S4:E1 - An Adult Conversation About Going Vegan & Eating Meat

Welcome to the Wolf's Den. Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Today's show is a live show on the back of a fundraiser that we're running here at Enterprise Fitness. We have raised already over $2,000 for the bushfires that have devastated this country in Australia. In today's podcast, we— I think that deserves a round of applause, folks. Anything that deserves a round of applause? So we have a number of people here in the studio for this podcast that we're doing today at Enterprise Fitness. And it's with my friend, Jeremy Evans, who I've known for the best part of now going on 4 years, 4 years. We are gonna get into the world of plant-based nutrition, veganism, cults, and everything in between. This is gonna be a fascinating podcast. I think this one will probably be a fan favorite for many. So welcome to the show, Jeremy. Folks, let's make him feel welcome. Thank you.

So I think—

Thanks for having me, Mark. It's my pleasure. I know we spoke before. Is it okay if I just monologue for a moment?

Absolutely.

I know you're into the arts and stuff as I am. So, love a good monologue. What I wanted to begin and open up this discussion with and open up the podcast with is because, you know, you and I have been observers. I'm obviously a carnivore, I'm an omnivore, I eat a variety diet. You're a plant-based vegetarian, fair to say?

Plant-based.

Plant-based, you don't like that term so much?

Plant-based.

Plant-based.

Covers everything.

Covers everything. So we have a, I suppose, a different point of view, but you've seen And then the game changers, obviously the documentary that's come out and it's kind of really has taken the nutrition world by storm or the mainstream media really by storm. And it's really, you know, as a personal trainer, I'm sure yourself, people are coming now more and more saying, you know, what about this plant-based diet? You know, you can get everything you need, all this kind of stuff. And it's really put people into two camps and it's divided people almost into the left to the right. It's almost become political and almost religious at this point. So what I wanted to start with was the thought and idea in the 18th century, we had this idea of, well, not the idea, we actually had the crown, you know, the queen, the royal family, and the church. And the king was chosen by God. So, in that sense, the crown, the church gave the crown power and the crown gave back to the power of the church. So, you know, I'm selected by God, great, church gives the king the power, then the king will say, you know, you should go to church, you should listen to them. So, together the church and the crown were able to control the way people thought and everything that went before. Today, or more recent times, we now have the state, the government, and the media. And for decades, it's been a case of, you know, what will the media do for the politician in power? And it's been really control of the narrative in mainstream. So, you know, if a politician wants to push a certain agenda, you know, they make the right deals with the right TV stations, and that's what then becomes, you know, on the Herald Sun, that's what you hear about. You don't hear about the war in Syria or Rwanda or anything like this. This is the narrative in that country, in that culture. Today, I think, is we're in a dangerous place because it's not the crown, it's not the church, even though that was a dangerous place. What we have today is social media and influencers and science. And I really do believe that science has become the new religion that people follow. And you have the influencer, which is kind of the king or queen that's been chosen. And what that king or queen is doing is putting up science as their religion. And people fundamentally, whether they're vegan or whether they're eating meat, And you see this with Michaela Peterson, who is all about carnivorous diet and promotes that. And you have on the opposing end, the banana girl, and I'm giving two probably extreme examples, who says anything that, that's just completely unacceptable. But what it does is it segregates, and this isn't just exclusive to plant-based and meat eating, but it segregates people into camps. It creates a, I mean, tribalism. And when you go to tribalism, the only thing left really is violence. And in my, in our opinion, this is how this came to be. That's a really sad state of affairs because why can't someone who eats meat, why can't someone who is plant-based come together and actually talk about the similarities that actually benefit people? So that's kind of my monologue that I wanted to preference the show with. Did you have any opening ideas to that?

Well, I agree with what you said. It basically, the fact that we can come together today and we can share our views and share our experience, I think that is probably the thing that's really lacking today. A lot. I feel like there is a lot of this dogmatic approach on both sides, and I feel like in order to, you know, free ourselves of the burden of these like single truths in nutrition, we need to be able to have conversations like this. We need to be able to broaden our understanding of these things. And so I think, yeah, removing that dogmatic sort of approach, hopefully we're evidence of that.

To that. Yes, absolutely.

Maybe the beginning of a new discussion.

Well, yeah, I really was kind of thinking about this, about, you know, the black and white in this day and age, in this kind of landscape. I think it's bullshit. Like you can go on the internet and you can find supporting arguments for it. And then you end up in this debate about whose research, whose science is better. And then people say, well, my science is better. But I mean, that doesn't really serve people at the end of the day. I mean, research is great and research shows you points, answers, but I mean, evidence and all this kind of stuff, people get lost and research ultimately, as we've spoken about before, doesn't necessarily always change people's behaviors. I mean, there's so much research that smoking kills, smoking and everyone agrees, everyone in this room, right? Everyone agrees smoking kills, gives you lung cancer, right? People still smoke, right? There's research to prove that. So if we're really gonna be as coaches, if we're, and that's where we look at this, both of us, if we're gonna help actual people who are gonna modify their behaviors, then it needs to be more than just about research. So my question to you, Jeremy, is tell me like your background or your growing up, your experience in life is obviously very different than mine. What guided you to the vegan diet, the vegetarian diet? Let's start with like, I know you call it plant-based, let's even go before that. What brought you to this diet? Sure.

It was initially I was influenced by my two sisters, older sisters who were vegetarian. And I, back in, this is like pre-2004, so I've been plant-based for over 16 years now. Back then I was, you know, the typical sort of, you know, omnivore. I was eating every kind of meat that you could think of, processed meat, chicken, beef, whatever. I was doing that and I had no intention of ever becoming plant-based. And I actually said that to my sister. I said, "Don't even ever try to talk me out of eating meat 'cause I will never do it." And one day she invited me to a screening of a movie that came out in 2004, it's called Peaceable Kingdom, and basically it was looking into factory farming and it gave an example of a couple that live in America who basically took animals who were abused in factory farming situations and gave them a second life. And it started there, it started at that point. I had this, I guess you could say I had an awakening. My compassion was awoken to this experience of other living creatures and I wanted to make a choice and I wanted to do something that was maybe more than myself and bigger than myself and so that night I decided to become vegetarian. So, and it was literally overnight that I did that. 6 months after I made that decision, I actually got quite sick. I became on the verge, it wasn't diagnosed, but I was on the verge of anemia. I was working with a naturopath at the time and she she was working with me and pointed out and said, you know, you're very close to being anemic, so you need to be very careful. And if you are going to do this diet, you need to do it smart, and you, you need to start being proactive. And that was another turning point for me because I realized that I'd— in becoming vegetarian overnight, all I'd done was simply remove animal protein from my plate, and I just replaced it with refined carbohydrates and lettuce, literally. So there was, you know, I was naive, I was not well informed, and that turning point essentially led me to where I am today, sitting here. It spurred, you know, hours and hours and hours of research. It meant that I would eventually become a personal trainer and start coaching people in their health and fitness. And so where I am today, I guess, is essentially Having had all of that experience of understanding my own health, it's brought me to also knowing that each individual has their own experience of health and that's very important as we discuss these things.

So, 16 years is, I mean, it's long enough to do the diet where you're gonna come into challenges. I mean, you hit those challenges into 6 months, you can see it's long enough to know the pros and the cons pretty well. I'd probably say like if we can start at like what are the things that, so you saw the documentary, what were the other reasons for people doing, say going plant-based that you believe that you see the most common?

Obviously, I think that the biggest overarching reason for becoming plant-based and I feel like it always needs to link back to this is compassion. At the end of the day, You know, we can argue the nutrition aspects and we can discuss the nutrition aspects, but at the end of the day, it does come back to a compassionate choice. You are doing this for compassionate reasons. That's ultimately what it boils down to for most people. I chose it initially for that as well. So that was, you know, that was my main, that was my fundamental initial reason for choosing it. But over the years, through those experiences that I had where I felt like I was making a lot of mistakes with my nutrition, it became more about my health. And I feel like, and you know, I can't speak for everyone that's had this experience, but I feel like a lot of people are drawn to it initially for the compassionate reasons, and then I feel like that's kind of left, and that's the only reason they choose to continue to do it. And therein lies the problem of not doing research on how to make the diet work for you. So if you're only choosing it for compassionate reasons, you're actually leaving the most compassionate thing that you can do, which is look after your own health, you're leaving that on the table. So absolutely do it for compassionate reasons, but you also have to do the research on the nutrition and make sure you succeed in that, otherwise it's not compassionate to anyone.

