Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 274 - Shawn Baker Debunks The Game Changers Vegan Documentary

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

Today we are joined by Carnivore expert Dr. Shawn Baker! Shawn is an orthopedic surgeon, weight lifting world record holder, and still to this date, the biggest meathead we've had on the show. He rece...ntly made a Youtube video debunking all the claims from the James Cameron Vegan Documentary, The Game Changers. We have him here today to further discuss why those claims were incorrect and also get more info on the carnivore diet. Subscribe to the Podcast on all platforms: ➢https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You know, I've been messing around with a bunch of different diets for a long time. I've done a bodybuilding style diet, I've done keto diet, I've done carnivore diet, and I always need something to look forward to in my day. And something that's been really helpful for me over the years has been a Quest Bar. And on top of it tasting good and on top of it having protein in it, it also has fiber in it. One thing I always found compelling and great about Quest Bar is that it fits any diet yes you know you did a lot of different dieting than I've done you were counting macros and counting calories you don't really want a protein bar that has like 18 grams of fat in it no quest bar has like 8 grams
Starting point is 00:00:37 of fat maybe so use quest bars as well I used quest bars plus like one of the thing about quest bars because I messed with a lot of other protein or I guess bars and they tasted like crap quest bars were good and especially on the restrictive diet i had during bodybuilding they were something that i really like liked to actually eat plus the fiber it was great it's nice to have something to look forward to andrew what you got uh we got a huge selection of quest nutrition bars that you guys can get in on head over to quest nutrition dot com enter mark's quest that's all one word at checkout, for 20% off all these bars and everything they got at questnutrition.com.
Starting point is 00:01:10 All right, so Mark, what are ketones? Man, that's a great question. You know, it's hard to produce ketones. It's actually one of the hardest diets because it takes almost two weeks for your body to actually start to produce ketones. Ketones is a, it's a fractionated fat. When you start to consume large amounts of fat in the absence of carbohydrates, your body will start to produce ketones. Some people believe that ketones are a preferred source of energy,
Starting point is 00:01:37 especially for like your brain. So a lot of people say, oh man, I'm on like this keto high, or I've gone on a ketogenic diet and I have a ton of clarity because of the ketones. But for me right now, like I haven't been on an actual ketogenic diet in a long time. I do eat very low carb, but I still have room for fruit. I still have room for dairy.
Starting point is 00:01:58 And so therefore I supplement with Perfect Keto. I utilize their ketones and they have a chocolate flavored one, a salted caramel one. But my favorite one is the coffee flavored one. And I actually throw that in my morning coffee, which I think would be something to be great for you to try because you do a lot of fasting, right? Yeah, no, I'm definitely really excited to try that in the morning when I'm fasting because I fast for most of my day. And since I'm pretty low carb, there is a period where I think I do hit ketosis. So it'd be really, really cool to get that in in my fasting period.
Starting point is 00:02:26 Yeah, we got to test your ketones too to see what you're running on over here. Andrew, where can they find out more about these ketones? All right. You guys can kick ass just like Mark Bell on ketones today by heading over to perfectketo.com slash powerproject and use code powerproject and get off all perfect keto products in sema i know that you don't work out very hard nope because it's pretty much just all genetics you get a lot of questions about genetics is that right all the time all the time i wonder you know what the importance of you know some of our food would be genetically like say for you know cows for example uh you know i think the genetics of our food is pretty damn important.
Starting point is 00:03:06 Like, you know, Piedmontese is all natural, all natty, with no added hormones or steroids and not even trend. I don't know. These things are pretty lean. Yeah. I'd like to have them tested personally. I think we should. We should. But their cuts of beef are from the Sandhills region, Nebraska, and contain significantly less fat and higher protein content than other beef that you
Starting point is 00:03:30 might find at the store. This comes from genetics, the breed of the cow, and not relying on the extra intramuscular fat and marbling. In other words, you get the best protein to fat ratio from the best cows in the country from the best beef for maximum gains. I love it. You're able to still eat your meat, but you don't have to worry about the extra fat calories. Works out great for anybody that is looking to be jacked and tan like us. Like us. Andrew, where can they find out more information about Piedmontese beef? Cool. As awesome as high protein, low fat beef sounds, our friends at Piedmontese are going to give you a more awesomerist deal by heading over to piedmontese.com.
Starting point is 00:04:07 That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT and that's going to get you a whopping 25% off your order along with free two-day shipping on all orders of $99 and above. What it is. Yeah, he mentioned that your gallbladder might be, your gallbladder is something that helps you uh digest fats you know and and maybe like you know maybe your gallbladder can build up
Starting point is 00:04:33 a tolerance for it like you know when you start because i eat like a crazy amount of fat and i don't really have you know stomach issues and so maybe maybe just like anything else that we work on we can have a stronger willpower. We can build ourselves up to be stronger. Maybe the permeability of our stomach for fats. I think that that would be one reason why someone might feel a little bit better versus feel a little bit worse. But I also think that Jen Widerstrom years ago wrote a book called eat right for your personality type. And I actually think that that's, it's hard to figure out what your personality is. It's hard to figure out like what kind of person you are in this world. So that, that even that whole thing
Starting point is 00:05:17 is kind of complicated, but even just selecting foods that, uh, fit your religious beliefs, selecting foods that fit your religious beliefs. They fit your life beliefs in general. If you don't want to harm any animals, then a carnivore diet's out. If you have tried low-carb before and it just never felt right, then that's probably out too. I would say that you can adapt to just about anything, but why force yourself into adapting into something that's like really just feeling uncomfortable, making you feel like crap. And you're talking about more than just like, I'm going to try a low carb. I had a headache.
Starting point is 00:05:56 I feel bad after two days. Right. Like that's totally different. Yeah. I think, honestly, I think you really need to try any style of diet that you're going to move into that you probably need to probably try for about two months. And that's even just a real blip on the radar. If you want to try to think of it in you try to think about in terms of like something that you can actually like hold on to and do, then take it as a week challenge and say, I'm going to try this for a week. and do, then take it as a week challenge and say, I'm going to try this for a week. And then from that week though, take the next week and say, I'm going to try to tweak it a little bit more because I didn't feel that great. And I mentioned to you earlier today, Andrew,
Starting point is 00:06:35 like I've, you know, I'm, I'm on this keto diet and I love it. And I've been on and off the diet for many, many years, but this has been a progression that's been, you know, going on for 20 years. And I feel really good with what I'm doing right now. And that'll probably change again. Like I'll probably, you know, sometimes I like we're going to our beach house in November. I'll be there for several days. It'll be Thanksgiving. I'm not going to really go off of a diet.
Starting point is 00:07:06 I'll still be on a diet, but that's when I'll utilize stuff like Icon Meals. When I'm hungry and I'm seeing everything else everyone else is eating, I'll probably heat up something like that because I just know it's a better choice. I'm kind of at the point now where I kind of have an eat this, not that mentality.
Starting point is 00:07:24 Just try to make a better choice. And if I am going to eat ice cream or something, then I'm going to eat ice cream. I'm just going to get after it. I'm just going to eat it. I'm not going to eat some weird keto ice cream or something like that. I'm just going to totally go for it every once in a while.
Starting point is 00:07:40 I've been saving the tomahawk steak from Piedmontese. I still have it. I'm going to have that on Thanksgiving. Yeah, I've been saving the tomahawk steak from Piedmontese. I still have it. I'm going to have that on Thanksgiving. Ooh. Yeah, I've already decided that, and I'll probably pick up another one so that way I can have it with a friend. Yeah, I should save mine for Thanksgiving. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:56 Instead of turkey? Yeah, turkey's terrible. Could you imagine? Yeah, I don't like turkey that much. Oh, man. Turkey? We'll see what we're doing. I'll throw your steak in my smoker.
Starting point is 00:08:05 Excuse me? That's not a euphemism for anything. You guys need a separate room? No, we can't dock. You want to dock my steak in your smoker? There's not enough meat at the end of the tomahawk to dock. What? And that's how we lost all our viewers. quick uh jay he works with us here he is like
Starting point is 00:08:30 hey man like i gotta ask like what's a poop cast like what's the difference wait are we live right now we're recording we're not live yeah and i was like oh dude like oh man like he's such a nice guy i'm like i'm sorry we're we're children he looks at me and i'm like yeah we're like 12 years old i'm like we think it's funny instead of saying podcast we'll say poop cast and he's like oh okay he's like yeah you are an imbecile some immature so we we were just watching some uh footage of mr carnivore, Dr. Carnivore, Sean Baker. Dr. Sean Baker broke down the movie Game Changers. I have not seen it yet. I don't think Andrew's seen it yet.
Starting point is 00:09:10 I saw like about half of it last night. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah. And then Seema has seen the whole thing. I've seen, in terms of Game Changers, I saw about half of it. Oh, no. I saw the whole Sean's video before. Yeah, I just got to the boner part and then that was it.
Starting point is 00:09:23 Oh. It's just because he got late. We trained this morning. I trained late yesterday yeah so but yeah uh and then i'm gonna have sean kind of break down some of this stuff for us and get some of his views on you know what might be wrong a with the movie and then b what might be wrong with uh doing a vegan diet if he does even believe that it's wrong at all. And then also, why would somebody, like I'm of the opinion of it doesn't really make sense to be on either side so hard. I think that vegetables, I don't know like if vegetables do anything great for us, like maybe they've been overhyped. That's my opinion. I think they've been overhyped. Um, but I don't think they're like
Starting point is 00:10:05 harming anything, at least for my body. I I'm not noticing anything now. Maybe it is doing something, but, um, I'm unaware of it. I feel great when I eat vegetables. I don't necessarily need to eat them every day. It seems like, like if I eat at home, it's more rare for me to eat vegetables. If I eat out just because because it's like part of like eating at a restaurant. They always want to give you sides. And so, um, I'll eat them, but I don't in terms of like the bathroom and all that stuff, I don't notice any difference whether they're there or not there. I don't feel like I need them. I don't feel like I personally need fiber, but again, I don't understand why you would go so hard on one side unless you had
Starting point is 00:10:47 some sort of condition. Cause I liked the way that they, I liked the way that they helped fill me up. And sometimes it's just kind of great to have some vegetables. Like I enjoy the taste of a salad. Obviously you need to have something on the salad or the salad needs some good stuff in it for it to be worth anything, which is usually protein or protein and fat like chicken and cheese and things like that. And then dumping some olive oil on it, stuff like that. It's all stuff that's very common to me, but it'd be interesting to talk to Dr. Baker on why someone would have, you know, lean so hard into one part of it. Yeah. The documentary itself though, it's like, i think we were already recording when i mentioned
Starting point is 00:11:26 this but it's it's really uh messed up how i guess how disingenuous it is in terms of the way it puts forward its data like uh i guess they have good intentions andrew were you recording while you're in the bathroom no okay so then this wasn't said but it was it it's the, the end goal of the documentary is to help people get healthier. And I think that will help people meet their goal if they're actually taking up and, you know, not eating a bunch of vegan snacks that are high in sugar or whatever. And they're, they're just trying, they're changing their actual diets, but the way that they demonize meat and say it's unhealthy for you, even though it's not, that's really messed up like and it just it makes
Starting point is 00:12:08 no sense what i found really interesting um i i've been under the impression like a lot of people believe that meat is bad for you like since i was a kid yeah and then in the documentary and i've seen this happen in like uh in religion where where they're trying to show that everybody else is saying, oh, you guys need to eat meat. And we're like, no, we're the opposite. I've been in church before where they're like, oh, people who you tell somebody like, oh, I am this religion or whatever, they look at you weird. And I'm like, no, when I tell somebody I'm not sure, they look at me even way worse. So I thought that was interesting. And then I was thinking on the previous podcast, we had talked about where the whole idea of meat being bad, where that comes from.
