The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 244: Where's the Beef?

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Celebrity fitness trainer and unapologetic carnivore, Vinnie Tortorich talks diet, hormones, and why he has a beef with the fake-meat industry.

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And follow at Rails to Trails on social. Hello, friends. It's the way I heard it episode number 244. This one's called, Where's the Beef? Assuming, Chuck, there's no copyright issues. I think it's incredibly clever. I think there aren't. Who knows? But, yeah, this guy definitely knows all about the beef. Do you remember who said, where's the beef? Clara, somebody or other? Yep. Old woman, is that right? Clara Peller was 80 years old when she was hired to do that commercial.

for Wendy's. I mean, it not only changed Wendy's, it kind of changed advertising for a while. It was a huge campaign. Isn't that the age your parents were when you first started putting them in commercials? Pretty close. My mom was 80 when she got her first book published. But no, they kind of shnered their way into my world about 10 years before that. But anyway, we're calling it Where's the Beef? Because when Clara Peller posed that question, it sort of sunk into the nation's collective consciousness. And then, Any Tortorich has been posing the same question for the last. I don't even know, Chuck.

I think he's been talking about this most of his life. Yeah, I think since the 80s or lately. You know what, geez, that would have been a great question to ask him when we had him on here. You know what? We just had a really kind of unusual conversation with today's guests. It's a good conversation, but I honestly thought he was going to come on and really promote his new movie hard the way people do when they have new movies, especially when the movies are good. This movie's called Beyond Impossible. And it takes a really skeptical and intelligent look at these fake meat burgers and the whole fake meat craze.

And he gets into all aspects of vegetarianism and veganism and the movie, I mean, it's really captivating. It's gone to number one, I think, on Amazon and iTunes. if you're interested in nutrition and would like to lose weight. One of the first things we talk about is how he got a famous comedian to lose well over 35 pounds. And that kind of launched his career as a trainer and a fitness guru and a dietitian. And I don't even know how to introduce the guy. I mean, he's an author.

He's a filmmaker. He's everything I've already said. He's a cancer survivor. He had leukemia in 2007, he said. he's better now. So he's got leukemia and his doctor says, look, you kind of beat it, you're in remission, it's going to be back in five years.

And that's when he embraced this thing that today I guess we'd call it the keto diet or something like it. Where's the beef is the question? Because Vinny's answer is, it's in my belly. It's in my belly. Right.

He believes that you can eat it every day. He believes in a diet of fresh meat and fresh vegetables. Lose the grains, lose the sugars. That's what he's all about. NSNG, I think he calls it. No sugars. No grains. No grains.

Yeah. So full disclosure, we thought he'd be a good guest because Chuck and I, pre-pandemic, each found ourselves on the wrong side of our ideal weight. And what he recommends people do to lose weight and keep it off is precisely what you and I did without really knowing about any of his books. Yeah. Get up early. You walk six, eight,

miles a day. You cut out the grains. You cut way back on the sugars, way down on the carbs, and eat all the fresh meat and fresh vegetables you can find. It works. Does it work for everybody? I don't know. I'm not a dietitian, but he believes it does, and his movie makes a pretty good case for it. Well, that's the thing that I kind of wish we had talked more about the movie, because the movie, to me, I found to be really, really interesting. And it goes places that you don't expect it to go. It really does. And he comes at it, in my opinion, as a guy who is genuinely looking for the truth. And he invited people who might disagree with him on respectfully, and no one accepted his invitation. But I think he makes a very persuasive case. And I found

the movie to be entertaining as well as informative. What did you think? I think the movie's terrific. And I'm enjoying more and more of this idea that there's so many documentaries out there that people never see. There's so much content in general. It's impossible to watch it all. But the fact that his approach is an approach that I used makes him a super interesting guest to me, along with the fact that he's made a lot of enemies. Because look, this whole vegan thing, I say this with respect, but there are components to it that are cultish. And it's difficult to get out of that world once you're in it. And I know from firsthand experience,

I know a lot of farmers, I know a lot of ranchers. These men and women, they feel under siege. There is a war on meat, and it's not entirely warranted. And there are a lot of stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions in the food world right now. And he's cranky. He deals with many of them in this movie and in his prior movies. So we wanted to talk to him.

And if you want to drop 30, 40 or 50 pounds or maybe a whole bunch more than that and get a better sense of where the beef is, watch the movie Beyond Impossible. And since you've listened to us this far, listen to the rest of the podcast. It's called Where's the Beef? It's episode number 244. Did I miss anything? Just that it'll start right after this commercial. There you go. Do do do do do do do do do.

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Finney, do you go through this parade of horribles from a technical standpoint on your podcast? I do. I do. Here's the thing. Sometimes the people that come in and clean up, they will unplug something. I don't know what they're doing on plugging things.

but I'll do four podcasts in a day. Come back the next morning, turn it on, nothing works. Right. Nothing works. And of course, I started yelling and screaming. My wife comes down, and she somehow miraculously always figures it out. Is your wife an engineer by any chance? My wife is actually a bond girl.

I'm not making that part up. I can build anything. I've built combustible engines. I'm building a kayak right now. I'm a hands-on guy. My wife had her picture taken for 11. She could come down here and whip all this stuff up like this note tomorrow. I can't figure it out.

Computers are beyond anything I will ever understand. Beyond impossible. As a man's man, is there anything more just inherently emasculating than having your wife come down and fix a thing that is so in your wheelhouse and yet miraculously beyond your ability? to have to live with the undeniable truth of that, you know, that can't be easy. Actually, I don't feel emasculated because it's not man's work. She's touching buttons. In some cases, tapping on screens on glass.

It's just, I don't feel emasculated at all. I'm just happy that is working again, and I can earn a buck. So I'm happy. How do you do four podcasts a day? Aren't you bitter and broken and completely? I mean, do you get to the point? where you're pretending to be interested in things you're not? Every day.

But here's the deal. I do five shows a week for myself. You know, for the Fitness Confidential podcast, we have well over 2,000 episodes now. And I don't stop at that. I do everyone else's podcast. I don't care if you have five people

or five million people listening. I will do your show. And then I literally answer every single one of my Twitter questions every day, myself. And when I go to bed and my wife goes, you're so angry, it's like, I just had 20 vegans telling me that I'm killing everything, that I'm a horrible human being and I should die. How can I be any other way? I'll leave it all on the field. Yeah. Well, you're a glutton for punishment. You obviously are a jagged little pill who likes to keep the conversations lively.

I'm not surprised that you'll do a podcast irrespective of its size because I watched your fine film, which I hope to discuss with you at length momentarily. And I was really struck by that moment when you were talking to Greger, I guess, or Greger's people who wanted to know how many people listened to your social media channels before they committed to doing it. And I thought it was just awesome the way that whole thing spun out. But people do care about the audience size. I think it's cool that you don't.

Well, you know what's crazy, Mike, is this whole thing started with a book 10 years ago. I wrote a book and people over at William Morris and Devers said, we know who you are because you've been training our clients for the past 20 years. But you don't exist on Google. And I said, okay, that's by design. I don't want anyone to know who I. I work with celebrities. I don't want anyone to know my name, right?

Because as you know, you're a celebrity, whenever sources close to it's either the trainer or the masseuse or the hairdresser or someone that's giving the information, I loved living with total anonymity away from that. And then all of a sudden, William Morris is saying, you have this great book, yet we Googled you and you don't exist. Well, I went on Google that night to find out how to become famous on Google. And what I figured out was I didn't have a bikini, so that wouldn't work.

