The Rich Roll Podcast - “What The Health” – How Corporate Collusion Is Making Us Sick & Costing Us Trillions

Episode Date: March 13, 2017

Imagine four commercial airliners crashing every single hour of every single day of every single year. It's unfathomable. And yet that is how many Americans die from heart disease annually. In fact, an unbelievable 1 out of every 3 people in the U.S. will perish from this one disease. Meanwhile, 70% of Americans are obese or overweight. In the coming decade, 50% of Americans will be diagnosed diabetic or pre-diabetic. An economic disaster, 75% of all health care costs in America are attributable to these and a few other chronic lifestyle illnesses. It's devastating. And yet the most heartbreaking aspect of this crisis is that 80-90% of these illnesses are very easily preventable and often entirely reversible via some rather simple diet and lifestyle alternations. It's the food, stupid. This week I'm joined by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, the filmmaking dynamic duo behind the groundbreaking documentary Cowspiracy, to talk about their brand new follow up. Equally groundbreaking, What The Health explores the relationship between our food systems and big business, exposing the collusion and corruption that is making us sick, keeping us sick and costing us trillions in healthcare dollars. Whereas Cowspiracy explores the impact of animal agriculture on environmental health, What The Health focuses on human health. Perhaps the most important documentary you will ever see, it's a film about the power of special interest groups to drive unhealthy consumer spending habits. It's about environmental racism and the impact of animal agriculture on community health. And it's about why you need to rethink for yourself everything you've ever been told about the relationship between business and food, the impact of food choice on personal health, and your body's incredible, innate power to prevent, fight and even reverse the chronic lifestyle illnesses that are unnecessarily killing people by the millions. Starting March 16, the film will be available to watch worldwide at whatthehealthfilm.com – where you can also pre-order the DVD and cookbook as well as set up a screening in your town (I'm hosting one on March 29). In addition, for the first four days of the film's release (between March 16 – 20), Keegan and Kip will be donating half of all proceeds to Food Not Bombs – an amazing, for-purpose organization that feeds thousands of people free vegan meals across North America and the world. Kip and Keegan are truly breaking paradigms. Making the world a better place. And changing lives with what I think is the most important film of the year. A film that just might save your life or that of a loved one. I aspire to their level of courage and advocacy. And I sincerely hope you enjoy this exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

There's so many similarities to the tobacco industry. Most people know, or maybe they don't, that dairy is addicting. So what do you do? Hook them while they're young. So a big part of their program, the milk program, is targeting young people. Same thing Joe Campbell did. Yeah, I mean, the dairy industry is so aware of this get them while they're young that the Women, Infants, and Children program, WIC, which is a federal

food subsidy program it's basically like food stamps and historically has been really heavy on cheese cheese and milk is like a big part of the WIC package and when there was an initiative to introduce fruits and vegetables into the WIC package the dairy industry came out against that they said no way you're not gonna put fruit and vegetables into the women, Infants, and Children health program. It's going to be our products because they don't care about your health. They're really,

they just want to promote their products. And again, get them while they're young, get children hooked on this stuff. That's filmmakers Keegan Kuhn and Kip Anderson. And this is the Rich Roll podcast. Right now, currently, as we speak, one out of every three Americans will die from some form of heart disease. Meanwhile, 70% of Americans are obese or overweight. 28 million worldwide suffer from cancer. And in the coming decade, 50% of Americans are obese or overweight. 28 million worldwide suffer from cancer. And in the coming decade, 50% of Americans will be diagnosed as diabetic or pre-diabetic.

This is something that is costing our economy trillions of dollars. In fact, 75% of all health care costs in America are attributable to these and a few other chronic lifestyle illnesses. It's an absolute disaster. It's devastating. And the most heartbreaking thing about all of this is that 80 to 90% of these conditions are preventable and quite often reversible through implementation of some really basic, simple diet and lifestyle alterations. So in other words, I think it's fair to say, to characterize that in many respects, it's the food. These are food-borne illnesses. My name is Rich Roll. This is my

podcast. And this week I sit down with Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn, the filmmaking dynamic duo behind the groundbreaking documentary Cowspiracy. And we sit down to talk about their brand new film. It's called What the Health, which is a really powerful, equally groundbreaking follow-up documentary that explores the relationship between our food on the one hand, and on the other hand, giant government, medical, pharmaceutical, and health business interests and how these powerful, well-financed concerns are contributing to the problem rather than the solution by producing, distributing, marketing, supporting, and quite honestly, often unabashedly pushing unhealthy foods on unsuspecting consumers that are not only making us sick, but keeping us sick. I've seen the film.

I'm in the film just for a second, like a cameo near the end. But I can tell you, it's really, really powerful. And there's a few more things I want to say about it and the boys and this conversation. But first... Okay, Kip and Keegan. If you're a long-time listener to the pod, then you know this is the third time these guys have stopped by. But if you're new or you somehow missed those episodes, I would definitely check them out,

RRP 91 and 176. If you have not yet seen their first film, Cowspiracy, definitely check that out. It's all about the deleterious and devastating impact of animal agriculture on our environment. I would go so far as to say it is appointment television, appointment screen time. And this pod picks up where we last left off by digging into the hows and the whys and the whatnots behind their brand new film, What the Health, which explores the impact of animal agriculture, not on environmental health, but on human health. Like I said, I've seen it. It's amazing. And it's coming your way soon, really soon,

as a matter of fact. March 16th, the film is going to be available everywhere at whatthehealthfilm.com. I'll put that link up in the show notes. And that's where you can also not only watch it, but pre-order the DVD and the cookbook. They've got a cookbook coming. You can set up your own screening and basically just stay up to date with everything they're up to. Not only that, and this is the really cool part,

Kip and Keegan are gonna be giving away half of all the proceeds that they raised for the first four days of the film's availability. So essentially between March 16th and 20th, 50% of all the money paid to watch the film is going to be donated to Food Not Bombs, which is an amazing for-purpose organization that's feeding thousands and thousands of people

free meals across North America and the world. So that is very, very cool. And this is my conversation with Kip and Ke world. So that is very, very cool. And this is my conversation with Kip and Keegan, or Keegan and Kip. Either way, it's all good. Well, before we get into it, why don't we, I think it would be good to recap a little bit of kind of the Cowspiracy experience. And like, since the last time we talked, it was right on the verge of it going live on Netflix. So, I'd be interested in hearing kind of the impact of that on you guys, like what you've experienced as a result of, you know, really mainstream audiences all over the world being

introduced to this movie and how that sort of colored or changed your advocacy, your filmmaking, and how you foresee your work going forward. It was really amazing when it went on Netflix, it just boomed around the world, just completely blew up. And we started getting requests to speak all around the world and all these different things. And one of the most amazing ones was EU parliament decided right before cop 21. And I can't remember.

This is before we talked or after. I can't remember either. It was after. And so got to go to Brussels, Belgium, the parliament show the film at the actual venue. And, you know,

with all the politicians in Paris,is no actually in brussels brussels where the eu parliament is headquarters and that was amazing and so then after right after that the italian parliament they showed it up there um with all their politicians there and then it happened again in holland and when you go to europe you just see how fast that whole message is happening meaning what what do you mean the message of of the the truth coming out of animal agriculture and affecting on the environment and then policies that are actually happening where it's a little harder to happen in the U.S. where you have more smaller countries there so it seems that the communities the grassroots can happen a little bit quicker there so in sweden um tons of stuff

are happening where uh they're starting to get get laws passed for you know um everything from uh to tell the the public to get less meat consumption and then you the main thing is ways you see it is happening with the food choices uh the mcdonald's from there is called mac or i think it's uh our max and they have uh four vegetarian burgers there it's equivalent of the mcdonald's mcdonald's there has veggie burgers there and they're having these festivals that are all vegan festivals and just everywhere you go it's blowing up. So essentially, but sort of between the lines,

what you're saying is that when you screen the movie or you introduce these ideas to these audiences across Europe, they're more sort of receptive to it, and the sort of policy changes seem to happen more quickly, or there's less resistance to kind of these ideas making their way into mainstream habit changes and government sort of initiatives. That's exactly. And I think, you know, documentaries are so unique in that ability to influence society and governments, because people, everybody watches movies. And so people

are watching, and especially when it's on Netflix, they're watching documentaries at night, right before they go to sleep. And so they wake up the next morning thinking about it and it's in their head. And that's everybody from people who are legislators through people who own businesses to literally everyone. And so it does, it has this incredible impact. And I think the biggest thing was just to inform people and then allow them to figure out

what they wanted to do with it. And people are doing something with it, which is pretty amazing. Mm-hmm. So cool. So you screen doing something with it, which is pretty amazing. So cool. So you screened it across Europe, anything? And what other stuff? Like, you guys must get stopped on the street and stuff like that, I would imagine.

Always Kip, because you're on camera. It's kind of funny. Especially in San Francisco, right? Yeah. Well, it's funny, because when I travel, the funnest thing is to go to the local restaurant. Well, you're wearing the same hat right now that you're wearing in the movie. Every time I see you, you're wearing the same hat. That's're wearing in the movie every time I see you wearing the same hat that's as funny as Keegan knows I really do wear a hat when I do like public talks I don't and sometimes people come like where's your hat like she wear their hat but I usually always wear a hat um but yeah it's just fun to

see traveling around and sometimes it goes in waves where I get recognized and that's always weird but you know when you go to every vegan restaurant, of course, that's right. But you get recognized in weird places. We were filming in Texas outside of Houston, and Kip comes back from the gym. He's like, yeah, some guy just recognized me in the sauna. I'm like, that's weird. Totally random sort of stuff, which, again, just kind of shows,

illustrates how widely seen this film is. It's not just by vegans it's not just by environmentalists it's like across the board oh yeah completely mainstream audience right cool so all right so you have this massive success with Cowspiracy um obviously that gets you thinking what what is the next movie going to be what are we going to focus on so maybe walk me through you know how you arrived at What the Health and what your idea for this movie was kind of going into it. Yeah, so What the Health kind of actually really started with

while we were making Cowspiracy. Cowspiracy, we were trying to cram in all this information because while we were working on it, we're finding out about, because Cowspiracy is about the impacts of raising animals for food on the planet and it's the leading cause of x y and z but we're also looking at well what are the impacts of eating this diet on our health and so we were we had this whole section in the film in cowspiracy originally to talk more about health and to talk more about the other aspects of animal agriculture but then we realized it was just it's a whole nother film and so we kind of we cut it down as much as possible in Cowspiracy.

And then we decided, like, let's put more time and energy into learning about this. And we spent, you know, really two years researching the impacts of an animal-based diet on our health and the benefits of a plant-based diet on our health. And just so much keeps coming up. I mean, literally, to this day, there's more and more information. And the thing about it, too, is once we started going into it and to have it in the original Cowspiracy is we have Dr. Clapper at the end talk about how dairy is not made for humans. And we also interviewed Dr. Goldhammer and a couple other things. Then we realized the same

sort of thing might be happening with Cowspiracy as the coverups with the, and the collusion between say the nonprofits, the environmental world, the Greenpeace, Sierra Clubs, Amazon Watch, them not talking about it, where they need to be the ones who need to be held accountable because that's who we look for to tell us the truth, not the animal agriculture industry. Once we started digging in to health, we started, and we're telling the story of the film, is realizing that the same thing is happening.