Starting point is 00:12:56 I remember being in sixth grade, and I don't know why this hit me when I went to the bathroom looking at the impossible sausage. bathroom looking at the impossible sausage. But, uh, I remember in sixth grade we did like a nutrition course and I think they, they said like for a kid, it's super like the most you can, most meat you can have was like three ounces or something. That's nothing. Yeah. And I remember like the teacher, I was like, well, what's three ounces looks like or look like? And he's like, oh, it's about like the palm, like size of your size of your palm and I'm like well I eat way more than that yeah and he was like oh it's probably because you're so active I played basketball like every single day I could oh he's oh it's because you're active so it's probably okay but like the second you stop working out or stop uh moving around a lot like you're gonna want to eat much less meat
Starting point is 00:13:43 and ever since then I remember thinking like oh meat i guess isn't the healthiest thing to be eating so in the game changers when they say like oh the meat companies are sending out propaganda to make it seem like it's the best thing ever i was like i think it's been the opposite well they do compare it to cigarettes yeah you know what i mean and like if they're comparing it to cigarettes, we all know how like Camel did it. They made it sound cool. So this documentary is trying to make meat, the meat industry seem like the cigarette industry. And also if you're going to build an ideology, right,
Starting point is 00:14:17 it always needs to be an us versus them type deal. So it can't just be like, this is great for you. They can't just say that. They have to say, this is great for you. They, they can't just say that. That's say, this is great for you. And this is very bad for you. And you need to do this because in the long run, you'll live longer.
Starting point is 00:14:31 And this is the, this, you got to demonize this. They need to kind of scare you a little bit. They have to scare you. Yeah. Scare tactics. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:38 Let me send this link out to Sean and then we'll wait for his arrival. But, uh, I mean, out to sean and then we'll wait for his arrival but uh i mean as somebody who who does make videos and has done a mini documentary it was done extremely well oh yeah like kudos to everyone that shot that i was a part of it because that shit looked good and it's very convincing well it's motherfucking james cameron who's involved in that so he's all right but you know even even from the uh like the the main character even from the main guy whose name I can't ever remember, but he does really, really well too, narrating. That's what I meant to say.
Starting point is 00:15:14 Oh, yeah. There has to be a story of how he discovered this ancient diet from Romans. I wish I had a way to describe to people how good I feel feel every day. Like I don't, I never lack energy. Like I, I, I would, I shouldn't say never. I very, very rarely lack energy. I always feel like excited and hyped up for every day. Um, I, I mean, after I eat a meal and stuff like that, I don't crash. I'm not tired at lunch. I wake up super early. I do a lot of shit every single day. I got a wife, I got kids, I got a lot of responsibilities and I have never felt this way before. You know, I've been on these different diets for a while, but I think now I'm
Starting point is 00:15:56 finally like really hitting my stride with the combination of like the type of exercise I'm doing and the style of diet that I'm eating. And I wish I could, I wish I could like hand this to somebody. That's why I'm so passionate about it. So excited about it all the time. Otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time yelling about it all the time. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:14 Kind of like, I forgot who said it, but they were like, Oh, put my head on your body and I'll, you know, make you healthy. Right.
Starting point is 00:16:20 I can't remember who that, I think maybe Todd Abrams. I think he had said that, but yeah. I mean, I think maybe Todd Abrams, I think he had said that. But yeah. I mean, is there anybody that like this, like your style of eating or your style of diet or training, like, does it not work for somebody? Sometimes things are hard for people to follow and adhere to. And so in that case, certainly, yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:42 Drama. Hey, there he is. Hey, what's up guys? Hey. What's going certainly, yeah. Drama. Mm-hmm. Hey, there he is. Hey, what's up, guys? Hey. Hey. What's going on, Dr. Baker? I was just, you know, I was just in the house doing some work, and I got your little text message, so good time.
Starting point is 00:16:56 I actually happened to be wearing my little super training shirt today. Oh, look at that. It's just sort of destiny, I guess. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, we watched your review of Game Changers. And kind of starting off with question number one, because you didn't seem like you were in favor of the movie, let's say. We'll get into more of that later.
Starting point is 00:17:18 If you were to make a movie that was to try to show your vantage point of how people can really thrive on a carnivorous diet, how would you go about doing it? Because my understanding is through this film, they tried to like showcase these people doing vegan diets and being successful in sport, which even regardless of how they perform in sport, I think is a really narrow way of trying to prove that
Starting point is 00:17:47 something is good for you. Well, I mean, I guess if we wanted to look at it as far as a carnivorous standpoint, you know, if you wanted to restrict it to sports or just health in general, I mean, you would take people that were at some level, whether it's athletic performance or general health, and you just put them on a purely carnivorous diet or almost purely carnivorous diet and just follow them and see what happens to them. And you can kind of get an impression. And I think one of the sort of deceptive things in sort of that vegan film
Starting point is 00:18:16 is they took a lot of guys that were athletes, very successful athletes as omnivores, and then they showed them for a brief period as a vegan. And, you know, for some of them, in fact, the majority of the athletes in that show, if you follow them out a year or two, they end up retired, they end up injured, or they end up seeing decreases in performance. You know, if you just Google the athletes that were in that movie and you see what happens to them, it's like, man, all these guys are retired or injured. So, I mean, to show that, you know, something can work for a short period of time.
Starting point is 00:18:46 And one of the things, one of the criticisms that I have in general, you know, just about, you know, the vegan sort of movement is saying that meat is bad for us when really it's probably the fact that if we cut out the junk food, you know, the processed grain, carbohydrates, seed oil, you know, the Twinkies or Doritos, the crap that everybody eats. And because, you know, you Twinkies or Doritos, the crap that everybody eats. And because, you know, you guys for sure know, I mean, there's tremendous athletes that just eat garbage. I mean, they're genetically very, very gifted.
Starting point is 00:19:14 You get guys in the NFL that live on McDonald's or drink Cokes and fries and just complete garbage. And so when they give that stuff up, I mean, of course, they're going to feel better. It doesn't mean, you know, they are going to become less of an athlete from giving that stuff up. I think what the problem is for an athlete, and this is a nice thing, and we're seeing this play out right now when guys, and again, this is not, we can't 100%, you know, use this correlation as causation, but we're seeing it happen pretty frequently. Guys like Cam Newton, you know, guys like, you know,
Starting point is 00:19:43 Boogie Cousins. I mean, all these guys going vegan, they lose a bunch of weight, frequently guys like cam newton you know guys like uh you know uh boogie cousins i mean all these guys going vegan they lose a bunch of weight and then they get injured and it's and you know when you're playing a a compact you know a contact sport basketball football man that's tough to tough to thrive on but uh you know no i was just kind of kidding i said you know chris and i are going to be hanging out next week and i said yeah that movie made me want to go vegan. I'm going to try to work on Chris, see if I can switch him. You know, I'm curious, Dr. Bakers, Mark and I were just asking this now. I mean, and Andrew actually mentioned something interesting. They used a lot of football players, but football in and of itself, like that's a sport where you have players going in and out because of injury.
Starting point is 00:20:20 But what do you think was the, the thing that these athletes were missing when they went to a vegan diet that they weren't getting from meat? Like what, what, what was it that would, yeah. What was lost? Well, I think that, you know, I mean the whole, the movie was basically focused on protein, you know, because the big criticism of the vegan diet is where are you going to get your protein from? And you know, you certainly can eat enough food and balance it out to get the right
Starting point is 00:20:45 amount of amino acid. It's just harder to do. And so when you make something hard for somebody, it's really hard to do consistently. And I think if I told you you had to jump through 25 hoops every day to make a diet make sense, so you're just barely covering your bases, and then there's a lot of room for error in there. And so we have problems with that. But just besides the protein, I mean, there are things in animal products that are very effective for health and things like creatine which is you know as you guys know it's one of the few supplements that's ever been shown to to actually work you know we're talking outside we're talking outside of peds and stuff like that but just creatine in itself there's carnosine there's you know
Starting point is 00:21:22 carnitine there's there's taur. There's a whole host of things. We know that proteins are more bioavailable. They're in the right ratios. We could start looking at things like branched chains, amino acids, particularly things like lysine and leucine. Animal sources are by far the way to go. And so when we start putting in the vegan proteins where it's the pea pratters, and I think to be an athlete, you're really going to be dependent upon these isolates,
Starting point is 00:21:47 these soy isolates, these pea protein isolates. And those really are maybe not the best source of getting these things, and there can be some potential issues with that. So I think that's an issue. Now, I also, and it depends what's in their diet. I can't speak to every individual, but, I mean, there are things in the diet that cause problems with our tissues whether it's advanced glycation end products from fructose or glucose high levels of fructose for
Starting point is 00:22:11 instance you know people drinking sodas and not these athletes are drinking a lot of cokes but that does occur and it causes the proteins and other tissues in our bodies to not function as well and so we also see things like the seed oils. And so a lot of people that push a vegan diet are, some of them are talking about low oil, but I mean, when you talk about energy needs for an athlete, you got to get calories from somewhere. So you can either load up super high carb or you can put some fats in there. And often depending on what they're eating, if they're eating vegan products, they're getting a lot of, you know, maybe it's soybean oil, maybe it's, you know, safflower, corn oil, canola oil, those things also seem to have detrimental effects on our tissues and they accumulate
Starting point is 00:22:50 in the tissue membranes. And what happens in my experience in observing the population is that we see greater and greater injury rates. And so therefore, you know, if your tissues are not healthy, I mean, it doesn't make too much, doesn't take too much sort of thought to think that if I've got, you know, tissues that are not performing well and potentially weaker, you're going to be more likely to be injured. And then when we see these athletes getting injured, it seems like the recovery takes a long time. You know, we can point to a number of them, a number of the examples of athletes, you know, Bill Walton was a good example. Bill Walton from the NBA, you know, a guy played for the, you know, UCLA and then a career in the NBA where he had a long career
Starting point is 00:23:27 and he made it, but he had, you know, injury after injury after injury, his bones were basically deteriorating. I mean, he ended up with something like 37 operations. You know, this is a, you know, this is a significant issue with that. So I think there's, you know, a lot of things that we know that are problematic and missing or very difficult to obtain. And it might be that you have to eat, you know, people like to talk about the comparisons between beef and beans, for instance. But to get the bioavailable protein in the right ratios, to get the leucine and lysine requirements, you might be asked to eat two, three cups of beans. And I mean, that doesn't do anybody any favors. It's digestive issues, and it's just technically hard to do for many people.
Starting point is 00:24:06 So I think that's probably more than anything what's going on. How simple is the diet that you've been suggesting personally? How simple is this carnivore-style diet? Like do we need to be conscious of certain supplementation? Do I need to eat some weird exotic foods? Do I need, you know, salmon eggs or liver? Or is it pretty much just eat a bunch of steak and hamburger meat and don't worry about it? Yeah, Mark, you know, like I said, I've been doing this for three years now and I haven't
Starting point is 00:24:38 keeled over and, you know, still doing pretty well. I think that, you know, if we focus on getting our nutrition from animal source products, you know, and I think that, you know, if we focus on getting our nutrition from animal source products, you know, and I think that probably ruminant meat, so that's kind of cow, deer, you know, sheep, things like that, tends to be a very, very sort of complete nutrition for most people. In fact, I posted a recent study up on my Instagram talking about isotopic data out of, you know, paleolithic Europe from about 40,000 years ago. And it looks like those guys,
Starting point is 00:25:10 both Cro-Magnon and the, what they consider upper paleolithic modern humans thrived on a diet of basically mammoth and reindeer. I mean, they didn't even eat much fish based on some of the isotopic data. So there's probably good historical presence that this is kind of what human food sort of started out to be. Now, the diet that I expose is basically, you know, get a good amount of that. And I think that's where your nutrition basically comes from.
