This week on the Real Men Eat Plants Podcast, our Founder, Bryan Dennstedt sits down with a power-packed panel featuring author and The Glen Merzer Show host Glen Merzer, Plant-Based Nutrition Support Group Founder Paul Chatlin, Anthony Masiello, Founder and CEO of Love.Life Telehealth, and Maxime Siqouin, Founder and CEO of Fit Vegan Coaching.
In this thought-provoking episode, the conversation delves into the heart of the plant-based movement. "What is the cause?" Bryan wonders aloud, reflecting on the diverse motivations within the whole food plant-based community. The discussion spans reasons ranging from compassion for animals, personal health, to environmental concerns.
Anthony Masiello CEO and Co-Founder of Love.Life Telehealth
The panel tackles the intriguing question of unity within the vegan message, addressing varying perspectives on the superiority of vegan diets and the perceived importance of individual reasons for adopting a plant-based lifestyle. The candid dialogue raises questions about potential distractions within the movement and the challenge of reaching a critical mass to drive widespread change.
A captivating analogy emerges as the conversation shifts to the early days of the iPhone. Bryan draws parallels, highlighting the need to make veganism desirable, akin to the way the iPhone made early adopters the envy of others. The discussion unfolds to explore the significant lifestyle and belief system changes required for adopting a plant-based diet, emphasizing the importance of leading by example.
The guests bring a wealth of experience and insight to the table, sharing strategies for promoting veganism without alienating others. Bryan reflects on his personal journey in the coaching space, emphasizing the impact of becoming an attractive character rather than preaching dietary corrections.
Maxime Siqouin, Founder and CEO of Fit Vegan Coaching
The episode concludes with a critical question: "Why isn't America turning vegan faster?" A thought-provoking query that sets the stage for future discussions on accelerating the shift towards a plant-based lifestyle.
Tune in to Real Men Eat Plants for a captivating exploration of the challenges and triumphs within the world of veganism, backed by a dynamic panel of experts.
Listen to the episode here: Real Men Embrace Plant Power
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Podcast Transcript:
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Hello everybody and welcome to the Real Men Eat Plants podcast. We are here with some amazing fellow plant based men to talk and unpack some more awesome topics today. I am filling in for Shane, from Shane and Simple as the host today while he is off dealing with some stuff getting ready for some other big events he's got going on. So let's all just go around the horn, say hi and where you're coming in from and what you do. And then we'll dive in today's.
to today's topic a little bit. So Glenn, you wanna kick us off? Yeah, Glenn Merzer, coming to you from somewhere in the Midwest. I write a lot of books advocating the whole food plant-based diet. Thank you, Glenn. Appreciate you being here. He's got some amazing books. Paul. Well, hello everybody. My name is Paul Chatlin, and I'm the founder of the Plant-Based Nutrition Support Group.
PBNSG.org, the only national support group. I'm also the co-founder of the Sage Circle Alliance. So we are going to be debuting that very soon and I'm very excited to be here, thank you. Awesome, we appreciate you being here too, Paul. And we do have the Real Many Plants group on PBNSG. So if you wanna hang out with us live and chat with us, come check out that group. Maxime, thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me. So yeah, my name is Maxim Siwai, coming calling in from Los Angeles, but originally Canadian. So escaping the winter this year, very excited about that. And I'm the founder of Fit Vegan Coaching, which was one of the world's top whole food plan based body recomposition coaching programs. That is awesome. We were just hanging out with Jeff Palmer last week on a few other things and just love to see us vegan men topping the charts on all those different angles. So thanks for being here.
Last but not least, Mr. Anthony. Yes, thank you. I'm Anthony Masiello. I'm calling in from lovely New Jersey. I have not escaped winter. We had snow flurries yesterday. It was actually beautiful. This time of year, it's beautiful. February and March, we're kind of sick of it. But so far, we're welcoming winter. And I run a company called Love Life Telehealth. We're on a mission.
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Well, we're making lifestyle medicine available to patients nationally. So wherever they are, we want patients to know that they have access to a doctor who practices lifestyle medicine rooted in whole food plant-based nutrition. Awesome, thank you all for being here. We got a nice well-rounded group, I think. And I know we were talking a few minutes before we started and stuff, so.
