#22. Victor Kuo: The Game Changers
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How's it going, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. Thanks to you, our podcast is growing each week, and I just want to take this opportunity to say we are extremely thankful for your support. Our hope is that you're getting something out of this show because having the chance to share and engage with you is truly, truly the reason why we do this. That being said, you can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com. Also, if you've been enjoying this podcast, please go ahead, rate, comment, or subscribe.

Now, our guest today has been on the show before. He is a certified sports nutrition coach and founder of FitFresh, a fitness nutrition and meal prep company in Shanghai. So today we talk about the Netflix documentary, The Game Changers. Yes, The Game Changers. You know the one. Everyone's talking about it. It's gone viral and it's poured a bucket of gasoline on an already heated argument between vegans and omnivores or meat eaters.

And if you're unfamiliar with the Game Changers, it's a documentary that basically claims we humans are healthier and perform better by eating a completely plant-based diet. They do this by trying to show that meat is bad for you and by linking meat consumption with all types of health problems and athletic deficiencies.

This documentary is produced by a lot of big names like James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Chris Paul, and it's reignited a lot of heated debate online. There's now a bunch of sources claiming to debunk the documentary, and around and around we go. But our discussion today focuses less on the individual claims of the Game Changers and

but really on the larger net overall effect it has and whether or not we should really be removing meat from our diet. So without further ado, please welcome back Victor Kuo. ♪ The little girl's gonna die ♪ ♪ She's living in a lie ♪ ♪ With her eyes inside her eye, eye, eye, eye, eye ♪ ♪ Well, I didn't wish she was my eye ♪

Alright guys, cheers! Cheers! This is uh...

This is the cobbler on again. We got to finish this bottle. This is strong. Yeah, but this is the strong one, right? Oh, shit. It's really good, but it's really fucking strong. This is the only bottle that's taken like five episodes to drink. I'm 100% confident we'll finish it. So this is the one that when we first opened, I remember Justin having like four sips and he's like, I feel it. Yeah. Yeah, I was pretty hammered like 10 minutes in. It was really quick. Yeah, that was our best episode, I think.

That means this one should be a fun one. All right. Victor. Welcome back, my friend. Thanks for having me, man. It's good to be back. Thanks for pushing around your schedule to be here. Really appreciate it. Glad to be here. And also, fun fact.

You are our first return guest ever. Oh, yeah. I feel honored. There will only be one. There will only be one. Really? Yeah. Really? So am I going to be able to come back again? No, no. I'm saying there will only be one first return guest. I was like, damn, I'm going to be the only guy who comes back? Every show. You're part of a crew. Wow.

How does it feel? It feels very good. Are you going to make up for any lost words from last time? Well, we'll go as long as the whiskey lasts. Or longer, if you guys want. Because we have more bottles. Okay, let's do it. I'm glad we took that detox vial. Nice call. That's true. So, Victor, I guess the...

I guess the most obvious thing to ask you, right? Because everyone's talking about this Game Changers documentary now. It's like spreading like wildfire. Have you watched it? Well, yeah, I watched it basically because you forced me to watch it. No, no. No. So, yeah, I...

Like, I think we talked before the show that basically I hadn't really planned to watch it until you said, hey, come on the show and let's, you know, kind of talk about what was presented by this documentary. So I watched it and...

Well, I guess, I don't know. How do you guys want to do this? Okay, before we dig into the details of it and all the claims, because it claims a lot of things, right? What was your first takeaway in general? Okay, so I think... Let me just give you my big picture on what I think about the film. I think that, yes, the producers have an agenda, and their overall goal...

I don't have a problem with it. I think reducing meat consumption, especially for the main audience, America, would indeed have health benefits and improve our ecological footprint. So I think the agenda is there and I'm fine with it. But the way certain things are presented in the film...

may be misleading or confusing to anybody who doesn't regularly review scientific or nutrition science literature. So that's just kind of my big takeaway on it. Okay, so I guess the next question would be, if you had to pick one thing, what would you think would be the most misleading thing, in your opinion, about Game Changers? Oh, there's a lot. Okay, let's just start from the top then.

Okay. So, well, let me say this. I don't know if you guys noticed right away, but they never say vegetarian or vegan in this movie. They always say plant-based diet, right? And so I think the producers do a really good job of

They do present certain pieces of scientific evidence for certain things, but then they leave a certain vagueness in the way they interpret it so that, you know, if somebody tries to beat them up on what their interpretation is, they can be like, oh, we didn't say that, right? So, for example, let's say I think one of them was like,

I'm trying to think. One of them was like, oh, okay, Nate Diaz beat Conor McGregor. He's on a plant-based diet, right? And, well, like, to the average viewer, the way they present it, it's like, oh, the plant-based diet had a lot to do with him winning. But I think, like...

Conor McGregor came back and whooped his ass. It was almost a close fight, but yes, Conor McGregor in the rematch won. Right, but it wasn't like... I don't think he changed his diet, right? No. And so it'd be like saying...

you know, Ruiz, like a lot of Ruiz, Joshua one, he's like, oh, he's such a fat guy. And he's the heavyweight champion. Should we all be fat guys now? And then we're like, awesome athletes. It doesn't make sense, right? So there's just a lot of experiential, like plant based athletes coming and saying, oh,

the plant-based diet is what makes my performance, but really there's no actual like measuring or scientific method to measure how the science really backs up athletic performance. And the whole premise of the movie is, oh, these super athletes, right? These super performing athletes and that the plant-based diet can fuel a top level athlete, right?

And I think they're trying to sort of get you to think like, could it be superior? When in fact, I think we should say that, yes, you can perform at a very high level on a plant-based diet. But to say that it's superior, these are the things that are very difficult to measure. And the way they present it to the average viewer, I think, can be confusing.

Especially that scene where James Wilkes, right? James Wilkes is the name, right? He's doing the battle rope, right? And they're saying at his gym, like 30 minutes was like, if you do it 30 minutes, you get on the board, right? And like the record was like maybe 45 minutes. And then he says, once he turned to a plant-based diet, he did it for like over an hour without even breaking a sweat. Like that was- That was fucking bogus. Like how can you, like that's a ridiculous, ridiculous-

I can't even believe that scene exists. Like, how did that get into the final cut? You know, like, yeah, I could say, oh, man, whiskey makes me like, you know, like, and I'll go like do like 100 jumping jacks. I'd be like, oh, I can only do 15 before, you know, like, it doesn't make sense, right? Like, it's just the lack of scientific method in certain ways they present things, you know, like,

And to a lot, like to us, like we look at it and it's like, oh, whatever, you know. But like I think to a lot of people, they saw that and were like, whoa, like, wow, could I really double my endurance from a plant-based diet? Like, sorry, that doesn't seem within the realm of possibility. But do you think they needed to...

exaggerate a little bit to get people to think a little bit differently because the you know the momentum and all of the tradition is on the meat side of the business so they kind of have to push the envelope yeah um okay so i think that's the thing right like i don't know why it has to be

a plants versus meat thing, right? Like, can't we just all be friends? Right. Like we can eat. So honestly, like I said before, uh, I think the, the word plant based diet is actually a good word.

It's a good diet. We should be eating mostly plants. And a portion of our diet may come from animal products. But the majority of what we eat, if we want to be maximally or optimally healthy and perform at our best, the most of what we eat should be plants.

And so we could say that's a plant-based diet. Our diet is based on plants, but let's say supplement with animal products or other things. And that would be actually the ideal diet, I think. Sorry, I forgot where we were. Well, I think it just all goes back to, I mean, like humans are just not very good at thinking through like,

through like in shades of degrees, right? Like it's very binary. Everyone wants to be very binary. Like you're either on this side or you're on that side. You know, you're either with the plant people or you're with the meat people. You got to pick a side here, right? In this heated, heated argument. But I mean, and I think that's where a lot of that debate is coming is like, is it better to be completely 100% animal product free?

