In the ongoing debate between plant-based diets and carnivorous lifestyles, there are few who can bring as much scientific insight to the table as Dr. Jenny Powers, PhD in microbiology and immunology. On a recent episode of the Plants vs. Meat podcast, Dr. Powers shared her thoughts on how our evolutionary history influences not only what we eat, but also how we live. In an engaging and thought-provoking discussion with host Bryan, she explores the question: are we living in harmony with our biology? Or have we strayed too far from our evolutionary roots?
How Evolution Shapes Our Diet
The human species has evolved over millions of years, adapting to various environments and food sources. Dr. Powers reminds us that early humans were omnivores, eating what the environment provided—sometimes predominantly plants, other times animal protein. "We always ate the whole food," she notes, whether it was a plant or an animal. The diversity in ancient diets depended largely on geography and necessity.
But as humans developed tools, mastered fire, and ultimately embraced agriculture, something shifted. The Industrial Revolution, in particular, brought ultra-processed foods into our diets—foods that our ancestors would never have encountered in nature. Sugar, refined oils, and stripped-down carbohydrates, while convenient, are far removed from the nutrient-dense, whole foods we evolved to eat.
Dr. Powers' new book, On the Origin of Being, dives into these very themes, offering an evolutionary perspective on modern lifestyles. She argues that many of today’s common health issues, from metabolic diseases to immune dysfunction, stem from the ways we live out of sync with our biology.
Reconnecting with Nature, Reconnecting with Ourselves
Dr. Powers also speaks to the loss of our connection with nature. For most of human history, people considered themselves an integral part of the natural world, not separate from it. Today, however, many of us live in concrete jungles, disconnected from the cycles of nature that our ancestors revered and depended on.
Dr. Powers encourages listeners to reconnect with the world around them, even in small ways: “Look up, look at the clouds, walk around the park on your lunch break.” She suggests that by being mindful of the natural world—whether through tending a garden, walking barefoot in the grass, or simply appreciating the birds in our cities—we can start to heal our bodies and our minds.
Ethics, Sustainability, and the Future of Food
In addition to the health benefits of aligning our diets with our evolutionary past, the conversation takes an ethical turn. Dr. Powers discusses the moral implications of our food choices, particularly with regard to industrial farming practices. She reflects on how our ancestors respected the animals they hunted and the plants they gathered, integrating sustainability into their way of life.
Today, however, most people are far removed from the realities of industrial food production. "We're destroying the lungs of this planet," Bryan notes, pointing to deforestation in the Amazon for cattle farming. Dr. Powers agrees, emphasizing that eating less meat and focusing on sustainable food sources can have a profound impact on the planet. The book explores how ancient societies lived in harmony with their ecosystems, a lesson we must urgently relearn.
The Path Forward: Small Changes, Big Impact
As someone who has made significant lifestyle changes in her own life, Dr. Powers understands that overhauling one’s diet or habits can feel overwhelming. But she reassures listeners that small steps, like incorporating more whole foods or eating more plants, can make a big difference. "Once you kind of start making smaller changes and you see that they feel good, then you can make bigger changes,” she says.
The debate between plants and meat is not just a question of diet—it's about health, the environment, ethics, and our place in the natural world. Dr. Powers’ evolutionary approach offers a unique perspective, reminding us that sometimes, looking to the past can help us navigate the future.
Whether you are plant-based, omnivorous, or still figuring out your relationship with food, this episode of Plants vs. Meat offers a wealth of food for thought.
Dr. Jenny Powers’ insights remind us that our choices have deep roots in history, biology, and morality.
As we look to the future, the question remains: how can we evolve toward a healthier, more sustainable way of living?
Transcript:
Bryan (00:01)
Welcome to Plants vs. Meat, the platform for friendly and informative debates between herbivores and carnivores that will give us both a chance to share our perspectives on our different chosen lifestyles. I am your host Bryan and joining us today is Jenny Powers. She is an accomplished writer, scientist, athlete who has earned her PhD in microbiology and immunology. I always trouble with that one from the University of Colorado.
Welcome to the show, Jenny.
Jenny Powers (00:31)
Thank you so much. I am really happy to be here.
Bryan (00:34)
I am excited to talk about you've got a new book that just came out on the origin of being understanding science and the science of evolution. Correct. That that's awesome. And so I always like to start off with like some common ground that we might have together here. And so I thought the important question that we probably have common ground on is,
Jenny Powers (00:44)
correct to enhance your quality of life.
