Veganitarianism

Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
You're listening to Why We Do whatwe Do. Welcome to Why We Do
what we Do. I am yourBroccoli host Abraham and I am your Satan
host Shane Hail Satan. Oh,good one. Yeah, we are psychology

(00:25):
podcast. We talked about what peopledo and why they do the things that
they do, and that's why wetitled our podcast why we Do what we
Do In fact. Yeah, andtoday we're gonna talk about veganism, which
is the thing that is near andgear to both of our hearts and something
that surprisingly, I've spent a lotof time around. Actually, at the
majority of my life, I've spentaround veganism, which I realized just now
as I was talking, speaking thesentence out loud. So that's a wow,

(00:48):
a weird thing to think about.I definitely did not. It's quite
the opposite. In fact, ifyou are still with us, thank you
for being here, said said thewords veganism lost some people, but potentially,
but you're here, so thank youfor joining us. All of our
folks in Texas are just done.That's right, possibly Florida. Yeah,
but anyway, we're here, Thankyou for being here, and we're going
to be talking about that. Yes, there's a thing that people do and

(01:11):
that's why we talk about it.But if you'd like to support the show,
if you like what you're here today, you should like and subscribe,
leave a rating and review by somemerch join us on Patreon. You can
start a new diet that does notneed animals and call it why we do
what we do or why we don'twhat we do it we don't do diet.
It could be why we chew whatwe chew. There you go.
I've missed a little thanking for iton that anyway. I'll talk more about
the ways you can support us atthe end of this discussion. But if

(01:34):
you're listening to this on the dayin which it were releases, this is
September sixth, twenty twenty three,and I would just like to acknowledge Happy
National Read a Book Day. Ahyes, I WI should be every day,
but you know, yeah, it'sa good start. It's also National
Fight Procrastination Days. So if youare worried about starting a book, maybe
today's to do it. Great celebrateboth days. It's Great Egg Toss Day

(01:57):
whatever. That yeah, fun,which also doesn't align very well with the
topic. Todays National Coffee ice creamDay, which big fan. Yes,
not that hard to make vegan.It's Jan Mashtami day, yes, and
this one you you were able togive an explanation for Shane. So this
is a celebration of life for Krishnaand Indian holiday. Yeah. So for
our Indian listeners, well see you. Yeah. It is National color Blind

(02:23):
Awareness Day, which is good.I love seeing those videos of people getting
those glasses that help see colors,Like for folks that are like severely color
blind and they get to see thosespecific glasses that help with that, it's
super cool. I had a bossone time that was profoundly color blind,
and what he would do is,whenever he would pick out outfits at stores,
he would always just grab whatever wason a mannequin. He would say,

(02:46):
I'll take that in these sizes,and so he would match them up
that way, and so he wouldn'thave to ask for help. He just
picked I want that outfit, whateverthat is. Yeah. I have known
someone also who had pretty extensive colorblind list. I'm really curious how those
glasses work. And I think we'vebeen talking about doing color blindness for a
while, so maybe we need todo just an episode about color blindness and
the glasses that exist for that.Yeah, yeah, for sure if you're

(03:07):
celebrating in September. The months thatwe're looking at our National Guide Dog Months,
which is you know, all dogsare good dogs, but you know
guide dogs are sons of special Itis Whole Grains Month, which does align
with our topic today and does notalign with the opposite of our topic today,
that's true. It's also National SquareDancing Month, which does not align

(03:27):
with our topic today. Doesn't notalign though. I can't imagine a lot
of vegan square dancers, but ifyou're a vegan square dancer, please email
us. You make a fair point, but the people are complex. It
is Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness Month,so now you know there's leukemia and lymphoma
and it's bad. Yep, it'sreal bad. I'll read a new book
month, so like if you can'tstart today, starts this month. Yeah,

(03:51):
a new one specific way. Yeah. And finally, National Suicide Prevention
Month again should be every month,but acknowledging that that is the current month.
Yes, absolutely, Okay, Aswe said, we are talking about
veganism and stay with us, staywith us where although we both have a
special connection to veganism, which isthat we both practice a vegan diet.

(04:14):
Yeah, we'll have things to sayabout that. This is going to be
a lot more history and psychology thanit is preaching. Not no preaching,
but mostly the science part. Yeah, we're just gonna give you information on
this. So today we're going todiscover what the Pythagoras theorem, Billie Eilish
and professional wrestling all have in common. Sweet, can't wait. I can't
wait to find out. So good, All right, let's get into it.

(04:36):
Yeah, let's do it. So. Veganism is a philosophy and a
lifestyle that means the participant does noteat or use any products that are derived
from animals. Someone who adheres toa vegan lifestyle usually makes intentional attempts to
avoid any animal products, not justfood. Now, I want to I
want to be clear about this.One of the things that's really important about
this is it attempts. It's notcompletely refrains, but it is attempts.

(05:00):
Because vegans mess up all the time. We mess up all the time,
all the time. But that isan important part of this. They make
an attempt to not consume any animalproducts, not just food. Surprisingly difficult
to avoid. Two, Like youcan find specialty places where you can get
non leather belts shoes that contain noleather materials. They're out there, but
you do have to look. Soit's like and sometimes they're not out there.

(05:23):
Sometimes the only option is this thingthat has some amount of leather in
it. It is just is whatit is, you know, Yeah,
you kind of get it's stuck withand so but as an example, leathers
maybe one people might not always thinkabout. There are oh man, all
the different dairies. That's food stuffobviously, but just a lot of things
I think a lot of people wouldn'teven think of necessarily as being things that

(05:44):
one would typically avoid. One actuallythat occurred to me just now is a
lot of times you will see vegansnot going to zoos or other amusement parks
that have animal exhibits, specifically circusanother one. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah,
there's a lot of interesting kind oflike things to unpack within that we're
going to talk about all it though. Yeah, so you can actually this
isn't in the notes, not whatwe were planning to talk about, but

(06:05):
you could think of the move towardveganism that is not just around food as
being a financial one. It issort of a economic boycott of industries that
use animals. Yeah, that's sortof a way of thinking about how how
it works. But veganism includes afew other important elements. As we said,
dietary is one of them. Andso any food consumed by vegan is

(06:28):
free of animal products to the extentpossible, and these are considered dietary vegans.
And yeah, we do get intoexactly what those arcs. I think
some people don't always know. Itwas hard to unpack this one a little
bit only because like basically just meansall the food that you're eating does not
have any animal products, no dairy, no milk, no cheese, you
know, all the like, noeggs, nothing like that. But also

(06:48):
like random buy products of animals aswell. So like some parmesan cheeses are
not considered vegan, not just bylike the fact that they're vegan, but
some of them aren't even vegetarian becauseof how they're duced and like some of
the some of the meat products thatare put into them. That includes in
some cases there's the debate about honey, which we're going to talk about later.
That is one that comes up quiteoften. So, yeah, So

(07:10):
basically, any food item that youconsume doesn't have any sort of animal byproduct
within it. Yeah, again,to the extent possible, yes, yes,
as we don't know, is no, exactly. There's also ethical vegans,
which means that any product like clothing, food, medicine are not consumed
by the person and these folks areconsidered ethical vegans because they avoid using it
because of the harm that it causesthe animals. So, like, let's

(07:33):
use the example like like different maybeshampoos. There are shampoos that are tested
on animals where they might rub theshampoo in the animal's eyes to see how
it stings or irritates eyeballs and stufflike that, and which is again,
it's just horrible and we're not goingto get into all of the horrors that
goes on with animal testing and allthat, but ethical vegans tend to avoid
all products that have any sort ofanimal testing because of the harm that it

(07:55):
causes the animal itself. Right exactly. That was actually a good example because
I think a lot of people hereare like, well, it's wrong about
testing shampoo and animals the way theytest it because they tested Yeah, they're
not watching a rabbit hair. They'redripping it in their eyeballs. Yeah,
I mean you could go volunteer toget tested on and see if it's as
safe and happy as it sounds likeit would be. How do you think

