Joe Rogan Experience #1389 — Chris Kresser Transcript

Transcript

0:00 ladies and gentlemen Chris Kresser Joe good to be back buddy good to see you yeah we are here So a little bit of context. Lots of celebrities. you know, You know, like, I'm eating meat. they believe what they're saying or do you think they're making these films because they are trying to convert people to being vegan and they think that distorting reality

2:46 where we tend to only look at the data you know, from a nutrition perspective, and they also believe that it's going to help save the So the diet they're being fed is not— And they didn't talk to his collaborator, Carl Groschmidt, who's been quoted in the media saying, It's not an ideal diet for fighting olympic games these were people that they were sending out to die for other people's enjoyment

5:58 And let me also just say, like, if this film, if the purpose of this film was to say it's possible to thrive on a plant-based diet and look, here's some athletes that have done that. No dispute with that. I mean, we haveames talking about his ability to But there's a lot of those. they're eating KFC, McDonald's, et cetera, and they switch from that to a plant-based diet.

8:59 So you're not going to see that decline in performance happen right away. So in the absence of the correct amount of amino acids, or that they were being deceptive. Right grams are equal to protein grams because they're they're not no but it's even worse than that butter is four grams. So you'd have to have five tablespoons of peanut butter in that sandwich

11:35 Just quantity. firmly established science. They look at this, especially like in third world countries where enough of each of them? That's the key question. What's the quantity? What's the profile? So the the effect on your body, particularly on things like muscle protein synthesis, which is of concern Yeah. Well, that's a common argument in the vegan community.

14:53 gone over the evidence and disputed the claims that are in these films, like a debunking someone who's actually informed has a conversation with one of these influencers. Like, they're not being 100% accurate, objective, The best argument, in my opinion, is this factory farming is disgusting Because if you want to make an argument you want to say i want to live like that because the way i feel about eating animals it makes me

17:13 We can do it right now before we move on because it is. rodents, you know, mice, birds, fish, all, you know, killed in the process of industrial you're most likely more animals are going to die than if you want. It's like if you have a hundred meat wheels, wheat meals, rather a hundred meals with wheat in them, you're probably killing more animals.

19:32 a vegan diet and all these monocrops that these monocrops are killing all these small animals On a massive scale. Would it improve our nutrition? basic nutrient and protein needs would be that much higher. So, you know, And if you want to feed 320 million people, And if you're going to grow food for 20 million people you need a giant chunk of land if you need that giant chunk of land even if everybody's eating vegan that means wildlife

23:00 Soil is eroding. You touched on it a little bit earlier. Are they not aware of what's happening here or is this disingenuous? Are they not aware of what's happening here, So that means, you know, the carbon needed for feed, for transport, for processing the cattle, not just emissions, not just methane burps from the cattle. Well, if we look at just the direct for both, it's 5% for livestock globally and 14% for transportation.

26:24 and then put it on the film. I would just like people to be informed. Yeah. just either extremely poor or they're monsters and they're treating their kid terribly these people When they have looked at regenerative, holistically managed livestock, This is a little out of my wheelhouse, but it's part of the whole methane cycle, keeps going and this is this is a natural cycle this is not something you have to use equipment

30:56 It's true that right now that type of holistically managed livestock is not very common. So this animal, the regenerative livestock production, we should talk about this that you need compost and you need fertilizer and you need something that replenishes the soil and doing We're choosing. then that may be the only way we can feed everybody. So we need three things to happen.

34:18 So I'm not saying this is an enormous undertaking. Well, what's interesting, and I didn't even know this until a few years ago, And we've gotten addicted to animals eating things they're not supposed to eat and the way their flesh comes out. yeah so both scenarios as you said are almost insane the feeding everyone and then also like We never eat them.

37:03 and bioavailable protein. I mean, and so many people get influenced by it And he said that he has the goal of it becoming the biggest organic pea protein company in surprising that those experts invest in what they believe in and that they write books about it i offering those for people who, doctors who watch this film and complete a short quiz. and that flesh should be avoided because it increases our carnal urges.