[Speaker] So I know like, and this is kind of an interesting question, very open question too, 'cause I know there's things inside like the bodybuilding, the strength world, the supplement world that drive me absolutely nuts. I know we've had sometimes conversations around like some of the stuff that you see, you know, Instagram or Facebook feed about, you know, banana girl, whatever. And then you get these people who kind of represent veganism they represent plant-based and in actual fact, like they don't, they're not really that great of representation because they're the extremes. What are some things that I suppose drive you nuts inside the community?

Well, that is one thing. I think it's the extremes. I think it's this, when, I mean, when you choose a plant-based diet, it obviously, it's not restrictive in that sense, but you are, you know, you're starting to refine your nutrition, if that makes sense. But I think you can push any end of the spectrum further to an extreme. You know, you can have, as we know on the end of the spectrum, you've got carnivorism and then on this other end you've got veganism. So, when you're choosing a plant-based diet, it's important to, you know, be open-minded and mindful of these things. The things that really irritate me, I guess, is that, you know, being a fruititarian, you know, being raw vegan, there's a time and a place and there's context for these things. But it gets back to that dogmatic approach. When we're approaching nutrition, there should be— there shouldn't be dogma, because that is dangerous. That's dangerous for people's health. And yes, you do get these social media influencers and YouTube personalities who are, you know, they're showing certain aspects of their life where they're potentially thriving with these diets, but we don't see the other side. We don't see potentially what health concerns they're actually coming up against. And so then we start to get this warped perception of nutrition and we start to think, well, because it worked for them with what I've been told and what I've been shown that it can work for me. And again, it goes back to that argument of nutrition is, it's an individual thing.

Yes, and I think some of the things with the YouTube folks, I honestly think, and this is completely unrelated to plant-based and vegan diets, but I saw the other day, I won't mention his name on Instagram, he put up a horrendous post and this guy is quite influential in the nutrition space. And what it was, was slagging the opposing. So, this guy was all about, he's very much in the calories of a fit human being if it fits your macros camp. And he put up a post slamming a guy who was about hormones and functional medicine. And if you read the comments, it was very divisive. It was very dividing. He's in the cult, I would say, of the king of if it fits your macros. And what he really wanted to do is send an FU to the people who are looking at hormones and looking at things like stress as a way to lose weight and all those lifestyle factors and wanted to simplify it. But what it did is divided It divided the camp. And I think when you look at these YouTube personalities or even this guy, I really do think with this guy, he's smart enough to know that's not the whole story. But I see the other side of it where, hang on, he's doing this because this is his brand now. He's been doing this for 5, 10 years and he actually wants to be divisive. He wants to. So when I look at like Banana Girl or these extreme people in these camps, I think one of the messages I wanna get across in this podcast is that, you know, people, you gotta understand the marketing and, they're held up and if they change their position and you've seen this with the guy you mentioned to me before about the YouTuber who was plant-based and now he's gone and eat meat. He got slammed by his people basically for doing that and their fame, their king status, their queen status ultimately gets very, very hurt. So, they're motivated not to change. They're motivated actually not to present the full story because they are the poster boy girl for that stance. One thing that we kind of touched on very briefly, which I'm curious to go into at the start, was I know I said vegan, vegetarian, and you don't like referring yourself to either. Why is that?

Well, I feel that it— well, the reason I say plant-based is it more refers to the nutrition aspect of things, and I certainly support a lot of the, well, you know, all of the aspects of what a vegan lifestyle is. So, but again, I feel like it gets into that dogmatic perspective of things. And I feel like when we start to narrow our experience, it limits our experiences. We've spoken about things in the past, you know, we, we view the world through our values, and the— if we continue to just only look for the things that reinforce our bias or our beliefs, we start to lose a full perspective. And I, I just feel like I've always been someone who doesn't like labels. I don't like labelling things because it— people will, and people want to label people because it makes them easy to identify and easy to relate to. So I understand that aspect of things. But again, if you label me, you're only going to know me as that thing, and I'm more complex than that. We're all more complex than that. And I just think that this— and I, yeah, I feel like those terms I feel like are more limiting for me personally. So I say plant-based because it refers to, yeah, what I eat as opposed to potentially all the other aspects.

Who I am. And say I'm a vegan, I'm an omnivore. That's right. Hi, my name's Mark, I'm a nutritionist. Exactly. It's like, well, I didn't ask you for your— I don't know if you've ever met a nutritionist or dietitian on a side note, every nutritionist, dietitian, it's same as like CrossFitter, you know that they're a CrossFitter or nutritionist and dietitian within 5 minutes 'cause they tell you.

That's right.

Do that test. Yeah, they tell you it's dead on. So that's very interesting. I mean, labeling, I mean, I had the same thing with bodybuilding and I used to label myself as a bodybuilder and then I realized like protein shakes actually upset my digestive system and you know, I can't eat 6 times every day and you know, whatever, like the bodybuilding lifestyle actually didn't suit me but the more I labeled myself as a bodybuilder, the more I got trapped into that identity. I'm like, well, actually maybe I'm not a bodybuilder and I'm not like, I'm more than that. I'm a guy who likes to lift weights. That doesn't necessarily make me that. Have you seen the Game Changers?

Yes.

What did you think of it?

Look, in terms of how it actually starts a conversation like this, fantastic. I think it's, you know, we haven't had something like that probably since maybe Forks Over Knives, but in maybe in a way that presented being an athlete on a plant-based diet. So in terms of that, in terms of starting a conversation, and potentially sparking people's interests in an alternative or another approach, fantastic. I think, yeah, look, some of the examples that they gave were obviously from a biased perspective, but I think at the end of the day, it succeeded in demonstrating that you can succeed on a plant-based diet as an athlete. That was essentially, I think, what its purpose was. So I think it, it demonstrated that. There was one scene in particular that really sort of irritated me, and it was when all of those NFL players at the end sat down to have their vegan food, and it was all like mac and cheese and burgers and all this sort of stuff. And I'm like, that's great because it shows people that they're not going to miss out on that sort of comfort food and all that sort of stuff, but it also doesn't necessarily— it doesn't truly reflect that you can eat that sort of stuff and be an athlete because I can guarantee they're not eating that stuff and performing well. They're not eating mac and cheese for dinner and eating burgers and all that sort of stuff. So that sort of, I think, it was a romanticized sort of approach. Fine, whatever. But I just don't think that it was maybe representative of what you are really going to need to eat as an athlete on a plant-based diet.

Did you hear about Usain Bolt? He ate 100 chicken nuggets before he— Broke the world record. So unless you're a genetic freak where it really has no impact in terms of what you eat. Apparently they did a study on him and his bones are like extra bouncy and that's why he's able to, 'cause they're long. 'Cause it's very unusual for someone that fast to be as tall as he is. But on a side note, probably for me, the most annoying part or my pet peeve with the film, and this is such a mute point, but it really irritated me, was when they had that guy that like, you know, I'm the doctor. And he said, you know, everyone thinks that protein is what you need for energy. You know, you don't need protein for energy. And you know, it's like, no one thinks that. No one thinks that you need protein for energy. Everyone knows that it's carbohydrate. And more to the point, when James Wilk went on Chris Joe Rogan's show and defended that point, he's like, oh, you know, in the University of blah, blah, blah, that's what they think. You know, they're the experts. It's like, well, hang on, you're looking at the wrong experts because actual experts do not think, there is no one really in the nutrition community, there should be no one who thinks that you're gonna get protein, protein is gonna be an energy source. So I thought some of the things there was, yeah, that I feel like they were doing such a good job and then some of the points that were just trying to get crossed over the line, if they just didn't try and get them crossed over the line, it actually would have been a stronger piece. And that was one of them where I really felt like they could have just taken that out and it would actually stand, stood stronger by not trying to dilute any of that.

Yeah, I agree. I think, yeah, as we know that the protein isn't a fuel source. And so for them to actually state that, I guess, you know, it's an instance where you're like, oh, hang on a second, you know, let's just take a step back.