And I didn't have a squirrel that can duct tape to a set of skis. So there was no way to get a million followers on Google. And my nephew, Mikey Tauterat, said to me, he goes, why don't you do a podcast? And I said, what's a podcast? And he said, well, you had a radio show back in the 80s when you were in New Orleans on WSM. be. It's just like that, but you talk into the computer. And I said, well, who's listening? He says, whoever wants to. And I said, but none of this is making sense. This was on a Friday night. It's a radio show without a station. Yeah, he said, talking to your computer. And I said,

you want me to just talk into it? It was almost like a scene out of my cousin Vinnie. It's like, I killed a man in the store. I killed a man. It was like that. I couldn't figure. I was like, I talking to my computer. So that was on a Friday. I called my friend Anna Vocino, who's in voiceovers, and I said, Anna, you're the only person I know with a mic. Can you help me record a show? And she said, absolutely not. I will not, no way, don't even come over, don't even think it.

So I said, Anna, here's my book. She left on vacation for a week. She went on vacation to Hawaii. She read my book on herself. phone and she came back and she says, okay, we'll do a few podcasts, a few. We sat down that first Sunday and we did three. And that week we put out three shows. I went back next Sunday, we did three more. And the only reason Anna Vocino sat there was because I was giving information on weight loss and women love information on weight loss. And we've been doing it now for over 2,000

episodes. And here we are. I don't know how I got into that diatribe. I do. Here we are. I do. Because it's the same story that I have, basically. You must be, you were born in what, 60, 62, something like that? Mike, you and I have a lot in common. I was born in 62. Both of my parents were school teachers. My dad's a history teacher, a history professor, on down the line. As a matter of fact, someone said to me, they wrote to me and said, Mike Roe stole your bit. Which bit was that? What bit did the man who's way more famous than me? What did he steal? They said, you know the one where your mom comes on the show? And I said, well, let me explain. I'm pretty sure Howard Stern or someone before that created that bit. David Letterman.

David Letterman, yeah, there's a lot of people who've done that bit. It's like, it's not my bit. We just happen to have interesting moms. Yes. Period. Yes. Born in 62. Right. I think the diatribe you just hit me with vis-a-vis technology and connectedness has to do with the fact that you've known who you are for a very long time. And you've been saying the same basic things for a very long time. And then one day you woke up and technology had approached in a way that you had never seen before. And now suddenly you're looking for ways to take your basic worldview and your set of beliefs around health and nutrition in this case.

and distill it into some sort of modality that makes you what the kids would call hip or current. And that's what happened to me. It's the exact same kind of thing. And the reason that I wanted to talk to you, aside from the fact that your mom sounds amazing, is that I wish I had known you 10, 15 years ago, because I watched your movie. Everything you said in that movie was something that I learned the hard way. And by the hard way, I just mean that I did everything the same way all my life. And then I turned 50 and I gained two pounds every year for about a while.

And then really more than two pounds. I lost 40 pounds a couple years ago following the exact diet that you talk about in this movie. Chuck did something very similar. So together we were like, you know what? This guy is saying something that a lot more people should know about. So that's why you're here. I thought your movie was terrific. I haven't read your books, but I imagine it's a variation on the same theme.

Yeah, I put out a book called Fitness Confidential a little over 10 years ago now. When the book came out, first off, I was getting Simon & Schuster and Harper Collins. They were competing over the book. And they said both companies came back with the same deal. They said, we'll give you $50,000. I'm an unknown author. We'll give you 50 grand up front, but we want you to go back and write two books. So, therefore, we will give you $100,000, but we want a two-book deal.

And I was like, well, what's wrong with the book I have? And it's like, we just wanted to be two books. And I kept asking both companies, because I wasn't in the business. I'm not a writer. I'm just a guy who sat down and wrote. But I have the two biggest companies in the world saying, we want two books. and I couldn't figure it out. So one day I was talking to my agent,

I can't believe I even have an agent. I grew up on a bayou in southern Louisiana. I have an agent. I said, what's the two books? They said, well, it's a fitness book and it's an autobiography. I said, so wait a minute. Are you telling me that they don't know which shelf

to put it on in a bookstore? And she said, yeah, pretty much. And I said, okay, do they realize, that there's only one bookstore chain left in the whole world right now, and that one is going to probably close? Do they even know that? Have they even heard of a place called Amazon? And she goes, apparently not.

And at the time, I had already had per episode, this is the first year of the podcast, I had 10,000, 12,000 downloads per episode. This was 10 years ago. By the time I made the decision to self-publish, getting 60,000 downloads an episode. So I did some quick math. And I said, you know, if I self-publish this,

if 10% of my people buy the book, I will make as much money as they want to give me up front. For the first time ever, the gatekeepers in my life was taken away. I went through a life of creating fitness products in Hollywood for 35 years, getting screwed by Guthy Ranker, getting screwed,

all these infomercial companies that wanted my stuff, right? But I was going to get two pennies on a dollar. I couldn't do that. I would never sign my name and everything over to these crooks. So for the first time, I said, you know what, I'm going to believe in me. I'm going to believe in this project. I self-published the book, but I didn't just do some vanity press. I went out and hired the, what do you call them, the publicist?

Not the publicist. I have one. And by the way, don't get me started on publicists. That's a whole conversation for another day. The people who read your book and correct it and do all the stuff. The editors. Copy editors. I had everyone, you know, I hired their people.

It cost me $14,000. It was doing a time when, you know, I was coming out of cancer. Hollywood was in a writer's strike, the biggest writer's strike ever. We went right from that right into 2008. There was no money around. I took $14,000 of my own money that I really shouldn't have spent and I just let it ride. I let it ride. I got the best of the best.

I got the cover done. Like my book looked like any other book that you would get from Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, all of these people. And I took it straight to Amazon and I put it up there. And I asked my friend, Dean Lorry, you know, he was a writer and the whole thing I said, my book just went up and it's at 300,000. What does that mean? It's all the way up the end. He goes, look, if you make it into the top 100,000, you're winning.

He goes, don't expect it. He goes, if you get to 10,000, you're killing it. You're killing it. He goes, but don't expect to get lower than 10,000. That means out of all the books being sold on Amazon. Long story short, the book went from 300 to 100. to 10,000. By the end of the first day, my book was at 400 of all the books on Amazon. In my category, I was between a book by Tina Faye and a Queen of England. I was number two.

We took a screenshot of it. Because in what world does that happen? In what world? Our world. Our weird world, Vincent. I did the same example. thing with my mom's book. Her first book, nobody would touch it because they told her, if you write a bunch of funny stories about your son, Mike, then we might have an angle. So she went away and wrote a bunch of funny stories about her mother, who nobody's ever heard of. So they wouldn't touch her. We published 10,000, sold him in three or four days on Facebook. Then the publishers came back, and now she's a three-time bestselling New York Times, whatever. So the moral of that story is that you take the reverse commute. You're not going to follow the

well-worn path. I'm a fan for that reason, just from a business standpoint. But really, let's talk about what's in between the covers of the book and what's between the first frames and the last frame of your movie, which is called Beyond Impossible. That's the information that I think can actually change people's lives. And I know you've seen it firsthand for the last 20, 30 years, but sum it up for us. like we're small, backward children? Well, the book, as I said, it opens up with me sitting in a meeting with the gay mafia in Hollywood.

I mean, it reads like something that's, I'm over at Gowan Morrie, Sandy Gallen, Sand Dollar. They have me sitting there. All two stories in his book, it seems like it's made up. And they're saying, we understand that you're the quick weight loss guy here in Hollywood. And I was going to say, okay, let's go with that.

Sure. I'm the quick weight loss guy. And they said, well, we have a problem. This is in the days, Mike, when they still had 42 sitcoms on the air. And they said, we have this young lady, and we're doing a sitcom, and we're making her the Asian Lucille Ball. But she didn't test well. It was Margaret Cho. Everyone figured out it was Margaret Cho.

Right. She's too heavy. And they said, we need you to get 30 pounds off of her. And I said, okay. And they said, you have six weeks. And I started going, you know, you're going to have to cut off a leg. Well, I'm doing that, almost like it was in a movie. Sandy Gallen writes something on a piece of paper.

He folds it and he pushes it to me. I opened it up and there was a number on it that I had never seen before. He said, we'll give you a check for half of this up front. If you deliver in six weeks, you'll get the other half. And I said, okay, here we go. So I took 30 pounds off of Margaret Cho in no time. And they retested her. And they came back to me.

