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Joe Rogan Experience #1784 - Diana Rodgers & Robb Wolf

Diana Rodgers is a registered dietitian, nutritionist, and host of the "Sustainable Dish" podcast. Robb Wolf is a former research biochemist, author, and co-host of "The Healthy Rebellion" radio podcast, alongside his wife Nicki Violetti. They are the co-authors of "Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat,"  a companion book to the documentary of the same name.

Diana RodgersguestJoe RoganhostRobb Wolfguest
Jun 27, 20242h 57mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:27

    Texas ice storm déjà vu and the fragility of modern infrastructure

    1. DR

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, folks. Good to see ya.

    4. RW

      It's good to see you.

    5. JR

      Thanks for coming.

    6. RW

      Um, glad we didn't make it snow-

    7. JR

      You almost did.

    8. RW

      ... again, in Texas. I mean, it was close.

    9. JR

      It can snow. It might snow today. It's very possible, 'cause it was drizzling when I left the house, and it was 30 degrees, so ... which is not supposed to happen. It's supposed to be snow.

    10. RW

      Hopefully it won't be the snow-pocalypse part two.

    11. JR

      Yeah, last time you were supposed to come, it became a complete disaster, but-

    12. RW

      (laughs)

    13. JR

      ... it was fun. It was fun to watch people slide around and, and, eh, know that this, uh, city has zero infrastructure in terms of, like, dealing with snow.

    14. RW

      (laughs)

    15. JR

      It's, it's, it's kinda ... 'Cause I grew up in Massachusetts where it's, you know, they know how to handle snow. Out here, they're, they're baffled.

    16. RW

      Do you wanna ...

    17. DR

      I did.

    18. RW

      She got ... Y- y- tell them what happened with you.

    19. DR

      Well, well, so my flight from Hou- ... I'm from Boston, and, uh, my flight from Houston to Austin was canceled, so I got the last SUV. You don't know how much I wanted to be on your show. I got the last SUV, drove through the ice storm to Austin, where there was, like, just dead cars, you know, it was like zombie apocalypse. Got to a Marriott around the corner from here and thought, "Well, at least I'll be able to walk, if, if nothing else." And my room overlooked this on-ramp, and I just, every day for a week, with no running water and no bottled water, watched the cars just slide up and down. And then I finally went out to Rob's house, where he at least had a pool for running toilets.

    20. RW

      Flushing the toilets.

    21. DR

      But I was living on basically, like, White Claw and canned tuna. (laughs)

    22. JR

      (laughs) Oh my God, this was when you were supposed to be here?

    23. RW

      Yeah.

    24. DR

      Mm-hmm. Last year.

    25. JR

      Oh, my God.

    26. RW

      I still have a can of Wolf chili-

    27. DR

      That I got out of a gas station. (laughs)

    28. RW

      ... that she bought here that ... but she didn't have a can opener-

    29. DR

      (laughs)

    30. RW

      ... and she was just like, "I don't know how to get into this thing." (laughs) So ...

  2. 3:27 – 6:22

    Why Joe feels best on meat + fruit: inflammation, weight loss, and carnivore practicality

    1. JR

      Um, I'm glad ... This is a good time to talk about your book. The book is, uh, Sacred Cow, Diana Rodgers and Robb Wolf. It's available right now, The Case for Better Meat. All I've been eating since January is meat. All I've been eating is meat and f- and fruit. That's, that's my diet. Meat, fruit, and eggs. I've never felt better. I've done this before in the past, but I never stuck with it. I us- would do, like, that carnivore month of January. I did it, like, two years ago. I lost 12 pounds. I looked great. I felt great. Then I started eating spaghetti again. (laughs)

    2. RW

      (laughs)

    3. JR

      Shocker. I get fat. I get fat and then I, I've ... my joints hurt again. And the, that's the thing that drives me the, that, that's the most wild, rather, is my joints feel so good. Like everything feels better when I'm not eating foods that cause inflammation. And for me, there's something, I mean, I'm, I'm not advocating this for everybody, but a meat-based diet for me is 100%, at least in a short term ... I've never done it for, like, years. I know, like, Shaun Baker-

    4. RW

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      ... and a few of those guys who've done it for years and years, Paul Saladino. But for me, short term, there's nothing that's made me feel better. And I can't imagine it would fuck me up long term. I mean, I take a lot of vitamins. I do eat a lot of fruit. I'm, I'm exercise ... my exercise is great. My ... I feel healthy. I have plenty of energy. I avoided all the diarrhea.

    6. RW

      (laughs)

    7. JR

      'Cause, uh, when I just did on- only meat, I had ridiculous diarrhea. Like, astounding, as my friend Tom Segura put it. When he, he tried it, he goes, "This diarrhea is astounding."