I want the conversation to just go wherever it takes it, but I thought I would kick us off with a couple of questions around some videos that I saw in the past, maybe a month or so, just talking about activism and strikes and changing the perceptions of the world and stuff. The theory that I heard was that it takes 3.5% of a population to...
reach this critical mass, 3.5% of whatever that group of people is, is the right number. And once you reach 3.5%, that is the tipping point. So today I really wanted to talk about like, in particular, obviously, us and our plant-based journeys to change the world here. But like, what do we see as the tipping point? Why isn't America turning vegan faster? Because in my opinion,
you know, if we say there's 300 million Americans or 350 million Americans, and the numbers that I always see is at least 12% are vegetarian, probably a lower percentage for us vegans and whole food plant-based type people, I feel like we're probably close to that 3.5%. So why I do see more, you know, beyond meat and those kinds of things coming, but I don't know, I'd be so curious to see what each of your perspectives are, so.
Anybody want to jump in first there? Let me ask you, have any idea how they came up with 3.5? I guess it's just been an ongoing, really, really strong study. So there's this 3.5% rule. Historically, it's been observed that once 3.5% of a population becomes dedicated to a cause, significant social change occurs.
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Because there's a chance that we're now at 3.4999 and you could be the person who flips this whole thing. I love it, Glenn. Yeah, I think it's interesting. And as you described that and Glenn, thank you for asking for that clarification. Because that's what brought this out. It's when you said the cause, Brian. Yeah.
What is the cause? I see even within the whole food plant-based community, I see a variety of causes, a variety of reasons why people switch. And I wonder if it may, I don't know how unified the vegan message is. I mean, I know people who are vegan for animals. I know people who are vegan for their own personal health. I know people who are adopting vegan lifestyle for the environment.
I know some people who think that their version of the vegan diet is far superior to other people's version of the vegan diet. I know that some people think that their reasons for being vegan are much more important than other people's reasons for being vegan. And so, so I wonder if that's a little bit of a distraction. And it's going to take us kind of, you know, and we don't have that 3.5% that are in any one of those kind of camps to really make it something that makes other people, I think you have to make people want
to adopt it. Like, let's say that when the iPhone came out, like the first 3.5% of the population who got the iPhone, they made everyone they started making everyone else jealous because they could simply do things we couldn't do, right. And the cost of entry, while expensive, wasn't like what we're asking people to do, which is basically change something so core as the way that you live your lifestyle and the way that you eat and basically the things that you believe in, you have to change the things you believe in. Yeah.
leading by example, I think makes the world of a difference. Like being in the coaching space, I was like, well, we talked before we started recording, how do we get more people that aren't vegan to go vegan or more people to kind of eat plan base? And I, on a personal note, I've never had a lot of success going to people being like, how you're eating is wrong, you should be eating this way, because then you're just purely confronting a value system or a belief system they'd had for a very long time. And so I thought like, well, let me just become a very attractive character. Let me just...
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you know, get fit, do Iron Man, do all of these incredible things with my body and have a lot of energy and people like, Hey, what are you doing? Or you have to tell me, like, how did you build those arms? How did you build those eggs? Well, I eat tofu and I eat tempeh and I eat kale and I eat beans and grains. And they're like, really? You did all of this with just eating this stuff. I'm like, yeah, tell me more. Yeah. Like, tell me more. I feel like, so if you lead by example, people are a lot more receptive to kind of the change versus, you know, being
confronting people about it. Because you guys all notice once you get into the vegan world, it opens up. There's like whole food plant based, there's raw vegan, there's like so many sectors of veganism. And I feel like that can confuse a lot of people as well when they come in and just makes them go backwards to that's another and to Glenn's point, it's point, point 099 and all these other sub subsections, we aren't getting to point 5%. Yeah, for sure. I got a few thoughts. And Maxine, I agree with you. You know, I, it's funny, I haven't we haven't done this yet. But
I'm willing to throw down at my age of almost 66, a chin up or pull up contest to anybody my age or five years younger, okay? Because I agree, my whole family is like, I lead by example, that's what I do. But saying that, I wrote a couple of little items. One is, the question is, why are people jumping in the vegan world, plant-based world? It's because we don't have a voice, okay? Everybody else, first of all,
the industries that are out there, dairy, meat industries, and every other industry has now watered that word plant-based down. So it doesn't have the same meaning it did 10 years ago, 12 years ago when I started, number one. Number two is all the people at the very top, they're doing their own thing. They could collectively band together, pool their money and resources and have one voice so we could have a chance of getting to that.