Or is meat good for you? And I think that's really the bait because whether you want to believe the Game Changers documentary, which I thought was very convincing when I first saw it, um,

Or not. I think the main question is, is meat bad for you? Because that's what the Game Changers documentary is trying to infer, is that meat is bad for you. Yeah. That's the real question. That's the biggest problem. Yeah. So actually, that is the biggest problem I have against this movie is that

They're saying meat is bad for you. Okay. And so, um, you know, they pull a couple examples, uh, to say why, for example, um,

Like, for example, let's say they mentioned hemi-iron. I don't know if you guys remember. They use all these fancy terms. And then they use like, oh, the hemi-iron and this and that. And then you get all scared. So that's how you convince people who don't know the nutritional arena is you say a scientific word. You say your interpretation in layman's terms.

And then any viewer who doesn't know what that means is like, oh, yeah, you're right. Just going along for the ride. But in their defense, though, they do have very credible doctors and scientists in the documentary also getting paid. Right, right. Well, no. I mean, look, anybody, I believe that every doctor has some sort of, some agenda or may receive some monetary benefit for whatever reason.

They do. But most of them probably believe or have convinced themselves to believe in their standpoint. Or maybe they just love money that fucking much. But many of them do believe wholeheartedly in what they see. But this goes back again to why nutrition science is so confusing is that...

you can only look at one variable, right? So we say, okay, all right, let's measure all this meat intake. Or say, okay, yeah, guys who eat a ton of meat do have higher rates of cancer. Correlation, not causation, right? But...

You know, we're not looking at what other stuff are they eating? Yeah, if they're getting all their meat from hamburgers, like fucking double-deckers and like...

KFC. Downing Cokes every single second. That's a big piece of the picture that's missing from that study. They're lumping all meat into one category and there's a vast difference between quality meat versus processed meat. Like you get at McDonald's, right? I mean, it's both meat, but it's completely two different things. Correct. So it's... And that's not to say suddenly, okay, just because you get all organic meat, it's always going to be good, right? Like...

You have to sort of keep an eye on the whole picture. So, like, for example, going back to that hemi iron stuff, okay? I don't know. The reason that popped out to me because I was... Last time we were talking about Impossible Burger, right? Yeah. And I was researching. They create a synthetic hemi to create that...

meaty, like bleeding flavor and texture. Well, what is heme? It's a form. So iron, it comes in a form. It's like, I don't want to get too much into science because I'm not like a super expert on this. I don't want to pretend, you know? So I just read about it because I'm interested, right? So the iron comes in two forms, heme iron and non-heme iron. And it's, heme iron always comes from animal products, animal products.

proteins while non-hemi iron is all from plants now the movie makes a point that's hemi iron causes certain I think it was like heart heart or cardiovascular disease stuff like that and you know again this is a very careful wording like in reality hemi iron is a essential nutrient for humans and

So to say that it causes, you know, like heart disease is completely wrong.

But elevated intake does or is correlated with heart disease. So, you know, it's easy for somebody who looks at a study and is like, oh, lots of high levels of hemi iron in blood, high levels of cardiovascular disease, then hemi iron causes heart disease. But it doesn't work that way, right? So we need it. So there's always a balance here.

Usually, most things in modern day society, our problems are that it's way out of balance. So I don't know, back a couple years, maybe five years ago, fish oil, omega-3s became the hottest thing. It's super popular.

And so what we slowly figured out is that it's not so much that omega-3s, they're sort of falling out of favor now, by the way. It's just ridiculous like this. But what we're finding now is that omega-3 is not some miracle fat. It's that over time due to industrial farming and stuff like that, like our omega-6 fats have elevated dramatically.

like by like 50 to 100 times. And so slowly we figured out that once your omega-6 and omega-3 fat balance is out of whack, your body starts to get inflamed. So that's why when we suddenly started increasing omega-3 fats in the diet, ooh, we saw this like almost miracle-like improvement in inflammation and all sorts of different

Again, it's like correlation. Most nutritional studies can only prove correlation and basically never causation. Why is that? Is that because there could be so many other factors that contribute to a person's lifestyle? Yeah, there's just too many. Think about it. We've been studying heart disease. We've been studying diabetes for years.

Longer than we've all been alive, right? And, you know, we haven't figured it out because there's just a million things that could be going on. And then when you find one thing that shows a correlation that looks promising, you say, okay, let's research that.

And then that study takes like a fucking decade and we're dead. You know? So, yeah, it's, you know, we'll keep improving our knowledge. But for us to make conclusive statements on the body of research we have right now today is,

It's almost impossible. So when somebody comes out and says so strongly, like in this movie, like, oh, meat is bad, plants, you know, like it's just it's not taking a very scientific view of the existing evidence, in my opinion.

- Well, I think both sides do it, right? To your point, once a body, a research comes out and it shows a correlation in favor of, let's say the vegan diet or in favor of meat eating or an omnivorous diet, something like that, then that camp wants to take that research and just march with it, right? And look, and then just kind of shove it in your face and be like, see, this is the research, this is the scientific data, and they wanna just ride with it, right?

Right. And so I think I'm the same way. I believe a certain way is healthy. If I truly believe it, I will tell everybody I know to eat like this. And so maybe another, like some scientist does a study and he's like, look, this is the new best way to eat.

And, you know, I don't blame him for shouting from the rooftop, like, you know, like, everybody should eat like this, you know. He may just be pursuing, you know, he may have good intentions and, but, you know, everybody has to evaluate for themselves whether they believe that's true or not, you know. So I'm looking at their website right now and

The Game Changers website? Game Changers website. Because, you know, they're putting a lot of marketing behind this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's James Cameron, big names. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan from the film industry. And then you have athletes like Lewis Hamilton. He just won his sixth F1 championship. You got Djokovic. You got Chris Paul. You got some pretty heavy hitters. Why did they...

In your opinion, why do they assemble this type of team? And what agenda does the film have? Because these guys have everything, right? Like Lewis Hamilton, Djokovic. They don't need to attach themselves. That is hilarious. So, you know, like I know in the movie, I remember there's this part where they knock...

the cigarette industry are like, oh, they use this playbook. Playbook, playbook. They're relating the meat industry to the tobacco industry in the way that they market meat. Right. And okay, well, first in that segment, they presented it in a way where it looks like meat is the new killer, like cigarettes, right? Although they didn't expressively say that,

But I think at least that's the feeling I got from watching it. Well, it's very theatrical. Right, right, right. First of all, like James Wolk, like, I mean, he's fine now. So all of this stuff, he was like acting in his own movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was like reenacting that battle rope shit. Like he was reenacting that shit, right? Then they had that test tube where they did these clinical sort of things, but it was done in a way that was very...

sort of like trying to tell a story and then they have the burritos with the meat without the meat and then they run it through the centrifugal you know you don't like that I hate it I hate it because okay yeah eating some animal fats will leave saturated fat residue in your blood

What? And they mentioned some stuff about the blood vessel lining, which I did not hear. Endothelial some shit. They just threw out all these crazy words. They surmised that this potentially could...

or could not have an impact on athletic performance. Right. So, uh, this study was basically a non is a mumbo jumbo, non like conclusive, nothing, you know? Why is that though? Uh, okay. So, okay. So they found that, uh,

They found that there's fat residue in the blood, right, after running it through the centrifuge. But what evidence do we have that fat in your blood decreases the game day performance for any existing sport? I don't think we don't have anything, evidence supporting that, right? Well, even if we're not talking about athletic performance, let's say just cardiovascular health, wouldn't that...

Isn't that bad for cardiovascular health if there's more fat in the blood stream? Well, so after you eat a meal of anything, then that happens to be present in your blood more than... If you have a sustained amount of saturated fat in your blood, then yeah, you may have a problem. But

Okay, so let's say diabetes is a problem. People are saying elevated blood sugar and insulin are a huge problem right now, right? If you ate a couple bananas and checked your blood, you could check the blood and then, ooh, I ate a steak. I have a low blood insulin. You're going to have diabetes. Like, what the fuck? Right? It's...