Yeah, one of the things that I did like about the film that they presented it as the athletes and the thing I really like about vegans, vegetarians, plant-based, whatever, you wanna call yourself. The thing that I really like is that they do make it a political and environmental issue. And I think there is a lot more common ground with someone like myself and plant-based folks in the sense that it needs to be an environmental issue. And I don't really feel the film really covered that or did that as much justice as it could. What about you?

Yeah, I agree. I think the main, narrative that it was demonstrating was performance as an athlete on a plant-based diet. You know, there are other films out there that talk more about the environmental reasons and arguments. And I think if you're going— like we said before, facts don't necessarily change people's minds. But I think if you're going to want to educate people, And you can't do this in a documentary on Netflix alone. Like it's a snapshot of the big picture. But I do feel like there needs to be more of that sort of threaded through the conversation as well. I don't feel like it should just be one aspect. You need to broaden people's understanding of the impacts of their choices, definitely. So yeah, there could have definitely been more of that.

One thing I wanna switch to now is, I know if you did see the, there was a, there was lots of rebuttals to the movie by numerous people. The first kind of the big one was the Chris Kresser one when he went on the Joe Rogan and really just went through each point and went, you know, 3 hours and said, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. And then the follow-up to that was the debate with James Wilks, who was the producer, MMA fighter, and Chris Kresser. And that went for 4 hours. And that was like watching a train wreck. That was like watching puppies die slowly. Like who wants to watch a puppy die slowly? No one. It was very painful to watch. And my takeaway from that is yes, James absolutely won that debate. He went in MMA fighter, physically intimidating. I think Chris probably was, I mean, I would be scared speaking to like, you know, James, he legitimate dude, he could kill you, right? That's what he trains people to do. So he's a legitimate dude. And when he gets angry, you probably don't wanna piss him off. And essentially that was, Chris was the protagonist in that. And Chris is kind of like a scrawny guy. You know, he can't really defend himself against the guy who's a trained killer. So I think that for me was the get-go, man, you're gonna lose because he's physically intimidating as well. But on top of that, in that 4 hours, they really covered only what I felt 4 points and the 4 points were just so redundant. One was about the calcium or not calcium, dairy. So, you know, there's 50% of studies in this, it was like the numbers that they were using, it's okay, like, They spent half an hour just trying to get the numbers right. Yes, and at the end of it, it's like, okay, so you can choose to have dairy. Do you wanna have dairy? No, you don't wanna have, okay, it's not a big deal because most people have some form of intolerance to dairy. But what I felt wasn't addressed, and this is the kind of thing that really pissed me off, was they never stopped and said, you know what? We should actually define what we mean by dairy. So I kinda want to go into that because when we talk about milk and dairy, often people, and this is the thing with plant-based nutrition, carnivore, whatever, I think the definition of actually what we eat, where you're getting your dairy from, 'cause there's a huge difference as we know, if you're getting that dollar of liter of milk from Coles versus if you're getting it from a farm that's been fermented dairy, say for example, that's raw, that's been processed and it's high quality 'cause it comes from a grass-fed animal that treated well, huge difference in terms of nutritional content. And obviously it's gonna, people will argue like calorie is a calorie, but there's gonna be a huge difference in the outcome of that too, in terms of someone's health. I mean, that dairy potentially that's been homogenized, pasteurized, comes from a sick animal. Not just that, but that dairy is coming from, you know, hundreds of tens of thousands of different cows. It's not like, you know, the farmer milks that one cow and that goes off and that's the dairy that you drink. No, all of the cow's milk gets funneled into the truck and gets pasteurized and processed at the same time. So you are potentially getting sick animals. You know, that's why it has to be processed so heavily. And I was disappointed that there was no, hey, let's just define because, you know, let's classify food. Like what is food? My friend owns a farm and we talk about this all the time about the quality of fruit that comes from his farm. You know, he gives me a, he brought in some peaches the other day and oh my God, like delicious. I've never tasted a peach from like that from the supermarket. Yeah. You know, so I think in terms of the food quality, We really have to stop and go, right, let's define what we actually mean by milk. Let's define what we actually mean by dairy rather than just be assumed that, you know, in this epidemiological study, in this research, well, everyone's having shit dairy to begin with. So really, is that what we're looking at? 'Cause that's kind of accepting the status quo of our food's shit. Oh well, let's just accept what the supermarket that they're giving us. And again, that's where the political aspect of what vegetarianism veganism brings in that I really, really appreciate.

Yeah, and I think to layer on top of that, it says a lot about where a lot of these studies are being done and where we're getting the information from. We're getting information from an unhealthy population. We're getting data from people who are eating or consuming the standard American diet or even the standard Australian diet. Which not that long ago was recommending cornflakes for breakfast, we don't have this more relative comparison. And so when we look at these, and so it's fine to, you know, you can listen to that debate and hear them argue their points back and forth, but you are right, it's like, well, we don't have this information that's relative to, you know, a healthy population. And that's where I think a lot of that is very problematic. So I think that's where we all need to take a bit of a step back and go, well, where are we getting our data from? Where are we getting our information from? We're getting it from a sick population or an obesity epidemic pandemic.

And I think the other thing that people need to stop and realize is that, 'cause one of the points that has always been made about a vegan diet is that, or a vegetarian diet, it's a better diet, like when, you know, research has shown that it's a better, it's a great diet, it's healthier, it's who they're comparing it to and they're always comparing it to the standard Australian diet. And the point that's always made is, well, anything is better than the standard Australian diet. My point on that, well, if I have a choice of someone doing standard Australian diet or a vegetarian or plant-based diet, well, 100%, I'm gonna pick the plant-based diet because it's better. Now, for some people, that's maybe all they can afford, they can't afford meat. So, you know what, that is actually a better option or their perspective is actually it's easier for me to stay healthy doing plant-based, like same way is some people in their perspective, it's easier for them to count calories than it is to cut out sugar. For some people it's easier for them to go keto than it is to count calories. But what happens in nutrition so many times to say, why do these things work in mechanisms instead? It's like, well, you know what? This would actually suit you because of your perception and your personality. And that's what's not being done because it's so much of the mechanism of how it's been and the actual person of, of how you're constructed on an intellectual and personality level of preference and choices that, you know what, you really have, like for me, I don't like counting calories at all. So, you know, doing an if it fits your macro plan is not gonna work for me because I'm not gonna bring out my scales everywhere I go. But you know, like Reece Adams, one of our great trainers here at Enterprise, you know, in their former life, David Coyne is a good friend of ours. You know, those guys were Excel spreadsheets. They got no problem doing that. You know, they've got the numbers you know, that's what they do in their free time, David Coyne particularly. But you and I— If you need an Excel spreadsheet, I'll take care of it for you. David Coyne. Shout out to David Coyne. No, but I think, you know, to your point is sometimes like that's the choices and not everyone is necessarily in the world looking for optimal. Not everyone is looking to be an athlete. Some people are looking for a diet and a lifestyle that actually matches their personality and their needs rather than saying, well, this is the best, this is deficiencies or whatever, that's the best they can do. And I mean, that might be a different way of looking at it. I really do. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think as coaches, our priority as coaches when we're working with people is to work through all of their limiting beliefs and their values and understand them on a psychological level and help them to move towards better health. And I think And as coaches, that's what we're always trying to do. We're always trying to educate people and move them away from food phobias. And I think that's a really big part of this discussion and that's why I think it's so important for us to just talk like this because there is so much fear around food. I think the more we can sort of have a discussion like this where we're not getting emotional and we're not trying to prove each other wrong, I think that is going to help people start to, you know, relax a little bit more and think about what's more important for them on a personal level and also on a global scale as well so they can start thinking outside of their own experience. We need a more nuanced approach to nutrition. And that's why I think these discussions and these documentaries are important to help start that conversation. But we do need a nuanced approach to nutrition. It can't just be because I do it and I've done well on it, you should do it and you will do well. You know, okay, you probably could do well on it, but you're going to have to work on it as I have. And but just sort of painting it black and white, it doesn't serve anyone. On a nutritional and a health level. It just creates more confusion and it creates more fear.