I'm sitting in that room again. Now there's Disney execs. There's all these people. And he said, Vinnie, you've done a wonderful job. You took 32 pounds off of her. but her face is still fat. Can you take weight out of her face? And I said, you guys realize she's Korean, right?

And the room exploded. This is 1992. We just want the record to show the record. We want the record to show that this is not us. This is Mr. Tataris that said these words. We mentioned nothing about her ethnicity and blah, blah, blah. And I'm looking around going, what just happened?

Right? And they said, can you get more weight off of her? And I said, how much more? And they said, whatever you can do, because we're going to make her the next Lucille Ball. She's funny. The college kids love her. And I do it. I take another 25 or so pounds off of her. And she shoots her sitcom. The sitcom is supposed to be the biggest thing that ever happened. She's on Letterman. And Letterman goes, you've lost all of this weight. How did you do it? This guy, Vinny. Every agent in town is writing down. Get this Vinny on the phone. She's on Leno. How did you lose the weight? Vinny.

She's on the guy, dog pound, who, who, who, Arsenio. How did you lose all the weight? Vinny. She put me in her act. You can still go on YouTube and find me in her act. She does a whole 10 minutes on me and some of her specials. Wasn't Margaret the one Vinny who would walk out on stage? I mean, she's clearly Korean.

but she had like a southern accent, right? What's wrong with this picture? No, that was another one. That's a whole different Asian. You've confused your Asians. Let the record show that Mike confused. No. You know, last week you had on one of my favorites, the money guy.

Oh, Dave Ramsey? Yeah, I love Ramsey, God. Yeah, he's awesome. And this week you've committed some kind of hate crime. This is great. I'm glad to be on your life. last show, by the way. Yeah, thank you. Do do do do do do do do. Dumb. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of

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like just a normal American girl, but she looks very Asian. Right. And her joke was, I looked like this, but I sound like this. And when she would get into her trainer Vinnie, she would go, first off, he's a trainer.

His name is Vinny, but he sounds like his name is Vinny. I can't do jokes, but that was the whole deal. That's how the book opens up. The first chapter ends with me rubbing the breast of one of my clients, because that was part of my job description. Whenever they had implants put in, the doctors would tell them you would have to massage these implants. They don't get scar tissue. The trainer walks in, and they want me to massage it. It's like, don't you have a husband? Don't you have someone else who, can do this stuff? Not like you. Do you not think that I'm not going to get turned on? And I'm

sitting there pretending, you know, what about what about the saints this year? They're looking pretty good, right? Yeah. I don't know what to do with this. Dave Ruth. What a player. What a guy. Dead nuns and puppies and everything I could think of. But that's how the first chapter ends. And then the book meanders into this guy who has all of these clients in Hollywood. I never really mentioned the celebrities. I allude to it. And then at some point you turn the page and the same guy, the healthiest guy in Hollywood,

is almost dead. I had really bad leukemia. One day my whole career just stopped. The book goes through that. Then it goes through what happens after that. But in there, there's a story about how to lose weight. And I called it No Sugars, No Grain. in S&G is what I used with all of my clients.

Everyone lost weight from it. I brought it to the world. As a matter of fact, I was so upset that once the book went past 100,000 sales, I was so upset that I didn't put more of a prescription in it. I went back and wrote a 25-page PDF. I put it on Vinny Tortoise.com. I'm telling this to your people right now. You can go to Vinny Tortoise.com.

get this free PDF. I've given it away over 300,000 times. There's no charge, there's no click funnel, there's nothing. As a matter of fact, I keep threatening to charge $10 for it. I'm not going to

do that for the next couple of months just for your audience. So go get it. So backing up, where was Atkins in the chronology of all of this? Were you really on the tip of that spear, that high-protein, low-carb, no-grain thing? Or was it sort of a hive mentality that

kind of emerged? Seems like a lot of people were talking about the same basic thing at the same basic time, but I might be conflating things. You're not. Atkins got it from Banting. This is not a new idea. We started working with, you know, people with cancer, you know, all the way back. You need to watch my first movie. I've done three documentaries now. The first It's called Fat, a documentary. I'd like to just spell them out. Yeah. Where I talk about just this whole 100-year history of how we got to where we are today.

Atkins just fell upon it by accident, started looking into Banting and all these other people and went, wait, these guys were right. This literature just keeps getting buried. Atkins pulls it out in the 1970s. He writes the book. Of course, Mike, we were young at the time, but you remember all the jokes if you watched any sitcom. It was, hey, I'll have that steak with a cardiologist. You know, it's like everything was,

you can lose weight on Atkins. You're going to look like a great corpse, right? We were still on this cholesterol thing. The thing that happened when my generation came along, because I started following this, I have a degree in exercise, physiology, and nutrition from Tulane University. I started looking at this in 1981

because I was the only guy in my class that was curious. Every other kid there was just trying to get to med school. The only reason I was at Tulane was because they gave me a football scholarship. My parents couldn't even afford to let me go have lunch at Tulane. School teachers don't make that kind of money. So I'm sitting there in class going, I'm getting a free education, I'm going for it. I'm going to ask questions.

Every time my hand went up, everybody would go, here we go. I was that guy, right? But I'm infinitely curious. And I'll never forget, being in a class and one of the professors saying that the body needs fat is fuel. It's your body's preferred fuel.

And I'm a voracious note taker. About a month passes, and we're talking about sports. and carbohydrates, same professor. And he goes, you need sugar for sports. You need a lot of sugar. It's quick energy. Hand went up, everybody.

And I said, wait a minute, back on, and I'm flipping the pages back. Back on September 26th, you said that fat is the preferred fuel. He goes, no, it's sugar. It's like, okay, did the science change between September and today? Because I'm confused, right? and that was my first clue.

My second clue was I walked into a gym in 1971. I was nine years old. And I never walked out of a gym. No matter what, I always went to the gym, and I watched bodybuilders. I was enamored with these guys who would put on all this fat and all this weight while they were building up their muscle.

And right before competition, they would cut everything out except protein. and then two days after the competition, they would start getting fat again. I'm observing this. So between college and observing these athletes and what was going on, I was building this case of,

can we look like this all the time? Can we do this forever? And that was kind of, I've gone into another diatribe, but that was the beginning of it. That's how I started messing around with it, if that makes any sense. It makes perfect sense.

So you've got a natural or maybe an unnatural sense of curiosity which you indulge from the jump. But you also got sick and was there some level of physician heal thyself kind of thing? It must have become very personal your whole diet, weight loss, health journey

when you wake up one morning and you've got leukemia. You came through that obviously and now I'm really not sure how to describe you, but one of the things I loved about the movie was that you seem not angry, because angry never works. You seem agitated. You know, you seem like one of those guys

who wakes up just a little pissed off because the world's not quite the way it ought to be. And maybe it's because of professors who change their mind, or maybe it's because of a fickle universe that deals some people some rough cards, or maybe there's just, maybe it's the vegans, maybe it's carbohydrates. You seem almost tortured, but delightfully annoyed, yet with an overarching shot of agitation,

that seems to be driving you. Forgive me if I'm just reading too much into it. You're not. Look, I'm going to be 60 years old in a few months. I'm still sporting a 30-inch waist. I'm not saying that to brag, maybe a humble brag, but I have a younger brother who was actually a better athlete than me. He was maybe eight years younger than me.

The guy looked like the statue of David coming out of high school. And I've not seen him under 300 pounds in the past 30 years. I have a lot of family members who are like that. It bothers me that the people I love, smart people, are following the advice of the government. We have this new term following the science all the time, right? following the pyramid, following all of the stuff, and it's leading us down this weird path that's not correct.