3%. Paul, what do you mean everyone at the top? Who are you referring to? All the people that we grew up listening to from, I don't wanna name names, but you know. The leading doctors you mean in the movement? Yeah. Like the people from documentaries, big documentaries and all that kind of coming together. Yeah, I mean, if you wanna point a finger, we could throw one name, you're like, I was LifeSafe by Dr. Esselstyn. He's an example. Now.
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Granted, everyone's getting older. So like, I don't point a finger at somebody, you know, of him, he saved my life when he's older. But the point being is, if everyone would just sit there and say, instead of working individually, work together, there would be a chance of a louder voice and a connection. The thing that concerns me the most is that for guys to make a change, there would have to be an event. You know, maybe an individual event.
What scares me is it would be a planetary event, something like that. So guys generally don't move until there's something happens or unless they're threatened by something and whatever it is, life, health, whatever it might be, a challenge. So I just think that if we were able to get one voice and I think the other thing too is that just keep in mind.
When I started Whole Food Plant-Based was Whole Food Plant-Based. Today, it's... There's no other option. It's everything. Everyone's got plant-based lotion, plant-based perfume, plant-based, you know, so we gotta, we gotta pivot, gotta change, that's the way it's gonna come off if we are gonna work together and get that free product. Yeah, and I think like a big part, like we talked about this before we started recording, I feel like women have such a, are the powerhouse of the homes when it comes to influencing the husband a lot of the time, right, talk about men eating plants.
And so I feel like we're doing a really good job of, I say marketing or targeting women with kind of the education and the one that are a little more attracted to this type of information and recipe and style of eating. But on the men's side, I think like documentaries, like the Game Changer did a lot for some of the men that wanted to transition because that's the big question, right? It's like, will I lose my muscle mass, which can be associated to masculinity for survival, right? Survival instincts. And so I feel like just having more
men that are doing incredible things. Like obviously you guys know who Neemai is, Robert Cheek, you know, Chris Paul in the NBA, like a lot of more bigger athletes are transitioning to the Indian plan base. I think that's what I'm seeing on my side. People come to us, like, I saw this in this person, and they're like really big and they're vegan. Like I want to look like that and be vegan. But a lot of people want to look like that, regardless of what it takes to get there. So if they see more bodybuilders eating steak and chicken and rice, then that's what they're going to do.
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So we just need, I feel like, even more example of men leading the way in that way. Max, if you want to add me to that list, I did 23 push-ups today. And Glenn, yes. Well done, sir. I usually do only 20, but I'm just getting more buff. Sweet. You know, I like that. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Brian. No, I mean, I...
Want to hear what you're going to say, I guess the string that you're tugging on is Maxime with what, you know, the American dietary habits that we have our cultural perceptions, you know, meat is tied with that masculinity in a big way too. But please, Anthony, go ahead. Yeah, I think a really good point that you make and, and what I liked about the game changers movie is it kind of acted like an invitation. It wasn't a scare tactic. It wasn't a push.
It wasn't a kind of shake you and wake you up kind of thing. It's like, here's a bunch of people. Here are a bunch of people. And they're doing pretty well, right? But many of them are near the top of their sport already. And they're doing pretty great. And now they adopted a whole food plant-based diet, and they just even did better. So to your point, they didn't lose everything that made them who they are to begin with. But it even made them better. And I feel like that did give hope. I think...
I wonder sometimes of all the different documentaries, maybe on the other side of the coin would be something like What the Hell, which is very much poking at the existing system and the absurdity of it, which is all important and true and I think helps people. But I wonder which one influenced more new people to even become plant curious or curious about a vegan diet or, you know.
Is it someone who's kind of told, oh, everything, if you don't.
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you're basically gonna die. Like some people took that as a take home message from what the hell, right? Versus the other, the game changer's approach is, if you do, you will thrive, right? So I think different people, depending on how scared you are, where you're coming from, but I think if we wanna talk about getting into mainstream, I think those invitations are gonna be much more effective than those kind of pushes, those scare tactics. Yeah. I agree completely, because I think-
Like if you look at my LinkedIn profile, I put the little green leaf on it at the end of my name. It's like Brian D'Esta with the green leaf at the end. And that instantly inspired like what is the leaf? What does that mean? They have to look at my profile, have to scroll down. They then they're curious. And then they ask me the question like and I know I'm a leader in my IT space in a big, big way. And I know many other people have just said, you're really vegan. You really you know, you haven't eaten meat in a while. And like, you know.