It could, you know, like just the way they presented it is not, it's not conclusive of, it looks scary, right? It looks scary. And like going back to that blood insulin test, if we did that,

and showed everybody that how elevated your insulin was after eating a couple fruits, you could scare the shit out of people from eating fruits ever again. So they're using a narrative or like a film device that they could apply, but it's not really scientific in the sense that I could tell the complete opposite side of the story by just having like a bunch of monkeys eat bananas versus meat and measure their...

blood levels and then make the correlation that okay these guys are all gonna get diabetes. So they said that blood lining thing, I'm sorry I didn't look it up. I didn't want to get in too much into science because like I care more about the big picture stuff. But so I do believe what they stated about that was probably factually correct that it could potentially improve your blood flow, right?

But they're trying to make a point that this somehow impacts your sports performance on a game day. So is that why they brought in these top producers? So it's kind of like lending credibility. So Djokovic says that. Chris Paul says that. This is going back to this is the same playbook that they blamed...

the cigarette company industry of using. They brought in big name, top level athletes to promote their video, right? Or promote their vegan or plant-based. Yeah, promote their viewpoint. Their agenda. Which, you know, I mean, every industry is going to do it. Like if you want to be seen in today's like over...

Like, too many messages, right? You need thought leaders. Fine. It's fine. But just the way everything was presented, you know, it can be misleading. But, you know, I think going back to this, I think that, you know, if they can convince Americans as a whole to maybe cut back meat consumption, right?

I think America as a whole would, in fact, benefit from a health perspective if they were to eat more plants and less meat. So, you know, whether this movie... I don't care that they're doing all of this...

shady stuff, which you know, I do think they're doing some shady stuff with the you know The way things are presented and how the data is shown It'll be very tricky for most people to look through past like we'll see through all the the techniques they use but if overall

I do believe the movie could potentially have a net positive effect on American people's health. I do too. So beyond... So clearly you have maybe a bit of an axe to grind. Not axe to grind, but you disagree with the stylistic way that they made the film. But do you...

Do you agree with the basic premise of the film? And what if that... Using the stylistic pieces, what they needed to do to make the point. So from the general, I guess, motive of the movie, how do you feel? Okay. So we need to discuss then what the premise and the motive is then. Well, for me...

For me, I think the real premise of the movie is they want to prove that top-level athletes can perform at that level using a plant-based diet. And not only can they do it, you know, not only is it something that...

the top level athletes can do, but it's healthy for you and they want to convince you to convert to why. What's wrong with that though? Yeah. Why are they doing that though? Why? Yeah. What's in it for them? Well, so there, that's a good question. I don't know. I didn't do any research on the, the producers specifically. I know that, well, for example, some, I don't know whether they have, uh, you know, their foot in the water or not. Um,

But, you know, overall, let's say if we reduce meat consumption, this is how I see it. I don't know them specifically. So if we were to reduce meat consumption, we could reduce our ecological footprint, improve...

American health. That's how, what I would like to see from me, what they can get from it, man, I don't know. They could sell their vegan diets and do, you know, you know, the movie, obviously you can make some money, right? Like, uh, they don't need money, right? Like, well, I think these guys are all, are all rich and they're at the top of their, uh,

They don't need the publicity. I mean, they really don't need it. - I think, and this term I'm about to say has gotten a bad stigma, but I don't mean this in a bad way at all. I think it's activist propaganda. So what I mean is I think they're just trying to fight fire with fire because I feel they believe, there's like two camps, right? And if they're saying that, and I have no idea what the truth is in this, but they're saying that the meat industry is like the tobacco industry.

There was this big meat cabal, right? And they're spending a lot of money. And over a long time, generations and generations, they have kind of convinced us and brainwashed us about meat is good. Meat protein is good. It builds muscle. If you want to be big and strong, you got to eat a lot of meat. And I think they're just trying to fight fire with fire with their own activist propaganda ideas.

And what I took out of the Game Changers documentary wasn't so much about the athletic performance side. I think they were just using that to highlight a point

But I think their main message was meat is straight up bad for you. I think that's what they're trying to get you to believe. That just meat is straight up bad for you. And that is the real debate. Like that's the real question because that's a huge claim to make. And, you know, they were trying to correlate meat with like higher rates of like cardiovascular disease, cancer, all these things, right? So it's like, well, that's a huge claim to make. And

So what are they specifically is there any specific data really saying that meat is a straight-up bad for you? Like we all agree you should be eating more plants I think everyone can agree on that right but is but is meat bad for you, right? Is that the is that the is it you know, there's no There's no evidence There's no body of research saying that yes meat is bad for you Like I said, we cannot draw that conclusion from any existing body of evidence, right?

But, you know, like, I think, you know, this is how I see it. Like, they made this claim for, you know, and these guys are not idiots, you know, like, they probably know full well that they can't make that claim. Right. But they want to do it because, okay, let's say...

If we say, if we say like, oh, you should eat more plants, nobody's going to fucking eat more plants, right? Like, so tell everybody meat is terrible for you. Maybe they'll start eating more plants. You know, I mean, this is something that has been going on from, from day one for, this is how, I don't know, this is just how we, our society operates, right? Like,

Ooh, like, like back in the nineties, this is like, like butter is bad for you. Eat margarine. Ah, right. Like, it's a campaign. Yeah. This is a campaign I'm looking at. So, so I'm looking at benefits on their website and I'm going to the part that says the bigger picture. And they have like several parts to this different people from different angles that are actively saying that, you know, meat usage is bad for, uh,

bad for the environment, et cetera, right? So they have... Remember the anti-poaching guy? Yeah, yeah. So he says the biggest threat we have is that it's taking all the land away, right? And then there's another part where this guy is like... Environmental guy saying it's taking away fresh water and all of the water footprint. It takes...

it takes too much water to make, to feed these animals. But aren't there a lot of holes in that argument though? I've read that if we went like completely plant-based...

- Agriculture land use is even more than animal land use. And it actually takes more water to grow agriculture than it is to feed the animals. - So let me explain why. Remember they said, oh, all the protein, they keep saying the animals are the middlemen. They take the plant proteins and then you eat it from them, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yes, because plants typically are less calorie dense, right? So you're talking about accumulated, all this accumulated plant stuff in this animal, which this is not how the biology actually works, by the way, but in a way, yeah, they accumulate nutrients, right? But so, yeah, I mean, in order, like think about like...

How long, like, one cow could feed a family versus, like, how much corn you would have to eat, you know? Like, it's, you know, yeah, you would probably need more land, more water. But, like, these are small things, you know, like, to me, I think.

Some people were nitpicking. Like you can present this data in any way to support any industry, right? Yeah.

- Well, they said the quality of protein also matters, right? Like the quality you get out of meat protein is much higher than plant protein. - Okay, so this one-- - That's not what they said. - This one-- - Not the movie. - Oh, that's what Chris Besser said, right? - The movie is not gonna say that. The movie is gonna say that the plant protein is just as good. - Now, okay, you can get, they call them complete proteins. They complete, they,

They contain all the essential amino acids. You can get complete proteins from plant foods. So no, I mean like this point that they make, yeah, okay. You can, is plant protein inferior? Certain plants have complete proteins. So it's not inferior.

But just the amount of plants you gotta eat to get the same amount of protein is insane. So that strong dude...

That motherfucker must eat a lot of shit. No, okay, so that's funny. He eats like a whole tree. And the vegan bodybuilder, right? Okay, so let me tell you, like, what they don't tell you is how many fucking vegan protein shakes are these guys guzzling down each day? Mm-hmm.

And all right, what kind of ecological footprint does it cost the planet to manufacture these and crush a ton of peas down into this protein powder? All right, I don't do the research on this because, sorry, I'm not like...

Unfortunately, I probably don't love the earth as much as like I should, even though I do. But like, I don't like do the research on these minutia to try to try to fix everything. Right. But, you know, like, so these are details that are ignored. Right.