Starting point is 00:25:37 And then if you want to add some eggs in there, some fish in there, if you feel like putting some liver and salmon eggs or whatever. And then the same thing goes with, you know, like the way I define a carnivore diet is it's a meat or an animal source diet, you know, focusing on nutrient-dense foods. And then the plants are either eliminated or minimized as needed for health benefits. So that doesn't mean, you know, you have to sit there and only eat steaks every day like some people seem to think. I'm a proponent. I think you've got to find out what works for you.
Starting point is 00:26:05 I think get your nutrition from that. Like I said, if I were a professional athlete, I think probably you should be getting 70% of your calories coming from high-quality animal-sourced nutrition. And then the rest of it you can toggle up and down. Some people may do better with more. Some people might need a little bit source of carbohydrate depending on the sport, depending on the activity length, depending on the actual athlete. I mean, the American diet
Starting point is 00:26:27 right now is a plant-based diet. We eat 70% of our calories coming from plants and meat is only about 10% of our caloric input. You know, most of that animal sources is largely dairy. I mean, it's, it's meat. I mean, it's milk, it's cheese, it's yogurt. So meat is only a tiny part of the American diet. And so we're sitting there blaming all these ills on the fact that we eat 2.4 ounces of red meat on average as an American. That's it, you know, two ounces of meat is nothing. And if you look at the vast majority of the rest of the diet and try to blame it all on this red meat, it becomes silly. And so what happens when you flip that around and you say, I'm going to focus on red meat, not make it a condiment, like some people are calling it, they're calling it a condiment, like Dr. Mark Harmon, you say, I'm going to focus on red meat, not make it a condiment, like some people are calling it a condiment, like Dr. Mark Harmon,
Starting point is 00:27:07 a little sliver of meat on there for flavor so you don't die, and then a bunch of spinach and quinoa and that stuff. I think the opposite should occur. I think you should make meat the center of your meal, and then the rest of the stuff is your flavor, your enhancement. If you like some spices, if you want a little bit of company in there, but don't depend on that stuff as your nutrition. I mean, it's clear.
Starting point is 00:27:26 I mean, you know, Stan Efferding, you know, his big athletes, I mean, those guys are pounding five, six pounds of meat a day, and then he's throwing out the rest so they can get more calories because it's hard. And one of the reasons the diet works so well is because of the satiety effect. I mean, it's kind of hard to eat a lot of meat. I mean, you know, I've done, you know, four, five, six, even eight pounds in one day, but that's, that's a struggle,
Starting point is 00:27:47 man. That that's tough. And I always shaking his head, but we got, you know, Molly Schuyler had on my podcast. She's a female competitive eater. She only weighs about a buck 20. She threw down 22 pounds of meat in one city. She was at a restaurant, you know, taking up this meat challenge and the record was 10 pounds and she came in there as prime rib she came in there crushed 10 passes can i keep going i said sure so she got to 15 she got to 20 she got to 22 and they said we got no more meat we ran out so she cleared out the entire restaurant that's awesome that's impressive don't you kind of think
Starting point is 00:28:18 like if you put someone on this diet and let's say that they're able to follow it some people are coming from a place where they really haven't ever even tried to diet. So the transition might be rough because now they're not eating any carbohydrates and stuff. But do you think, and do you maybe even encourage people just, just have at it like eggs and ground beef and steak and maybe like butter, just like, just, I think you eat butter too, right? Maybe just tell people, hey, man, just go for it because after a while, you're going to stop eating that much food. And over the course of weeks and months, you'll start to lose weight. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things about the transition. So, you know, there's two things that make a diet fail. One, you don't like the food and two you're hungry all the time. I mean,
Starting point is 00:29:07 those things are incompatible with long-term maintenance of a diet. So if I tell you, you got to eat a bunch of raw liver every day and you don't like it, guess what? The odds of you staying there is not very high. And again, the new, it doesn't matter how nutritious something like that is. The nutritional value of a food you do not like is effectively zero because you're not going to eat it. So it doesn't matter, right? I mean, if I said dog shit was very nutritious, who cares? No one's going to eat it, right? So, I mean, when you talk about how to
Starting point is 00:29:34 transition, I tell people and when I consult with people, I say, man, you got to just find things you like, you know, they're basically animal foods. It could be eggs, it could be bacon, it could be, you know, steak, it could be hamburger, it could be, you know, pork chops, it could be, you know, some dairy, it could be some cheese, just load up on that stuff. You know, in the beginning, don't worry about gaining or losing weight, just work on transitioning because one of the big issues is cravings for a lot of people. And we all know, you know, you can go on a diet, two weeks, three weeks, you can be disciplined. And then all of a sudden, man, you somebody just, you're hungry and there's that little tray of of cookies there and you're like man i'm just
Starting point is 00:30:08 gonna have me one and then you know 20 minutes go by and you just down off the whole damn you know whole damn thing you know we've all done that you know mark i know when you were when you used to be a giant ginormous job at the hut guy i mean it was like gallons ice cream i did that stuff too when i was 300 pounds i mean you could just you know it's. You could just eat and gorge yourself and lay there like a freaking swollen alligator. Yeah, this is great. And you know, you feel like crap. Well, now I'm doing the same thing with meat. Yeah, but you can do it with meat and it's harder and it's, you know, and we can talk about some of the advantages. And I know guys like Lane and those guys, Lane Norton are always like cowers in, cowers out, but they always disregard protein. And I
Starting point is 00:30:44 mean, there's clear protein overfeeding studies, guys like Jose Antonio and others have done and show that you can dump, you know, 200 grams of protein into somebody's system and they don't gain weight or body fat. I mean, they preserve lean muscle mass and they don't gain fat. And so there are some differences and nuances between what you're eating from a caloric standpoint. And it's not that the calories don't matter, but there are, you know, like I said, it's not just a linear straight, it's straightforward type thing. But yeah, from the transition standpoint, beginning variety, use seasoning, use spices, use whatever to make it palatable to you personally, something you can do. If I tell you, hey man, you got to eat plain ground beef every day for the rest of your life. No one wants to
Starting point is 00:31:22 do that. I wouldn't want to do that. I mean, what happens over time is you eventually evolve into like, man, I really like, you know, things like a ribeye steak or some brisket or some ribs or something like that. That really fits the bill for me. It provides me the flavor and the fat guys kind of gives me some fuel because I think, you know, this is a difference between like a straight up keto diet where it's all macro dependent and we're like we've got to hit enough fat I think you know either we've got to hit this certain percentage of fat and often it's 80% or still With this I think it's just you need enough fat and what enough fat is for you individually is gonna vary some guys are 50-50 I mean when you're really trying to get lean like like you guys are and getting down at a low body fat level you you
Starting point is 00:32:02 You can't eat go you can't gorge on fat I mean you can eat some and you can eat enough to keep your hormones functioning, to keep your satiety going, keep your mood elevated, but you can eat a little bit leaner, I think, at that point. And it just depends, you know, where you want to be. But I think from the normal person, just eating meat to satiety works pretty well for everybody. There's exceptions to that. I've seen people that have gained weight and gotten fat on the diet. I mean, that certainly can occur.
Starting point is 00:32:27 But that tends to be pretty unusual, quite honestly. In the documentary, The Game Changers, they had made a claim that basically said that eating meat will cause a lot of inflammation. And I think it was because it doesn't have any antioxidants the way, you know, plants do. Does that make any sense or is there any truth to any of that? So this is the interesting thing about the antioxidants. And I think even if you look at guys like David Sinclair, who, you know, wrote the recent book on longevity, he was on Rogan's podcast a couple of times, You know, the thought that antioxidants, particularly exogenous antioxidants, are really doing much for us.
Starting point is 00:33:08 So we know that if we take antioxidants in the form of a pill, you know, vitamin C, some of these other antioxidants, it doesn't really do any good at all. And often it can be harmful. The body has a really hard time actually absorbing those antioxidants, whether they come from a plant or a pill. And once they get them in the system, a lot of times they're just kind of detoxified. You know, they don't really work well with our system. We have our own endogenous antioxidant system. Glutathione is one of the big ones that everybody knows about. Uric acid is actually an antioxidant.
Starting point is 00:33:38 There's other things like superoxide dismutase. There's cystothione and a whole host of other endogenous antioxidants. There's dismutase, there's cystothione, and a whole host of other endogenous antioxidants. And we know that often being in a low-carbohydrate state will upregulate those antioxidants. Things like carnosine, which is exclusive to meat, also is a very potent antioxidant. And so to say that there's no antioxidants in meat is actually a misstatement in the fact that we have our own antioxidant system. And it works well when we let it do itself there's supposed to be some level of oxidation and some level of
Starting point is 00:34:10 reduction of that oxidative oxidation and that's our own internal system when we're dumping these exogenous things in there that kind of disrupts that mechanism so there's really you know the you know if you look at an antioxidants that theory has sort of fallen out of favor i mean this is like you know they're kind of quoting sort of theories from 20 30 years ago and we as we've come to know more and more about this stuff we find out that maybe those things aren't true and it's the same thing with well quite a few of the things they say in there the cholesterol stuff and uh you know those types of things the saturated fat clogging the arteries all those types of things are occurring.
Starting point is 00:34:46 But I will tell you, again, one of the big problems with modern nutrition research is we don't have particularly good studies. What we do is we do these large population-derived studies called epidemiology where we ask people, hey, what did you eat? How many cups of ribs did you eat in the last six months? And people are like, cups of ribs? What are you talking about? But you got to figure that stuff out and you got to guess what you ate for the last six months. And they'll do it once or twice in 10 or 20 years. And they'll try to, you know, figure out that data and say, this causes this
Starting point is 00:35:15 disease or this causes that disease. And it's a very inefficient, ineffective, highly flawed, highly biased way to do this. And so, but when you start looking at people that like, you know, in my cohort where we're only eating meat, and I think your brother, Chris, and yourself, Mark, for a period of time, myself, when we look at our inflammatory markers, and I've seen literally hundreds and hundreds of these inflammatory markers, they're almost always consistently extremely low, you know, C-reactive protein consistently below one, you know, high sensitivity C-reactive protein. So at the end of the day, when we actually look at it in the human system, you know, over a period of time, meat seems to be very anti-inflammatory. You know, I just got back from a
Starting point is 00:35:54 little speaking engagement down in Malaysia at this integrative medicine conference. One of the speakers was doing gastrointestinal food sensitivity and testing, using antibodies, immunoglobulins. And what he saw after doing something like a quarter of a million tests every year for 20 years, he almost never sees anyone having a negative immune reaction to red meat, which is just striking. And I mean, all these other foods have it, even things you know, things like eggs and fish, chicken, dairy, you know, from an animal source, they do tend to have reactions, but the plants are all over the place. I mean, there's tons of people with gluten and, you know, oxalates and all these other compounds that we see that are causing problems. What are some reasons why you've seen people get off of a vegan diet? I know, like I like on your instagram you've talked about uh people
Starting point is 00:36:45 having issues with their teeth and with their hair and like um is that just because people aren't maybe maybe they're not knowledgeable enough on how to properly follow a vegan diet or like what's kind of happening to these people what why have you seen some people hop off of it before yeah i mean that you know there was an informal study done, you know, four or five years ago, and they saw something like 84% of the people that went on vegan vegetarian diets end up leaving it. And the number one reason was health issues. But honestly, I mean, certainly there are some out there that are just doing it wrong, or the vegans would say they're doing it wrong.
