May 13, 2025 • 52 mins
You don’t have to be a hardcore vegan to eat a plant-based diet (although you can be). There’s a whole variety of degrees people adopt phasing out meat from their plates. One kind is even called flexitarian for goodness sake. Seems pretty welcoming to us.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
and Jerry's here too, and this is a good old
fashioned root and tune, down home episode of Stuff you
Should Do.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Technical difficulties, please stand by.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, we're a good twenty minutes late, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Man, because it's about to say me, it's not my fault.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
No, it's not your fault. It's the computer's fault, right.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Not even But who cares about computers? This is I mean,
this is probably literally the opposite of computers, because we're
talking about plants.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you, old school Chuck,
have you ever eaten a plant?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I love living things, so I do not kill plants and.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Eat So are you a breathetarian? That's what they are, right, yeah,
where you just don't eat.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
No, of course I eat plants, you know, Emily, I
would argue it has a plant based diet. Now that
I know that a plant based diet doesn't mean that
you're vegan or vegetarian. It just and you know, as
you'll see, depending on the percentage of the website you
look at a lot of people say like you know,
it really depends on how much you eat and a
(01:26):
certain percentage, like maybe eighty percent of your diet is
plant based, and that's easily Emily. She eats vegetables constantly.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
She always has like a radish in her hand.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
No, but there's just her meals. Like her meals she'll cook,
Like we try to eat the same stuff, but I
don't want to sit down and eat Brussels sprouts, broccoli
and cauliflower for dinner.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
That's a plant based diet for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, but she'll put some chicken in there and some fish,
so she's sort of pescatarian plus maybe.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, pesca poultry tarian.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah. I mean there's a lot of for all this stuff.
I didn't know about a third of these probably.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, they all seem to fall under the umbrella term,
like you said, a plant based diet, so like a
vegan diet is a plant based diet, but not all
plant based diets are like vegan diets. Yeah, that kind
of setup.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I had never heard of blacktoe vegetarian, which basically means
you throw out all the rest, but I'll eat dairy.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, understandable. There's also ovo vegetarian. These are terrible names
by the way. Yeah, that means that you include eggs
in your vegan diet.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, not oval that would make even more sense, I think.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
No, it means that you include ovum in your diet. Yeah,
but I should say it's not a vegan diet at all,
Like you can't have any kind of animal products, Nope,
in a vegan diet, not just like meat or dairy
or eggs, but like vegan won't eat honey. Yeah, we
talked about fig wasps recently. They won't eat figs for
(02:55):
that reason.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
I think some vegans I found a lot of support
behind vegan saying like a processed wasp part and a
thing is fine.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Okay, I'll bet there's some that still won't.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh sure.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And then there's also lacto ovo vegetarian. You're a vegetarian,
but you eat eggs and dairy. There's lacto ovo bacon vegetarian.
And then there's what you said, Emily was pescatarian, which
is general. I mean you're essentially just you know, you're
eating more vegetables than the average person at this point.
(03:31):
If you're a pescatarian.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I think that's right. No comment on what that does
to your butt.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
What if you just eat seafood.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
No, if you eat nothing but broccoli and cauliflower all
day long.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Oh yeah, not just your butt, but like the well
being of people around you too.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, but it's it's very good for you. She's a
much healthier human than I am.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Nice, well, not the part that you're not as healthy,
but I'm glad that she is.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah. Of course, one thing we should going out early
on is that there's a sort of exhaustive look at
how much meat people eat around the world at a
certain point or kind of pepper throughout and just for
cops purposes. In the United States, we average per capita
meat consumption between one hundred and twenty three to one
(04:19):
hundred and fifty ish kilograms, depending on where you're looking.
So just kind of put that in your in the back,
in your back pocket when we start talking about other countries.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, that that really kind of came home to me
when I converted it to quarter pounders. Yeah, or in
Europe royale with cheese, that's thirteen and thirty two quarter
pounders a year. That means you're eating almost four quarter
pounders worth of meat a day every year. At one
hundred and fifty one point four kilograms.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Man, if only you could do that and live.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Right, that's called heaven, my friend.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
So clearly with those kind of numbers that the US
is a meat based culture. I mean, plenty of people
here do not take part in that kind of thing, obviously,
but as you'll see, many cultures around the world historically
have plant based diets and still have plant based diets.
Depending on who you ask, they might say there's about
two billion meat based eaters in the world and about
(05:19):
four billion plant based eaters.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, so I mean that's not too bad. They're really
holding things up because I mean, if actually that's more
than that's the majority. You're saying the majority of the
world is plant based.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I'm saying two billion and four billion. I'm not weighing
in on percentages.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Okay, yeah, we will go around the world in a minute,
but let's go through history for a little bit first. Okay,
because plant based diets, especially in the West, they're kind
of like a new thing. Maybe they came out of
the New Age movement in the seventies and eighties. No,
this is really old stuff. In fact, you can make
a really good case that plant based diets, especially a
(06:00):
flexitarian version is essentially the default diet of humans.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, I mean it's in some cases were actually in
a lot of cases, especially historically speaking, and still in
some places today, it's sort of the de facto diet
because that's what you have and you may not have
the kind of money to like go get really good
meat or something like that. So if you look back
through time and you go back to say like Ireland
(06:25):
in the nineteenth century before the potato famin, they were
eating tons of potatoes there, or a lot of poor
people in iron that were like, hey, we can grow potatoes,
they have some vitamins and minerals. Maybe we can milk
a cow and eat a little pickled herring, but other
than that, we're eating lots and lots of potatoes.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, for sure. This is before the famine, when a
potato blight came and when the Irish immigrants really started
to come on mass to the United States in the
nineteenth century, they were quite surprised at the abundance and
availability and cheapness of meat in the United States, and
(07:06):
that apparently dates back to colonial times where colonists in
well what would become the United States were eating more
meat than the average person back in England. Like, they
were eating essentially the same amount of meat as elites
back in the UK. And that's the long standing thing
where meat consumption throughout history in most places is associated
(07:31):
with higher status and elite status. You're wealthier because it's
always been harder to come by. Well, the colonies had
a lot more land, so they could grow a lot
more livestock and then hence eat a lot more meat.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Yeah, had a lot more land, asterist, right, and yeah,
everyone knows what we mean by that. Yeah. And you
know there's who helped us with the original version of this.
Was it Libya No Laura, all right? The claw Claw,
doctor Claw. She dug up a graft basically about how
(08:04):
Italians eat and prior to well, not that long ago,
they ate what you would call the Mediterranean diet now,
and they just called it what we eat because that's
what's around here, the diet. Yeah, exactly, fruit, vegetables, olive, oil, legomes, fish, cereals,
not a ton of dairy or meat. But they after,
(08:25):
I believe after World War Two, they started eating a
lot more meat. Before that, it was basically a plant
based diet because as you'll see, once again, no, no, no choke,
they're eating lots of fish. Plant based diet is we're
talking about meat here. The fish get a pass. I
guess as far as plant based diet goes, it does
not mean vegetarian or vegan.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Right, And Italy followed the same trajectory that most nations
do once they reach a certain point of prosperity, meat
consumption to start going through the roof. Whereas before in
history elite like individual groups of people who are well
off or could afford beat, when an entire nation becomes
well off enough, they start buying meat. Meat consumption just
(09:08):
goes up. So after the war, Italy followed that. And
you'll see like throughout throughout the world, the more prosperous
a nation, the higher their meat consumption. Almost it's almost
to a.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Country, yeah, which you know, a cynic might say, well,
if every nation was prosperous, everyone would just eat tons
of meat, and it sounds cynical, but like the data
sort of says what you just said, right. You know,
if you look at the US in the nineteenth century,
they were roundly encouraging the people eat lots and lots
(09:44):
of meat. There was a cholera outbreak in eighteen thirty
two in the US government said eat more meat and
drink more alcohol, and lay off the fruits and vegetables,
obviously because of cholera, but there was also just this
idea in America early on that like, you know, we're
well fed and we're well bred because we eat red
(10:07):
meat and we growing big here in the States. We're
not sitting around eating rice and grains and potatoes.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, And that diet has just spread throughout the world.
But again, it doesn't necessarily seem to mean because people
are emulating the United States. It just seems like the
United States was following a trajectory that other countries are now, right.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, and hey, what a great time to set up
where countries are now because remember those numbers I told
you about the United States. We're going to walk you
around the world, everybody not in the way back machine.
What do we call this when we're just currently go
far machine? Yeah, the go far and wide machine.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It still has that new imaginary machine. Smell nice.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Modern day in the go far and wide machine and
come with us at first to Africa. If you look
at continent wide, the stat is about sixty five grams
I'm sorry, sixty five kilograms of meat per capita. I
wonder about that number, because if you break it down
per country, South Africa they eat about sixty five point
(11:21):
two kilograms compared to let's say, the Democratic Republic of
Congo at just over four kilograms. Who's eating more red
meat in Africa than South Africa to make that average
sixty five?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I don't know. One thing that I recognized from researching
this is that there are so many stats that are
so different and estimates that are just so different. And
don't understand why it's so hard to track something like
meat consumption, Like we've got that so commoditized that I mean,
I don't understand how we can't track it. Even for
(11:57):
the United States. You rattled off, Yeah, different estimates for
how much meat the United States eats, So who knows, Chuck,
Who really knows whether any of these numbers are correct
or not.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Well, no one's ever asked me how much meat I eat.
I could skew that. Oh really, have you? Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I get that all the time usually because I have
like a big chunk of like steak in my teeth.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
No, no, no, I mean like an official study, like
I don't know, I know, I'm just kidding. Do any
of that stuff. It's sort of like weird black magic
to me. But we do know that generally speaking, West
African nations eat a little more meat. It's a little
more meat heavy than East African nations. But even in
West Africa, that's again, I mean, if the average per
capita was sixty five kilograms, that's like less than half
(12:43):
the United States per capita.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right, Yeah, I'm guessing from what I could tell, the
United States leads the world in meat consumption. I'm sure
most other countries, depending on where they are, are going
to eat a lot less. But again, like you said,
Africa is not some single bontolith. It has a bunch
of different variation. Asia is the same way. On the whole.