How does that translate into your career? So I know it's just by putting the leaf in my LinkedIn profile has brought the questions out. So it's just that subtle way of influencing. I thought you were selling weed. So I was, that's why you get all those kind of leaf. That's a different, yeah. I would like to also say the one thing is people get older. The big issue and the thing I like, I love about whole food plant base is the word recovery.
I mean, I do work out six days a week and I'm never sore. I'm never sore, but you talk to anybody, you know, 50 and up or 60 and up and that's what you hear. I, you know, I can't move, I'm too sore, you know, or they have to go get aspirin. I don't take aspirin and I can do the same workout, different parts every day. So, I mean, I think that is something that needs to be shouted out to people to give this whole food plant based a try for all these benefits. You know, I was always hoping that those
21 day 15 to whatever jump starts would change the world and make a big difference But like many things it hasn't made enough of a difference Yeah, yeah Being being i'll share this being the coaching space like we work with people like from 50 to 80 years old, right? So a lot of people that come in are coming in because they've had health scares or health issues and are looking to kind of reduce Their risk or they have a lot of their close friends kind of pass away or get sick and they're like I really need to do something different
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heard about Whole Food Plan based through a documentary or rip or kind of all those, those other podcasts, and then they want to create some of those changes. What I found is that when they change the way they eat, yeah, the recovery gets better, their energy gets better. But then what's cool about it is they become like a shining light amongst their circle of friends and community. And so by having five people that are getting fitter than their communities getting impacted, again, still the same concept of leading by example. But yeah, I think the recovery is such a huge part.
at that age, with continuing to be active. I feel like that's such a great way to get people to change. Because most people are gonna come in because there's pain, right? Like pain creates short-term change and then kind of wanting a better future will create more lasting change and continue the habits. But when you ask the question at the beginning of like what needs to happen, not to turn this into a dark topic, but I feel like there's gonna be a point where America is so sick that...
they're going to be forced to create a change at that point. And I don't think that we've quite gotten there yet. Hey, Maxine, my question. It's like when I walk around, I'm in crowds, wherever I may be, I take a kind of a visual look at all the people I don't know, but as they walk around. And it seems like in the last four or five years, you know, it's amazing how big people are getting. It's just absolutely shocking to me.
Yeah, it really is. And you know, I look at some of these people and I ask my question, the question always like, how could they enjoy their day? Like I know they're enjoying their food, but how can they enjoy their day? Yeah, it's mind blowing. And what's scary is it's not stopping. So I said, it's going to have to get, like I said, a national calamity of some kind. But I don't wish that you know, I don't want that. I had a podcast guest, Corey Davis on and he was talking about generational memory.
And that seems to be the problem. I'm living in a town that I lived in 40 years ago. And as soon as I came here again, I saw the extraordinary obesity. I remember being here when I was young. And all the people my age, there was very little obesity. Now I see young people. My wife even went to a
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beauty shop and even the young women working in a beauty shop were all obese. And so they don't have the generational memory of what it was all 20 years ago. To them, it's normal, you know, 40% of, I think 42% of Americans now are obese. So it's like the frog in the, in the water that's boiling, you know, it becomes normal to people. Yeah.
like that movie Wall-E where everybody's round. Yeah. And so now we have to get through to people and say, no, this isn't normal. And no, we're not body shaming. It's just that this is not healthy. Every virtually every disease is likely to hit you at a higher rate if you're obese than if you're fit. There's nothing good about being obese and
you know, without body shaming, you know, we have to invite people to change. Yeah, I think a big part is the environment as well that we live in nowadays, like things that have been made so accessible. You think about how we've been wired as humans, where we've been wired that like we're in the middle of nowhere, we have to find food, eat as much as we can, because we don't know when it's the next time we're gonna find a meal and we're moving around all day. We're so wired that way, but now you sit down and you can...
Uber eats foods to your house, you can Instacart groceries to your house. You don't have to move, you have access to thousands and thousands of calories within 30 minutes. And being wired to just consume these foods, you need to put systems in place to not use these things. But yeah, we're wired for calorie density. Like right now it's winter time. Like Anthony was mentioning, there's a little bit of snow on the ground, which I endure for maybe a week and then I gotta get out after. But a lot of members like...