So let's get into the mechanics of that. So say, you know, for the people watching, I wanna do a vegan diet, maybe I wanna do, you know, 2 days a week plant-based, right? What are some pieces of advice? What are some pitfalls potentially that I'm looking at?

The most important thing, and I, this is top of line, when you start eating plant-based, you need to look at your total caloric intake because on a plant-based diet, you're going to be eating more volume, but in order to get the daily caloric requirements and your daily protein, you're going to need to eat more volume of food. And sometimes that can be intimidating for people because the sheer amount of whether it's chickpeas or beans or whatever, it can be quite intimidating. You're like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that I need to eat this massive bowl of this stuff to get what I need. But so that's a very important point to make is because if you're transitioning to a plant-based diet, you can't just cut out meat and then just replace it with vegetables. You need to make sure that you are eating enough to fulfill your energy requirements for the day. That's the first thing that people need to do.

And this is also why so many people lose so much weight on a vegan diet. Yes, that's right. And it's great for weight loss. Because the calories are so low because they have to eat so much food.

On average, I think it's on a plant-based diet, most people that have been, um, for the statistics, it's about 600 calories less on a plant-based diet on average that people will eat. And so yeah, you kind of get this, um, this confirmation bias of if I go plant-based, I'm going to lose weight. Well, eating in a calorie deficit is— you're going to lose lose weight. So that's, it's not necessarily the plant-based diet, it's the fact that you were probably eating a lot less than what you were. And, you know, maybe you just started to increase your uptake of micronutrients and vitamins and minerals and all this sort of stuff. And maybe that was, you know, helping to shift inflammation from your body. So that could have been part of it. But was it the plant-based diet specifically? Or was it the fact that you started to include more micronutrients and these things that help with inflammation? So again, not sort of don't look at it through this limiting lens, you need to look at it broadly and understand it broadly as well.

You know what's great about that is you can say exactly the same thing for those who just go carnivorous diet.

100%.

You're just gonna eat meat. Well, if you're just gonna eat meat, you've lowered your calories and that's not necessarily sensible. Like, and there's not very much research and good research done on a carnivore diet other than hearsay of this was my experience as like, you know, fruit girl, banana girl or vegetarian or whatever saying, you know, it's the next thing. What other benefits I suppose that people experience? What other pieces of advice, things they need to watch out for? So that's one, total volume of food.

Yep. Benefits, I mean, for me personally, I, and this is, it's very subjective and it's very anecdotal. So everyone's experience is very different and unique. But when I first became plant-based, I started noticing that I had more energy and it was simply, it was probably because maybe my body wasn't putting as much time and energy into digesting meat. Potentially, you know. I mean, that's, again, that's very anecdotal, but that's what I experienced. And I, and I think that's true for a lot of people who switch to a plant-based diet because they're getting their, you know, they're getting more micronutrients and their inflammation is reducing, so their body's not having to work as hard to constantly deal with this inflammation. And then certainly not to say that the meat's causing inflammation, but it's saying that, you know, maybe their previous diet, which was full of processed food, and then suddenly made this switch to a really clean diet, maybe that that was the reason. So that's, I mean, it is definitely, you know, you're definitely going to experience that. You'll feel, you know, potentially lighter and clearer and more energy. I personally noticed that my recovery was a lot quicker. I've been a professional Irish dancer for 21 years and—

21 years?

21 years.

That's a lot of time Irish dancing.

Longer than half my life. And throughout the last, I guess, 16 years of being, professional dancer and all of that. And looking at my recovery as a dancer and looking at the other dancers alongside me, I noticed that— and they were a lot younger than me too, I might point out, I was the oldest dancer in the troupe— and I was recovering quicker than them. They were all complaining of, you know, having stiffness and soreness and all this sort of stuff, whereas I was bouncing back a lot quicker because I was making sure that I was eating a healthful diet and I was making sure that I was getting enough nutrients for my energy needs.

To that day. With that said, you could say it's also made you though more conscious than when you were before saying eating a mixed diet.

Yeah, absolutely.

So then being conscious, there's also the element of, well, I'm actually focusing what I eat and I'm actually making effort to make sure anything that I don't get, I'm either supplementing with or putting my calories together in a very sensible way. So it's actually a better diet than what I was doing previously, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think—

That's how you have to do it.

That's right, you have to be, you have to be proactive when you choose this. You can't, as I said before, you can't just choose, you know, a plant-based diet and expect it to miraculously work. It doesn't work like that. You have to work at it. There was a point I was gonna make about that and I've lost it, but it might come up if, yeah.

Well, what I wanted to add to that, it's the same thing with eating meat that I feel that people go, you know, I don't need to worry about that, whatever. And my take on it with the environment is we all live in this world, obviously, right? And I read a good quote today about children never think, you know, what's the purpose of life or what's the purpose of what do I need to do? 'Cause they're so entrenched in their life. They live and they live a part of the world. Whereas as we get older, we kind of distance ourselves and instead of we come out of this world, we come into this world and the world is kind of separate from us. So I think really, as you know, everyone, we really need to be conscious of our environment and where our food, is actually coming from. So my point I wanted to make is with meat, you know, and you do see this in research and this is where, you know, the carnivores get their back up against the wall against the vegans and becomes quite, but there really isn't, you really need to define what you mean by meat because I wanna point out as well that a lot of the research that shows that meat causes colon cancer, like in Germany, for example, if you look at the German research, it shows that it causes colon cancer, but what they define as meat is bacon and sausages and hamburgers. America, same thing, it's processed meat. So meat gets this really bad rap because there's a huge difference between eating game meat like kangaroo or goat or, you know, grass-fed beef to eating, you know, a sausage or the chicken mince and, you know, mince for example, or most like chicken nuggets and stuff is the offcut. And now what they do also in butchers is, not all butchers 'cause there are some really, really great butchers that get things really well done, but they've got a thing called meat glue and they glue the offcuts of meat together. You know, and this is the thing. So you can't compare, like you're not comparing apples with apples. And I think, you know, the research that's done is done very poorly because it looks at meat that is, well, I wouldn't eat it. I eat meat, but I'm not eating that. 'Cause that to me, that's not quality. And I think if you are gonna choose to include meat and eat meat like I do, you need to make the conscious choice to actually go that one step further, buy grass-fed, know where it comes from. For me, buying caged eggs is a big no-no. Like that to me is very bad. Like you don't buy caged eggs. Why? Because you're putting a chicken in a cage and just laying eggs. And you look at the quality of the eggs from a chicken, from the caged eggs versus the quality of the eggs from a free-range, you know, had a great life chicken, the yolks, the yellows, the size of the eggs, it's completely different. It's not apples with apples, the amount of nutrition in that. And yes, that does mean that you are gonna have to spend more money, but interesting fact, what is it? It's like the organic market only needs about 16% to have more penetration of the market to actually bring the lower— lowering the costs wide. And I think globally we're at about 4%. So the more, I mean, there's a law of supply and demand. The more people that demand good food, the more the big corporations are gonna say, well, you know what? We're not gonna give you factory farm of meat. And the other thing on meat that I always like to bring up, which is like in America, they literally traded in 120 buffalo free range for 50 million tortured cows. Now, any way you cut that, you want the buffalo. So why? Because they thought, well, we're going to control our environment, we're going to, you know, produce meat on demand, we're going to, you know, ransack the environment and just create this meat on demand whenever, you know, big corporations want it. Where really, if we can go back to living with the land, and this is the point that I vegetarians, plant-based vegans, meat eaters really come together with people who are health conscious is it's far more important where you get your food from rather than just saying, I'm a vegan, I'm a vegetarian, I'm kind of carnivore diet because where you get your food from actually determines what it does for the environment. 'Cause if you're buying factory farm meat or if you're buying soy, you're still giving money to the people who are, you know, raping the planet for its resources in terms of the fossil fuels. There really isn't a sensible— the only way sensible out of this is to go buy your food from farms that are ecosystems that are carbon neutral, for example. And that's where if you've got vegetation on the land and you've got the animals, it's actually shown in those ones that the carbon that's emitted is actually neutral. So you can have animals and animals are needed, but it's how you farm, not a matter of this choice, my label is going to make me more superior and better than you.

