go way back as swimmers. We

crossed paths both as teens and later as college rivals, and then decades later as plant-based athlete allies. Rip, who was an NCAA All-American at the University of Texas, as well as an elite professional triathlete, was just a huge inspiration to me personally at the outset of my journey and has been and continues to be an incredible mentor, a lighthouse, a cheerleader, and just an absolutely wonderful friend. For those unfamiliar, Rip is an OG in the plant-based space, not just as this incredible athlete at age 56, he recently broke the master's world record in the 200 meter backstroke,

but also as an advocate, a public speaker, a podcaster, check out the PlantStrong podcast, as well as a food entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author. Rip's first book, Engine 2 Diet, put whole food plant-based on the map. And his subsequent books, which include Plant Strong, My Beef with Meat, and several others, really helped cement the benefits of this lifestyle in mainstream consciousness. Rip is an incredible man. This

conversation is lit, as the kids probably don't say anymore, but not so long ago used to say, and it's all coming up quick, but first. 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 the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. People at Recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do.

And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So this conversation picks up where we left off

at the end of 2017. Rip makes the case for the whole food plant-based diet or the plant-strong lifestyle, as he calls it. We discuss the incredible mainstreaming of this movement. whole food plant-based diet or the plant strong lifestyle as he calls it. We discuss the incredible mainstreaming of this movement. We talk about how to rewrite your relationship with food in the new year, what and how to eat to perform athletically

and the power to positively change that lives within all of us. We also discuss his world record setting swim, what the future of the plant-based movement looks like, the story behind his brand new food company, titled of course, PlantStrong. And near the end, we even get quite a bit spiritual, a wee bit esoteric,

which is personally my favorite part of this conversation. So please make sure you stick around all the way to the very end. As you'll soon discover, Rip is a good dude, a solid dude, a loyal friend, a living bulletproof example of the benefits of the PlantStrong lifestyle. He's a passionate man

devoted to simply helping people eat and live better. And I really think you're gonna dig him. To learn more about Rip, check out plantstrong.com. But right now, let us spin the wheel, shall we? Because here comes the thing, me and RIP Esselstyn. Enjoy. And we're doing it. Good to see you, my friend. Good to see you, my friend. Good to see you, Rich. We're doing this old school, which feels appropriate. Like we're just, it's audio only. We're in the original Austin house where old school Rip Esselstyn made it all happen back

in the day. So now, despite the fact that I've got this crazy studio and multiple cameras, it feels good to kind of go on the road and do it the way that I used to do it back in the day with the man himself who really has served, as many of you know, as a mentor to me, as a living example of this lifestyle. And I'm excited to chop it up with you. Well, great to see you again, Rich,

and welcome back to Austin. Yeah, man, I love it here. We're here in late October. The weather is unbelievable. I've been running around the lake and all the pathways around here. It's so livable. I mean, what's not to love, man?

Yeah. You've been here since 82? 82. Yeah. I came here to go to school at UT, University of Texas, and never left, right? But I have seen it grow more than we ever imagined, from 340,000 people to we're now over 2 million

with some of the surrounding suburbs. And I read something recently, we're now the 11th largest city in the United States. It's hard to believe. It still feels, I was just telling you, it still feels so livable and it feels, I know there's been this crazy influx, but it does feel like it has this kind of homespun,

you know, small town feel, despite the fact there's skyscrapers going up all over the place and construction everywhere. And I'm sure the traffic is way worse than it used to be. Oh, I have heard that it's one of the top five worst congestive cities in the United States, because like you just said, it's got this small town feel and the infrastructure cannot support the demand right now.

And so we're gonna have to figure out some really smarter ways with public transportation, subways, light rail, all those things as we grow up. And you can feel the influx over the last year of many more people migrating here from Los Angeles and New York and all the places. No, literally since 2000, Austin and Raleigh, North Carolina

have been the two fastest growing cities in the country. Wow. But this house that we're in, which now serves as your office, you bought originally when you were a firefighter, right? For like pennies on the dollar, raised your kids, your kids were born here. Well, I'm almost embarrassed to say it now in 2021,

but yeah, I bought this in 2002 for $147,000. Yeah. And it's literally worth 10 times that now, at least. Yeah, and as I told you when I was giving you the tour, this thing was rat infested. There were holes everywhere. It was like Alison in Wonderland because everything was so off level

and the amount of work that I put into this house. It was a lot of passion, but this is where basically, you know, I grew my family. All three kids were born in the master bedroom of this house and it's charming and we love it. But six years ago, it was time to move to a little bit bigger house. This is 900 square feet.

Right. And now it's like your man cave office, the cupboards and the shelves are covered with a new food line, the PlantStrong food line, which we're gonna talk about, which is very exciting. And it gives you some separation between work and family, right? Oh yeah, as soon as I walked through that door,

it's like, okay, I'm focused in on podcasts, work, whatever I gotta tackle in the day related to this new kind of PlantStrong empire that we're trying to create here. Yeah, it's impressive, man. It's very exciting time for you. Well, thanks a lot. And you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I know. So just to recap a little bit, and I've told this story many times on the podcast, so I don't wanna belabor it, but from the very beginning, you were like this lighthouse for me when I was trying to figure out how to find a way of eating and living

wherein I could thrive. I stumbled across you on Facebook and I knew your name. We weren't acquainted in person, but because we shared this history of being competitive swimmers, I knew who you were. You swam at Texas. We had been at a lot of the same meets over the years.

And you were posting about this plant-based diet thing and this book that you were working on. It must've been 2007, I think around then. Seven or eight, yeah. And I just reached out to you and I was like, tell me what this is about. Like, I'm super interested. I'm at a pivotal moment in my life.

And you threw me a lifeline and became like this person that helped me figure out, like, because you were so much further down the path and had been living this way for so long. And because of your accomplishments as not only a swimmer, but a professional triathlete and then a firefighter, I was like, oh, this guy, like this is working for this guy.

Like here's a guy that I can like cast my gaze upon and model, you know, how I'm gonna approach this new way of living. And, you know, it was huge. I mean, short of that, like, I don't know that I would be sitting here right now. And whether you know it or not, you played a huge role in that pivotal time for me

and have continued to be a friend and a mentor in so many ways. So I just wanted to publicly thank you for that. But given that you have been in this game for such a long time, and I think Engine 2 came out, the first book came out in 2009, right? February 25th, 2009. Yeah. And you had been living this lifestyle for many years prior to that. It has to be unbelievably gratifying to bear witness to the mainstream adoption of this lifestyle because the differences between when I began

and when your first book came out to what it looks like now, I mean, it's unbelievable. Now, it's moving at warp speed, truly, right? And the fact of the matter is it can't move fast enough, right, especially given what we're facing right now with the health of this country, with the climate crisis that's afoot right now, as we're going into COP26,

the big conference in Glasgow, Scotland. a crisis that's afoot right now as we're going into COP26, the big conference in Glasgow, Scotland. And when I wrote my book, I think that maybe there were maybe 10 books that had been written and they were all plant-based. Colin Campbell, you had John Robbins, "'Diet for a New America' or yeah, "'Diet for a New America'."

Colin Campbell, obviously with with the China study, and a handful of others. And now I feel like there's a, I mean, I'm getting people asking me to endorse their books, like I'm getting one a week, right? You know what I'm talking about. And it is phenomenal, the amount of access that people have to this information,

to food, to documentaries. And my hope is that in the next 10 years or so, we can eradicate animal agriculture from this planet. And when I say eradicate, I don't mean eliminate completely, but like we've done with smoking cigarettes, eradicate meaning let's get it down to where less than 20% of the population

is consuming this way. No small problem. I mean, the way I think about it is on the one hand, there has been just this explosion of interest in this lifestyle. I think in the early days, there was a sense that, oh, this is a fad, like this is just the latest thing. It'll pass like every other fad diet,

South Beach diet, whatever, right? Clearly history has said otherwise, like this is here to stay. Every restaurant you go into has plant-based options. has said otherwise, like this is here to stay. Every restaurant you go into has plant-based options. The explosion of meat and dairy analog food products is unbelievable. Just go to any grocery store across America

and quickly that's expanding across the world. And no longer are we in conversations with people who say, what is plant-based or what is vegan meat? Like people get it. And that's, let's just pause for a moment and recognize that that's massive progress. Yet at the same time, the consumption of meat globally has never been higher.

The incidence of chronic disease seems to be on the rise. The explosion in diabetes, type two diabetes, all of these chronic lifestyle ailments that are rooted in diet and lifestyle continue to metastasize. So it's like these parallel tracks. So on the one hand, we can celebrate the growth of this movement, on the other hand,

there's a despairing aspect of how I look at it, where I go, is this making any difference? Like, how are we actually going? I mean, there's other systemic things that we have to talk about, healthcare, et cetera. We have to create environments that are conducive to healthier lifestyles, et cetera. But how do you think about, like, how do you stay optimistic and rooted in the mission? Well, I would say that I am a, the glass is half full, not half empty kind of guy, right? And so I'm always looking for the, I'm very optimistic. And I have a lot of hope.

I mean, I have hope for humanity. I see all the good that's out there. I also see a lot of the bad and the ignorance, but I think so much of it is just educating people. And that's one of the things that I am, I spent my whole career doing. I mean, you know my path, right? I mean, start-

And we should probably recap that a little bit for people because there's a lot of new listeners since the last time you were on the show. Yeah, I was inspired by my father and his groundbreaking research at the Cleveland Clinic going back to 1984. And as a surgeon, he kind of decided to tackle the fact that heart disease was kind of this making of our own cause

because of what we're putting into our mouths. And he, and I would say Dean Ornish have the most profound evidence-based research on the planet showing you can actually metabolize away these plaque formations just by changing what you eat. And so my father's been, like you said, I was a bit of a lighthouse for you. My father's been a like you said, I was a bit of a lighthouse for you. My father's been a huge lighthouse for me.

Right, and I don't think it could be overstated just how radical a notion that was at the time that he was making those proclamations. Well, and everybody called him a quack. They made fun of him. But my dad has always been a truth seeker and he doesn't care what people think. And so he's got a pretty thick skin.

And so he forged forward and lo and behold, he started in 1984 and by 1991, he had some pretty profound angiographic evidence. Basically, it's like an x-ray of the arteries where they put a dye in there, but you can actually see the before and after. And it was hugely dramatic. And he's gone on since then to just do this again and again and again and again to show that it wasn't a fluke. His book came out in 2007, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. He's been written up in at least seven of the peer reviewed medical literatures that are out there.

And he now sits on the American College of Cardiology. He's one of the members there. How old is he now? He's gonna be 88 in December. Like just a whipper snapper and like as vital as ever, has he lost a step at all or? No, and he bikes every morning and he's doing fantastically well.

You know, he's, because of COVID, he's a little bit more sheltered in place. You know, because of his age, he's taking some precautionary measures. But what he was able to do influenced my trajectory, my whole path in life. And so when I went to University of Texas at Austin, as soon as I graduated in December 86,

I started eating this way. As soon as I was off the athletic dining room table with the football players of steaks and bacon and eggs and all that stuff. Did you do that kicking and screaming or you were compelled by your father's example? No, people always ask that. And no, I have so much respect and admiration for my father. And I have always been like one of his biggest cheerleaders.