I'm so I have so many cravings right now. I don't know what's happening with me. Maybe I ate something that kind of caused me to have more, more cravings. I'm like, where do you live? I live in I live in New York. I live in Toronto. I'm like, it's cold. Your body's just trying to store fats, your organs are freaking freezing during the winter. Right? It's just your body's wired to store when it's time to store you go to Mexico during the winter, you'll lose a bunch of weight, and you'll feel good and you won't be hungry. Right? That's a
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Another thing to keep in mind. But our bodies are wired the same way they were 20 or 40 years ago. The food has really changed. Yeah. And so excessive is getting fattier and fattier and more and more meat and dairy. Yeah. And empty of nutrients. So you can just eat a ton and not feel satiated. And even in the vegan section of the grocery stores, the processed foods. Everything's got coconut oil.
I mean, even if you're talking about the less healthy things in the vegan section, like let's say vegan ice creams, I used to, you know, sometimes get a vegan ice cream made with soy oil or something. And, you know, not the healthiest thing in the world. I don't eat that now, but I used to 10 or 15 years ago. Now I can't even find anything that doesn't have coconut. You got to make your stuff at home.
Like on the other side of that coin, I just found, I live right across the street from our local health food store. It's probably a natural grocer or something. I call it the health food store. It's been there forever. And they had these little, it's frozen smoothies, but it's called a little something. And if you Google it, a little something ice cream, it comes in these little tiny things. And the first ingredient is bananas. And the second ingredient is some other fruits. And there's a peanut butter flavor. There's one that's got cacao in it. So, you know,
I love seeing these brands that pop up that are health promoting and delicious and convenient and all those things. And I buy them even though they're expensive because I would love to see them stick around. Like I would guess, I mean, Glenn, you know what a sunshine burger is, right? Yes.
They were made with nuts and nuts and They were sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds was the base. That's why it was I haven't seen them in a while They went out of business about two years ago Yeah, I figured you know Paul like it's so sad to me, but they were like that they were low in salt They were they were packed with like they had broccoli and they had carrots in them and they had greens in them and had all these vegetables and then sunflower seeds and beans and it was put into you know, and I would
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Like that was my go-to. I could keep them in the freezer and grab and they're gone. So there's one that's good. It's called something like the, I don't know the brand name is called something like the, the real purple burger. Actual veggie, actual veggies. It's called they make a purple one, a pink one. Yeah. And that those have good ingredients. Yeah. Great. Yeah. And so that's, you know, we all have to buy those to keep them in business. And I just saw like,
I saw a really good alternative latte company the other day, unimaginable foods, I think unimaginable foods.com probably. And she's got like super high fiber, oat milk, blah, blah latte. That's got all the brain boosting stuff and none of the bad stuff in the latte mixes. So yeah, I think it is, it is. Now we've got the vegan junk food, the Oreos, whatever, and we've got to steer them back to that. So we've talked a whole bunch about,
the health side of this. Um, I'm just curious of like the tipping points in the environment or the animal side a little bit too. I mean, I think you hit it on the head, Anthony, when you said it, like, we've just got a hundred subgroups that all have half a percentage point and none of them have rallied to three and a half. How do we get, how do we congeal us or how do we do that? Cause I know, I know like to Maxime's point, like when is, what's it going to be? Cause when you say, I only eat a little bit of fish.
I'm like, okay, well I instantly go like, that's probably our number one concern. At least we've got the cows and the chickens on a pretty, so I call for the most part, but we are literally going to run out of fish in our lifetimes. Like by 2050, they say the ocean is going to be empty, which causes economic collapse in my mind on every level when there's no environmental issues. There's going to be so much like that is like well before I plan on dying. So
You know, what talk to me about the environment or the animal side of this. Thoughts? Well, you know, absolutely, we have to protect the oceans, but we don't have any leaders of any nations in the world saying what we have to do, which is we need a moratorium on fishing. If it was me, it would be forever. But we at very least need to.