I think it's all on a scale at the end of the day in terms of our choice. We do all have a choice to make and we all have this responsibility to make the best choice with the knowledge that we have and the resources that we have. And the more we understand about things, the better choices we can make. And I think that's probably really where we are in the state of the world, in the state of the environment and and health is that for far too long we've made choices that were very driven by the ego and we're in this sort of, you know, it's cause and effect and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You know, the state of factory farming, I believe, has given rise to veganism because it's a response to that. And I agree, we need to go back to You know, we're so out of touch with where our food comes from. We're so removed from the whole process. And you walk into a supermarket and you've got what, 12 or 14 aisles that are food-like products that, you know, haven't been seen by humans, you know—

Ever. Ever.

You know, yeah, exactly. And then onto one side you've got, you know, your fresh food, which is, is predominantly what we've survived on. And, but there's no one understands what's involved in doing that.

But even in that, like Australia wastes 30, what is it? 30% of its water that it basically on. And the reason being, it's like, let me say that again. It's like 2 billion liters of water that Australia wastes every year because this is a big because, because it, We throw out approximately 30% of the food we grow. Now the question is, ask me why. Everyone go, why? Why? One person, great. I feel really supported right now. The reason why for that is because for the supermarket to have like an apple, they want an apple circle. They want the avocado to be round. They want the banana to be a certain shape. So you have fruit like humans that don't look all the same. And that's completely normal. Like there should be dirt on your apple. You know, you're gonna have different shapes, but there's 30% of food that we grow in this country. I'm not talking about like America, I'm talking about Australia that we throw out. There's perfectly good food. In places like Sweden, for example, they've got the aisle of, and they've promoted it as, you know, where all bodies are different, why shouldn't our food be? And people buy it and it's a little bit cheaper, but that's a great resource. And I mean, you know, we talk about, you know, feeding the homeless or making use of our resource. Resources and just being more conscious. I mean, that is such an easy fix at the supermarkets, the conglomerates. And this is why I'm quite passionate about, you know, I get my— I have a lady, her name's Julia, from a farm. Some cards at the front, happy to pass them around. Free shout out to Julia. But she's local to me and I get all my food once a week from her farm. And she delivers like $12 delivery, right? Great, fantastic. I don't shop. And if I have to shop at Coles, like I really don't like it, right? Safeway, because of that reason, because there's so much waste. And I mean, this choice of what we're talking about now, you can be plant-based, you can be vegan, you can be vegetarian, but if you don't do that, that's a fundamental. Like if it really is about the environment, which I think for me, you know, that's really why I come on it, you need to understand so many things that go into this. It's just so much more about exactly what you said about the label. Oh, I'm plant-based, I'm better than you because, you know, you kill animals. Well, hang on. In the trade-off for that, if you eat soy, for example, you know, in farming soy, which is a monocrop, you're using glyphosate. That's horrible for the environment. You're killing the land. That's not a better process any way you cut it. It's a different process, and it's akin to the factory farm for what it does to the land. So really, the only way off, you know, and to be sensible with it, is to really go back to nature and put the money back into the pocket of the for us, the Australian farmer who's growing, doing the right things, but you know, they're constantly in the red. You know how many Australian farmers are packing up, going out of business? It's a real problem. And it's because of this stuff with the dollar liter of milk. So when, you know, the vegetarians and the vegans, the activists are getting out the front going, this is ridiculous. I'm with them 100% because that's what the problem is. It's not so much about your choice to eat meat, but if it is, if you are gonna eat meat at the same, you've got to apply those same rules when it comes to meat and go buy proper meat. And if that means that you can't afford to eat as much meat, well, hey, you're gonna go plant-based. You can maybe eat one meat, you know, and the reality is that if you're on a farm, you might have one beast and that one beast might last you for the whole winter or whatever it is, you're on rations. But I think this way of thinking is a much better and at least spend money on your food because that's, even though now it's always like the point of early adapters, that chart which shows that the ones who buy, who line up at the front, who buy the iPhone the day it comes out, the early adapters to anything, like with Tesla, for example, they're the ones that bring the price down. So you need the early adapters. And I think for a lot of the folks who are in this room watching this podcast, you know, you folks are the early adapters. So spend money, 'cause that's the only way that this is gonna get mass market where you get to that 16% of organic food. And then people, that's gonna be the norm, right? Because then they're just gonna start to realize that Australia wants proper food. I want proper food.

Yep.

You know?

I want it.

Yeah. Thoughts?

Yep. It's like, I think when we talk about choice, yeah, we all have a choice to make and with what you've said, understanding where your food comes from and being proactive in that whole experience, we do have a choice and like you've said, layering on top of that, personal choice I think needs to be put aside in so much that because if you're only going to choose what is right for you personally, like it's like I'm gonna keep eating this thing, it's like, well, you need to be aware of the impact of your choices. Does that make sense? It's like, well, personal choice, sure, but in the grand scheme of things, your personal choice may be contributing to something that's actually causing other people or other things in the environment to, you know, being a in a worse off state. So, we all have choice, absolutely, but I think we need to remove the personal choice and bring it back to more having that responsibility. It's personal responsibility to understand where our food's coming from, take that accountability of doing the research, being educated, being aware, and when you have all of those, I guess when you have that more, as I've said before, that more nuanced understanding, you're going to be able to make better choices. And I think that's ultimately what education comes back to. So we need to educate people on how we got to where we are today. How did we get in this mess of nutrition? Well, it's because we all made choices. We all made choices and that caused corporations to go, oh, okay, I'm gonna make the TV dinner for them. That'll make their life easier. You know, and then from that, you know, I don't want my life easier.

That's what you have to say.

That's right.

I don't want my life easy, which is really hard.

We've been sold convenience or we've been sold health under the guise of convenience or—

Yes. Yeah. Protein bars.

Yes.

Shakes.

Yes. It's like—

The fat loss pills.

Yeah, and just processed food in general. You know, it's, that's the problem. It's like convenience is, Yeah, sure, there are, there's definitely, it's always context, of course. There are times when you're gonna need to have something that's convenient, but if that is the only way that you choose your food, if it's only ever a convenient choice, it's eventually gonna come back and bite you in the bum and that's kind of where we are today. It's like we've made too many convenient choices for our food to be the way it is today.

On that, there's a book that I recommend, it's called "Food Shock" by Diana, I don't remember her last name, but the picture on the front is, she's an Australian author, which is great, but it's a glass apple and I think it's great. Like it's such a good picture to symbolize the food shock. But one of the points she makes is with tomatoes. Tomatoes are picked green, they go on a truck for 6 months on transit, they're sprayed with a chemical. I can't remember what chemical, starts with O, that slows down the aging process. And when it makes it to the supermarket, Essentially it's ripe on the outside, but still like not ripe on the inside. It's green on the inside essentially because it's grown so slowly. But you know, that is, and this is again, when I say this, this is even more point because you want tomatoes that taste nice. I want tomatoes to taste nice. Go to your local farmer. They're the only folks that have tomatoes that taste nice with everything else.

And as you do, like know who your food is coming from. From. You know, go to the farmer's market or contact someone who you know grows, you know, seasonal vegetables or whatever it is, you know, make sure that you're actually in contact with them. Make sure you have a relationship with these people because if you're going to have a good relationship with your food, you need to know who grew it for you. You know, we're relying, we're literally relying on second and third and fourth hand, you know, instances of people preparing our food. You know, and that comes back to personal responsibility again. We don't even cook our own food anymore, you know, predominantly that's the trend, you know, and I think it's important to have that awareness.

What was it? In the 1950s, we spent approximately 2 hours cooking. Today's day and age, we spend 30 seconds on average. If you average it out, some people don't have, you know, don't cook.

At all.

You can just order Uber Eats.

Uber Eats, how easy is that? Get some Uber Eats, you know. That really should be an on occasion thing, you know, once every while, not a daily practice, just when you map this out. And as you said, it really is that matter of convenience. People are trading in convenience, but you know, you can only make that trade in your health so many times.

That's right.

You can only trade so many until it bites you in the ass. And we're doing that with our environment.

Yes.

Yeah, and that's why so many people get like with the live export, I don't know if you've seen that, but that's horrendous. And why should Australia send out its animals to all these other countries? And it really is quite horrific when the animals are on the ships, the heat in the ship goes up so much, a lot of the exports die.