(08:16):
how do you think they know there'sno tears? Right? Yeah? So
anyway, you're right, And manyof those products are labeled specifically it'll say
vegan or not tested on animals orsomething of that nature, so that people
can make that choice. Yeah.And then finally there is environmental veganism.
This holds the same standard as dietaryand ethical vegans, but the primary motivation
is related to how damaging industrial farmingis in causing irreversible damage and the other

(08:39):
industries that essentially depend on animals asa part of manufacturing in some capacity.
Yes, so we've got these threedifferent types a lot of times, and
maybe this is a good time tokind of unpack our personal experiences with this.
Sure, let me start by sayingthis, I'm not entirely vegan.
I try to adhere to a vegandiet as much as I can, but
I miss the mark all over theplace, not like as as good about

(09:01):
that as I can be. Mostof that is a dietary, but I
do try to avoid harmful products,and I do try to avoid products if
I can. And so I startedas an ethical vegan because of the harm
that came to animals and ethical vegetarianfrom the harm that came to animals,
and then moved into more dietary focusesbecause that seemed to be the easiest place
to kind of inter like, tochange my behavior. So that's kind of

(09:22):
where I started, was it startedwith an ethical kind of moral compass and
then turned into more of a dietaryapproach to it. Some of the other
stuff kind of came in, like, Oh, I'm glad I'm having this
impact. There's like really cool sideeffects as a result the experience I had
and the experience I've heard from others. The experience I had was that I
learned about the environmental impacts first.An environment was much more of a concern

(09:43):
to me. I didn't it's hardto say this without sounding like a horrible,
terrible person. I really did notconsider or think that the impacts of
the animal industry on animals mattered verymuch, right, And I don't remember
exactly my just vacation for this,but I remember thinking, I love meat,
I love dairy, I love theway these things taste. I love

(10:05):
them in my foods. I wantto try every cuisine on the planet and
every type of food, and Isaw that as being like a necessary part
of that. It means that animalsdie, said, they end up as
my food. Right. The environmentvery much has concerned me for a long
time. And so then when Ilearned about the impact. And we'll get
into this a little bit later,but the whole idea of like, well,
just don't eat meat one day aweek, right, that was pretty
easy, right, And it's tomake a long story short, that eventually

(10:28):
evolved into a vegetarian diet and theninto a more restrictive vegan diet. So,
as I said, I started atthe position of simply the environmental impacts.
But once I was already adhering tothat lifestyle, then all of the
sudden, all the other parts ofit just started to make more sense to
me. Then it was like,now I started to actually feel compassion toward

(10:48):
animals. Now I started being concernedabout the dietary part in terms of health,
and so I started issuing some ofthose animal products that I found in
other things. Like not wearing leather, like not using honey, like not
tooming things that were like filtered throughanimal bones, not eating like gelatin as
one. A lot of people don'tknow about, right, And so those
were sort of the reasons. AndI've heard that from a lot of people,

(11:09):
like they'll come in it from onedirection and end up sort of picking
up all the others as reasons forthemselves. Yeah, I'm as fairly common.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Youknow, I started as I started
cutting out and we'll talk about thedifferent levels of this too. I started
cutting out red meat, and thenit was I started cutting out chicken and
I was only a pescatarian for alittle bit, which we'll like, I
said, well, I'm start thatterm, and then that's when the ethical

(11:31):
stuff hit it. I did itfor health reasons first, and then the
ethical stuff hit in, and that'swhen I was like, okay, no
meat at all, nothing with aface, and then started kind of like
shaping up my behavior around like morevegan products and more plant based products after
that. So that's kind of howI started. I had to like fade
in this diet for me. Yeah, And you know, I think as
I was saying like I also fadedin, but it was like one day

(11:52):
a week was so easy. Itwas so easy even for someone who like
I always like to joke that themeat industry took a pretty huge hit when
I became vegetarian, because like,my baseline was way above your average.
It was like I would like meatwith a side of meat on top of
meat wrapped inside of meat, please. Yeah. Yeah, And so when
I changed directions that, it waslike I died as far as the meat

(12:15):
industry was concerned. A regular staplecustomer just suddenly vanished into thin air.
Yeah, there's a blip on themap there, like a whole family disappeared.
No, yeah, basically yeah,yeah, just just the one anyway,
point being, I think that itwas a pretty dramatic shift for me.
But even with that diet, orwith just one day a week,
it was what it was really easy. Yeah, it was really easy.

(12:39):
Yeah. I barely had to thinkabout it or work on it at all.
I would just choose things that didn'thave meat in them. And this
was at a time when the optionsfor alternatives were scarce to exist. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't think people realizethat it's much easier to be vegan
vegetarian now than it has ever been. Yeah, Like when I started,
the best you could get most placeswas a tofu sandwich. There was like

(13:00):
a slab of tofu on bread,like that was your alternative. Otherwise it
was just like you know, youmake your own food. It was a
lot of it. Or you'd goto like salad places and just tell them
like, don't put the chicken on. What I mean by don't is don't.
What I mean by don't as indon't is leave it in the container
instead of putting it on the sandlid. I don't want it anywhere. Hard.
It was hard to explain. Yeah, it took some explanation, yeah,

(13:22):
to get there. But anyway,I found it extremely easy to just
not eat meat one day a week, and so after a while I just
doubled that, and then I justcontinued to increase it from there. So
that was a fading process from yeah, it's there, you go, it
works. It works. So withthat being said, it's probably worth unpacking
the terms vegetarian and vegan and whereit all comes from. But first some
plant based ads. All right.Shane teed us up for talking about vegan

(13:54):
and vegetarian because it may surprise youor not to know that these turns have
not been around forever, but reallynot very long at all. Yeah.
So, the term vegetarian has beenused more regularly since about eighteen thirty nine,
So it's only since eighteen thirty ninethis word existed, just like the
word creep. The word creep isa fairly new term thanks to Charles Dickens,
because he was a creep. Hewas a creep poet. I almost

(14:16):
went so far to say like theword creep was vetted by TLC, but
you know it was not. Sothe term was primarily used to refer to
a primarily vegetable diet. It's oneof those words that was made up,
like all words, you know,but it came from an irregular combination of
vegetable and aryan arii a n,not the other, not the bad arian,
which means to support or believe.So vegetarian is a combination of vegetable

(14:39):
and the suffix arian right, Sobasically, to believe in a vegetable diet
is kind of how loosely translated,Yeah, yeah exactly. The term was
attributed to Fanny Kemball in a booktitled Journal of a residence one on a
Georgian plantation in eighteen thirty eight toeighteen thirty nine. That is the rolls
right off the tongue. Yeah,you know, it's just as good as
like and flew over the cuckoo's nest. Yeah. And we're still talking about

(15:01):
vegetarian right now. Yes. Somequick notes on Kembell. She was a
British actress and abolitionist whose work wasprimarily derived from her personal journals. She
would often document conditions of enslaved peopleand would go to advocate for the abolition
of slavery. See our recent episodeson slavery that immediately precede this one.
Yeah. Yeah, I thought thatwas kind of an interesting tie in.