Okay.
Bryan (01:01)
Evolution. can all agree that humans have evolved from earlier forms of life. Correct. So I'm glad we're on the same page there, but to the format of today is really to get to know a little bit of background about you. And then we'll try and spend a few minutes and talk through the health, the planet and the animals a little bit. So, take us, take us back in time and the precursors that led up to you writing this awesome book. So.
Jenny Powers (01:07)
Mm -hmm. Yep.
That would be great.
Yeah, well, I have always been kind of a high achiever. I got a chemical engineering degree. played basketball. I got my PhD. I was always, I think I was really caught in the rat race. my self -worth was really tied up with what I accomplished and things like that. And so.
you know, I had, and I felt a lot of shame that I just, I was depressed and I couldn't, I just couldn't feel like I could do it. And I felt like it was my fault. And I felt like, you know, I was, you know, just not suited for it. And so I, when I had my kids, I actually left academia and it was the best decision I ever made because I started pursuing my career in writing and that...
made me feel like, my gosh, you know, my whole life I've been doing things that other I thought other people wanted me to do. I thought society wanted me to do. So I started writing middle grade novels actually for they're like for kids that are like your age kids. And but writing, you know, doesn't pay the bills very much. So I was looking for something else. And I ran across Luke who wanted to have a research assistant for a book that he's working on nutrition. And I'm like, that sounds I could do that.
Bryan (02:34)
Very cool.
Jenny Powers (02:49)
But when I interviewed with him, he said, I just hired a nutritionist to help me with that. And I'm like, man, you this sounded like a great opportunity. And he said, well, but what, you know, I have this other idea kicking around in my head for years, and I really am interested in somebody being able to kind of take it and run with it. And so he had discovered when he was researching his nutrition book and the evolution of nutrition, how far off we are from eating the way we evolved to live.
And so he started seeing all of these other aspects of our lives, know, sleep and work and our relationship with nature. And this is just the first book that the next couple of books, you know, take like child rearing and social groups and the arts and things like that. So all of these ways that we are living now that we were in complete discord with our biology. And so he was like, you interested in maybe researching and writing this book?
Bryan (03:43)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (03:48)
As we were talking, I was like, my gosh. I started to see that maybe many of these places that he was talking about, like, maybe it's not me. Maybe the life I was trying to have was just not in accord with my biology, with who I was. And so what was really cool about this experience is because I got to use my scientific training.
and I got to use my passion for writing. And the book we have out now is the result of that. so, and what I really liked about it too is, you know, I'm an immunologist. I studied the innate immune system. I studied macrophages, which really doesn't really have anything to do with evolution or anthropology or anything like that. So when I started this book, Luke had the outline and he had this vision, but I started the book as a blank page.
Bryan (04:35)
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (04:47)
And as I researched and studied and wrote, I learned right along with like someone who's a reader, right? If you start from the beginning and you read it, you kind of went through my journey as well. And so the lifestyle changes that we propose in the book and the reasons why, we take people on an evolutionary journey to understand why. And then we spend a lot of time on our hunter gatherer ancestors because
Bryan (04:47)
Mm
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (05:17)
We've lived, that was a successful adaptation for a couple million years in our human lineage. And then by the time we get to modern humans, people are like, I think I know what's wrong. So then we talk about ways to change. And so we were talking earlier, like a way that I have changed my, especially my diet and some of my other habits. I eat whole foods now.
Bryan (05:21)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Right.
Mm
Jenny Powers (05:47)
trying to eat more plants. I'm trying to get more fiber in my diet. So there's a lot of things that I, know, at first it was kind of overwhelming all of the things that we weren't doing in accord to our biology. But once you kind of start making smaller changes and you see that they feel good, then you can make bigger changes and more changes and they kind of add up.
Bryan (05:52)
Yeah.
And it, it's so true because like, you know, we're not, I, know, as a vegan myself, I'm not expecting everybody on the planet to switch tomorrow. I certainly hope for that, but, but at the same time, like, I know everybody has to go through a process. I know I watched the movie forks over knives and I just went out of the movie theater and said, look, the science and the, the, everything's just clicked with me in that movie. And I went vegan cold Turkey. And then, you know, 60 days later,
Jenny Powers (06:19)
Right?