And so kicking and screaming, not in the least, I embraced it in a big, powerful way. And I just, I was trying to figure it out, of course, for the first, you know, couple months, year. But I also decided when I graduated that I was not destined for a nine to five desk job. It was just, made me want to like shrivel up and die. So I always loved competition and the thrill of it and just the black and whiteness of it. Like, okay, you know, there's no BS.

It's just, you know, whoever crossed the finish line first, there you go, you're the winner. And so I decided to try my hand in triathlons and I did that for a decade, right? Swimming, biking, running. I became the premier swimmer in the sport for almost a decade. And one of the top 10 in the United States

at the international distance, not the Ironman. That required such a whole nother mentality and level of, I'm gonna say, commitment to training. And I already was training two to five hours a day. And I saw, you know, the Molinas of the world and Dave Scott and Mark Allen. And I was like, I just, I'm gonna stick to the shorter stuff.

But you did compete at Kona and were first out of the water. Listen, you might've gotten passed quickly thereafter, but you got that TV time. Yeah, yeah. No, I competed in Kona just because you have to. I mean, back then, I wanted to do it. It's the granddaddy of all Ironmans.

It's the reason I got into the sport. I saw Dave Scott in 1981 or two on Wide World of Sports. And I was like, oh my God, this guy is a stallion. I wanna do this. And I did it. I was first out of the water. I led until like almost a turnaround at Havie and then got passed by.

Oh, that's good. So you led for the first half of the bike. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was passed by, that year it was Dave Scott, then Greg Welch, Ken Glaw, right? And then I came off to like 224th.

The monkey jumped on, I should say the piano jumped on my back. And then I finished like 1,054th. I mean, it was painful just being vertical. I mean, I walked a mile, ran a mile. I was like, oh my gosh. And so my two to three hour training days and having done one or 200 mile rides followed by a 10 mile run, didn't do it.

Not the best prep for that race. No, no. Didn't matter what I was eating. Yeah. So you were pro triathlete for 10 years? 10 years, exactly. But then I continued to compete at a world-class level, but not in so much the road triathlons, but in the off-road triathlon. So the Xterra races, which I just gobbled up and I loved it. And it was so different than the road triathlons where you just kind of put your head down and just cranked it out.

Here, mountain biking, you've gotta be like on your game. There's just so much going on. I love the off-road running, the trail running. I love the loop course of the swim. So all that. And so I did every one of the XTERRA World Championships on Maui from 1999 to almost 2006. And quietly plant-based the whole time

before it was a thing. Yep, yep, for sure. I mean, you had to be the only athlete. Well, keep in mind it. And I don't know what's happened to Dave lately, but Dave Scott inspired me because he was 100% vegetarian and he was so hardcore, he'd wash his cottage cheese and things like that to rinse off the excessive fat.

But it was like- I think he's changed his tune lately. Yeah, yeah, I haven't talked to Dave about that, but- But while he was in top form, yeah, that was his approach. Yeah. And he was vocal about it at the time, as I recall. Very vocal. Yeah. Yeah. So in, let's see, 1997, I was like, okay,

I've been gallivanting around the globe long enough, swimming, biking, and running. It's time for me to hang up the Speedo, hang up the Schwinn bike and the Nike shoes. And that's when I decided to try my hand at firefighting, right? And I just love the fact that, because triathlons, it's kind of lonely, right? It's such an individual sport. And I loved the fact that as a firefighter, I'm part of a crew. I'm part of a team. This is my second family. We're going out and we are doing, we're helping people, we're saving lives.

And we're doing that like 10 to 15 times a shift. And I love the fact that you never knew when that tone went off, what exactly you were gonna find when you got there. Whether it was a fire, whether it was somebody that had a, you know, heaven forbid, a heart attack, whether it was a fire, whether it was somebody that had a, you know, heaven forbid, a heart attack, whether it was a gnarly car accident, investigate smoke,

just, you know, gunshot, whatever, right? I would imagine that there were more heart attack type visits than there were houses on fire. And that probably was, I suspect, like impactful to see, you know, people suffering up close and personal in that way. Yeah, especially given kind of my knowledge and my education, seeing all these people,

because I'd say 75 to 80% of our call volume was responding as emergency first responders, paramedics to this absolute just dearth of medical calls. So lifting assistant calls, chest pain, heart attacks, people whose blood sugars have gotten too low and they're on the verge of going into a diabetic coma. And yeah, 80% were all related to, which I will say is just the standard American diet.

And it was super sad because I felt like taking every one of them aside and saying, hey, I got the answer for you here. Yeah. Well, the I got the answer for you here. Yeah. Well, the big inflection point for you amidst the firefighting career was this experiment that you ran with your crew, right? Right, right.

This competitive group of dudes who are all trying to best each other in various ways. You kind of flipped the script on that and challenged everybody to see who could lower their cholesterol the most in a given set time period. Exactly. Firefighters are very competitive. And so we always have these little bets to see who can make the most free throws on the basketball court in the parking lot, who can do the most

pull-ups, push-ups, ping pong games. So we had a little bet to see who had the lowest cholesterol level. And we found out that one of my firefighting brothers had a cholesterol at 33 of 344. And so that was really the inflection point when we as a crew decided we would get behind this firefighting brother and eat this way, basically in an act of solidarity to help this guy out. And so this was in 2003. And I challenged this one guy, JR, to do it not only at the firehouse, but also at home. So he was doing it 24 seven. And then within 28 days, his cholesterol went down to 196. So 148 points.

Pretty dramatic, yeah. Right, and that's in less than a month. Lost 14 pounds, sleeping better, acid reflux went away, you know, the standard protocol. And then the next thing you know, this is becoming a tradition at Fire Station too on the C-shift. The Austin American-Statesman does an article about us.

Then the New York Times, the crown jewel of written media does a front page article on the Metro section. And then I'm getting blasted by literary agents and publishing houses to write a book about the escapades and the adventures that we were having at Fire Station 2, where we were doing something as crazy in the land of beef as eating tofu and broccoli and steel cutouts having it fire station too, where we were doing something as crazy in the land of beef

as eating tofu and broccoli and steel cut oats and sweet potatoes and all that jazz. Did you have a sense, like a light bulb moment of like, oh, this is opening a door to a new path for me? Or were you just kind of responding to what was getting thrown at you at the time? No, forever I was just responding to what was getting thrown at you at the time? No, forever I was just responding to what was being thrown.

I had, you know, I tell this story, I don't know if I've told you, but I probably got letters and emails and phone calls from 30 different publishing houses and literary agents soliciting me to write a book. And I never responded to any of them. No, I was like, I'm like, no, who am I? I'm not a doctor. I'm not a life coach. I'm not a dietician. I've got no business writing a book. And frankly, the thought of writing a book was

very intimidating. Yeah, it's scary. Yeah, super scary. And at some point, and I'd say it's probably six months after the barrage started coming in, I just was like thinking, you know what? Well, why not? And maybe I can reach a segment of the population that wouldn't otherwise hear this message from a doctor or a dietician

or your typical kind of authority figure. And so I flew to New York and met with all these literary agents, Richard Pine, who we've talked about and who was behind the South Beach Diet and oh God, a litany of other books. And I decided to go with him as my literary agent. And I spent almost two years writing the book,

doing a pilot study and all that. I know there was some debate or discussion like this pressure to put the word diet on the cover, right? That you were resistant to. Yeah, I didn't want to, but they insisted that that be on there. They also insisted that in the recipe section, you also have to have fish and chicken

as an option for people. Oh, did they really? Because in 2009, when I wrote this, they're like, this is not gonna sell if it's 100%. That's so interesting. Vegan. Yeah. And you can, as you know now, in subsequent additions of the NG2 diet,

we have removed all the fish. So the original edition had those in there. For people that wanted it as an option, we had some, but it was only a couple of the recipes, but I felt tainted doing it. Right. But the book goes on to become a New York Times bestseller, which had to be surreal for you.

And it really does like create this opportunity and this platform to step into this sort of call to service in terms of like, okay, I now have this situation in which I can really ply what I've learned to help the many that are suffering in various ways. And what's so beautiful about what unfolded, and we talked about this the last time, is that it becomes this extraordinary family story.

Like everybody in your family participates in what was, you know, hence created to basically, you know, convey all of this wisdom from your father and your mother and your siblings, et cetera, that has gone on to impact like millions of people. Yeah. Listen, this has been such a gift, right?

Across the board. And I just feel so blessed and lucky that, what I've tried to do in my life is just always follow what I'm passionate about. And that is kind of served me very well. So when everybody told me, oh, my God, you need to get a real job. You can't just do triathlons. That's ridiculous. I'm like, listen, just like let me figure it out.

And I did that for a decade. And then I became a firefighter and loved being a firefighter. But then after I wrote this book, the Engine 2 Diet, and we haven't talked about this yet, the universe, you know, kind of opened up, the clouds parted and I got this invitation to become a healthy eating kind of crusader of sorts for Whole Food Market stores.

And John Mackey, he read the book and he was like, "'Rip, I want you to come on board. "'I want you to educate our 100,000 team member base. "'I want you to lecture to as many of our customers as you can, go around to the UK, Canada, the United States, visit all of our stores and do that. I also would love for you to be a healthy eating immersion partner and we will pay for our sickest team members to go and learn from soup to nuts about this lifestyle. And so, I mean, it's just crazy the growth trajectory that I was thrust into in the span of writing the book,

having it hit February of 2009, and then getting this invitation to be a health eating partner with Whole Foods Market in really the summer of 2009. And then I retired from firefighting after 12 years. Right, almost reluctantly. Oh, very much so. But as John Mackey said, he's like, Rip, if you wanna take helping people and saving lives to a whole nother level,

and I know it's not easy, but you gotta burn the ships, burn the ships, leave that career behind and come on board here. Yeah, and not for nothing, but I remember back in those early days, there were certain prominent figures in the movement who will remain unnamed, who were of the opinion that it was impossible to make a living in this kind of vein of advocacy.

Like you can write a book, that's fine. Or you can try to help people, but ostensibly you're gonna need another job, right? Because there was no roadmap or blueprint for what you created. No, I just, well, I can tell you this, that I wasn't gonna jump from firefighting unless I had something that was a little bit more solid.

And what John Mackey offered me at Whole Foods was more than I was making as a firefighter. Right, it was pretty secure. So you end up going on tour. I mean, you must have done thousands of these presentations at all these whole food markets all over the place. Well, I went around for a decade and I probably did close to 200 a year.

Right. Oh my God. But you know what? Every time that I would get in front of that audience, whether it was three people or 300, I gave them everything I had, you know, because they were there, they wanted to be educated and the opportunity to turn, you know,

help somebody out and flip them from the Stan American diet to eating a whole food plant strong diet. And I've gotten so many thank yous and just, you know, whether, and you know this, but when I'm doing book signings, like, you know, thank you, you saved my life. Thank you, you and your father saved my life. You and your family saved my life. And then, as you know, by John Mackey giving me this opportunity, I also, in addition to running these healthy eating immersion programs

that we were doing for seven days, we then opened them up to the public. And then it also gave me the confidence to start doing these weekend events, which we had you two. And so- The plant stock and the various- The plant stock.