The American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, or even my 11-year-old niece, she knows that you're not supposed to eat red beef, red meat for your heart, yet you go on the website and there's a whole section on beef recipes. Yeah, I think that Cowspiracy was incredibly impactful for two reasons. First of all, it was sort of pulling covers and helping people to really understand the impact of animal agriculture on the environment which is something you know as a culture we were not talking about i mean it blew my mind you know just to come into that awareness and then secondarily to find out that these uh non-profit

organizations uh these organizations that we have entrusted with sort of advising us, the consumers, the citizenship, with what we should be lot of these foods that we've been told our whole life are essential to a healthy diet. You know, beef is what's for dinner. Milk does a body good. What's the pork one? Pork one is like beans. Beans fired. Beans fired. Who came up with that one, you know?

And eggs is, what's the egg one? Excellent. The incredible. Oh, the incredible edible egg, right? Like all these catchphrases, right, that are just part of like me. That's like how I grew up, right? It's Salon, the incredible. Oh, the incredible edible egg, right? Like all these catchphrases, right? That are just part of like me, that's like how I grew up, right? It's part of American Lexicon.

And then understand like, oh, wait a minute, maybe these things aren't so healthy. Maybe these things are actually contributing to disease. And now let's look at these nonprofit organizations, these consumer watchdog groups that we've entrusted with telling us what we should and shouldn't be eating and to understand that similar to Cowspiracy, these organizations are leading us astray and obfuscating the truth in many respects. And what's so interesting, it goes on a whole other level in Cowspiracy is that where the government is involved, these marketing programs that you talked about, the Milk Life?

Yeah, Milk Life is their new name. All the ones that you named, they're actually government programs. I want to get into that. Yeah, yeah. I want to get into that. But let's take it sort of step by step. Maybe just kind of explain for the listener the general synopsis of the movie. So essentially, it's funny how similar it is to Cowspiracy.

The story essentially starts out as my true story my past i was a hypochondriac and as any of my good friends can tell you hardcore hypochondriac i actually i manifested myself with illnesses for a long time and then i realized something very severe happened and that and i found out that i manifested it from the doctor he told me what do you mean what is that what do you mean um uh kind of more a personal story but that's like worse i kind of a funny story but it happened a lot i would get stomach aches i would get head i would get everything and then a real severe one i thought i had. And then a doctor told me that you didn't. It's completely in your head.

And at that point, I realized it was getting so dramatic. And this was getting serious. It was affecting my life that I completely, that powerful thing of realizing this is in my head. I'm manifesting this. I flipped it on its head and realized that we do have power. You know, mind over matter. This sort of psychosomatic situation where you're manifesting illnesses because you're afraid of getting them.

Right. Essentially. All right. Yeah. And then so since then, actually, it's kind of, I don't go this deep into the film about that. It's kind of just an interesting thing. But finding out I got really into nutrition and in health.

And then to find out that, you know, the WHO just came out. I've been vegan nine years, but just in the past two years, the WHO came out with their announcement that processed meat is now classified in the same category as cigarette smoking, which is unbelievable. And so all these facts, and these facts have been around for 40 years. So I found out about these before they announced it about around eight, nine years ago, when I went vegan, all these things happen, the environment and the health. And I got really into it, dug deep

into it. And I found these studies already. And to think that this was hidden from me and hidden from us, you know, my whole life, even after studying it. Because I became unhypocondriac, the opposite, and started studying nutrition for about 15 years. And I never learned about any of these things. And at that time, I was eating a lot of meat and a lot of dairy and not knowing anything about the harms of it. So then once you find out this, then like Cowspiracy, dig deeper and deeper and deeper.

So part of the story really is, like Cowspiracy, dig deeper and deeper and deeper. So part of the story really is like Cowspiracy. It's really finding out these things I really found out around eight, nine years ago, but at this point, really not only finding out and sharing the information, but how this information got to us. You know, you see a lot of these awesome documentaries, Forks Over Knives, new one, Eating You Alive, and they take it a certain step of what's good for you and what's bad for you. And they tell a little bit about how it got to be this way. But we take it really deep on how many levels of collusion and how this happened and why we think meat and dairy is good for you

and why it's impossible or dangerous to be vegan. And then to find out this is all stemming from essentially the same players. And we just go deep in exploring about all this yeah and then we also go another step it's beyond personal health you know a lot of health documentaries really focus on just what are the impacts to me and we looked at well what are the impacts of this industry on society what's the impacts of this industry on the environment and what's the impacts of this industry on people who have to live next to factory farms you know we went to North Carolina and we interviewed families who live next to these factory farms who have to deal with the toxic waste that's coming out of them. And then looking at the whole picture that health isn't just about ourselves. It can't be just about ourselves.

It's got to be about the bigger picture. Yeah, I think that's what really does distinguish it from the other documentaries that I've seen. I think similar to, so Cowspiracy begins with this discovery of the UN report, like the 2008 report, right, that kind of launches you into this investigation, into the environmental implications of animal agriculture. Analogously, in this movie, it's this World Health Organization health organization report right that suddenly classifies processed meat as a what is it a class group one carcinogen right and that's sort of the entry point for you to then go on a similar journey uh but again what is really compelling is that is that you really examine sort of the political landscape of this and the impact of this on communities and uh the civil rights implications, which is something that, you know, I don't think many people think of.

And that was really super interesting. And it's really compelling. You guys did an amazing job. And I think this is going to really open a lot of people's eyes. And I will say this. I was super stoked to notice that it's like the Rich Roll podcast roundup. I like had a running tab of all the guests that have been on my podcast that are in the

movie. And it's like, it's amazing. You've got like David Simon, of course. I mean, Dr. Michael Greger is like the star of the movie. He's like incredible. He's a rock star. Dr. Michael Clapper, Neil Barnard, Garth Davis, Joel Kahn, Michelle McMacken, Tim Schieff, David Carter.

And then the other people that you've interviewed that have not been on the show are all on my list of people to get on, like Caldwell Esselstyn, McDougal, Dr. Goldhammer. Who am I missing? You're missing the biggest one, the biggest star. Who's that? Rich Roll. I'm not a guest on my own show. No, but you're on the show.

But I do appreciate... Yeah, i make a little i make a little cameo thanks for you know indulging me on well i mean it's an honor it's an honor to appear in the movie oh it's it's a huge huge motivator and actually the ritual podcast was an amazing resource to be able to go to because we could we could listen to these doctors and we could see like who who's the the most forward-thinking people in the world of nutrition and health and it's yeah amazingly there's these hour to two hour long interviews with all right i know and we could see who's the most forward-thinking people in the world of nutrition and health. And amazingly, there's these hour-to-two-hour-long interviews with all of them. Right, and the podcast brought to visual life, which is awesome to see. Maybe we talk about it a little later because it's the end of the movie,

but my transformation that happened with me, even though I've been vegan for a good time now, I hadn't done any marathons, kind of giving the end part away, but it was actually after doing that that podcast the second podcast with you i'm like i'm gonna do an iron man like i want to test this whole vegan thing out um so i guess i'm getting into it now but it was the first marathon i did being vegan and i beat my time by 23 minutes and and purposely it was for the movie but it was going to be a lot bigger part

in the movie um that i training only half the time and only twice a week and then i stepped it up after talking to you i'm like i can do an iron man right and then and purposely i wanted to do it within three months i never even owned a bike i've never swam more than two laps i think never did a lap didn't own a bike other than I do mountain biking around San Francisco never biked over five miles ten miles and I'm like I'm going to do this

within three months do a marathon and then within that same month do an Ironman so I just jumped on a bike started swimming

and tested this whole vegan thing out and did it and it's true no it's great yeah I know that that was originally the original intent that was going to be

more of a narrative through line throughout the movie. Maybe it didn't fit how it all worked out or whatever because you guys are trying to cover so many things. But you told me this one story once about that that I just love. You kind of just threw yourself into it without really knowing what you were doing. And I think, was it, you did Coeur d'Alene, right?

Was that the Iron Man that you did? I did Coeur d'Alene, right? Was that the Ironman that you did? I did Coeur d'Alene. Of all of them, it turned out to be, I mean, it's been around since what, 1985? The hottest Ironman, not until that morning, they were going to cancel it. It was 106 degrees. It was the hottest Ironman in history up until that night. It was on, you know, they didn't know if it was going to happen or not. And I have no idea what I'm doing.

The first time I jumped on a bike, I just, to this day, I've never biked under 40 miles because I just had to do it so fast. But at that morning, I never hung out with anyone who's done Ironman. And all of a sudden, I'm surrounded myself with all these incredible athletes. I think I snuck in. And the funny story I think I told you was, so everyone's getting their bike ready. I'm like, what's everyone doing with their bike? bike you know they're pumping it up and like testing it and i so i asked him like what do you what are you doing with your time he started looking at what are you talking about he said you're supposed to uh you know your psi is supposed to be a

certain like really what is it and he could not believe uh i was asking him this and i still 100 psi tires and kip had it at like 40 i had it training at 40 psi yeah so that's basically like yeah so he tested it and i'm like oh my god so i pumped it up like you're not gonna explode he was just hilariously laughing at me pumped it all up to 100 so i've been training the whole time on 40 or 45 psi and that was the huge great training tip for anyone if you want to do it because i was going to fly over mount tam if you know mount tam i was doing pretty hardcore uh climbs i put that on when i jumped on the bike i flew i'd be my uh my bike time by like two hours just i cannot believe it so that was that

was fun talk about now be prepared it's like where it's like training swimming in a drag suit right or i was just shaved down you know and then you shave down and then you feel like a million bucks that was the same thing too i was i was i had board shorts from surf shorts like big huge board shorts with pockets filling with yeah and then i go on this you know this micro uh wetsuit just fly down wow that's a great training tip we didn't who knew right cool well you got it done man that was awesome yeah and then the scary part too on that story was that it was 106 degrees and i don't know my body that well you know because this is all new to me and i'm seeing people lay out um in convulsions and so for you know it's around 13 hours so at any time you know i'm test looking at my pulse i don't know

if that's gonna ever happen to me So that was a really scary part. The whole time I never know if this just happens or not, if there's a warning sign. So that was scary. But you did it. You did it, man. You did it. I know.

On like training twice a week or something for an Ironman? Around then, because I had to train for a marathon and Ironman, I did like three times a week. Right. But I did a long distance. Not advised, but I'm glad you're still alive. And you got it done. That's cool. marathon and iron man i did like three times a week right before but i did a long distance not advised but uh but i'm glad you're still alive and you got it done that's cool and it really does work for the film though because it's a testament that a plant-based diet is that clean

like that you know kip could do this with really no experience very ill training and and still pull it off and pull it off really well and it's like that is a testament to, you know, Kip as an individual, mental fortitude, but really to the fact that if you eat really clean and you eat purely, it's so much easier for your body to get things done. Yeah. And that point does come across specifically through the words of David Carter and Tim Schieff, who kind of talk about how once they went plant-based, it's so anti-inflammatory that a lot of the aches and pains go away. A lot of the problems that David had that he spoke about on the podcast went

away. He was able to train harder, recover more quickly, all these sorts of things that allow you to progress as an athlete on a fraction of the training and, you know, without getting injured and all the things that go into it. And that point came across really well. So, for, you know, I want to kind of go to the beginning of the film and for people that are listening that maybe are new to the podcast or maybe they saw Cowspiracy, but they don't necessarily have a point of reference when it comes to the impact of meat and dairy products on diet, maybe we can start like at square one. Because I think when you say, look, when you look at animal agriculture and what it's doing to the planet, the environmental implications for that, it's easy when you lay it out to go, oh my goodness, like I had no idea. But obviously,

like that makes sense. I can understand why this is happening. I need to rethink my approach, you know, and my habits. But when you talk about diet, it gets a little bit trickier because, you know, I think a lot of people, most people would just say, well, meat and dairy products have been part of, you know, the human diet going back forever. Now you're saying these things are what's causing all of these chronic lifestyle illnesses. Like how can that possibly be? So, you know, how do you begin to unpack that and answer that? Yeah. I mean, the film is based on science and that's, I think the foundation is that you have to look at real scientific information and what is science actually telling us when it comes to nutrition. And then when you look at that science, you also have to look at, at well is it real science and who is it being funded by because you can look at a study and you can say well hey red meat is directly caused to coronary heart disease like it's 100

everybody knows that but then you can find another study that says complete opposite and so people will say oh well you know that's a mute point then it's like well who funded that original study and who funded the pro meat study and it's like what was it a was it you know cattleman association was it a meat board so we looked at that that was a big that's the foundation is you have to look at real science and real research um but you can i mean there's yeah i think anybody logically can understand that if you put foods that your body wasn't designed for into your body it's not going to function. It's optimal.