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stop exploiting fisheries for a period of time to let the ocean heal. And everybody should see sea-spiracy. This is a really depraved industry. This is an industry in which they, when they accidentally catch dolphins, instead of releasing them, they kill them.
because they don't want the dolphins competing with them for the tuna. It's an extraordinarily depraved industry. And, you know, it's just so politically hard to stop it, to get any nation to say we have to have a more tuna. Do you think that the environmental side of it is gonna be the angle that we get the tipping point? Like, I mean, you can walk up to anybody and say, look, you could...
live a much healthier, happier life if you just started eating the plants with me. You know what I mean? Like, and that's like a very personal thing that we have all seen in our lives. I know all of us have influenced others, but like, will the world come to get this environment thing quicker than the plant? I don't know. Our problem is that as we hit more and more extreme climate events, like...
like the city of Phoenix had 115 degrees or more for like a month last summer. As we hit more and more extreme climate events, Canada being on fire, the forest in Canada, what we find is the politicians say, at least those who understand a little bit about the science, they say, we have to do something about climate change. This is serious. This is now, it's happening now.
So we have to stop burning fuel, fossil fuels. But they don't say we have to stop eating meat. You know, right. And so even when we get, even when the climate event gets people's attention, it takes their attention and puts it towards the number two cause of climate change, burning fossil fuels and not the number one cause of climate change, which is animal agriculture. You know, the other thing too, is that our population keeps growing.
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and we've gotta be able to feed people. And again, as I said earlier, and I pray hope it never happens, but it's gonna be a world event that is gonna have to awake all these people because until you get China and India understanding and believing in doing, we can do everything in America and Canada possible. But if they're not on board, I mean, they're two thirds of the population and they're growing.
So again, you know, it's scary. It is scary, you know, as a father and a grandparent, it scares me, it really does. And, you know, what can you do? Well, what can you do is you could just keep trying to be a beacon, as Maxime said, you know, just lead by example, because there's so few things you could control. Yeah, I don't feel that the environment will ever be the number one leading cause, cause people to transition.
unless like the whole world's on fire and the oceans are taking the aliens attack, you know, but the thing is like, when you get to that point, a lot of it will be irreversible, right? Versus if you get sick, yeah, you can get healthier, you can reverse some of the chronic illnesses that people have. So I feel like if we lead with the environment, which honestly, out of all the people I've ever encountered that are vegan, very rarely is environment the number one reason, right? Usually it's health or kind of animal cruelty that tend to be the leading causes. So
I feel like the environment is a supporting act to the other big reasons as to why people transition. But I feel like if we just count on the environment and world leaders to kind of make a change there, I don't think it will do much because there's still the demand for fish. There's still the demand for all these other products. And so we have to change the demand that people have to be like, shit, there's no more money in this anymore. There's money in soy, there's money in grains. Let's just go do more of that because they're just following the money at the end of the day.
We got to get the humans right first because we are so selfish. And until we get, you know, the humans, right. They don't care about the animals in the environment. So to me, it's always been about getting the humans right. Yeah. I was just going to say, like, I liked the fact that like California is like clearly a, a rule setter. And then that usually is the tipping point for the rest of America to follow suit over the next 10 years and a lot of things. And that's where I think the carbon.
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the carbon emission economy is going to take off. But I do feel like we need more taxes on the things that are destroying the environment. And could the government do that? But then you need the people to rally for it in the first place. And we all don't want to pay more taxes on anything. So I think it's about how far in the future do any of us see the future?
kind of care about typically, or how far do we see, how long sighted are we? Because when we're long sighted, the environmental makes a big impact. And when people have children and they start thinking about their children or their children, they get, but what you said, if policy makes it immediately more expensive to do the thing that's detrimental to the environment, then it becomes all of a sudden, now it's my problem today, because I don't want to pay this for the one that wrecks the environment versus this for the one that
that fixes it. And I think it's something that we can all kind of take more responsibility. I think the same thing happens with health. When people sit down, it's like, oh, this cheeseburger is not gonna be the one that kills me, right? It's like, I'm gonna have to eat 100 of these over the next years, then that's gonna maybe, so it's, I do think that immediate kind of, just thinking about in the moment.
None of these things I think will really take big, big traction because there's no immediate impact. So we have to help people to understand the long-term benefits, and that's where it does happen in all of these different directions. And that is probably where the animal, you know, the animal compassion kind of does take more of a front seat because there is immediate, you know. I mean, these animals are on a truck, you know, going to be turned into food, you know, right now, you know, and we can take action and we can stop.