Mm -hmm.
Wow.
Bryan (06:38)
I said like, look, I miss the ice cream. I miss the butter. I miss those things. And so I put them back in and then it took me another three or four years to go back through the evolution to get back to being like the true vegan now kind of a thing. So it was just that, that interesting shift that we all have to go through our journey of like, think we're all spoiled with our early life metabolism and get into our late twenties, early thirties or something and realize, man, I better figure out this diet thing.
Jenny Powers (06:49)
Mm
you
This is true, yeah.
Bryan (07:06)
or we figure it out through exercise or whatever our journey is.
Jenny Powers (07:10)
Yeah, yeah, the lifestyle changes. And I found, you I was off social media for a really long time and I found that there is this amazing community of people who, health and wellness and that it's like having, you going through my feet, it's like having little people on my shoulder reminding me, you know, like, don't forget, this is really healthy for you. You know, there's a, there's this, yeah, there's a, there's a support network that's building. I think it's really hard for people.
Bryan (07:23)
Mm
Yes.
Eat more kale, right?
Jenny Powers (07:39)
to go again, like everyone's on this, you we're in this river and it's really fast and everyone's going downstream and the people who kind of choose a different way of life have to swim against the tide and there's not a lot of, not a lot of support. There's not a lot of options, you know, and everyone else is still, you know, just mindlessly, you know, swimming down the river and they don't understand your reasoning. And so it was really helpful for me to see that.
Bryan (07:42)
Mm
Mm
Jenny Powers (08:07)
online at least there's more and more people who are embracing this kind of lifestyle and because I feel like the lifestyle is not going to come from the top down you know the status quo is going to be set there until somebody changes it and if the change is going to have to come from you know the grassroots movement.
Bryan (08:16)
Mm
And it's going to take a tremendous amount. Like we have got to end meat subsidies. We've got to change the FDA's food plate, little picture and get rid of dairy off of there. Like there's ingrained things over the past 200 years we've been building up and at least in America. So I hope we can figure out ways to unlock that and stuff. guess, you if we spent a couple more minutes on the health sides of it, which is really what I feel like a good portion of your book is probably focused on to a degree. And you said,
Jenny Powers (08:33)
Right.
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Bryan (08:53)
other books coming out. Like, cause I, I'm curious about like, you know, grounding and, know, walking barefoot and just getting back in touch with the earth or the whole fungi world is fascinating to me with the mycelium networks and stuff. there's just so much stuff we don't know. And I hope you get to write more books to help us put this all together to a degree. But the, that your expertise in immunology and, just diet and stuff like that. Like I know
Jenny Powers (09:04)
yeah.
thanks.
Bryan (09:21)
Like as an example, like I am a vegan and I go out to restaurants and I say, Hey, I'm vegan. What do you have for me? And they come back with spinach and pasta and I'm allergic to spinach. Like I know that I figured it out. like, you know, I can't really eat spinach. It's not a friend of mine. And that's the default play for meat restaurants that want to serve you up something as well. We've got some spinach or every salad, every salad I asked for has spinach hiding in it.
Jenny Powers (09:29)
Mm -hmm.
man.
Now have a salad.
Bryan (09:49)
so like that's just one of my personal things because it's genetic in me. Like I just know that tapioca and spinach are not my friends. And those are the two things that the alternatives use on a regular basis. so it makes me even in tough. So I'm just curious, like how that evolution has played into a healthy immune system and how you see like plant diets versus animal diets compare with some of your research.
Jenny Powers (09:54)
Right.
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the truth is during our evolution, during the human lineage, we were omnivores. And as the human lineage progressed and our brains got bigger and bigger, which is the hallmark of human beings, our intelligence and our creativity, our brains got bigger, we had to find different ways to feed that brain. And so,
Bryan (10:29)
Mm
Mm
Jenny Powers (10:38)
evolutionarily, you if we go back to our primate ancestors, the common ancestor that we had with chimpanzees and bonobos, they, they were omnivores, but they ate mostly plants. And so as we evolve, we started putting more and more animal proteins in there, because animal proteins, know, or animal meat, and the things that animals provided us had less, you know, they, they were easier to digest and things like that. And so we needed to feed our brains.