And I'm telling you, especially like that bodybuilder, he's got to be drinking a ton of shakes if he's doing it all vegan. He's single-handedly like ruining the Amazon probably. No, no. Well, what they're not showing is all the other bodybuilders who aren't vegan. Yeah, no. So here's the thing, right? Like they're saying like, oh, these guys. But like, I'm sorry, like...

Like, could they be doing better on a mixed diet? Maybe. I believe so. So, you know, like, these top-level athletes say, it's because of the plant-based diet. But, you know, like, we have top-level performers, and you never heard of any of these people, basically, before this film, right? Like, there's a, I mean, they're, I believe they are,

I think athletes are a combination of a lot of things, mental preparation, all this stuff. And I believe these people could potentially perform better if they considered a mixed diet. Well, like what is LeBron James eating? Like that's what I want to know. So that's funny. So.

LeBron James has been, you know, bouncing around a little bit. But the most recently I saw that they were trying to do like a keto media piece and they use LeBron James and he started eating a lower carbohydrate diet. But the way keto works is you got to eat light.

70 80 percent of calories from it depends on the person everybody's different from fat right from fat and so i read the article i was like this is this is not keto but a lot of athletes perform not because of their nutrition but in spite of their nutrition as you well know most athletes actually eat like most athletes actually eat like

um and like the majority of the nba players not counting the top elite athletes that take care of their body yeah but like even like the six men and like the people on the bench they eat like doritos and like and even nachos they don't care many of the top level athletes probably until they're 30 they pretty much just eat crap

Because their work rate is so high, right, from the training, the games, their energy expenditure is so insane. As long as you're getting enough carbohydrates to fuel your activity, enough protein to sustain your amino acid needs,

you're basically going to be all right until you get injured. Then you start thinking about diet like Wilkes did, right? Like that's what he did, right? Until you get injured or you feel your energy levels are dropping, you're playing like shit, then you'll start thinking about how to improve your diet.

So actually most athletes, like pro athletes are notorious for having really awful nutrition. And then you notice a lot of athletes after they retire, they become gigantic. Yeah. Right? Because they're used to, you know, they're used to burning like 5, 8K calories a day. Yeah. And suddenly you stop playing.

you the appetite doesn't go down not like that you know like so you just keep eating the same but they're not burning anywhere near this and they just become humongous well that's especially true with fighters because of the weight cutting they have to do yeah you know they hate weight cutting everyone hates weight cutting is a terrible practice for for health really terrible um

What I find interesting too is the, I think it's the guy, Chris Kresser, is that how you say his name? He was alluding to a thing called the vegan honeymoon.

And so like around me, I have a lot of friends that after watching the Game Changers documentary, they come running up to me and they're like, dude, you gotta watch this documentary. I'm going all plant-based, I'm vegan now, or vegetarian. Like I'm only eating plants, I'm only eating plants, right? And a lot of my friends around me have started doing that.

And I talk to them a week or two in and I'm just checking in and they still swear by it. They're like, "Yeah, I feel better. I have more energy. I'm losing weight. I'm working out a lot."

And what Chris Kresser alluded to was this thing called the vegan honeymoon. And he was saying, most people are eating a very poor diet, right? So if you go from like eating KFC and all these other junk foods all the time, and all of a sudden you switch to a complete 100% plant-based diet, of course you're gonna feel better. Huge benefit. Yeah, of course you're gonna see all these benefits and you're gonna start losing weight. You're gonna feel much, much better. But it's that long-term...

kind of data that we don't really have in terms of, well, what is it like over a lifetime of eating plants? You know what I mean? Yeah. So, I mean, and, you know, I don't think in our lifetime we'll ever have that data set where that we can make some conclusive evidence or conclusive statement that which is better. Because, I mean, all these people, like, some people eat, like, decide to turn vegan when they're like,

40 when they're 50 and then they have 20 years of data. But what about this 40 years of meat eating? Like could that have benefited them? Could have it was that did it make it worse? We don't know. Right. And so some people like I like I have friends or I've had clients who were like, oh, you know, like I switched to vegan and I felt like shit and then I switched back and now I'm like hitting PRS.

Did you know people who said that they felt like shit after trying vegan? So I think I know one very, she's an absolute warrior, by the way. Like she was a CrossFit trainer and she used to be vegan. And then, you know, she switched over to meat, hitting new PRs. Like, you know, like, you know, it was like,

What you would kind of guess, but you know, it may have also been partially a number of other things. We can't say maybe she wasn't hitting her protein needs with the vegan diet. Could she have with all...

Plant-based diet? Maybe. Maybe. We don't know. Like, but sometimes it's just not practical, right? Like, it's easier to eat a chicken breast than to eat, like, 15 bowls of quinoa, right? Like, so, like, you know, it's hard to say, you know.

You know, sometimes these experiential things, you know, people say, oh, my friend had a great experience with this. Is that your experience? Like, is that scientific data? Like, you know, just so that's why I say, like, I don't I don't really. So my methodology is like this. Like, I review all the science for knowledge.

But at the end of the day, people want to eat what they want to eat. And if some guy comes to me and says, I want to eat an all-vegan diet. And so I'm not going to try to say, no, fuck you. Like, you got to eat meat. No, no, no, no, no. So I believe like, okay, if you believe that you want to do a vegan diet,

Let me help you pick the best vegan foods. Let me help you get the right nutrient balance from what I know to be the best in your specific options, right? Because people are going to eat what they want to eat. And you just want to help them optimize that. Right, right. So if somebody said, like, yeah, like...

This movie, I'm sure a bunch of people saw it. It's like, are you fucking kidding me? Give up burgers? Fuck you. Right? Like, fuck this James Wilkes guy. Like, I'm going to eat my steak no matter what. You know? So you're not going to convince them eating meat is bad. So I think the athlete argument breaks down in a couple of different ways. Okay? So number one is...

to your point, Justin, let's take the top 10 athletes of every sport. How many of them are vegan? How many of them are meat eaters? Right? So then, because they're,

You're cherry picking. You're finding like these obscure guys. I mean, there's like no one famous in the movie. Okay. Okay. There's another thing though. Like you got to look at a percentage of population. How many people are vegan? Exactly. In comparison to the whole population, right? So what percentage of vegans are top athletes? What percentage of mixed, you know? Yeah. If I'm going to choose an all-star team, I'll be on the meat eating team, right? Yeah. Like,

And so, but then- I'm not on the vegan team. To Victor's point though, there's just such a small population of vegans compared to the total size that of course, if you pick, if you did a survey of like the top 10, they're mostly probably going to be meat. But then that's not even the biggest thing. Like I said, like I said-

I will say these things determine a top-level athlete before diet. There's probably like fucking 10 things on the list. All right? Like genetics, willpower, the amount of time you spend training. You know, there's so many things that go into determining who is the number one athlete.

That somehow nutrition has, you know, you want to say nutrition is what it is. Like, you know, my business is nutrition. So, yeah, nutrition is the most important thing. No, that's not true. Right? As much as I would love everybody to believe. Well, that would be very self-serving for you. Right, right, right. That's right. And so if I went on a vegan diet and I went up against LeBron James, right?

on a meat diet. Look, you would beat him. You would beat him in basketball. According to the movie, I might be able to beat him. So I have a question. Now, I've been pretty quiet throughout this whole thing because I didn't watch the film. Okay. But I do have a question. I mean, basically, I've heard about the film. I've seen some other videos that talk about the film. I've heard you guys talk about it a little bit.

So I get the basic gist of what it's about. Now, my question is this. Someone just asking really innocently. As a human being, do we need carbohydrates in our body? Carbohydrates? Yes. I'm taking one step at a time. Carbohydrates. Do we need to eat? Do we need to consume carbohydrates? Look, to subsist, you do not eat.