    8. RW

      (laughs)

    9. JR

      I'm like, "Yes, that's a good way to put it." (laughs)

    10. RW

      I was following that, and I was like, at some point there may need to be an intervention, like-

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. RW

      ... somebody, like, dropping you some Imodium or something. Yeah, that sounded rough.

    13. JR

      Well, there's something about, like, f- eating a lot of fatty meat only.

    14. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    15. RW

      Right?

    16. JR

      Your body's like, "What is all this?" Like, "Where's the veggies?" Like, "You're, you, you always eat veggies." How come there's-

    17. RW

      Right.

    18. JR

      ... how come there's no spaghetti here? Where's the, where's the bread?

    19. DR

      Yeah, so as a dietician, to be talking about things like this is definitely blasphemy.

    20. JR

      Blasphemy?

    21. DR

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      Yeah?

    23. DR

      I mean, I, I get pushback like crazy from fellow dieticians. It's, you know ...

    24. JR

      But what do they say ... Well, well, what's the goal, right? Isn't the goal to feel better, to look better, and to perform better? So if you're eating food that makes you feel better, look better, and perform better, I mean ... Uh, I was at 205 when I started this diet. Now I w- weigh 195 and it's only been two months and I feel great. Like I'm not s- starving. I just lost weight. It just went vroomt.

    25. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. JR

      It just went away. I got my six-pack back. Like I feel better. My joints feel better. Like I just feel better. Like isn't that the goal? Like the whole goal of your diet is supposed to be the vitality of your body, right?

    27. DR

      It-Right, and the whole goal of science should be to question your bias and seek the truth.

  3. 6:22 – 9:17

    Carnivore evidence, research limits, and autoimmune remission anecdotes

    1. JR

      Well, I know Shawn Baker was telling me that there's a large study that's going on that Harvard's putting on for the carnivore diet. Do you, do you know about that?

    2. RW

      They have some preliminary data on it, and I mean, it, it's ... There's not, it's not a randomized control trial. There's not a, a control group.

    3. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    4. RW

      It, it's a survey. And so, you know, can be very critical of surveys, but it's interesting, like 94% of the people that did it got off of the medications that they were on, like entirely.

    5. JR

      Yeah.

    6. RW

      And it went through and detailed like some blood sugar changes, blood sugars improved dramatically for the vast majority of people. They saw lipids improve. Not everybody. Some people on kind of a higher fat carnivore type diet, they see their lipids go up. We're still not sure what the total, you know, net risk is with that, but it's pretty impressive. And a- again, you know, people will poke holes in that, but there was a time in the 1940s, 1950s when there wasn't this thing called the Mediterranean diet. Then this guy wrote a r- review paper about it, and nothing really happened for, I don't know, eight, 10 years, but then more people started writing about it, more people started talking about it. Now, we have randomized control trials, and we have all kinds of different interventions, and we have some proof that something like a Medi- Mediterranean type diet is probably pretty helpful for a lot of people. So when people criticize this stuff and they just dismiss it out of hand, like, "Well, there's no research on it," okay, that's fine, but this is where things begin, and it's usually observational, you know, that okay, there's this group of people that seem to be getting these really remarkable results. And the, the thing that, that was so interesting to me, my background was in autoimmunity and cancer research, and I got into this because of gut and autoimmune issues. I'm the person that came up with the autoimmune paleo diet. Like I'm the person that kinda, you know, formalized that initially, and it works pretty well, but when I saw what people were doing on a carnivore diet, it, it just blew me away. Like it ... People who had done every other thing and they were so sick, they were crippled from gut and autoimmune issues, they would go on this modified, you know, carnivore type diet, and put theirs- their problems into remission and then have really remarkable health at the end of that. And it was a few people initially, but as it has grown, it's become this, like, really watershed moment, and I, I don't think that a carnivore diet is like the first whistle stop somebody should do when dietary change. There's a lot of other (laughs) shit you could do before that, but if you're really sick, you know, I, I think to, to both of y'all's points, if you're really sick and you're trying to improve things, like it seems like a reasonable thing to use as an intervention, just ... It's like playing darts and you're just trying to get closer to the bullseye, and you can use that as a beginning point. Some people add in fruit, like Paul Saladino has added in more fruit and honey and stuff like that. Shawn Baker is an absolute beast and he's, he, he w- wouldn't be caught dead eating fruit, you know, and it just seems to, to work for him. But I, I think that it's a reasonable place to at least start and begin tinkering with things, and maybe you stick with it long term or maybe you modify it down the road.