(15:22):
However, there is a bit ofcontroversy in her writings for various reasons.
Some people argue that Kemball falsified heraccount of plantation owner Roswell King Junior after
her affections were dismissed. So apparentlyshe had come on to Roswell King Junior
and he said, no, I'mnot interested, and she's like, I'm
gonna get you by recording an accuratehistorical account of what you did to people,
and the accounting was directly criticized byKing's granddaughter. But guy was a

(15:46):
plantation owner, so probably wasn't reallygreat. Yeah, not known for their
like honesty about conditions on the plantation. Yeah, and it sounds like King's
granddaughter probably has a vested interest inmaking sure or that the you know,
the legacy is not tarnished exactly.Okay, So, as we said,

(16:07):
vegetarian is a recent term. Despitethat, however, vegetarianism, the practice
of actually eating a primarily fruit andvegetable based diet, has existed for a
millennia, just didn't need to beknown by any particular title. Clearly is
accounting for vegetarianism goes back at leastas far as thirty three hundred BC in
the Indus Valley civilization, located inSouth Asia and what we now known as

(16:29):
eastern Pakistan and northwestern India. Thecivilization was notable for their urban planning,
elaborate drainage system, water supply systems, and metallurgy, and apparently practiced widely
a vegetarian type diet. Yeah,I thought that was pretty interesting. Now.
As far as term vegan goes,the phrase wasn't coined until about nineteen
forty four in a publication called theVegan News, which so great. That's

(16:53):
great, so much stuff going onin the world, and they put together
a vegan news bulletin. I thinkthat's fantastic, right. The members the
Vegetarian Society. By the way,I realize, even as a vegan vegetarian,
I don't think that I would beable to hang out with these people.
They sound insufferable. Yeah, theydo not sound like they're fun.
But members of the Vegetarian Society wantedto develop a news letter that account for

(17:14):
people who were solely devoted to nondairy vegetarianism, right, And as we
said, vegetarianism largely. I guesswe haven't really unpacked this super well.
But vegetarianism really just was not eatingspecifically the flesh of animals, right,
although in practice we'll talk about noteven the flesh of animals coincided with also
not eating products from animals, andthose often weren't readily available anyway, And

(17:38):
I think arguably throughout history this isn'treally something we're talking about. Inside of
this would be fun, I thinkanthropological sort of episode to do to talk
about human diets as they've evolved overtime. Sure, but meat has almost
never been a central part of anydiet throughout history until industrialization began, because
meat was extremely difficult to procure andlarge enough quantities that it could be like

(18:03):
a major part of people's diets.So most people throughout history primarily ate vegetables
and fruits and grains as they wereavailable. I've seen these these stickers that
people have on the bumper of theircar that says, like, eat beef
the West. Wasn't one on salad. I'm like, yeah, it kind
of was it one on trail mix? Yeah, Like what they had to

(18:26):
eat was like they would certainly eatgame if they could hunt it and catch
it, but they had to dependas a primary staple of their food a
lot of grains and a lot offruits and vegetables when they could get their
hands on them. You just can'thave that substantial amount of your diet come
from meat when you're in a societythat is not as very well industrialized.
Because humans are slow, we donot have very many predator features that most

(18:48):
other predators have, and we can'toutrun our food very well. We have
to trap it, we have tocatch it, we have to hunt it.
If they're gonna if it's gonna beanimals. Otherwise you can forage it,
which we're very good at, andyou can grow it, which it
turns out we also became very goodat. Right. So anyway, point
being, most places around the world, we're sort of foundationally practicing a much
higher level of vegetarianism just because thatwas all that they could do, and

(19:14):
not necessarily ideologically, although some ofthem were somewhat ideological, right, And
we're gonna unpack some of that tooas we go, Like, we're gonna
unpack and talk about just the factthat in a lot of places, the
availability of meat is a for thosecommunities is kind of like a like a
reward or like a you know,it's a special treat. It's not something
that's like a staple. It's notlike a you know, three course meal

(19:37):
type of situation that we have herein the United States, where it's like
meat and potatoes for every meal.It's not like that. Right. Oh,
I just need to say really quickbecause I was saying the West one
un salad. The idea of theWest being one is extremely insulting. Yeah,
Like the West was stolen and appropriatedfrom indigenous people by committing horrible acts
of atrocity and genocide. Like,let's not pretend that it was one in

(19:59):
any way. The West was previouslymaintained by a largely vegetarian diet with a
scattering of meats here and there.Yeah, okay, so you're right,
Okay, So let's talk about DonaldWatson. So Donald Watson, who proposed
the idea of the vegan specific newsletter, was told that this was not
going to happen by the vegetarian society. So he went off and he started
his own newsletter called the Vegan News. The term was invented by Watson and

(20:22):
a school teacher named Dorothy Morgan.They would later marry, like the two
of them would would end up gettingmarried, so that the you know,
husband and wife came up with theterm vegan. And to do this,
they coined this term through this thisincredibly painstaking process that included lots of trial
and error of different ways, likeways to distinguish veganism from vegetarianism that did
include eggs and daring that sort ofthing. What they did is they took

(20:45):
the beginning and end parts of vegetarianvege end end and made a new word
that was all that was all theyhad to do. Became vegan because the
general rules, a G followed byan A is a hard good sound so
vegan. Yeah, pains thinking,so tough, so difficult. I will
say they did. They did comeup with some alternatives that I'm so glad
that we didn't stick with. Sowe're gonna go over so what we could

(21:07):
be, but we are not.So we could have been all Veggia or
all vega. It could be neovegetarian. We could be dairy bond.
It's not great Vitan, I guess. Yeah. We could be a benavore.
You that sounds like a medicine youwould put on, like sores on
your butt or something. It soundslike it would be on I Love Lucy.

(21:30):
It sounds like it would be thepartner two Vita meet a Vegamin.
There you go. And we couldalso be Santa VARs or we could be
bow Mangure. None of those works, super well, none of those work
at all, So I'm glad theylanded on vegan. Yeah. The Vegan
News and eventually the Vegan Society wouldgo on to published trade list in books
that included things like vegan recipes andchildren's books related to veganism. I think

(21:52):
probably largely related to the idea ofthinking of animals as being sentient, autonomouss
that should be left, that shouldbe treated with respected dignity. Absolutely,
I want to make sure that it'sreally clear. This is right around the
end of World War two, sothis is not like an old practice,
but it's also just such a specifictime frame. There's so many things going

(22:17):
on that it feels like, I'msurprised that this became such an important part
of that kind of rebuilding society typeof situation, if that makes sense.
Like I feel like it's like,yeah, it's like such a strange little
corner of like World War two eraAmerica. Yeah, I agree, it
is kind of odd that that wason their mind at the time, but

(22:38):
hey, I guess people have todo something other than think about the war.
Yeah, absolutely So. In nineteenforty seven, this group made a
call for a ban on all animalproducts, not just dietary restrictions, and
in nineteen fifty one they published theirfirst definition of the term vegan. So
they were already kind of getting intothe vegan activism activism, and this is
kind of maybe where Peta maybe startedand then totally like ran off with it

(23:00):
saying that meat causes autism. Now, good lord, So don't listen to
Peter. They're a little bit ridiculous. But this is kind of where it
starts in a nineteen fifty one andwe finally get a definition of this.
Yeah, I will say this asa quick side note on PETA, that
part of my anti vegetarian stance earlyon in life was seeing the absolute crap
that was put out by PETA.Yeah, and so I have never been

(23:22):
a member of the organization, andI think they were. They have almost
always been extremely counterproductive in their methods, right, and so just as a
quick note on there, Yeah,there have been a lot of famous vegetarians
throughout history. There is Seneca theYounger, Nicola Tesla, Dame Jane Goodall,

(23:44):
Coretta Scott King, Sir Paul McCartney, Leo Tolstoy, Serena Williams,
Leonardo da Vinci, Pythagoras, RosaParks, Albert Einstein, and Billie Eilish
to name a few. That doestie in at least a couple of our
threads from the beginning. Yes,some people are sitting here listening and I
know what you're thinking. Yes,Hitler was also a vegetarian, and he

(24:06):
presumably was even a vegetarian for ethicalanimal reasons, which just goes to show
like that people can are complex,I think, and that just because you
maybe make one choice in the rightdirection what we would maybe consider the right
direction, doesn't mean that you area morally good person through and through right
exactly. It's probably more likely thathe did it for I could see him

(24:30):
doing it for diet there reasons,or doing it making a decision while he
was like all kinds of hopped upon speed. Well, he apparently suffered
from horrible flatulence, so vegan dietwould be better for him, Like,
oh my god, the guy hedoes not need to eat more broccoli.
I think presumably he thought that avegetarian. Yeah, he wasn't vegan,
but I think presumably he thought avegetarian diet would help with the flatulence as

(24:52):
well. That I think is alittle unclear. But he definitely expressed some
amount of sentiment for animal welfare insome ways ironic obviously not human welfare.
Yeah. Yeah, still really baddude. Yeah, basically the archetype for
evil in the world. If ifyou were to believe such a thing like
this. Yeah. Yeah, absolutelydidn't think he was going to make an
appearance in this episode. Did notplan for that. So sorry, No,