Asia eats far less meat compared to one another. Some
(13:09):
meat more, some eat less, and you get all sorts
of weird little statistical blips that come up from that.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yeah, if you look at the top ten countries around
the world with the highest rates of vegetarianism, India and
Taiwan are on there. So two of the top ten
are in Asia, Japan and China. They aren't on the
list of top ten percentage vegetarian wise, but they eat
a lot less meat than the US at an average
per capita consumption under seventy five kilograms.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, and Taiwan's a good example too. It has a
very high percentage of vegetarians, but it also has a
really high per capita meat consumption too, So it's just
basically wacky over there.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, and this is another like if you look at Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal,
minimum are, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, they're all under twenty
kilograms and Thailand is it like twenty five and Laos
at thirty. So I mean that's way less than the
seventy five average in Japan and China.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, I would guess Thailand, and I'm not sure about Laos,
but I would guess Thailand is wealthier than probably memr
or Indonesia. I don't know about Vietnam, but I think
a lot of it also has to do with the religious,
like what religions are predominant.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
There too, Yeah, which we'll get in. Well, actually take
a break before we do that, but we'll talk about
India real quick, because they have the highest proportion of
vegetarians in the world. Close to forty percent, thirty eight percent,
thirty nine percent are vegetarian in India for you know,
obvious reasons, and six point six kilograms of meat per
(14:56):
capita compared to as many as one hundred and fifty
for the U.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, exactly, that's very low. It is very low.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
All right. We promise talk of religion because who doesn't
love that, But this is religion as it relates to diet,
because depending on your religion, there may be a lot
of rules and restrictions on what they say you should
eat because of a bunch of reasons. It can sometimes
it shows like purity. Sometimes it's like no, it shows
(15:24):
how dedicated and faithful you are. Sometimes it's like, hey,
you get at following rules, don't eat this on this day,
and let's see how you do with that. But for
whatever reason, there are plenty of religions that have rules
sort of surrounding meat, for sure.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, some of the most famous ones are kosher. Yeah,
that's a big one where you have to actually separate
certain kinds of food like you separate meat, separate dairy.
There's also like restrictions and guidelines on how animals are slaughtered.
So it's not particularly vegetarian by nature. Keeping kosher is
(16:02):
but it makes you so much more mindful that a
lot of people just eventually end up being vegetarian just
by following a kosher diet. There's also halal is very similar.
It has all sorts of permissions and bands and stuff
like that on what animals can be eaten. But it's
different in that like there's no shell fish allouter birds
(16:23):
of prey, but you can eat rabbits. But they're both
similarish in that you really have to pay attention to
what you're eating if you are a genuine adherent of
this religious diet that's being prescribed to you.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, and if you're wondering, like, well, how does that
affect the rate of vegetarianism in Israel? They are second
behind India. That's not the only factor, of course, but
I think the highest percentage of veganism is in Israel too,
which is Yeah. I don't know why that surprised me,
but it did.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Okay, good noted. There's I think so this is another
thing too, like a lot of people just end up
being default vegetarians because of their religious diet. And another
good example is the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church, which we
talked about in our Holly Selassie episode. I think they
(17:16):
have two hundred days a year that are considered fast
days where you just can't eat meat, but you can
eat plants. So I mean, for all intents and purposes,
you're at least the majority of the year of vegetarian.
If you're Eastern Ethiopian Orthodox.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I wonder if one hundred and sixty five days a
year they just party down on some steak probably what
Seventh Day Adventist. It's not a requirement to be a vegetarian,
but they're like, it's not a bad way to live.
They kind of endorse it.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, remember they grew out of that whole William Keith
and John Kellogg movement of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah, they endorse the movement. Generally, thirty six percent end
up lacto ovo vegetarians, and then sixteen percent I'm sorry,
an additional sixteen percent eat plant based diet with maybe
a little fish, maybe a little bit of meat.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah. Buddhism is very connected to vegetarianism, like a straightforward
religious decree like kosher. Instead, it's linked to nonviolence, right,
So if your religion forbids violence, you can't really cut
the head off of a chicken and eat it very easily.
(18:35):
People still do in Buddhist countries, but it's much more
or it's much less common and frequent, and in fact,
apparently in Japan from six seventy five to eighteen seventy two,
meat was essentially banned in that country because of the
influence of Buddhism and Confucianism.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
You gotta weight on that chicken to dive natural causes.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Just follow it around like a buzzard.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
He's not looking so good.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
He looks a little peaked.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Hindu is. I love that word, by the way, good used.
I heard that word last night on the TV show
The Pit, and I realized I just don't use it much.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
You know what I like? That's similar. It's peckish.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I like peckish as well.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Maybe our musical duo should be peaked and peckish.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Oh my god, that is that. You just won the
band name contest, Chuck for all time.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
But everyone would be like, who's peaked and who's peckish?
Like I think Josh is peaked and Chuck is peckish.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It wouldn't matter. We can both be it, would it?
Would depend on our mood on any given day.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Or perhaps we are both peaked and peckish. Yeah, at
all times, we're always hungry and we're always not looking
so good. Hinduism, at almost eighty percent, eats a plant
based diet. But they again, it's not required. It's just like, hey,
why don't you do this that kind of thing heavily suggested. Maybe.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, it's also I mean, especially since the Hindu nationalist
ruling party took over the Baratiya Janata Party BJP, they
have been enforcing like really strict rules that are Hindu
in nature against eating meat, so much so that people
have been beaten. I think one person at least has
(20:19):
been lynched for eating meat or being associated with the
meat trade, specifically beef, because cows are considered sacred in Hinduism.
And also similarly, in India, vegetarianism is linked to social status,
(20:40):
in basically complete contradiction of what it's like in say
the West, where eating meat has long been associated with
being an elite or having high status. Vegetarianism is in India.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Apparently all right, flip loped it, I love it.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, And if you're like, wow, eighty percent of Hindus
are vegetarian. It's pretty impressive. Prepare for this, Janes. These
are the people who are so against hurting or killing
anything that they have little hand dust rooms that they
carry with them to dust off seats before they sit
down so they don't actually accidentally kill a bod. Ninety
(21:18):
two percent of them and fifty nine percent of Sikhs
in India are all vegetarians.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
And I guess eight percent of Jains are bad Janes.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I guess. So I mean, like, how would you show
up to like the Jain meeting and show your face?
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, or show up to a Jane party with a
raka ribs that's probably not it's probably frowned upon, I
would say, I would think so, all right. So if
and of course I'm kidding, no offense to any Janes
out there.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
No, of course not. I'm sure they'd show up and
be like natural causes, everybody would be able to check you.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
So, if you're gonna eat a plant based EyeT, it
can look at like a it can look many different
ways depending on what you're into. We found some information
from Harbord Health and obviously one thing that you're gonna
do is eat lots of veggies like Emily does. They say, like, hey,
fill half your plate up with veggies and vary the color.
Don't eat just like a bunch of green veggies. Like
(22:15):
eat veggies of all stripes and colors.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Get to some anthracyanins, why don't you.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Also the way so these are like if you want
to start to get into vegetarianism, these are some easy
ways to kind of slide into it. Another one is
changing the way that you think about meat. Rather than
it being the center or the star of the meal,
just kind of put it to the side, like it
doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, a thumb sized
(22:43):
piece of steak. But I mean if it more, you know,
kind of evenly resembled the grain or the greens on
your plate, that would make that would make a lot
more sense.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, I'll have the cream, spinach side abruptly and a
thumb of steak.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Right. It's funny, so I used thumb. So have you
ever heard that thing about a portion of meat being
no bigger than the palm of your hand.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
For like that's the healthy way to eat meat? Yes,
I don't think I've heard that, but oh okay, I
could see that.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
So not just that if you cut your hands that
you're serving of fruit and vegetables, and then your thumb
is your measure of fats like a nut, butter or
something like that. Good. There's a name for all this.
It's called the Zimbabwe hand jive.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I can, I've done that dance, but I did not
know that was a eating scale.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Well, so this guy in nineteen ninety three, doctor Kazim Mauji,
came up with this way of doing it and it's
been widely adopted. But I had no idea. That's what
it was called.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
It's a great name. What I do. We host a
lot of especially in the spring and summertime of people
when we go to the lake and just at our
house here we have we ow dinner parties. We just
do a lot of that kind of stuff. And aside
from being exhausting, one thing, I'm just kidding, it's actually
a lot of fun. But one thing I do, and
(24:08):
this goes along with like how you think about meat
and how much meat you have, is I don't cook
up like, you know, twenty chicken breast. If there's twenty
people there, I cook up a bunch of you know,
whatever kind of cut of chicken and or steaks. Sometimes
they'll do a couple of meats and I will I
(24:29):
will slice it all up on a big platter and
then you can just get a portion of something rather
than saying, like, here's a gigantic chicken breast on your
plate that you now feel responsible for, right, And people
seem to really like that, you know, like maybe I'll
have a little bit of this and a little bit
of that and then the rest is our veggie sides.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, so that's a tip from Chucky.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, you should just set up a carving station and
ask to see each person's thumb, righty. Yeah, that'd save
you a bunch of money totally. So let's see what else. Oh,
another good one is to choose different fats, avocados, olive oil,
stuff like that, and then just cook at least one
vegetarian meal per week. Yeah, and if you start doing
(25:16):
these kind of things, it's actually really easy to find
yourself down the road, like just doing it without thinking
about it, and more and more meals throughout the week
become vegetarian. Because we'll talk in a minute about why
people do this, but a lot of people stop eating
as much meat for health reasons or because they want
to lose weight. And if you just kind of start,
(25:38):
like you said, dip your toe in like this, it
just becomes kind of second nature over time.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah, you can get used to something like that. And
I think what you'll find if you if you think
you need meat because like it's more filling, that's just
not true. You get plenty full eating all that other stuff,
So you know, you can give it a whirl. I
do that stuff every now and then grains at breakfast
is great. This is basically again what Emily does. A
(26:03):
lot of oatmeal, buckwheat, barley, quinoa, eat like a horse,
but not as much as a horse.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
This is a big one for me. Chuck is eating
fruit for dessert because I don't ever eat something and
like a meal of any kind and not think like, okay,
now I have to have something sweet. Oh really, I
just can't not do it. My brain's just as wired
that way.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
I am too.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, okay, so if you just eat like an apple
or some strawberries or something like that, it just short
circuits that it does it for you.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah, I have just retrained my brain to where I
don't seek that and it's not like I was eating
dessert every night, Like the only time I literally have dessert,
like a dessert is kind of either if a bunch
of people are out to eat and it's an occasion
or maybe on vacation or something like that. But it's
not like even eating out in a restaurant. We never
(26:58):
eat dessert like that. But I have found just one
square of dark chocolate scratches that itch in a nice way.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
That always feels like a punishment to me because it's
just one, just one, and it's dark chocolate.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Oh you don't like dark chocolate.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
It's fine, but it's not going to short circuit that dessert.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You know what. I used to not be into dark chocolate,
but I la la la love it now.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah good, I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. I'm
gonna cut the legs out from under you in a
little while then.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
But I don't do that every night, but I'll still,
you know, when I want that, when I find myself
like god, I gotta have the sweet thing to night,
I'll do one square, sprinkle a couple of little dabs
of sea salt on top, and that that does it
for me.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
My God, why don't you live in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I know because I don't have a manny store greens too, obviously,
like leafy vegetables, salads. Just eat as much stuff like
I love a salad. Emily make you know, she grows
that stuff and prepares fresh salads, makes her own salad dressing.