And so that's part of the film that we looked at is the anatomy of human body. Are we true omnivores? Are we carnivores? Are we really herbivores? And that's actually one of the things that was kind of surprising while making the film was that, you know, I'm vegan. And so, like, I want it all to fit into my narrative narrative of like, we're supposed to be 100% plant eaters. But something that we found is that actually, well, human beings, we can get away with eating some animal products without detrimental effects. And it's like, that's not something you want to hear as a hardcore vegan. But the truth is, is that yeah, maybe 5% to 10%, you can get away with it. But the impacts that that has on the environment, the impacts that it has on people, the impacts that it has clearly on the animals is huge. And is that really worth it? But then, you know, looking again, going to the anatomy and what are we really supposed to eat? Well, we're not really herbivores.

We actually had a whole section in the film where we had this whole animation about how we're herbivores and it shows our anatomy. But then we realized that, well, actually, we're not herbivores. We're frugivores. We fit every characteristic of a frugivore which is so explain what a frugivore is so frugivore is is an animal that gets 90 or percent or more of its nutrition from plants particularly high carbohydrate plants so is that similar to us what's the difference between that and like a starchivore like a what mcdougall would call like a starchivore it's it's actually really really close so what you look at the the great apes they're all frugivores so you know gorillas uh chimpanzees orangutans they're they're frugivores and human beings being a great ape we've 100 fit into it

so it's something we go into the film you know more in depth uh but i think it's really this that's a great place to start but But I think that we have to, and what we do in the film is we start from the standard American diet, and we just start to pick it apart and looking at all the different aspects. A big thing right now that's talked about in health and nutrition is sugar. Sugar is like the big devil. You know, a few years ago, it was wheat. And I think wheat is still kind of like the bad guy, but sugar is the big thing. And so we look at it, and we ask the question, what role does sugar play in things like heart disease and cancer and diabetes? And the responses we got were actually really pretty shocking for both Kip and I.

Yeah, it's super interesting, and sorry, Kip, I don't want to hear what you have to say on this, but right now, it's all about sugar, you know, and which kind of contravenes, this is an ancillary topic, but it sort of contravenes a more holistic approach. Like it's not any one thing, right? We have to look at these things in the context of the matrix of everything, right? But right now, you know, sugar's on everybody's minds and, you know, sugar is the culprit, sugar is the devil. Certainly processed sugar is not a good thing. When you see the sort of explosion of processed foods with sugar in them and, you know, high fructose corn syrup, all that kind of stuff, there's no question that these things are making us sick. this sort of contrarian perspective that you get from, say, Dr. Neil Bernard, that contravenes, you know, what you would hear from Gary Taubes, right? Gary Taubes coming from,

it's all about sugar, to Neil saying, don't worry about sugar, it's the animal products. And as a consumer watching this, it's very easy to get confused. You know, there's doubt, like these people are saying different things, they both seem smart. I don't know what to do. I'll just keep doing the same thing. So, how do you parse fact from fiction and why do you come down on the side of someone like Neil Barnard as opposed to Gary Taubes? Dr. Davis, Garth Davis, did you have him on? Yeah, yeah. That was really good actually. He sums it up in this one part right after in the film after neil barnard talks about how diabetes is actually not caused by sugar it's caused by saturated fat and then king you might remember the way he says it says sugar doesn't cause plaque sugar doesn't you know just kind of done goes down this list it's not good

for you doesn't increase inflammation yeah um it doesn't like lock your uh uh the way he said it i can't remember he did this laundry list of what sugar doesn't do it's not good no one said it's good but like cowspiracy we we address fracking we address other things that are happening and as we address this we compare it to eating animal for for this film eating animal products what's fracking and cowspiracy um the comparison of fracking to animal agriculture there's no comparison of how much water is consumed or uh taken from it and polluted the same thing happens in this film yes sugar is bad but how bad is it compared to meat and dairy um so so when you have these doctors who say sugar is bad yes but there's there again, there's just no comparison to saturated fat,

especially from animal proteins and animal products. Yeah, and again, we kept coming back to the science. It had to be based on hard science. And so, yeah, you look at the studies and it's like, well, what are the studies actually saying? And the research is saying, and it's really actually pretty interesting because even groups like the American Diabetes Association will say, if you look at their site and you dig a little bit, they'll say, oh yeah, high carbohydrate diet actually doesn't cause diabetes. They encourage all of their supporters and anyone with diabetes to be careful of your sugar intake because clearly if you have diabetes, you should be concerned about your sugar intake.

But it's not what causes diabetes. What causes diabetes is your insulin system not working because it's clogged up with fat and so what's what's got more fat in it you know sugar is what it's like four calories per gram versus seven calories per gram for for fat so it's really it's looking at the impacts of of fat But it goes, again, even beyond just that. Because it's not just these isolated things, not just saturated fat. It's not just cholesterol. It's not just carcinogens.

It's all of these things put together. And it's how all of those things work in our bodies that is the real issue. And also, too, as you said, how can you tell fact from fiction? A good example is on the cover of Time, I think now it was two years ago, it was a stick of butter and I can't remember the title, but something butter is back. And so that started a huge craze that, you know, bullet coffee,

all this. And we go, we look, go back, go back, go back. Who funded this? Who did the studies?

Go back. And it was national dairy council, national dairy council. The whole study, like, I mean, that's like that whole, you know, saturated fat isn't bad for you.

It's based on basically two studies. Anybody who's listened to the Garth Davis interview will know about this. Well, presume people haven't. Yeah, I mean, it's really based on two studies. And they're funded by the National Dairy Council. So it's like they have a vested interest in protecting their industry. So they're going to fund studies that are going to say that, no, no, no, our product isn't bad for you. And the leading source of saturated fat is from dairy products, not from meat.

So I think it's a combination of a couple of things. First of all, my recollection is, isn't that those studies said that saturated fat is good for you? They just cast doubt on how bad it might be for you. And then journalists looking for appetizing headlines will take that and translate it into fat is your new best friend and then there's books being written about it. And the average consumer

who doesn't have time to drill down to the truth of all this stuff is just gonna see the headline, modify their behavior accordingly. And this is not helping anybody. You know, it's a page out of the merchants of doubt. It's directly out of the playbook from Big Tobacco. If you can make people sort of confused enough, then you have them exactly where you want them.

We have exactly where the film leads into. Dr. Greger talking about that, about the tobacco industry, doubt is our product. And that was right in there. Right in there. Yeah, and they're mad at us. I mean, they really, it's about, yeah, confuse the public enough where they don't know what to do

and they just continue as business as normal. And so what the health of the film does is it lays all this information out easily. And it's all, again, you can go back, we're going to have on our site all the original studies so you can source everything, you can see where all this information is. Because we really just want, this is just the starting point. You learn, you get some of, you get your appetite for understanding nutrition and then you can go deeper because there's so much more that we couldn't fit into this film. we couldn't fit into this film. To me, it breaks down and tell me what you think. But to me, it breaks down into kind of two parts. The first part is really looking at the impact of meat and

dairy products on the human body. And, you know, you can delve into the archive of this podcast and listen to interviews with all these doctors. We don't need to rehash all of that now but we're in this explosion of chronic lifestyle illness cancer diabetes heart disease killing millions and millions of people bankrupting our economy and our health care system it's just absolutely devastating and then understand that we actually have control over these things a little bit more than perhaps we thought, that with some pretty simple dietary and lifestyle alterations, we can actually not only prevent ourselves from contracting these diseases,

which we've sort of been misled to believe are simply genetic, and to actually reverse them under certain circumstances is incredibly powerful and illuminating. And I think, you know, turns the lights on for a lot of people. I mean, that's gonna be huge news for a lot of people that aren't spending all their time watching health documentaries on

Netflix. So that's the first part. And then the second part, which is really just mind-blowing, is the extent to which these organizations, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, what are the other ones that you guys?

American Cancer Society. Susan G. Komen. Yeah, Susan G. Komen. The extent to which these nonprofit organizations are being less than transparent about the truth and the true extent to which they are actually funded by the meat and dairy organization, the big companies that produce these products, and how that compromises the information that's being delivered to the consumer. Yeah. I mean, and how could it not? I mean, it's just what Kip brought up. Like,

you can stop anybody on the street and say, you know, what, is red meat good for your heart? And they'll say, no, it's horrible. Red meat, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. And yet, you go on the American Heart Association website, they have a huge section on red meat. I mean, like recipes and recommendations. You can go, you can look at, you know, we know that processed meat is one of the leading causes of developing type 2 diabetes. I mean, it's more than any other foods. And yet on the American Diabetes Association,

they're, you know, was it recipes for healthy living? They have bacon-wrapped shrimp. It's like, what? That's a recipe for healthy living? They have bacon wrapped shrimp. It's like, what? That's a recipe for healthy living is bacon wrapped shrimp. And, you know, that's just the tip of the iceberg. And it's every single one of these organizations. And so we did, we started investigating, we looked deeper and said, well, why would they have that on there? And we uncovered that they're receiving millions of dollars from this industry. And so of course, they're not going to say anything negatively against it. Right. So before we even get into that, and I want to unpack that, you know, what

kind of leads the viewer into that is, you know, this sort of trademark conspiracy, you know, thing you did in conspiracy, where you knock on the doors of all these organizations, and they either slam the door in your face, or they grant you an interview that gets sort of called off in the middle, and you have that amazing exchange with that guy from the American Diabetes Association who seemed more than happy to talk to you about the disease itself, but the minute you sort of tiptoe into the subject of dietary implications on either the progression or reversal of the disease, the guy gets super freaked out. Yeah, it was unbelievable. And the first, when we were making the film,

the first thing that happened even before that was our first interview was with an American Cancer Society rep. And it was a doctor who represented them, a nutritionalist. And somehow, and it's in the film, we had an interview scheduled, and then somehow she either looked, we had an interview scheduled, and then somehow she either looked up our name or something happened, and that next day, we did tell her it was going to be about dietary implications on how it affects cancer, if there's any correlation,

and other things about cancer. She scratched the interview and said she cannot do it today, and we said, well, how about tomorrow? She says, I can't do it tomorrow. How about next week? And then she stopped answering our emails altogether. And that was the real like, whoa, this is the same thing happening. And why would they not want to talk about diet?

It's so, I mean, it's so bizarre even still after making the film. But the cat's out of the bag. You guys made Cowspiracy. You're, you know, a simple Google search will reveal like, hey, they don't want to put themselves in some kind of gotcha situation. It's like Sacha Baron Cohen or like Borat trying to convince people. I don't think they had their names, though, actually. Even though, and I think there is just some truth to that.