(25:15):
you're good. It's important. Figuresomebody was thinking it, we may
as well say it. That isthe argument that comes up a lot.
So I think it's probably worth unpackingthe different types of vegetarianism and veganism because,
as we said before, the VeganNews in nineteen fifty one came up
with a definition of what vegan is. But today, because we like to
label things and we like to havedifferent lab like, it's like sub genres

(25:36):
of veganism and vegetarianism, and sowe're gonna maybe unpack that a little bit.
Yeah, the taxonomizing of things whatStephen J. Gould would call extreme
splitters. Yeah, humans love ityea. So earlier, as we said,
we referenced there's sort of if youthink of the motives, there's the
sort of dietary, ethical, andenvironmental veganism as sort of subtypes. But

(25:56):
there are these other branches and dietarysubsets of this lifestyle that we figure it
may as well discuss briefly. Yeah, so there's lacto vegetarians, which excludes
meat and eggs and foods that containthem, but there's dairy based products within
that. So a lacto vegetarian doesn'teat eggs or meat, but they will
eat cheese or maybe drink milk.Yes, the oval vegetarian excludes meat and

(26:18):
those dairy things yogurt, cheeses,milks, that sort of thing, but
they do allow eggs, right,And then a lacto ovo vegetarian will exclude
meat but allow dairy and eggs.And so that's kind of where I'm at
right now, is the lacto ovoor lacto avo vegetarian. Got it?
A pesctarian excludes all meat, dairy, and eggs, but does eat fish.

(26:40):
And actually, I think this one'sa little bit flexible too, because
I've seen a lot of pesctarians whobasically just don't eat meat from land animals
and will eat basically anything. They'llstill eat dairy, they'll still eat eggs,
right, and they'll still eat fish, but they just won't eat like
cow's, chickens, pigs, thatsort of thing. That's what I did
for a long time. It waslike no land animals, but it was
like creatures were fair game. So, and but I did kind of like

(27:03):
what you said before, where itwas like any like it was like,
oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna depletethe sea apparently because I wanted to eat
all of it and try all thethings like so I would, I would
eat every every sea creature. Sure, so there's a real problem. There's
also flexitarianism, which is primarily aplant based diet but has a flexibility to
include animal products in moderation. Andthis might be due to specific health considerations

(27:26):
or dietary needs. It's not necessarilythat the person is like got a moral
high ground about it. It mightactually just be that they've got something that
they can't supplement outside of those things. So that's that's where the flexitarianism is.
So the majority of their day,the majority of the diet is plant
based, but they have to includesome other things here and there. And
then, as we said, veganexcludes all animal products. No meat,

(27:47):
no eggs, no dairy, nohoney, no gelatine, no bones,
no blood, no animals whatsoever.That's kind of the breakdown of all the
things. I mean, I'm surethere's a lot of other ones in there,
but those are the main ones thatI found as we're doing the research.
That's fair. Well, I'll tellyou what. Ever, someone finds
out that you're a vegetarian, andespecially when they find out that you're vegan,

(28:08):
the first question we get is howdo you get enough protein? These
ads will tell you, and thenwe'll tell you the truth. Nice.
Okay, we're back answering the questionabout where do vegans get their protein.
They're all dying and wasting away beforeour very eyes. Yeah, so welcome

(28:33):
to the myth busting portion of this. And this is my favorite thing because
everybody. First of all, forthose of you who see me, I
do not look like I'm wasting awaybecause all I'm meeting is a salad.
So I get plenty of food andthere's plenty of protein in my diet,
don't you worry. Yeah, butcome down this path with us. We're
going to debunk the hell out ofa lot of public misconceptions about veganism and
vegetarianism. And the first is thateating vegan is expensive. No, it's

(28:56):
not so. The parts that areexpensive are the meat substitutes. Those are
things that tend to be like kindof at a premium price. But even
then they're not really that terrible,but they aren't necessary for a vegan diet.
I think that's the really important thing. You don't need to have a
beyond burger to be a vegan right. As a matter of fact, naturally
vegan foods tend to be cheaper overallgrains, rice, fruits, seeds,

(29:18):
nuts, beans are all naturally veganand can be purchased at a much lower
price point than you would think.Yeah, it's kind of like anything.
Like you can eat a carnivorous dietand spend millions of dollars if you want
to, having the rarest steaks andwhatever, or specific types of meats,
or you can eat flexibly on abudget, and the same is true for

(29:38):
a vegan diet. You can spenda lot of money if you want to,
but you certainly don't have to tobe able to follow the diet.
Right. Another one, the honeyis vegan. Honey is not vegan.
This is a unique debate. Honeyis produced by bees, so we don't
like squeeze honey out of them oranything. Let some argue that sense bees
often produce more than they consume.They aren't forced to produce, such as

(30:00):
cows, with milk and therefore it'sfine. Others argue that collecting honey is
exploited if and harmful. It isinteresting debate, and I think the where
to go with that is that thereare cases where bees will produce more than
they need to. What people maybedon't know is honey is bees food.
They basically make that they regurgitated outof themselves, and then they use it

(30:21):
later for a source of calories.Right. They have this process where they
farm things like pollen, They goto plants, they collect it, they
consume it. It gets processed intheir body to be regurgitated out, so
it becomes a digestible source of caloriesfor them, their primary source of calories
in fact. And so the waythat a lot of honey is farmed is
that people will take the honey.They'll have these bees kept in these boxes.

(30:44):
We can easily take the honey outand then they replace it with sugar
water because that also has calories.It also has sugar, which is what
the bees have. Terrible for thebees, absolutely terrible, and so the
bees often will experience colony collapse becauseof this. They might also dine in
the process simply of going through Theyoften will smoke the bullet smoke at the
bees to keep them calm, sothey're not attacking the apparist as they're doing

(31:04):
the thing. But there are alsopeople who argue that they can do this
very ethically be responsible, and Idon't doubt that that's certainly possible. But
I think for a lot of people, the safe route is just don't eat
honey, right because you don't knowhow it's being produced. Right. So
there's that, yeah, and Govenik, there is a perfectly acceptable replacement as
far as like you're trying to getthat that feeling like that that works just

(31:26):
fine. Okay. So one thingI've heard, and I hear I hear
this all the time is plans tohave feelings. Well, no, they
don't. There are some interesting studiesto talk about, like I don't want
to say trauma responses, but likebasically, if there's like a if like
damage responses, like if there's damageto the structure of the plant, there
are certain things that happen as aresponse, like almost like cellular like reproduction

(31:48):
and all that stuff. But plantsdon't have central nervous systems, they don't
have brains. They are complex,they're interesting, but they do not have
what we would describe as feelings,and so so that that's kind of one
of those things that there's a lotof really interesting science. And if you're
a botanist and you want to talkabout this, please email us as well.
I'd love to hear from you all. Ye, Brendan friend, Brendan

(32:10):
who loves plants, please tell ussome stuff to But at the end of
the day, plants do not havefeelings the way that we think they do.
Yeah, And it's just kind ofsilly argument. And then I think
if you go back to the motiveof like environmental impact, Like, honestly,
if I could eat nothing and beperfectly healthy and survive and just absorb
sunlight for energy, I would totallydo that because it would be even less
exploitative on the world. It wouldfree up a lot of space and time

(32:31):
that we spend hauling stuff out ofour planet that would be better spent helping
our planet thrive and be successful.But I can't do that, so I
gotta eat something. Right. Thething that I can eat that is the
closest to the sort of lowest levelof the trophic food chain, if you
will, is plants, And therewas a recent study about here and plants

(32:51):
scream. It was literally what itsounds like when the fibers and plants break.
You want to call that screaming,Like come on, right, that's
like saying that rock scream when youbreak them apart, because they make a
sound when you pack them, right, right, never even had anything to
do with anything a lifelike. Nowif you get if you start slicing a
carrot and it goes oh wow wow, then that's a different conversation. Yeah,

(33:14):
then then stop. Yeah, it'sjust it's a very silly argument from
people who are i think, disingenuouslytrying to engage, right, Yeah,
it's it's bad faith actors, Likethey're just like they're trying to like they're
not trying to have a debate oran argument with you. They're literally just
trying to like troll you. Yeah, yeah, it's just trolling. You're
an episode on trolling. Sometimes.I think it's meant that before yes,
all right, mid number four,vegans can't get enough calcium or protein.