  4. 9:17 – 13:13

    Mediterranean diet vs. the real Mediterranean: blue zones, pork, and confounders

    1. JR

      Well, it's gotta be a function of different requirements for different people's bodies, right? Different people ask more of their body, like a guy like you does a lot of jujitsu, that's very physical. Some people don't. Some people, th- they just hike and maybe they could have a different diet. There's a l- a lot of different things that a, a person needs depending upon their lifestyle. But when you talk about like a Mediterranean diet specifically, what is, what, what is a Mediterranean diet? Like what's in there?

    2. RW

      Th- that's the kind of funny thing. I mean, you've got what the literature kind of says, and then you have what people actually eat, and what folks actually eat is a lot of fatty fish, a lot of like lamb and goat and, and they definitely eat some legumes, they eat local fruits and vegetables, a lot of olive oil, but it looks very ... It, it's not this so like grain centric, you know, thing that, that is typically portrayed in modern dietetics. Yeah.

    3. JR

      So, but is there like a, there ... W- was there a protocol for the Mediterranean diet? Like if someone says, "I'm going on the Mediterranean diet," what do they mean? Are they eating lettuce? Do they have f- vegetables?

    4. RW

      Usually Mediterranean diet means a emphasis on seafood, lean meats, low fat dairy to some degree.

    5. DR

      Legumes.

    6. RW

      Legumes a- as kind of a preponderance for the carbs, like usually in preference to grains, although they'll have some grains in the ...

    7. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. RW

      ... in the mix too, but that's kind of the funny thing, is-

    9. JR

      Vegetables?

    10. RW

      Th- a good amount of vegetables, yeah. Yeah.

    11. JR

      Okay.

    12. RW

      Olives, olive oil.

    13. JR

      So it's essentially like a primal diet.

    14. RW

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      Like the idea is just to cut out processed foods.

    16. RW

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      Which is always a good step one, right?

    18. RW

      Absolutely. Yeah.

    19. DR

      Yeah, but then when you look at what people in the Mediterranean actually eat, it's not ... It's a made up diet. It's, it's-

    20. JR

      Oh, interesting.

    21. DR

      It's not really a diet. It's ... I mean, I've been to Spain. They eat a lot of pork, and pork is like not okay on a Mediterranean diet.

    22. JR

      It's not? Why is it not okay? Isn't it a fatty meat?

    23. RW

      It, it, well we-

    24. DR

      Well, fatty fish is okay, but not fatty meat.

    25. JR

      Oh, okay.

    26. RW

      So, so you have, you have the what people are actually doing versus kind of what's been canonized within dietetics, and they're, they're really different. And also to Diana's point, like what folks are doing in Spain is reasonably different than what they're doing in, in Greece and Italy and whatnot, you know, just kind of a granular level. But that, th- just as an aside, the only food I think that is common to all of the blue zones is pork, but nobody ever mentions that.

    27. JR

      Really?

    28. RW

      Yeah. It's literally the only food that, you know, from Costa Rica to ... I guess the only one wi- that, that it's not part of would be like the Seventh Day Adventists, but yeah. Yeah.

    29. JR

      Yeah, that's a weird one, right?

    30. RW

      Yeah.

  5. 13:13 – 17:02

    Loneliness, social connection, and exercise: health span vs. life span

    1. JR

      Social connections helps? In what way? Like when ... How do you define?

    2. RW

      Uh, eh, this stuff gets a little bit sketchy, but there's, uh, uh, some research that suggests that people with inadequate social connectivity, like friends, family-

    3. JR

      Oh, like loners?

    4. RW

      ... y- y- i- i- eh, k- kind of loners, but, you know, they're just socially isolated, that that is as negative on health as a pack-a-day smoking habit. Now, that pack-a-day smoking habit gets thrown around a lot, because people will say eating an egg incr- is- is equivalent to, like, you know, smoking c- cigarettes, or y- you know, something like that.

    5. JR

      Yeah, that's the silliness.

    6. RW

      But it, but it, but I think when you think about, like, human evolution and small group environments and stuff like that, there's something really powerful there. And i- it's clearly ... You had Sebastian Junger on, and they-

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. RW

      ... they talk about, you know, poorer communities tend to have more social connectivity, and you don't see suicides within these groups-

    9. JR

      Right.

    10. RW

      ... and whatnot. And i- and there's a, a lot going on there, but I think that that, that social connectivity, in my mind, is on par with sleep and food w- with regards to overall health. Like, if you're really negatively impacted there, it's, it, it's gonna be a major piece of, of your overall health. And if you tick that box, you can get away with a lot of other stuff.

    11. JR

      Mm.

    12. DR

      Yeah, so, so, uh, I was listening to a book, Heartbreak. It's amazing. It's, it's this new book out about a woman that got divorced, and she's, she gets really sick, and she's trying to figure out why her health declines. And she's kind of going through all the, all the numbers and trying to seek it out and talking to all these neuroscientists and everything. But loneliness, your chance of dying early for loneliness is, by far beats out cancer or, um, autoimmune diseases, heart disease. It's loneliness.