with the food that had the most energy dense food, but we always ate our food whole, right? We never just ate the muscle meat. We never just ate the pulp. ate of the plants, we ate the entire plant. We ate the entire animal. But at the same time, what's really cool is if you look at studies done on the hunter gatherer groups that survived into modern day, they were pushed to the fringes.
because nobody wanted that land. And so there's this complete opposite. People who lived in the Arctic, the Inuit, ate 95 % meat, 95 % animal products and 5 % plants. And yet those who lived in the Kalahari Desert, they ate maybe 75 % plants or more and a lot less animal products and not necessarily animal products like
mammals, you know, they ate a lot more, you know, like bugs and just whatever. During our evolution, we had to eat whatever the environment provided us. depending on where we lived, and we if we lived in the Arctic, we lived in the desert, before agriculture came along, we lived everywhere in between too, you know, and so we, we ate the food sources that we had that were there in season. And
Bryan (12:17)
Yes.
Mm -hmm. And we ate the food source there. Exactly. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (12:35)
but we always ate the whole food. So there really isn't one paleo diet. And I think what's important for people to know is there's lots of different ways people can eat. And now that we are conscious, we're more environmentally conscious, we can make conscious decisions and we can make moral decisions and we can make health decisions based on what makes us feel the best and what is best for
the environment. that's what I love. We're adaptable. That's what I love. We have all this adaptability. We can be omnivores, vegans, we be people who are carnivores, but we have to take into consideration a lot of different factors now. It's not just about what can we eat.
Bryan (13:09)
Yes.
Totally.
And it's interesting because I know like the book is on the origin of being understanding the science of evolution. it's the thing that I like to point out to people when I get into this debate is that our ancestors ate a tremendous amount of bugs and insects and that kind of stuff, because those are pretty easy to catch and eat and they're a good source of protein. When it comes to the meat side of it.
Jenny Powers (13:42)
Mm
Right.
Bryan (13:51)
I don't think we ate meat until we created fire because you need to cook the meat to kill the bacteria and everything else. I'm, I, I have a copy of the book. I've not had a chance to read it yet. so I'm just curious, like, did your book touch on the fact that you have to cook the food? Like the, the Arctic, one obviously is eating 95 % meat, but they had fire to cook it, to kill it. Like,
Jenny Powers (13:54)
Mm
Yeah.
Mm
Bryan (14:15)
We say we're carnivore oriented, we're not carnivores have completely different acidic structures in their bodies to digest raw meat. We cannot do that unless we cook it. And I think that's a really important thing to point out in some fashion or another that we need to process that food in some fashion. So we don't die by eating it.
Jenny Powers (14:21)
Mm
Right.
This is true.
Exactly. So the other thing as we evolved, our nutrition evolved with us and we figured out ways to process food. when we were, homo erectus is the first human lineage that figured out how to use fire. And what's amazing about fire is that it processes food to the point where it makes it so much easier to digest, know, not just, not just meat, but potatoes. And it's like a lot of, there are a lot of plant foods that we need to cook in order to deactivate toxins.
Bryan (14:47)
Mm -hmm.
Mm
Jenny Powers (15:02)
in order to make the nutrients bioavailable to us. once we started, and don't forget cooking makes things so much easier to chew. we, know, primates these days, know, modern primates spend so much time chewing and humans were like, we don't have time to chew. we have, you we need to find things. need to process things so we can get their nutrients from them as quickly as possible.
Bryan (15:02)
Mm
Yes.
I need a smoothie. That's right.
Jenny Powers (15:31)
And then, you know, we are social, we needed to interact, we needed to teach each other, we needed to, there's so many other things that humans need to do as our brains evolved. And so a lot of the processing techniques like cooking became very, very important. So you're completely right. But what's interesting is, you know, as our brains evolved and as we're trying to get more and more energy dense food that's
Bryan (15:50)
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (15:59)
palatable and easy to digest and absorbs quickly. It's almost like we took it too far once we had the agriculture revolution, especially the industrial revolution, because never in the history of any animals evolution did we eat pure sugar, did we eat pure refined oils. We never ate food in the absence of how it came to us from nature. And so while sugar is palatable and it's
Bryan (16:08)
Yeah.
Jenny Powers (16:27)
It's easy to chew, it's easy to digest. It gets into our bloodstream, unfortunately, way too quickly for people who are diabetic and things like that. But we weren't ever, our processing became ultra processing. that, we went very far away from our evolutionary roots when we started eating ultra processed food.