Starting point is 00:37:19 They're eating junk food or eating processed vegan food. And this is what we see. You know, the same thing that makes fat omnivores or meat eaters is a junk food. And it's the same thing that makes these fat-sick vegans. And so that's certainly co-orders there. But then there's also issues where, you know, some people lack, you know, some of the actual enzyme systems or conversion factors, the genetic makeup to handle a plant-heavy diet. You know, vitamin A is one that's often talked about.
Starting point is 00:37:44 You know, we often hear about beta carotene in carrots. That's not actually the form of vitamin A that we can use. As humans, we have to convert it into retinol. And many people lack the capacity to do that to a great degree. So some people really struggle with converting vitamin A. And so those people may fall out more quickly. The issue, like I said, it requires, you know, very high levels of knowledge for many people on this diet to be constantly, you know, balancing your food, supplementing appropriately. And many people just can't do that. I mean, it's just sometimes too hard to eat that way. It's not intuitive for most people unless you're very regimented. unless you're very regimented. And so, you know, we're seeing, certainly we're seeing dental problems. A lot of people develop cavities, gum disease,
Starting point is 00:38:26 they lose teeth. You know, this tends to be over a period of time. A lot of people struggle with mental health issues. I mean, there's quite a bit of evidence showing that, you know, things like low cholesterol, things like chronically deficient carnitine. Again, carnitine, our body can manufacture, but we know that in plant-based dieters, whether vegan, vegetarian,
Starting point is 00:38:44 their carnitine levels are low in both the muscle and the serum. Same thing with their levels of creatine. And all of those things have a benefit on brain health. And so we may see mood disorders, depression, anxiety issues I've seen. I've seen people with a lot of gastrointestinal issues. A lot of people develop irritable bowel syndrome. For some people, it's just that high, high chronic exposure to lots and lots of fiber and perhaps sugary stuff that seems to disrupt, you know, the gut permeability for whatever reason. You
Starting point is 00:39:14 know, I mean, you know, a lot of people, I mean, despite these athletes, there's a lot of people that can't afford all the protein powders and some of that stuff do end up problems with, you know, they lose muscle mass. I mean, that's, you know, the common stereotype of a vegan is a skinny guy with no muscle. And that's a stereotype for a reason because it does occur. It's not that there aren't guys, athletes out there that have kind of shown to be the exception. But I mean, there are a number of people that, you know, really struggle with that. You know, we see that pretty pretty common i know after this movie game changes come out i've seen like athletes like kai green the bodybuilder talking about maybe i'm gonna do a vegan diet and uh michael bisping you know the ufc former ufc fighter talking about this stuff
Starting point is 00:39:56 and it's interesting to see you know i think kai green you know he's got so much muscle mass you know it might take him a couple years to you, to lose some of that stuff. Cause he's, he's just got that, that physiologic reserve built up. And that's the other thing we see. Most of the people that are adopting a vegan diet are younger people that have good physiologic reserve there. I mean, they're, they're, they're as good as you can get. And so it takes them a while to sort of, you know, lose some of that stuff. So they may be able to last for, you know know a year or two or three years and certainly there's some that have that have toughed it out for decades and you know interestingly you would think if you've made it past a 10-year point you know you're golden but
Starting point is 00:40:34 I consistently see people that are 10 12 13 16 25 year being vegetarians that say I had enough I just got too sick and they eventually quit yeah I think it's a first off everybody that's listening to this should go watch your video where you went over the whole game changes documentary. It's 51 minutes, but it's great. But I think, um, a great thing that you pointed out was that first off, a lot of these athletes started off with me, got big, got, then went vegan. But another thing that I didn't even realize was that, um, a lot of people that were claiming plant-based, I mean, that doesn't mean that they're vegan. Can you explain that a little bit too? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of interesting. It's kind of convenient that some people will claim, at least like Tom Brady,
Starting point is 00:41:15 for instance. Tom Brady's plant-based. And while it's kind of true that he eats more vegetables than the average American, because again, reading the accounts without actually watching Tom Brady, I can't say for sure. But if the accounts of what he eats are true, I mean, 20% of his calories are coming from, or 20% of his food rather, is coming from red meat, fish, and I believe eggs. And that is more than the average American. I mean, the average American, that may only make up 10% of our diet. So he's actually eating twice as much red meat, eggs, and fish than the average American. I mean, the average American, that may only make up 10% of our diet. So he's actually eating twice as much red meat, eggs, and fish than the average American would eat. And then the rest is just not junk food. And I think that's the important part.
Starting point is 00:41:52 Eat meat, don't eat junk food, and you're going to perform well. And, you know, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for Tom Brady's success. I mean, the system he plays in. I mean, if you look, he's not obviously a great, tremendous, fast, strong athlete, but he's a smart guy that works well in that system. And he's a pocket passer in that position in that situation. Whereas Cam Newton, you know, he's a runner. He's a guy that's out there like a running back almost.
Starting point is 00:42:14 And so now he's 30 years old. And quite frankly, his career may be done. I mean, I don't know that he'll recover from that injury effectively and, you know, to be able to run again like he was. And if he can't do that, how well he'll adapt to the pocket, you know, may be an issue. And so he may lose his job because of that. Whether the diet caused the injury or not, that's up to debate.
Starting point is 00:42:35 But it certainly didn't help it in my view. But, yeah, there's a host of athletes, you know, you can talk about in the film. I mean, almost the entire Tennessee Titan group that they showed in the video, I recorded all their names and I looked at what happened to them. And I think all but one of those guys saw just their career go to hell. They just either quit. And, you know, again, it's the NFL. Everybody gets hurt in the NFL.
Starting point is 00:42:57 I understand that. But, I mean, you know, it's kind of odd when seven out of eight guys, all of them. Yeah, they tried to use it to explain their side of the story and it was just absolutely ridiculous because why would you take conor mcgregor the greatest fighter of all time who just you know he ended up getting beat by nate diaz who they say is uh vegan and it's just a it's a weird thing it's like uh conor mcgregor has previously won multiple titles. He's done stuff in the UFC that no one's ever done.
Starting point is 00:43:27 So it's a horrible example. Of course he's lost one time. He's lost a couple times. They all end up losing eventually in the UFC. And not only that, but he avenged that loss the very next fight. Yeah, that whole narrative made no sense. It makes little sense to me to take one of the best athletes in the world and say, look at this guy.
Starting point is 00:43:46 He eats a ton of meat. And then go on later and say that meat kills your performance. I mean, the whole premise of the movie was meat makes you a worse athlete, you know, because of blood flow and other stuff. But then they use an example of one of the greatest guys of all time saying, I eat two steaks a day. You're like, well, that sort of doesn't seem to match your narrative. And if you look at the best athletes of all time, I mean, there's literally thousands upon thousands of examples of guys that thrive eating meat, whether they're eating a lot or at least some.
Starting point is 00:44:14 So to say it detracts from athletic performance really doesn't match the narrative at all. Yeah, they use kind of obscure athletes too, like people that a lot of people haven't really maybe heard of, especially in the general public. Maybe some of us have, because we follow some of these sports. You mentioned Kendrick Ferris in there as an Olympic lifter. And I think you said he had like a two kilo PR or something like that. And they were saying that he made it to the Olympics, you know, on this vegan diet, but he's previously been in the Olympics several times, right? Yeah. I mean, Kenner's, I mean, he, no, not to take anything away from the guy, the guy's an incredible athlete. I mean, he, when I, I remember when he came on the scene, he was just, he was freaking everybody out. This is back in 2008 when he was an, you know, he was a meat eater clearly. And I mean, he went to the Olympics and he did well.
Starting point is 00:45:01 I mean, he, in the 84 kilo class, you know, I think he totaled, I think it was like 350, 362, right? That was his total in the 84 kilo class. And he did that. And again, in the 2012 Olympics, he did it again as a meat eater and he totaled about the same. I think it was 350, 357 at that time. And then in somewhere in two, four, 2014, he went vegan and it was questionable how vegan he went because he might've still been eating whey protein. So it was kind of questionable. And we saw, you know, that he hit a two kilo PR, but they don't tell you that he already had the record. I mean, it was his own record and he, and he went up, you know, two kilos, which is, I mean, it's good, but I mean, it's not like he jumped, you know, you know,
Starting point is 00:45:43 he made a huge jump and it could have just been cutting out junk food. And this is a few months into going vegan or, you know, maybe not that long into going vegan. And then as we see him fall, fall him over time, he then gets to the Olympics at a bigger weight class. He was in now in the 90, you know, now he's in the 94 kilo class or 95 kilo class or whatever. I think it was 85 and then 94.
Starting point is 00:46:03 So he's, he's, he's nine kilos heavier, which is about 20 pounds. He actually totals worse than he did, you know, eight years ago as a lighter weight guy. And he has a worse performance of his Olympic career. Shortly after that, I think he does an event, he gets injured and he doesn't do anything again. And so he's, you know, you just see this collapse of a career and it seems to follow this six months to 18 months pattern where we see these guys, you know, they may do better initially, but when we get out, when I get the French fries and Cokes out of their diet and then they start to start to go down and that's, that's pretty consistent. When or where does this idea that
Starting point is 00:46:39 meat is bad for us come from? We were trying to figure it out. We just were talking about a little bit earlier. Like, why is that still a thing? You know, if you post a picture of meat, somebody will be like, isn't that unhealthy? Well, I mean, if we look at the origins of the nutrition field in general, starting back in 1917 with the American Dietetics Association, this is founded by one of the members was a guy named Lena Cooper, who was a strong advocate of the Seventh-day Adventist church. And Seventh-day Adventist church produced guys like the Kellogg's brothers that were back in the 1900s, you know, generally genitally mutilating people to prevent them from masturbating and having sex. And, you know, they were circumcising
Starting point is 00:47:22 females and doing all this crazy stuff. And one of the things they were doing is they felt that meat caused carnal desires, lust. It made you masturbate. It made you want to have sex. It increased your libido. So they took the meat out of the diet. They replaced it with cornflakes, you know, very bland foods. And that was what was, you know, some of these people going into to have found the nutrition field back in 1917 were exposed to and believed in. And so we had this sort of anti- a religious conviction or a passion and they really believe that you know meat is bad and not not to mention the sort of the ethical
Starting point is 00:48:10 beliefs that meat is something we should avoid and plants are going to keep us healthy and we should eat as much as possible and so you know then we have all this epidemiology which you know again you're if you're told if i tell you mark that smoking is bad for you say, okay, I'm not going to smoke because I think it's bad for me, and I'm also going to lift weights and train and, you know, eat healthy, I mean, it's pretty easy to say, okay, those people that smoke are going to be people that don't care. Most people that smoke don't work out. They don't, you know, they don't eat well. You know, that's a pretty consistent thing.