    13. JR

      Wow. That makes sense.

    14. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    15. JR

      I mean, people who make you feel good, like if you have good friends-

    16. RW

      Mm-hmm.

    17. JR

      ... and you're around 'em, and you're laughing, like how, how is that not good for you?

    18. RW

      Right.

    19. JR

      You know? It really should be prescribed.

    20. RW

      Right.

    21. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. JR

      Yeah. So exercise is, uh, critical, but not the primary factor?

    23. RW

      I think it provides the quality of life. A- and, you know, when we think about longevity and kind of health span versus life span, we wanna live as well as we can as long as we can, and then very short, you know, decline, and, and then, you know, fade out. And I think that smart exercise, a base level of cardio, some resistance training, then just doing a variety of activity, good mobility, that, I think that that feeds into the ability to do all the stuff that we wanna do. And also, like, eh, you get sick, you get injured, you get in a car accident or something, like people who, y- you know, if you're, you're better shaped, you're just harder to kill. And I think that that is such a major factor, but I, i- my opinion, you could, y- you know, maybe agree, but, um, I think when people tackle exercise as a calorie-burning endeavor, like, you're much better time spent focusing on good quality food, very protein centric, 'cause it tends to be satiating so you don't overeat.

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. RW

      So you exercise so you have a kickass life, but if you wanna lose weight, good body composition, it's really the nutrition part that, that addresses the bulk of that.

    26. JR

      So, uh, the people that do exercise just for calorie burnout, w- the problem I usually have with that is that I- I don't think they enjoy it.

    27. RW

      Right.

    28. JR

      I think they think of it as this task that one must do in order to look better, or to justify a sundae, you know, justify an ice cream sundae or a bowl of spaghetti, you know? Where it's like, you should, you should enjoy the results. Like, you feel good, like, it's great for the body, it's a stress reliever, it relieves anxiety. It's like, it's so critical. If you're going through any, like, stressful period of your life, that is the time where you gotta be, like, disciplined with your workouts. You gotta hit 'em hard.

    29. RW

      Right.

    30. JR

      It's a medicine. That's how I feel.

  6. 17:02 – 19:53

    Protein requirements and sarcopenia: why RDA is ‘minimums,’ not optimal

    1. DR

      Yeah, and sarcopenia is something, so that's age-related muscle loss, and we know everyone over 40 starts to d- eh, lose their ability to digest protein. And so your need for protein and your requirement to even just maintain muscle mass goes way up as you get older, and the RDA for protein i- is, like, so far below ... I- it's set at the minimum to avoid disease, it's not the optimal amount, but even that RDA is way, way, way too low for protein.

    2. JR

      Really?

    3. DR

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      Well, what is the RDA for protein?

    5. DR

      So the RDA is .8 grams per kilogram of body weight, but then because Americans don't like kilograms and, and they don't wanna do the calculations, you'll see these numbers floating around. So for women, they'll say, "Women need 45 grams of protein, and men need 55 grams of protein," or something. But that's based on this ideal body weight of 125 for women and 155 for men.

    6. JR

      What do we live in, the '30s? (laughs)

    7. DR

      And so yeah, so the average weight-

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. DR

      ... according to the CDC for, for women is 165 and for men it's like 195.

    10. JR

      Is that real? The average weight for women is 165?

    11. DR

      Mm-hmm. For American women.

    12. JR

      Wow.

    13. DR

      Yeah. And so wh- so then when you go .8 grams per kilogram, you're way above what, what these RDA nu- you're at about double what the RDA is. Um, uh, but then when you look at optimal amounts, so we went through this in the book, and we, I looked at all the research and how they came up with the RDA and-... um, you know, we really need at least double the RDA of protein, and we need it from animal source foods. There's a huge difference between animal and plant source proteins.

    14. JR

      Now, that- this is something that vegans, their hackles get up immediately.

    15. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. JR

      How much real data is there that shows, like actual real world data that shows that plant-based protein is not as bioavailable as animal-based protein?

    17. DR

      I mean, that's just basic biochemistry. It's just a fact.

    18. JR

      And what, so what is it? So if you have, like, 30 grams of broccoli protein versus 30 grams of beef protein, like, what is the difference? What's happening?

    19. DR

      Oh, that's a good question. I don't know exactly how, like, broccoli would compare to beef.

    20. JR

      Probably be a lot. A lot of mass for broccoli. If you wanted to get 30 grams of broccoli protein, like how much broccoli would that be? It'd be a big-ass bowl of broccoli.

    21. RW

      Right. You, you have your, uh, the beans?

    22. DR

      I do have it for-

    23. RW

      Yeah.