Bryan (16:52)
I agree completely, but it's, it's a great segue into like this next little section that I want to talk about, which is the animals, right? The ethical side of this to a degree, because like, if I say, when I, when I try and tell people like, think about the ethical side of this to a degree, like many people have their heads buried in the sand that we have a tremendous amount more animals on this planet that we kill and eat than nature left in the planet. But like I say to you, you know, picture a farm with cows and chickens and you think of
Jenny Powers (16:59)
Mm
Bryan (17:22)
beautiful picturesque Charlotte's web type video, green grass, sunshine, all that kind of stuff. But then when I say, you know, industrial farming, like people either don't know what that really looks like, or they don't understand that you maybe don't have any sunshine involved in the animal's life or that you only get a one by one square of space to walk around in. And then you're obviously, we hope that they're slaughtered quickly and painlessly as we possibly can, but really start to unpack that for people.
Jenny Powers (17:26)
Mm -hmm.
Mm
Right, right.
Bryan (17:52)
Did you touch on that in the book at all or how we've industrialized that? And let me know your thoughts or the book's perspective on that.
Jenny Powers (17:54)
Yeah, we did. Yeah, well...
Well, one thing that I learned is, know, hunter -gatherers weren't tree huggers. Like they didn't have a concept of, you know, let's save nature. Yeah, they didn't have, let's save nature because they were nature. They, they considered themselves, our ancestors considered themselves a part, an integral part of nature. We weren't above it. We were inside of it. And the respect and the sustainability practices that they exercised,
Bryan (18:08)
Plants versus meat, right? Yeah.
Great.
Jenny Powers (18:32)
were just were so integrated into their lives. So, you know, they, they, you know, as their religious, religion systems, you know, they, you know, they, all the animals had spirits and all the, you know, all the rocks, all the plants, all the trees had spirits. And so they had this reverence for what they would take from the environment. And, you know, they would celebrate and celebrate the
Bryan (18:35)
Mm
Jenny Powers (18:58)
you know, the animal that gave their life to them. They would celebrate, you know, the food that they grew, you know, or were able to harvest. And so I feel like that's one thing that we've completely lost. We don't have a connection with nature. We don't have any connection to the way our food is made, except for people who garden and maybe farmers themselves. They have no idea what goes into it.
And because of that, don't understand.
just like you said, the moral, the compassionate sides of what we need to do to grow our food. So hearing people say, you know, well, we were not part of nature, you know, you know, we're so integrally part of nature, that people don't realize what we're doing to the environment. Now we're actually doing to ourselves. I'm sure you've heard about all that stuff. And now that we know that our human population,
Bryan (19:43)
Mm
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (20:02)
The way that we're feeding our human population is unsustainable. So we have this information, we are intelligent, we can make choices to stop that from happening. Let's find a way to live more sustainably. And I am definitely of the camp of eating less meat is more sustainable. If people ate a third less meat, it would be incredible how much land has opened up.
Bryan (20:15)
Yes.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (20:30)
to either return to forests and you could stop cutting down forests. Yeah, exactly.
Bryan (20:34)
I mean, we're destroying the lungs of this planet in the Amazon just to raise more cattle so we can have our stakes. So we have got to stop that in my mind in a big, big way. But like, if we stay focused on the ethical side of that, that animal pieces of this is, is like, maybe we can't convert everybody to eating whole food plant based a hundred percent, but we maybe can at least end the suffering by growing lab grown meat, perhaps.
Jenny Powers (20:44)
Mm -hmm.
Mm
right. Mm -hmm.
Bryan (21:04)
or something like that, or at least I don't think that's sustainable personally in the long run. But like, if we can at least say, look, you can get your steak once a month to get your fix, but it's at least lab grown. Maybe have we removed the ethical pieces of that? I don't know. It's a, it's a struggle for sure.
Jenny Powers (21:13)
Mm
Well, and if we take away the land that is used to feed the animals, so we have fewer animals, so we need less food to feed them, there's more land for them to maybe be roaming freer. I mean, I don't know all the logistics of that.