But people can easily say, well, if I don't need it, somebody else is going to eat it. The animal is still going to get, you know, be slaughtered or whatever. So, yeah. Yeah. We're so complicated. We need to make it like a cultural thing because, yeah, this might be a little weird twist on kind of all this more serious conversation about the environment and everything, but I think about like my fiance's from the, from the Philippines. And so when she tells me how people in the Philippines, that they won't have a lot of money, but they'll go and spend.
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you know, a month's worth of rent on a Gucci t-shirt, and you'll go to Asia, and you'll want to copy the trends that are in America. I feel like if we can get veganism to be cool, like America pretty much sends a trend for the rest of the world. Like if something's cool here, it'll be cool in India, it'll be cool in Asia, it'll be cool in the Philippines, it'll be cool in those other countries where meat consumption is really heavy.
And a lot of people want to do what people are doing, especially if you look at LA and New York, the kind of two biggest cities that people want to emulate and copy the trends. I feel like it has to become a part of the culture. It's like those freaking Stanley cups, right? They had that video with a car burned down and a Stanley cup was fine. I'm at the gym now, everyone has Stanley cups, right? So I feel like we need to embed it into the culture where it becomes cool. I worry about that just because like,
Keen wah is cool. Like America has made keen wah the coolest thing on the planet, but keen wah comes from Bolivia and Keen wah Keen wah has divided the Bolivian economy because now potato chips are less Expensive versus keen wah and we all know keen was way better than potato chips So we're exporting all the keen wah out of where it's produced in importing American potatoes
But I mean, I totally get your point. Like I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer, but, but totally like, absolutely. How do we make it cool? Because the thing for me that pops in my head is like, I watched maybe a week or two ago, I finally had a chance to sit down and, and I watched, um, from food to freedom and that's a free movie you can watch on YouTube. I think they released it on YouTube finally for free. And it was all about, you know, bringing five or six patients through the, they had extreme diabetes and how going plant-based for.
for just 10 days, got them off of a good majority of their meds, right? Extremely powerful. But then they went back and interviewed them a few months later to see how they're doing. I'll boil down to one word, which I think probably resonates with all five of us, is discipline on that front. And just what is discipline? Because I know I'm even guilty of it, and I've been...
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Over the past year or two, I've tried to be much, much more conscious about all aspects of discipline. Like I got a new belt for Christmas and it was a leather belt and I had the hardest time telling this person like, I love you. Thank you so much for this present. Is there any way we can please exchange this for a non leather thing? And that's one of the ones like, again, I don't think twice about that a lot. Like my veganism is very much tied to my food.
not so much what I wear, but I'm starting to try and say like I can skip the straw. I can try to point out that that's not a healthy choice to my kids or that's got leather in it. We're not going to purchase that. You know, so try to, you know, like, like we said, walk with our wallets with our handbags here and make the decisions that are going to ripple through the economy in every way. I don't know. How are you guys seeing discipline come out in what you're doing? Well, I was going to just throw in, you know, if
If we could get like 10 Taylor Swift type superstars and have them create a series of advertisements that make, and Maxime, I agree, make it culturally cool to not eat animals, then I promise you that generation would not eat animals. Great. So again, you know, and then...
I've been this is part of what I've been doing is going around trying to collect a great amount of people to create one voice. Like I said, everyone I know they got to pay the bills respect, they got to do the thing. But what happens if we had this one big voice to talk about things? We don't we've got 100 voices. So I think those are the two things that I would.
I'd like to see, you know, a change, you know, if we could get some influencers to talk about how cool it is to be plant-based for whatever the reason, human, plant, animal. And then create a message, a consistent one, you know, one voice message. I have Taylor Swift's phone numbers somewhere. I think I put that in the chat box. Yeah.
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Tell her I say hello, okay? For those late night calls, Glenn. You know, I think what, you know, we're seeing there's kind of two sides to this, I guess, change catalyst or this motivator, right? It's things that we move away from, things that we're afraid of, things that we want to avoid. That's kind of pushing us forward in the one side. And then there's those invitations, right? There's that magnetic force that kind of pulling us towards it. And...
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Yeah, I
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And there are big ones that we've that Lewis Hamilton. Yeah. Natalie Portman, Lizzo. You know, some of these ones are so cool that I don't even recognize the names. But which means that it's you know, my kids would be paying attention to what they tell them versus what I tell them and stuff. Right. But yeah, I just don't know. I think what you said, it's great, Paul. It's like we have to figure out how to make it first.