    24. DR

      ... um, yeah. In fact, I have it-

    25. JR

      For legumes?

    26. DR

      Yeah. I have it-

    27. JR

      So it's like that?

    28. DR

      Yeah. I have it... I don't know if, um, the drop box link that I sent came through. Um, so I've got one comparing beans to beef, and I have it for protein, for vitamins, and for minerals.

    29. JR

      And for farts.

    30. DR

      (laughs)

  7. 19:53 – 26:10

    Plant vs. animal protein: amino acid completeness, bioavailability, and meme math

    1. DR

      Um, but, and the, and the other thing is, is that it's limiting. So here, here we have-

    2. JR

      Okay.

    3. DR

      So we don't just need protein. We need amino acids.

    4. JR

      Right.

    5. DR

      And so, and there's a popular meme out there comparing broccoli to steak and how you can get all your protein just from broccoli.

    6. JR

      Right, right.

    7. DR

      Um, but, but kidney beans are a much better source, so I went with kidney beans. And so four ounces of steak versus four ounces of kidney beans. And when, when you see these, um, plant-based memes, they will be comparing uncooked beans, and they will be doing it by calorie, not by portion.

    8. JR

      Okay.

    9. DR

      Right? So we need to, you know, look at, you know, portion size.

    10. JR

      And why are they doing uncooked beans?

    11. DR

      Because you get ... There, there's more beans in uncooked beans.

    12. JR

      Oh, I see, 'cause the water's not-

    13. RW

      It's like double.

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. RW

      Yeah, yeah.

    16. JR

      Yeah, okay. But it's not realistic in terms of a portion of food-

    17. RW

      Right.

    18. JR

      ... because you'd cook them and they'd swell up, and ...

    19. DR

      You just ... And the calories that you would need to eat to get ... All right, so we have only nine grams of protein from four ounces of kidney beans, so in order to get the same, even close to the amount of total protein, you would need to eat, um, over three times the amount of kidney beans.

    20. JR

      So, and that would be, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 and something calories of-

    21. DR

      And then you need to have-

    22. JR

      ... of kidney beans.

    23. DR

      ... rice with it as well to, to balance it out.

    24. JR

      Right, versus 180 calories of protein from... or 180 calories from, uh, 30 grams of protein in steak.

    25. RW

      And, you know, on that, like, sarcopenia side, like losing muscle mass-

    26. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    27. RW

      ... as we age, and also just for athletics, isoleucine, leucine, some of these branched chain amino acids are the, are the really important amino acids because they stimulate anabolic signaling. And you have a threshold with that. If you don't hit a certain threshold, it doesn't turn on the anabolic signaling, so you're, you're tending to lose muscle mass. There's kind of some, some bro science, like you need to eat every two hours or you're going to lose muscle mass. It's not to that point, but we do need some amount of anabolic signaling. Exercise, specifically strength training, causes that anabolic signaling, and then eating a protein-rich meal that's, that's rich in branched chain amino acids causes that signaling too. And it's, it's not impossible to do via plant-based methods, but it's hard. Like, it's really kind of a calculus problem. To get that part, that box ticked, like you need to do protein powders and stuff like that to usually get in there and make that happen, but then you also get a ton of calories comparatively.

    28. JR

      Wouldn't the, the simple solution be to, if you wanted to have a plant-based diet, is to eat the plant-based protein, but then substitute with, uh, exogenous amino acids?

    29. RW

      You, you could. If-

    30. JR

      If you did that-

  8. 26:10 – 47:34

    Micronutrients, conversion genetics, and gut factors: B12, iron, vitamin A, omega-3s

    1. DR

      Mm-hmm. And then I have this broken out also for minerals and for vitamins, just so, so the micronutrients that you're getting from animal source foods too, which s- are far superior to, uh... So, here we have, uh, vitamins.

    2. JR

      Right, but this is just beans, right, which are not really known as primary sources of vitamins. 'Cause-

    3. DR

      Oh, they're touted as the magic food.

    4. JR

      Beans for vitamins?

    5. DR

      For, for nutrient density, for-

    6. JR

      Not for vitamin A.

    7. DR

      (laughs)

    8. JR

      'Cause they have 0%.

    9. RW

      (laughs)

    10. JR

      (laughs)

    11. RW

      But this is the, this is kind of the cul-de-sac you get stuck into, though. Like, how do you get enough protein?

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. RW

      How do you not overeat? And then, what type of nutrient deficiencies are you facing at the end of that?

    14. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    15. RW

      Like, it, it, it's...

    16. JR

      Well, if you look, it's funny that they put vitamin D 'cause you don't, really don't get vitamin D from food, and both of them have 0%. Like, why is that on there, then?

    17. DR

      It's just part of the USDA.