It's not even kind of correct. When I started this 10 years ago, I was just trying to sell a book. That's it. I'll admit it. But when I've seen all of the good intentions of all of these people just lost and gone, you look at that and you go, someone has to stand up for these people, someone. I'm not mad at veg

I'm not even upset with vegans the people who go vegan are trying to do the right thing I'm upset with the doctors the vegan doctors who are lying to these people and as you saw in the movie I begged the top guys

in that arena to come into the movie I was going to ask them the same questions I was asking everyone else and categorically got turned down by every single one of them. Every single one, not even a, let me think about it. Vinnie, I just want to say that's one of my favorite

parts of the movie is how you read the letter that you send to these guys to try to get them to weigh in. And Mike's right, you're not angry. It seems to me like you genuinely want to get to the bottom of it. And I am always suspicious of people who will not

come to the debate, who will not come and defend their position because I feel like that's the best way to learn is when you have two opposing views and people hash it out, you're left with having to make a choice or maybe considering something you hadn't considered before. It's like the best way to learn, I think. So good on you for that.

Well, thanks, Chuck. It's never an easy thing to be the guy always pushing the boulder uphill. But I'm just one guy out there trying. I get support from people like Dr. Drupinski will have me on whenever. Adam Carolla's had me on almost a hundred times, you know, which is crazy to me. I went on for one show, and then they had me back two weeks later, and they had me back every two weeks until I actually left California.

Now they have me on about once a month or, you know, whenever they can get me back. I love these people for doing that because they have big megaphones, and it gives a guy like me a chance to get the word out there. And what is the word? What exactly is the message? distilled. Wow. To put it in any kind of short term, it's hard to do.

I would say this. If we can just get people off of engineered food, period, we would be doing 85% better. Because engineered foods have seed oils, which is an abomination. Seed oils are good for tractors and anything else. Lubrication. It's not meant for humans.

the amount of sugar and fructose we put in everything, even when you can't taste it. When I tell people to get off of sugar and grains, they'll say, I'll talk to them weeks later, and they'll say, wait, you're still having salad dressing? I said, no. Yeah, but it's a ranch. There's no sugar. No, no. There's high fructose corn syrup in there. That's how they get you hooked. You can't even taste it. You can't even taste it. We have engineered foods. If people can just go back to eating, that's the one thing I love about, vegans the ones that just eat whole foods are actually doing 90% better than anyone else the only thing they're missing is their vitamin b12 and some iron and other stuff that they have to take

exogenously just to make it work but if you want to do that i'm fine with that if you're a vegan because you're saving animals think again yeah because that ain't happening no it's my favorite part of the movie when you really walk people through the reality of what a combine does in a wheat field. When you consider the moles and the voles and the mice and the rats, when you consider the bunny rabbits and the squirrels, all that stuff gets scooped up and many times mulched. And so how many vegans are eating rice that is actually ripe with protein from God knows how many rodents that got scooped up in the whole thing? How many vegans are enjoying their diet, their menu with no understanding.

of the number of wild hogs that have been slaughtered in the tens of thousands and not even eaten, simply shot. That's crazy. Your movie is very similar to my mission. We're trying at MicroWorks on a daily basis to confront the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that keep people from exploring a career in the trades and suck them into the well-worn path of a four-year accreditation without really thinking critically. I'd like for you to talk about the stigmas and the stereotypes

and the myths and the misperceptions that pull people toward vegetarian diets and pull people toward these fake meat alternatives and how it came to be that red meat became the enemy. Well, Mike, in order to explain that, we need to go back to 1865 and a woman named Ellen G. White, Sit back, folks. I'm getting ready to do one of Micro's short stories.

Oh, boy. Here we go. The way I heard it. Sit back. 1865. So we're in America and the Civil War is just ended? Just ended. And there's a woman named Ellen G. White. She belonged to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Ellen woke up one morning and she said, I had a premonition. God came to me during the night. Now, in 2022, if someone wakes up and says God came to me during the night,

you would go get that person help immediately. But in 1865, that didn't happen. They said, really? What did God have to say? Was he upset? He said, don't eat anything with a face. That's where that term,

that vegan term comes from 1865 in LNG White. don't eat anything with a face. During that time, there was a young man working for the church. He was around 14, maybe 15 years old, and he had the skill of typing. And he would type all the stuff for the Seventh-day Adventist Church and this propaganda that they started working on because what they figured out was the Seventh-day Adventist, I don't know if you know this, but they don't believe in sex a whole lot.

I don't know how they intend to impropriating. They keep showing up. they get more seventh day dentist. Yeah, they need to have some sex from time of time. But the one thing they will not stand for is any form of masturbation. And they found that if you took young men off of meat, they're not as virile. So they have this young 14-year-old guy typing this stuff up. And that young 14-year-old guy was very smart.

And he became a doctor. The doctor's name was Dr. Kellogg. and he started a company called Kellogg's. He was a staunch believer and no sex unless you're procreating, period. Your wife doesn't matter. He also came up with something called dextronization. Do you know who that is? Dexterization.

That's the removal of, I would imagine, dextrose or some sort of sugar, maybe flour. I remember a Reverend, I think it was Reverend Graham. It was. Yeah, we did a story about him. It was part of the great masturbation scare, and these guys were trying to get bland foods into America's diet, I think. Yeah. Well, what Kellogg figured out was if you burn wheat long enough, you can extract the sugar. You can get the dextrose. You could get most dextrose comes from rice now, but you can get it from corn or anything else. And he came up with the flake. They decided with this flake. going to tell guys, instead of having eggs and meat for breakfast, a meal that largely wasn't

eaten back then, we're going to have these people used as flake to fill them up. And that became corn flakes. He had a friend named CW. Post who started a company called Post C.O. That guy took it to a different level because that church did not like coffee. Coffee was was one of those things you shouldn't have. So he came up with a drink called Postum, where he burnt the flakes and made it look like coffee and started a campaign saying that if you let your kids drink coffee, they will become dumb.

See, there was no Google back then in the early 1900s, but what you did have was friends who had newspapers. And that's how a lot of the word got out. They would just write these articles across the country. Don't let your kids have calls. that is going to stunt their growth. Any of this stuff sounds familiar? You're going to become dumb.

All of this stuff. As a matter of fact, coffee. Now, you have to take this with a grain of salt. I own a coffee company. So please listen. Oh, Vinny owns a coffee company. Of course, he has a hammer. Everything looks like a nail.

But coffee next to water is probably the healthiest drink you can have. Period. I drink it all day. But why? Antioxid it? It's a great antioxidant. It controls the adenicine and your brain. It just does all of this great stuff.

Now, some people, when they have too much coffee, they can get nervous and the whole thing. Coffee's never been shown to cause high blood pressure, heart disease. These are all things made up. By the way, they went after the salt industry the same way, but I digress. Let's go back to John Kellogg, and what he was doing, between he and Post, they both decided, hey, let's run this campaign that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And you've got to start a healthy breakfast with our product. All of that came out of people making flakes and getting us away from eating real food.

Let's eat this bastardized food instead of real food. Well, this was clipping along. Not everyone was buying into it. I guess lazy moms were given their kids cereal. I don't know. know living on Bayou Lafouche in southern Louisiana, I never saw cereal. It was always bacon and eggs. We didn't have it. I saw the commercials. I didn't have a Pop-Tart. None of this stuff, right? It just didn't exist on the Bayou. You could smell bacon coming out of every house.

It wasn't until Dwight D. Eisenhower had a heart attack. Everyone loved Ike. The guy has a heart attack, and right there, right at that time, there was a guy named Ansel Keys who was trying to push this idea of less meat, more grains. Now, why he was trying to do that is anyone's guess. But this is where the problem really starts in 1958. You see, we just kind of meander it on from 1865 right up until 100 years later, 90 years later, now we have a heart attack. the heart attack scene around the world. Ansel Key starts saying that meat is the problem. He has no science, nothing.

As a matter of fact, at some point he runs what's called the seven country study. You can go look this up. The problem is that he didn't study seven countries. He studied 21. And he squinted and looked really hard and found seven countries that kind of fit his model. Wait, hang on, I just told a lie.