Starting point is 00:48:40 So the same thing happens with meat. We call it the healthy user bias. And so when I tell you meat is bad for you, particularly red meat, and this has been going on since the forties and fifties or when Eisenhower had his heart attack in the fifties. So people are like, meat is bad, meat is bad, meat is bad. So everybody that eats meat basically doesn't care because you're like, well, I don't care if meat's bad. I don't care. I don't really care about my health. I'm just going to smoke and I'm going to drink. I'm not going to exercise. I just don't give a fuck, you know? And so these are, this, this is the cohort of people you have, uh, that are meat eaters. And then when you survey those folks, you're not surveying guys
Starting point is 00:49:12 like me that care about their health and exercise or guys like you guys that work out and stay lean and, you know, don't have diseases and still eat meat. Those people are a small minority of the people. Uh, but when you, So this is where it comes from. And then there's, when we look at like even the World Health Organization that in 2015 said, red meat is a class two carcinogen and processed meats are class one carcinogen. When that study came out, there was a guy named Professor David Clearfield who was on that panel. And he basically said a high percentage of the people on that panel were seventh-day Adventists, vegans and vegetarians, ethical, you know, ethical vegans and vegetarians. And he asked that that be declared as a conflict of interest during that proceeding. And he was
Starting point is 00:49:53 told, nope, we don't care. We're not going to mention that. And also, I mean, they just threw out all the evidence that didn't match their narrative. He was like, well, what about this study that shows it meets not bad? No, we don't care about that. So he said it was one of the most frustrating experiences of his life because they just clearly went through with an agenda, clearly cherry picked the data. And now we saw, as you guys probably saw, the Nutri-X sort of thing came out, you know, beginning of October where they said, look, we're going to go back through and re-examine all the data on red meat and use a higher standard of evidence. We're not going to settle for this nutritional epidemiology. It's got all kinds of confiners. We're going to use randomized controlled trials, you know,
Starting point is 00:50:28 prospective studies and give those higher weight. And when they did that, they say, man, there's really no evidence that shows meat is either causative of heart disease or cancer. And so that's kind of where we're at today. And of course, that's getting a lot of backlash, because the people that are invested in the narrative that meat is bad for us really want us to keep doing that and so the good news is there's going to be more studies coming out i know that there's going to be another large study coming out that shows that meat is not bad and then i know i'm going to be involved in a study with a major university looking at the carnivore population we're going to get some of this data in there and i think it's going to be
Starting point is 00:51:01 very favorable so that you know there's some scientific changes that are going on, but there's a lot of, you know, I mean, the historical stuff we talked about, the current stuff, I mean, there's just a big market out there. I mean, there's a lot of money in plant-based foods. I mean, this is what happened. You know, we saw that Silicon Valley woke up to the investment potential. They're like, hey, we can, you know, the fake meat market is potentially a hundred billion dollar market and we want a piece of that pie and we're going to the investment potential. They're like, hey, the fake meat market is potentially a $100 billion market, and we want a piece of that pie, and we're going to invest in that.
Starting point is 00:51:29 And so there's something like $5.7 trillion of capital coming from corporations that are trying to create this niche market. So they can sort of, what we're going to do, we're going to demonize meat eaters, say it's unhealthy, say it's bad for the environment. We're going to say it's unethical. We're going to guilt people into buying our product, which right now it's all just processed garbage. I mean, you guys see the Beyond Meat, the Impossible Burger. It's just 20 ingredient chemistry experiments, pea protein isolate and soybean oil, you know, basically, or some combination of that, which is clearly not health food. You know, but they're selling it at McDonald's and Burger King. And I mean, generally, that's junk food anyway.
Starting point is 00:52:05 So it's not going to make that big of a difference. But it's just a, you know, it's a way to get more cheap, highly profitable product on the market. You know, Dr. Picker, I'm curious because I know you definitely have a great answer for this. Outside of athletes like fighters, right, who, you know, they want to eat a lot of carbohydrates because, you know, it helps them, you know, with their performance and outside of athletes, are there any populations that you think thrive better or feel better with carbohydrates or with higher carbohydrates? Are there any populations from what you know, or will, would everybody do better with lesser carbohydrates and a bit more meat in their diet? You know, it's hard to make general broad sweeping generalizations on any of these types of things.
Starting point is 00:52:50 But, you know, I think that all human beings are evolved to eat meat. I mean, that's clearly part of our evolutionary upbringing. You know, if you believe in there, some people that discount that argument. But I think in my view, that's pretty solid that humans have eaten meat. Now, depending on how long we want to say humans go back, you know, some people use 300,000 years at the beginning of Homo sapiens. Some people use three million years starting with Homo habilis. And some people use a creationist view where it's, you know, several thousand years. But regardless of what your viewpoint is, human beings have been eating meat in pretty much every single culture since we have been alive, you know, and so
Starting point is 00:53:26 that's been a part. Indigenous tribes, you know, they hover anywhere between 30 to 70 percent of their calories, some even higher, some 95, 98 percent, depending on what part of the world you're in. So I think every human has a capacity to, you know, do well on meat. Now, the carbohydrate thing is going to be more, in my view, a tolerance standpoint. You know, if you tolerate them, and again, this is another miscommunication. I don't think there's anything wrong with glucose. I mean, there's people that demonize glucose, but our body makes glucose. I mean, you know, I make plenty of glucose, even though I don't eat it. We need glucose. Glucose is a vital molecule. So, I don't necessarily think glucose is necessarily bad.
Starting point is 00:54:05 Now, it may be that wild fluctuations and uncontrolled amounts are problematic. But having that in a level that you need to fuel your activities, I think, is okay. I think the problem with the foods is what they're packaged with. And so for some people, they may say, well, I like, you know, eating a bunch of almonds and that's fine. You know, there's carbohydrates in there, there's some fat, there's some protein in almonds, but it's not necessarily one of those macronutrients. It might be the high oxalate content, you know, that some people oxalates cause gut disturbances. A lot of people have gut problems with nuts. Some people end up with kidney stones from oxalates. In fact, the number one cause of kidney stones are calcium oxalate crystals, which come from
Starting point is 00:54:46 plant foods like almonds, leafy green vegetables, things of that nature. So I don't think there's, I think it's really, again, I hate to be sort of pansy on this, but it's somewhat individualistic. I think that, I honestly think that the vast majority of people on earth would do very well on a Fully meat or almost fully meat based on I think that's pretty clear to me Does do the vast majority people need to do that? Certainly not. I don't think they need to I think there's some people You know Mark has done this is his time in the carnivore spear and I think what he finds is He hovers around that, you know
Starting point is 00:55:24 You find that meat is a very good source of nutrition finds is he hovers around that. You know, you find that meat is a very good source of nutrition and you may go off the rails, you know, for, you know, a period of time here and there, but you always kind of come back to a meat-based diet. I think most people that do that find that it's the most well-tolerated food on digestion, on making you feel good, perform good. And then the other foods tend to kind of, kind of, kind of wave up and down. And then in the book, I, you know, in the book, I talk about that. I think, you know, there's people that are carnivore adjacent where they're, you know, maybe they're, you know, 70 to 90% carnivore. I think that's just fine as well. I think the problem is, you know, again, we have a, uh, you know, a Western diet that is just not even anywhere
Starting point is 00:56:02 close to what we're designed to eat. In the, actually, sorry, a few minutes ago, you had said that the Kellogg's guy was trying to remove meat because it was making libido skyrocket. But in the documentary, although it was a rudimentary test or whatever, they showed that taking meat out and eating a vegetarian diet would make your erections stronger and last longer in comparison to having meat in your diet. What do you think about that? You know, again, you know, and the guy, it's kind of funny, the guy that the urologist actually lives in my town. So he's probably one of my damn neighbors. So I don't know who the guy is, but I mean, so, I mean, you know, he even says this is not as an scientific experiment. And I think that should be emphasized. I mean, they take two guys or three guys and they feed
Starting point is 00:56:52 them some burrito. One has, you know, one day it has meat and the next day it has, you know, fake meat products. Right. And so we don't know what happened on day one. I mean, maybe they went out drinking that night, you know, who knows, you know, celebrate. Maybe, maybe having that device on your leg the first night is very distressing. You don't sleep well because you're uncomfortable. You're not used to it. I mean, there are so many possible confounding variables. Maybe that was the fifth group they shot. I mean, we don't know. Maybe it took them five tries to get the result they wanted. I mean, we don't know anything about that. This is pure propaganda. It's not a scientific study. You know, I can, you know, again, I can speak to myself and I can tell what people tell me. I mean, libido is very good on a meat-based diet. I mean, I wake up every day, you know, from where, well, I mean, not that it was ever bad. I mean, it's still pretty good. It's still pretty solid usually, but it's even better, you know, as, as a carnivore. And, and, you know, there's actually data out there in your urology journals looking at,
Starting point is 00:57:50 for instance, carnitine, which we know again is a meat based compound is actually even more effective than testosterone in, in improving erectile dysfunction. So whatever, whatever they did with that one, one night little goofy little propaganda experiment is not likely to hold up under rigorous scrutiny. And this is a problem with that. It's just a publicity stunt. I mean, we could very easily do the same thing and, you know, show the exact opposite result. You know, we could just, here guys, have your plant-based burger and then don't get any sleep and go drink six tequilas. I mean, again, I don't know what happened. No one knows what happened. You know, like I said, it's, it's,
Starting point is 00:58:27 it's just, you know, we just don't know. What's, uh, what's your biggest problem with kind of like what's going on? Like a lot of your posts on Instagram, they, some, well, many of them seem inflammatory. You seem like frustrated. So what are some things that are maybe like frustrating you that people are like missing? Well, I mean, as you know, Mark, we're kind of in the entertainment industry at this point, you get on social media. So you kind of have to just, you know, kind of, you know, play the fool sometimes just to get attention. And then hopefully people start listening. You know, anytime I put up a study, a serious study, it's like I get about a third of the response rate. That's nice. But then you put up some silly vegan thing and I get
Starting point is 00:59:09 10 times as much response. And so it's about getting the message out there. But I mean, to be honest, the true frustrations I have are not that people are doing whatever diet they want to. I'm fully supportive of it. If you want to do whatever diet you want, if you want to eat potatoes every day for the rest of your life, go for it. It's your business. I think maybe on kids, we should probably maybe sort of draw some lines on that. I think there's some problems with kids doing this stuff. But honestly, I think the sort of, you know, constant misinformation, the constant propaganda, the constant demonization of meat, I don't think is based on good science. I think the outright just lies that are out there.
Starting point is 00:59:46 I think it's something we need to combat. And the problem is, this is, you know, this, and we can, we can liken this to like a political campaign. Whoever says something the most and the loudest over and over again, that's what people believe is the truth. And right now we have a very vocal minority that is screaming into a megaphone 24-7, 365 days a year, getting their message out there. And they are influencing people that don't have the desire, the energy, or the concern to look it up and challenge their data. So people are swallowing it as gospel. And they don't really, oh yeah, I guess I should go plant-based. They don't even think about that.
Starting point is 01:00:22 That's why we get guys like Michael Bisping and Kai Greene thinking we ought to go vegan. I mean, they looked into this stuff realistically. They would maybe really reconsider that stuff. But we are seeing some policy being directed towards this stuff. So we're seeing like New York, the New York mayor, I forget his name now, but anyway, he, you know, Meatless Monday, every public school in New York, every kid in New York has no meat option on Monday.
Starting point is 01:00:47 There is a school in, I think, in London where it's a vegetarian school, and the kids are not allowed to bring in food from home. So they are forced to eat a vegetarian food. I mean, this is happening. I mean, in Sweden, they're looking at cutting 50% of the meat out of the school's diet by 2023. I mean, they're just to save the environment. This is a goal here. And again, we can go into the true environmental impact of animal agriculture versus the other stuff. But this is a misguided effort.
Starting point is 01:01:21 And again, it's being backed up and funded by these companies that stand to gain billions of dollars. And so this is where the support's coming from. So we've got this huge shift. For instance, the Eat Lancet Commission, who came out with the World Global Diet for the Planet, which was 53% of the calories came from sugar, grain, seed oils, and soybean. And that's just basically processed food. This is they wanted to do to go and these this is sponsored by petrochemical country company companies agricultural chemical companies processed food companies these guys are all behind us because this is what they want to see they want us to continue producing monocrop foods that are highly fossil fuel dependent and cheap to make and very profitable.