But it's, well, then just tell the truth. I mean, it's not like Kip and I are like twisting people's words and making them out to look like idiots. It's like if the American Cancer Society had done that interview and had said, absolutely, the World Health Organization says it, absolutely, eating animal products increases your chance of prostate cancer, bowel cancers, X, Ys, and Zs cancers. Even if it was a tiny percentage to just say, yes, this is true. That's what's so interesting about Cowspiracy is we get, you know, sometimes I'll go to a debate or somewhere, and there'll be someone from, say, Greenpeace and they'll get our Amazon watch more recently.

And so pissed off. And it's, we were so surprised leaving those interviews that all they had to say is, you know what, you're right. It's a very difficult message to get across. People don't want to hear about it. But you're right. We need to find a way to get this message out. That's all you had to say, you know, and that film would have been totally different, make them, you know, look in a different way.

But for all of them to be so secretive and so beat around the box and to not just say that, you know, you're right, this plays a big role. We need to address it. Same thing with this. Like Keegan said, if they just address, it's true, processed meat is directly linked to cancer. We need to do something about this. You're right. We plan on it.

But the same story played out in this film, too. I mean, we joked constantly about how similar this film is to Cowspiracy. Like, it's scary how similar it is because the same story is happening. The leading cause of environmental destruction is animal agriculture and one of the leading causes of you know the health impacts on our society is from is yeah associated is is from animal products right well you have that there's that amazing quote from the guy from the pew research institute yeah robert martin yeah he's amazing and he said something like uh you know, animal agriculture, you know, big animal agriculture interests, they have the power and the money of big tobacco and big pharma with the personality of the National Rifle Association, right? So, they're super well-funded, they're politically connected, and they don't give an inch, right? And when you look at, when you follow the money and you see who's backing these health non-profits, it's really quite shocking. So, maybe, you know, extrapolate on that a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, we started looking at the corporate sponsors. So, American Cancer Society is corporate sponsoring with yum brand second largest restaurant chain in the world owner of kfc taco bell and pizza so how could they ever say anything bad against processed meat when they're literally receiving do we know how much money those um they're getting from yum yeah i don't have it off the top of my head it's we'll have it on our our website susan g common story the one that we do know. Yeah, so Susan G. Komen, who's pink ribbon campaigned against breast cancer. We find studies, studies, but we focus on one study in particular that showed that consuming whole dairy products,

one serving of whole dairy a day for a woman who survived breast cancer, increases her chances of dying from breast cancer 49%, and dying from all-cause mortality, 64%. And yet they're partnering with someone who makes that product, and they received $35 million from Yoplait. And that was one part that didn't make in the film. We went to these headquarters, and we went to Susan G. Komen headquarters, and we were running around trying to get an interview, essentially snuck into the headquarters, as you can you see and they just would not want to talk to us they've had a lot of trouble there's another documentary called i think pink ribbon so they've been called out pretty bad but we got them on the phone and it was the rep from susan jacobin pretty high up and our camera ran out or ran out of battery or whatever happened and it was right when she said

well yo play yogurt gives us was it 35 million on the phone they're a big sponsor about you know they're very important to us and essentially without saying it they gave that they give us 35 million she even said the actual number and we didn't have like you didn't have that recorded yeah but um it's it's well documented again even more than cowspiracy the link is there and it's well documented. Again, even more than Cowspiracy, the link is there and it's so in your face, too. You go on their corporate sponsors and then you're probably going to go into the pharmaceutical story of this whole film and what's going on, too. And that's even more scary. Right. So we have American Diabetes Association funded by Dan and funded by Kraft, who makes Velveeta, Oscar Mayer, and Lunchables, and funded by Bumblebee.

They're the tuna manufacturer. Yeah, and other processed meat. Right. American Cancer Society, funded by Tyson as well as Yum, Komen, in addition to Yoplait, KFC, right? American Heart Association. I mean, it's just – it's across the board. Beef, poultry, dairy, the fast food industry, processed meat industry. And it's tricky because on the one hand,

these organizations do good things, right? Like, I'm not interested in just being some kind of insane conspiracy theorist and throwing the baby out with the bathwater and saying these are horrible humans. Like, this is a systemic problem that compromises the work that they do but i would imagine that the people that work there are well intentioned and and i think that's just the same thing with the environmental organizations featured in conspiracy they're really good people doing really they're doing their absolute best what they think they're doing is is the best thing they can do for for everyone who's suffering from these diseases. But I mean, if you could just imagine, imagine the American Lung Association getting money

from a cigarette company like Philip Morris. Nobody would think that was okay. People are like, that's a huge conflict of interest. Of course, it's going to color what information you put out there. Nope, it's totally unethical. And so then to have these organizations receive money from companies whose products are directly linked and associated with the causes of these diseases is a major conflict of interest. And there's no legislation to prevent these kinds of things? Or are there laws in place to make sure that these funding sources are transparent so that the consumer can at least be appraised of this?

Yeah, so nonprofit organizations have to declare their contributions over a certain amount, I believe. And so most of these, we were able to dig through records and find their corporate partners and their corporate sponsors. And so you can actually see their dollar amount. That took actually quite a bit of research but it's available and so i i think everybody should do that with everything you know it's something that we kind of got criticized with cowspiracy is oh you didn't guys didn't show

the numbers that these you know environmental organizations getting money from animal ag and they do some of them you know for example in one of greenpeace's largest contributions on record came from the you know somebody who owns 40 000 animals and slaughters them for his restaurant every year so we we just focused on it more in this film because we realized that that that does play into people's consciousness they want to know you know how much money are these people getting and it's it's pretty significant and so when they receive when these organizations receive these i mean how does it in your mind, how does this go down? On the one hand, is it like some kind of nefarious cloak and dagger meeting where they're getting money from Tyson and being told, okay, so you're going to say nice things about us, right? Or is it just sort of understood? What is the functional mechanism under which this money gets funneled and these companies end up benefiting as a result of these donations? I think it's a lot of unspoken sort of stuff.

But then there's also just clearly it benefits these organizations to not say anything negative against companies giving them money. So Susan G. Komen did a campaign with KFC where they did pink buckets. So you get fried chicken to fight breast cancer. I mean it's like Right. I mean the most that's cool. They actually had like the graphic like

ribbon like on the buckets? They were actual fully pink buckets. They like took a KFC bucket and they were completely pink. And they raised millions of dollars. I mean an insane amount of money off of that campaign so if they're not going to say anything bad about chickens association with cancer right no way right because why would they um and then you know i think it also is something that with

conspiracy as well is that you have to look at what are the people who run these organizations eating as well and if it makes them feel uncomfortable about their own dietary habits there's no way they're going to encourage people to eat differently if they're not willing to do it themselves. And I think we still, we're on the cusp of a real massive change, or maybe the change has already happened, but there's still this hang-up around meat that we have to eat it. There's like the, you know, you can't live without it.

And as we show in the film, you know, not only can you live and thrive, but we have, you know, ultra-athletes like yourself, like David Carter, like Tia Blancoanco and professional surfer we have these unbelievably talented athletes who are pushing their bodies to the next level and they're doing it on a plant-based diet so it's we're trying to break down that idea that you have to have to eat this way and as i feel especially in the athlete section it's as i think you see this it's it's the new secret coming out and it was so exciting with uh nick the mma fighter diaz nick diaz that was the last one when you know we were on joe rogan that was i can't remember if it was on well we were during the podcast or before after he's like you know i totally see i'm friends with rich and i see this but i just don't think it'll

ever get to that point where you know be a boxer, an MMA fighter. And I mentioned his brother. It was actually Nate Diaz. Yeah, Nate's the one who did that big fight and won. And then that happened about two months later, so that box is now crossed off. But I feel it's the new secret. But I feel it's the new secret, you know, the inflammation and how protein from plants is the most optimum protein. Where if you're getting it through animal products, it's just recycled protein.

You're going directly to the source. Even things like algae oil and spirulina. Where does fish get their fish oil, quote unquote? Well, they get it from the algae in the sea will go directly to the source. And so that's kind of what we show in the film too about the whole protein myth and going directly from the source where these huge strong animals, the strongest animal in the entire planet, pound for pound is a gorilla.

Where does he get his protein? Where does he get so strong? Yeah, you guys did a good job of nailing the protein question and the graphics that you use there, I thought were great. You guys did a really good job with the animation um and i think that's gonna really help people conceptualize that a little bit better i mean i always just say it's eating lower on the food chain right but what

is exactly what what exactly does that mean what does that look like and i think when you when you draw reference or comparison to large land herbivores you know the the the gorillas and the hippopotamus and the like and say well these are herbivorous animals they get their their protein from plants it's easy for somebody to say well yeah but like they have completely different digestive systems and how they process food is different like how that's just an invalid comparison but from what i have come to learn and what other people who know more about this stuff than i do have said to me and you know i'm interested in if you guys know more about this than i do is that the way that a lot of these animals digest and process starch and glycogen

is very different than a human being but actually the way they metabolize protein is essentially exactly the same that's interesting i mean something that we actually talked about while making this is that because i i get uncomfortable about that like well eat what a gorilla eats it's like well yeah i can't really eat what a gorilla eats it's like but i can eat a lot closer to what like a chimpanzee eats because they are closest right closest living relatives but you know i think you can't you just look at someone like Patrick Baboomian, who's one of the strongest people on the planet. It's like this guy eats nothing but plants.

So clearly you can do it. I think it's also, too, it's just try it. Try it for 30 days and see how you feel. And I think that's where the proof is really at. People, they eat clean, they eat smart, and they feel better. They perform better. It's like their brain is clearer. So I think that's a big part of it is just encouraging people to take that step, just try it.

And do more research as in Cowspiracy. Go beyond the film. Do your own research. Look at the anatomy. There's this awesome diagram of 10 across, 10 down from carnivore all the way to frugivore. And frugivore is at the very end i believe or maybe herbivore is and it lists the omnivore carnivore omnivore down the list and then it goes down the list about 15 to 20 depending on which one you see is teeth throat stomach esophagus uh intestines colon on and on and on and on. And we fit every single checkbox off of a frugivore.

It's actually not an herbivore that we found out while editing. Thankfully, we found that out. And so, is the physiology lying to us? Millions of years of evolution and to say that all of a sudden we're an omnivore? It's like a diesel, I'm sure you get the same analogy, a diesel car and a normal gas car. It is what it is. And you just look inside us, it's just so clear. And we're pretending that we're an omnivore, but we're not. We are a frugivore.

Right, well, we're certainly not an obligate omnivore. I think human beings have evolved where we can handle a lot of different things, right? You can eat carnivorously, you can eat omnivore, you can eat like an omnivore, you can eat like an herbivore. And we're adaptable. I think we're extremely adaptable in that regard. So, it's really a question of like, what is the best way of doing it? Because there's people that just eat nothing but McDonald's or, you know, people who eat ice cream, you know, three meals, whatever. whatever like human beings can withstand for at least a certain period of time like an improper diet about 45 years then they started to have heart attacks

and diabetes and hypertension and that's the thing too as we mentioned the film at the very end as keegan started off with we can eat because we're closest to a chimpanzee. Chimpanzee eats around 5%, some more animal protein, not even considered insects. But at the time we live in, going back to calisperies and that message, we live with 7 billion, moving up to 9 billion people. So when people talk about this paleo diet, it's still, it's a disconnect from what that even mean mean what a paleo when you'd look from that paleo age what you should the takeaway you should get from that is they lift lived within their means of their environment and not that they might have eaten some rabbits and some deer they never ate hamburgers or

anything like that but they lived within their environment so a true paleo that should be the spiritual message and the full message of what it means to be a true paleo is that you're living with among the means of the society and the times you live in we don't live 40 000 years ago and at that time there's studies coming out they live to what 30 35 years old and is that the goal and had heart disease and had heart disease and gum disease and is that the goal is to live to be you want to be something that was already been done 30, 40,000 years ago? Or do you want to live in the future of what 30, 40,000 years ago from now looks like, let alone 30 to 40 years, it's becoming more and more clear as we evolve or when you want

to ever say transform to this more plant-based society. I want to live in the future. I don't want to be turning around the past. If you do turn around the past, this paleo, realize what that truly means. I also think that it's incumbent upon us as conscious, compassionate consumers to broaden the definition of health to include planetary health and social health and community health. Like when people talk about health, they're just like, well, what do I need for me? Like, it's all about me and my personal interests. I'm like, I want to perform at my best.