Retreats and immersions and- They've morphed, like they started out as kind of farms to forks and then we decided to call it plant stock. And yeah, we had those weekend events and I think you came to three or four of them over the course of years. Yeah, they're incredible.

They're incredible. So back to this point of like traveling all over and doing 200 of these things a year, beyond the fact that it helped you become this extraordinary public speaker because you were so honed in on your message, other than like the thank yous and et cetera, like what are some of the things you learned

about how to impact people in the most meaningful way? Like I'm sure themes recur, like, oh, I know when I see these people, this is kind of the basic story that they tell. How do you help them? And like, what are the things that you've learned from meeting so many people who were struggling with their health?

You know, I think that the thing that I learned more than anything was nobody is too far gone and that just about anybody can turn it around. And, you know, Dan Buettner talks about this a ton, but you have to create the right environment so the healthy choice is the easy choice. That's a big one. And you got to get rid of every one of the excuses

that you're going to throw out in front of yourself because everybody thinks that their excuse is better than anybody else's. Whether it's the mother that has seven children and is she just going nuts? Whether it's the CEO that is on the road 150 days a year, whether it's the guy that works offshore on an oil rig and doesn't have access to food

or an 18 wheel truck driver. And I say every one of those because I met every one of those on my journey and every one of them was able to figure out ways of conquering it. Right, you don't know my, I understand what you're saying, Rip, that's great. You don't understand my specific problem.

My life's too complicated for this. Thanks, but no thanks. Yep, yep. And so we just gotta like clear the slate and say, listen, everybody thinks that, but you can do this. I believe in you. I absolutely know that you can do this and let's just, let's give it a try.

And so that's the whole thing with the 28 days or the seven days or whatever, take it for a test drive. And then you'd be the judge after that. Is it something that you feel like, was it worth it? How hard was it? And is it something that you feel like, was it worth it? How hard was it? And then we know that you need support and you need community, right? So you don't feel like you're alone, especially over the, well, when I started this in 2010, there were hardly anybody,

hardly anybody that was doing this. So we've created some really powerful communities at PlantStrong where people can feel connected to like-minded people. And we have coaches that are helping answer questions, but it's become kind of this community where everybody helps everybody else. Right? Yeah, and the original kind of portal for this was engine2.com that's now evolved into plantstrong.com,

but it's been cool to watch over the years how you're constantly iterating on the website and it just becomes a more and more robust 360 degree destination for all the resources that you need from meal planning to recipe prep, to, you know, any number of dissertations or lectures on the whys behind all of this. And it really is for anybody who wants to learn more,

like that's all you gotta do is go to your website and it's like all there. Yeah, yeah, planstrong.com. We got a lot. Yeah, and I tell you, along the way, I've really developed such an amazing team of mission-aligned people that work for me from Amy Mackey, no relation to John Mackey, Lori Kordowich. And then of course, this whole new team that I have

now as we're launching food. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're recording this in late October, but this is going to go up in the new year. And with the new year, with January upon us, most of us are thinking about changes we'd like to make, about sort of unlocking a better version of ourselves. It's new year, new you time. So, I want to explore that a little bit, but as a kind of preface for that, or to contextualize it all, like make the case for a plant-based diet.

Like why a plant-based diet? Why not a Mediterranean diet? Why not a plant forward diet? Why not a carnivore diet? Or any number of the diets that are kind of swirling around in people's consciousnesses as they're trying to decide like what to latch onto. Yeah, there's a lot of noise out there right now.

And I would encourage you not to go down another, not to go on another fool's errand because there's a lot out there. And you said plant-based, I'm gonna take it even a step farther than that and say whole food plant-based, because we now know that just plant-based isn't enough. And in 2021, there was a litany of products

that are on the shelves right now. But as our friend, Jeff Novick would say, they're loaded with crap, right? Calorie rich and processed. It's almost like harder, like in the early days, it was hard because you didn't know what to do. There weren't a lot of resources and there weren't a lot of products at the grocery store.

Now there's too many products and it's very easy to delude yourself into this idea that you're eating healthy because they don't contain animal products, but it's become more incumbent upon everybody to really responsibly read these labels and to make sure that you're not going down some crazy processed food rabbit hole

that really is no better than the standard American diet and the processed foods that are, you know, kind of part and parcel of that lifestyle. No, I actually would tell you that. So I have a podcast too, for the listeners that don't know this. It's called the Plant Strong Podcast. And I've been doing about three years. And yesterday, I interviewed Kim Williams. I know you've had Kim on maybe once or twice. Yeah, once or twice. And for people that don't know,

he's the, well, he's the head of cardiology at Rush University Medical Center. He also in 2015 to 16 was the president of the American College of Cardiologists. And he said that eating a highly processed vegan diet is actually as unhealthy or more unhealthy than eating a animal-based diet. And he cited a study that was in the journal

of the American College of Cardiologists in 2017. a study that was in the Journal of the American College of Cardiologists in 2017. And I came on board Whole Foods in 2000, late 2009, 2010. And one of the things that John Mackey tasked me with doing was doing a line of food products called Engine 2 Plant Strong, because of the 20 or 30,000 different products

around whole food shelves, there were maybe 50 that John could eat, right? Right, yeah, because he's very diligent and hardcore. Hardcore, right? And so he loved the criteria that we had at Engine 2 as far as being 100% whole grain, low sodium or no added sodium, no added sugars or minimal sugars, low fat, a hundred percent plant-based. And so he said, Rip,

you know, in conjunction with the Whole Foods team, let's start rolling out some Engine 2 products, we'll license this from you. And let's see what we can do. And looking back now, this was so easy for me because I was just really a passenger. I mean, it was a licensing arrangement. I had access to the whole Whole Foods infrastructure from the lawyers, the graphic designers, the food scientists,

they were doing all the travel to the manufacturers and making sure that they passed all the quality control tests and all these things. And I was just basically saying, testing it and saying, yep, I like it or nope, that's not gonna work. But kind of going back to your original question. So to me, it is so easy to get swayed into this mistress of plant-based foods, which, hey, I've had them, right? They're absolutely delicious. But if you are making these the foundation

of how you're eating, that's a bit of a problem. So then maybe define whole food plant-based and let's like build upon that and then talk about why that's optimal. So whole food plant-based is when you're eating foods as close to grown as possible that are minimally processed. And the one thing I left out earlier is we also we're not doing any added oils, any processed oils.

So for example, if we were to pick up one of our products you'd recognize just about every ingredient in there. Jasmine rice, roasted red bell peppers, onions, ginger, turmeric, okay? It's not gonna be pea protein isolates, soy protein concentrates, coconut oil, safflower oil. And what you find typically in all these plant-based products that are littering the shelves right now

is they don't have any whole food ingredients. It's all oils, sugars, salts, and plant-based proteins. And our friend Colin Campbell, he's like, the whole is always better than the sum of the parts. And when you're eating whole foods, an apple, an orange, a mango, brown rice, you are getting this symphony of fiber, water, phytonutrients, antioxidants, water, phytonutrients, antioxidants, protein, carbohydrates, fats,

just the way nature intended. And that is gonna make you the best Rich Roll, the best Rip Esselstyn, the healthiest version of ourselves. So I'm kind of jumping ahead a little bit right now. But so what happened is Amazon basically acquired Whole Foods in 2017-ish and the world kind of shifted from underneath my feet

and the whole Whole Foods culture for the most part. And all of a sudden they had a little different philosophy and know that Engine 2, it was a control brand of Whole Foods. So Whole Foods owned it. Right, it was a licensing deal for you, with you. Yes, and so in like 2019, I kind of got word that they're just gonna be focusing in

on the Whole Foods premium brand and the 365 everyday value brand. But it was such an experiment in trying to figure out and understand what products resonated with customers and which ones didn't. And engine too, the most important thing was we're following the criteria, right? No added oils, the sodium has got to be in this one-to-one ratio, which I can talk to you about in a sec. And so we didn't put as much of a emphasis on the taste factor and so in about 2019 when I

basically they told me that you know we will not be renewing the engine to license for another 10 years but this is a great opportunity for you to now basically take the brand and do what you want with it and give it the love and the attention that it rightly deserves. Right. And so I'm like, all right, am I like good to go? And am I done? Or is this like my opportunity to like step up and try and make this thing fly. Right. And the next year was one of the most challenging and soul searching years of my life. There's great pain on your face as you say that. Well, it's true. It's true.

Yeah. Because the overwhelming nature of what it actually means to like create, from an entrepreneurial point of view, like create your own business in the food space. And I had an idea how hard food was, right? I had an idea, but keep in mind at Whole Foods, I didn't get my hands too dirty, right? I was above all that.

You had to have learned a ton about how it all works. So, I mean, you couldn't have done this when John first came to you, like that licensing opportunity allowed you to have an education without having to, you know, so much as scrape your knees along the way. Absolutely. But it's the difference between being a passenger

and being a pilot. And now I'm forced to fly the plane, right? And I'm forced to find the money. And I self-funded this thing for the first, almost 12, 15 months, right? At some point I'm like, oh my gosh, you know? But Rich, here's the thing. It's like, I saw this also as a challenge

that I just needed to go for. I needed to go for it because I wanted to be, everything we're talking about right now, I wanted to be that lighthouse for all those other brands that are out there that, you know what? This movement needs to continue to evolve. And we need a brand that's kind of like the Tesla

of automobiles. It's like the Tesla for the plant-based space. I mean, back when we did Engine 2 at Whole Foods in 2010, we were 10 years ahead of our time. There was no other brand that I know of that was 100% plant-based, no other. There were some plant-based products, but not a brand that was fully committed to this. And so I see, I mean, I would wake up at three going, oh my gosh, you've got to make this work. Do you have the stomach for this? Yes, you do. And every day,

it was like another challenge, another obstacle. Like, all right, I gotta hire somebody. All right, let's do a seed round. Let's find angel investors. I had a great lunch with John Mackey and he said, Rip, what you wanna do is you wanna find people that love you, that adore you and believe in you and let them know exactly what you're trying to do. And I put together, you know, spent a long time

putting together this pitch deck, was able to get 26 friends and family to basically, you know, jump in, was able to meet with a category manager at Whole Foods. So people can't see, but I'm holding this broth up to you. This was our organic vegetable stock. It's actually no added sodium. There's, let me just take a quick peek here.

There's 20 milligrams of sodium per serving in this. You won't find another commercialized veggie broth that's less than probably 120. And most of them are 500 to 700. Yeah, it's a huge difference. Huge difference. So this is a category that is just littered with sodium. The same thing with soups and chilies and stews. But so I had to like earn my way back into Whole Foods.

Wow. Starting from zero. After all of that. After all that. Did, when the licensing deal ended, obviously Whole Foods has rights to those formulations. Were they permissive in allowing you to use the same recipes and rebrand them as your own?