You do not need carbohydrates. But to live your longest and optimize, yes. So this is where nutrition gets confusing once again. It's like, okay. So according to the keto camp and low-carb camp, it's like, oh, carbohydrates are not essential, right? Technically, your body has the processes to...

eventually break protein down and convert it to, you know, your body has an insulin response, elevate blood sugar. So it has the mechanisms to do that. But is that the best way? No, it is not. And so to the movie's credit, they do say some stuff about how, yeah, like most of athlete energy demands are fueled by carbohydrates.

But then they fall off right away and they're like, oh, if they eat too much protein, it'll eat into their carbohydrate percentage. I'm like, fuck. So yeah, I think carbohydrates, not essential, but for optimal health and if we were to say longevity, yeah.

Yeah. Like there are carbohydrate dense foods that would really benefit your health. Okay. Second question. Do we need to eat protein? Yes. Yes.

Yes. Well, what's your timeline? And what was his need? And how long are you living? As a human being, it doesn't matter if I'm an athlete or not. How he's trying to figure out his future diet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. That's not even what I'm trying to get at. No more carbs. Protein is essential, right? Protein, yeah. Protein is absolutely essential. And diet is. I mean, fat is absolutely.

because i'm actually asking this in a very like basic right i have a point i'm trying to get at okay protein is not exclusive to meat i mean it's almost impossible to avoid all protein because no matter what you eat it's going to be just going to be here's my question yeah here's my question so you you were mentioning before quinoa as a source of protein for a veg a plant-based diet right but in general

I mean, meat delivers a higher and denser quality and quantity of protein as opposed to, in general, a green or any type of vegetable.

In general? I don't know. I'm asking. In general. You should watch the movie. It's tricky. Because the movie would claim different. The documentary claims different. Well, they claim plant foods, right? So there are plant foods in existence. Let's cut the quality word out. Name some plants or plant foods that have a good amount of protein. Okay. Now you're talking about quantity, right? There's a couple of things in consideration.

quantity, right? And there's just basically very few plant foods that have, uh, the same density of protein per calorie or per volume. Cause like you can only stick so much food in your, your stomach. Right. So there's a very few, um, the highest, uh, protein plant foods that we have are stuff like tofu. Um,

Soy. Beans. Yeah, soy. Soy stuff.

Beans and legumes in general. Nuts, right? Nuts, they're pretty dense in protein as well. But they're really dense in just calorie too, right? They're super high in calorie? Correct. So nuts are higher, like have a very high density of fats. So fat is the most calorie-dense macronutrient out of all of them. So yeah, it would...

So it is, practically speaking, it is difficult to reach an athletic protein need through plant foods alone. Now, if we're saying like, it's hard because the optimal nutrition for what, you got to think about what your goal is. Longevity? Longevity.

Your nutrition for longevity is different from nutrition for peak athletic performance or for lifting the most weight. Everybody's nutrition is actually very different. But how did cavemen... But dude, cavemen lived until they were 19, man. Or human nature, period. Period.

Well, the documentary makes a claim because they started off talking about the gladiators, right? Back in Roman time. And so they're trying to claim that... First of all, they're trying to paint a picture that the gladiators back in ancient Rome were like the peak physical specimens of Rome. When in fact, they were just actually the slaves. Yeah, they were slaves. And they're saying that they ate a predominantly plant-based food.

that the gladiators were fed predominantly vegetables. I think that was another one of the theatrical sort of vehicles. I don't think they were trying to make any real... It's just... Yeah, let's not dive into that. But the overwhelming evidence of going back to human evolution...

was that since the dawn of man, they've been omnivorous, right? Yes. Is that the overwhelming data that shows that? Yes. Well, let's look at it this way. To survive in any element for any animal, you got to eat what you can, right? If you can eat meat,

and meat is the only thing around you, then you better fucking eat or you're going to die, right? And so, and then that region's people will probably adapt to being more adept at consuming meat or hunting meat or whatever, right? You get my drift? Like, I think that, you know, just in general... Can I say something? Yeah, yeah. Ice demon people only eat meat. They don't have vegetables.

So, yeah. Okay. That's a good point. Eskimos? Eskimos don't have veggies. For a long time, Eskimos ate only fish and walrus. So they adapt to that. They eat meat and fat, right? Like the blubber from the whales. They eat meat and fat. There's no plants there. And they will survive. That's a good point. But then, is that optimal?

Well, I mean, like, maybe for them, maybe for... But I feel like human bodies are so adaptable that... Correct. Correct. And I'm glad you brought that up because I think what gets lost in all this, in this discussion...

in general is the idea of adaptive nutrition. This idea that like, oh, you have to pick a nutrition plan or like regimen and that's what you are. You're on those rails and you cannot like go to this. I think the best is to have an adaptive nutrition program where like on a Joe Rogan podcast, he had this guy called Zach Bitter, right? And he had just recently broke the 100 mile record. He ran 100 miles in 11 hours.

And he was talking about like on how peak training days, he eats a certain type of food in terms of macros, right? And on recovery days, he eats, you know, different kind of different proportion of macros. So he's always adapting his nutrition plan according to his needs. Oh, this is very important, yeah. So especially for athletic needs, right?

Yeah, you need to fuel for your energy demands. But then, like I said, athletic nutrition needs are very different from the average person who are seeking longevity.

Let me be honest, like athletic endeavors are often harmful to the body. Like trying to lift the most weight like anybody's lifted, that's really bad for your body. Yeah, that guy did not look healthy though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, or like... Yeah, high performing athletes don't live the longest. Yeah, or even like, let's look at LeBron James. He is like the peak specimen of athletic performance. He's also a freak of nature. He's a freak of nature. But that...

That's probably not... In a world where you gotta fucking dunk basketballs to live, like, and crush everybody on the court to live, yeah, he would be number one. But if... In a world where, you know, like...

It's not all about how high you can jump or how fast you can run. Some people don't want to jump high and run fast. They want to just live until they're fucking 100, right? Well, I think LeBron's going to outlive everybody, too. Not necessarily. But I think that's a good point.

It's tricky. I think we have to ask the question, what is the goal? Right. And if your goal is... Because the movie talks about... It kind of brings together multiple points. And because it's a movie, right? It can't be like super academic. It's not like going to...

you know, MIT and then studying nutrition or Harvard semester, right? No, it's, it's, it's a movie. You got an, it's got an hour and a half to make its point. And then, you know, to advocate for some change, but what's your goal? Do you want optimum performance? Okay. They talk a little bit about that. Okay. Do you want to have less inflammation and you want to be healthier and less cardiac, cardiac, cardiac, whatever,

you know, heart disease. Okay. That's, that's one thing, right? Or you want to be able to, you know, function really, really well and have great stamina and energy in terms of the work you do. It's all a little bit different. They kind of try to talk to all of these points so they can get to as much the widest audience. But I don't think that NBA basketball players, they don't live that. I mean, shit like Will Chamberlain.

Right? Those motherfuckers, like, they die early. Well, you know, well, let's say this. The NBA player of the old had a very different lifestyle than they do today. Yep. And so there are many factors, again, that could contribute to a shorter life. And still so. So I have a question, right? Because I think the...

the whole sort of the debate is that this stuff, like you said, it's very scientific. It's hard to isolate variables. Like, we don't know. I mean, like, none of us... I mean, of the four of us, you obviously know the most about nutrition because you've studied this. But, like, the rest of us, like, we don't really know what's going on. But I do have a question for you. If you were to train an athlete, because...