One capsized recently.

So many animals die. I mean, practices, which goes back to the point of this is far more about than just plant-based versus eating meat. If you're gonna get out of the wheel, you need to actually look at what's creating that wheel. And I think meat eaters as well, you know, you can start today by making better choices and those better choices can be very simple. Like reach out to your local farmer, find out their name, whether you're eating meat or you're plant-based. One of the things that in the plant-based diet that we see a lot is the comparison of, you know, this peanut butter sandwich is, Is it the same as, you wanna speak to that?

Yeah, I see a lot of stuff on Instagram and Facebook and I'm sure you've all seen it too. There's the comparison of like 100 grams of beef versus 100 grams of beans or whatever. And I understand why we make these comparisons because it's to show people, well, look, you can get the same amount of protein from this amount of calories or the same, serving size, so I understand why the comparison is made. What I take issue with is that when we only look— well, first and foremost, most of these comparisons are just comparing protein, and food is far more complex than just protein at the end of the day. You know, there's the fiber, there's the micronutrient value, there's the karmic quality of food as well, and so when we only view food through this like, well, how much protein does it have? You know, it's very reductive. And beyond that, when we make these comparisons, like I said, there's so much more that goes into, you know, the individual components of food. It's not a fair comparison because the energy, the way that food is grown, you know, you need to— we need to separate these things and rather being like, well, if you compare that, look, you get the same amount of this as you will get from that. And it's like, well, I understand that, but at the end of the day, let's just talk about what that that thing is good for. If we're gonna do this comparison, let's just talk about what beans is good for, let's talk about what lentils are good for, you know, rather than, and I also don't like it, you know, from a purely just from a, I think a psychological approach, when I'm making these comparisons, I don't, it's amusing to me that people will put up pictures of meat when that's the thing they're actually trying to direct people away from. Do you know what I mean? It's like, here I am trying to—

Don't give a pink elephant.

Yeah, exactly. Yep, pink elephant, you know what I mean? It's like, let's just talk about the benefits of the plant food as opposed to always, you know, I understand it, I know it's very complex and I know we're doing that to draw people's attention to the two things, but I'm very much like—

But it's also very divisive. It's me versus you.

Yes.

Which that's what fundamentally brings it back down to. It's a mechanism and a weapon to put people into camps or they're those people who eat meat, but look, our camp can eat this and we can get exactly what that camp's better. There you go, you got nothing on us. On us.

That's— yes, that's, that's true. And yeah, I think it's just very reductive at the end of the day. I'm always— I like to think of myself as being someone who's solutions-focused. So, you know, we've talked about all the different aspects today, but I think one thing is often not that— and I think you see it in these rebuttals that have happened on YouTube from the Game Changers— everyone wants to talk about the problem, and everyone's got their own problem with And they're so focused on the problem as opposed to actually talking about the solution or solutions, 'cause there's always gonna be one, more than one solution. That's what I really take issue with. And yeah, so when I have conversations like this, I don't wanna get sort of bogged down in like, and we haven't, but you know, get bogged down in the problems. It's like, let's talk about the solutions.

It's like in the Chris Kresser, James Wilkes interview where they got Got to the B12 and they did an hour on going back and forth about B12. And it's like, yeah, so would you agree that if you just took B12 as a vegan, you could get enough B12? Yes. Wow, that took an hour? Wow, it just took us like 10 seconds to go, yeah, well, you can supplement with that. Just make sure you buy the right supplements. You know, you get practitioner brand, you get the methylcobalamin, you don't get the crappy whatever it is that isn't gonna be absorbed. Where, you know, it creates other problems. And I mean, really, that's the solution, isn't it? That's right.

And we like to think, and this is another, I guess, issue that's sort of come with all of this, we want more and more, we want complicated solutions to our very simple problems. Yeah, we actually thrive on that. We want this drama and this like, you know, this dialogue that's separating and we want to confuse things. But at the end of the day, the solutions are quite simple.

Yeah, it's like what Albert Einstein said, which would paraphrase, any intellectual moron can take the simple and make it more complex, but it takes genius to take the complex and make it simple.

I like that.

Yeah, and it's just those actionable steps.

That's it.

Yeah, what else is on your mind? Have we covered?

I think we've, yeah, I think we've We've dug into it. I can't think what else there was.

Yeah, we've covered it. We've done a good job. Alrighty. Well, what we'll do is we'll take a quick break. I want to take this time. Let's give Jeremy a round of applause, folks. We're going to take a quick break and come back. I just, before we do go to that break, I do want to thank Localised for donating a great hamper. They're on Swan Street. They donated a great hamper. They have organic food. So if you want to check out Localize, they're on Swan Street. They donated to us for the bushfire appeal. Also First Press Coffee, they gave us 8 bottles. They make great cold drip coffee. And Birdie's Butcher, where they get all their meat from Victoria, and it is all grass-fed. So check out our sponsors for today. We've already raised over $2,000 for the bushfire appeal. I hope you're enjoying this interview. We'll be back with a Q&A from the audience. Stay tuned. I hope you're enjoying this episode of The Wolf's Den, brought to you by our good friends at personaltrainermentoring.com. So if you're a personal trainer looking to level up your business and career, head over to personaltrainermentoring.com. They have a free $500 gift pack ready and waiting for you, a digital gift pack that contains a free course all about how to screen and assess your clients. The course is over 2 hours long, gives you the ins and outs of screening and assessment, and also included in the pack are 3 ebooks. All on how to make more sales, get more clients, and basically get better results. So if you're a trainer, head over now, personaltrainermentoring.com, leave your details and get on the fast track to success. Welcome back to the Wolf's Den. Now we are gonna get into audience questions. So our first to kick it off.

Just from what you brought up before about the water wastage, I was just wondering if there was like anything in the movement law-wise to sort of reduce that because it was pretty astounding to hear how much is actually being wasted.

Yeah, so just to clarify what I was saying is the numbers that I was giving like that, whatever that absurd number, I don't know the exact numbers, so don't quote me on it. It's something like, it's over a billion. It's over a billion litres of water that is wasted. What I was directly attributing that to was agriculture in Australia. So, because 30% of our food that's grown for supermarkets doesn't look a certain way, that water that's used to grow that food is like, it's over a billion liters. So, we are wasting that much because we're essentially throwing out that food. So, that water is really going nowhere. It's not personal use, it's because we're throwing out food that simply doesn't meet that criteria. So, that downstream effect isn't just that we're throwing out 30% of our food that doesn't look quite right, we're also wasting over a billion liters of water every year because of that practice. So, in terms of laws and all this kind of stuff, I think really it's just consumer awareness. Like if you look at, the European Union. In 8 weeks they introduced the bill to put genetically modified food. In 8 weeks it was rejected. Why? Not because of politicians. It was because Europe has a food culture. And the thing about genetically modified food, it offers no consumer benefit. So if you look at low-fat products, if you look at like any of the artificial sugars, it's low fat, it's low sugar, it's high in protein. These are fortified foods. People can market them as something. So to the lay public who doesn't watch The Wolf's Den, they're like, oh my God, it's low in sugar. But it's super high in fat. Oh my God, there's no fat in this, but it's super high in whatever, right? Chemicals, people like whatever, but genetically modified food offers no consumer benefit. There's not a benefit to you eating genetically modified food. The benefit is to the grower. So in Europe it was rejected. So now they have a law where you cannot import any US genetically modified grain into European Union, which is case in point to say when people, for example, are celiac and have a real problem with wheat and they go over to Europe and they stuff their face with pizza and pasta and like, oh, it was fat, I was fine when I was in Europe, you know, I'm probably not a celiac or whatever and they come back here to Australia or America and then they have all these flare-ups. Yeah, the grain is different and that brings the, rises the argument of, well, is it the gluten? Is it the glyphosate? Is it the genetically modified process? Is it probably a chemical cocktail of all these things? Yeah, probably. Thoughts?