She's gotten more into cooking. She never used to do
(28:02):
stuff like that at all, but she's that. I found
myself eating a lot more salad these days.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Right. And then the last one is, after you do
all these things, eat more vegetables, eat vegetarian meal once
a week, eat a salad for dinner. This is actually
the key to the whole thing. Go to bed really
early so that your normal breakfast will come much more quickly.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
I don't eat breakfast. But yeah, that was a joke,
by the way, I know, I get it.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
But okay, well thanks for the laugh.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Support.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You want to take a break and then come back
and talk about why people become vegetarian vegan?
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Okay, Well we'll be right back again.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Learn and stuff with Joshua job stuff you shin up?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, Chuck. I think I promised before we left that
we talk about why people become vegetarian. I already said
health reasons, which we'll get into more in a little while,
But a lot of people just do it because it's
just healthier. Like if you want to eat healthier, most
people don't like double or triple down on fried chicken,
(29:42):
like you instead start turning to plants, you know, Like
people just start eating more plants, And it's almost intuitive.
I don't think it even has anything to do with
the nutritionists set in the United States convincing people like
plants are healthy. I just feel like we just intuitively
know that that is healthy. You're than eating like a
steak or again fried chicken. Yeah, I feel like there's
(30:04):
a place for fried chicken. I'm not knocking that.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
No, I mean, as you know, it's my favorite food
and I just you know, I heard you got to
pick and choose with that stuff. But it's not removed
from my life, thank goodness. But you're gonna get lots
of vitamins and minerals and fiber and antioxidants in your
veggies if you eat legumes eat if you're a vegetarian,
(30:27):
you probably eat lots of lagomes and chick be's and
lima beans and stuff like that. Soy you're gonna get
lots of protein, amino acids, lots of fiber and antioxidants
there and also no cholesterol, which is you know, I
have cholesterol problems genetically speaking, so and a lot of
people do. So that's a good way to get your
cholesterol down.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, And there's a lot of variety in just legumes alone,
like rather than do you want the chicken or the fish,
there's something like twenty thousand species of legumes. And I
didn't know this. I ran across this, chuck. There's a
category of food called neglected and underutilized legomes, the status lagoom.
They even have an acronym for n Ul's right, And
(31:11):
there's apparently a ton of legomes that are found around
the world that are known to like local cuisine that
they're just waiting to be adopted to kind of make
the plant based diet even more varied.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah, I mean there's twenty thousand. I probably have had five. Yeah, acteah,
maybe more, but no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
No, I know what you mean. Yeah, I just had
a night so one of the one of the ones
I found was the Bombara ground nut. You would make
a trillion dollars if instead of a mayonnaise operation. You
opened a Bombara ground nut operation in Brooklyn. Yeah, sure,
I mean you would make so much cash, dude, overnight.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
People just like saying ground nut.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, but that Bombara really sells the ground nut if
you ask me, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
For sure. Obviously. You know, we've mentioned the concerns with
red meat, but with beef and pork, people have been
you know, calling for years for less of that in
your diet, and you know, health practitioners and doctors because
obviously you know, heart attack, stroke, cancer, all the things
that can lead you in that direction once you eat
(32:18):
too much red meat.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, And the medical consensus consensus is and remains so
that eating red meat, too much red meat is bad
for you, Like, it just leads to all sorts of
negative health outcomes like stroke and heart attack, heart disease,
things like that. The problem is, despite that consensus, studies
still come out fairly regularly that question that idea, that
(32:43):
say no, it's not necessarily true, and they usually get
shouted down, but it's enough that it makes you, like,
some people question that. I feel like, because the medical
consensus is that for now, it's probably okay to kind
of follow that philosophy that less meat is healthier than
more meat.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, for sure. Another big, big reason is animal welfare
and just maybe your moral values as a human. That
is a lot of people switch over to vegetarianism or
veganism because the modern factory farming system in the United
States is a horror show. And everybody knows this. Some
(33:24):
people some people do it anyway, but it's a big reason,
you know, Like vegans are like, no, all animals have
a right to life and a right to freedom, and
we're not doing it right here in the United States,
so I'm not going to take part in it.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah, that's a whole subcategory of veganism called ethical vegans,
And I think that they could shoulder their own episode
because the whole philosophy behind it and like the way
that they live their lives. It's really interesting. And something
I ran across that they counter is the idea of
carnism eating meat not being normal and we just take
(34:04):
it for normal. And they they questioned that they're like,
who said that eating meat is normal? And that that's
like why people why people like me can feel bad
when I pass like a truck full of cows on
their way to the slaughter on the highway and then
still go eat like a cheeseburger that same day. That
(34:26):
we just kind of have this idea that carnism is
normal and vegans are like, no, that's not true. So
I found that fascinating. I kind of wanted to get
into it a little more.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah, for sure, I'm not gonna tell that story. Mind
fleeting is another one, which is I mean exactly what
it sounds like, just instead of like falling into a
pattern and I just I'll just eat that because that's
what I've always eaten, or you know, grabbed that thing
that's quick and brainless to put in my mouth, grab
(34:55):
it by the horns. Yeah, to really just have a
heightened awareness of what you're eating, what's going in your body,
and every impact from your health to what it means
to the world and to that animal. Just being more
mindful is another reason that people will go to a
plant based on it.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah. I think that's how people get to that from
like religious mandated diets.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, and we'll put environmentalism in its own category because
there's a whole section on that. But that's another reason.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Okay, let's pick up health outcomes. Let's dive into a
little more So one of the things that people figure
out pretty quickly when they become vegans in particular, is
that you can get really unhealthy really quick just eating
food that qualifies as vegan food. There's a ton of
process vegan food out there, A lot of times, a
(35:45):
lot of sweetener, including just sugar, is added, and just
basically eating packaged food or even French fries as long
as they're cooked in vegetable oil, those are vegan. And
everyone knows that French fries aren't really good for you.
So there is like a whole kind of blind alley
that you have to watch out for when you get
(36:06):
into veganism.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yeah, I'm not a vegan, but it's I can still say,
you know, word of caution if you go that route,
that you have to be more active in meal planning
and because what you really want to do is eat
whole foods and eat real foods. So if you're like
I'm going to go vegan and just sort of buy
(36:28):
the ultra process stuff that is technically vegan, you're not
doing yourself any health favors. I mean, you know you're
still doing and you know, as far as your moral
values are concerned, you're doing right by that. But you
want good outcomes all the way around, so just lean
toward whole foods and the Mediterranean diet, which again people
around the Mediterranean just call it eating that has roundly
(36:51):
been shown over the years to be kind of the
one of the ideal diets that you can lean toward.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I would say the ideal diet. I mean as far
as health outcomes go, Like I can't imagine how much
this diet has been studied and result after results shows
that like some kinds of cancers, diabetes, cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease,
like these things are all lower in people who eat
like a Mediterranean diet, like that's just what they eat.
(37:22):
Then people who don't, especially regular meat eaters.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Yeah, for sure. As far as the end of it,
you know, we'll kind of go through a little bit
about like who's deficient in what depending on what you eat.
If you're looking at protein and saturated fat, you're going
to have obviously, if you're a meat eater, you're gonna
have the highest intake among anyone, and the lowest is
(37:46):
going to be among becans. That's just makes a lot
of sense. If you're a vegetarian or a fish eater,
you're gonna be somewhere in the middle. And vegetarians are
more likely than meat or fish eaters to have, as
a result, inadequate protein intake, and vegans even more likely
to have inadequate protein intake, I think, more than vegetarians.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, that's a long standing chestnut in like the I
guess I don't want to say bodybuilding communities, people who
work out like hardcore, that you can't possibly be ripped
as a vegan and our stuff you should know. Listener
Doyle Wolfgang van Frankenstein, the guitarist for The Misfits. He
is just vegan to the core and he is totally ripped,
(38:29):
and in fact, he has his own protein powder called
Vegan Monster Protein, where you can get ripped yourself if
you want to and still be a vegan.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
I think ripped Vegan is that's got to already be
a band name.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I wouldn't. Yeah, maybe that's his sideban, his folk side band.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Yeah, ripped vecan. You might have a vitamin B twelve
deficiency if you are a vegan, because plants don't have
B twelve. I think fifty two percent of vegans are
B twelve deficient. Seven percent of vegetarians, and if you're
a meat eater, you have a less than one percent
(39:07):
chance of being B twelve deficient.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
And that's a big deal too. I mean, like that
is a well known problem for vegans and vegetarians because
B twelve is used for red blood cell production, cell
wall production, nerve function, DNA production, and it's just not
in plants, it's in meat, it's in fish, it's in dairy.