And so what is, I'm going to make all my decisions based upon that selfish regard. But I think we really need to be a little bit more expansive about that and understand that we share this planet and that those choices that we're making impact others. But the beautiful thing is when you make the choice that is optimal for your personal health it actually checks the box that's optimal for planetary health it's almost like nature rigged it up that way it's like duh come on like just do this it's good for everybody why is it so hard for you to see that and i think the film does a you know a really nice job at at demonstrating that and when you take these two these two films together um you know it's like

they're the perfect bookends to this message and then the film what we explore in the film i don't think other too many other health films if any really do is how it got to be that way um why we've gotten to this point and then to realize that we've been been manipulated from these terrible industries we're essentially puppets of the pharmaceutical industry and the meat and dairy industry that kills 70 billion animals every single year, not even counting the humans it killed. Then once you realize you're essentially a puppet of this industry, to be liberated and released from that is the most incredible feeling, let alone the health impacts personally. But, you know, your whole world, your aura just kind of opens up to include everything. And

it's just a great, so many bonuses that when I first went vegan, I didn't know what happened, and they just kind of all opened up. Right. So instead of being just a battery for the matrix, you can actually make conscious decisions for yourself. And I want to talk about the pharmaceutical component of this, which is sort of bifurcated between all the pharmaceuticals that go into the animal products that weated between all the pharmaceuticals that go into

the animal products that we're consuming and the implications of that on health. It's like 80% of all antibiotics go to animal agriculture. And then secondarily, this explosion of pharmaceutical intake to treat the symptoms of these diseases that we're contracting as a result of the poor dietary choices that we're making. Yeah. I mean, as Robert Martin, who was a chair of the Pew Commission on Industrial Agriculture, Animal Agriculture, he talked about is that, you know, we're on the verge of antibiotics not working in post-antibiotic era in medicine, where literally all antibiotics that we use today could be obsolete

because we've so abused them both how we fed them to non-human animals you know 80 of all antibiotics sold in u.s go to livestock but also how we're constantly consuming them ourselves and we're just a constant exposure and that we're we're seeing these super bugs coming out you know the swine flu and the avian flus these are are coming out of factory farms. And so people are literally dying. And then things like, you know, MRSA, these infections that aren't treatable by antibiotics that people are dying from constantly in hospitals. Well, these stem from animal agriculture. They can actually now trace. And it's a really exciting thing that we, again, didn't cover in the film is that they can actually now trace, they in taiwan the the strains of bacteria to their

original sources in these farms and they actually found this you know like patient zero patient zero and they're coming out of factory farms you're coming out of chicken farms and pig farms in particular so that's another huge aspect of it is that the pharmaceutical industries they have they they like the animal agriculture industry of course a huge amount of these drugs if 80 of the antibiotics they're producing are going to that industry they're going to want to make sure that that's going to continue to grow and expand and then you eat those products and what are you going to need to do you're going to need to take more pharmaceuticals and so from that we started when we looked at the corporate sponsors of these health organizations american cancer society and diabetes association heart well, not only are they getting money from millions

from animal agriculture industry, but they're getting even more money from pharmaceutical companies. I mean, some of their biggest donors are Pfizer and Merck and these massive international pharmaceutical companies. So of course, they're not going to talk about solutions. They're going to talk about, hey, what drugs can you take? What what, what some of our buddies over at Pfizer, what can they do for your diabetes, instead of saying, hey, well, maybe if you change your lifestyle, you wouldn't have to take those drugs. So there's, again, this massive conflict of interest is going on. Yeah, there was that one, you were gonna you're on your way into a into a hospital to interview a surgeon, and like a rep from the hospital came out and said,

that's no bueno, it's not going to happen, and here's why, and explained. So the craziest thing about that is that that happened more than once. That happened on phone calls with hospitals, because we're doing a film on health, so clearly, and I'm the director of photography, I've got to get shots of us in the hospitals. We've got to get as much hospital footage as possible. And hospital after hospital wouldn't allow us to film. And they would say it.

I mean, I had two different reps tell me on the phone, we can't be associated with anything that's going to influence the financial standings of this hospital. And we understand that changing your diet is beneficial, but this one, they said, we just put in a new surgery wing and we can't have you promoting something

that goes against what the hospital's doing. Yeah, that one woman said it basically point blank. Like, we cannot go on the record and talk about ways of avoiding surgical procedures because essentially we make our money on surgical procedures. Yeah, so this is working at cross purposes with our bottom line

and it's just not gonna work for us, which is insane because basically they're saying, yeah, we can't get behind anything that's gonna promote health in a preventative context because that's just not what we do. So they're in the business of making money. And so how could we be more clear you know about where the real agenda is and what is really going on and then when we finally did get into a hospital they stayed very close to us because i poked my head in had we both had cameras i think but we poked our head in this cafeteria because knowing

most people have gone to a cafeteria know how terrible it is and whoa we almost got kicked out right there do you roll in do you get releases first or you roll in just with film with cameras on like how do you what's the protocol the the hospital that did allow us to film was amazing that they allowed us to film but yeah they had a there was a pr person with us the entire time and it's actually when we're leaving because we showed up a little bit early kip went and checked out the cafeteria and it's in the morning and it's just bacon and eggs and sausage. I mean, it's just all processed meat and animal products. I don't think there was, was there even any plant foods?

And so when we're leaving, the PR person's leading us out. Kip said, hey, I'm just going to run and grab some shots real quick at the cafeteria. And she's literally stood in front of him and said, no, no, you're not. He's like, no, no, I just, just going to get a few shots. We just need a few shots. She said, no, no, no, you're not. He's like, no, no, I'm just going to get a few shots. We just need a few shots. She said, no, there's no way you're going to film the cafeteria. And it's like, why wouldn't you want us to film the cafeteria if you don't think there's anything wrong with it?

Why wouldn't you say, oh, of course, yeah, get some shots of our healthy, nutritious food that's healing people's bodies. And the sad thing is, again, I don't think the film demonizes anybody because I think there are really good people. But they have an interest to protect, and that's their financial stake. Yeah, these are systemic problems.

You have that great conversation with Steve-O, too, who's also a podcast guest. I didn't have him on the list. But yeah, he went to like an American Diabetes Association buffet or lunch or fundraiser or whatever. Go-kart racing. Yeah, they had like all that kind of food, right? And he just like, I remember when that happened because he made a big stink on social media

and he took pictures of it and he's like, I'm out of here. And Joel Kahn and Garth Davis both are really great about documenting that stuff when they go to these conferences and these symposiums where, you know, there's a bunch of speakers on a specific health-related topic, but they have their big breakfast and it's bacon and eggs and the whole thing. And Steve-O says, his funny quote that he had that happened after that happened, he said, serving chicken at American Diabetes Association is like serving alcohol at an AA. At an AA convention or meeting. Yeah, it's amazing. And it just shows, it goes to show you how incestuous and insidious, you know, these sort of overlapping interests are. And really, the people that ultimately end up paying are the consumers and we're paying with our lives and with our health. And you have that, I can't, is it Dr. Clapper? I think it is, who talks about all the sort of medications that everybody is on, or I think it's Dr. Esselstyn as well, maybe it's both of them,

who are talking about, yeah, here's all the pills, but these are not getting at the causal elements of these disease. They're treating symptomologyology these are drugs that are designed for people to take their entire life that are being administered by doctors saying this is what you're going to be doing from now on with the message that this is going to prevent that stroke or prevent that heart attack and there's really no indication that that's actually true it helps sort of keep certain things in check, but you're not really getting at what's causing this problem that led you to this place in the first place. Because otherwise you wouldn't have to take the rest of your life. It's like they sell Band-Aids if someone's banging their head against the wall

and you have to put a Band-Aid on and take all these drugs. And they just mention all what Band-Aids and what healing methods of pharmaceuticals you take rather than just stop banging your head against the wall. But they don't want to tell us that. How dare you? Yeah. You can't ask people to do that, right? Well, so that's something you want to talk about the American Heart Association.

So something we didn't put into the film. We finally got an email back from, this was pretty recently, from the American Heart Association about why, because they weren't getting back to us about doing an interview. They weren't basically saying no, no. When you petition these organizations to interview, what is the pitch? Do you tell them, hey, we're the people behind Cowspiracy, and we're going to be talking about you guys regardless, and if you want to be on record with your side, or do you just play it really low key? It's kind of interesting, because this's the first time we've you know the follow-up film so first we i think we had an assistant do it and that's that's interesting the thing about american cancer society is why

we're so shocked by that is i don't think we gave them our name we just mentioned that diet was going to be part of the interview but then as we you see in the film it was really really hard to get interviews to the point where it was impossible. And then we said, well, how's Michael Moore? You know, honestly, you know, he's definitely, like him or not, he's incredible. He gets stuff out and he gets these interviews. And then we said, we just need to tell them the truth. Because no matter what, we're going to talk about you and tell them what's happening.

So, why don't you, here's your chance to defend yourself. Just say, it's difficult to tell this message because people don't want to hear it but we're just going to do our best but still you know they just just do not want to say it so american cancer american heart association finally gets back to us with our because they we gave them all the questions these are the questions and their response was basically something the extent of and this is like their official response which i guess we'll probably put out eventually which was we recognize that meat is a common feature in the American diet, and therefore we try to encourage people to eat wisely.

It's like, what does that mean? We recognize that people... Yeah, it's like written by a publicist or a lawyer. We recognize that people smoke cigarettes, so therefore we're going to just tell people to live consciously. Like, no, no, no, no, no. You understand that people are doing detrimental things

to their health. As a health organization, you have an obligation to encourage people to not do those detrimental things to their health. So again, it's like, yeah, we understand that people do this and nothing's going to change. It's like, well, yeah, of course nothing's going to change unless you tell them.

So I think it's really an information battle. It's just getting this information out there because Kip and I both are in a place where we don't want to tell people how to live their lives. It's not about dictating behavior to anybody. It's about let people make up their own minds, just present the information. And that's what I really want to see from these organizations is not for them to all of a sudden come out with this huge vegan message. It's like, though that would be amazing, just come out with the huge vegan message it's like though that would be amazing just come out with the information just present it and say here are the things that you can do here are the things that are negative and then let people make up their own minds definitely though promoting

bad behavior is not something they should be doing and some exciting things the movie hasn't come out and we're not positive that this is because they saw the trailer or there's been buzz about the film coming out. And the American Diabetes Association, just about two weeks ago, I don't know, did we talk about this, Keegan? They put out a statement that following a plant-based diet

could be the best opportunity for disease reversal and prevention. Oh, that's amazing. And ironically, just weeks. Is that like a press release or is that on their website? Yeah, it's on their website or what? Yeah. Yeah, it's on their website.