Yeah, I think when we're sort of looking at big numbers like that, it can be quite, I guess it really does raise your awareness of all of these things. I guess, yeah, if you want some other big numbers too, which might raise your awareness, over 60 billion land animals are killed every year for food, 60 billion every year, and that doesn't count for fish or ocean life. And that's again like what we were saying earlier, it's like there's this huge disparity of overconsumption and this is what I believe is why the rise of plant-based diets has come about because people have been like, well, hang on a second, this is not sustainable. We are not living sustainably on this planet and we need to start being way more mindful and start making better choices. So, yeah.

Yeah, thank you for the question. Let's give him a round of applause.

Hello, I just wanted to ask, just in terms of plant-based proteins, what's the best ones that you can recommend for performance or just in general?

So when we look at protein, all plants will have, will comprise the amino acids, the essential amino acids. So It's more about what I want you to think about more to make it easier is just total caloric intake. If you're obviously, you're not gonna get like, you know, 100% of your calories from fat, of course. But if you're eating a diverse and whole foods diet, you're going to get enough protein. So, you don't need to worry about that. When it comes to a performance side of things, you might need to consider including, you know, Maybe more chickpeas, which are really quite high in protein and also quite high in carbohydrates too. Beans are of course very good. Buckwheat is another good example. Some seeds like pumpkin seed is very high in protein. So don't be so sort of worried about am I going to get enough protein for recovery and performance, be more concerned with am I eating enough for my daily energy requirements. It's a much easier way to approach the problem. Does that make sense or do you want more specific like foods that you can eat?

More probably specific. If you were to say have one actual animal meat a day and you wanted to cut back on that and have the rest plant-based.

Yep, I would go lentils and beans.

Yeah. What's that, lumen flakes?

Lupin flakes, yeah, lupin flakes. I totally forgot about that. How could I forget about that? Lupin flakes are a relatively unknown legume that have about 45% protein and they're relatively low carbohydrate in comparison to a lot of the other plant-based proteins. So if you go to— there's a store called The Source. I don't know if you've heard of it. They do like bulk foods and they It's one on Smith Street actually, they sell it. It's kind of, I would say lupin flakes are like the next big hemp seed type thing. So—

You heard it here first folks, lupin flakes.

Yes. So yeah, I mean they're very, you've got to prepare them similar to you would like oats. You cook them like oats essentially. But yeah, really high in protein. But again, to get the amount of protein, you're gonna have to eat a lot of lupin flakes. So just be aware of that too. You know, it's the volume of food is going to increase, but as long as you're hitting your calories, you're gonna be fine. But yeah, in terms of like a comparison to switching from a meat, I would go lentils and beans 'cause you're gonna get a broad amino acid profile and it will cover off all of your needs.

Yeah, lupin flakes was embedded in my brain when you said protein. Jeremy actually presented at Wolfpack for us in August did a great presentation for personal trainers who are looking to learn more, so that was great. Thank you for your question. Next.

Thanks for the information that you've shared today. I really appreciate both accounts and that it's coming from a sustainable lens. I just wanted to know your thoughts about people who follow like an ancestral diet, because It seems interesting that most of the other species know inherently what to eat and humans are so confused about what they need to eat. So just interested about your thoughts about that.

It's a great question. Do you want to go start?

It is a great question. I, and I agree, like there's unnecessary confusion and we do need to go back to a more simple approach to our food. And you're right. The lion doesn't get confused about killing the antelope. It just does what it needs to do. And it certainly doesn't, you know, worry about the ethics of its choice. I guess fortunately in that sense with our, you know, our brains, we do have the ability to have that awareness with those things. I think it always comes back to what we've said. Always go back to a whole foods diet. Minimally, like, Honestly, I can't really think of an example where I would say, hey, have some processed food. I think I would be disingenuous if I was like—

Maybe if you're in the army, you're starving, you're out on a big trek, that's all you could bring with you.

Yeah.

Yeah. 'Cause what they do in the army when they have their massive treks, I was speaking to an officer the other day actually, and he was like, they've got, they've formulated these packs. I forget what he calls them. Yes, the ration packs. Yeah, the ration packs. And it's got like a bunch of protein, bunch of carbs, bunch of fat. And when they go out on their big troops and whatever, it's just like bang. And obviously in that situation, that's where I think the processed food and the formulas really probably come in super handy because they're carrying 22 kilos on their back. They're not gonna whip out a steak. That's right. Tupperware, my six-pack, put the ice bag in it.

And people who are on a plant-based diet who are maybe, maybe as they learn how to get the right balance of nutrients for performance and recovery in their health, sometimes, you know, you might want to include, you know, a plant-based protein shake or something like that as an easy way to get your protein up for the day. Certainly not to say relying on that, but yeah, there's going to be little instances where you can go, all right, well, maybe I can make an exception for that in this instance. But when we're talking about like ancestral diets, you're probably going to be able to speak a bit more in depth about this, but I think it always does come back to, it has to be to be whole foods and that's, it really is that simple. I don't think we can make it any more complicated.

I love the question because before I answer it, I just wanna say this, in over 200 studies that are done on genetically modified food, they've looked at over 200 animals or essentially 200 studies or 200 animals, I forget the exact details, but essentially they analyzed 200 animals, they presented the option of genetically modified food versus the ungenetically modified food the non-GMO food. In every case, the animal would pick the non-GMO food. Then they went one step further, they only presented the option of the genetically modified food. The animal, 9 times out of 10, picked to starve than to eat that food. The animal did not recognize genetically modified food as food, which blows my mind, right? It's like, wow, that is quite incredible, you know, to feed. To the smell, the texture, they're able to see the difference. Whereas humans obviously are lied to with marketing and whatever and are into facts and figures. So, we look at the ancestral diet, there's a few ways to, I suppose, dissect this. Way one is to look at the Blue Zones. So, the Blue Zones were essentially regions of the world where people had lived to over 100 and they analyzed what they eat. Now, the thing about the Blue Zones it's everyone's kind of eating a different thing. So, it's not one diet, it's depending on where they live and it goes back to what we were saying earlier, which is living off the land. Then another way to analyze this is with Weston A. Price's work. He wrote a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, which I'd highly recommend. So, in truth, Weston A. Price, when he went out and did his research, he was, he thought he was, he wanted to know what makes people healthy. So he was a dentist and a researcher and basically he believed in the chiropractic philosophy of healthy spines equal perfect health, except 'cause he was a dentist, he understood that at the time of birth, your cells that make up your spine also divide and make up your teeth. So if you have healthy teeth, it's actually a primary to indicate whether you have, you are healthy. So he went out into the 1930s and analyzed essentially 14 different cultures, native cultures and looked at what they eat. Now in truth, he thought he was gonna find a vegan society. He didn't, that really surprised him. The closest he found was lacto-vegan. So the Swiss, for example. What he did find is like the Aboriginals or any of these like native cultures is their diets varied upon where they were. What we're also learning about the microbiome is that, you know, people in today's day and age wanna be really politically correct on things. What we're learning about the microbiome is it's racist as fuck. So, you know, if you're African American, if you're white Anglo, if you're a female from England, like wherever you lived, it has a great impact on your microbiome. And there isn't actually just one microbiome that's gonna be one size fit all. It's racist in a sense because it's so different in our foods. And what that basically speaks to is your ancestral food point is like we know pretty emphatically through work, well, I know emphatically with working with clients and this isn't gonna be politically correct, but Samoans and Torres Strait Islanders do very, very poorly with carbohydrates, right? Very poorly. So, and why is that? 'Cause if you look at genetically, there wasn't a lot of processed foods in their diet. They were actually more on the side of high fat keto diet. What were they eating? They were eating high fat. So if you give like say Torres Strait Islander or an Islander, Samoan, someone of that Maori backgrounds, if you give them a diet that's high in carbohydrate, they're gonna do poorly. They're gonna get fatter. If you give them a high fat diet and a high protein diet, they'll do really, really well. 'Cause there are those genetic differences. It's the same thing with dairy. Asians, it's like 95% of Asians are lactose intolerant. It's like, okay, so does that say that if you're Swiss extraction, well, if you're Swiss, that's what you grew up on, right? It was dairy, but it's not the dairy, the shit that we buy in the supermarket. It was the fermented dairy, the cows and they had their own processes. So absolutely to your point, Māsi, wandering tribe, you know, they existed on white blood, which they referred, was milk. Milk was referred to as white blood and blood. So they would bring animals along with them and, you know, stab them in the neck and drink some of their blood. And, you know, we're talking about some of the tribes that resisted slavery. Like these guys were freaking animals. The Māsi, all they ate was meat. Not the Māsi, rather the Lakota Indian tribe. All they ate really was meat and they called them red teeth 'cause they had so much blood. If you look at the Inuit, you know, the Eskimos, what we'd call Eskimos, they ate no vegetables. There was no, 'cause essentially the vegetables didn't grow in those colder regions of the world. It was really only fish and fat. So I think there is a lot of, you know, legitimacy to what you would call an ancestral diet based on, and I think the more science evolves, the more we realize the more we don't know and just how much this actually plays a part and differences there are. I mean, even Italians genetically are poor at absorbing iron. I think that was referred to back, I can't remember, I don't remember everything that I've ever read, but it was something about our iron absorption and malaria thing and whatever. But again, poor at absorbing iron. So it makes, that's a case to have a bit more red meat in their diet, for example. So I think there is a lot of legitimacy and it's just about, you know, you live in Australia, So, going back to, you know, Johnny Bowden's 4 famous food groups, which are hunted, fish, gathered, and plucked. If you, you know, the way you make that up, I think is gonna be actually highly individual. Like Jeremy, he's not doing, you know, the hunting or the fishing, but it's the gather and the plucked. Where if you're me, it's, you know, the hunting, the fishing, the gather and plucked. It's a kind of a mix and you've got to kind of find that balance that works for you as well. Does that answer your question? Yeah, cool. Let's give a round of applause. Yes.