(33:37):
This one is so false that ithurts. Check this out. First,
Vegans get more than enough calcium fromthings like kale, spinache, to heeny
dried figs, almonds, soybeans,chickpeas, and seaweed. There's calcium and
a lot of plants that's more readilyavailable than in other places. Furthermore,
as far as protein goes, broccoli, spinache, tofu, lentils, chickpeas,
amaranth nutritionally yet soy milk, andgreen peas are just a few of

(33:58):
the plant based foods that provide asubstantial amount of protein. Beans can actually
give you more protein than a cutof steak and have less fatty byproducts.
All of the things that we needare available from plants as humans specifically,
It's not true for cats, butit is for humans, right right right,
mid number five. Vegan diets arenot healthy. Now here's the thing

(34:20):
about this. If it's done wrong, sure, just like any other diet,
and this is really important. Ifyou're not getting all of the nutrients
you need, then yeah, thatwhatever you're doing is a problem. It's
not inherently that the vegan part ofit is bad. A good vegan diet
is actually very lean, very healthy. You almost have like zero issues with
cholesterol and all the things that goalong with that. So it's not that

(34:42):
vegan diets are unhealthy. It's thatpeople implement them in unhealthy ways. As
a matter of fact, some ofthe most unhealthy people I know are vegans
because they choose in their diet toeat nothing but buttered pasta, you know,
like like with margarine or oil.Yeah, or French fries all the
time. And oreos and oreos becauseoreos are vegan. And so that's I've
seen. Some of the most unhealthypeople in my life are vegan because they're

(35:04):
doing it wrong. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they're not inherently one
way or another. But I thinkif you were focusing primarily on eating vegetables
and you're going to be in prettygood chain, right, all right,
Vegan diets make you weak. Thisis a professional wrestling tie in professional wrestler
Brian Danielson former Daniel Bryan and WWEas a staunch vegan, has been for
decades. He's an incredible shape.Even replaced the WWE title with a vegan

(35:28):
friendly version made of recycled materials fora little bit and with slap hotdogs out
of people's hands during the show.I guess Carl Lewis, famous Olympic track
star who set world records, alsovegan so yes, there is no no
reason to think that you can't bevery strong and also be vegan. There
are many people who are actually bodybuilderswho are specifically vegan have written books about

(35:49):
how they they sort of work around, you know, they use their diets
to support the lifestyle of bodybuilding.Yeah, Brian Damson is is a great
example this. I always think it'sreally funny, and it's always funny too,
Like in professional wrestling, when theymake something that's like a quote unquote
counterculture to what they think professional wrestlingis, they make them the villain.
So like his character was trying tosave the world by recycling more and trying

(36:15):
to reverse global warming, but hewas the villain. So that's why he
would slap hotdogs out of people's handsbecause they were like, you can't eat
that, it's disgusting, Like you'redestroying the environment. Like the environmentalist was
the villain like they which is sosilly. Sure, But the reason he
had a recycled belt is because thechampionship belt as a leather strap and he's
like, nah, we're not doingthis, and so he threw it away

(36:37):
and had like a hemp strap withlike wood plates on it and stuff.
It was great. It's hilarious.Love it. Myth Number seven vegans just
eat salad well, according to mostrestaurants I found on yelp, Yes,
that's true. Those are the veganoptions that every restaurant has when they list
themselves a vegan. But those peopleare silly gooses. Vegans eat so much
more than that. And as amatter of fact, some of the best
vegan food I've ever had is nota valid even like at home, some

(37:00):
of the food that I make,like my son, like the one thing
that he loves to eat is thevegan pizza that we make. M Yeah,
good stuff. Yeah, vegan pizzais not that hard. Actually,
even if you weren't using alternative,simply leave off the cheese and you've got
a really good pizza. Yeah.Or you get like vegan shreads if you
want, if you want that texture, and that's fine too, Like it
all works. Yeah, I actuallylove like going to a sandwich place.

(37:22):
We sort of build your own,and I wasn't like all the vegetables,
Yeah, that's all, and likeyou'd be amazed at how good that tastes.
Like it's yeah, it's great works, Yeah, put all the vegetables
on there. I personally am afan of the jalapenos. Avocado gives it's
nice creaminess. I like mustard onmine. I'm a fan of the wheat
bread. And you've you've got avery well rounded sandwich exactly, all right,

(37:42):
math eight. Veganism is hard.I mean, sure it can be,
But how is it different from changingany other habit in your life.
I consider a time you try goingon a specific diet you think back to
like Atkins or something like that.Yeah, it's hard to stick to,
right. Habit changes can be toughfor a variety of reasons. Being vegan
isn't really any harder than something thananything else. I would argue easier than
something like picking up a workout routineright, particularly because it becomes a lifestyle.

(38:05):
You stop thinking about it most ofthe time. It just becomes something
you do right right exactly. Andthe last minute we're going to debunk vegans
must miss meat or dairy. Notreally. There are people that might.
But if you are somebody who iseating vegan vegetarian and you have like flavorful
cooking, like you know how tocook a meal, yeah, you're usually
fine with it. Like I've beenin the vegetarian realm for eight years now,

(38:30):
and I don't crave or miss anyof the things that I used to
eat. Like there's never a timewhere I'm driving by a Wendy's going yo,
man, you know what could reallygo for as a spicy chicken sandwich.
I don't. I don't think likethat. I'm just kind of like,
no, I want something spicy.I'll go make something spicy at home
and get that. Like, I'mnot missing the meat part of it,
I'm missing the flavor part of it. So just flavor your food, you'll

(38:52):
be fine. Yeah, I agree. And the hardest thing when I first
started following a vegan diet was cheese, because I, yeah, and I
had a lot of animal animal products, and that was the toughest one for
me. But once I was sortof over it, I was completely over
it and I literally have not wantedit ever since. And actually the times
would have accidentally had milk because someonemade like a latte with regular milk when

(39:15):
I asked for something else or whatever. You could tell pretty quickly because it
has this weird off sort of sourtaste that I feel really unpleasant. Now,
Yeah, we're not trying to converty'all, but like, we just
want to give you information. Butsomebody the other day said that they had
a glass of like two percent milkand said it smelled like boogers, and
that made me laugh really loud,Like I was like that thought it was

(39:36):
very funny. But also, yeah, like I can't drink milk anymore.
Yeah, I mean, to befair, I don't really just drink glasses
of oat milk either. That's justnot a thing. But anyway, yeah,
exactly, Well, we call ourshow why we do what we do,
and so we should talk about whypeople are vegan a vegetarian. We
sort of shared our story, butthere's more to unpack there. So we'll
listen to some ads, sell yousome I don't know, impossible brokers maybe,

(40:00):
and we'll come right back. Okay, So why are people Why do
people do this? Shane? Yeah? Why? There's lots of reasons.
You know, we kind of sharedour personal reasons and stuff. But there
are for some folks a lot ofhealth benefits. Just I mentioned before,
like eating a vegan vegetarian diet canhelp. More specifically, vegan diet can

(40:23):
help produce issues with cholesterol. There'sa lot of things like that. There's
also health concerns about animal protein,and there's also animal welfare on moral values.
All of those things are different reasonsfor why somebody might do it,
and every person that you meet that'svegan or vegetarian is going to have their
own personal kind of journey towards it, so their own reasons for it,

(40:44):
and we've, like I said,we've shared our own, but there are
lots of reasons why. One ofthe things that immediately got me into it,
as as I mentioned earlier, wasthe sort of environmental impacts. And
there's a few things that like Ilearned about this that again, this is
I think the previous part of allof this, and I think there are
some caveats situated in this as well. But some of the things that includes,

(41:05):
like, Okay, the meat industryactually uses a ton of fossil fuel
and water and the lot of grainto feed livestock. I've actually heard that
I think the majority of the corngrown in the United States goes to feeding
livestock when you could use those resourcesto actually feed people directly. Because you
don't get a one to one conversionthe amount of food you spend to grow
an animal does not produce that amountof food and meat from that animal.