You know you build these meal plans and you find and you work with successful athletes So if you were to train an athlete What would you recommend and what if you seen actually works because we all this other shit's like speculation I don't if somebody were giving me a hundred percent control and say do whatever you want and

I'm, I would, obviously I would recommend an omnivorous diet. Like, no question. Do you offer vegan options? I do. I do. But, but not like it's sadly, it's just tofu in like, like, like 10 different flavors, you know, like, like, uh, I'm sorry. Like maybe like, I'm not trying to be selfish, but like, I'm not a vegan. So that,

you know, like, uh, honestly, it's not part of your agenda to push. Yeah. Yeah. And like, if somebody is vegan and comes to me, I, I would like to serve them and I would like to help them get the optimal for what they, you know, whatever they want. Like, so for me, it's like, again, we go back to this, like,

Yeah, optimal, optimal, optimal this. But optimal is only a function of this individual person's behavior, right? So if some person says, okay, I'm going to go on a vegan diet and starts paying attention to what they eat as opposed to just eating whatever the fuck they want at all times, this is a net positive effect, right? So then...

would I say like, oh, you should eat meat. Like it's not my place to say what you should eat. I will give you my recommendations based on your set criteria. So it's interesting because I think I'm trying to like eat more healthy and this and that. But I do have kind of a –

It's not really a real question, but it's kind of like if meat was like bad for you, why does it taste so fucking good? You know what I'm saying? Well, that would make the most sense. That's weird. Because most things that are bad for you taste bad. I want to eat more veggies. Like it's been programmed into me. It's the same thing with eating rice and noodles and carbs. But I hate eating vegetables. Vegetables taste like not that good. I understand. I understand. Okay. So in times of scarcity...

evolutionarily speaking you are designed to hoard calories right so unfortunately we haven't beaten this evolutionary mechanism yet where you know calories are scarce calories are not scarce anymore we should not be designed to hoard calories anymore but we still do yeah we haven't

kind of evolved around that yet. Right. So, yeah, like it just turns out whatever has the most calories happens to taste the fucking best. So it doesn't necessarily mean it was the most healthy because they weren't able to gorge every day. So we have the capacity because we can go to like the supermarket and we could just buy

you know food every single day but these the the prehistoric ancestors literally could probably only do this like once a month and then they would like binge they just ate whatever existed that was edible around them well is that is that to say is that inferring that like mostly healthy foods like plants and vegetables are not dense in calorie

most plant foods are not super dense in calories. Most. What about avocados? Avocado is very dense in calories. Avocado is very dense. It's as dense as fat. Yeah. Avocado is almost all fat, man. So it's very... I love avocado. That's why I'm like, there's a problem. Like, you know...

nutrition and the fitness industry is like, again, this goes to different goals, right? Sometimes it's about fat loss and sometimes it's about

healthy fats it's about money yeah or it's always about money it's always about money but then like uh everybody will say like avocados they're so healthy for you and then they'll eat okay eat like three a day and then like and they're like why am i not losing any fat i'm like well eating a lot of healthy fat

is not going to help you lose fat. It's like the same thing with olive oil. People are thinking olive oil is healthy, and they just dump a bunch of olive oil on their salads, and it's so dense in calories. Yeah, they're like olive oil. So that's where the media makes it very confusing because it says olive oil may help you lose fat. But what do they really mean by that? They mean...

replacing hydrogenated oils with olive oil may help you lose fat. But then people will see olive oil makes you lose fat. And so they're like, oh my God, drink that shit. I can have all the olive oil if I want. You know, like, fuck. It goes back to what you were saying last time. It was like, everyone wants an easy way out. So they don't actually want to...

change the way they live. And so like if you sit on, like if you're eating like really unhealthy shit, then chances are you're fucking on your ass all the time. You don't exercise, you know, you're doing all kinds of unhealthy shit. You're not getting enough sleep and eating is just one factor, but it's linked to all of these other things. It's a million things. And eating is probably one of the,

Eating and exercise, like these are the just, just like you have so much control over your health. Exercise is like a fucking magic pill. And then like, you know, like even just like walking for 20 minutes a day has a super high correlation with lower levels of dementia, like heart disease and all this stuff. Yeah.

walking 20 minutes a day can you imagine I walked over to your house by the way Justin yeah I mean like it's you're not gonna have dementia then I don't know I'm getting it already now like like well walking 20 days uh I mean 20 minutes like undue

lots of alcohol, like, you know, these are, again, many variables, right? What's your, okay, so, you're pretty fit, you know, we, I've seen your muscles, pretty, pretty solid. So what's your, what's your, what's your routine? Like, like, not what you recommend, but sort of like, what are you able to,

you know eat every day well that's funny because uh i recently have been doing getting ready for a second you know like uh i don't know a lot of people who knows about this but like before i started this business and did my nutrition coaching i i spent about like a year eating garbage

and destroying my body. Why? Just for research? Just because I wanted to do one of those, like, oh, I transformed my body. Before and after. And stuff like that. So I did that. But the thing is, I didn't document it at all.

I only have like a before and after picture. Okay. And so it was not a very effective marketing campaign. Were you happy that one year? Like, was it fun as fuck?

It's funny. So it starts awesome, right? Like, I'm like, I'm fucking eating ice cream. I drink like four beers. Oh, so I'm doing it again, by the way. It started as laziness. This is the real game changer. I got to be honest. We're on the honest drink, right? So it started like I had a rough period of work where I was working like probably 14 hours a day.

seven days a week and so i was like ah you know like you know i understand sometimes you gotta put off your own health if you want to do something in certain arenas that's fine uh that's like uh something i understand that i'm willing to sacrifice some people don't understand that right and uh they're destroying their body but they don't know right so

But so, you know, it started out as laziness. And then I'm like, all right, I'm going to use this opportunity to redo everything I did before. So over the last three months, I have been fucking destroying my body. Like recently, recently, this past three months, past three months, going into the fourth month now. So what kind of how are you destroying your body?

I smoke like a pack of cigarettes a day. What? A pack a day? Maybe a little bit less. Maybe a little bit less. What else? I drink four beers a day. What? Every day? Every day. Maybe minus a couple here and there. What else? And then my eating is highly irregular. I haven't worked out once for the last two months.

jesus and uh i eat sometimes i eat sometimes i don't and when i eat i eat whatever i want are you documenting this yeah are you documenting this this time i i just take like a quick so you know i'm trying to do social media and stuff i hate you know i suck at it i i'm not like a very private person usually so i'm trying to do a little bit better than last time you know like but if you're but so what are you really trying to get out of this though

Um, so, you know, like, I'm just, I'm just, what I'm trying to do is, one is document the struggles of changing your bad habits. Because, like, all right, if I wanted to give you, if I told everybody, like, I can get you fit. You eat these macronutrients and calories and exercise these, this many times a month.

If everybody could follow it, 100% success rate. 100% success rate. But why does it never... Why is the success rate probably like 20%? It's really about how hard it is to stick to the program. It's behavioral psychology. It's trying to make changes to habits you've established that

for, you know, sometimes a lifetime, you know? So it's not, everybody's trying to pick on the science, but it's all about the behavior and the psychology that everybody's missing.

That's so fucking true, right? Like everyone wants to point to like, does this program work? Does this diet work? Does this fat work? Does keto? Every single one works. Every single one works. But it's just like, can you stay on it? Like what can you be consistent about, right? Yes, yes, yes. And that's getting lost in a lot of this discussion. So are you trying to, so you're doing this to kind of like go through that journey and that struggle yourself? And yeah, so I did it before. And I used to tell myself, I used to tell myself that I would do this

once every like two years to remind myself how hard it is for the average because you know like after you get there like after you build a habit it's so easy and then you're like what's you know you start to tell clients like what's wrong with you just do it you know like and and that's something you you just can never tell anybody because

And so that's what originally like why I started doing this is like I'm going to remind myself how hard it is. So how much longer are you going to do this for? I want to start like I think January like, you know, New Year's is a very good start. So that would be like six months, five months? No, that'll have been like four months of body destruction. Four months. How much weight have you gained so far? So not that much. Not actually. So because like I stopped exercising recently.