G'day, Mark and Jeremy. My question was in regards to a sole plant-based diet versus the omnivorous or carnivorous diet. A, sort of the quality of the protein, do you find that, or what I'd sort of read to the effect of that animal protein is of a higher quality in terms of your performance and whatnot, whereas going on a plant-based diet, some of the benefits that you can get are sort of longevity in terms of the health benefits on that. Yeah. Thanks for your question. The quality of protein in meat versus plant food, at the end of the day, it's kind of a non-argument because if you're getting enough protein from a plant-based diet, you're covering off your protein needs. Needs. So it's more a quantity thing than a quality thing, because protein is, is protein at the end of the day. The amino acids are the amino acids at the end of the day, whether they come from meat or whether they come from plants. The amino acids are the same. It's just whether or not you're actually getting enough of the essential amino acids to ensure you're getting enough protein. So, um, yeah, that's, that is the short answer. It's, it's quantity as opposed to quality. And I think there's this sort of maybe misnomer where we view animal protein as being the superior protein and sure, per serving you may get more protein in that one particular thing, but if you eat enough of the beans and lentils and chickpeas and lupin flakes and whatever else, you're gonna get enough protein. So, it comes back to quality more so than, sorry, quantity more so than the actual quality.

My answer's gonna piss people off on the internet, So, first I wanna address the health thing, right? The health thing is, you know, there is a lot of research that shows that a vegetarian or vegan diet shows that healthier outcomes, but again, you need to look at who's it comparing it to and they're in a calorie restricted phase. So what that says to me is that people who don't eat shit and don't overeat and aren't in a calorie surplus live longer, duh. So is it that the fact that they're vegan or is it the fact that they're eating less calories? I would argue and say, well, there's no reason you couldn't do that if you wanted to eat meat as well. I'm not saying you have to, but if you wanted to eat meat and not be vegan, you'd still be able to do that so long as you don't eat like a fat pig, right? The other answer I would say to that, to what Jeremy was saying with the protein quality, yes, absolutely what Jeremy said. You need to make sure you hit your protein. The only thing I would say is with a vegan or vegetarian diet, you do just wanna pay a little bit more attention to what type of amino acids you're getting and you may need to fortify. So this is where we've worked with a lot of vegan competitors and we've had quite good success. And the way we do it is they have to supplement, you know, there's really no way around that. So, you know, we're using things like the Thorne Amino Complex, which just brings up the BCAAs and EAAs, which is their branched-chain amino acids and essential amino acids. So just paying attention to that, if you are making that choice to be plant-based, for ethical reasons and, you know, it feels right for you, then just making sure like if you are wanting to perform, you probably are going to need to put those amino acids in. Yeah, thanks for your question. Did I answer it? Yeah.

Um, thanks for the talk today, both of you. I'm really interested in how either of you view, um, plant-based products that are marketed as meat, because I find in the polarizing debate. I'm a meat eater and a vegetable eater, that it's something that has come up to light quite recently, and I find it quite annoying. I have no opposition to plant-based diets, but yeah, I'm really interested in your thoughts.

We were literally just talking about this off camera.

Yes. Well, let's—

Wine, vegan wine.

Yes, that's right. So I work at Fitness First and literally yesterday I saw—

Melbourne Central Fitness First.

Melbourne Central Fitness First.

Give it a right plug.

And I saw an advert on their big LED screens for vegan wine. And that just really stood out to me because I was thinking to myself, why on earth are they advertising wine in a gym? And I know why because It's vegan and vegan does not equate to health, but that's what they're trying to go with. So that's why it's advertised in a gym because they're like, well, if we advertise it in a gym, people will think it's healthy and I can have it after my workout.

Imagine instead of protein shakes, wine shakes. Yeah. Hey, that would take off.

Yeah, unfortunately it probably would. But that I guess just highlights I think that's where we are in terms of our understanding of, well, it's just because it's vegan doesn't mean it's healthy. It can be just as processed and it can be full of fillers and all this sort of stuff, so it doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthy. And the other day I got asked if I'd tried the new Hungry Jack's, what's the name of the burger that they're doing?

I have no idea, I don't follow.

Does anyone know the name of the—

Rebel?

The Rebel Burger? Yeah. And my immediate response to that was no, why would I? Because just because it's vegan doesn't mean I should rush out to Hungry Jack's, who have been a long-term junk food corporation, also responsible for the deaths of billions of animals. Why would I suddenly go out and support them just because they've decided to cash in on a market? So that— I quite— that's my stance and position on these things. It's— there are a lot of meat replacements and for some people transitioning, maybe if they're missing the taste and the texture of meat, I understand that that might sort of fill that gap and it might, you know, as they start to, you know, move across to eating other foods, it might help with that. I understand that it's kind of like putting the nicotine patch on while you, you know, wean yourself off being addicted to cigarettes. But at the end of the day, if you are going to eat mock meats or, meat-like products, it should be a short-term thing because it's still not a whole foods product. I understand too that some people might use it just on occasion to fill a gap or just to, you know, sort of, I don't know, ground themselves in some sort of sense of reality. Fine, I understand that as well, but again, long-term, I honestly think that no, that's my short answer. It's, I just think it's, You know, it's to me again moving away from what it means to eat whole foods. It's moving away from what is nutritionally sound for our bodies, and it's moving towards something that is grown in a lab or heavily processed that looks like food. It's the same stuff that you see in aisles 1 through 14 in the supermarket. It's not food. It looks like food. It might smell like food. It might have the the same texture and for some people, fine, but for me personally, and I thought, I think in the broader context of what it means to have, you know, a nutritional approach to food, I think no. That's going to upset a lot of people too.

Yeah.

Sorry about that.

What a great answer. I don't have any follow-ups, so that's, you don't need it. Great answer. Alrighty folks, let's give another actually round of applause for our guest today, Jeremy Evans. Outstanding, outstanding. And for all of you, thank you for coming. So folks, you're watching The Wolf's Den. Stay tuned for more great episodes like, just like this one. If you're new to our show, go back and check some of our other great episodes. We've interviewed the greats like Ed Cohn, Ben Pokalski, Sebastian Auerbach, Eugene Teo, it's all there. If you're a personal trainer, do check out www.personaltrainermentoring.com. And if you wanna get in the best shape and check out some PT, if you wanna get in the best shape possible and pick up your PT, check out Enterprise Fitness. And obviously, Jeremy, you're at Melbourne Central Fitness first so people can check you out. Where is your Instagram? Tell the folks your—

It's peakplantperformance.

And your website?

www.peakplantperformance.com, sorry, coming soon.

We'll put all the notes in, we'll have episode notes that will all go there. Thank you for watching. Until next time, folks, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.