(41:27):
You need like between ten and onehundred times that much food to grow the
same like a pound of that meat. It takes about seventeen hundred to eighteen
hundred gallons of water to produce asingle pound of beef, compared to an
average of thirty nine gallons of waterper pound of vegetables, more or less
depending on what types of vegetables onwhere you grow them. The vegetarian diet
alone could dramatically reduce water sumption byas much as fifty eight percent per person.

(41:52):
Again, lots of caveats situated there. Thinking about where things are grown.
Like if you have a salad thatwas flown into you specifically from like
South Africa to the United States,the amount of phosphuel burned to get it
there was not worth it Like here, right, it was either negligible or
even potentially worse. So consider wherethings are coming from. Things grown in

(42:15):
regions that they don't normally grow andrequire a lot more water and environmental modifications
to make them stable. That's hardin the environment. So it's a mix.
But if you can get it locally, things that are grown naturally in
those areas or the you know,their ship does as well as could be
expected given where they come from,then you can't reduce that by quite a
bit. Right. Also, tomeat production itself is a major contributor to

(42:37):
greenhouse gas emissions. That specifically,the greenhouse gas emissions has proven to correlate
to climate change crisis, like thecrisis that we're experiencing right now. That
is one of the number one things, if not the thing that's contributing so
immediately, just eating meat is kindof perpetuating a system that is producing really

(42:59):
problematic kind of environmental events. Imean, that's why we're seeing literally we
gotta eat Like I just got likenotifications the other day a hurricane was hitting
Los Angeles at the same time asan earthquake. There's a lot of stuff
going on. It's a it's alittle bit intense right now. Yeah,
I don't think climate change can accountfor earthquakes, but we definitely have seen
the intensity of hurricanes increases, thetemperature of water increases. Right. This

(43:21):
goes back to the sort of economicportion of this. You just eating a
piece of meat doesn't necessarily do anythingto the environment. It's the fact that
that meat then was raised in acow on a farm and then shipped to
you, right like that was andall the combinations that. Yeah, it's
all the combination of things. Whenthe cows alive, they fart or burp
a whole bunch of methane in theatmosphere to the tunes of like billions of

(43:44):
metric tons of carbon. So youcan reduce your carbon footput by as much
as eight pounds if you every daythat you choose to not consume just meat,
Like we'ren't even talking about dairyan andeggs or anything else at this point,
right, So person skipping meet oneday a week for a year would
be like taking almost three hundred fiftymiles off of the road of driving a

(44:07):
car. And if everybody did this, it'd be like taking two hundred and
fifty million cars off the road everyyear. As how they've worked out the
math, that's probably an extreme estimation, like on the high end of that,
and that probably also doesn't factor inthings like electric cars and that sort
of thing. Right, But quickside note, shouldn't we just take two
hundred and fifty million cars off ofthe road? Yeah? Anyway, Yeah,

(44:27):
just get rid of them, justto reduce traffic. Yeah, just
get rid of them. Yeah,so there's a lot of benefits to eating
a plant based diet just once aweek. But you know, people do
this too for religious belief like theymay find and we've seen this time and
time again where the cows a sacredanimal, so it is not consumed,
it is worshiped. And you'll seethis kind of time and time again where
vegetarian diets are kind of embedded orentrenched in certain religious practices or spiritual beliefs.

(44:51):
And I think that's really important toowhen you understand that, like it
might not even be an ethical reason, it might be a specific moral reason
related to a higher power. Yeah. And there are also some people who's
just simply they don't even want thelabel. They don't care about feeling like
they fit in with a vegan orvegetarian community. They just prefer to not
eat a lot of animal products.It's usually meat that they tend to eat
a very little of, right,But that could also be a reason.

(45:14):
It's just that personal preference that peoplehave that they just don't like it or
they just don't want it to youknow, they just maybe they just prefer
other they like really prefer vegetables,and it's like they don't really care about
the fact that they're missing out onthe meat. They just really really like
their vegetables. That happens for somepeople, right right. So with all
that being said, that's this kindof general like understanding individual variables. But

(45:37):
we should look at the science parts. So what do nerds have to say
about the vegan vegetarian diets? Okay, so earlier we talked about calcium.
Smith two thousand and six found thatvegans can struggle with calcium and have a
greater risk of osteoporosis than they're nondairy counterparts. However, the lower amount
of calcium is not directly related tocalcium and or vitamin D deficits, as

(45:58):
they relate to bron factors, sodon't necessarily have more broken bones. Should
plan for getting more calcium in theirdiet, right. Gaming in twenty twenty
one discussed the idea that veganism isbeginning to emerge as a more popular lifestyle,
so it's becoming kind of part ofthe cultural zeitgeist, and more specifically,
they account for cultural origins of veganismand how those are beginning to permeate

(46:19):
what we describe or what we thinkof as cultural norms. So you're finding
that other parts of the world thatvegetarianism and veganism has been kind of a
staple practice for centuries is starting toget into places that didn't really have that
type of lifestyle for a long time. So now that that's starting to cultures
are starting to meld, you're startingto see more vegetarian experiences. Yep,

(46:40):
Sex Thing Garnett and Lauren More twentytwenty two discussed big veganism and how it's
beginning to grow across a variety ofgeographical reasons. Factors that contribute to big
veganism spread included following food ways,alternative food networks, cultural politics, and
material politics. So apparently you canget a job as a food geographer as
a thing. Yeah, so thisis something I learned to food geographer apparently

(47:02):
maps out like where rich resources offood and food deserts exist within specific places.
For example, like a food geographerin the United States might look at
specific areas where like more rural areas, more rural cities where it's hard to
get food stuffs to those places,or like reservations which are considered in a
lot of places are considered food desertsbecause there are certain resources that can't get

(47:24):
out to the reservations and theave Americanreservations out there. So food geographers look
at that and they do data analyzesbased on food accessibility. Wow, that's
cool. I'm glad that's the thingthat exists. Yeah, I thought that
was really really cool. I thoughtit was really fascinating. So behaviorally speaking,
though, we could spend hours andhours and hours breaking this down because

(47:45):
people have interesting relationships with food andfood aversions and all this stuff. But
I want to look at a fewfactors that we can account for when we
talk about behavior. First is thatfood is a primary reinforcer. Means that
like, we tend to really likefood, We're naturally motivated to go eat
food, Yes, and it's primaryneed. So we develop really complex,

(48:05):
sometimes detrimental relationships with food. Wedevelop these really unique experiences with food for
different reasons. We learn what welike, we learn we dislike, we
learn how to prepare meals. Allof these contributed the types of foods we
eat, including whether or not welike certain types of vegan food. Like
oh, you might have a particularexperience with tofu, like maybe you don't

(48:27):
like the texture, maybe you don'tlike that, So you might have a
unique relationship with the types of foodthat are coming up in your area.
Yeah. Absolutely. Another thing thatwas an account for this is just our
general learning histories and the sort ofcontexts in which we've contacted these foods.
We may have been exposed to lotsof experiences with foods when we were growing
up. For instance, Shane ateso much pasta when he was a kid

(48:47):
because it was cheap that he gotreally sick of it and he never picks
pasta as a go to food that'sover it. Yeah, it's true experience
is like being forced to eat foodsor traditions around foods might create different learning
history use that influence our behaviors.My mom, I think, very cleverly
told me that I was smart fortrying a lot of different foods, and
I wanted to be smart, soI was like very open minded to trying

(49:08):
different foods. Yeah. And Ilearned early on that mushrooms were mote of
my favorite foods and always have been. And the more mushrooms I try,
the more like mushrooms. Yeah,makes sense. And I've also like I
don't call a time in my lifewhen I did not like a lot of
dark, leafy greens and other vegetables. Like I've always loved broccoli, I've
always loved spinach, I've always lovedsquash. I've always loved like all of

(49:29):
these other vegetables my whole life.So I kind of grew up around a
wide, wide palette. But Ialso grew up around people who were very
very much into meat eating and triedthings also like chicken livers and hearts and
cow tongue and all sorts of differenttypes of meats, various seafoods and that
sort of thing. Yeah, itwas just a very very wide range of