So you really have to pay attention to that and
basically take B twelve supplements all the time to make
(39:30):
sure you don't become deficient because it's not good.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Yeah, for sure. Here's one thing though, and this is
something that was controlled for BMI. Even if you're a
vegetarian or vegan, you have a kind of a remarkably
a remarkable statistical risk or higher risk I guess of
getting bone fracture than meat eater, And especially when it
comes to your hips, the risk of hip fracture. With vegetarians,
(39:57):
you have a twenty five percent higher risk of fraction
your hip as a vegetarian controlling for BMI again, and
vegans one hundred and thirty one percent higher chance of
hip fracture.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, I so part of it is that B twelve
deficiency because B twelve helps produce bone and so bone density.
But I also wondered if vegans typically get less protein
and therefore have less muscle mass on average. Obviously you
can get ripped as a vegan, but not everyone does.
If you're more susceptible to falling, like you can lose
(40:29):
your balance more easily because you have slightly less muscle
mass than a meat eater, and then with less bone density,
if you do fall, you're more likely to break a bone.
Just my yea, I wonder.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, I did mention cancer. You know. I think
we often talk about like heart attack and stroke and
stuff like that by eating too much red meat. But
cancer is another factor that I sort of briefly mentioned.
But if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you have
at ten to eighteen percent lower risk of cancer than
meat eaters. All calls, All calls mortality. That's another good
(41:05):
band name. Man, that's three band names, all Mortality, Peckish,
and peakd All calls. See that can't be our band
name because I can't even say it. At the end
of the show, all cause mortality was not different, which
is surprising between vegetarians and meat eaters and begans.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, another thing that surprised me is that vegetarians have
a twenty percent higher risk of having a hemorrhagic stroke.
So we should say all of this data came from
a twenty twenty one analysis of this British cohort of
sixty five thousand Brits that have been followed around since
the nineties. So they managed to look at twenty thousand vegetarians,
(41:50):
So this is a pretty robust study, and they found
that they have a twenty percent higher risk of stroke.
They couldn't they couldn't determine that for vegans. Think they
only had like twenty five hundred in this cohort, but
for stroke at least, they weren't able to figure out
how that affects vegans. You would assume that it would
be even an even higher percentage for vegans. But a
(42:12):
hemorrhag hemorrhagic stroke is where blood vessels in your brain
start bleeding. Again, that would make sense because B twelve
helps fortify cell walls, and I would think the lack
of red blood cell production would have something to do
with that too. So I think what we're trying to
say the upshot is it's not just like a slam
(42:33):
dunk that you're going to be healthier or your lifetime
health outcomes are automatically going to be better. But it's
still I mean, it's just if your overall or sorry,
if you're all dash cause mortality is going to be
the same, then I don't know, I think that kind
of makes an argument to eat whichever makes you feel best.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeah, that's just a weird Statyeah, all dash cause yeah,
I don't know. I can't explain that. Maybe someone will
have some more information on that. But earlier we did
promise an entire section on the environmental impact of eating
animals because that is yet another reason. And you know,
obviously people have all kinds of reasons and it's usually
(43:16):
a combination of all these things. But we were learning
just it's become plainly obvious more and more, this isn't
the kind of thing. I think that, especially in America,
people like to look at a lot in the past,
but it seems like in the last like fifteen years
or so, people are sounding the alarm like, hey, besides
ethical concerns and health and all that other stuff, like
(43:38):
raising animals is to eat is kind of a or
the way we do it is a disaster for the environment.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, so there's a lot of misleading stats out there
that compare the amount of kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions
compared to the kilograms produced of something. Right, that doesn't
make any sense because kilogram of broccoli is a lot
less as far as food being spread among people than
(44:07):
a kilogram two point two pounds of beef. Right, you
can feed way more people with two point two pounds
of beef than you can with two point two pounds
of broccoli. So exactly at best. But so some people
have said, well, let's just alter it a little bit,
So we'll measure the kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions for
(44:27):
every thousand calories produced, and so that makes it a
lot more apples to apples comparison. But even still, when
you alter it like that, the numbers essentially come out
the same, which is that meat production has a much
larger carbon footprint than almost any kind of plant production,
although there are some surprises like, for example, your beloved
(44:50):
dark chocolate has a larger carbon footprint than producing poultry
or pork chuck. How do you feel about your dark
chocolate assault On top of it now.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Kill that chocolate. You know, coffee and chocolate are two
pretty notorious you know, environmental disasters as well on the
on the non meat side for sure.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
For sure. The reason why, apparently is demand. There's so
much demand for chocolate that the deforestation that results to
create more fields for cocoa production, that that just is
what's giving it such a huge footprint. And I think
coffee is relatively the same overall though. I found a
(45:33):
twenty nineteen study from Sustainability the Journal, and they basically
said thirty vegetarians have thirty three percent lower greenhouse gas
emissions based on their diet than a vegan than meat,
and a vegan diet has fifty three percent lower greenhouse
gas emissions. It's just that's just how it goes.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Yeah. And if you're like, well, I like eating some meat,
the biggest spenders there are beef, lamb and mutton.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, I thought that was weird.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Beef produces sixty kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram,
and a kilogram of poultry is only six. But you
compare that to a kilogram with just some English peas,
that's under one kilogram of greenhouse gas emissions produced. So
you might think that as far as water consumption goes,
(46:24):
the plants would far outpace like a meat diet because
you got a water vegetables. But generally there are just
a few plant based foods that have a bigger water
footprint than beef.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yeah, beef is just the worst offender of all but
livestock raising livestock in general, apparently one fifth to one
quarter of all the water used by humans goes to
raising livestock, which is nuts. But the reason why is
because not only do you need water to keep that
head of cattle alive until you decide to kill it,
(46:58):
you also need water to grow the grain that you
feed that head of cattle. So they're just consuming all
over the place, especially as far as water is concerned.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Yeah, and just so you know, there are like zero
sort of vegetables that out paste beef. The two that
do out paste beef that I was referring to our
chocolate and almonds.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, and who considers an almond of vegetable? Come on,
give it up.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
And I think as far as lamb and mutton go,
the two other biggest defenders in the meat category only
cashew's pistachios and hazel nuts consume more water to produce
than lamb and mutton.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Hazel nuts are so great, far and away the best.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Nut, you think, not the ground nut.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
I haven't had one yet. Well, peanuts apparently are a
ground nut. I have not had the bombar ground nut yet,
so I should wait and reserve judgment.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Yeah, peanuts they grow underground.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Right, Yep, they're a ground nut.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
I can just see Jimmy Carter holding a big thing
of peanuts and roots with dirt falling off of them.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
All right, Pete and God bless that man.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
That's right. The US maintains about nine billion, nine billion
livestock to get the meat that it needs or wants,
I guess is the better way to say it. And
if that grain went to humans, it'd be enough for
eight hundred and forty million people that have plant based diets.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yes, And there was another thing that I came across
that I was kind of surprised by. Totally makes sense.
Is if we en mass as a species, humans essentially
abandoned livestock production, beef production, or meat production in favor
of a plant based diet. Just basically, globally, the chance
of communicable diseases developing would drop drastically because seventy five
(48:45):
percent of emerging communicable diseases are zoonotic, which means humans
get them from animals, and we make our closest contact
with animals through the livestock industry.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Yeah, and at petting zeus.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah. I mean, as long as it wasn't grown in
a lab, you can kiss communicable diseases, goodbine.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah. The other environmental disaster of raising livestock, and this
is more and more lately, is the habitat destruction to
raise all these animals. You're talking about extinction of plant
and animal species and thousands more being threatened in the
year's upcoming because of habitat destruction. And it's also true
(49:27):
for some kinds of agriculture. You know, we've talked about
palm oil cultivation being a big problem for a lot
of stuff, specifically orangutang populations or at least by example,
but beef once again is the biggest factor. They drive.
Beef drives forty percent of tropical deforestation globally, whereas palm
(49:49):
oil and soy, which are two sort of offenders on
the other side, are only eighteen percent combined.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
That's all, just eighteen percent of deforestation.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Yeah, but I mean the one takeaway here is beef
beef bad.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It's what's for dinner and what ruined the planet.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
Yeah, I mean it's far and away leading the way
in all all the bad categories.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
You know, it really does.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
So.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, I mean this is we've just kind of touched
the surface, especially on the environmental impact. There's a lot
to dig into there if that interested you. But I
feel like we gave some good reasons for people to
adopt a plant based diet. I don't know if I'm
going too fully, but i'd like to think it's I'm
kind of part way there already.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Yeah. I eat more vegetables now, I eat way less
red meat than I used to. Yeah, for just like
all the reasons that we talked about.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, I've cut my four quarter pounders with cheese every
day in half and I eat both halves. Since Chuck
kind of laughed at my last joke, I think everybody
that means we should probably slog along to listener mayl.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
That was a real laugh. That was an oh Josh laugh.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yeah, I love those two all right?
Speaker 3 (51:02):
This from a Smithy because of us actually, Oh yeah,
I saw this one. Hey, guys, I've always had a
bit of an interest in metalworking, and as of about
five years ago, i've had an interest in your show.
I'd say your show has been the longest running podcast
of my life. Actually, I remember listening to your episode
about blacksmithing four years ago and that kind of set
off the domino effect of me getting really into blacksmithing
(51:25):
as a hobby. I'm definitely one of those that like
to collect hobbies, with most passing in about six months
and I never pick it up again. But not true
with blacksmithing. I've stuck with it since your episode came out,
and I'd like to say I've come a long way
with it. I've attached to a few pictures of my work,
which was very good, by the way, starting with early
works and all the way to the two I completed
about a week ago. I thought you might be interested
(51:46):
in seeing how your show kicked off one of my
favorite hobbies I've ever had, So thanks for that. And
that is from Tate Avent and you can find Tate.