    18. JR

      Right. Oh, I see. And vitamin A, again, it's like, you only get 1% from steak. Uh, but the big ones are vitamin B12. That's a big one, 'cause if you look at big, uh, the, the big difference in B12 in kidney beans, you have 0%.

    19. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    20. JR

      B12 in steak, you have 95% of your USDA. And that's just for four ounces. This is a small portion of sirloin steak.

    21. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. JR

      And you're getting almost a full daily requirement of vitamin B12, which, that is a big factor with people that are on a plant-based diet, is getting their v- their B12.

    23. DR

      Yeah, and we s- iron and B12 are two of the most common nutrient deficiencies worldwide.

    24. JR

      Hm. And both of those are common in meat and not very common in, in plant-based stuff.

    25. DR

      Yeah, and whenever there is a nutrient in both plants and animals, our bodies r- prefer the animal source nutrients.

    26. JR

      And wh- why is that? And how do we know that?

    27. DR

      So, for, like, example, um, beta-carotene, which is, like, what makes sweet potatoes orange and carrots orange, um, we have to convert that to vitamin A, uh, retinol, which is the usable form. So, i- when we eat an animal source of vitamin A, which is in fats of animals, we're getting it directly. And there's about 45% of the population d- has a gene that makes it so they can't make that conversion efficiently. So, not only do we have to convert it, but then almost half of all humans can't do it very well.

    28. JR

      Really?

    29. DR

      And so, to convert, uh, beta-carotene to vitamin A, a- and that's just one, uh, you know, heme iron in animals.

    30. JR

      Do some- half of the people that can't, is it because of the location of their ancestors? Is it...

  9. 47:34 – 1:16:46

    Plant defense chemicals, cooking/processing traditions, and why fruit ‘wants’ to be eaten

    1. JR

      So w- what do we think is happening to people's guts? Do you think that it's the plant defense chemicals that are messing with people's guts? Do you think with, when it comes to, obviously not celiacs, which is an extreme version, but when people do have issues with autoimmune issues that are food-related, what i- what is causing this stuff?

    2. RW

      I, I think there's a lot. Like, we have now, uh, you know, antibiotics were developed in the 1930s, like the sulfa-based antibiotics, and it was 1950s-ish that the more penicillin-derived antibiotics started hitting, so how many generations now do we have, like mom to baby, mom to baby, like alterations potentially in the gut microbiome? So some people who have the celiac gene don't express celiac disease because they have gut microbes that, that trim up the prolyl endopeptidase. It, it ... they have prolyl endopeptidase bacteria that break up the, the gluten proteins.

    3. JR

      Is that something someone can supplement with?

    4. RW

      ... kind of, but it doesn't work that well. Like, it, it's kind of like a, a, a, it will protect you from, like, cross-contamination a little bit, but, like, you get so sick with celiac, it, it's something that I would be careful, you know, playing around with that. But, you know, so you've got antibiotics, um, you have alterations in, in just our environment. I think that there's gut issues, mitochondrial issues, and then changes in our food supply. So I think it's a lot of different things. Low vitamin D levels, like the, uh, autoimmune diseases track very, very closely with latitude. You tend to see relatively little, uh, uh, autoimmune disease near the equator, and then you see it much higher at higher latitudes.

    5. JR

      Interesting.

    6. RW

      So vitamin D is a big factor. So there's a lot of different things that go into it, which is a little bit of the problem of trying to figure out how to fix it, because doctors have a tendency to just say that people are crazy or it's mainly in their head, because there's, like, this piece and that piece and the other piece. There's clearly a piece to a loss of gut barrier function. Like, that's pretty well-understood. Uh, Alessio Fasano, like, he, he's a researcher mainly looking at celiac disease, but he has celiac disease as a model for autoimmune disease in general. But there's a loss of intestinal barrier function when intact food particles can make it into the body, then the body can mount immune responses to everything. And then the flip side of this, and maybe why carnivore works so well is if, if somebody eats a very simple diet, it doesn't irritate the gut, the gut can heal, and then the body is not primed to be, you know, reacting as, as much, doesn't mount the same immune response, and so you can kind of dial the, that inflammatory process down.

    7. DR

      There's, there's also other people that think that, you know, when you live in a really clean environment-

    8. RW

      Oh, yeah, the hygiene hypothesis, yeah.

    9. DR

      ... and you're... Yeah, so, uh, so all of us have immune systems that want to be working and, and exercising themselves all the time, and in places where you're more likely to have parasites or, you know, other pathogens through your food, your immune system's busy working on all that stuff, um, and, and keeping you healthy. But when you are living in a place where there's just not anything for your immune system to work on, then it'll work on you.

    10. JR

      Mm.

    11. DR

      And start attacking yourself.