Bryan (21:30)
Mm
Yes. Or let the buffalo come back or whatever else we need to do. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (21:39)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we talk about in the book, difference between, you know, industrial raised meat and wild meat and how much better, you know, wild meat is for you because of the way, you know, we evolved eating animals from nature. didn't and so their body composition, the composition of their fat, all of those things are changed when you do an industrial, you know, industrial slaughterhouse, you know, or industrial, you know, cattle farming.
Bryan (21:46)
Mm
Mm -hmm.
Yes.
Jenny Powers (22:09)
the like basis of their nutrition that they give us has changed. more, fewer, less meat, more free range meat where the animals have a lovely life roaming around eating the food that they would eat naturally. So then when we eat them, we get the food that we would have eaten naturally when we were evolving.
Bryan (22:35)
Yeah. I, I hope we can end all of that personally, cause I don't think as a smart, you know, our next evolution should be to just helping reduce the suffering and cruelty on the planet. but, but yeah, I agree, but I want to key back on like the, environmental side of it. Like you said, like, you know, we've lost our connection to nature and I agree. Cause I think many of us are sitting in our houses with our filtered air and our air conditioning and stuff like, so.
Jenny Powers (22:44)
Mm
I agree.
Bryan (23:05)
We have got to get back to that nature piece of it and the environment is another big thing. think we're aligned on the fact that humans have had a significant impact on the climate of this planet. Like you said, I think we're now above being connected to nature and we're controlling nature. Like we're creating new islands, we're creating land, we're destroying huge ecosystems.
Jenny Powers (23:17)
yeah.
Right. Mm -hmm.
Bryan (23:31)
How does your book touch on the environmental impact and like, it have any recommendations on how we can take quicker and faster steps to save our planet?
Jenny Powers (23:39)
Well, I think one of the main points of the book is that people who aren't connected with nature don't care if we save it or not. And some people are like, well, I live in this city. I can't connect with nature. But I feel like that's really short -sighted. People have this view of nature, the National Geographic nature programs. I have to go to this amazing.
Bryan (23:51)
Mm
Jenny Powers (24:08)
you know, the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone or things like that to connect with nature. And, you know, our country gathers didn't travel to be in nature. They knew they were connected to the nature that was right surrounding them. So if you live in the city, the nature that's surrounding you is are the birds, are the trees, are the plants, even manmade like gardens or
Bryan (24:23)
Mm
Jenny Powers (24:33)
flower pots or that's the nature you're surrounded with. So connect with that nature first because, you know, look up, look at the clouds, walk around the park on your lunch break. You're not gonna make a connection with nature if you only connect with nature once a year when you're on vacation at Yellowstone. Those situations are good because nature provides so much awe.
Bryan (24:39)
Mm
That's right.
Jenny Powers (25:03)
types of trips are important as well because you have the sense of awe and the feeling of awe will also make you care more about trying to preserve what we have. So, so I, yeah.
Bryan (25:16)
I, I agree. Like even if you, you know, I have a hydroponic garden in my house and every now and then it gets a bug infestation and it's like, how did they get in here? And how do I cure this? And, and over the past few years, I've, re restructured my whole backyard to be just, it's got thousands of flowers in it now. And the butterflies that come in every year now and just going outside and looking at it.
And the aphids like North Carolina has the aphid, like the 17 year aphid brood or something has hatched and the aphids makes such noise. You can hear them inside the house, but yeah, I do hope we can, if we connect with the nature, even just in our own local environment, we can try to help realize we've got to make a bigger play faster, quicker to help save some of the things that are. Go ahead.
Jenny Powers (25:40)
yeah.
boy.
That's crazy.
Right.
Mm -hmm. I also, yeah, think gardening is so important for people to start doing because gardening helps you, well, you're in the earth, you're in the dirt, you're grounding, like you said, but also you see what it takes to grow food. You have fresh organic food. And I see more and more communities who have like community gardens and permaculture and things like that. feel...
Bryan (26:11)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Jenny Powers (26:31)
That's the way to go. Get involved in your own food making, then also share your food. Get your community involved because that is something we talk about in the next book that has completely fallen off our radars is how important community and social interactions are for our wellbeing. So we can't just be in our little boxes.
Bryan (26:51)
Anybody anybody that wants tomatoes or cucumbers I have got a million of them right now so you are welcome to stop by my house and I am giving them away in buckets full so.