Just look up Tater makes t a I t E
r a k e s and check out Tate's work.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Well, thanks a lot, Tate. That is awesome. Congratulations on
your awesome hobby and getting so good at it, And
we really appreciate you letting us know that we had
some sort of small, tiny impact on you. We love
hearing that kind of thing. If you want to be
like Tate and let us know that we had some small,
tiny impact on you, please send it via email to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
and Jerry's here too, and this is a good old
fashioned root and tune, down home episode of Stuff you
Should Do.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Technical difficulties, please stand by.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, we're a good twenty minutes late, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Man, because it's about to say me, it's not my fault.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
No, it's not your fault. It's the computer's fault, right.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Not even But who cares about computers? This is I mean,
this is probably literally the opposite of computers, because we're
talking about plants.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask you, old school Chuck,
have you ever eaten a plant?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I love living things, so I do not kill plants and.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Eat So are you a breathetarian? That's what they are, right, yeah,
where you just don't eat.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
No, of course I eat plants, you know, Emily, I
would argue it has a plant based diet. Now that
I know that a plant based diet doesn't mean that
you're vegan or vegetarian. It just and you know, as
you'll see, depending on the percentage of the website you
look at a lot of people say like you know,
it really depends on how much you eat and a
(01:26):
certain percentage, like maybe eighty percent of your diet is
plant based, and that's easily Emily. She eats vegetables constantly.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
She always has like a radish in her hand.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
No, but there's just her meals. Like her meals she'll cook,
Like we try to eat the same stuff, but I
don't want to sit down and eat Brussels sprouts, broccoli
and cauliflower for dinner.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
That's a plant based diet for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, but she'll put some chicken in there and some fish,
so she's sort of pescatarian plus maybe.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, pesca poultry tarian.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah. I mean there's a lot of for all this stuff.
I didn't know about a third of these probably.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, they all seem to fall under the umbrella term,
like you said, a plant based diet, so like a
vegan diet is a plant based diet, but not all
plant based diets are like vegan diets. Yeah, that kind
of setup.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I had never heard of blacktoe vegetarian, which basically means
you throw out all the rest, but I'll eat dairy.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, understandable. There's also ovo vegetarian. These are terrible names
by the way. Yeah, that means that you include eggs
in your vegan diet.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, not oval that would make even more sense, I think.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
No, it means that you include ovum in your diet. Yeah,
but I should say it's not a vegan diet at all,
Like you can't have any kind of animal products, Nope,
in a vegan diet, not just like meat or dairy
or eggs, but like vegan won't eat honey. Yeah, we
talked about fig wasps recently. They won't eat figs for
(02:55):
that reason.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
I think some vegans I found a lot of support
behind vegan saying like a processed wasp part and a
thing is fine.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Okay, I'll bet there's some that still won't.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh sure.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And then there's also lacto ovo vegetarian. You're a vegetarian,
but you eat eggs and dairy. There's lacto ovo bacon vegetarian.
And then there's what you said, Emily was pescatarian, which
is general. I mean you're essentially just you know, you're
eating more vegetables than the average person at this point.
(03:31):
If you're a pescatarian.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I think that's right. No comment on what that does
to your butt.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
What if you just eat seafood.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
No, if you eat nothing but broccoli and cauliflower all
day long.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Oh yeah, not just your butt, but like the well
being of people around you too.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, but it's it's very good for you. She's a
much healthier human than I am.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Nice, well, not the part that you're not as healthy,
but I'm glad that she is.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah. Of course, one thing we should going out early
on is that there's a sort of exhaustive look at
how much meat people eat around the world at a
certain point or kind of pepper throughout and just for
cops purposes. In the United States, we average per capita
meat consumption between one hundred and twenty three to one
(04:19):
hundred and fifty ish kilograms, depending on where you're looking.
So just kind of put that in your in the back,
in your back pocket when we start talking about other countries.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, that that really kind of came home to me
when I converted it to quarter pounders. Yeah, or in
Europe royale with cheese, that's thirteen and thirty two quarter
pounders a year. That means you're eating almost four quarter
pounders worth of meat a day every year. At one
hundred and fifty one point four kilograms.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Man, if only you could do that and live.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Right, that's called heaven, my friend.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
So clearly with those kind of numbers that the US
is a meat based culture. I mean, plenty of people
here do not take part in that kind of thing, obviously,
but as you'll see, many cultures around the world historically
have plant based diets and still have plant based diets.
Depending on who you ask, they might say there's about
two billion meat based eaters in the world and about
(05:19):
four billion plant based eaters.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, so I mean that's not too bad. They're really
holding things up because I mean, if actually that's more
than that's the majority. You're saying the majority of the
world is plant based.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I'm saying two billion and four billion. I'm not weighing
in on percentages.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Okay, yeah, we will go around the world in a minute,
but let's go through history for a little bit first. Okay,
because plant based diets, especially in the West, they're kind
of like a new thing. Maybe they came out of
the New Age movement in the seventies and eighties. No,
this is really old stuff. In fact, you can make
a really good case that plant based diets, especially a
(06:00):
flexitarian version is essentially the default diet of humans.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, I mean it's in some cases were actually in
a lot of cases, especially historically speaking, and still in
some places today, it's sort of the de facto diet
because that's what you have and you may not have
the kind of money to like go get really good
meat or something like that. So if you look back
through time and you go back to say like Ireland
(06:25):
in the nineteenth century before the potato famin, they were
eating tons of potatoes there, or a lot of poor
people in iron that were like, hey, we can grow potatoes,
they have some vitamins and minerals. Maybe we can milk
a cow and eat a little pickled herring, but other
than that, we're eating lots and lots of potatoes.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, for sure. This is before the famine, when a
potato blight came and when the Irish immigrants really started
to come on mass to the United States in the
nineteenth century, they were quite surprised at the abundance and
availability and cheapness of meat in the United States, and
(07:06):
that apparently dates back to colonial times where colonists in
well what would become the United States were eating more
meat than the average person back in England. Like, they
were eating essentially the same amount of meat as elites
back in the UK. And that's the long standing thing
where meat consumption throughout history in most places is associated
(07:31):
with higher status and elite status. You're wealthier because it's
always been harder to come by. Well, the colonies had
a lot more land, so they could grow a lot
more livestock and then hence eat a lot more meat.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Yeah, had a lot more land, asterist, right, and yeah,
everyone knows what we mean by that. Yeah. And you
know there's who helped us with the original version of this.
Was it Libya No Laura, all right? The claw Claw,
doctor Claw. She dug up a graft basically about how
(08:04):
Italians eat and prior to well, not that long ago,
they ate what you would call the Mediterranean diet now,
and they just called it what we eat because that's
what's around here, the diet. Yeah, exactly, fruit, vegetables, olive, oil, legomes, fish, cereals,
not a ton of dairy or meat. But they after,
(08:25):
I believe after World War Two, they started eating a
lot more meat. Before that, it was basically a plant
based diet because as you'll see, once again, no, no, no choke,
they're eating lots of fish. Plant based diet is we're
talking about meat here. The fish get a pass. I
guess as far as plant based diet goes, it does
not mean vegetarian or vegan.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Right, And Italy followed the same trajectory that most nations
do once they reach a certain point of prosperity, meat
consumption to start going through the roof. Whereas before in
history elite like individual groups of people who are well
off or could afford beat, when an entire nation becomes
well off enough, they start buying meat. Meat consumption just
(09:08):
goes up. So after the war, Italy followed that. And
you'll see like throughout throughout the world, the more prosperous
a nation, the higher their meat consumption. Almost it's almost
to a.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Country, yeah, which you know, a cynic might say, well,
if every nation was prosperous, everyone would just eat tons
of meat, and it sounds cynical, but like the data
sort of says what you just said, right. You know,
if you look at the US in the nineteenth century,
they were roundly encouraging the people eat lots and lots
(09:44):
of meat. There was a cholera outbreak in eighteen thirty
two in the US government said eat more meat and
drink more alcohol, and lay off the fruits and vegetables,
obviously because of cholera, but there was also just this
idea in America early on that like, you know, we're
well fed and we're well bred because we eat red
(10:07):
meat and we growing big here in the States. We're
not sitting around eating rice and grains and potatoes.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, And that diet has just spread throughout the world.
But again, it doesn't necessarily seem to mean because people
are emulating the United States. It just seems like the
United States was following a trajectory that other countries are now, right.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, and hey, what a great time to set up
where countries are now because remember those numbers I told
you about the United States. We're going to walk you
around the world, everybody not in the way back machine.
What do we call this when we're just currently go
far machine? Yeah, the go far and wide machine.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
It still has that new imaginary machine. Smell nice.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Modern day in the go far and wide machine and
come with us at first to Africa. If you look
at continent wide, the stat is about sixty five grams
I'm sorry, sixty five kilograms of meat per capita. I
wonder about that number, because if you break it down
per country, South Africa they eat about sixty five point
(11:21):
two kilograms compared to let's say, the Democratic Republic of
Congo at just over four kilograms. Who's eating more red
meat in Africa than South Africa to make that average
sixty five?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I don't know. One thing that I recognized from researching
this is that there are so many stats that are
so different and estimates that are just so different. And
don't understand why it's so hard to track something like
meat consumption, Like we've got that so commoditized that I mean,
I don't understand how we can't track it. Even for
(11:57):
the United States. You rattled off, Yeah, different estimates for
how much meat the United States eats, So who knows, Chuck,
Who really knows whether any of these numbers are correct
or not.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Well, no one's ever asked me how much meat I eat.
I could skew that. Oh really, have you? Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
I get that all the time usually because I have
like a big chunk of like steak in my teeth.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
No, no, no, I mean like an official study, like
I don't know, I know, I'm just kidding. Do any
of that stuff. It's sort of like weird black magic
to me. But we do know that generally speaking, West
African nations eat a little more meat. It's a little
more meat heavy than East African nations. But even in
West Africa, that's again, I mean, if the average per
capita was sixty five kilograms, that's like less than half
(12:43):
the United States per capita.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right, Yeah, I'm guessing from what I could tell, the
United States leads the world in meat consumption. I'm sure
most other countries, depending on where they are, are going
to eat a lot less. But again, like you said,
Africa is not some single bontolith. It has a bunch
of different variation. Asia is the same way. On the whole.