Or did you have to come up with new things out of whole cloth? There were only a couple of products that we decided to go forward with. And I had permission to use those formulas. So was the vegetable stock your best seller? Cause I would have thought the Rips Big Bowl. My dad loves it.

He's like, I'm eating my Rips Big Bowl. He's not even like a plant-based guy, but he loves his Rips Big Bowl. But so I got this hope that, okay, this category manager wants like more. So I got to work, I hired a woman to help with food, basically food development and, you know, kind of help create this. I hired a guy, you know, Ken Rubin from the Ruby cooking school. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think I do.

Anyway, I've hired him as a consultant to help because one of the things when I took this brand over and I pivoted from Engine 2 to Plant Strong, and that's really important. I want people to understand that I love Engine 2. It's right, it's always like, it's tattooed onto my heart, but it's kind of a muddy name. And you have to let customers know what it is, what it does, and what it stands for in about half a second. And so PlantStrong, I decided to pivot to PlantStrong

as the name. And you can see the new packaging. I mean, it's really gorgeous. It's clear immediately what it is, what it's about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you can see the ingredients that are in the products. I love the new logo. And how many skews of the new line are there right now? I mean, there's lots of stuff up here on the shelves. There are, but so there's different channels

that you can go into, right, with food. And you have to do it very strategically. So at retail, we're starting at Whole Foods. Whole Foods has asked for a 90-day exclusive. That exclusive period runs out November 1st. So starting November 1st, we're going to go out into other retailers like Sprouts, like Wegmans, Raley's, a lot of the natural food channels. And then when we have our sea legs, we'll also go into some of the more conventional channels like the targets. What's the one down in Florida that's so-

Piggly Wiggly? Walmart? Well, Walmart's one, but yeah. Ralph's, Fonz, Safeway, all that, whatever. The big ones. The big ones, the big ones. But I got some really good advice from a guy here in Austin named Clayton Christopher, who's just like got the green thumb when it comes to CPG.

He said, rip inch wide, mile deep, inch wide, mile deep in retail. And the reason why Engine 2 was able to do that at Whole Foods is because when you're a private label brand, you can do that if you're just in that store. But when you're trying to go out into thousands of doors, you gotta be more strategic. So we took the bestseller

and then we're doing line extension. So we're doing on the broths, we're doing basically the same one. We're doing the vegetable broth. We're also doing a shiitake mushroom broth. We're also doing a Spanish style sofrito broth. And lastly, we're doing a sweet corn broth. So we got four right now that are on the shelf.

And they're all like low sodium, no added sugar, unsalted, oil-free. And this is a category, like I said earlier, it's ripe with added oils, added sugars, enough sodium to sink a ship. And so we've done a lot of research into making sure that these are top-notch. They're fantastic. They taste fantastic just to enhance and elevate all your cooking. Whether like I made some, just a stir fry the other day, I used a sweet corn. It was insane. If you're just doing like steamed greens, just put some of this broth

in there, casseroles, you name it. It's amazing what a good broth can do for you. And then the other thing is we used to have an engine to firehouse chili. It was a three bean chili. And so we decided, and that sold really, really well. So we got the firehouse chili. It was a three bean chili. And so we decided, and that sold really, really well. So we got the firehouse chili. We've got a creamy white bean chili, which you can see right here. And this has got like hatch green chilies in it. It's got navy beans, cannellini beans, all the aromatics. So the shallots, the onions, the garlic. And it's got about 220 milligrams of sodium in it per serving. And most of your chilies and stews and soups have 500 to 700. And the Institute of Medicine has basically said

the top level for Americans should be about 1500 milligrams. 1500. So if you're doing like a typical, I'll just throw out a name, Amy's soup, it's 750 milligrams per serving. There's two in a little can or Tetra Pak. That you've already met your upper limit just on that soup. Wow.

Right? And so considering that we got almost a quarter of America that is now hypertensive or on some sort of medication for this, this is a huge dietary need state for to meet these kinds of products. We've also got a Indian lentil stew right here that is just like, it's like the equivalent, it's a kitchari, which in India is like a chicken noodle kind of soup. And it's so

great for an upset stomach. It's got black cumin in it, jasmine rice, red lentils, yellow lentils. I mean, every ingredient that goes into every product, we put a ton of thought into. We have a Thai carrot chickpea stew that's got lemongrass, kefir leaves, galangal, turmeric, because we want that curcumin mixed with the black pepper, the piperine and the curcumin. It's like a one-two punch of antioxidants. So I really think of this as food as medicine.

And you can see, I'm getting pretty wound up here. Yeah. But it's like- I like how excited you are talking about all this stuff. But there's like, nobody, nobody is doing this. And so what we wanna be is, again, I'm gonna say it, we wanna be that lighthouse. And so what we wanna be is, again, I'm gonna say it, we wanna be that lighthouse.

And the nexus of health meets taste, to me, there's nobody else that is doing it like we are right now. Yeah, I imagine, look, any entrepreneur is trying to build a business. You're not only facing obstacles, but you're compelled to have to face the possibility of making compromises. Like everything's a compromise.

There is no ultimate, like, yeah, you could do it this way, but then you're going to have to do this. Or if you do it this way, it's going to cost too much. Or you can use this packaging, but this is going to happen. Like every decision has all of these kind of downstream ramifications. I just know this from, you know, Julie's experience with her cheese company and all of that. So to create a line of products that are kind of holding that, you know, apex aspirational space of we're not compromising on what these ingredients are. I'm sure along the

way you had people saying, well, if you want to do that, like, you know, it's going to be hard. No one's done that or whatever is an achievement and cool. Well, that's really, and I'm glad you said that because what a lot of companies do is they'll just procure existing products and then throw their label on it. And so one of the most challenging things that we have discovered is finding a manufacturer

that is willing to think outside the proverbial box using our requirements, because it is- I'll just tell you, we don't do it that way. Well, yeah, and if- If you wanna work with us, you gotta do it this way. So yeah, we'll have to go knock on another door. And then the amount of time that it takes for us to get it just right,

like the Thai carrot chickpea stew, we went through 28 different iterations before we actually got it to where we were like, this is it, home run. And there's also, you have minimum order quantities. So they're like, they're not gonna play. And yes, unless you're willing to do, just give you an example, 50,000 units, right?

Of each one of these. And then you have to do the math and say- When you're bootstrapping this, I mean, you know, with the payment terms and all of that, like it's gotta be suffocating. Oh. Like this, we were talking about, you were telling me like, oh yeah,

listen to the Matt Walker episode about sleep. Like I was like, okay, this guy hasn't been sleeping, you know, trying to create this company. Well, typically I don't have a hard time sleeping. My head hits the pillow and I'm asleep within a minute. But yeah, I've had too many nights, more than I care to remember, where I'm waking up at 2.45, 3. And I'm thinking about, okay, how are we going to solve this? How are we going to do this? But yeah, I mean, you got 50,000 minimum, you know, a minimum order quantity. And it's like, okay, we gotta sell this many,

you know, per week. Can we make that happen? And the other thing I was gonna tell you is there's different channels. So the retail channel is one and it's a hugely popular channel, but it is so bloody expensive and there's so many hurdles. Lots of middlemen all taking their little vig.

Lots of middlemen, you got the supply chain, you got distribution that you need to work out, warehousing, you gotta make sure that you don't have voids on shelf. I mean, it's endless. It's absolutely endless. The other channel that has really been lit on fire, especially after COVID.

DTC. DTC, right? Direct to the consumer, Shopify, e-commerce. And so we, about a year ago, we started an e-commerce site for PlantStrong. It's plantstrongfoods.com. And this is a funny story. So there were these two young whippersnappers out of Miami.

They were ex-semi-professional soccer players. And they'd heard the Engine 2 message back when they were playing soccer. And so they started eating this way. And they're both like 33, 34 right now. And they have a business where they help you build websites and help you figure out customer acquisition and data analytics and all that jazz.

But I didn't know that at the time. The reason why I reached out to them is they have a little passion project on the side and it's called Plant Athletic. And they basically make all this vegan wear. Yeah, I know these guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Cameron and Daniel, right?

And so they were making these Plant Strong t-shirts and I'm like, hey, these guys can't be making these. I've got the IP on that. You trademarked that day one. I did. And so reached out to them and said, hey guys, love your doing, love everything, but you can't be doing that.

And they're like, hey, are you actually like Rip Esselstyn, like from Engine 2? And they're like, hey, is there any way that we can like work together and like, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, let's talk. So they flew to Austin. And again, I had no idea that they, what their real expertise was.

And we never even like, we talked about the t-shirts. We just started talking about what they do and how they can help us out. So long and short of it is, I've got these two guys in Miami that have an amazing background in e-commerce that are now part of the team. And we call them Miami Vice. That's their nickname because they're two good looking studs, young families. And they're responsible now for building the website, helping us figure out how to bundle it, how much promotions do we have to do to keep moving the product.

And it's been a dream working with these guys. Plus they make unbelievable cycling kits. Yeah. It's like the best stuff. I love their stuff. Good. So if you want to rock the message when you're on your bike, like check these guys out, Plant Athletic.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so like, and in that channel, right, that's where we took some of the best sellers at Whole Foods that we're not going to do at retail, but we're like enthusiastically doing an e-commerce like the Rips Big Boy. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I mean, when I think you have all this experience

with Whole Foods, so you kind of understand that, but the economics of that ain't great. And you have this incredible community of people that you've built over many, many years who are passionate about you, your message. They wanna hear from you. They want to hear from you. They're ready to go wherever you want to lead them. To me, DTC just seems like the best way to go. I mean, you should even do, maybe you're already doing this, I don't know, but like

a subscription model where it's like every month, you're going to get your box of all the stuff. You get that recurring revenue stream, and it just allows you to be more connected to this community that you've created. Yeah, no, we're on the subscription. That's definitely smart. You know, we got hundreds of people that are subscribing. They need their Rips Big Bowl.

Your father should get on that subscription actually. I'll get them on it. That's a Christmas gift, I'll buy him a subscription. I'll hook him up, I'll hook him up. But yeah, so we took our best sellers. So we got like the Rips Big Bowl and we added back the banana walnut that was my favorite. And we've actually taken it and we've upgraded everything.

So we're now using organic oats, right? Gotta be organic, especially with the oats and the glyphosate that are out there right now. We've totally like upped our inclusions. So the dates are like, they're like date marshmallows. They just kind of melt in your mouth. The dried banana, no added oils, no added sugar. It's just literally dried banana.

Like you ever had the Barnana bar? Anyway, it's like amazing. And then the berries, the raisins, everything just rocks. And then we started these granolas because we had granolas back in the day, but we decided to up our game in the granolas. And so we've got an all American apple pie. We've got a classic oatmeal raisin cookie.

We've got a classic oatmeal raisin cookie. We've got a berry crumble. And oh, we have a tahini chocolate chip cookie as well. Yeah. So, and the thing that make these so unique is there's no added oils. There's no added sugars. Instead we're using- Most granola, there's so much sugar in those things.