He found six countries that worked in his model, but he figured he needed to get at least one-third to prove his point. So he went back to Crete in Greece during Lent. The only time these Cretans won't eat meat is during Lent. And he did another 40-day study, and he went, aha, no meat, no heart problem, I'm in. The whole thing was a lie. But we went with it, and it really didn't take hold until 1968. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap.

They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant. like never before, with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode,

join the skilled trades movement, support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself and see too, easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skills usa.org slash Mike. I'm talking skills, U.S. Skills, U.S. Skills USA. McGovern, God, that guy started it all.

The Democrats were trying to figure out how to give free food to poor people in the South. So they started this whole thing to figure out food stamps. During this 10-year period, they met for 10 years, by the way, I'm not making that part up. Ansel Keys got in there and started working his magic with this, hey, we could give him more grains, is cheap. We subsidize grains anyway. Let's give them more grains. Let's do this. As a matter of fact, in 1978, when they ended the McGovern Committee, they threw their hands up and went, okay, we'll just go with what Ansel Keys is talking about. And by 1982 or 83, we had the food pyramid where the whole bottom of the pyramid is grains. As a matter of fact, you don't find

meat until the very top. The small part. And if you notice, you guys are the same age, right, Mike and Chuck? Very close, yeah. Okay, we're all the same age. When we were in high school, if a girl had an extra five pounds on her, she was the chunky chick. The fat guy in my school,

his name was Phil Callahan. He was my best friend. He weighed 210 pounds. That's it. Now I'm working with people who weigh five and 600 pounds. There are TV shows, my 600-pound life.

There's 1,000-pound sisters. When I was a kid, I would look at the fattest guys in a Guinness Book of World Record, they were on little many bikes, right? These two, they weighed like 400 pounds. They have the world record. We have that walking around now, right? It's crazy where we've become in such a short period on this diet.

And that, my friends, is why I'm angry. Now you know the rest of the story. There's a beat in your movie. A picture tells a thousand words, right? Obviously, that's why documentaries are. a really effective and different way to deliver the message. We can podcast to the cows come home. You can write books until Simon & Schuster goes out of business.

But when you show people a shot of Woodstock, a big panning shot of the whole crowd and basically play a game called, Find the Fat People, and you can't. And then, what, 30 years later, Woodstock revisited, play the same game. Actually, play Find the Skinny people. Good luck.

Yeah. Because, I mean, you're right. In the period of a couple decades, something chemically must have happened. It can't just be social. It can't just be choices. There's something with the chemistry, it seems. We're a big, fat country, Vinnie.

We're going to break under the weight of our own weight. You know, we're looking at war, now going on over in Russia and all this stuff, if we had to go to war, we're going to break under the weight of our own weight. And health care, how are we supposed to support this? You guys really have to watch my first movie. Still today, it's the number one movie Gravitaz Ventures has ever put out. A documentary.

This is a big distribution company. And when I call Gravitas, the president picks up his phone because it's like, wait, Vinny's putting on another movie, we'll do it. the first movie, Fata Documentary, tells a story that you would not believe. I'm here promoting my third movie, telling you guys about the first movie. You need to go west of that movie. You will be shocked at what you see in that movie. You're going to go to that?

I can't believe it. Where can we see it on Amazon, iTunes. It's on 70 VODs around the world. As a matter of fact, I love it when I get on airplanes and I see that I'm in the queue. I usually wait for about 30 minutes and I go to the bathroom in the back and I walk up the aisle to see who's watching.

But that movie has changed so many lives. I'm happy and I'm proud I did it. I'm glad that I was part of it. I crowdfunded that movie. I didn't want to do it. People kept saying you have to do the movie. You have to do it. We've heard the podcast.

And we did a crowdfunding campaign and I was looking for $150,000. My friend Mike August over at Adam Carolla said, you need way more than that to finish a movie. The crowdfunding went to a quarter of a million dollars. We were asking for 150. We got $100,000 over that. And it still took some of my money to finish it. But once I got it finished and put it out there, it did well.

It did so well that during the pandemic, I took the money that it made, and I made FATTA documentary 2 to tell the rest of of the story, I took the same people that were interviewed in one and just let them talk and two. Then when the money came back on that, I said, okay, this whole fake meat industry is coming around. I need to take this money. I never keep the money. I don't feel like it's my money. I crowdfunded it. It's not really mine.

And I just keep making movies with it. I don't make a dime on my documentaries at all. What has been the response to Beyond Impostal? possible, both from the experts you invited on who demurred courteously, and the vegan community in general. How big a target have you put on your back with all this? I have a concealed carry at this point, if that's what you're asking. And I'm not being funny. Yeah. You know, I get death threats daily. I don't really worry about if someone wants to kill me, fine. What are you going to stop? You're not going to stop it. You can stop me.

you picked a fight with a cult Vinnie right it's the only eating disorder that we allow where you can't judge people think about it it's an actual eating disorder

where you can't judge I'm at the point where I don't care if you don't stand for something you fall for nothing you fall for everything I look around and go someone's got it you know no one's picking up this cause

I found you when someone said you got to go wise this guy is down in Louisiana messing with alligators that was the first one I saw that Gary Savoy I have friends that have alligator farms I know what that's you can't get that smell out of your skin when you leave nope the alligator farm you're a guy out there doing stuff I listen to you and Chuck every week as a matter of fact I was so worried about you guys when you went from that short format to the lunger oh boy oh boy what's he doing what's he doing I love to

short format. I knew some of the names. I knew Mary Shelley. I knew the thesaurus guy. I have weird information. It's like, why is he going away from? And then I hear the news show and I love it even more. Because you're doing stuff that no one else is doing. And I love that. I can't get enough of that. Well, Vinnie, thanks. But look, here's the torture. I'm sitting here listening to you talk right now. And I admit, change is tough. And I like that old format too. It takes a while to write those stories. I wish I could do it faster, but I got a story on Kellogg's. I got a story on Post. I got a story on Bernays, the father of modern PR, who worked with guys like Smithfield to help create the alternative breakfast that you were talking about that put bacon on the menu in a meaningful way. So,

you know, I could take this podcast and I could put those stories in front of it and then I could bring on an expert like you to take a deeper dive. But the truth is, man, I'm still trying to figure out why people listen to podcasts too. Sometimes it's to be entertained. Sometimes it's to hang out with people that they like. And sometimes it's to be straight up informed. And so I worry, when I have a guest on like you, part of me, I just want to sit here and bullshit with you for about three hours. I'm not going to do that because we're all terribly busy people approaching the end of our lives. Who's got time? But I do need you to talk real specifically, if you would, to guys like me and Chuck and women. Look, Chuck lost 30, 35 pounds

following your diet. I lost 40, and we've each kept the weight off for the most part. What changes, and by the way, just not to make it about me, but what I did, diet-wise, was exactly as you propose. What I did exercise-wise was I stopped going to the gym and I stopped running. What I started doing was getting up every morning and walking six to eight miles. Usually on the phone with Chuck taking care of business, listening to a podcast and so forth. And then the great indulgence, I cut out beer along with the rice and along with the pasta and along with the French fries, but I didn't cut out booze. In fact, I might have even doubled down.

So I stopped working out the way I used to. I kept the booze in my life because I enjoy it. But I committed to eating as much red meat, fish, poultry, and vegetables as I could shovel down my well-muscled throat. And it worked. And it's still working. I haven't really become an evangelist for it, but I'm a fan of it. And if it worked for Chuck and it worked for me, my color's better. I don't need as much sleep.

A lot of nice things happened as a result of this diet to me. but I can't be an evangelist like you because I don't know how broadly or how emphatically I should speak about it. But I am asking you, are there some treats I can keep around the house that I can eat whenever I feel like it that won't swell me up like a tick? Oh, you just became Adam Carolla. That's the only reason the guy's had me back 95 times. Yeah, he's just picking your pocket for free advice. He wants to know what he could get. Yeah.