Asia eats far less meat compared to one another. Some
(13:09):
meat more, some eat less, and you get all sorts
of weird little statistical blips that come up from that.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Yeah, if you look at the top ten countries around
the world with the highest rates of vegetarianism, India and
Taiwan are on there. So two of the top ten
are in Asia, Japan and China. They aren't on the
list of top ten percentage vegetarian wise, but they eat
a lot less meat than the US at an average
per capita consumption under seventy five kilograms.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, and Taiwan's a good example too. It has a
very high percentage of vegetarians, but it also has a
really high per capita meat consumption too, So it's just
basically wacky over there.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, and this is another like if you look at Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal,
minimum are, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, they're all under twenty
kilograms and Thailand is it like twenty five and Laos
at thirty. So I mean that's way less than the
seventy five average in Japan and China.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, I would guess Thailand, and I'm not sure about Laos,
but I would guess Thailand is wealthier than probably memr
or Indonesia. I don't know about Vietnam, but I think
a lot of it also has to do with the religious,
like what religions are predominant.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
There too, Yeah, which we'll get in. Well, actually take
a break before we do that, but we'll talk about
India real quick, because they have the highest proportion of
vegetarians in the world. Close to forty percent, thirty eight percent,
thirty nine percent are vegetarian in India for you know,
obvious reasons, and six point six kilograms of meat per
(14:56):
capita compared to as many as one hundred and fifty
for the U.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, exactly, that's very low. It is very low.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
All right. We promise talk of religion because who doesn't
love that, But this is religion as it relates to diet,
because depending on your religion, there may be a lot
of rules and restrictions on what they say you should
eat because of a bunch of reasons. It can sometimes
it shows like purity. Sometimes it's like no, it shows
(15:24):
how dedicated and faithful you are. Sometimes it's like, hey,
you get at following rules, don't eat this on this day,
and let's see how you do with that. But for
whatever reason, there are plenty of religions that have rules
sort of surrounding meat, for sure.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, some of the most famous ones are kosher. Yeah,
that's a big one where you have to actually separate
certain kinds of food like you separate meat, separate dairy.
There's also like restrictions and guidelines on how animals are slaughtered.
So it's not particularly vegetarian by nature. Keeping kosher is
(16:02):
but it makes you so much more mindful that a
lot of people just eventually end up being vegetarian just
by following a kosher diet. There's also halal is very similar.
It has all sorts of permissions and bands and stuff
like that on what animals can be eaten. But it's
different in that like there's no shell fish allouter birds
(16:23):
of prey, but you can eat rabbits. But they're both
similarish in that you really have to pay attention to
what you're eating if you are a genuine adherent of
this religious diet that's being prescribed to you.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, and if you're wondering, like, well, how does that
affect the rate of vegetarianism in Israel? They are second
behind India. That's not the only factor, of course, but
I think the highest percentage of veganism is in Israel too,
which is Yeah. I don't know why that surprised me,
but it did.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Okay, good noted. There's I think so this is another
thing too, like a lot of people just end up
being default vegetarians because of their religious diet. And another
good example is the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church, which we
talked about in our Holly Selassie episode. I think they
(17:16):
have two hundred days a year that are considered fast
days where you just can't eat meat, but you can
eat plants. So I mean, for all intents and purposes,
you're at least the majority of the year of vegetarian.
If you're Eastern Ethiopian Orthodox.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I wonder if one hundred and sixty five days a
year they just party down on some steak probably what
Seventh Day Adventist. It's not a requirement to be a vegetarian,
but they're like, it's not a bad way to live.
They kind of endorse it.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, remember they grew out of that whole William Keith
and John Kellogg movement of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah, they endorse the movement. Generally, thirty six percent end
up lacto ovo vegetarians, and then sixteen percent I'm sorry,
an additional sixteen percent eat plant based diet with maybe
a little fish, maybe a little bit of meat.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah. Buddhism is very connected to vegetarianism, like a straightforward
religious decree like kosher. Instead, it's linked to nonviolence, right,
So if your religion forbids violence, you can't really cut
the head off of a chicken and eat it very easily.
(18:35):
People still do in Buddhist countries, but it's much more
or it's much less common and frequent, and in fact,
apparently in Japan from six seventy five to eighteen seventy two,
meat was essentially banned in that country because of the
influence of Buddhism and Confucianism.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
You gotta weight on that chicken to dive natural causes.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Just follow it around like a buzzard.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
He's not looking so good.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
He looks a little peaked.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Hindu is. I love that word, by the way, good used.
I heard that word last night on the TV show
The Pit, and I realized I just don't use it much.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
You know what I like? That's similar. It's peckish.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I like peckish as well.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Maybe our musical duo should be peaked and peckish.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Oh my god, that is that. You just won the
band name contest, Chuck for all time.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
But everyone would be like, who's peaked and who's peckish?
Like I think Josh is peaked and Chuck is peckish.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It wouldn't matter. We can both be it, would it?
Would depend on our mood on any given day.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
Or perhaps we are both peaked and peckish. Yeah, at
all times, we're always hungry and we're always not looking
so good. Hinduism, at almost eighty percent, eats a plant
based diet. But they again, it's not required. It's just like, hey,
why don't you do this that kind of thing heavily suggested. Maybe.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah, it's also I mean, especially since the Hindu nationalist
ruling party took over the Baratiya Janata Party BJP, they
have been enforcing like really strict rules that are Hindu
in nature against eating meat, so much so that people
have been beaten. I think one person at least has
(20:19):
been lynched for eating meat or being associated with the
meat trade, specifically beef, because cows are considered sacred in Hinduism.
And also similarly, in India, vegetarianism is linked to social status,
(20:40):
in basically complete contradiction of what it's like in say
the West, where eating meat has long been associated with
being an elite or having high status. Vegetarianism is in India.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Apparently all right, flip loped it, I love it.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, And if you're like, wow, eighty percent of Hindus
are vegetarian. It's pretty impressive. Prepare for this, Janes. These
are the people who are so against hurting or killing
anything that they have little hand dust rooms that they
carry with them to dust off seats before they sit
down so they don't actually accidentally kill a bod. Ninety
(21:18):
two percent of them and fifty nine percent of Sikhs
in India are all vegetarians.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
And I guess eight percent of Jains are bad Janes.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I guess. So I mean, like, how would you show
up to like the Jain meeting and show your face?
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, or show up to a Jane party with a
raka ribs that's probably not it's probably frowned upon, I
would say, I would think so, all right. So if
and of course I'm kidding, no offense to any Janes
out there.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
No, of course not. I'm sure they'd show up and
be like natural causes, everybody would be able to check you.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
So, if you're gonna eat a plant based EyeT, it
can look at like a it can look many different
ways depending on what you're into. We found some information
from Harbord Health and obviously one thing that you're gonna
do is eat lots of veggies like Emily does. They say, like, hey,
fill half your plate up with veggies and vary the color.
Don't eat just like a bunch of green veggies. Like
(22:15):
eat veggies of all stripes and colors.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Get to some anthracyanins, why don't you.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Also the way so these are like if you want
to start to get into vegetarianism, these are some easy
ways to kind of slide into it. Another one is
changing the way that you think about meat. Rather than
it being the center or the star of the meal,
just kind of put it to the side, like it
doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, a thumb sized
(22:43):
piece of steak. But I mean if it more, you know,
kind of evenly resembled the grain or the greens on
your plate, that would make that would make a lot
more sense.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, I'll have the cream, spinach side abruptly and a
thumb of steak.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Right. It's funny, so I used thumb. So have you
ever heard that thing about a portion of meat being
no bigger than the palm of your hand.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
For like that's the healthy way to eat meat? Yes,
I don't think I've heard that, but oh okay, I
could see that.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
So not just that if you cut your hands that
you're serving of fruit and vegetables, and then your thumb
is your measure of fats like a nut, butter or
something like that. Good. There's a name for all this.
It's called the Zimbabwe hand jive.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I can, I've done that dance, but I did not
know that was a eating scale.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Well, so this guy in nineteen ninety three, doctor Kazim Mauji,
came up with this way of doing it and it's
been widely adopted. But I had no idea. That's what
it was called.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
It's a great name. What I do. We host a
lot of especially in the spring and summertime of people
when we go to the lake and just at our
house here we have we ow dinner parties. We just
do a lot of that kind of stuff. And aside
from being exhausting, one thing, I'm just kidding, it's actually
a lot of fun. But one thing I do, and
(24:08):
this goes along with like how you think about meat
and how much meat you have, is I don't cook
up like, you know, twenty chicken breast. If there's twenty
people there, I cook up a bunch of you know,
whatever kind of cut of chicken and or steaks. Sometimes
they'll do a couple of meats and I will I
(24:29):
will slice it all up on a big platter and
then you can just get a portion of something rather
than saying, like, here's a gigantic chicken breast on your
plate that you now feel responsible for, right, And people
seem to really like that, you know, like maybe I'll
have a little bit of this and a little bit
of that and then the rest is our veggie sides.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, so that's a tip from Chucky.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, you should just set up a carving station and
ask to see each person's thumb, righty. Yeah, that'd save
you a bunch of money totally. So let's see what else. Oh,
another good one is to choose different fats, avocados, olive oil,
stuff like that, and then just cook at least one
vegetarian meal per week. Yeah, and if you start doing
(25:16):
these kind of things, it's actually really easy to find
yourself down the road, like just doing it without thinking
about it, and more and more meals throughout the week
become vegetarian. Because we'll talk in a minute about why
people do this, but a lot of people stop eating
as much meat for health reasons or because they want
to lose weight. And if you just kind of start,
(25:38):
like you said, dip your toe in like this, it
just becomes kind of second nature over time.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah, you can get used to something like that. And
I think what you'll find if you if you think
you need meat because like it's more filling, that's just
not true. You get plenty full eating all that other stuff,
So you know, you can give it a whirl. I
do that stuff every now and then grains at breakfast
is great. This is basically again what Emily does. A
(26:03):
lot of oatmeal, buckwheat, barley, quinoa, eat like a horse,
but not as much as a horse.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
This is a big one for me. Chuck is eating
fruit for dessert because I don't ever eat something and
like a meal of any kind and not think like, okay,
now I have to have something sweet. Oh really, I
just can't not do it. My brain's just as wired
that way.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
I am too.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, okay, so if you just eat like an apple
or some strawberries or something like that, it just short
circuits that it does it for you.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah, I have just retrained my brain to where I
don't seek that and it's not like I was eating
dessert every night, Like the only time I literally have dessert,
like a dessert is kind of either if a bunch
of people are out to eat and it's an occasion
or maybe on vacation or something like that. But it's
not like even eating out in a restaurant. We never
(26:58):
eat dessert like that. But I have found just one
square of dark chocolate scratches that itch in a nice way.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
That always feels like a punishment to me because it's
just one, just one, and it's dark chocolate.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Oh you don't like dark chocolate.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
It's fine, but it's not going to short circuit that dessert.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You know what. I used to not be into dark chocolate,
but I la la la love it now.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah good, I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. I'm
gonna cut the legs out from under you in a
little while then.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
But I don't do that every night, but I'll still,
you know, when I want that, when I find myself
like god, I gotta have the sweet thing to night,
I'll do one square, sprinkle a couple of little dabs
of sea salt on top, and that that does it
for me.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
My God, why don't you live in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I know because I don't have a manny store greens too, obviously,
like leafy vegetables, salads. Just eat as much stuff like
I love a salad. Emily make you know, she grows
that stuff and prepares fresh salads, makes her own salad dressing.