Yeah, yeah. So we're using macerated dates. So it's just the whole date. So you have all the fiber, all the nutrition that comes with it, and then also apples as well, right? So one of the big things with the new PlantStrong is we're looking for ways always to elevate the taste

without compromising the health of it. And you just have to get innovative and you can make it work. And the thing is, and I'm going back to your original question, 30 minutes ago, all these plant-based brands is they're using all the tricks.

They're using all the excessive amounts of sodium. They're using all the excessive amounts of sodium. They're using all the excessive amounts of sugar. You look on the ingredient deck and I guarantee you there's three to four different types of sugar that are in that ingredient label. There's probably three or four different types of oil and all these things, they're using the typical tricks and not using whole food ingredients. Yeah, well, sugar, salt, and fat, I mean, that's how you create palatability, right?

So if you strip that away, you're challenged to create something that's gonna taste good, that's gonna appeal. Like you were speaking earlier about like taste, like if it doesn't taste good, man, like you're dead in the water, right? So short of salt, sugar, and fat, like coming up with a formulation

that is gonna appeal to people, that has to be primary. And where I was gonna go, and I spaced out, so I forgot, was most Americans' palates have become so hyper-palatized, right? Because of all the excessive amounts of salt, sugar, and fat. And if you read, have you ever had David Kessler or Michael Moss on your podcast? No, but I know Michael Moss's book.

Yeah, so he wrote Salt, Sugar, Fat. David Kessler wrote The End of Overeating. He's the former head of the Food and Drug Administration. And both of them basically talk about how these companies put salt on top of sugar, on top of fat, and then they put more salt on top of sugar, on top of fat, and then they put more salt on top of sugar, on top of fat. And they have millions of dollars to test these things, to create the absolute peak of palatability,

to hook you and create this addictive compulsive response with these foods. And that creates a population of people who have this hyper palatability issue, where when they actually eat real food, it doesn't taste good because they're so accustomed to these processed foods that are designed to taste good and to trigger that addictive response,

but ultimately are what's leading us down this path towards chronic illness and obesity and everything else. Yeah, and so, you know, we've got our work cut out for us, but on the e-commerce side of things, And so, we've got our work cut out for us, but on the e-commerce side of things, we're gonna create a master brand where right now we've only got nine products on there. Actually, I should say we got 17, but our goal is to have 50 by the end of 2022.

So it's like, it's basically, it's a store where you can come and you can buy everything. Not everything, but a lot of what you need to make this lifestyle work, especially if you're looking for that convenience. And you can know that that plant strong, when you see plant strong, it is the good housekeeping seal of approval that this guy, you don't have to read the, you don't have to turn it over. You don't have to look at the nutritional facts label, look at the nutritional facts label, look at the ingredients.

This guy is good to go. So here we are in January. You still have to sell me on this idea, Rip. Why a plant-strong diet? Like, why can't I have some chicken and fish? What's wrong with some olive oil? Like, why do I have to walk this path? Like, what is it about this lifestyle, this way of eating that makes it superior

that is gonna allow me to sidestep these chronic illnesses that have failed half my family and affected my friends? Yeah, well, I'm gonna answer that in a number of different ways. The first is, I'm not gonna come at it as being superior, although it is, right? If you're looking for optimal health, but you see the shirt I'm wearing right now?

Eat strong food. Eat strong food. So I tell people, if you wanna eat strong food, this is the direction you wanna go in. You wanna eat a whole food plant-based diet as close to eating foods, as close to grown as possible, where you know you're getting the most kick-ass form of protein, right?

All proteins originate from plants. Most people don't know that, right? And it's like the Goldilocks form of protein, right? All proteins originate from plants. Most people don't know that, right? And it's like the Goldilocks form a protein. It's not too high in the sulfuric containing amino acids. They're gonna promote inflammation, leach calcium from your bones, raise cholesterol levels, basically burden the dickens

out of your kidneys and your liver, right? So that's one thing. You got the best form of protein, as opposed to the protein that you're gonna find in red meat, chicken, fish, any of those meats. Dr. McDougall, he loves to say that anything that flaps a wing, wiggles a fin, paws a hoof or closes a clam,

inside there you've got these substances, these insidious substances like cholesterol, like saturated fat, like problematic animal protein. You just can't get away from it. Whereas you look at the strong foods, the whole plants, you got Goldilocks protein, you got the number one form of carbohydrates that are gonna fuel our 37 trillion cells.

You and I are both comprised of about 37 trillion cells. And what fuels us is it's glucose, it's sugar, right? Unless we're trying to do something like go on the keto or the carnivore. And now we're trying to fuel ourselves with ketones and basically fat, which don't recommend to anyone. And then when it comes to fat, you're getting the essential polyunsaturated fatty acids

that we so as human beings, we so desperately need. And the reason why it's called essential is because our bodies cannot manufacture these on their own. We have to get them from food. And most Americans, Rich, are getting 35 to 50% of their calories from fat, and it's the wrong kind of fat. It's the fat that's coming, it's saturated fat that you're going to find in chicken, in eggs, in red meat, all those kinds of things. So you're avoiding all those things. But the thing that I'm gonna like harp on right now,

and this is pretty, pretty new. And have you ever had Will Bolshevitz on your show? Yes. Okay. It's the microbiome, right? We now know that one of the most powerful things that you can do to create a rock solid immune system to help mitigate all those cravings for bad food is to start eating a whole food plant-based diet. And now the 10 times the number of cells that we have of bacteria that reside in our microbiome,

that we have of bacteria that reside in our microbiome, we're creating a healthy microbiome and it is gonna help us defend against the litany of chronic Western diseases that are out there, inflammation, all these things. And Kim Williams, who I was interviewing yesterday, as far as like, why, you know, why should he eat plant strong? So Kim, and again, he's on my mind because I interviewed him yesterday, but I asked him, I said, what are you doing, Kim, to like motivate your patients after they've had a stent or a bypass or a procedure?

And he said, you know, Rip, I have found this motivational interviewing technique. I discovered it in January of 2019 and it works almost every time, like a charm. I'm like, tell me, I wanna know. And he said, okay. So I walk into the room and I let him know that I am Kim Williams. I'm the head of cardiology here.

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a couple of really silly questions. First question is, what's your understanding of why you ended up here and needed a stent or bypass? And he said, they'll say, well, I had a blocked artery. That's my understanding. And he'll say, right. And what was it clogged with?

And he said, 90% of the time they'll say plaque. And I'll say, exactly. And do you know what was that plaque made of? And he said, most of the time they'll say, cholesterol and fat. And then he'll say, well, where did that come from? And they'll say, well, I ate it. And then he'll say, and what foods have that saturated fat, have that cholesterol?

And if you wanna continue to eat that way, know that I will be here, Rush University Medical Center will be here with our 51 cardiologists to play surgical whack-a-mole, right, and we'll put in another stent, we'll do another bypass. Or if you decide you wanna eat plant-based, you probably never have to see us again.

But he said just the fact of getting that coming out of their mouths and connecting the dots is super powerful. I think it's cool that, you know, what I hear in that is he's giving the patient agency, like rather, were you still like the doctor coming in and saying, this is the way it is, and this is why you're here, and here's what you need to do, and then goodbye, as opposed to a line of questions that then compels the patient to think. It gives them sort of power over those decisions and leads them towards the conclusion

that ultimately wants them to arrive at. Exactly right. Yeah. And now they're a participant as opposed to being lectured at exactly. Right, right, right. Where they're just gonna tune out and go do whatever they're gonna do. Yep. Yeah. And now they're a participant as opposed to being lectured at exactly. Right, right, right. Where they're just gonna tune out and go do whatever they're gonna do.

Yep. Yep. So, I mean, frankly, for health reasons, whole food plant-based, that's like the pinnacle. That's where you wanna be headed. But I mean, as we started, I think said in the very beginning of this, we got this climate crisis that's afoot right now.

And from everything that I've read and we're already over 400 parts per million when it comes to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is, I guess, very, very scary. By 2050 mid-century, I guess, very, very scary. By 2050, mid-century, I think the goal of this COP26 meeting is to become net zero and to keep that 1.5 degrees Celsius

from getting up that high. And I read, like, what are they asking countries to come to the table with as far as what they can do to kind of reach these goals of being net zero by mid-century and making sure we don't increase our temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius. And these are the four things they've asked. Accelerate the phase out of coal, curtail deforestation, speed up the switch to electric vehicles and encourage investment in renewable energies.

Nowhere there do I see anything about eating a plant-based diet. That's insane because by all accounts, every acclaimed climate scientist understands that there's no way we can achieve those benchmarks without reducing the global demand for meat. And when you talk about deforestation,

we're deforesting to clear land for grazing and raising crops for animal feed. There's just no way around achieving our aims unless we adopt a more plant centric diet and get off the teat of our animal food addiction. Yeah. And you know, Khaled bin Alawid, one of the Saudi Arabian princes,

he has basically said that it is his goal in our lifetime to relegate animal agriculture to the bin of basically history. And he's created this whole venture fund and has placed large investments in all of these companies and startups that are moving our world in that direction. Sell your meat, all that stuff.

But here's where I wanna take this to the next level. And that is almost all of us have seen conspiracy, right? Where, you know, Kip Anderson talks about how he found this report by the World Watch Institute, this part of the World Bank called Livestock's Long Shadow. And in it, they talk about how between the supply chain and the life cycle of the close to 80 billion animals that we grow and then basically slaughter and then eat annually, 51% of global greenhouse gases are caused because of that. 51. They also talk, the number that I see floating around a lot is 14 and 15%.

It's the same as all forms of transportation combined. But I just heard six months ago, you ever heard of a guy named Celeste Rao? Yes, I've had him on the show. Oh, okay, there you go. So Stanford, the director of climate healers, basically he has new research showing that it's not 14% animal agriculture.

It's not 14%, it's not 51%, it's 87% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by everything related to animal agriculture. How did he come up with that number? I'll send you the paper. I'll send you the paper. I'll send you the paper. But I think, again, it's between the supply chain, all the trucks, all the deforestation,

all the water resources, you name it, right? But I mean, and so this is why I look at this and the goals of this meeting in Glasgow in a couple of weeks, and that's not even on there, we gotta figure out a way to get this front and center. I mean, Billie Eilish, right? I mean, the number of celebrity people that are getting behind this message, right? Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix.

Joaquin Phoenix. I think it's his birthday today. Happy birthday, Joaquin. Have you ever had him on the show? No, I'd love to. Yeah. He's not, you know, he's a reclusive one, that guy. Yeah, yeah.

So frankly, we are in a bit of a pickle right now and we need everybody that makes sense screaming from the mountain tops, hey, planet earth, you gotta get plant-based like as fast as humanly possible. And this is why I am a fan of everything that's going on in this plant-based, you know, food industry. If we can get people to eat this way, fantastic, because at least we'll have a mother earth in a hundred years or so, right? This PlantStrong, this is a whole nother kind of level of plant-based.