(49:52):
things. Yeah, that makes sense. I could see that I was raised
to try things, but I wasalso like, we didn't get a lot
of opportunity to try it they becausewe just had no money. Like it
was it was pretty much like,okay, So like a cut of steak
was London broil, like it wasbeat It was tough and chewy, you
know, it was pasta every night. It was peanut butter and jelly.
It was you know, I livedthat life. Whereas it was hot dogs

(50:13):
wrapped in a piece of white bread, you know, like, Wow,
that's the kind of the diet thatI grew up with. And not to
say that people don't have that worse. People absolutely one hundred percent have that
worse. I was very fortunate tohave food, but I didn't get a
lot of opportunities to try stuff likethat. So I didn't do that until
later, and then I was like, I'm gonna try everything, and then
learned I don't like to try everythingthat's fair. So speaking of that,
let's talk about food accessibility and opportunity. So with vegan options becoming more and

(50:37):
more accessible and available, it makessense that veganism would be kind of on
the rise in areas where plant basedoptions are not quite as available. Though
we might find the folks may simplynot make the attempt or they may not
know how. And I could speakfor this. When I was a kid,
we had morning Star. Morning Starproducts were the product that everybody ate.
That was it. Yeah, theoptions at least just for like the
stuff that's out there that's like specificallyplant based stuff that's like products like the

(51:00):
meats up stutes. There's so manythings. Now. All my vegan friends
when we were kids, like lovedit. Was Boca and morning Star.
Those are the two things that everybodywas like, yes, we got to
get those, and there was itwas kind of like, you know,
Cobra's versus Scorpions, Like it waslike two different rival gangs. I had
the Book of Friends that I hadthe morning Star gang. I was a
morning Star kid. I couldn't standthe both of stuff. Now I eat

(51:21):
Boca Burgers all time. Yeah,I like them both. I think a
lot of people who aren't in thesort of vegetarian community, they sort of
think that that is all that exists. Still I've heard anything that maybe it's
what they've heard of. So likeif we ever go someplace where someone's like,
oh it made a vegan option,ninety percent of the time is going
to be a Portobello fun yeah,And the other time, like, if

(51:42):
it's not that, then it's probablyone of those morning Star patties and they're
good. Like I like them all. I like I like Boca, like
morning Star, like they're fine,but there's there are just so many more
options out there. And also likeI'm okay just eating vegetables, Like I
said, I love vegetables. Yeah, And also just so you know,
we appreciate the attempt. We're verylike flattered you would even try. We
do, yes completely. The factthat even thought that it was worth trying

(52:04):
to help accommodate it is very verykind. So I don't want kind to
disparage that. Yeah. Yeah.Another one is response effort. This is
I think, just understanding what ittakes to engage in some diet like this,
learning how to prepare new meals,create new recipes, change dietary practices.
It does take effort. This isnot like you just flip switch into
everything. It's like golden Some peoplemay find that the juice is not worth

(52:28):
the squeeze, as they say,when it comes the amount of work that
it can take. And that's notjust in preparing meals, but that's also
learning how to tell if something thatyou've bought is vegan. It's learning to
tell like how do you pick outrestaurants? How do you identify ingredients that
you need? There's so many thingsthat go at like what things shouldn't you
have anymore? And like all ofthat takes time, it takes effort,

(52:50):
it takes learning, but eventually,like you get very good at reading labels
on packaging, yes, yes youdo. That's not in everybody's sort of
wheelhouse. You know, that's notsomething they wants to do. They don't
want to really think about their foodvery much. So and I get that.
I think the more we move towardlike what's really nice now is how
many products it'll just have a littlestamp that says vegan on it, Yeah,
and so that you really don't haveto try very hard. If it's

(53:12):
got that stamp on it, youcan just you can accept that you're good
to move on. Sure, Ithink for some people, if they wanted
to try it but they didn't wantto do the effort, you could just
sort of ask say, is thatvegan? They'll the waiters say I don't
know, and you're like, yeah, whatever. But sometimes they'll say,
oh, it's not, but wecan make it vegan if you want to.
And so yeah, I think there'sthings that are moving toward making it
less effortful. Yeah. I thinkanother part of that too is like if

(53:34):
you are somebody and this is justkind of like a little tidbit, if
you're somebody who's interested in becoming veganor vegetarian, just know that you're probably
gonna mess up, and it's Okay, give yourself some grace. Like I've
seen people give up on vegan diesbecause they mess up once or twice and
they're like, well, that's it. It's like, no, I have
I still like we'll mess up hereand there, like not too long ago,
Like I, like I said,I try to be really cognizant of
like what I eat, and nottoo long ago. I got a bag

(53:57):
of like pizza combos and they havelike a b a beef broth in it
or something like that, and Ididn't know I missed it when I looked
at the ingredients and I saw it. And once I saw it, I
was like, oh, I'm notgonna eat the rest of these, But
it was I'd already I'd already messedup, you know. Or like some
soups will have like a broth thatyou don't know about and you're like,
oh, broccoli cheddar. That soundsvegetarian. It's like, no, it's
probably made with a beef broth ora beef tallow So you gotta be careful

(54:17):
with that. But you're gonna messup, and it's okay to mess up.
Yeah, absolutely. I think theall or nothing attitude is extremely damaging
when it comes to a lot ofthings like this, I'm probably on the
more extreme end of sticking to it, but I honestly think and people have
said that, they're like, likethey reduced me, and I'm like,
that's great. Like, honestly,any little effort you make, I think

(54:37):
is great. Yeah, the morethe better. But like, if that's
whatever you can do, and youdo that thing, that's awesome. I
love to hear that. Agreed.You don't have to totally adopt a vegan
diets to have the kind of impactthat you might want to have, And
I think just just reduce a littlebit, you know, choose alternatives.
That's it. Yeah, nice andeasy. Nice and easy. All right.

(54:57):
Speaking of alternatives, we have analternative to good content, which is
bad content in the form of advertisement. Let's wrap this up with a few
interesting tidbits here. Many people mayhave hurt this, but I always think
it's fun to share. Is thatIndia has the lowest rate of meat consumption
in the world, with about fourhundred million people identifying as vegetarian. That's

(55:22):
more people there in the United States. I think, between China and India,
that's a third of the entire planet'spopulation of human beings. Yes,
I think it's a lot, alot of people. Yeah. Israel has
the highest percentage of vegans, withabout five point two percent of their total
population practicing veganism and identifying as vegan. I would have never guessed that,

(55:45):
never in a million years. No, not at all. The majority of
Eritrean and Ethiopian food is plant based. This I did know. There's a
plant There is an Ethiopian restaurant whereI live. Going there, you basically
have to make no modifications to makeit vegan. It's everything is just plant.
Yeah, it's great, really great. Jamaican eat all food etall comes
from the word vital in Rastafarian.Okay. It's based on Rastafari traditions and

(56:07):
usually includes foods that are organic,unprocessed, and free of additives, and
a lot of vegan food options.So as a matter of fact, one
of the only Jamaican restaurants it's inmy town is a vegan restaurant called Kale
Cafe, and it's so good.Oh, I would love to check that
out. I come with me andI'll bring you get some jerk mushrooms.
The Jamaican spices like jerk spices thatthey use are so good. They know

(56:30):
how they use they know how tothrow some spices together. Oh yeah,
uh huh okay. I have astat here couched in caveats. So vegan
diet can reduce your carbon foot printby about seventy three percent. Some ways
it can be higher, many waysit can be lower. I think the
important thing to consider is how yougo about doing it. I think a
lot of the alternatives end up beinga higher carbon footprint than simply eating produce,

(56:52):
be that things like synthetic animal orsynthetics like pleather, you know,
or things like fake meat products.They're almost always much much lower than meat
themselves. But it just depends.As I said, if you're flying your
saladin from like the the other sideof the world for your meal every day,
then your carbon footprint is going tobe extremely high. Like eating local

(57:12):
in many situations, it might beless environmentally damaging to eat locally raised beef
than it would be to eat someexotic products that were harvest and flown in
from all over the world right fora particular meal. So just consider like
those things. But that being said, you could theoretically sort of weigh it
out that way, right, Anotherstat that comes up I've heard a few

(57:34):
times, but again as Couchton andsome you know, there's an asterisk here,
is that every vegan saves about onehundred animals a year by not eating
meat compared to somebody who does.Now that's it's where that number comes from.
How they calculate that is a littlebit challenging. I think they're basing
it on like general meat consumption inthe United States. But that's something that
has come up quite a few times. Yeah, something to nothing right,

(57:55):
and everybody is parade, but allalcohol is vegan. Some products are filtered
through ising glass, which is fishbladder, gelatin, egg whites or milk
proteins, and some cases with winesalso charred bones. Yep, I've heard
that blood and other visceral tissue mightmake it in there. In addition to
that, again just ruining your day. Sugar, particularly white sugar, may

(58:17):
not be vegan because some processes forrefining sugar include the use of charred cowbones
or other animal bones. Yeah,so hate to bove everybody out, and
you might not care, and that'sfine, Like we're not trying to convert
you, but we just want youto know why people do this thing.
Yeah, I will say for myself, I don't think the whole world needs
to be vegan. I don't eventhink everybody needs to be primarily vegan.