Okay, I'm going to do this in cartoon fashion so that anyone out there can understand what I'm talking. talking about. My problem is sometimes I get too scientific. And if I do, stop me and ask. Okay. I've seen more people with the good intention of running a marathon to lose weight actually get to the finish line of the marathon heavier than when they started because of cognitive dissonance. The first thing that happens when you start running a marathon, you go to a running store and you buy shoes and there's a wall of sugar. It's all dextrose. It's goo. it's power bars, it's Gatorade, it's junk. It's like you're a kid at a birthday party of junk.

And when you start, they tell you you need this to run. So the reason I'm even bringing this up is because you can't outrun a bad diet. You can't out exercise it. Calorie and calorie out will never work. Let me give you the world's best epidemiological study. It's called Weight Watchers. I hope they're not a sponsor of your show. Not anymore.

Not anymore. They were. Weight Watchers has admitted that their diet fails 98% of the time. But that's okay because part of their business model is you can sign up and do it again. Because it wasn't their fault you couldn't stick to it. It's your fault. Now, why am I bringing up what does marathons and weight watches have to do in common? In both cases, people are relying on a cash.

Calorie in, calorie out proposition. You talk to most doctors who took zero nutrition, because when doctors are learning to be doctors, they're learning how to heal people or how to put a band-aid on something. They're not learning nutrition. That's left to idiots like me who usually end up in high school

telling people to get your gym clothes on. Calorie in, calorie out has never worked, and it never will. Now, people will say, well, Vinnie, you're wrong. I went to weight watches and I lost 100 pounds, and I'll say to them, How much weight did you put back on? Well, I put 120 back on. People who get gastric bypass.

Most of the 5- and 600-pound people I work with have gastric bypass surgery. There are doctors out there telling people they can't be trusted with a stomach. We're going to cut the stomach out and your problems are going to go away. Again, just like Weight Watchers, it's a calorie-in, calorie-out proposition. when you cut someone's stomach out, not only they're not getting enough calories, they're not getting enough nutrients, and they end up having other problems.

If you drove your car down the road, and I'm assuming you have a car with gas and a diesel, not an electric car, or even electric car, you can take any kind of car. You run it down the road, it runs out of whatever energy it's running on. You run out of gas, you run out of battery, you run out of diesel.

Do you expect your car to continue going down the road? No. The answer is no. Unless we're going downhill, no. Yeah, and eventually you can't go downhill forever. So unless you get out and push, the car can't continue. It's out of fuel. Yet we tell people that calorie in, calorie out works. Run yourself out of fuel and keep operating.

It makes no sense. And most people can do it for a period of time. They will white knuckle themselves usually down. about 100 pounds because that's a courageous number to get to and at some point there'll be a birthday party there'll be an anniversary there'll be a Super Bowl or something and on that day without them even realizing it when they have that first beer or that first thing they're reversing and they're going the other way and they don't even see it happening it just happens those are the problems now here's your solution feel like I'm writing for a Stallone movie now

You're a problem. I'm the solution. If it's not calories, period, then what is it? It's hormones. It's hormones. So how does that work? Well, we have three or four hormones that are working together to make you either fat or thin. Both of you guys married? No?

No, neither. Ever date women? More than a few. Okay. If you went to one of those women, the day before their period started, and you said to them, hey, listen, I want you to concentrate really, really hard and not have your period this month. Can they do it? Not in my experience.

No, they've tried. It does not work. It's like, oh, we're going to the beach. Just concentrate really hard. No period. They can't do it. Why? Because hormones come in every month on the 27th or 28th day and says, we need to flush out.

that egg, we need to rebuild it, get ready for another month. That's what happens. That's dictated by hormones. The same thing happens when you gain and lose weight. When you eat something with sugar, this is where I'm going into the cartoon model, and stop me if you don't understand it, you eat something with sugar or grain. Your sugar level goes up and your body releases insulin to push it down. And it does. It does that very successfully. If you just ate a candy, you just ate a candy, bar or if you just drank one beer, it would do its job and it would stop. But who in the hell drinks one beer? No one. Right? And when you eat a candy bar, the first thing you want is another candy bar. I'll explain why later. If you just did that, it would squash it.

That's the 1970s, right? We would have like one Coke or we would have one candy bar. We would have one something. Nothing came in supersized. Nothing came in 60s. four ounces. We didn't have family bags. A bag of Cheetos you could fit in the palm of your hand when I was a kid. Now the regular bag, you can't even get two hands around it. So when you have too much of the stuff, you don't have a spike of sugar, you have a load. It stays up. And your body has to keep releasing insulin on top of it. And what happens to that insulin is you become resistant to it. I'll give you an example of that. If you never, you never, you know, drank and you have one scotch, you would be pretty tipsy, right?

But if you drink one scotch every day, now you have to have three or four to get to that same tipsy as a teetotaler. You've become resistant to the alcohol. The same thing happens with this insulin. So your body keeps releasing insulin. And when it releases insulin on top of this sugar, it pushes the sugar into your bloodstream. But guess what? We're all We have all the sugar we need, but it's got to go somewhere. Where's it going to go? Ah, we can turn it into a long-chain triglyceride and store it in a fat cell to be used later. But here's the problem with the long-chain triglyceride.

We've all heard of medium chain. They call it MCT, MCT, medium-chain triglyceride. We have short-chain triglyceride. This is currency that we use for energy all the time. the long-chain triglyceride goes into the cell and it has trouble coming out. Think of it this way. You go to the store, you buy a bed. You got your mattress, your box springs, you got your headboard, what have you.

You can easily walk it through a bedroom door. But once you set it up, you can't just pull it out. It takes work. You have to tear it down again. It's hard to get a long-chain triglyceride out of a cell. It's going to keep using the medium chain as currency. So, insulin is pushing sugar into a fat, the fat gets stored, and it doesn't want to come out. That's problem number one.

Now for the insidious part. We also release something called grelin. It's another hormone, and there's another hormone called leptin. Grelin is the hormone that gives you that hunger pain. It's time to eat. But when it's constantly being delivered, just like with the insulin, What happens is you become resistant to it. Now you feel hungry all the time.

When we were kids, there was an old saying, what do you need 30 minutes after you have a Chinese meal? A Chinese meal. You need a Chinese meal. Now here's the interesting part. Most people don't know this part. This is where I sound really smart, so hang on, guys. It takes three hours for our stomach to empty its content.

Yet your brain is sending a signal 30 minutes after that meal of nothing but sugar and grains that you're hungry again. You have a full stomach, but your brain goes, he's starving. I need to find food now. That's Grelin. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Rowe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble.

It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living. Trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants. Thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious

mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend 100 bucks and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange, bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's Code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old fashions every time. It's my favorite way to support microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirates.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirates.com. Soon may the nobleman come to bring a bottle for everyone. When the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. But why does that happen?

Why does your brain do that? Because when you become resistant to something, it keeps loading that hormone on. You're getting the missed signals. Go back to my theory of drinking. You need more drinks to get there. Am I explaining this correctly, Chuck? It's good, Benny. But tell me if this is analogous.

I met a guy a couple months ago called Ed Curry. Ed has created the hottest peppers in the world, the ghost peppers, the pepper X. And, you know, I ate one of these things. It puts you into another sort of dimension. The pain is almost impossible to describe. But Ed said, look, that hot pepper on your tongue, in your mouth, on your lips, in your throat, it's not really burning you. It couldn't really burn you because if it did, it would burn a hole straight through your stomach

I can write out your butt and you'd be finished, right? Right. What it's doing that Capsason is sending a message to your brain, and your brain is telling you, okay, that's really hot. You don't need any more of that. It's a confused signal. You're not really hungry, but your brain says you are. Your mouth isn't really on fire, but your brain says it is.

And you're saying that's happening because hormones. Signal. Yeah. All right. That tracks. I guess it gets really crazy. leptin. Leptin is the hormone that tells us we're full.