She's gotten more into cooking. She never used to do
(28:02):
stuff like that at all, but she's that. I found
myself eating a lot more salad these days.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Right. And then the last one is, after you do
all these things, eat more vegetables, eat vegetarian meal once
a week, eat a salad for dinner. This is actually
the key to the whole thing. Go to bed really
early so that your normal breakfast will come much more quickly.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
I don't eat breakfast. But yeah, that was a joke,
by the way, I know, I get it.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
But okay, well thanks for the laugh.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Support.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You want to take a break and then come back
and talk about why people become vegetarian vegan?
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Okay, Well we'll be right back again.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Learn and stuff with Joshua job stuff you shin up?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, Chuck. I think I promised before we left that
we talk about why people become vegetarian. I already said
health reasons, which we'll get into more in a little while,
But a lot of people just do it because it's
just healthier. Like if you want to eat healthier, most
people don't like double or triple down on fried chicken,
(29:42):
like you instead start turning to plants, you know, Like
people just start eating more plants, And it's almost intuitive.
I don't think it even has anything to do with
the nutritionists set in the United States convincing people like
plants are healthy. I just feel like we just intuitively
know that that is healthy. You're than eating like a
steak or again fried chicken. Yeah, I feel like there's
(30:04):
a place for fried chicken. I'm not knocking that.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
No, I mean, as you know, it's my favorite food
and I just you know, I heard you got to
pick and choose with that stuff. But it's not removed
from my life, thank goodness. But you're gonna get lots
of vitamins and minerals and fiber and antioxidants in your
veggies if you eat legumes eat if you're a vegetarian,
(30:27):
you probably eat lots of lagomes and chick be's and
lima beans and stuff like that. Soy you're gonna get
lots of protein, amino acids, lots of fiber and antioxidants
there and also no cholesterol, which is you know, I
have cholesterol problems genetically speaking, so and a lot of
people do. So that's a good way to get your
cholesterol down.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, And there's a lot of variety in just legumes alone,
like rather than do you want the chicken or the fish,
there's something like twenty thousand species of legumes. And I
didn't know this. I ran across this, chuck. There's a
category of food called neglected and underutilized legomes, the status lagoom.
They even have an acronym for n Ul's right, And
(31:11):
there's apparently a ton of legomes that are found around
the world that are known to like local cuisine that
they're just waiting to be adopted to kind of make
the plant based diet even more varied.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah, I mean there's twenty thousand. I probably have had five. Yeah, acteah,
maybe more, but no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
No, I know what you mean. Yeah, I just had
a night so one of the one of the ones
I found was the Bombara ground nut. You would make
a trillion dollars if instead of a mayonnaise operation. You
opened a Bombara ground nut operation in Brooklyn. Yeah, sure,
I mean you would make so much cash, dude, overnight.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
People just like saying ground nut.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, but that Bombara really sells the ground nut if
you ask me, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
For sure. Obviously. You know, we've mentioned the concerns with
red meat, but with beef and pork, people have been
you know, calling for years for less of that in
your diet, and you know, health practitioners and doctors because
obviously you know, heart attack, stroke, cancer, all the things
that can lead you in that direction once you eat
(32:18):
too much red meat.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, And the medical consensus consensus is and remains so
that eating red meat, too much red meat is bad
for you, Like, it just leads to all sorts of
negative health outcomes like stroke and heart attack, heart disease,
things like that. The problem is, despite that consensus, studies
still come out fairly regularly that question that idea, that
(32:43):
say no, it's not necessarily true, and they usually get
shouted down, but it's enough that it makes you, like,
some people question that. I feel like, because the medical
consensus is that for now, it's probably okay to kind
of follow that philosophy that less meat is healthier than
more meat.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, for sure. Another big, big reason is animal welfare
and just maybe your moral values as a human. That
is a lot of people switch over to vegetarianism or
veganism because the modern factory farming system in the United
States is a horror show. And everybody knows this. Some
(33:24):
people some people do it anyway, but it's a big reason,
you know, Like vegans are like, no, all animals have
a right to life and a right to freedom, and
we're not doing it right here in the United States,
so I'm not going to take part in it.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah, that's a whole subcategory of veganism called ethical vegans,
And I think that they could shoulder their own episode
because the whole philosophy behind it and like the way
that they live their lives. It's really interesting. And something
I ran across that they counter is the idea of
carnism eating meat not being normal and we just take
(34:04):
it for normal. And they they questioned that they're like,
who said that eating meat is normal? And that that's
like why people why people like me can feel bad
when I pass like a truck full of cows on
their way to the slaughter on the highway and then
still go eat like a cheeseburger that same day. That
(34:26):
we just kind of have this idea that carnism is
normal and vegans are like, no, that's not true. So
I found that fascinating. I kind of wanted to get
into it a little more.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah, for sure, I'm not gonna tell that story. Mind
fleeting is another one, which is I mean exactly what
it sounds like, just instead of like falling into a
pattern and I just I'll just eat that because that's
what I've always eaten, or you know, grabbed that thing
that's quick and brainless to put in my mouth, grab
(34:55):
it by the horns. Yeah, to really just have a
heightened awareness of what you're eating, what's going in your body,
and every impact from your health to what it means
to the world and to that animal. Just being more
mindful is another reason that people will go to a
plant based on it.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah. I think that's how people get to that from
like religious mandated diets.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, and we'll put environmentalism in its own category because
there's a whole section on that. But that's another reason.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Okay, let's pick up health outcomes. Let's dive into a
little more So one of the things that people figure
out pretty quickly when they become vegans in particular, is
that you can get really unhealthy really quick just eating
food that qualifies as vegan food. There's a ton of
process vegan food out there, A lot of times, a
(35:45):
lot of sweetener, including just sugar, is added, and just
basically eating packaged food or even French fries as long
as they're cooked in vegetable oil, those are vegan. And
everyone knows that French fries aren't really good for you.
So there is like a whole kind of blind alley
that you have to watch out for when you get
(36:06):
into veganism.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yeah, I'm not a vegan, but it's I can still say,
you know, word of caution if you go that route,
that you have to be more active in meal planning
and because what you really want to do is eat
whole foods and eat real foods. So if you're like
I'm going to go vegan and just sort of buy
(36:28):
the ultra process stuff that is technically vegan, you're not
doing yourself any health favors. I mean, you know you're
still doing and you know, as far as your moral
values are concerned, you're doing right by that. But you
want good outcomes all the way around, so just lean
toward whole foods and the Mediterranean diet, which again people
around the Mediterranean just call it eating that has roundly
(36:51):
been shown over the years to be kind of the
one of the ideal diets that you can lean toward.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I would say the ideal diet. I mean as far
as health outcomes go, Like I can't imagine how much
this diet has been studied and result after results shows
that like some kinds of cancers, diabetes, cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease,
like these things are all lower in people who eat
like a Mediterranean diet, like that's just what they eat.
(37:22):
Then people who don't, especially regular meat eaters.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Yeah, for sure. As far as the end of it,
you know, we'll kind of go through a little bit
about like who's deficient in what depending on what you eat.
If you're looking at protein and saturated fat, you're going
to have obviously, if you're a meat eater, you're gonna
have the highest intake among anyone, and the lowest is
(37:46):
going to be among becans. That's just makes a lot
of sense. If you're a vegetarian or a fish eater,
you're gonna be somewhere in the middle. And vegetarians are
more likely than meat or fish eaters to have, as
a result, inadequate protein intake, and vegans even more likely
to have inadequate protein intake, I think, more than vegetarians.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, that's a long standing chestnut in like the I
guess I don't want to say bodybuilding communities, people who
work out like hardcore, that you can't possibly be ripped
as a vegan and our stuff you should know. Listener
Doyle Wolfgang van Frankenstein, the guitarist for The Misfits. He
is just vegan to the core and he is totally ripped,
(38:29):
and in fact, he has his own protein powder called
Vegan Monster Protein, where you can get ripped yourself if
you want to and still be a vegan.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
I think ripped Vegan is that's got to already be
a band name.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I wouldn't. Yeah, maybe that's his sideban, his folk side band.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Yeah, ripped vecan. You might have a vitamin B twelve
deficiency if you are a vegan, because plants don't have
B twelve. I think fifty two percent of vegans are
B twelve deficient. Seven percent of vegetarians, and if you're
a meat eater, you have a less than one percent
(39:07):
chance of being B twelve deficient.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
And that's a big deal too. I mean, like that
is a well known problem for vegans and vegetarians because
B twelve is used for red blood cell production, cell
wall production, nerve function, DNA production, and it's just not
in plants, it's in meat, it's in fish, it's in dairy.