(58:39):
I think the biggest problem is peopleeat way more meat than they need to
in places where they have abundant accessto other food types. When we're talking
about food deserts, there are manyplaces in the world where if they tried
to cut out meat altogether and otheranimal products, they would starve to death
because they don't have access to otherfoods. And so like, we can't

(59:00):
ask or expect that the world becomevegan. That's not a reasonable place for
us to be. But we couldseverely reduce the amount of meat and other
animal products that we consume to helpimpact I think both food security because as
I said, we're using an enormousamount of land to support these animals that
if we use that same land tosupport people, it would be much easier

(59:22):
to reduce food and security because we'dbe growing crops that would directly feed people,
rather than ninety percent of the caloriesfrom those crops going to making it
a single basically feeding one person,right, because you know, it'd be
like ninety percent of that goes toa pound of meat or something like that.
So anyway, I'm as I said, I'm of the mind that it's
not all or nothing. I'm alsoof the mind that it doesn't make sense

(59:44):
to expect that the whole world needsto be vegan, and I think there
are very healthy and economic and sustainableways that people can eat diets that include
animal products, and I think thatit makes the most sense to just do
you figure out how we can bestmove forward knowing that how can we use
so that we're not using an enormousexcess beyond what we need, and how
can we do it sustainably so thatwhere we do have those things, we're

(01:00:07):
practicing it in a responsible way.That's my thought. I agree. I
couldn't have said it better myself,sweet, So anyway, that's veganism.
I think I think we sort ofround it out, you know, this
is it's something that it's important tome. I think I've been a lot
more sort of preachy fire and brimstonegung home in the past, but I,
like I said, not so much. I think I was a little

(01:00:29):
little less flexible about how I sawother people's participation and whether they called themselves
begin or not than I used tobe, but I think I've sort of
grown up around that, and Ialways hated the speeda message of fear and
anger and hatred and like it's bad. Yeah, this like good riddance getting
bitten by a shark, Like whatthe hell is that? Like? No,

(01:00:49):
we should never celebrate the suffering overthe humans, particularly an instances like
that. PETA is ridiculous. Theyare ridiculous. Just so that everybody here
is aware, most vegans think thatPETA is ridiculous us. Yeah, yeah,
not on board with that messaging atall. They're the Westboro Baptist Church
of vegans. That is such agood analogy. Wow, everything about that.

(01:01:13):
But that's really really it's real,it's really what it is. So
but they're also letigious. So youknow, we don't have lawyers. Don't
see us. Don't tell them that. They can't know that we don't have
lawyers. They well, we'll getone anyway. I think that's all we
have for this until we get somerecommendations. You are for recommendations. Let's
do it perfect. And actually beforewe do that, we always need to

(01:01:35):
shut out our acknowledgments really quick whichis that if you liked what you heard
today and would like to support us, thank you a little bit surprised,
but that's great. You can likeand subscribe, follow, we'll leave a
rating and review all the things thatyou do on podcast. Pick up some
merch at our merg store. Joinus on Patreon. If you do,
get all kinds of bonus things likeearly episodes, ad free episodes, and
that sort of thing. We're reallylooking to grow that community as much as
we can. We have a cooldiscord server. People can talk to each

(01:01:55):
other, they can argue with us. If we get enough people, we'll
start hanging out y'all virtually. Becausewe'd like to sort of celebrate the growth
in our community, so considered comingon and joining us on patron to get
those things. The people who havealready made that leap, This amazing group
of humans that makes it possible forus to do the things that we like
to do includes Mike, m Meghan, Layla, Mike t, Justin,

(01:02:17):
Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, and Ashley.
Thank you so much. Thank youalso to my team of people without whom
I could not do this show.Thank you to Justin for his music and
editing, Shane writing fact checking,and in particular your work on today's episode.
And of course thank you too,Emma Willson as our social media coordinator
who helps us stay present on theWorldwide Web. Yes, yes, that

(01:02:39):
ever growing internet place. Yes,indeed. Now I think I'm ready for
recommendations. Let's do itations. Iam recommending a beverage. It is called
Liquid Death. Yes, it isa sparkling water. They can be a

(01:03:00):
bit pricey, but I've found themfor very reasonable prices as well. They
use really good food puns and someof their flavor titles like they have Severed
Lime and rest in Peach and ArmlessPalmer, and so they're all they're just
meant to be funny and kind ofsilly that they're really large for sparkling water
cans, which I find necessary becauseI go through a lot of sparkling water

(01:03:22):
cans. Yeah, and so anyway, if you enjoy that nice sparkling water
mouth feel, I would recommend checkingout Liquid Death's good stuff. Yeah,
it's a good product. I likeit. I like it speaking of because
you know, it's fun, becauseit's like run by metal heads, like
it's it's very clearly like people whoappreciate like alternative music, and I really
like that, so I've been right. Speaking of alternative music, I recommend

(01:03:43):
a new album that just came outby a band called Ringworm. Have you
ever listened to Ringworm? I've neverlistened to Ringworm. Ringworm might be the
maddest band that has ever existed.Okay, they used to be a hardcore
band. They turned into like kindof more of a thrash metal band.
And their new record is called Seeingthrough Fire, and specifically I recommend the
songs No saw Us, No Quarter, No Mercy as One Song, or

(01:04:05):
death Hoax, both very good songs. The singer's name is human Furnace first
name. I think his full namehis Christian birth name is Oh, you'd
be so mad if I said thathis real name is something different, but
it's obviously a human furnace. Hesounds like a human furnace. That's exactly
what he sounds like. He's some yat. Their new record is so

(01:04:26):
good. It's just a really good, like thrash metal record. Fun parkour
dudes that started writing thrash metal anddo it really competently. Oh fun,
Yeah, all right, well,very good if you would like to tell
us about ringworm or liquid death,or veganism, or anything related to something
we talked about in this show,you should definitely reach out to us.
You can email us directly info atWWDWWD podcast dot com, or on all

(01:04:46):
the social media platforms. We lookforward to hearing from each and every one
of you, so please send usyour messages and if you like it,
we might even read it on airexactly, so that could be a thing
that happens. And I think thatis pretty much all I have anything for
you, Shane, or anything beforeI forgot before we wrap up. Uh
No, I think that covers it. Oh I did, I almost forgot.
I should have mentioned this at thetop of this podcast. Awards are

(01:05:08):
closing and go to podcast Awards dotcom. We're under the Skeptics Guide category.
Can vote for us for podcasts People'sChoice Awards sort of thing, and
we'd be very honored. We werehonored just to be nominated. So thank
you all, yes, please pleaseplease go vote, Thank you for listening,
Thank you for recording with me today. Shane, and I think that's
it. So this is Abraham,this is Shane. We're out. See
Yah you've been listening to Why WeDo What We Do. You can learn

(01:05:30):
more about this and other episodes bygoing to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks
for listening, and we hope youhave an awesome day. All right,

(01:05:57):
but we're actually not psychology about podcasts. We talk talk about the things that
as we said, we talked aboutthe things that people do. What picular
do you say? Hold on?You said, we're not a psychology about podcast

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