And I think they, you know, it talks about it because if you watch the trailer, he's in it. And he's the head, the chief medical advisor. Oh, he, the guy that you interview in the movie? Yeah. Right. And the guy got all skis out and ran away? Yeah. Wow.

He's like the chief medical officer. So funny is we always thought that would happen in calispercy someone running out because it's kind of what you want to happen right dramatically right when he happens like you just made the trailer you know that like that's like it's for the advice anybody who's ever doing an interview don't get up and throw your mic off like it's just the worst thing you could do for it's the greatest thing you could do for the directors what's great in that scene too is how like kip's like because you're like all right this is happening this is awesome and you're like your agenda obviously is to try to perpetuate

this and keep this going as long as possible and the only way to do that is to maintain your cool you're calm and you're cool you know and what was amazing is you squeezed like at least an extra 30 to 45 seconds out of that guy because he was out of there well it's so funny i don't want to talk about diet and then he says these studies have eventually these studies and i've mentioned some studies that are that are in europe and they've been peer-reviewed these studies have been peer-reviewed well actually this nih study from europe has been peer-reviewed well haven't seen it. Well, I can show you. I don't have time for this. I'm actually wanting to show.

It's just so bizarre. This is actually. Well, his nervousness is just an indication that he knows exactly what you're talking about. And he realizes that talking about that is at odds with organizational goals, right? And whatever he knows personally. goals right and and whatever he knows personally which is the the the mission statement of the american diabetes association is to find a cure for diabetes that's that's their goal so when so when someone comes into your office and says hey i have these studies multiple studies that say that there is a way to prevent and reverse diabetes you would think they'd be oh my gosh let me see those studies like how did this go under our radar like how did we miss this this

should be you know the forefront on our website no the response was i'm done with this interview i'm taking my mic off and i'm leaving and this is that was 20 minutes into a two-hour interview like we had two hours blocked out so he could have spent the next hour and a half reading through the study if he wanted but that's what's so exciting just a few weeks ago they came out with that again don't know if it's from the film buzz that's coming out the other thing that happened while in production to show that the change can happen and is happening uh the american care society they removed almost all of their processed meat i think there still might be one but and they actually contacted us and said,

we are removing this. And they actually said, thank you for pointing this out. So giving props to them. And again, even from Cowspiracy, people say, it's been, what, now two, almost three years. At any time, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, they'll put information out. We always post it.

We thought it'd come a lot longer. We thought it'd happen a lot faster with these organizations by now. It's happening a little bit slower, except in Europe, kind of jumping back to Cowspiracy, it's exciting to see this Greenpeace Spain, Greenpeace Sweden, they're starting to send the message out all over Europe, but the US is just holding tight on these environmental groups. But already before the film is even coming out with the health, already you have American Cancer Society changing some policy, the American Diabetes Association coming out with this. So I feel with this film, and again, it feels like perfect timing,

you just can't hide the truth. And with Dr. Oz just saying this last week, did you hear about that? I was just going to say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The vegan, the biggest movement of 2017 dr oz like how mainstream yeah the vegan movement is the number one sort of trend for 2017 coming out of dr oz and it's easy to like be like well dr oz fluff or whatever but like that guy has a huge impact on you know sort of cultural awareness like it's significant that he would say that and that has you know a profound impact on

how people conceptualize and think about this lifestyle and i think a point that we haven't brought up too it's a big part in the film is why don't we know this why doesn't our doctors know this because it's in the film quote unquote because the doctors never told us yeah michelle mcmackin talks about that yeah and they've just never been taught this in school. We're looking up research, and it's surprising. We couldn't find how many hours it takes to get, how many hours of schooling they have, because there's so many different variables of doing internships and all that.

They don't have a total of four to eight hours of nutrition, of hundreds if not thousands of hours they just don't know it and then everyone looks to their doctor to tell them like uh i mean of my family i have difficulty in that where my doctor told me this like well your doctor doesn't know about nutrition right like we've just sort of divested all our decision making and our power over our doctor with the assumption that like, well, they went to medical school, they know everything, you know, and we abdicate responsibility for our own choices and to really realize like, hey, not only do they not know, like they don't have, you know, like zero education, essentially zero education on nutrition throughout their medical

school experience is kind of eye-opening. And, you know, kind of further complicating it and obfuscating the truth is the fact that you have not only this overlapping of funding that's compromising these organizations, these health organizations, you have the USDA, which is this quasi-governmental organization that is not only less than transparent about the truth, but is actually promoting unhealthy untruths on the public by virtue of its dietary guidelines. And this is something that the film explores as well.

And I've talked about this on the podcast before, but maybe kind of explain a little bit about that. Yeah, so the USDA puts out the dietary guidelines for Americans every five years and it's put together by this committee. And the committee is made up of people who work or have received money from fast food industry, from sugar industry, from Anheuser-Busch, from every single livestock industry, chicken and eggs and pork and cow. We think of it as a government organization, but it's not really. It's an industry organization that gets federal funding.

And that's the truth of it. And so they put out these dietary guidelines, which is what Americans, you know, the food pyramid that a lot of people- Yeah, now it's the plate. And they've always had, up until now, which is the MyPlate, they always had meat and dairy. Now dairy is a section on there and they have protein which i think is smart like yeah we we need protein in our diets how much protein do we actually need well probably less than 50 grams a day but we you know it's there um and so but

these people they they literally their mission of the usda is to promote agriculture that's why it started was to promote farmers and to promote their products. And so of course, they've got to promote eating animal products, because that's part of their mission. The another aspect of the USDA is that they have federal checkoff programs, which is something that we learned about while making the film, Dave Simon, who wrote meatonomics is amazing on that is the federal checkoff programs are federal programs that the industries have to pay money into so it's the dairy checkoff program the beef pork all the animal agriculture and that's regulated by the u.s government and they use that money to then promote the product so yeah like the incredible edible egg the you know pork being inspired all those campaigns those

are all federally funded dollars, or federally managed dollars. And even beyond that, when you see things that we didn't, I don't think I knew this before we were making the film, when you see the cheese-stuffed crust from Pizza Hut or whatever, that's a federally supported program. It's absolutely insane. Unbelievable. Basically, all of these organizations are paying into a giant pool

that goes to the federal government that then acts like a marketing and advertising agency for these companies. So, on the one hand, it's absolutely staggering and mind-boggling to me that these industries can advertise in public venues like schools, that you can see posters for milk does a body good in a high school. Like, under what, you know, sort of understanding of law and propriety does it make sense that an industry gets to advertise in a public school? It's crazy, right? And then to realize that it doesn't stop there, but it spills into these other television commercials, like what you were saying with, oh, we got to get consumers more interested in cheese. This, this turns into the cheesy crust and the pizza hut.

And like, that's part of this checkoff program that is essentially government sponsored. And it's, and it's actually legally it's considered government speech. So to eat, what does that mean? It means that,

that it's, it's actual, our government telling us to eat more beef, eat more cheese, drink more milk. So when they, yeah, the stuffed crust pizza or a pound of cheese, they literally had a campaign with Pizza Hut. I think Pizza Hut was like, what, $20 million to put a pound of cheese on their pizzas. And so then when that does well, then every other pizza company says, yeah, cool, we're going to put more cheese. So walk me through how that works. the company says, yeah, cool. We're going to put more cheese. So walk me through how that works.

So what is the, what is the actual like government involvement in that decision-making and sort of crafting that campaign and who's getting the money? So as you said, these industries pay into this big pool and then there's government employees who see how that money is allocated, how that money is spent and they spend it primarily on advertisement. That's where most of it goes. It's anything to promote the industry. And so then they can give that money to anyone they want. They can give it to industries. They can give it to companies themselves and say, hey, promote our products. The best example of this we have in the film, we did it in a kind of funny way, is that McDonald's employs six people, I believe full-time,

six people around a table, and their sole job is to figure out how to put more dairy products into their food. And so we did a little funny thing. You did that little recreation thing. Can you imagine spending eight hours a day? How can we put more cheese in the list? The triple mac, double, triple cheese, quadruple bacon cheeseburger. Oh, good one.

So you see these bizarre ones that come out. Anytime you see a bizarre new product, realize it could be a federally funded program. It's just bizarre. And then when people, you know, so many carnivores and my friends who I love meat, it's like you're being taken, you're being taken, you know, subliminally, you don't even realize that you're a puppet. So when you think that you want these things, you really, you know, that's what they want you to think that you have control of of i want me and it's like really no you don't is that you've been you've been triggered by marketing so when you see like that pizza hut commercial where they're pulling up the piece of pizza and you can see the the cheese coming out of the crust and it's all looking

you know super you know luscious and all of that that television commercial is in part like you would look at that and say, well, Pizza Hut is paying for that, the production of that television commercial and is doing the ad buy. That's capitalism. That's just the way it goes. But are you saying that actually government funds are contributing to the production and the ad buy of that television commercial? So they might not be involved in the actual ad buy for that television commercial so they might not be involved in the actual ad buy for that company but they'll be involved in the promotion of that product so they might go to pizza hut and say hey we want you to use more cheese we'll give you 20 million dollars to add a pound of cheese to every pizza that you sell and so pizza hut says yeah of course we're

going to take your 20 million dollars where you when you see ads so like you know pork be inspired that ad will say at the bottom of it uh paid for by the pork checkoff program and so or brought to you by the pork checkoff program so they'll and that's an actual government that's a government commercial that's it's like state-sponsored media it's actually exactly that the only good thing it should be clear is that the only good thing is that our tax dollars do not pay for it. Well, so there is a percentage of it. It's being cycled from the industry itself, right? Yeah.

But the federal employees are getting our tax dollars. So the people who oversee all this. In some ways. But, you know, again, it's. And just to give you some context of the scope of this. I mean, there's some statistics that you guys run through in the movie. I think you say like $ the scope of this i mean there's some statistics that you guys run through in the movie i think you say like 50 million dollars uh of dairy industry dairy industry spends 50 million dollars on public school advertising here it's a lot of posters that's

insane uh and this checkoff program is 557 million dollars annually so this is these are not like small things and like the tobacco industry is what they used to do. There's so many similarities to the tobacco industry in this film and what's going on with the dairy industry and health is that the film was going to be called secondhand eating, like secondhand smoking. But another similar thing that they do that the tobacco industry did is get them while they're young. Most people know, or maybe they don't, that dairy is addicting. There's the case of morphine is in it derived from casein in the human breast milk. There's around four grams of casein in human breast milk. They think because it has case of morphine in it. So your baby will go back to you. Well, a cow is trying to raise a calf to the size, you know, eventually a thousand pound animal as quickly as it can. So it has around up to 26 grams of casein. So it's literally, there's casomorphine in this.

So what do you do? Hook them while they're young. So a big part of their program, the milk program and all these things is targeting young people. Same thing Joe Camel did. So the parallels are just, it's incredible how many parallels are to these two industries. The great news is that they're both falling apart this just happened to be about 30 years after tobacco industry but really see it falling apart right now yeah i mean the the the dairy industry is so aware of this this get them while they're young that there's actually there's the women infants and children program wick which is a federal food subsidy program it's basically like food stamps and it historically has been really heavy on cheese cheese and milk is like a big part of the wick package and when there was an initiative to

introduce fruits and vegetables into the wick package the dairy industry came out against that they said no way you're not going to put fruit and vegetables into the women infants and children health program right it's going to be our products because that's how they don't care about your health they're really they just want to promote their products and and again get them while they're young get children hooked on this stuff yeah it's super intense uh and you see it in the in the cheeseburger laws too which are another like prophylactic move to try to prevent what what ultimately did you know it in the cheeseburger laws, too, which are another, like, prophylactic move to try to prevent what ultimately did, you know, happen to the tobacco industry, which is that they became responsible for gigantic, you know, gigantic lawsuit demands that to the tune of, you know, I don't know, trillions of dollars, right? Billions? Trillions?