Starting point is 01:02:07 And so this is, you know, this is what we're seeing pushed down our throats. And, you know, there's people that are just, okay, that's fine. It doesn't really matter. And, you know, when we look at what's causing, well, we can go to a different topic on fossil fuels. But anyway, what else do you guys want to talk about? Why do you think this film was made? Why do you think game changers was made? Well, I think that, you know, I mean,
Starting point is 01:02:31 I think James Cameron was the, the obviously driving force behind this. I mean, he is a vegan, his wife, Susie came, came us I think is also a vegan. They have vegan schools. I mean, he is, I mean, he's invested. He's got $140 million invested in a pea protein manufacturing plant, the largest in the world, basically. So, I mean, obviously, if more people go vegan, they're going to sell more pea protein.
Starting point is 01:02:56 So, I mean, it's hard not to be cynical about that stuff. But, I mean, I do think he's ideologically invested in this belief system, like many of those folks are. And it's just – he's obviouslyologically invested in this belief system like many of those folks are. And it's just, you know, he's obviously a good filmmaker and is very compelling and it utilizes appeals to emotion and it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, it could be plant-based but it's not fact-based. And I think that is the sort of situation there. And it's just, it's his belief to do what he thinks is right in the world.
Starting point is 01:03:28 And the same with the other filmmakers. I mean, I believe they honestly believe they're doing the right thing. Now, if they make some money off investment, that's fine too. But, you know, we all at the end of the day got to make a living. But at the end of the day, it is just, you know, it's just basically propaganda at the end of the day. What about their claim in the Game Changers documentary where they're saying that the animal products don't actually have the protein. They're just the middleman.
Starting point is 01:03:58 They're the delivery system because the cows or whatever, they're eating the grass. And that is actually what contains all of the protein. We're just getting it through the cow, basically. Yeah, I mean, there is some truth to that. But I mean, it's just kind of ridiculous. I mean, if you look at a cow, I mean, what does a cow have? I mean, they have a rumen, which contains 50 gallons of food. I mean, they can hold 50 gallons of food. I mean, they can hold 50 gallons of food and then they have bacteria that convert that
Starting point is 01:04:29 food into short chain fatty acids and other compounds are utilized by the cow. But I mean, while it's true plants have protein, but if you look at like other primates like a gorilla or chimpanzee, I mean, these guys also have this specialized hindgut fermentation capacity that humans largely don't have anymore. And so these guys, like a gorilla, for instance, will eat something like 40 to 60 pounds of food a day. Can you imagine having to eat 40 pounds? You know, the average silverback gorilla is about 350 pounds. And Mark, you were almost that size at one point. If you had to eat 50 pounds of leaves and twigs every day to maintain that, I mean,
Starting point is 01:05:07 it would be ridiculous. And so, I mean, that is what you would have to do to do that. You know, and the other thing is, you know, nitrogen is in the atmosphere. You know, nitrogen is the most common gas in the atmosphere. And what happens is actually bacteria in the soil fix that nitrogen, convert it into microbial protein, and then the plants then absorb that protein through their root system and then display it in their protein. And then, you know, cows eat it and then we eat the cows. This is the trophic levels where apex predators, high-level predators. So if we were to make that argument, then the right answer would be you should walk around maybe eating dirt because this is where the protein really initially originates in from micro,
Starting point is 01:05:47 but microorganisms, or you could say you could just suck in nitrogen from the air. I mean, if you want to make this least common denominator argument, so it's just a silly argument. And, you know, we're just, we are as human beings, not don't have the specialized hardware, you know, the anatomic tools to make the conversion to turn that much plant material into protein very effectively. And this is why the pea protein isolates and all the mechanical stuff that has to occur. So if you go around, just go out in your backyard and start munching on whatever vegetation you find, you're not going to do very well. So I mean, yeah, it's just a silly argument. I mean, I don't even know why they throw it out there. If you think about a vegan diet and you think about like a keto diet, well, there's a
Starting point is 01:06:28 lot of things you can target people with, you know, you can, or even just people on any sort of diet, you can make products and you can make a lot of money off of, of having products that fit people in the keto world or fit people in, um, the vegan world. But when it comes to meat, it's kind of, it's like you just go buy meat from the grocery store or the butcher. It's a much harder thing to figure out how to like monetize. I guess, you know, there are some offshoot products like bone broth and there's some bars that have meat in them or something like that. But for the most part, it would be difficult and it would be hard to target those people because of some of the stigma behind meat.
Starting point is 01:07:11 So it raises a lot of interesting questions on what are the reasons why people are trying to say that a vegan diet is good and then they're kind of slamming red meat. There's just, there's not a lot of profitability when it comes to some of these things from what I've seen. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's difficult to make a pro, you know, make a product out of meat. I mean, it's, it's pretty complete already. You don't need much process. It already tastes great. You
Starting point is 01:07:37 know, it comes in a pretty good package form, but I mean, to be honest, there is, as you guys are probably aware, there is this sort of belief that this lab-grown meat is going to be the thing. And so we can talk a little bit about that. And I think that's an important discussion to have because people think, you know, we're just going to take a cell from a cow and put it in a little Petri dish and imagine we're going to grow hamburgers and the world's going to be saved. But they don't understand the actual process. So if we go over the process of how that currently occurs, it's actually pretty sort of scary. So the way they have to make that occur is they have to take the cells that they harvest from the animal, and they have to bathe it in a fluid called fetal bovine serum.
Starting point is 01:08:15 So where do we get fetal bovine serum from? So what they have to do is they have to take a pregnant cow. They have to kill the cow, cut it open, remove the fetus. And while the fetus is still alive, they have to suck blood cow, cut it open, remove the fetus. And while the fetus is still alive, they have to suck blood out of its heart through a big needle. And they have to do it without anesthesia on the fetus because it would, you know, the anesthetic got into the blood and it would be a problem. So they have to take these fetuses, suck all their blood out, you know, squirt it on these cells, and they have to keep doing it over and over and over again
Starting point is 01:08:42 to get these cells to grow. So this is a first problem. And then you have to feed those cells something. So you have to feed them glucose. You have to feed them protein. Where do you get the protein from? So you have to grow pea protein or soybean protein or some other source of protein from a monocrop field in more amounts than you would that beef would eat. from a monocrop field in more amounts than you would that beef would eat, because beef can turn grass into protein where we have to use these soy and pea protein isolates to feed these things.
Starting point is 01:09:13 You're going to need more monocropping to support this stuff. And then, so once you grow these things and you have all these, and there's all the waste products you have to dispose of, we don't talk about how we get rid of that, and then we have to keep them sterile because remember these, these little cell cultures don't have an immune system, right? So if a bacteria gets in there, it wipes out the entire batch. It could be a giant, you know, that, you know, a huge vat of meat sort of cell cultured meat product. So if we get the antibiotics, so then we have to bathe them in antibiotics and people complain about
Starting point is 01:09:41 antibiotics and injecting in cows. Well, guess what? These cell culture ones are going to have to be sterile at some point. So either they put them in a sterile container, but as soon as they take them out from that, they've got to put something on there to protect them, possibly more antibiotic. And so we've got this stuff, not to mention all the fossil fuels and energy that go into running the plants, to harvesting the peas, to converting the peas into pre-protein isolate to feed the cows and so it becomes a very environmentally draining process from with regard to fossil fuels whereas a cow is sitting in a field using the energy from the sun to eat grass you know to turn its product into meat and it's self-replicating you know it's a self-replicating device and so this sort of process thing at memphis meats and other other are coming in. It is another thing.
Starting point is 01:10:25 And they're going to tell you this fairy tale about how they're saving the planet and how it's much healthier for you. And again, remember, these cells can grow forever. And we have things called immortal cells that we use in cancer research. So for instance, there's like breast cancer cells that have been growing since the 1960s. And they keep growing and growing and growing. And they keep them alive like Frankenstein's monster. And then they use it for research so this is what this food would ultimately be and so we don't know if these cells replicating indefinitely will have some sort of
Starting point is 01:10:53 problems we don't know what parts are going to grow are they going to have the right amount of fat so they're going to have a right around you know you know just inputs that we would require to grow what we're used to eating as humans and again, this is another product that I have a lot of skepticism about. Is that out currently? I think it'll be on the market by maybe next year. The first, first, uh, you know, first rounds of this stuff. Um, what about, um, like sustainability, you know, and what about, um, you know, can, if we go on a carnivorous diet, is there enough cows? Is there enough meat to to feed us all?
Starting point is 01:11:33 And also, are we, you know, leaving a worse footprint, bigger footprint behind in terms of like the environment if we eat meat? terms of like the environment if we eat meat? Yeah. So, I mean, certainly, you know, beef in particular is more environmentally intensive than other sources of protein, even if you compare it to chicken, pigs, you know, sheep and stuff. Well, sheep's about the same. So, what we have to realize is depending upon what metric you use. And so, a lot of people like to use calories per greenhouse gas, right? So that presumes that all calories are created equal. If we start looking at critical human nutrients, if we look at things like lysine, which is an essential amino acid, if we start looking at things like zinc and iron and bioavailable protein,
Starting point is 01:12:20 then those numbers become very different. Then it almost becomes favorable for beef versus things like, you know, other plant foods that are out there. And so that's one, that's one discussion. You have to frame what you're talking about, because if you want to just produce lots and lots of calories for human beings to eat, then just grow sugar. Sugar is the most calorie dense resource, you know, prudent thing you can grow. And so we,
Starting point is 01:12:44 we just feed people lots of sugar and you know people like it because it's sweet but it doesn't do much for our health right our teeth all fall out and we get fat and sick most likely so there's did you you've got to frame this a certain way but even if we talk about let's say greenhouse gases for instance and one of the things is you know we hear from vegan advocates and you know particularly they say well beef is the number one or animals are the number one reason, you know, particularly they say, well, beef is the number one, or animals are the number one reason for, you know, climate change. And that's just clearly not true.
Starting point is 01:13:11 You know, when we look at, for instance, the United States data where we, where us three live, right, three of us live and we're trying to make a difference in the world. We see that, you know, animal agriculture accounts for 4% of our greenhouse gases. Plant agriculture accounts for 5% of our greenhouse gases. I'm using EPA data here. Cows account for 2% of our greenhouse gases nationwide. And so when we compare that to things like the transportation industry, which is about 28%, the electrical and energy industry is about 27, 28%. And then industry in general is about another 25%. So we've got 80% in those sectors and only 2% from cows.
Starting point is 01:13:49 Just the healthcare sector alone is about 10% of our greenhouse gases. So if we go on a meat-based diet and we stop having to go to the doctor all the time, guess what? We're actually saving greenhouse gas emissions. We're actually saving greenhouse gas emissions because instead of going to the doctor six times a year and having procedures and taking pharmaceutical drugs, we're not contributing to that anymore. So we've now reduced our greenhouse gas footprint just from getting healthier. Sick people are going to be more damaging to the environment than cows can possibly be. That's one thing. damaging to the environment than cows can possibly be. That's one thing. But when we step outside of the U.S., we see that worldwide animal agriculture is about 14% of greenhouse gas emissions and cows themselves are about 6%. And the reason those numbers are higher is because
Starting point is 01:14:35 in most of the world, most of the cattle are still raised and used like they were five, six, seven, 800 years ago, 1,000 years ago. They just haven't evolved. Something like 70, 80% of the cattle in the world are still being managed like they were 500 years ago. That is terribly inefficient. And then we see that, like for instance, in India, I mean, or Africa, it may take you 20 years of feeding the cow to get the same amount of milk that you can get in a year in the U.S. You know, so it's just very inefficient. So you don't have to put them on grain to get this, but just to breed them properly, just to treat them so they're free of parasites and disease. You know, India has a cattle herd of over 200 million.