You're topped off. But when you have that being delivered all the time, the switch is in the wrong direction, and your brain is always telling you you're empty. Now, I'm going to give you an example, and when you hear this example, you're going to go, God, Vinnie's probably the smartest guy we've ever had on the show except maybe Dave Ramsey.

If I gave you a family bag of Doritos and you were watching a football game, you can tell yourself you're going to have a few. You bought the family bag because, you know, you frugal as less, you know, to get the big guy. Yeah. So you got the big giant bag. And you're sitting there and you're watching the Packers,

and you're eating and you're eating. Before you know it, the bag is empty. And you're literally tearing it open and licking out the mylar inside of this bag. When half time comes, you're running upstairs to see if there's anything you can eat. If I took you to a steakhouse, say we went to Boa, we go to meat down in Santa Monica, one of my favorites, and you get the big tomahawk, and they bring you a pound of beef, and you eat the entire thing. If they brought out another tomahawk right after that, you would tell

them to bag it up, you've got to bring it home. Well, obviously, you've never eaten with me. God. Remind me not to pick up the tab if we go out to eat. Yeah, trust me. But if you eat a big giant steak, you're sated. Now, here's the crazy thing. I've checked. The bag of Dorito is 17 ounces of corn, and you're starving. The hormones are releasing.

You can't scratch the itch, no matter how you try. Yet when you eat fat and protein together, you become sated. Now, right at first, you might not. But as you work eating in that direction, just eating fat and protein, you'll be fine. Now, to get back to your original question, booze, how does booze play into this? Well, you can almost look at distilled liquors as its own macronutrient. Macronutrient number four. It metabolizes differently than anything else.

That's why when they make keto treats and everything, they put erythritol. It's basically sugar alcohol. It will make you crap your pants. Yeah. But if you want to have that taste, that's why I tell people, and that's where I'm telling you, if you're eating a correct diet most of the time, if you want the beer on the weekends, and it's only one or two, you're fine.

The problem is when one or two becomes five or six, now you're getting too much carbohydrates. Beer is nothing more than liquid bread, period. Right. Whereas scotch and bourbon and, you know, all of it, even tequila, all of it, you can have as much as you want, no problem. Did I answer the question because it was kind of, of a weird question, but that's how we lose weight.

Well, it all tracks, and it's why we don't lose weight, obviously. But I guess I'm just asking for not really a shortcut, but maybe a hack. Because what happened, I was highly motivated for about a year. And then I wasn't as motivated, but I wanted to stay at 195 pounds. And I've been able to do it, but there are days, you know, when I just want to grab a handful of something. and shove it in my mouth. I know enough to not reach for the family bag of Cheetos.

What should I reach for? Besides carrots, which have a nice crunch, but peanuts, beef jerky, is that too processed? What's your go-to? I'll tell you my go-toes. Maybe that'll help. I don't do much in the way of processed meats. When I'm on the road, if it's a car trip,

I may take some processed meats, but it comes from a butcher. It's not from a package from Oscar-Mey or something. It's something that's really done well. But my go-toes are high-fat cheeses. I love Stilterns and blue cheese and other kind of stuff. Triple Cream Bree. Trader Joe's does a good job of putting out stuff like triple cream brie.

You can find other kind of stuff. Pork rinds and chitlins are both great. Stay away from the ones that are barbecue flavor because usually there's sugar in that or something else in that. There's a company I'm not associated with. with them in any way, shape, or form called Epic, because the problem with a lot of pork rinds is they can cook them in seed oils. You want the ones that are cooked in their own fat. So Epic is a great brand for that. As far as nuts go, I'll give you the nut ranking.

Macadamia Nut is at the top because it's mostly fat with some protein, very low carbohydrate. Walnuts are great. Pecans are great. And almonds. are great. When you get below almonds, when you start getting into cashews, you're getting into a lot of carbs. My favorite all-time nut is, but don't write this one down

because it's not good for you, is pistachios. Nothing tastes as good as a pistachio. It tastes almost like a potato chip because it's all carbohydrates. Damn it. So I gave you all the nuts. You have cheese, you have nuts, you have pork rinds, crunchy.

I do a lot of sausage. I'll make up a bunch of different sausage from the butcher, not the crappy stuff, and I'll just have it hanging around. I'll go in the fridge and just cut it up into medallions when I'm sitting here at the desk and get some, you know, anything from horseradish to a really nice hot mustard and just do it like that. As far as fruit goes, berries. Berries are great. Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and you can always mix them. I do it with usually cream fresh.

Might as well get, you know, if you're going to do it, don't just sit there and eat a sugar thing. Eat it with fat so that you won't eat as much sugar and you'll have more of a good fat in you. So if you want something with a sweet taste, you can do that. I tend to stay away from peanut butter. If you want to do a butter that you can get a nut butter that you can get a whole to, almond butter is the best way to go. This is where I become hoity tooty. I afford myself macadamia nut butter.

walnut butter, pecan butter. But folks, that's caviar. It's expensive. Yeah. And I've never seen a cheap version of it. I don't buy it very often, but if I'm going to have a nut butter, I'll do that.

I'll get the high-end stuff. All right. I mean, that's all useful. I think maybe we should maybe land the plane with the original reason I told Chuck, I really wanted to talk to you, which was on dirty jobs years ago, I think before you started watching it.

watching it. I slaughtered a cow on camera with a mobile butcher, a guy named Earl, who worked for Earl's Meets. And we were somewhere in the western part of Michigan and we drove to a farm and it was a small farm, but they raised their beef to eat. You know, and these were nice people with kids and they got attached to their cows. And a lot of people, they don't want to kill their cows, but they're going to eat them. And this is a whole concept that I think a lot of people really hadn't pondered. But Earl shows up and he shoots your animal and he quarters it right there and takes it back to his place and turns it into about 800 pounds of steak and brings it back to you. Sometimes a month later after he dry ages it and sometimes a lot faster than that.

Point being, I wanted to do this story. I didn't clear it with the network. And the first thing that happened was I was handed a rifle and I shot the cow on camera. and we went about the business of following Earl through the process of turning it into 800 pounds of steak. Anyway, I've gotten a lot of grief over the years for doing a lot of things. There's a file over at Discovery right now that includes letters from PETA and OSHA

and the Humane Society and the FBI and just about every angry acronym there is. But nothing incited wrath like that. And one of the points of Dirty Jobs was to show people in no uncertain terms where their food came from. And that seems to be the thing that we share most in common, wanting to at least understand that. Thank you for doing that.

And ultimately, how much grief are you getting here in your dotage as you approach 60 years of age of shooting the metaphorical cow in the actual face for the last 40 years? Yeah, I get my fair share. By the way, I grew up hunting, and that's why I have so much respect for the meat I eat, because I've gutted and skinned and quartered more deer, rabbit, squirrels, and every kind of bird you can possibly imagine in my life. And I have great respect for it.

And, you know, I've never shot a cow, but I would. Because, you know, when the vegans go, do you even know where it comes from? It's like, oh, yeah, I've been up to my elbows and guts. I know exactly where it comes from. I feel that everyone should go hunting at least once in their life and take down an animal and do all the work and do it. Because there's no other way to appreciate, you know, I'm not very religious, but it's got like. It really has got like. As far as getting pummeled, how do you sell a book that has been sold over a quarter of a million times

and you watch your Twitter numbers go up and then go down, right? I'm shadow banned on Twitter. My numbers never go past 37,000. No matter how many times we've written to Twitter to get me a blue check mark, they pretty much tell us we're not doing blue check marks today. When we started Instagram a couple of years ago,

I watched my account within a week or two go from 500 to 5,000 to 5,000 to 10,000. This all happened in a couple of weeks. It got to 20,000, and it was zipped. And my guy that works out, he goes, it's very interesting. interesting for every two people you take on, they get rid of two people. And then people write to me, go, why did you cancel me and you're, it's like, I don't

do anything, they're doing it. I woke up one day and someone said, why did your Wikipedia go away? And I'm not aware of this. I went to Wikipedia and my Wikipedia was gone. My attorney contacted Wikipedia and said, what was wrong with his Wikipedia? And they said, we can't find one thing. fact that was right about this guy. And my attorney worked with him and said, well, what can you not figure out? It's like, well, we need an external source that he's actually written a book.