It's the varsity program. And it's probably not for everyone, but anybody that wants to take their health to the next level, this is it. But I am such a fan of what's going on right now. I know you were here meeting with a company called Daring, right? And I just, the innovation that's going into this industry,

the rate at which it's growing, a couple of facts. 2014, Global Data, which is this research firm, did this research and they showed that 1% of US American citizens identified as vegan, 1%. 2017, three years later, 6% of US citizens now identified as vegan. That's an increase of 600%. And imagine what it is now in 2021.

I bet you we're getting close to that, you know, that tipping point of 10%. And I mean, I see the laundry detergent now that's claiming plant-based, right? Yeah, I mean, there's also a lot of like greenwashing out there, it's like, oh, we need to be on board. This is like the thing that we need to be associated with. How can we do that?

Well, we'll change the ink color on our labeling to green. There's a lot of that, but that just means that this is in the culture and in the sensibility. And people understand that they need to align with the plant-based sensibility in consumer products if you wanna be competitive in our capitalist society, which is all told a good thing. Yes, the PlantStrong line, like where you're coming from

is the varsity program. And it's important to remind people like, look, I'm like a flick the switch guy. Like I'm gonna cross that line and not look back I'm like a flick the switch guy. Like I'm gonna cross that line and not look back. I know you're the same way. Most people rip, I got news for you. They don't really function that way.

I wish they did. We gotta ease people into this and any changes that you can make in a positive direction are awesome. I mean, you mentioned Dr. B earlier, Will Bolschwitz. When I got interested in this, it was very much from a personal health perspective and perhaps a vanity perspective. I was fat.

I felt like shit. I saw those before and after angiograms that are in your dad's book. It's profound. You see the reversal. You're like, wow, just eat plants and you can go from A to B on this. Like that is unbelievable. Like, and it just, it and you can go from A to B on this? Like, that is unbelievable.

Like, and it just, it got like branded into my brain. But now we have all these other on-ramps for people that are interested in making changes. So perhaps you're not worried about heart disease or perhaps you're not worried about diabetes. A lot of people are, that's a good reason to consider this lifestyle. But maybe you have an autoimmune disease

or you have some kind of inflammation that you can't get on top of. Dr. Will Bolzewicz will tell you that the best way to begin to address that is by increasing the diversity of plants in your diet. Like that's his whole thing. It's about the diversity. He wants you to get 30 different every week. Right? Like that's a challenge thing. It's about the diversity. He wants you to get 30 different

every week. I know, right? Like that's a challenge. You want a challenge? Yeah. Take that challenge on. That's not so hard. It's not telling you you can't do X, Y, or Z. And it's not focused on the things you're not eating. It's about like, how can you get 30 different types of plants down your noggin every single day? Like, you know what I mean? And I love that. And now we have this environmental issue. You know, when I began this journey, I don't know about you, like I wasn't thinking about that at all. Now I think about that all the time.

It's so powerful. And I think everybody is thinking more deeply about how to live more sustainably and more gently on this planet. And when you look at the numbers and you kind of really sit with everything that you just shared, Rip, you can't get around the fact that pivoting

towards a plant-based world is really a crucial aspect of this solution. No, it's mandatory. It's mandatory. And things have changed so much for me over the last 10 years. Like you, I've got kids now. I've got three kids. And you can't help but think about their future, right? And then their kids. And the fact that these guys are talking about climate change. And, you know, we had last February, Rich,

we had, you probably heard about, we had snow getting here in Austin, Texas. We haven't had, I mean, I've been here 30, almost 40 years, 39 years. We had snow for three days. We had freezing temperatures for almost four or five days. We had the electricity off on our house. We had no water.

It was downright frightening. And most people don't have four-wheel drive vehicles. I had a friend, you know, Rick Kent, who was in his apartment. And I basically took my life in my hands in my little car and got him. And he came and stayed with us because he was in his apartment that was 37 degrees for three days.

And I was like, dude, you're gonna die. You know, things like that. And then of course, you know, the fact that, you know, we're having the hottest year, you know, ever. And it seems like every year is the hottest year ever. And it seems like every year is the hottest year ever. It's staring us right in the face and it is downright scary. How old are your kids now?

So I got to set, thank you for asking. I got married late in life. I was 40, almost 44 when I got married. You had your Peter Pan thing going on for a while. Big time, big time. But, and I married a wonderful, wonderful woman. Oh my gosh. But I got a seven-year-old daughter named Hope

and Hope is an absolute firecracker. And then I've got a 12 year old daughter named Sophie. And Sophie is like an old soul. She is so like cool, calm, collect. She keeps us in check. It's just crazy. And then I've got a son, Cole, who's 14, much more like me.

And he's like all about athletics and swimming and sports right now. Have you had any challenges with them deciding like, hey, you know, cause look, when you're a parent, like nothing you do is cool. Like, you know, they like, I don't know what your experience has been,

but like my kids, they're like trying to figure out how to define themselves in opposition, right? So they're like, yeah, I know you do that stupid thing over there, but like, I'm going over here because they're trying to figure out who they are, right? And part of that is great and natural. They have to experience life on their own terms

and push the envelope and figure out where the guardrails are and all of that. When it comes to the foods that they're eating, like, you know, I mean, my kids have never had meat, but they go off and like do whatever they're gonna do, right? And all you can do is like, this is the way we eat here, educate them about the hows and the whys behind it. And then on some level, I mean,

my kids are older than yours. Like you have to like let go a little bit. So you're just on the precipice of like the hormone storm that's about to descend upon these kids. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. But are they like all on board with you right now on all this stuff? Rich, I couldn't be luckier.

They are so on board. And I think that, I think it's kind of like how I was with my father. I was just like, I just admired him and respected him so much. And just seeing him put his shoulder to the grindstone and do things that people said were impossible to do. And I think my kids, they've been and they've seen me talk at Whole Foods. They've seen what I do. They, you know, they see all the PlantStrong Engine 2 products littered throughout the house. They, they see me, you know, doing the podcast. They see how, how hard, you know,

daddy works. And so I haven't gotten, there's been no pushback with the food. And actually, if anything, they wear it with a kind of badge of honor, like really proudly. But I mean- That's cool. But they, you know, we've got the Natamu ice cream in the freezer and, you know, they're going after that.

And, you know, the Mary's Gone crackers and, you know and stuff like that. I mean, and they'll go to birthday parties and they'll have the birthday cake. And we typically will bring our own vegan cupcakes or stuff like that, but no, no real pushback. And the thing is, Rich, I don't know about you with your kids.

I just try, I try and shower them with as much love as I can. And my daughters, I heard a quote from a guy. His name's actually Dale Hayden. He was a triathlon buddy of mine, but he told me this in like 1988 and I never forgot it. And he said, you know, Rip, 1988. And I never forgot it. And he said, you know, Rip, a woman's beauty is her father's love for her shining through her eyes. And I was like, oh my God. And I was like, I mean, you can see

I'm getting goosebumps right now. And I was like, when I have children, if I have any daughters, I am going to let them know how much I absolutely adore them, how much I love them. And I don't wanna ever clip their wings. I want them to continue to just be bright burning suns. And so, I say, I love you. We do that in our family so much. And when I was growing up, we didn't do that a lot.

And so we really err on doing that, being affectionate, holding hands, all that stuff. With my son, Cole, it's a little different relationship in that I'm a little harder on him and my wife has to rein me in a lot and say, hey, you're being much harder on Cole than you ever have. Yeah, but dads and daughters,

it's like, you know, just like the be a softie, you know? I know what that's like. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, having kids has been just one of the greatest experience of my life. It's one of the hardest things. It's one of the most gratifying things. It's just incredible.

And anyway, just to try and connect all this a little bit, because you and I, and I think a lot of people on your podcast, we don't shy away from doing hard things, right? And there's a certain joy and gratitude that comes with tackling hard things and conquering it and then moving on. And I'll just say it again. I've never experienced anything as challenging or as hard as this right here, right?

As launching this food line. Yeah, you're pointing. Like you don't mean parenting. You mean like launching the food line. No, I'm talking about the food line. And parenting is right there, it's the same. And also, you know, making sure that relationship with my wife, right, is solid

because it's so easy to get off base. And when I was traveling, you know, a hundred days a year and all that. I don't know how you did that. No, looking back, I can't believe it either. So this, if I can conquer this, if I can, over the next 10 years, be a lighthouse for other brands

and really further the whole food plant-based movement, not the plant-based movement, but the whole food plant-based movement, then I will have been successful. And I just gotta be authentic to what I started back in 2009 and what this brand stands for. We have spoken for over an hour and a half and not yet have we brought up the fact

that you set a world record in the 200 meter backstroke at age 56? And that was- In the 55 to 59 age group. And that was really stupid of me. Why? Because I didn't, I should have done it when I was 55. Oh, right, because you're at the bottom

of your age group, right? Yeah. What could you have done at 55? Exactly. I know. What did you get? You went like 220? 220.

220. Well, actually, so talking about hard things, right? So some guy challenged me. He said, hey, Rip, you know, there's a meet at ASC, the pool that you swam at. It's a long course meet. So you get a world record, you know, why don't you go for it? And it was two weeks away.

And I hadn't swum in a long course meter pool in a couple of years. But I figured, okay, I'll give it a shot. And do you wanna hear the story? I do. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, the reason I bring it up, other than like, I wanna celebrate the fact

that you broke a world record, because it's totally badass. But I think in the back of people's minds, it's important for people to connect the dots on your athletic experience because when you talk about all things plant-based, you think about like, well, how am I gonna be able to be robust?

How am I gonna be able to go out and like be active and do the kind of things that I like to do? Is a plant-based diet going to sustain me? And you at age 56, breaking the world record and do the kind of things that I like to do, is a plant-based diet going to sustain me? And you at age 56, breaking the world record in the 200 meter backstroke, like it's fucking cool, man. So I do wanna hear the story, yes. Yeah, yeah.

So the record was a 222.7. Who held it? You know, I can't remember his name. Like Rick Carey or something like that? Come on, I don't think Rick's been in a pool since LNA. I don't follow it. No, but- Kraselberg.

No, he's not that old. Yeah, no, he's not. He's not old enough. So I went and I missed it by over two and a half seconds. So I went like a two, almost 224.9 or 225 low. And I can remember, I knew I had to take it out in about a 109, 110. I was out in a 111, came back into like a 13.

And I had somebody on the deck holding up his fingers, like what I was, cause I figured I'd be at eight, nine. Well, he held up both hands, signaling that I was like a 110 or above. And I can tell you, Rich, that second 100 meters, my stomach got tied up in knots. My legs felt like there was cement being poured into them. I was breathing like a freight train. And I was like, to them, I was breathing like a freight train. And I was like, why am I doing this to myself? What do I gotta prove to anybody?

So I finished, I didn't get it. And I'm like, okay, I'm done. That is whoever set that record, good for you, you start. Right? And then that night I was going to bed and I'm like, I got this gnawing, you know, I'm like, God dang it. All right. Competitive firefighter is rearing its head.