    12. JR

      But how much do you buy into this idea that plants, whether it's like kale or what have you, uh, they, the, these plant defense chemicals that these plants emit are causing some autoimmune issues with people?

    13. RW

      For sure. They, they are in some people.

    14. JR

      For sure.

    15. RW

      Um, it shouldn't really be that way though. Not to the degree that we, we see now. And this is where just looking back at, like, the 1950s, it, you know, people weren't... Celiac existed then, but it didn't exist to the degree it does now. You didn't see these multiple chemical sensitivities that, that folks have now. Plant defense mechanisms are definitely there. I mean, part of the reason why people soak, sprout, and ferment grains and legumes is that it decreases those things. So within most traditional food cultures, there's ways of taking relatively toxic foods and making them less toxic. Like what, what do they do with the, uh, taro root to, to get the cyanide out of it? I mean, just cooking, but they will also-

    16. JR

      Oh, yeah, that's a big process.

    17. RW

      ... ferment it. Yeah, yeah but the-

    18. DR

      Even with corn and lime.

    19. RW

      Yeah. Yeah, corn and lime is another... So there's a lot of historical food systems that, that help deal with this stuff. But it, it just, you know, when you look at most traditional food systems, it took pretty good care of people. Like, not everybody on the planet needed to eat paleo to, to have really outstanding health, you know? Traditional Mesoamerican food, even though it was very corn-rich, they, they figured out that you needed to, to do some things to, uh, prevent pellagra, which is this B vitamin deficiency ultimately, which was the, the inclusion of lime, but there's something that's changed, where we're-

    20. JR

      The inclusion of lime? What do you mean?

    21. RW

      The, the, uh, the, um...

    22. DR

      When you make corn tortillas traditionally-

    23. RW

      Yeah.

    24. DR

      ... you, you, like, ferment it with lime and that breaks down some of the anti-nutrients with the corn and it makes it more digestible.

    25. JR

      Oh, I see.

    26. RW

      Yeah, yeah.

    27. JR

      Mm. So this is when they're making the tortilla itself?

    28. RW

      Right, right.

    29. JR

      So what about the difference between a cooked vegetable versus a raw vegetable? Because one of the things that people love to say is like, "Oh, I only eat raw vegetables." And I'm like, "Hey, man, I don't think that's good. I used to think that was good, but I don't think that's good anymore."

    30. DR

      Uh, you're right. Period.

  10. 1:07:16 – 1:14:00

    Antibiotics, topsoil, and why the current industrial food system has an expiration date

    1. RW

      Well, uh, uh, it, it, one thing I want to bring up is that Diana ha- went to Southeast Asia at the... Can we talk about the Merck deal and all that?

    2. DR

      Yeah.

    3. RW

      Like, antibiotics. Like, I just want to throw that one out there-

    4. JR

      Okay.

    5. RW

      ... because there's pieces of this system that cannot go on. So we use a huge-

    6. JR

      Cannot go on?

    7. RW

      Yeah. Uh, uh, so we use a huge amount of antibiotics in chicken and pork production because of the proximity that they... Like, you, you can't do industrial chicken without the antibiotic inputs that we have, because they're just on top of each other. Merck and some of these pharmaceutical companies recognize this. And so historically, like before the 1940s, chicken and pork were a background part of the food system. Like, pork was fed largely food scraps. Chickens were just kind of a background part of, of farms. It wasn't a, a main feature. I think it was Herbert Hoover that said something like, "A chicken in every pot is like a, you know, a campaign deal." This was the beginning of the industrialized food system. We-

    8. JR

      Chickens were expensive.

    9. RW

      Chickens were expensive, yeah. It was usually beef and lamb and things like that that were the mainstay. But we know for certain that the current industrial food system is broken at the, the grain production level because of the damage it does to the topsoil. And it's broken at the animal production level because of the damage that it does to our, our antibiotic defense, basically. Like, if, if we lose the ability to use antibiotics because of creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, we're all screwed. Like, it, it... And so Merck is starting to educate folks that produce beef and, or pork and chicken, that we have to figure out sustainable ways of doing this. And it looks a lot more like Joel Salatin or White Oak Farms, where you're integrating all this stuff. So when people just immediately say, "Well, does regenerative ag scale?" We definitely need to address that, but like, the current system has an expiration date on it. We have to find something else. And in the book and the film, we don't lay out specifically, we d- we're, we're not trying to be futurists saying, "This is the way that this is gonna work." But a lot of what we suggest is that food production should be done at a regional level based off the resources and like the knowledge and the culture of the people that are there. Like, what happens in Nebraska should be really different than what's happening in like Venezuela or something like that. Like, you have different resources, different infrastructure, different cultural values. But there should be an integration of plant and animals, and the whole thing should probably look a lot more like an early 19th century farm with like good technology inputs than just industrial row crops is kind of the, the, the ultimate thing that I-

    10. DR

      But-

    11. RW

      ... I think we take away from it.