Starting point is 01:15:21 The United States has 90 million cattle. In India, most of their cows are sick. They're wandering the streets eating trash. They're filled with parasites. They're producing their methane gas. So if you were to take that and bring up the efficiency standards, even to what the United States had back in 1960, you could feed the world all the meat they eat today with half the cows we have currently. So, I mean, you can actually reduce the number of cows we have, feed everybody just as much beef as we had now with less cows. Now, you could double the meat production in the world with the same amount of cows
Starting point is 01:15:53 and even go more. And there's things we can further mitigate. There's things like algae that you can feed the cattle now that eliminate their methane emissions almost completely. And in the discussion around methane, most people don't realize that methane is a very short-lived greenhouse gas. So it goes up in the atmosphere. It's quickly turned around back into CO2 and comes back down.
Starting point is 01:16:13 The plants then take it back in and turn it back into oxygen and the cows eat it. So it's part of this CO2 cycle that's natural. In fact, NASA and other places have looked at methane isotopes in the atmosphere, and they've concluded that cattle are not contributing to rise in methane. Those things are all coming from other sources, things like fracking, natural gas, rice farming, wet marshlands, different things. So it's really not the impact you think it is. It doesn't mean we don't need to continue to improve the efficiencies. You know, in the United States, methane emissions are down 30% since the 1970s. Water usage is down 30% since the 1970s.
Starting point is 01:16:57 Land usage is down 30%. We just have 30% less cattle because we've been more efficient at doing that. And the other thing about the water, you know, we always hear about, you know, a hamburger is like 55 swimming pools worth of water. I mean, that's also garbage data because what they failed to mention is something like, and this is on a worldwide number, something like 96% to 90% of all water that is used to go to feed cows is just rainwater. I mean, it's not like that water wouldn't fall anyway. The water falls on the grass, the grass grows, the cows eat the water that's in the grass.
Starting point is 01:17:29 Most of the cow's water comes from grass they eat, which came from rainwater. And what happens to that water? It doesn't magically disappear. Guess what? The cows piss. The cows take a dump. The cows breathe out moisture.
Starting point is 01:17:41 All that water is, again, returned back into the environment. And so, again, returned back into the environment. And so again, these numbers are all just suited to whoever's political ideology you believe, you know, so this is a, this is a thing, but yes, we can clearly, and we talk about regenerative type stuff, you know, goals like guys like Joel Salatin, who I believe you're familiar with and Will Harris at Whitehooks Pasture. These guys are showing clearly that animals, when they are properly managed, can actually return carbon to the soil more than they utilize. So they are actually fixing the environment, which a vegan diet cannot do.
Starting point is 01:18:15 So if you manage cows correctly, in fact, the most beneficial thing you can do for the environment is eat regeneratively raised large animals. This is going to help the environment. It's going to kill these animals too. You know, the vegan vegetarian argument about, you know, you're killing all the animals. Well, I mean, we know that, you know, pesticides are sprayed on fields. I mean, those pesticides are not unintentional. I mean, the whole name pesticide kill pests.
Starting point is 01:18:41 That's what it means. So you're intentionally killing animals. I mean, farmers are out there with shotguns shooting rabbits and they're pesticide kill pests that's what it means so you're intentionally killing animals i mean farmers are out there with shotguns shooting rabbits and they're shooting you know deer and they're shooting things that eat their food i mean we see this you know there's just like millions upon millions of animals that are killed to harvest any food product whether it's plant and then animal products but at least we get at least we eat the the the animals that we harvest for food whereas all these rabbits and deer that suffer shot i I mean, they're thrown into a compost heap or thrown in a landfill.
Starting point is 01:19:10 So, I mean, it's more ethical actually to eat, you know, particularly a large ruminant animal. This is the most ethical thing you can do. How can people find out more information about you? You have a book out. How can people purchase the book? Yeah, the book Carnivore, comes out November 19th. It's up on Amazon. It'll be on Barnes & Noble.
Starting point is 01:19:27 It's got a couple of international places. It's going to be released internationally. My Instagram, SeanBaker1967, and then Twitter, I'm SBakerMD. I've got a YouTube channel now where I kind of yap once a morning for five, ten minutes about some topic that I'm interested in, that sort of stuff. How's that training going? How you been feeling lately? You know, I was kind of, you know, I went to Malaysia and I just kind of, you know, I took the little X3 bar that John Jakisch has and play with that,
Starting point is 01:19:57 did a little of that when I'm trying to find that's okay for travel. But, uh, I, uh, I was just kind of being a slacker. I mean, I was still training, but I wasn't like killing it like I normally do. And so it took about three weeks. And so now I'm just, this week, got back into ramping it back up. I'm excited to go hang out with Chris in Hawaii next week and train out there. You guys are doing a seminar out there, right? Yeah, we're doing a little seminar talking to some fitness folks about probably some of the stuff I'm talking about now.
Starting point is 01:20:23 But Chris is really, I mean, I'm sure you're proud of the stuff i'm talking about now um but chris is really i mean i i mean i'm sure you're proud of the guy too i'm absolutely he's done in the last two years it's been amazing oh it's been unbelievable and to what and that's you know that's why i'm shouting all the time talking about eating meat because uh i've seen it change people's lives including you know people that are close to me so you know, people that are thinking about like trying to diet, it's as simple as just eating some meat. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. You think about explaining a diet to any animal. I mean, if it takes more than 10 seconds to tell your animal what to eat, I mean, it's kind of crazy.
Starting point is 01:21:02 But yeah, I guess from training standpoint, you know, I won the world championships in rowing last year here in Long Beach. And so next year it's kind of crazy, but, uh, yeah, I'm not, I guess from training standpoint, you know, I won the world championships in rowing last year here in long beach. And so next year it's in Paris. I think I'm going to, I might fly out to Paris to compete to try to, uh, you know, retain the title. That's, that's kind of my, my athletic goal for, for the year. And then always just the, you know, the general stuff, the deadlifting and the, you know, the jumping around and staying, staying fit and agile and that type of stuff. In your book, do you talk about your training as well? Not so much.
Starting point is 01:21:28 No, I mean, it's more really an introduction. The target audience is for people that really may not understand or know much about the carnivore diet. So it's kind of the philosophy. The publisher, I had a publisher that approached me to write the book. And so they really wanted me to include some autobiographical stuff. So I did do some of that. Some of that they cut out because it was too graphic, I guess. It was too gory when I talked about my time at war
Starting point is 01:21:50 and some of the stuff I saw in medicine. But I was kind of a little bummed to see that stuff go. But I guess it was like for a guidebook, they said it may be a little too intense. Maybe I'll do it as an unabridged release or something. But no, it really talks about some of the historical and evolutionary theory, some of the scientific theory behind why it might work, some of the conditions it seems to help and why it may do so. Of course, we'll have some success stories.
Starting point is 01:22:12 And just how I like to implement it, philosophy on how to implement the diet, what are the important ideas, what are the concepts, and how to make it sustainable over the long haul, which I think, as you know, your friend Stan know, your friend Stan Efferding says, compliance is a science. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And so whatever you do that makes you successful, that keeps you, uh, what I, and what I feel is healthy is lean and strong. I mean, I think those things are, are, are very good markers of health and whatever, whatever it takes to get you there and keep you there is really the best thing you can do for your health over the long haul. Always awesome. Have you on the show. and keep you there is really the best thing you can do for your health over the long haul. Always awesome to have you on the show. Super excited about the book and I hope everybody checks it out.
Starting point is 01:22:50 Catch you later. All right, guys. Thanks so much. All right. Take care. That was awesome. That guy's a beast, by the way. I think he'll deadlift 405 occasionally for some reps. And I think I want to say I've seen him do like 17 or 19 reps or something like that.
Starting point is 01:23:10 Not an easy thing to do. I don't think he even wears straps. He's always in shape. Yeah, he's always in shape. He's lean. Yeah, he'll do those 17 reps and then jump over the bar and then jump across the entire gym like a madman. Wait, you said 63 or 53 63 he's 63 yeah yeah bro and and this this is gonna sound stupid but like looking at him now he
Starting point is 01:23:34 looks younger than the first time i met him he looks a lot he actually looks a lot better yeah i remember when he first came here and he was telling me that he ate meat for like a year and i was like i would assume you'd look better eating meat for a year if i'm being totally honest like i would think that you would be leaner i remember like his skin was a little more like blotchy almost and looking at him here i was just like yeah what's going on you should do a 23 and me test and see if he's uh anyway part nigerian yeah maybe he might be like like viking or something right like he's a big dude so yeah man that's awesome 63 bro i thought he's 53 yeah it's crazy but what i really wanted
Starting point is 01:24:13 to know you know how we were having that conversation about do we actually think that you know um that they're really trying to help people get healthy i want to know does like with what all these doctors know because you can't think that they don't understand what he understands about these studies. Are they trying to help people get healthy or are they literally just trying to get an agenda forward and make money? I wanted to know his thoughts on that. But I guess that's something for another day. Yeah, yeah, when he comes in. We'll have him here at some point.
Starting point is 01:24:41 But I think that, to your point on that topic, I think that some people, I just know i think that um you know i think you know to your point on that on that topic i think that some people i just don't think they know i don't think they know the way he knows i don't think they do and it's interesting because he is a doctor but he's not a doctor in the field that he's talking about yeah he's not a doctor of the carnivore diet but he has become one because he researches everything and then like how do you know so much shit about the cows and stuff? Yeah. He researched like, he's really like, you know, uh, people need to have a better appreciation for people like that because he's doing this dive that's deep, man.
Starting point is 01:25:16 And that no one else has really done before. People have not. And in my opinion, he's kind of the guy who's kicked this whole thing off, you know, in the first place. And some of the stuff he was talking about, like vitamins and minerals, not being able to really absorb them for much of anything, you know, when you get them in a, you know, supplemental form and you try to take them, try to take like a thing like vitamin C, you know, I really find it really interesting. Maybe every single thing that we know about nutrition, or maybe not every single thing,
Starting point is 01:25:42 but maybe like a huge percentage of the stuff that we know is way different than we ever thought because there's different rules for people when they're on a really good diet. When you're consistently on a really good diet, one example is like vitamin C. They've shown that when people eat, there was a study done where people that eat carbohydrates for whatever particular reason, they seem like they need more vitamin C. When people eat less, they don't need as much. And I don't know if it's because you produce something that's similar to vitamin C. I forget how it all works. But that's an interesting concept.
Starting point is 01:26:16 That just because you don't participate in eating a certain way, you end up getting a different result. And then you have not only a different result, but then you have a whole entire different set of rules. So it's like all these things that were like, you need to get your vitamin B, you need to get your vitamin whatever, like maybe like when you just eat meat, maybe everything's pretty taken care of. It's what it seems like. It does, right? It does, it does.
Starting point is 01:26:49 And he was talking about kind of like nutrient-dense food, and I think people get all excited about the vitamins and minerals in the food. But I think even beyond the vitamins and minerals, it's nutrient-dense in terms of its macronutrients as well. It's got a nice, healthy chunk of fat in there and a nice, healthy chunk of protein in there. Those things are satiating. They can help you stay on your diet. And carbohydrates can be satiating too, like a potato, like we've talked about before on the podcast or oatmeal, you know, make up some thick oatmeal. You're pretty full for a damn long time too. But it's like, you know,
Starting point is 01:27:23 if you're, you're trying to, you're trying to stay on a diet day in and day out, um, you really need to make sure that it, it all boils down to what is something that you are going to be able to do? What's something that you're going to be able to adhere to? What are some things that you're going to be able to look forward to? Because we don't have foods that you look forward to. I don't, I don't think you're going to make able to look forward to because we don't have foods that you look forward to i don't i don't think you're going to make it i don't think you're going to be able to diet through it i think it's going to be too hard it is like we're we're every time we've both tried to diet and i guess or all of us yeah and we couldn't stick to it well we binged right so i mean yeah i don't get when the exact opposite way of the foods where you're told to eat,
Starting point is 01:28:06 it's like, Hey man, you need to like egg whites, rice cakes. Here's your things. You got these 12 foods you're allowed to eat and that's it. And you do it for like two or three days and then it's like maddening. And then there you are,
Starting point is 01:28:17 you know, eating all kinds of crazy, weird stuff. Yeah. God, this is crazy. It really is crazy to me. All of this stuff.