Trillions. A lot. to the tune of, I don't know, trillions of dollars, right? Billions, trillions? Trillions. A lot. So to prevent that with animal agriculture interests, they have the cheeseburger law.

It basically says you can't sue and claim that these products made you unhealthy because you should just know that they're unhealthy. Well, that's exactly for the tobacco industry. I mean, straight up. But the wild thing about it is that these laws are called, the model template legislation was the Common Sense Consumption Act. It's like common sense. You should know better. You should have the common sense to know that these products are bad for you.

Therefore, you can't hold us responsible. Right. But then out of the other side of their mouth saying, these aren't bad for you. Exactly. Right? So which way is it? Data is our product. Yeah.

It's super interesting when you kind of unpack where you know, where everybody's bread is buttered, pun intended, with all this kind of stuff. And that's something that you explored also with the egg lobby and, you know, kind of what happened with Hampton Creek, which was a big news story. So, you know, maybe there's probably some people listening that don't know what transpired with that. But I think that that sheds a light, a pretty strong light on kind of how heightened this is and how very real it is.

Yeah, so Hampton Creek is an egg alternative company, makes just mayo and a bunch of plant-based egg alternatives, and they're so successful that the industry saw them as a major threat. And so- Right, healthier and cheaper. Healthier and cheaper, safer. And they were getting in all the stores, like they were really getting market share.

And I think what was, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but what I didn't realize is what a gigantic industry like mayonnaise is. It's the number one condiment, right? Like, I don't know what the numbers are on it, but it's massive. Yeah.

And so, Hampton Creek, this one company, poses a threat to their entire industry. And so, attorney Jeffrey Light and researcher Ryan Shapiro, who's just total badass when it comes to Freedom of Information Act request,

uncovered documents from the Egg Board showing internal emails where they talked about how Hampton Creek is a major threat. And then they joke in their emails, and these are government employees, government email addresses. That's a perfect quote from that film. They joke about killing Josh Tetrick, the CEO of Hampton Creek, which is just, I mean, it's unfathomable.

This is a private company, and these, it's, it's unfathomable. This is, this is a private company and these are government employees and they're so threatened by a private company that they, they will literally will joke about killing him. Uh, and that's something we talk about just briefly in the film. We wanted to go more in depth because it's, it's not an exaggeration to say that, you know, this is an industry that has the personality of the National Rifle Association. say that you know this is an industry that has the personality of the national rifle association this is these are serious people who have serious ties uh and again and said this is all stuff that's happening behind the scenes where so when people see the ad for a product they don't realize how much went into that or how much was behind it and that's something we really want to achieve with

the film what's what's the solution here guys guys? You know what I mean? Like, you watch that, and it's easy for your heart to just sink and say, this whole thing is so compromised. Like, our food system is so compromised by special interests that are at odds with our health and the sort of transparency that we deserve as citizens of a free country, how do we rectify this? Like, what is the path forward? I feel even more than Cowspiracy. Cowspiracy is almost so overwhelming, how it affects the environment, how global it is, where at least this film, you've realized you do have the power A for me. You know, if I have diabetes or my family member

does, okay, first I start with my family and I find this information in this film or elsewhere, then it can impact the family. And then you find out about community. And then you can find out about starting change.org. One of our big goals is after the film is to really make sure they start putting warning labels on hot dogs and processed meat so that if you're feeding your child deli meat or a hot dog, it'll literally be considered child abuse. And that's something that is very realistic to happen. Whereas the environmental impacts, it's a little bit more murky of how about to go about that and how overwhelming this is, where this is getting information out to my family, my friends, my loved ones, and then to see that this is – I just feel this is happening already a lot faster than the environmental movement in a way.

Yeah. It's interesting that there is so little transparency in this industry. And we could talk about ag-gag laws, and we've talked about that before, not being allowed to photograph what goes on. But essentially, to come into this understanding of the extent to which these animal products are rife with hormones and antibiotics and whatever other pesticides and toxins that are part and parcel with the way these animals are raised and slaughtered and packaged, when you purchase that product at the grocery store, there's no indication of any of that. You don't know whether, I mean, yeah, you can get the sort of certified organic labels and whatnot, and some of those have been compromised already.

But it seems to me that we as consumers, if somebody's going to purchase that product, that they have a right to know exactly the sort of nutritional sort of breakdown of everything that is in that food product, you know, beyond just the animal product itself, but everything else that went into that. Why is that not law? And how can we make sure that that becomes law? Yeah, well, so in California, there is a law that says that you have to say if your product causes cancer. So there's, if you live in California, you've probably seen places, you know, this product is known by the state of California to increase the chances of cancer or contains carcinogens. So in California, now that we know officially that, you know, meat, processed meat, and but particularlyred chicken, is carcinogenic.

Well, there should be warning labels. And actually, PCRM did a campaign and got Burger King to start putting, this was a few years ago, but start putting warning labels in their restaurants that said, you know, this chicken is known to be carcinogenic. That should be law, though. But you also really, I mean, I think it's about information. Yeah. Let people know. But there is, there's so much other stuff like that you said about, well, people will go organic then like, well, I don't want all those hormones. I don't want all these

pesticides and things like that. But something that we found out while making the film that I was totally shocked by is things like dioxins or strontium 90 or radioactive pollutants. 93% of our exposure to dioxins, which are the most toxic substance known to science, we get through eating animal products. And that doesn't matter if it's organic or conventional. It's because dioxins go around the planet. The highest concentration of dioxins are in the Arctic communities of the far north because these chemicals go around the world.

And that doesn't make a difference, again, if you're eating organic dairy or organic animal products of any kind. You're still going to get that. And the same thing with strontium-90, this unstable radioactive pollutant, goes around the world and it binds to proteins. And so it climbs up in the food chain.

So it binds to the plant proteins. Cow is going to eat 100 pounds of food a day. Then it binds to her tissues. It binds to her milk. And then we're consuming that. And how is that that we don't know that? How is it that every mother who's then passing that onto their infants in their breast milk, how do they not know that? And why aren't they warned about that? And that's part of the thing that really is disturbing to me is the fact of what's happening to children and children have, they have no say in it and me is the fact of what's happening to children and children have they have no say in it and they have no knowledge of what's being done to them and it's not because their parents are you know horrible people it's because their parents weren't told

and and i think that's where it really has to start is about education well when yeah when you say weren't told it's like we don't even have how are they supposed to be told if the information is not readily available well there's this amazing documentary called What the Health is Coming Up. What's interesting about the dachshunds is a male cannot get rid of dachshunds in any way. And for a female, the only way a female can get rid of dachshunds is through her breast milk. Or having a baby. Or having a baby. And so that was a big surprise.

Keegan and I knew most of this information in the film, probably about 80% of it. The big surprise making the film is how much we didn't realize babies were impacted, pregnant mothers and toddlers never really thinking about like, wow, they're the ones that are most affected by this, the cell growth and the development. like that's the time people are worried, oh, I'm pregnant now, so I can't be vegan. That is the absolute time you have to be vegan. If you're not vegan, you know, the rest of the time, if anything, while you're having a child and those first two, three years of development for that child, that's probably the most crucial time because that's when these, all these things that you mentioned, the pesticides and hormones

and the dioxins, can manifest later in life. Yeah, you hear that a lot too. Like, well, I wanna be vegan, but I'm just gonna have like a little, I'm gonna have some fish, you know what I mean? Because they're so afraid of whether it's the protein issue or the omega-3s or whatever they've heard,

like out of nothing but like fear alone, they will resort to that. And you kind of explore the fish thing too. Like, of course, it depends on what kind of fish and how high up on the food chain the fish you're eating is, but fish are like these batteries that store these toxins and the mercury in very concentrated amounts. So, in certain respects, they could actually be the worst option for you to resort to yeah i mean just the just the mercury alone it's like if that can't scare people off i mean the fact that you know you can't eat you can only eat so much fish before you start to have mercury problems especially you know again like the higher up on the food chain the salmons and the bigger fish

like that so yeah these these ideas we kind of try and touch on every aspect all of the the you know health foods like chicken like oh chicken's a better option than beef well actually no it's not really you know has just as much virtually just as much cholesterol as as beef does and people go to that oh i have high cholesterol so i just eat chicken right they eat a lot more of it than they would because they're not afraid of it or yeah right so it's we we try and touch on all of it but again the film is just a jumping off point and uh in terms of kind of resources for people like you did you guys did such an amazing job with cowspiracy you could go to the website and it's just like boom like there's all this information there and all these links and everything is super

backed up by this study and that study like it's just totally vetted right are you guys doing the same thing for this i mean you better have your house in order right you're gonna ruffle some feathers with this thing yeah people are gonna be coming at you we have a whole facts page and it is important to realize when people are want to find out this information on their own there could be there could be a film with the exact and we mentioned this a few times but for every study that we have in the film you could probably find one or two the exact opposite but then who funds those stories where it comes back to where it comes back to what is the true information um but we do have a very solid source page coming from reputable sources they're all peer-reviewed studies and then the more you more you look into it it's just such

common sense like the real common sense is like they said, the common sense act is the real common sense is that a plant-based diet is the most healthy. And for every reason, it makes the most sense. Yeah. And it's not a movie where you're trying to shock people with like really graphics. Well, there is the pus thing. You do show that part. That's pretty gnarly. with like really graphics.

Well, there is the pus thing. You do show that part. That's pretty gnarly. That I had never seen before. And I have a very low tolerance for like watching that kind of stuff on film. But beyond that one instance, which is important for people to understand, like I didn't know that either.

That was like ghastly to see that. And maybe we'll just leave it at that. You know, it's not about shock value. It really is about education. And one of the other things that I feel like we glossed over a minute ago that I wanted to make sure that we talked about a little bit is extrapolating upon this idea of personal health to community health. And you kind of profile these people that live in a North Carolina town where there's some hog farms and

kind of what that's doing to the community and the impact that this kind of farming tends to have on lower income people. And of course, that then becomes like a civil rights issue. Yeah. I mean, so there's a term, environmental racism, which is that you see higher percentages of polluting industries in communities of color. And it's because those people are underrepresented in government. And so they don't have a strong voice or their voice isn't heard. And so it's because those people are underrepresented in government. And so they don't have a strong voice or their voice isn't heard. And so it's easier to get away with abuses. And we see that absolutely in the animal agriculture industry. You can look at a place like Duplin County, North Carolina,

which has the highest concentration of pig farms almost anywhere in the world. And it's predominantly black and Latino. And it's for that very reason is that they know they can get away with this stuff or they think they can get away with this stuff. When you say get away, what are they getting away with? So these farms, pig farms, factory farm pig farms, what they do is they keep animals in extreme confinement. They live in these sheds, which they call barns, but they're really just warehouses with slatted floors. The animals defecate.