And it's like, well, it's on Amazon and it's on these five different places. And it's, it's like, we don't see that. It's like, but it is. They said, we can't prove that you've ever done three documentaries. We can't prove that you've ever done a podcast. There's external sources for all of this. but according to Wikipedia, none of it exists. We're living in a world. If everyone wants to think it's a fair world right now, think again. So more than people putting a target on my back, I'm being hammered on that end constantly.

As a matter of fact, as I mentioned before, my wife is an actress. So when my Wikipedia went away, I went to her Wikipedia, and they removed me from that. There's a Wikipedia of my hometown. I was on that Wikipedia as one of the famous people who came from this town of 6,000 people in the deep south. I was removed from that. The guy that wasn't removed is the local mafia dude. He's somehow famous in my hometown.

He died years ago, but he's on the Wikipedia, not me. How many books have you sold at this point? In or around 275, 280,000 books, all self-published. That's pretty good. That's amazing. Not bad for a kid that grew up on a bike, right? It's like an annuity. I've been selling it for 10 years.

I don't understand why your last name isn't pronounced to Torridge. Why is it Tortorich? It's Tatarisi. It's an Italian name. Most of my family changed it from an I to an H. And no one knows how or why or when it happened. But I have relatives that still spell it Tatarisi. And mine became Tartorici.

Which was good because I played football and it got butchered anyway. I wish my name was Mike Rowe. It's simpler. I'll tell you that. I'm glad it's not Chuck Klausmeier because they were to screw that up. Yeah, that's a rough one. So where do people start? If they want to take a deeper dive, if they want to drop 40 pounds in a year or so, if they want to change their diet and just to get armed without becoming an expert,

what's the pick line approach to getting the info they need? go right to viny tautnerich.com, find the free PDF, read it. I've had people lose three and 400 pounds, just reading that PDF. And they brag about it on Twitter and everywhere else. There's a Facebook group I have of 40,000 people, or 30,000 people in it.

All they do is I've never paid this guy a dime. I just read this PDF and lost. You guys should download the PDF. Just get it. I will. I don't consider myself a writer, but sometimes I get prolific and I'll just start writing. I'm so proud of it. More proud of that than the book, than the movies, than the podcast, or anything else I've done. I love that PDF because it works. No kidding. So the most effective thing you've done

and the thing that brings you the most pride is a document that you don't charge any money for anybody to obtain. It's a PDF. It's free. And it's out there. And if you read it, then you will at least have a working knowledge of why red meat and protein and vegetables are infinitely superior to sugar and grains and all the other crap we're eating. And I guess the last question is exercise. I know it plays a role. It sure seems like it's overstated with regard, or at least in contrast, with respect to diet. Whenever I walk on stage to do a talk, they go, okay, here comes to train or he's going to tell us to exercise. and the first words out of my mouth

is exercise is a poor way to lose weight. As a matter of fact, exercise can make you gain weight. So people will say to me, well, why should I exercise? It's like, oh, that's a different question. Exercise is the fountain of youth. It truly is the fountain of youth. I'm going to brag now. Right before this podcast, I was on my Concept II roar for 90 minutes.

I don't miss a day of doing something, right? I do it every day. It really works. It really matters. But don't look at it as a way to lose weight. That's where everyone gets it wrong. Diet to lose weight and exercise to have a healthy heart and lungs. Yeah. And let me tell you this, Chuck. When you hit your 35th birthday, sarcopena started taking place. No, he didn't play for the A's back in the 70s. Sarcopena is muscle wasting. And what that means is you start losing about. about a pound of muscle per year. And if you do the math, by your 80th birthday, you can lose half of your body mass and muscle.

And with that, you're gonna take some bone with it. That's why people get frail. They fall, they break their hip. And the only thing you have to do to reverse that is walk. One thing, walk every day. If no one takes anything else from this 90 minutes that we've been here, get up and walk every day. Just walk.

It's the best thing you could do for your health. Period. Isn't it funny that we came to this, Chuck, after the fact? Because we really kind of Forrest Gumped our way into it. Four years ago, I just said, that's it. I got to drop 40. Lockdowns came. Chuck followed suit.

It really is that. Rarely does a morning go by that we don't walk six to eight miles. I haven't had a piece of pizza in years. I haven't had it. I don't really miss it anymore. But I am enjoying meat. I am enjoying it like I never had. before is what you have to do and are you really walking six and eight miles every day every day

i did it just before this let me find my phone i think i average between five and six on you know because i don't walk every single day sometimes i miss yeah so this morning was uh why is that too much 12 000 700 steps oh wow yeah i got this new watch a while ago and it's got the step thing on it and i noticed that they tell people to walk you know it was just a campaign to tell people to walk 10,000 steps. I think it's a good idea. But I started noticing on my watch that most days I walk between 18 and 25,000 steps.

And people go, do you ever work? It's like, oh, no, I'm doing my phone calls. Whenever I'm doing business meetings, I just walk out the front door. I just go out the front door and walk. Now, all the neighbors, I'm new to the neighbor. Oh, it's the crazy old guy that's, because Italians talk with their hands and I'm flailing.

Right, right. You know, everything else. He talks to himself. But I'm walking every day. Three and four times a day. I'm out the front door and I'm walking. I had a moment between this and this podcast. I got it on the roaring machine.

It could have been my spinner. I'm pointing over here because everything is right here. And if you can see in the mirror behind me, there's a big screen television there that makes it very easy for me. And if you look behind me, there's a squat rack. I might break into squats at some point. When you have it around you, you will do it. and that's the key to all of it. Just have it around. Most guys want a Porsche, most guys want a boat. I got everything I want right here.

It goes the other way too, Vinny. If you got the family pack of Cheetos around, you're going to hit it. If you got the pistachios around, you're going to nail it. If you got a pizza oven, probably going to use it. You're right. What do you surround yourself with? It's not that difficult. People think I'm some kind of zealot, and maybe I am, I don't know. But I'm just trying to live the best life I can. You know, I almost died when I was 45, and I'm still here. And by the way, we'll put a button on it with this. In 2007, when I had the cancer, when it was all over with, you know, being in the middle of Hollywood, every one of my Hollywood friends was going, oh, you need eight ounces of wheatgrass a day,

and I'm going eight ounces. If I have one ounce, I'll burp it for two days. I mean, I said, I'm not going to do it. Oh, you need to do this. You need to go vegan. So I went to my oncologist who is also a research scientist. I said, Doc, I'm clear now of this cancer. And she goes, yeah, but within five years it's going to come back.

But don't worry, we'll give you chemo again, and we'll knock it into remission. And I went five years. She goes, yeah, it's going to grow back. You have a form of leukemia that will come back. But don't worry, we'll catch it early this time. And I went, great. That was in 2007. This is 2022. I've been eating no sugars, no grains. I've not had cancer again. I've never been back in chemo. How do you explain that? I can't explain it, but the evidence demands a verdict. You eat what you eat. Your lifestyles, a matter of

public record at this point, even though you don't exist on Google or Wikipedia. You seem pretty real to me, man. Thank you for making the time. This was a long time coming, and I'm glad we did it. You're welcome back anytime, although I don't know that 90 appearances. I don't know that I can out corolla, corolla. Yeah, that's going to be rough. Given my regards when you see him, Mike August, too. We know those guys.

We go back a bit. It's been a while. Great guys. Yeah, they're terrific. Vinnie Tortorich. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, guys. This episode is over now.

I hope it was. worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go on a lasserie. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge, but in this world the advertisers really like to judge. like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch just a lighter two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not too. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Even if you hate it. Five-star. Especially if you hate it.

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