So you really have to pay attention to that and
basically take B twelve supplements all the time to make
(39:30):
sure you don't become deficient because it's not good.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
Yeah, for sure. Here's one thing though, and this is
something that was controlled for BMI. Even if you're a
vegetarian or vegan, you have a kind of a remarkably
a remarkable statistical risk or higher risk I guess of
getting bone fracture than meat eater, And especially when it
comes to your hips, the risk of hip fracture. With vegetarians,
(39:57):
you have a twenty five percent higher risk of fraction
your hip as a vegetarian controlling for BMI again, and
vegans one hundred and thirty one percent higher chance of
hip fracture.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, I so part of it is that B twelve
deficiency because B twelve helps produce bone and so bone density.
But I also wondered if vegans typically get less protein
and therefore have less muscle mass on average. Obviously you
can get ripped as a vegan, but not everyone does.
If you're more susceptible to falling, like you can lose
(40:29):
your balance more easily because you have slightly less muscle
mass than a meat eater, and then with less bone density,
if you do fall, you're more likely to break a bone.
Just my yea, I wonder.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, I did mention cancer. You know. I think
we often talk about like heart attack and stroke and
stuff like that by eating too much red meat. But
cancer is another factor that I sort of briefly mentioned.
But if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you have
at ten to eighteen percent lower risk of cancer than
meat eaters. All calls, All calls mortality. That's another good
(41:05):
band name. Man, that's three band names, all Mortality, Peckish,
and peakd All calls. See that can't be our band
name because I can't even say it. At the end
of the show, all cause mortality was not different, which
is surprising between vegetarians and meat eaters and begans.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, another thing that surprised me is that vegetarians have
a twenty percent higher risk of having a hemorrhagic stroke.
So we should say all of this data came from
a twenty twenty one analysis of this British cohort of
sixty five thousand Brits that have been followed around since
the nineties. So they managed to look at twenty thousand vegetarians,
(41:50):
So this is a pretty robust study, and they found
that they have a twenty percent higher risk of stroke.
They couldn't they couldn't determine that for vegans. Think they
only had like twenty five hundred in this cohort, but
for stroke at least, they weren't able to figure out
how that affects vegans. You would assume that it would
be even an even higher percentage for vegans. But a
(42:12):
hemorrhag hemorrhagic stroke is where blood vessels in your brain
start bleeding. Again, that would make sense because B twelve
helps fortify cell walls, and I would think the lack
of red blood cell production would have something to do
with that too. So I think what we're trying to
say the upshot is it's not just like a slam
(42:33):
dunk that you're going to be healthier or your lifetime
health outcomes are automatically going to be better. But it's
still I mean, it's just if your overall or sorry,
if you're all dash cause mortality is going to be
the same, then I don't know, I think that kind
of makes an argument to eat whichever makes you feel best.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeah, that's just a weird Statyeah, all dash cause yeah,
I don't know. I can't explain that. Maybe someone will
have some more information on that. But earlier we did
promise an entire section on the environmental impact of eating
animals because that is yet another reason. And you know,
obviously people have all kinds of reasons and it's usually
(43:16):
a combination of all these things. But we were learning
just it's become plainly obvious more and more, this isn't
the kind of thing. I think that, especially in America,
people like to look at a lot in the past,
but it seems like in the last like fifteen years
or so, people are sounding the alarm like, hey, besides
ethical concerns and health and all that other stuff, like
(43:38):
raising animals is to eat is kind of a or
the way we do it is a disaster for the environment.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, so there's a lot of misleading stats out there
that compare the amount of kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions
compared to the kilograms produced of something. Right, that doesn't
make any sense because kilogram of broccoli is a lot
less as far as food being spread among people than
(44:07):
a kilogram two point two pounds of beef. Right, you
can feed way more people with two point two pounds
of beef than you can with two point two pounds
of broccoli. So exactly at best. But so some people
have said, well, let's just alter it a little bit,
So we'll measure the kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions for
(44:27):
every thousand calories produced, and so that makes it a
lot more apples to apples comparison. But even still, when
you alter it like that, the numbers essentially come out
the same, which is that meat production has a much
larger carbon footprint than almost any kind of plant production,
although there are some surprises like, for example, your beloved
(44:50):
dark chocolate has a larger carbon footprint than producing poultry
or pork chuck. How do you feel about your dark
chocolate assault On top of it now.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Kill that chocolate. You know, coffee and chocolate are two
pretty notorious you know, environmental disasters as well on the
on the non meat side for sure.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
For sure. The reason why, apparently is demand. There's so
much demand for chocolate that the deforestation that results to
create more fields for cocoa production, that that just is
what's giving it such a huge footprint. And I think
coffee is relatively the same overall though. I found a
(45:33):
twenty nineteen study from Sustainability the Journal, and they basically
said thirty vegetarians have thirty three percent lower greenhouse gas
emissions based on their diet than a vegan than meat,
and a vegan diet has fifty three percent lower greenhouse
gas emissions. It's just that's just how it goes.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Yeah. And if you're like, well, I like eating some meat,
the biggest spenders there are beef, lamb and mutton.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, I thought that was weird.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Beef produces sixty kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram,
and a kilogram of poultry is only six. But you
compare that to a kilogram with just some English peas,
that's under one kilogram of greenhouse gas emissions produced. So
you might think that as far as water consumption goes,
(46:24):
the plants would far outpace like a meat diet because
you got a water vegetables. But generally there are just
a few plant based foods that have a bigger water
footprint than beef.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yeah, beef is just the worst offender of all but
livestock raising livestock in general, apparently one fifth to one
quarter of all the water used by humans goes to
raising livestock, which is nuts. But the reason why is
because not only do you need water to keep that
head of cattle alive until you decide to kill it,
(46:58):
you also need water to grow the grain that you
feed that head of cattle. So they're just consuming all
over the place, especially as far as water is concerned.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Yeah, and just so you know, there are like zero
sort of vegetables that out paste beef. The two that
do out paste beef that I was referring to our
chocolate and almonds.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, and who considers an almond of vegetable? Come on,
give it up.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
And I think as far as lamb and mutton go,
the two other biggest defenders in the meat category only
cashew's pistachios and hazel nuts consume more water to produce
than lamb and mutton.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Hazel nuts are so great, far and away the best.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Nut, you think, not the ground nut.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
I haven't had one yet. Well, peanuts apparently are a
ground nut. I have not had the bombar ground nut yet,
so I should wait and reserve judgment.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Yeah, peanuts they grow underground.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Right, Yep, they're a ground nut.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
I can just see Jimmy Carter holding a big thing
of peanuts and roots with dirt falling off of them.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
All right, Pete and God bless that man.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
That's right. The US maintains about nine billion, nine billion
livestock to get the meat that it needs or wants,
I guess is the better way to say it. And
if that grain went to humans, it'd be enough for
eight hundred and forty million people that have plant based diets.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yes, And there was another thing that I came across
that I was kind of surprised by. Totally makes sense.
Is if we en mass as a species, humans essentially
abandoned livestock production, beef production, or meat production in favor
of a plant based diet. Just basically, globally, the chance
of communicable diseases developing would drop drastically because seventy five
(48:45):
percent of emerging communicable diseases are zoonotic, which means humans
get them from animals, and we make our closest contact
with animals through the livestock industry.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Yeah, and at petting zeus.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah. I mean, as long as it wasn't grown in
a lab, you can kiss communicable diseases, goodbine.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yeah. The other environmental disaster of raising livestock, and this
is more and more lately, is the habitat destruction to
raise all these animals. You're talking about extinction of plant
and animal species and thousands more being threatened in the
year's upcoming because of habitat destruction. And it's also true
(49:27):
for some kinds of agriculture. You know, we've talked about
palm oil cultivation being a big problem for a lot
of stuff, specifically orangutang populations or at least by example,
but beef once again is the biggest factor. They drive.
Beef drives forty percent of tropical deforestation globally, whereas palm
(49:49):
oil and soy, which are two sort of offenders on
the other side, are only eighteen percent combined.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
That's all, just eighteen percent of deforestation.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Yeah, but I mean the one takeaway here is beef
beef bad.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
It's what's for dinner and what ruined the planet.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
Yeah, I mean it's far and away leading the way
in all all the bad categories.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
You know, it really does.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
So.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, I mean this is we've just kind of touched
the surface, especially on the environmental impact. There's a lot
to dig into there if that interested you. But I
feel like we gave some good reasons for people to
adopt a plant based diet. I don't know if I'm
going too fully, but i'd like to think it's I'm
kind of part way there already.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Yeah. I eat more vegetables now, I eat way less
red meat than I used to. Yeah, for just like
all the reasons that we talked about.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, I've cut my four quarter pounders with cheese every
day in half and I eat both halves. Since Chuck
kind of laughed at my last joke, I think everybody
that means we should probably slog along to listener mayl.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
That was a real laugh. That was an oh Josh laugh.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yeah, I love those two all right?
Speaker 3 (51:02):
This from a Smithy because of us actually, Oh yeah,
I saw this one. Hey, guys, I've always had a
bit of an interest in metalworking, and as of about
five years ago, i've had an interest in your show.
I'd say your show has been the longest running podcast
of my life. Actually, I remember listening to your episode
about blacksmithing four years ago and that kind of set
off the domino effect of me getting really into blacksmithing
(51:25):
as a hobby. I'm definitely one of those that like
to collect hobbies, with most passing in about six months
and I never pick it up again. But not true
with blacksmithing. I've stuck with it since your episode came out,
and I'd like to say I've come a long way
with it. I've attached to a few pictures of my work,
which was very good, by the way, starting with early
works and all the way to the two I completed
about a week ago. I thought you might be interested
(51:46):
in seeing how your show kicked off one of my
favorite hobbies I've ever had, So thanks for that. And
that is from Tate Avent and you can find Tate.
Just look up Tater makes t a I t E
r a k e s and check out Tate's work.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Well, thanks a lot, Tate. That is awesome. Congratulations on
your awesome hobby and getting so good at it, And
we really appreciate you letting us know that we had
some sort of small, tiny impact on you. We love
hearing that kind of thing. If you want to be
like Tate and let us know that we had some small,
tiny impact on you, please send it via email to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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