I stopped—I don't eat, like, all the time. Because, you know, like, I work very—I work, like, 12-plus hours a day. So eating is not something, you know, like, I don't always remember to eat. You know, like, sometimes I'll just forget to eat for, like, eight hours. And then when I do eat, I'm like, yeah, I'll just eat whatever I want, eat some Snickers and, like—

you know uh you know like delicious stuff you know like are you enjoying it is it good you start out enjoying it but then it doesn't taste good anymore it tastes like normal it tastes like normal and then uh and then you think about what to eat and you don't even know what would taste good anymore like so so this is one thing i remember fondly about my healthy habits is uh

I would eat. I was just like, I don't think about what I eat Monday to Friday. And then like, I'll have a cheat meal on Saturday. I'm like, and all week I'll be thinking about that one thing that's going to go in my mouth is going to take me to fucking heaven. You know?

And then when it does, it's like really special. It's a really special Saturday night, you know? That's awesome. But then it's lost all meaning once you do it every day, right? Yeah. So nothing, like nothing. Food is not special. You know what's funny? Are you part of this program too?

We are pretty much like, me and my wife are pretty much linked in perpetuity for food habits. Oh, yeah. We are, so we are like at possibly the... I was like, 气色很好。

You know what's funny? I've been like, I think mistakenly, I'm on your program as well because I haven't worked out in like four or five months. I've gained weight. I've thrown away my nutrition. Well, you need to start documenting it. How even? Me and you, we're going to get started together. I think we need to do that because I planned, I just quit smoking like a couple weeks ago. And...

What? Yeah, we'll start in January. It's fine. So this is a... First of all, let me say this. I don't agree with this, but I am doing it. But I think everybody should start today, right now. One easy decision. It could be as simple as just changing one habit.

Tomorrow. I'm all for like... Wait, bad or good? Like destroy your body or not destroy your body? No, no, no. If it's destroying your body, I'm way ahead of you. Destroying the body thing is not for anybody. So it's all about every single minute habit. It's not about like me and Howie are saying, yeah, in January, we're buckling down and we're going to make everything fucking perfect.

But that's not how life works, right? Like, it's all about changing tomorrow. Just change one habit and make it better. And then persist with that habit for 30 days. See what happens. Maybe not that much. All right. But you built that into a habit. What's an example? What's an example? Eat only vegan burgers for 30 days. No. Fuck that.

So the biggest problem I have with the vegan burger movement is that they are using a bunch of processes, human-made processes that we don't understand yet. Is it healthier just because it's vegan? No. No. That's 100%. Is something healthier just because it's plant-based? No. No.

But, you know, we don't know. But back to what I was saying before. You should change. I think, like, it's very difficult to do what I was proposing to Howie is on January 1st we start and change our whole lives. What's more practical for everybody is change one habit. Stop putting sugar in your coffee.

You know, start very small. The first week or first two weeks. Incremental improvements. Incremental improvements. Stop putting sugar in your coffee. Okay, day one. One month, fine. Stop putting milk in your coffee. Okay, fucking 30 days. All right, fine. You can drink black coffee. Fantastic. And then like, okay, like every day drink like... No more sodas. Yeah, yeah, no more sodas. Like no more sodas. You know, like...

These small incremental changes are what will make rock solid habits for the rest of your life. If you want, every time, everybody tries to, every New Year's, they try to go with the like, I'm going to change everything. And they fail like 99% of the time. Too much at one time. And they rebound right back, right? You can't do it. Yeah, we got a question over here.

就是吃好吃的東西會讓你心情很好。 那你如果不開心的話,不是也對身體不好嗎? Yes. Okay, so the question we got is, you know, sometimes eating delicious stuff really elevates your mood.

And so what about when you are feeling down? Isn't that bad for your health? And once you, you know, like, is it bad for you? Because there's a very delicate emotional and physical balance to health, right? So, yeah. The problem here is that emotional eating, yeah, it can be very unhealthy, right?

Right. But at the same, you know, like sugar, as we all know, can elevate your mood, sugar high, you know,

But, you know, there's no problem if you're feeling down and you occasionally have a shitty meal to elevate your mood if your average day-to-day habits are rock solid. As long as you don't rely on it. Right, right. So, I mean, if you're depressed and you need to eat fucking chips every day, your problem is not chips. It's your depression. Right, right.

So, you know, it's you have to nutrition. Health is so complicated. Yeah. So if we can build rock solid day to day habits and enjoy ourselves when we are celebrating or if we're down, we want to elevate our mood.

you know there's that occasional blip sure right and that's totally normal but if every day like this is the norm is and then like you have to say oh i i was so bad for like the last two weeks gotta eat a salad

you are just basically doing nothing for yourself. Well, I couldn't agree more. You go back and talk about building these incremental layers. It's like building layers of good habits one at a time. And going back to what you're saying, it's like, and I was guilty of this for a long time, and a lot of people I know are, where they're in a funk, they're living a lifestyle of bad choices, and they're overweight and blah, blah, blah.

And let's, you know, they always want to start, like usually it's Monday is usually always the day. They're like, okay. It's the worst. They're like Monday because that's like traditionally the top of the week, right? It's a new week, Monday. Okay, on Monday. So it's like it's Saturday, right? And then you're starting to think, okay, well, I'm going to go on a diet. I'm going to eat a lot healthier. But they always put it off to like, okay,

Monday, I'll start. And before that, my last meal is going to be dope. I'll have my last hurrah. And then on Monday, I'm going to start cleaning. And that's not the only problem. Because when you have this binary mindset...

All right, Monday, yeah. And then on Tuesday, your coworker has a birthday on fucking Tuesday and there's a fucking cake in the office. And then like, oh, I had a piece of cake. I'll start next Monday. Yeah, I'll start next Monday. It was a birthday. How can I say no? So it's not about when and how perfect you're going to be.

It's about changing. Like if you can make one healthy decision every day, one healthy change, right? We're always talking about health and wellness, but nothing, it's always about change. And so in reality, like, I don't remember if we talked about this on the last podcast, but science is where it needs to be for nutrition, right?

In terms of maybe not 100% like we were saying there's a lot of inconclusive stuff but if we're talking about We need to spend all our time figuring out how can we convince people to change their behavior for to make healthier decisions when we have really spent the time to evaluate this I think whatever

nutritional science data is out there like we'll we'll have even better data better scientific data to say like oh yeah because it's like let's say all right we we say the low the vegan diet is the best way to do it but we can only get like five people to adhere to a vegan diet

You know, like then we have no data, right? Or if we say like this macronutrient balance is better than this macronutrient balance with this variety of vegetables. Like if we can convince people to, you know, really focus on their behaviors and psychology, I think it's going to be easy to improve people's health. Exactly. Like you're saying that the, it's so heavily focused on the physical rather than the mental aspects of it all. Yes. Yes. I think,

And that's why life is so confusing these days, right? Like, there's so much mental shit going on. And the physical stuff, like, dude, we're living longer than we've ever had in, like, centuries, right? Like, and everybody just wants to live fucking forever, which there's a problem with that in itself. Yeah. But, like, so...

how to, you know, like everybody should have their own definition of life quality and whatever they want to do. And so like, uh, going back to what my theory on nutrition is like, I don't try to convince anybody that, uh,

Their dietary belief is wrong, right? Vegan, keto. Even though I don't recommend certain things to people who are blank slate, I wouldn't recommend keto or veganism or vegetarianism to. But if they want to do that, I fully support them. And there's a great way to live a very long and healthy life

And as far as we can see, perform at a very high level of athleticism, right? So, you know, like, let's, I think everybody just needs to stop attacking each other. And, you know, there's an optimal way for every way of living, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think that's interesting. We started the conversation with...

zoomed in on this movie, the controversy, the polarization, and it could apply to any topic. We see this all the time, but the question isn't... Really, the question isn't like plant-based versus meat. It's more...

What you're saying is it's how do we convince people to change all of their behaviors, how they sleep, you know, how they eat, how they work out, how they meditate, blah, blah, blah. And then the real question is, like, how do you stay true to the plan that you choose? Because most of the plans are good. Because no one's saying, like, eat hamburgers all day, right? No motherfucker's saying eat hamburgers. No one's saying. Well, Victor is. Victor's saying, like, yeah, like, four months of eating hamburgers every day. The all-chicken-nugget diet. Right.