    12. DR

      It does sound like he's dodging... So I did go through the numbers in the book.

    13. JR

      Okay.

    14. DR

      Um, and it does look like we have the land in the US right now to grass-finish, in a regenerative way, all of our beef herd.

    15. JR

      G- before we go onto that, and I, I do want to talk about that. Like, what is causing the need for antibiotics specifically? Is it the factory setting where everyone's jammed in together?

    16. RW

      Yep.

    17. JR

      That's what it is?

    18. RW

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      When did that start happening?

    20. RW

      1940s. You know, w- when we... So we had the Haber-Bosch method, process which, uh, made industrial ammonia for firearms and munitions.

    21. JR

      Mm.

    22. RW

      And then when we got done with that, we're like, "Oh, this stuff makes amazing fertilizer." And it, it really is amazing, but it also damages the topsoil. But it, it produces huge amounts of food, like in grains and-

    23. JR

      Wait a minute. It makes great fertilizer, but it destroys the topsoil at the same time?

    24. DR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. RW

      Well, it, it makes great fertilizer in that you can, short-term... And by short-term I mean like maybe a century, century and a half.

    26. JR

      Hm.

    27. RW

      You can produce a shitload of food. But when we think about our planet, we want our topsoil to last forever. Like, we want to come back 5,000 years from now and have this topsoil better than what it is today.

    28. JR

      Right.

    29. RW

      So there's, there's trade-offs. Like, in the short term, it's good from a prod- productivity standpoint and we started getting excess food production in a way that we could industrialize things like pork and chicken production-

    30. DR

      And then in, in-

  11. 1:14:00 – 1:32:23

    Fake meat claims under scrutiny: ingredients, processing, seed oils, and lifecycle accounting

    1. DR

      And that's what lab- that's what goes into lab meat and all the- Beyond Burger and Impossible Foods, they're not using organic products in- I mean, th- they're using a hundred percent legit chemical ag to make their products.

    2. JR

      Well, not only this, it's, like, one of the most processed things you could ever eat. So, all these people that wanna eat healthy, plant-based, like, if you wanna eat, like, a healthy vegetarian diet, you certainly can. But if you wanna eat a healthy vegetarian diet and also pretend that these processed things that are filled with seed oils and, like, what exactly is in a fake meat burger? And how bad are those things for you?

    3. DR

      It- it- it- so, I mean, just on a, on a nutrient density level, they've never- I've never seen a full breakdown. Like, they'll say, "Total protein, total fat," and it'll line up kind of, but, like, the fat's coming s- from soybean oil, not natural. Uh, the protein is limiting in the amino acids. Um, but we still have yet to see a full nutrient breakdown of all the junk they put in, and of course it's better to eat real meat.

    4. JR

      What is- what's the main ingredients of those burgers?

    5. DR

      Uh, pea protein is one of them, and then-

    6. RW

      I think soy ends up h- like, on the-

    7. DR

      S-

    8. RW

      ... oil front, and then also just some of the protein also.

    9. DR

      Mm.

    10. RW

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      What if they mixed those burgers in with a branched-chain amino acid profile?

    12. RW

      I mean, you would-

    13. JR

      Could you do that, like a bodybuilding Beyond Burger?

    14. RW

      (laughs) You could.

    15. DR

      You could. You could-

    16. JR

      You'd make a lot of money.

    17. RW

      ... BBBB.

    18. DR

      (laughs)

    19. RW

      You'd make a lot of money. You'd make a lot of money.

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. RW

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      But you- y- are you causing inflammation? Are you giving people issues with these seed oils, like soybean oil? That's not necessarily good for you, right?

    23. DR

      Exactly.

    24. RW

      Yeah, and- and you're still, like, for every calorie that you consume of that, you're not consuming something else, so where are you getting the vitamins, the minerals, the n- y- you know, these other things? And i- in a developed world, you, you could go to your corner store and get vitamins and- and do all that. But what's kinda squirrelly is that because this whole story has been so cli- tied into climate change, they're really pushing that the developing world adopt this stuff too.

    25. JR

      Mm.

    26. RW

      And this is one interesting area that different places in developed world have pushed back, because they're like, "We can't be dependent on this."

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. RW

      "Like, we have these traditional food systems, and if you, if you make us dependent on the exports of, like, your industrial row crop food system, we're- we're, one, we're super dependent, and two, we- we can't afford it." And then the third point, which Diana really detailed this well in the book, these folks don't have access to, like, a CVS to go get their B vitamins and their folate and y- you know, their zinc-

Episode duration: 2:57:13

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