It falls through the slats on the floors, gets pumped out into these giant waste lagoons or these basically ponds of just liquid, the most foul stuff you could ever imagine. And then it's sprayed out onto fields. And it's sprayed out with these giant water cannons. And so it's this misted, just the most disgusting thing you could ever imagine. And the smell is unbelievable. And they are spraying this stuff onto people's houses. They're spraying spraying into water and there's no laws about how you sort of dispense with the the the byproduct of all of these hogs this is organic fertilizer man that's that's organic nutrients yeah there's the guy

who's like uh who said something like there's as many hogs in north carolina as there are people yeah but each hog produces eight to ten times this the sort of fecal matter that a human being does and there's no kind of system for how we're uh managing all of this right so it ends up in these just disgusting pools that are actually the entire we have the the animation the entire eastern seaboard imagine every single human in the entire Eastern seaboard of America, all defecating, peeing and taking shits in little North Carolina. And so it really affects me because my dad's from North Carolina. I'm from Virginia. And I grew up swimming in all these rivers. And not only cannot swim in them, the very next day, that we were only there three or four days, the very next

day after interviews, that's when when the film the entire river that was right there was just laid out with thousands and thousands and thousands of dead fish let alone you can't swim in there these are fish that are dying on a you know sometimes daily basis and it's so sad because it's i feel the most beautiful state probably probably the most beautiful state in this entire country and it's just being wiped out it's so sad and these hog farms i would presume are kind of under contract to the big you know big smithfield yeah like those sort of they loan them the money to build these warehouses right and then and then the farmers are sort of indebted to them and that kind of served to i think food inc explored that

issue pretty thoroughly their contract growers is what they're called and i cringe i cringe so much more than anything because my family they're you know they they most of them they meet and my friends even still but it's when i see the bacon this whole bacon thing that took off and like i love bacon and bacon and after going to north carolina that's the one thing that really gets to me that just hurts me in my heart when they see that. And they're good people wearing these. I love bacon. And they just don't know. And it's so sad. And most likely, every time you have a piece of bacon, it's for a good chance it's coming from this area.

Yeah, they're those sort of buckets of dead cows piled on top of each other. Oh, yeah. I mean, pigs in the movie is insane. And it's so prevalent. I mean, we were driving all over Duplin County and the southeastern part of North Carolina, and these sheds, once you start realizing them, once you start recognizing what they are,

they're everywhere. And you can smell them usually more before you can see them, and the smell is unbelievably bad. I mean, there's just the flies are in insane levels. And again, this is, people are forced to live there. And people often say like, well, why don't those people just move? It's like, well, these people have lived there

for five, six, seven generations. They've been there long before this pig industry moved in. It's like, so why should they move when this horrible, polluting, needless industry is there? And then, yeah, you look at the health impacts of those people living near their farms. They're higher rates of all kinds of infectious diseases because they're surrounded by,

they're constantly being bombarded with toxins from their environment from these pig farms. Yeah, you have the African-American woman who's kind of coddling her baby, telling you about how her neighbors all have cancer and are ill and there's spraying going on in the background and she's like, they spray every day, we have a picnic on Sunday, they spray, they spray, they're always spraying and you could say, well, she should move or whatever.

And I'm looking at that and I'm like, well, what is – what's in that spray? Like what is it that she's being exposed to constantly in her backyard i mean heavy metals and just toxins i mean it is antibiotics i mean everything it's the most toxic stuff you let alone it's shit and pee like yeah that's the least of the worries it's everything that's in there yeah it's really really those most the toughest time at least for me the filming going there seeing again when you talk about health and realizing health so many people talk about health and i i do yoga and it's the same thing people talk about health and you know oneness and you know true oneness and true health is when when

your family's healthy when your community is healthy when someone across the entire planet's healthy and you really we're living in balance symbiotically with you know our environment and that that's the same thing with the paleo thing well real paleo they live in at least an imbalance um but you just really see it when you go visit somewhere like north carolina it's really sad yeah it put a a real face on this industry and the the true victims you know clearly the the frontline victims are the animals that are being you are being slaughtered in unimaginable numbers. But then there's a very human face to it, and Renee Miller, that resident in Duplin County, she's lived there her whole life. I think she's third generation on that property.

They had a well all the way up until the 90s when the pig farms moved in, and now they can no longer use their well because it's so polluted with toxins from the farm that they have to now buy city water. And it's like the thought that you lived in this pristine environment for generations, and now this horrible polluting industry moves in, and you've got to buy tap water from the city. And it's just the injustice that goes on. And they know it, and the governments there know it,

but it's it's about making money and that's not happening only north carolina that's one of those things there's just so much you can put in a film but in calisperia we go in a little bit of it and this film a little bit of it but again compared to fracking gets so much attention of how much water consumes and how much water pollutes and you know destroying these communities animal agriculture compared to fracking there's no comparison so this is happening all throughout the midwest you look at the gulf of the um the gulf of mexico and it's just completely decimated and um it's just another another sad sad story of

this industry well i don't want to we gotta we gotta start beginning the process of wrapping this up and i don't want to leave people like super bummed out. So I think it is important to point out that there is a hopeful, there is a hopeful ribbon that, thematic ribbon that runs through this movie. who have changed their lives around and have like sort of had these dramatic recoveries from chronic illness as a result of making the changes that the doctors throughout the movie advocate. And I think we have two or three people that were at true health. So maybe kind of talk a little bit about who these individuals are. Cause I think it's pretty inspiring and it's amazing to see in such a short

period of time, like they don't even look like the same people. It's unbelievable. It really is unbelievable. True North, which is a health center based in Santa Rosa, amazing. They focus on water fasting, but just incredible. Dr. Goldhammer founded it. They allowed us to come and interview some of their… And Dr. Clapper.

And Dr. Clapper is based there as well, yeah. But we followed three people. Three. Three there. Three there who go through a process and just over the course of two weeks how they all came off their meds and we're talking about people incredible numbers of meds

two weeks some of them one lady she's on a walker and that was maybe a month yeah but she stopped all of her meds she was taking 20 plus meds and in two weeks of fasting and changing her diet you know getting off animal products getting off these inflammatory foods she comes off of it um we've got people with diabetes we have this amazing woman amy resnick

she lost i think it was 20 pounds in the first four days i mean and and i mean it's just incredible and just just to see too yeah how emotionally they change too i mean just how how easy they were to laugh and to smile and it makes sense it's if you don't feel well how are you going to have a positive attitude and a positive outlook on life you've got to start somewhere uh and so that's a really i think emotional aspect of the film and then just show too that you can do this and it's not some crazy extreme thing is that you can change how you how you eat and you're gonna you're gonna live differently beautiful man yeah it's pretty inspirational because i think that's you know people that are really struggling with their health that are going to watch this movie are going to be able to find the hope that they

need to make those changes through those stories yeah that's what's cool about the film there's a real solution and a real immediate solution you know this is within weeks of some either you're sick or one of your loved ones sick and just wants to do the say 30-day vegan challenge whole foods plant-based um or just to do a cleanse and to see the transformation that happens in only weeks. It's really exciting. And we had no idea until we went to True North to see how powerful that is because we're pretty healthy.

But to see that happen that fast, I had no idea. Yeah, it's amazing. And the lights just go on. Yeah, I need to see their eyes. And they come back to life. Like the woman who was on the walker all hunched over, just literally sleepwalking to her death and then you see her two weeks later outdoors walking and i'm like that does not look like

the same person at all yeah it's amazing and to see them as shocked as anyone because this is them going through decades of their doctors saying um that it's impossible this is the way your life is so this is the way your life is and then this is the way your life is. And then in only two weeks, all of a sudden this is happening and you just see the light turn on. And at the same time, feeling that they've, you know, the regret of them listening to their doctors for so long. But the most thing is I'm just so thankful they finally found a solution in another way.

Yeah. Awesome, guys. Well, listen, Cowspiracy, you guys hit it out of the park with that movie I still remember screening it for the first time when you guys were running your Kickstarter and Greg and I calling you guys up

and just being like how can we get more involved with what you guys are doing we were so impressed and then to see how far you have come and how many people you've impacted with that movie and then to see you come here and just knock it out of the park again. Like, I just can't wait for audiences to experience this movie. You've taken it, um, you've raised the bar, taken it to the next level.

And you guys are just magnificent, amazing examples of service. You're doing it for the right reasons. Your heart is into it. And that, that bleeds out into every frame of this movie. So congratulations, and it's just a privilege and an honor to know you guys and be blazing this path with you. Thanks, Rich. So, I mean, that's amazing.

Honestly, thank you for that. We are super excited because we're going to do a big Thunderclap campaign like what you did with Plant Power Way, which was awesome, amazing to see, to try and get as many people to pay attention to the film being premiered online. So again, What the Health film on Instagram and Facebook. I think it's actually WTH film on some social media. On social media, okay. Twitter and things like that.

Well, in the show notes, just go to the show notes for this episode on my website and I'll have all the appropriate links dialed in. The goal is really just get this film out as fast as it's up to everyone. You know, it's like how, it's like how Spearcy, we sure we made the film, but that was only part, that was a fraction of it. It was that everybody who shared the film, it's a tool. So the goal is to everyone to sign up for the thunderclap campaign and to tell everyone this to have all their friends and loved ones watch it

right and then and then beyond that the distribution plan is tbd right now tbd we're still figuring out we're talking discussion and figuring out the next step gotcha we've got some really exciting things coming out we've got a cookbook written by a registered dietitian, Carly Slauson. We've got a whole bunch of exciting things coming. So, you know, keep in touch with us. Good talking to you guys. Awesome talking to you. So psyched for you.

Yeah, congrats on the movie. Everybody check it out. You've got to see this movie. Watch it. Share it with your friends. Spread the message. Watch it, share it with your friends, spread the message, and let's together do what we can to solve this ridiculous healthcare, health, and environmental crisis that we're facing. These are very interesting times that we find ourselves in, and I think it's incumbent upon all of us to be as informed, as active, as compassionate, and as involved as we can be.

Well said. All right, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Peace. Plants. Awesome. We did it again on March 16th. What the health will be available everywhere at whatthehealthfilm.com where you can also pre-order the DVD and the cookbook, set up your own screening. And not only that, again, for the first four days, the 16th through the 20th of March,

50% of all sales are going to be donated to feed people in need with healthy food, thanks to their partner, Food Not Bombs. So that's a huge reason to check the film out immediately as soon as it becomes available on March 16th. In addition, these guys have a thunderclap running to help get the word out about the release. The link to that is in the show notes. You can sign up there to help share their message with your community, which is fantastic. And finally, we are hosting a live screening of the documentary on March 29th in Thousand Oaks, California, my neck of the woods. I'm going to emcee the event. We're working on some special guests. We're going to have a plant based dinner by joy cafe and desserts from karma Baker, our partners. Uh, and it's going to be

awesome. Uh, tickets are going really fast. There aren't very many left at this point, but there are a few left. So for information and to nab your seat please go to whatthehealthfilm.eventbrite.com and again i'll put the link in the show notes to that if you would like to support this show and my work there's a couple ways to do that the easiest way is just to share it with your friends to talk about it over the dinner table to throw it up on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or what have you, to leave a review on iTunes, to click that subscribe button on iTunes helps us out a lot. And also, if you want to buy something on Amazon, if you click through the banner ad on my website or bookmark it to your browser, that really helps us out a lot, sends us some commission change, doesn't cost you anything extra.

And also we have a Patreon page for those who want to contribute financially. And I greatly respect and thank everybody who has made that commitment to me. It means a lot to me. Big love to everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production, Sean Patterson for help on graphics,

Chris Swan for all his hard work on additional production assistance and compiling the show notes and all kinds of other behind the scenes stuff. And as always, theme music by Annalema. See you guys here in a couple of days. Am I going to do a midweek? I don't think so.

I think I'm going to do, the next one's going to be up next Sunday. I'm in Australia. I'm having a great time. I got to focus on these events coming up, but really happy to be bringing you this podcast today and look forward to seeing you guys here next week. Until then, make it great. Stay true. Peace. Thank you.