Yeah, I mean, Usain Bolt, right? But it's... No one's saying, like, fucking eat, like, Skittles every day. It's M&M's. Yeah, I think it's very simple, you know? Like, it's just about making improvements, however small. Like, yeah, so the reason these kind of... Like this film, Game Changers, works is it's better than...

as egregious as some of the methods or statements they make are, it's better than nobody saying anything to, like, it's better than nobody saying anything, like, about your diet, you know? It's better than nobody making, like, for a lot of people, if they've been eating, like, fucking at McDonald's every day for the last, like, you know, two months, like,

If they heard this and decided like, oh, I can't, I shouldn't make a change, then it's a net positive effect. Right? Absolutely. So the important thing is not about what's perfect. It's about what can we all do to make a positive change?

So I think that's why. So that's why, like, I thought I was going to be, like, super angry, like, when I watched this movie. Like I said, like, I told Justin before the show, like, I hadn't watched the movie because I was going to get pissed off. But then, like, I was watching. I was watching. I was like, you know what? Like, you know, in reality, I think a lot of people's health may benefit from watching this movie. Whether their takeaway was good

scientifically correct or whether or not, you know, you know, as extreme as the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. I think that, I think that a lot of people's health would benefit. Yeah. And so the only, um, the only thing like, uh, the average person. Yeah. But, but I would say if, uh, if the, the average athlete, uh,

Because I'm into sports nutrition. I'm not into longevity nutrition. I study it to know about it, but it's not what I'm into. And so for the average athlete, it's difficult. It's more difficult.

It's more difficult to follow a vegan, vegetarian diet. There's a practicality of it. But to your point, whether or not the science is 100% meticulously correct, the intention of the movie generally can be taken as positive, which is not true for the smoking.

right like I believe that like that it's like that like we can't sort of yeah you know mistake that like the smoking shit that shit just ain't good for you that's why I'm so okay like I did not get upset about this video at all or this movie at all you know like they talked about smoking in the game changers

No, no, no, no, no. He's talking about like in terms of the general movement. The advertisement, the playbook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Because the playbook for smoking was like... I mean, that's just like... Now in hindsight, we know that that shit was just not legit. Devastating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So whether or not they should have compared it to the meat stuff... Man, that was egregious. Yeah, but it's fine. But like plant-based diets, I don't think...

There's nothing you can say like the intention behind plant-based diet is evil or anything like that. Well, the general consensus is plants in general, eating plants is beneficial. Generally, the intention, I think you can take it as generally positive. I'm happy with it. Yeah, so that's why everybody's going to do...

Some questionable massaging of data. And we don't know where the money is actually coming from. There's all these big names, attached game changers, but where's the money behind it? At the end of the day, let's be honest here. I don't want to sound like one of those extremists. What I'm trying to get at is these kind of films all have agendas. Yeah, of course. And whether it's for profit or for any other reason, there's an agenda behind it.

So anytime, anything that is, any type of message that is being sent that has an agenda behind it is going to be biased. But I think, yeah, and at the end of the day, I think the main takeaway here is a well-made documentary can convince you of almost anything.

A well-made documentary can convince you that Bigfoot is real, right? It just depends on how well-made the documentary is. It really can convince you of anything. I think, yeah. And I think they presented the data in a very convincing way for people who are not very polarized or people who are not very... Or lazy to do research. Not lazy to do research, but...

have a keen eye for evaluating research. Because research, as we all know, can be very flawed.

Very flawed. They like to point out research funded by whatever industry. They could be biased too. Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of research biased for the vegan industry, right? So it goes both ways. It's a good healthy debate. Okay, so my mom has this message that she always says to me whenever I say anything that's a bit extreme. And maybe your moms have all said this as well.

Whenever I say something that's a bit extreme, she always replies with, Howie, it's very simple. Anything that is too much is no good. Yes. Anything that's too extreme is no good. And that goes back to what you said in the first episode. It's all about balance. A balanced diet is kind of your motto. Balance and moderation. I think, yeah, I mean like...

Whiskey is fantastic in moderation. Yeah. Right? Like if you drink every day, like you drink a fucking bottle by yourself, then you got a fucking problem, right? As we look over the wall, if you drink one bottle every week on Sundays, you got some fucking problems. No, no, no. Like as a friend...

who enjoys that bottle with you i think that's okay i think the amount we drink is okay but to kind of wrap it up i mean i think you guys said it perfectly and it's and i haven't really heard anyone when they talk about game changers really talk about kind of what we mentioned here is about what well what is the overall net effect right because everyone wants to get boggled in and honed down on the argument yeah science the left and the right yeah they want to they want they want that they want to take part in that that's

that divisive kind of argument at that debate like what side are you on are you on their side or are you on this side like where is it and then and they're trying to like like point out like different like you know flaws and the argument holes and everything like i got you on this i got you on that but i think what we had here today was very true and i couldn't agree with you guys anymore it's like it's like what is the net positive effect here and in my mind i think after thinking about it and after having this this discussion

I do think, and I agree with you guys, that the overall net effect of the Game Changers documentary is positive because I think most people like me, I'm not gonna be a vegan. I'm not gonna just become a vegan. I'm gonna eat an omnivorous diet. I'm gonna keep meat in my diet. But we can all agree that eating more plant foods is gonna be a healthy choice. That's a healthy decision to incorporate. - 100%, 100%. - And if this documentary

if it can convince more people to incorporate more plant foods in their diet,

Not to say that they need to become vegetarian. Maybe like a higher ratio. Exactly. Just eat a little more salad. Eat a little more vegetables in your diet. Everyone should. Everyone should. That is a net positive effect. And I think that is the main takeaway. Yeah. And to that point, I think that right now, there's not that many good veggie options. It tastes like shit. I don't like it. Yeah. So if more people eat the stuff. Oh, God. I hate vegetables. If more people eat plant-based stuff,

Then there's going to be more restaurants and more people catering to that. And then the food will taste better and it'll be like a positive cycle. It's tricky. It's tricky, though. Because... They're going to put that fake... Let's not open up this whole can of worms. They're going to put that fake-ass heme in it. That fake-ass heme in it, right? No, no, no. So I don't know. I'm not going to say it's good or bad. I don't know yet. I just believe that...

Human synthesized products are never going to be as healthy as what roams the earth or grows from the ground.

I feel strongly about that. If only in the future they can find a way to make vegetables as delicious as a cheeseburger. But then you would eat too much. But I don't think you can eat too much vegetable. No, no, no. Three avocados a day. An avocado isn't technically a vegetable, is it? It is. It is a vegetable. It's a plant food. It's a plant food, but is it a vegetable? It is a vegetable. It's plant-based.

I thought it was a fruit. I thought avocado was classified as a fruit. It depends on your definition. Some people say fruits have seeds, you know, so it could be a fruit. But fruit and vegetables, generally same category, plant food, right? So, I mean, like, I believe that natural food, man, like, eventually, like, a balance of natural foods...

Well, you can't go wrong. You can't go wrong. Balance, moderation, and the occasional chicken nugget. You ain't gonna die. It's all good. And the occasional chicken nugget. All good. I often partake in the chicken nugget. I think we all do. Well, Victor, thank you so much for coming back. It's always a pleasure. I hope we can do this again. We will. We will definitely do this again. Regular guest.

Alright, here. Here's to the game changers. No matter what you think about it, you know, take away what you want to take away. And for us, we think it's an overall net positive. Not that we necessarily condone veganism or anything like that. But you should be eating more plant foods. And I think that's my personal takeaway from it. Alright. Alright, guys. Alright. Cheers, fellas. Thanks for having me. No problem. Anytime. We'll have you back soon. I'm Justin. I'm Eric. And I'm Howie. Peace, guys. Oh, my stomach is starving. Oh, my God.

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