I'm like, okay, Rip, think about it. Why didn't she get it? Well, you haven't been in a 50 meter pool. As a swimmer, you know, it's almost a different animal completely. I mean, long course, I mean, forget about it. You ain't getting away with nothing. There's nowhere to run. There's nowhere to run.

There's nowhere to hide. And so I did my homework and I found another meet that was gonna be at the Dad's Club in Houston, Texas. Wow, that's three way back. In three weeks. Dad's Club, that's still a thing? It's still a thing. And the pool is like three feet deep, you know?

And I'm like, but it was the only meet in the next three weeks that I could drive to. And then we were going on vacation for a month. So I went to a different master's program because I knew I needed to swim in long course. So I went to the ASC pool. I trained for like two and a half weeks there. I woke up at 5.30, had the PTSD going.

But you had been trained, like you're avid masters swimmer. So you were like going to work out all the, it wasn't like, oh, I just- I'm going five days a week yards, but again, meters. So I did all kinds of race pace stuff. I made sure my stroke was a little bit longer. I saved my legs for the second 50. And so I got to that meet in the dad's club

and I felt comfortable in meters again. And again, I had somebody on the deck, hold up your fingers, let me know I'm out in a 108, 109. I see two hands again, 110, one, one. Actually it was a 111,, she couldn't do anything. And so I'm like, okay, 1.10, oh my God, I gotta bring it back on a 1.12, right? That's what I'm thinking in my head.

For people to, I mean, you're essentially even splitting your tone back, like at any age, that's very difficult. Let alone. And so I started like, all right, let's dig in, let's do it. And my stomach didn't go up in knots. My legs felt good. My turnover was solid. The last 50, I like cranked it up and I was like, yeah.

And I touched the wall 221.8. So I got the record by nine tenths and I was out in a 111.5 and I came back in a 1.10 something. So I negative split. Negative split. Negative split it, right? Yeah, I mean, for people that don't understand swimming, I mean, that's extremely difficult and almost never happens.

Yeah, yeah. And so then I went on vacation for a month to Wisconsin, this little, you know, rustic cabin on the lake to unwind. And I swam every day for 20 minutes. And I decided that I would just do some interval stuff in the lake where I go a minute hard, minute easy. And I came back here and I got an invitation from this woman that ran that meet at the dad's club.

She was running a meet at Texas A&M. This is an indoor 50 meter pool. It was like the districts of masters swimming. And as opposed to at the dad's club in the 200 meter backstroke heat, I was next to an 88 year old woman and a 40 year old like, you know, guy. There were three of us in the heat, right?

And so I lapped, I lapped the 88-year-old woman or whatever. God bless her. God bless her is right. But at this, there were nine heats of men, and I was in the last heat next to a 22-year-old dude who was in at a 219, right? And I was in at 221. So we went out together, and I was out in a 219, right? And I was in at 221. So we went out together and I was out in a 109, like flat. And I felt the month on vacation, the second 100.

Yeah, only swimming 20 minutes a day. Yeah, yeah, but I went to 220.8. So I lowered my old record by a second. And it was all because of this guy that was next to me. I beat him by a 10th and it hurts so bad, but- He must've been bummed. He looked over and he's like, this dude? I think he was a little bit dismayed for sure.

Yeah, yeah. But anyway- All that Goldilocks protein. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Goldilocks protein. And now I got people asking me, cause you know, I'm gonna be 59 in four months. Hey, you're gonna go for the 60 to 64.

And you know, I probably will have to, but. What's the record in the next age group, do you know? I think it's a 226, it's pretty soft. Right, right. Right? Soft record sitting there with your name on it. Got to cherry picket. Yeah, but you never went to like Masters World

or Masters, because there's bigger meets, right? You go to these and they're always like the worlds is always in some really cool city halfway across the world. I would do it, but now that I'm married, I've got three kids. It's like, how much time do I want to spend doing that? And so the fact that I could do everything that I did and it was all driving distance,

so it just was a Saturday. Yeah, like the A&M meet, I woke up at six, was home by noon. I think it's powerful because it demonstrates not only can you still perform at your age at a very high level, the ripple effects of that, like there was a lot, like a lot of news picked that up. Like it got reported on and it becomes this narrative of like, not only can you be a

competitive athlete as, as a plant-based person, but the longevity piece also, I think is really important. And then, and then truth be told, Rich, I got that record in the first one in June, the second one, I think in August of 2019. And I knew that the Game Changers was coming out. Right. Right. Yeah, it'd be good for the movie and all that. Yeah, and because I was one of the executive producers

and because I had a small little piece in it, I just, I wanted to like let people know you can still be like in your 50s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and like be like at the top of the world. You know? Yeah. Not for nothing. I still got it.

But just in case you were questioning, I still got some juice. And I can remember, I think when I was on your podcast for the first time and I told you that I was gonna go for a world record and you said, I can't remember what you said exactly. I'll have to go back and look, but you were like, dude, you can do this.

Right, about time. You got this. And anyway, so yeah, about time. Yeah, it's great. I just think, like, I think about this a lot too. Like I don't have the time to train the way that I was training when I was doing all those ultra distance things. Like, I wake up and I think,

what's the best use of the limited amount of time and energy that I have? Like, how can I use what I have to impact the most number of people in the most meaningful way? And usually that means doing exactly what we're doing right now, or working on a book, or going and speaking somewhere.

Every once in a while, I think it does, there is merit and value in investing that time and energy into something athletic because it demonstrates that vitality. talk about all this stuff all you want, but ultimately, as you know, and as Game Changers was so important in advancing, like people watch what people do. And when people go out in the world and they execute at a high level, that is going to lodge into their brains and in their consciousness in a way that's much more important than the latest study that you retweet or whatever else it is. It's like, that's how people learn. It's not necessarily, like you were talking about, it's about education. Yes, it is.

But how do people learn? Like, what's the best way to impact people in a way that's gonna move the needle? And I think storytelling is a huge piece. And, you know, doing something hard, you were talking about like, yeah, we like to do, like when you go out and you do something hard and you succeed, that is a powerful story

that people don't forget. Yeah, I mean, I look at so many of the people that you've had on your podcast, from Colin O'Brady to Jesse Itzler, and they're just doing all these crazy, crazy feats. And I feel like I'm at a point in my life now where I'm excited for them, but I personally can't wrap my head around it.

Climbing Everest or doing the last man standing event, doing this loop. Do you know, climbing Everest or doing the last man standing event, you know, doing this loop. Do you know Harvey Lewis? Dude, I'm trying to have him on my podcast. I just got a date to schedule him on to have him come on. Did he win that thing? Not only he won it, he did more, they call it yard

or is it, yeah, I think it's a yard. Like when you, a loop, like a four mile loop, I think they call it a yard. And he did more than anybody ever has. Was it three days or three and a half? Something like that. Like, I don't know the exact stats, but he just ran an insane.

And it's like, he did like, he was going ultra after ultra after ultra leading up to this. It's not like he hadn't done anything. Like he just did a couple huge races earlier this year. Well, but here's the thing that's mine. Plant-based we should point out. I mean, that's one of the reasons we're bringing him up.

But one of the things that's mind-blowing to me is that I think these guys were up pushing each other for three or four days in a row. And Matthew Walker is gonna have a stroke, right? When he thinks about that. These guys don't sleep at all. No, but I mean, I think in the podcast with you, he said how, you know, you go five, six days,

you're looking at death and permanent, like, you know, disability mentally. I mean, whoa. Right. There is a moment in your life where, you know, you wanna stretch, prove what you're capable of, do the thing, and then there's a twilight on that. Like you've proved everything

that you need to prove to yourself. You've established your bona fides as a virulent athlete who can perform at a high level on a plant-based diet. Do you really need to invest more time and energy to double down on a case you've already made? Yeah. That's really the question, right? I mean, would you ever entertain

doing like another Ultraman or something like that? Or does it make you just sick to the stomach? I mean, it doesn't make me, I love it. Like left to my own devices, like I love to train. Like if I had nothing to do, I would just, like yesterday I ran and then I went to, you know, I went over to Barton Springs and I swear I was like, what else can I do today?

Like, can I get out on one of those boats out there and paddle around? Like, I just enjoy it. like, what else can I do today? Like, can I get out on one of those boats out there and paddle around? Like, I just enjoy it. So I don't think of it as burdensome, but to place that kind of rigorous training schedule template on top of my life right now, like it would be impossible. And I don't feel like there's that much more

for me to say in that space that I haven't already said to myself that would justify that amount of time commitment to do that thing. That's kind of how I look at it. But I like doing hard things and I wanna stay challenged by tackling things that scare me from time to time. I think that's important as well.

Yeah, like I look at like Scott Jurek, for example, right? Who got the Appalachian Trail record. And then just recently he went forward again, had a issue with his knee and had to drop out. But I'm like, wow, Scott, man. Cause I read his book North and he basically, by the end of that, he was mincemeat. He was absolute mincemeat.

Yeah, I mean, he'd lost so much weight. He looked like another day of that might've done him in. I mean, it was unbelievable what he achieved. Unbelievable. But again, I applaud people that are getting out there, getting after it, pushing the boundaries. I mean, wow, right? And now there's a whole new generation of people.

They can do it for us, right? That's right, that's right. We can be on the sidelines cheering them on. So wait, so you're 55, you just turned 55. I just turned 55, yeah. How's that feel? It feel, I mean, I feel good. I feel fine. You know, I think, I feel good. I feel fine.

You know, I think when I turned 50, I didn't think twice about it. I think when I turned 52, like the white hair started coming in really fast and I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like this is different. 55, you're rounding towards 60. So I think that one landed a little bit harder.

I don't know how it's been for you, but you know. Well, I'm- I'm not a spring chicken anymore, but, you know, I get out and I get after it and I'm able to, I wake up grateful every day that I feel good in my body and I can go out and, you know, be active. I got some back stuff and, you know,

I'm not immune from little things here and there that are bugging me that didn't used to, but, you know. No, one of the things I've learned is nobody likes to really hear anybody complain about aches and pains that they have. It's just, it's kind of like a big yawner, right? And you try and empathize with them. But I had something happen to me. And it was one of the reasons why last year was one of the most difficult of my life. You know, in addition to trying to launch this PlantStrong brand. And that is, I was on a mountain bike ride behind my house.

That's right, I forgot this thing. Yeah, yeah. And I've been mountain biking for 30 years and I'm like Gumby, I fall and I'm like, okay. Took this fall and oh my gosh, I mean, I heard a snap. I got nauseous in my stomach. I tried standing up. I fell back down on the ground.

I basically snapped my fibula. And so I broke my ankle. I had to be carried out of the green belt. And I had surgery about a week later and I had a plate and eight pins put on. I didn't walk for almost five months, hobbling around on crutches or a little scooter. It gave me such respect and empathy

for people that are handicapped, that people have any issues with being ambulatory, things like that. I'm looking now for the handicapped stalls, the handicapped rampways, all that stuff. That's rough, man. Five months. I didn't realize.

Oh, five months. Five months. Five months. And I still have some issues and I wanna have the plate and the pins taken out because I can just never feels quite right. And I haven't really, I mean, I run, but not like I used to.