That's the problem. I said, about a month ago, I wrote down the 10 top influencers and I sent emails to eight of the 10 that I thought was their email. I didn't get any reply, but I'm doing that every month to hope that they could respond back. But it's just not easy to reach these people. And also it's not necessarily what everyone wants to be identified with. I mean, even if people aren't doing it for their own reasons, they don't...
Like they've got, you know, everyone has their own focus. And I think we're here, real many plants. We probably want to encourage men, other men, to kind of, you know, take this fully and eat more plants, right? But, you know, when someone's focused on their music or their career or their films or something like that, like that, you know, it kind of becomes a secondary thing.
I love it. Well, we've got a couple minutes left. I want to throw out the question. I'd love to still hear a little bit of discipline, but at the same time, like let's look at this episode in 10 years and what are your predictions? When's America going to hit its tipping point for, for our plant based movement here?
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I feel like we're reading here. My friend Silas Shrow says that it's gotta be by November 2026, because that's when his granddaughter has her sweet 16. So I'm not gonna contradict Silas. So it's gotta be November 2026. He got to the month. Well done, Glenn. Yeah.
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I said I would love to see it next 10 years. I feel like we're nearing a tipping point because it's gaining more and more popularity. And obviously my view's a little bit skewed because I live in this world. Like all my friends are vegan. I work in the vegan space. But I feel like there's more and more people coming through the movement. And I have more and more conversations with people that are absolutely like completely not eating plant-based and that are wanting to eat plant-based and kind of being open to it. I'm seeing more and more of those people.
Obviously that's just on my small scale, but I think the public is waking up and there's cool documentaries coming out in the next like months to years. And I think that's gonna kind of help make the push and hopefully they make a game changers too. So I don't know, it was like that helped a lot of people transition. Absolutely, yeah, I hope so too. I'm just gonna trust Glen on his prediction.
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The bad news is my wife came across some study on the web that said that the majority of people in the world will go vegan by 2075. And if so, that means that Silas's granddaughter is going to have to have a sweet 75. And we're all going to have to stick around for a long time in order to see it. Oh, yeah.
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Paul, for you, any predictions? No, I'm sorry. I mean, I've been doing this for 12 years. And I call it, I've chosen to do hard time in the plant-based world for 12 years. I love it. I'm still doing it. But I couldn't possibly, I can't predict tomorrow, man. So it's like, I'm just taking one day at a time. That's kind of how I try to train myself.
Well, that is awesome. I appreciate everybody being here. I know Anthony you mentioned that place earlier and I think you found a different name for it, right? What was it? EatSweet? Oh yeah. Yeah. It was, I, I spaced on, or I goofed up on the name of those little healthy, those healthy ice cream, healthy vegan ice creams, but they're called sweet nothings. And I, I forget what I called them a little something or something. I don't know. That's okay. No, just to help the people out that are listening, check those out.
Sweet nothings calm. I have no time. I just think they're cool. I just think they're cool I know well, hopefully they'll sponsor an episode sooner or later here But yeah remind everybody where they can find more information about each of you as we wrap up today max Just fit begin coaching calm all the link to our podcast YouTube everything's on there awesome Anthony it's love life slash telehealth That is awesome
And I know my mom has used that one yet. I've got to get my mom to sign up with you, Max, but Love Life has done a great job. Paul? It would be pbnsg.org. And probably in the next 30 days, it will also be the sagecirclealliance.org. So I represent, wear multiple hats. Very cool. And my fellow podcast host, Glenn.
Glenmerzer.com and I've got a podcast, the Glen Merzer Show on YouTube. That is awesome. Again, I really appreciate you guys coming in and talking about this. I think it was a lot of fun. Just explore the tipping point with you all. Any parting thoughts as we wrap up for the day? Nice to meet you, Maxime. Good seeing you, Glen and Anthony and Brian, but care of the torch, guys. Let's all keep care of the torch. Yeah, I love what everybody's doing.
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A pleasure to meet you guys. Very grateful to be here. Thank you. We will wrap up today's episode of Real Men Eat Plants podcast. Check out other episodes online. Let us know who else we should get on the show, any other topics that you wanna discuss. We would love to have more real men eating plants on here, helping to spread the word. Thanks again, everybody. We really, really appreciate you. Hang out one second while we finish uploading it as I hit stop.
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