Starting point is 01:28:24 Cause just a few years ago none of this all of this would sound like bullshit yeah that's that's kind of where i am too like and i wanted to ask him and i guess i'll just ask you mark um like how do we get the older generation to start eating meat not start but like not demonizing it because like i tell my dad like hey like i'll look at his plate like he's probably throw some more meat on there ah the doctor blah blah like no dude you're fine i think it's a matter of of having a discussion with somebody where you can try to unring some truths you know these things that they think are true you know for them and if you can start to do that then maybe you can get for them. And if you can start to do
Starting point is 01:29:05 that, then maybe you can get them to believe. Cause if you can get them to believe, uh, our belief system is so strong that that's something that keeps you connected. That's something that really keeps you connected to something. So, um, you know, I'll always revert back to fasting cause I can't think of any other way to make you hungry for meat all the time than to fast. But fasting and lower carbohydrate intake, I know they both suck. I know it's like, it doesn't sound fun. But, you know, I've said before that success breeds success. Well, I feel like when you start to eat on a keto style diet, that keto promotes keto. Like it's one of the few diets that actually promotes itself. It's one of the few diets where it even takes several days to like even start to produce ketones. But it's, it's promotional in the fact that you're like, well, if I eat those carbs,
Starting point is 01:29:57 I'm going to kind of break up this little system that I got going on. And I'm encouraged to eat meat every time a, because I'm hungry B B, because I really am excited by the food, like I love the flavor of it and then number three, I know that it's gonna keep this cycle going of ketones and once I eat some of this meat, the cravings I have, because we're talking about Pop-Tarts today,
Starting point is 01:30:19 the cravings for Pop-Tarts are gone halfway through and then I'm totally fine, like I'm calm again, I'm like, ah, everything, everything's good in the world, you know, and I get to kind of stay on that cycle. But to get some of the older population to, um, you know, try to buy in, you know, I would just say like, you're already sick. Like you're already, you're already kind of screwed up. And so, you know, what do you have to lose other than to make some really awesome,
Starting point is 01:30:45 uh, strong, positive changes. And if you go back to what Dr. Baker said in there, or if you read the war on carbs book, you know, I suggest when somebody starts diet, man, like just go for it. Eat as much as, eat as much as you need, like not as much as you want. Like, don't be reckless, but eat as much as you need. You need, you feel like you need to eat three pounds of meat one day. Um, you know, good luck trying to keep that pace for a long time. You know, you're going to, are you going to eat six pounds of meat every day for like four years? Um, I really, really doubt it.
Starting point is 01:31:17 I know there's some people that have some pretty good appetites, but after a while you'll start to automatically eat less and less. But after a while, you'll start to automatically eat less and less. And that's, in my opinion, that's kind of what we need to have people have control over. And I think also, I mean, if you want the older generation to listen, you need to. I think that podcast we had with Ken Berry was pretty powerful. I sat down and had my mom watch that because a lot of the stuff I've been telling her was kind of falling on deaf ears until like she listened to that and saw what a doctor was saying about what doctors say. Because her doctor, it was like, oh, you know, you need to lower your cholesterol a bit.
Starting point is 01:31:57 You probably should eat less red meat. Like her doctor has this influence over you and your health and telling you what to do. And it's the exact opposite of what you're trying to tell them, Andrew. Well, you got to try and you probably have to have another person that they feel is, uh, has the credentials that they'll respect. Cause it also comes down to like, maybe they just don't respect your opinion. Some people in my life don't respect my opinion on some of these things. Yeah. And it doesn't help that I'm the youngest in the family too. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the youngest in the family too. Yeah. Yeah, I'm the weirdo over here telling them to eat meat and exercise. I think eating less fat and less cholesterol and things like that,
Starting point is 01:32:33 I think it's just such common suggestions. And I also think that when people say eat less cholesterol, there's still a ton, there's still a wide array of foods that are wide open. So if I say don't eat carbs, like you won't have any of these problems that we're talking about, you'll have none of them. Uh, that's a lot harder of a thing. That's a lot harder of a stance for someone to be like, all right, well, fuck it. I'm just not going to eat any carbs. Like that's a really big commit from commitment for somebody. Yeah. But for somebody to go, Oh, I could eat like some less eggs.
Starting point is 01:33:07 And yeah, you know, I have bacon in the morning. And there's a couple other places where I think I'm getting in too much cholesterol. I'll read some food labels. It's pretty easy. But what do you get to still eat? You still get to eat your, you know, older, a lot of older people like eat like hard candy and stuff. I don't remember my grandmother.
Starting point is 01:33:23 Yeah, my grandmother had all that stuff around all the time and very snacky. You know, these old people are very snacky. They got tons of packaged foods that have a lot of, uh, you know, a lot of crunch or a lot of sugar to them. And that's what those people get accustomed to eating. But, you know, I, I said this to a guy the other day and he was like, he thought it was brilliant. This guy, you know, was talking about how he had a hard time like getting up off his couch. And, you know, I said to him, I said, throw away your couch. He's like, I end up coming home from work and I just plop down on the couch and I just sit there and eat. And I said, okay, so like, you know, you're under the impression
Starting point is 01:34:05 of that your TV costs, you know, four or $500, you know, but it doesn't, it's costing your life because you're sitting there in front of it eating like a goddamn pig. And if you didn't have the TV or the couch, you wouldn't have these problems. So it's like, get rid of one or the other. Like take that goddamn couch and throw it out. And actually'm being 100 serious put a uncomfortable chair in front of the tv you know what i mean yeah yeah like just make it so it's not that setup um andrew you went with me to kyle kingsbury kyle kingsbury's house right and what did he have in front of his tv uh so i'm trying to remember there was a uh like a like almost like exercise mat type of thing a hundred percent it was an area to do fucking yoga and then he had he had uh uh he had med he had like some med balls
Starting point is 01:34:51 out he had like a kettlebell a trampoline a trampoline and they all go jump on the trampoline occasionally uh he had a foam roller and it was like this you walk in and you look to your you look to your left and there's stuff for his son bear and you look to your you look to your left and there's stuff for a sun bear and you look to the right there's a tv with a couch there's a still couch there in front of it though there's this little area where you can exercise and you're like oh this house is about exercise it's about family because they got stuff over there for the kid they all joined together and watched tv they didn't even have cable all they ever play is the same like disc over and over again the like planet earth the planet earth or something like
Starting point is 01:35:30 that yeah they have different versions of that yeah because it's educational and they that's the way they roll but you don't have to be you don't have to be kyle's kingsbury you don't have to be that crazy about it but like you get the point man like what's what's bugging you what's in your way are you snacking too much are doing this? You're doing that ditch to snack or ditch the time. Like what's, you know, people are like, ah, man, I late night is a real problem for me. Well then go to bed. You know, if, if you eat, like if you have this crazy weird appetite at 10 o'clock at night, then go to bed at nine and then it's not there anymore. Yeah. Definitely walking
Starting point is 01:36:06 in and hanging out with the Kingsberries was a huge influence on our house. Like, I mean, everything that they do it minus the open relationship thing is a huge influence on Stephanie and I. But yeah, you walk into my house right now and the, maybe the second thing you see is our entire gym room. Like where we're supposed to have a living room is a squat rack you know a bench yeah treadmill and stall mats that's how we had it set up yeah and part of that was because i'm like thinking like we probably shouldn't do this but kingsbury did it like fuck yeah i'm gonna do it yeah so yeah it's it's huge yeah changing the lifestyle that no that that makes a big difference throw everyone's couch away it's like an amazing it gets in the way of the habit loop like you don't have you cannot go sit
Starting point is 01:36:49 and sit on a couch yeah you get take a hammer and throw it right through the fucking center of your television there you go you won't sit in front of the tv anymore i can't it means so much to me you gave it to me oh there we go so i can't do that my uh wife would be pissed she loves to watch tv she i i don't even know how she does it i i told her the other day i'm like you should be She gave it to me. Oh, there we go. So I can't do that. My wife would be pissed. She loves to watch TV. I don't even know how she does it. I told her the other day, I'm like, you should be like 700 pounds. I'm like, you are up to date on every show, and you're still fit and in shape. I don't know how she does it.
Starting point is 01:37:18 But she doesn't really sit down and watch it, though, I guess. She's just doing stuff while she's watching. It's really, really rare, actually, now that I think about it. If she does sit down, she sits down for like 30 minutes and then I bother her or the kids bother her and she's back up again. Or Daisy. Yeah, there's somebody in the gym. I think I've talked about it before on the podcast, but they were like, you know, they say you're not supposed to eat and watch TV. I've been watching TV and eating dinner for the past 20 years. I'm not going to stop now. I was like, oh. And you can imagine he is a little bit of a bigger fella oh but we love him
Starting point is 01:37:51 and he's he's a funny guy he's awesome but yeah that's kind of i eat and watch stuff yeah i do i was just gonna say i do that all the time yeah i guess it just matters how you do it and how much you uh i think i use it to the uh to my benefit like if I'm eating no carbs, I'm just trying to pay attention to what I'm watching. And then just all I look down, all the food's gone. Cool. Yeah. I normally don't just because I like sitting at like the dinner table a little bit better. But the house that we're in now, you can kind of see the TV from there.
Starting point is 01:38:21 So I'll probably be halfway watching watching tv or tv is like always on yeah you know our tv is like always on yeah but i think i i got past a lot of those problems anyway so it's not really a big deal for me anymore i have no idea what that house is like but i'm just picturing the space like just all of the space but how big it is like so like even just little stuff like i'm like i like even just throwing something away, I'm like, man, I had to walk. I need like multiple garbage cans. I had to walk really far. You took a 10-minute walk to my garbage can.
Starting point is 01:38:52 Yeah, I had to fucking, just in my own kitchen, like not even trying to walk it outside or anything. And then like I don't know where anything is still. So we're just like walking around like mad. Andy's like, we're going to lose a bunch of weight being in this place. Nice. Because we're walking all over the place. I can't wait for you guys to see it.
Starting point is 01:39:09 Oh, God. It's awesome. Friday. Yeah. Friday. Friday night. Meathead Millionaire Summit. That should be fun.
Starting point is 01:39:16 Anyway, that's all the time I got. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Where can people find you, Andrew? At IamAndrewZ. It might be a little tricky to find me right now but just type shadow yeah type in the entire name and I'm unfortunately probably the last one
Starting point is 01:39:29 that shows up but it's just at I am Andrew Z it's not I dot just I am Andrew Z and he got shadow man because he talked about his Congo should have done this I told you not to do that out of out of all of the percent that was a crazy picture I was not expecting that.
Starting point is 01:39:46 Yeah. They took that shit down. I was so upset. But yeah, of course, out of all of the percentage that I'm made of, the one percent Congo gets hated on and shadow banned. It's your fault. I know. I don't talk about it, at least openly.
Starting point is 01:39:59 Where can people find you, sir? My Instagram and YouTube is at Nsema Iyang. N-S-I-M-A-I-N-y-a-n-g at mark smelly bell bye

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