Jenny Powers (27:01)
Yeah, yeah, so it's just, it's fun to think about, if I grow this food, I can share it with, and I can just give it to people. I don't need money for it. People are like, healthy food is so expensive. Well, not if you find someone who's given it away or growing it yourself or, there are all kinds of ways to.
Bryan (27:10)
Mm -hmm. Great.
through it.
Jenny Powers (27:24)
to both, and it's eating more plants. you you're gonna eat the plants that you make, that you grow, and you're gonna respect and have pride in what you created. Like, I made this, you know? And so it'll help you eat healthier in the long run, and there's so many really important things that could go into learning how to garden.
Bryan (27:29)
Mm -hmm.
That's right.
This has been awesome, Jenny. got one other like bigger, like future looking question. And it sounds to me like you're very much on your way to joining us on the vegan side of this. So I let me know how, let me know how I can help you as you write the second and the third book. Maybe we can convince you. but given like your scientific background, how are you envisioning like the future of food production and trying to balance like everything that we talked about the human health, the environmental sustainability and some of the ethics.
Jenny Powers (28:00)
I think so.
Bryan (28:20)
pieces of it. What's your hope for the future there?
Jenny Powers (28:23)
Well, I think scientifically there are more and more studies coming out. People are focusing on the health benefits of all of the things we've been talking about. And so if the researchers start, and then we have to start, the research needs to start moving into our healthcare system. The way we train doctors needs to change in terms of functional health, know, holistic health. Because I think
Bryan (28:49)
Nutritional training. Yeah.
Jenny Powers (28:51)
Yeah, yeah, you know, because we, know, doctors help keep people dying longer now, you know, we still have the same life expectancy, but the last 15, 20 years of our lives are, we're ill, we are overweight or obese, you know, we have diabetes, heart disease, all kinds of things. So I really feel like scientifically, that's where we need to start is to realize, you know, all of these studies are being done about the benefits of
Bryan (28:57)
Hmm.
Mm
Jenny Powers (29:19)
whole foods, about the benefits of nature, about the benefits of less stress in your life, know, the benefits of getting really good quality sleep and having your circadian rhythms aligned. That needs to trickle into our medical field. And then that because that is a place where we can start helping people learn how to change their lives. So I feel like, again, it's a bottom up kind of problem, but it's also a top down problem we need, we need to meet in the middle.
Bryan (29:24)
Mm
Jenny Powers (29:49)
But I am encouraged by all the scientific studies coming out about all of these different things because it just serves to put an exclamation point on it. This isn't just because if someone who might not want to give up meat because of ethical reasons, if it's going to help them live longer, well, then they'll do it. So there's lots of things different people are motivated.
Bryan (30:10)
Yeah, that's right. You have two choices. Eat more plants or I'll be cutting your chest open in 30 years to do a bypass. So yeah.
Jenny Powers (30:19)
Right? So people have a choice and, you know, people just need to wake up a little bit and see what's going on and make better choices for themselves. And if they make better choices for themselves, it will trickle down and make better choices for the environment.
Bryan (30:35)
Yeah. Thank you, Jenny, for being on the show. How do people get in touch? Where can they find the book? And hit us with all those details one more time.
Jenny Powers (30:41)
Sure, yeah. Yeah, it's been so much fun talking to you. So we have a website, www .OnTheOriginOfBeing .com. There you can see we have some videos and our bios and excerpts from the book and a place to buy it. Any online retailer will sell it, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, those kinds of things. I've just recently started doing social media, so we're still gaining some momentum. I'd love people to follow us.
I do most of my interaction on Instagram. It's on the origin of being. So those are the two main places that you can find, that people can find us.
Bryan (31:22)
That is awesome. We'll make sure we put those links in the show notes for people and and don't forget to try and support your local bookseller that's probably right next to the community garden on that front and I'm sure you can get a copy of Jenny's book there as well. But that.
Jenny Powers (31:30)
yes.
Yes, yes, we do have it in several independent bookstores. So they can. Yes, they can.
Bryan (31:39)
And I'm sure they can order it either way for you. So that's right. Well, that is all the time we have for this episode of the plants versus meat podcast. Thanks again, Jenny, for joining us, sharing your insights and experiences with our community. The best way you can support our show is to click that subscribe button down below, tell some friends and family about that, and let us know if you know somebody that wants to be our next guest on here to help have a friendly debate and try and unpack this a little bit more.
Until next time everybody, we'll see you soon.
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