You out on the bike at all though, or are you just hitting the pool? No, no, no, no, no. You're done. No, no, I'm biking. Oh, you are, okay. I got back on that horse. Yeah.

And it was scary the first week or so. And the trails here, have you run on the Greenbelt at all? Well, there's a lot of like corollary trails that run off the main green belt and that's where the excitement is. Like more like single track stuff? Single track, ledges, roots, rocks. I mean, it's gnarly stuff.

You have to have some skills. And so getting back on the bike was, the first week was rough and then I got back. But I'm always now a little bit more tentative than I was before. Yeah, it's unavoidable, man. But I'm glad you're back in one piece. Yeah, yeah, it feels good to be back.

And I just now, just walking, I'm like, oh, thank you. I'm so grateful. But it made me think of our friend, Paul DeGelder and what that man went through and his spirit and his tenacity. It's unbelievable, his just, the manner in which he carries himself with such gratitude and poise is remarkable.

I just saw him a couple of weeks ago. I mean, for people that don't know, victim of a bull shark attack in Sydney Harbor, lost half his leg and half of one arm. And, you know, I mean, but has become this incredible ambassador for shark preservation, for ecological, you know, responsibility and so many things.

It's such a powerful voice. And he goes into the gym and he kills it and just no excuses, no woe is me whatsoever, just like walks the talk. Big time. And he's now like the host of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. I mean, it's like a full-time job.

They got him flying all over the place all the time. Yeah, doing stuff with like Mike Tyson. Yeah, he gets to see people like Mike Tyson and Will Smith basically poop their pants. Right, I know, it's hilarious, man. We're not gonna end this without leaving people with some takeaways who are thinking about getting on the plant strong bandwagon.

What do I do first? How do I make this switch? What do I watch out for? Help me, Rip, help me help them. Well, the first thing I would recommend is you gotta start somewhere. And I would just go to plantstrong.com and I would take the seven-

There you go. I would take the seven day challenge. Literally anybody can do anything for seven days. So take this challenge and don't think of it as a challenge if you have a lot of challenges in your life. Think of it as an adventure and healthy eating. And what I always tell people is

just find foods that you love and like do steel cut oats for breakfast with a sliced banana, maybe a little bit of oat milk on top. Do the commercialized Rips Big Bowl cereal, right? Just anything. You're a born marketer. And then find a lunch that you can like gravitate to.

Like in that icebox right now, I have got a sweet potato, right? I've got frozen rice. I've got a can of black beans. I got some salsa. I'll just throw that together. I always have some green leafies during the day, preferably twice a day.

But my favorite dinner is always, and we had it last night, rice and beans extravaganza. Just brown rice, pinto beans, white beans, you name it. And then I do a veggie relish on top where it is sliced tomatoes, sliced bell peppers, a little bit of avocado, water chestnuts, a little bit of tofu. This lifestyle, I tell people, this is the cheapest, easiest way to eat once you kind of get over yourself and all the obstacles that you're putting

in front of yourself. Again, I'm just gonna repeat really quickly. Oatmeal, potatoes, rice and beans. This is peasant food and it can be absolutely delicious depending upon what you put on top of it. I love putting sriracha on a lot of my things. We go through so many bottles of that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

And then I'll go back to the community. It's really important that you plug into a community and you're getting support through a community. And we've got all kinds of free stuff, community.planstrong.com with 25,000 people that are super active and engaged that just will be very welcoming and open you or welcome you with open arms.

We've actually re-engaged with our medical immersion programs. So we did our first one in two years because of COVID back in Sedona two weeks ago. We had 80 participants. We had the whole PlantStrong crew that was there. We had Dr. Michael Clapper. We had a guy named Dr. Brian Aspel,

who's a rising cardiologist. I don't know him. Yeah, he's a new guy on the block. He's amazing. We had, of course, my sister, my brother-in-law. My parents did not make it to this one with COVID and everything like that. But we made sure it was safe.

Everybody had to bring a test result that they tested negative. And so that was safe. And we, everybody had to bring a test result that they tested, you know, negative. And so that was fantastic. We're doing another one of those in Black Mountain outside of Asheville, North Carolina in early March. If anybody's interested in learning from soup to nuts about the lifestyle and we do rich, we have bonfires at night. We have stargazing. We have talent show night. It is like camp. It's like food camp for kids. And you learn to find your inner child and laugh again and have so much fun. And I'm going to deviate just for a sec because something really powerful happened in Sedona. And I want to try it on for size with you.

So one of the things we do whenever we have a Sedona immersion is we have a big bonfire and it's, you know, the Sedona night sky is so spectacular. And we have this bonfire and we got all 80 people around it in chairs and it was cold. And we just invite people to tell ghost stories, right?

And we typically have like 15 people that decide to share and almost all of them are true. And people will say how, you know what? When I was a little girl, this is true. When I was a little girl, my mother had a best friend and she was beautiful and she was an artist and we really connected. And I would dream about her at night that we'd be doing things. And she would be dreaming as well about us doing things together. And then when we'd meet like in person, we'd talk about, oh, wasn't that fun when we did all this together?

So they were visiting each other in their dreams. And she said how she's always had this ability to kind of really connect with people, read people. But as she's gotten older, she's kind of lost it, right? Another woman got up and talked about how she, when she was a little girl, there was this man, the cookie man, because he had this freshly made cookies in a cart. And he would come by their house in the neighborhood, and she'd always buy cookies from him.

And then she had a dream one night that the cookie man died. And she found out the next morning from her mother that the cookie man had died. So she somehow was able to tap into that. had died. So she, you know, somehow was able to tap into that. And it was like story and story again and again like that. And one of the stories that I told was one of my wife's very good friends at a young age developed this ability to basically visit the dead, right? And it sounds kind of crazy and far out and listeners are probably- I'm all about this.

Okay. Keep going. Okay, okay, okay. And she said when she was a little girl, what happened is something happened where her father died and she was alone and she was scared. And this woman would come visit her at night

and hold her hand. And this is starting at like, starting at age six. And this woman somehow gave her the ability to tap, go beyond that veil of this physical, like, you know, reality that we're in. And go beyond to be able to talk to dead people. And I know this woman and I'm fascinated with her, but she doesn't let hardly anybody know

about this skill that she has. So anyway, so this is happening at Sedona where, you know, we tell these ghost stories and- And Sedona being kind of like this vortex for spiritual expansion and mystical experiences. But it's story after story after story and everybody's like, God, if this wasn't true and this couple was standing there in their robes

and then I looked again and they were gone. And we found out that in doing our research that 70 years ago, the house burned down and, you know, this new one went up. And so, you know, so we go to, I'm busy doing stuff and I go down to the dining room at the retreat where we're at in Sedona. And I'm one of the last ones to go through. And I go outside and I'm looking and there's one person all by themselves. And so I'm like, oh, I'm going to go sit with this person and make sure they're doing all right. And so I sit down. I said, is somebody sitting here? And they're like, no, help yourself. And I'm like,

oh, I don't recognize you. And she's like, yeah, no, I work here and I work on energy and meditation and spirituality. And Rich, the next 30 minutes blew my mind because I just peppered her with question after question after question. And she like met me there, right? And I wanted to know what happens like, you know, after we die. And, you know, I told her about all these ghost stories and my wife's friend's ability to talk to the dead and,

you know, all this stuff. And she said, you know, Rip, we're all trying to figure it out in these physical, you know, bodies that we're in. And the most important relationship that you can have in your lifetime is with yourself. It's really with yourself. And I can't get too specific because it's a little too personal on some levels, but she said that you pick your parents. You pick your parents based upon the lessons that you have to learn in this life that you're gonna live right now.

And most of us, most of us have come back in this physical form or different physical forms on average 300 times. And I'm like, whoa. And then she said how, and if you can get in touch with your complete self in this lifetime, and it made me think of, you got to do the work. You got to do the meditation. You got to like dive into the being, you know, that spiritual, like just energy and that force that's out there. If you can tap into it, she said, you then have the ability, once you die, that your

energy has the ability to break through that veil and you are now free from this lower dimension that we're in. I'm fascinated by all this. It blew my mind. And now I wanna explore this like in a big major way. I love it. I mean, this is like my favorite thing to talk about. And this podcast took a turn I was not expecting

because I look at you and I'm like, Rip is a very practical, grounded individual. He very much lives in the three-dimensional world. And now we're talking about ghost stories and the karmic cycle and all of that. Like, I just think like, regardless of your spiritual or religious proclivities, there's something very powerful about understanding

that we're here for a reason and that there are lessons to be learned. Like we're here to grow, right? And so, yes, we choose our parents. What can we learn from them? What are the obstacles that we faced? What are the traumas that we experienced? And what is the kernel of truth

that needs to be explored through that? Like, and I look at my kids and I'm like, they're my teachers. They're putting right in front of me things that maybe I don't wanna look at in myself, right? And they're here to like teach me those things. And all of these experiences that we have are opportunities to go a little bit deeper inside, to mine that truth

that is trying so desperately to, you know, hide from you, right? And the more that we can embrace that and be cognizant of that journey, I think it's just a beautiful way to live. Yeah, and she looked at me and she's like, cause she'd been there for 15 years teaching. And she said, yeah, Rip, I, you know, I see you as the, you know, the engine to

guy, but what I want you to know is you're so much more than that. And if you could take all that positive energy that you have and everything and really like explore, who are you? Who are you, Rip? Really, who are you? Well, if somebody were to ask me, like, who is Rip? Like, I see you as this incredible catalyst for positive change in others. Like, you are a change agent and you stand in a certain set of life experiences with a strength and with a conviction

and with this unbridled optimism that conducts like a frequency of energy that gets emanated out in the world and becomes like a magnetic field that's attracting people who are looking for something just a little bit better in their own lives and see you as a living example of something that they perhaps aspire to. And you're somebody who reaches out with this like welcome open hand and says, come on in the water's warm. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I love ending every one of our immersion programs. I basically saying, listen, you know, I want you all to know that the light will always be on and the door will always be ajar, right? So you're always welcome. That's a good place to land the plane for today, I think. Let's go get some PlantStrong grub. Yeah, let's do it.

I love you, man. I appreciate all the openness and the honesty today and the spiritual rabbit hole that we just dove down. It's very cool. You feel okay? It's good, you hungry? I feel great and I can always eat. Good, yeah.

So we're gonna go do that. In the meantime, if you wanna learn more about RIP, the best place to do that, plantstrong.com. And if it's not already in your local grocery store, it's probably coming soon, the PlantStrong line of foods available nationwide. So by the time this thing airs, it'll be available in Whole Foods, plantstrongfoods.com.

And we'll be starting to get into like sprouts and Wegmans and some of those, but just keep your eye out. And do me a favor, go into your retailer and say, hey, you need to get those plant strong foods. There you go. Dispatching your army, your legions of minions out there to seed the world with plant strong goodness. Seed, yes.

All right, buddy. To be continued next time you're out in LA. Thank you. Peace. Plants. Thank you. Rich. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.

To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show

is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis.

The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and AJ Akpodiete. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace.

Plants. Namaste. Thank you.