40:29 So we have this weird meshing that goes back to like the early 20th century don't drink they're they're advised to exercise so it's kind of like the dean orner studies where no smoking, no drinking, and exercise. performance by the vegan diet. reduce heart disease, that's not really true. conversing with joel about this and by the way the reason why i had him on i know people think

44:11 If you ask 100 people on the street, my guess is 100% would say those are obviously different. It's ridiculous. population. So there was one, the health food shoppers study, where they only looked at people And the people without meat, look, no poison. And for me to unpack that, I have to talk about healthy user bias. And then when you realize, when you start trying to study nutrition there is so much to learn there's so many factors and there's so many biases

47:27 And to be fair, it's the same for, you know, people who are into keto or low carb or carnivore or whatever they're into. so most vegan sounding non-vegan ever. But I, like many others and my patients in my community, my health was harmed by that. had something to do with the diet I come across them on Twitter or something. In fact, I'm in trouble with the low carb community because, total. Like I don't, I'm not a low carb guy. I never have been. I,

50:32 And then kept running, I think, after that. So, yeah, I yeah i mean anyways my point I don't want to take that away from him. I think when you're at that level of performance, I was doing cardio Probably lost weight too Like giant And it was so ridiculous. Yes, RDA protein. that the RDA should be 1.2 grams per kilogram. And again, just the basic And we're not, again, not talking about optimal amount for athletes. We're just talking about the RDA basic bare minimum.

54:41 recently why don't you try eggs and uh they they looked at me like I was talking to them about poison. does acknowledge in the film that athletes need more protein than regular non-athlete people. weightlifting community will recognize this. And, Jamie, if you pull up slide 10, this is what you'd have to eat on a vegan diet to get that amount of protein.

56:22 So you would need to eat three cups of cooked lentils, three cups of chickpeas, two cups like the bioavailability and amino acid profile would be horrible Is it lutein? what it is is when you get it once you hit a certain level of leucine it's a and it's low in plant proteins. profile in beef to several different plant proteins like amount of that, as you can see, because of the levels. And this is why a lot of vegan

1:00:36 So, he starts with a bunch of different supplements in the morning, multivitamin, nutritional yeast, zinc, glucosamine, magnesium, calcium, B12, and iron. And then he has some more protein shakes and smoothies throughout the day. and then using supplements to address that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean it's just one of those sports where it's like bodybuilding.

1:02:56 what he's trying to do right i don't know if he could eat just vegetables and pull that off he And it's an unfair comparison. Yeah, he's enormous. enormous he's so much bigger yeah but the problem is in the film they don't make that distinction I think it is though, because for him, for his size, very sport specific area of performance. I'm more like a whole foods person, and that's where I'm coming from.

1:05:51 I think during camp. I think what he does is avoids red meat. He's outstanding in all areas. I'm not sure if he was vegan back then. It was like 11 days out. it's a big cut for him so his normal let me let me keep going so he's this is that was the first and only time well except He's tough as nails. Nate beats him up, gets him on the ground, submits him, and they're saying this is a victory for veganism.

1:09:37 god the vegans are dominating look vegan dominated but he's you know this is a last minute fight So Brian Jennings, the boxer, they talked about he went vegan division and it's filled with killers like any combat sport and that as he got in many fighters don't make it to get in collard greens and Popeyes, KFC, everybody frying chicken. I grew up not even knowing

1:12:03 people to understand that this there's They're not honest about what they know they're only giving you little snippets and cherry picking data and doing things like the study that showed right? I mean, I've always argued that the optimal diet includes both plants and animal foods, and there's reasons for that. Plants contain some nutrients that animal foods don't,

1:13:54 Times more selenium than we have the alt-right now we have the carnivores and we have the vegans. because vegetables give you these things often as humans we have a hard time with the rda you need a certain amount to not starve to death you don't necessarily need vegetables there's a whole community of people out there that's listening rather about it

1:17:03 well the Inuit also There was a study, ethnographic study of hunter-gatherer cultures done, 230 roughly cultures studied, and they found that the clinical research suggests that plants have some useful nutrients, especially some fibers Yes. large dose of protein to fulfill their Well, just read off of you. Cam Newton is one of them, right? And some people think, you know, certainly could be career ending.

1:21:15 it's going to be difficult. to not eat meat other than that he just did it to recover and then once he recovered he went back to the games and practices and all that. It's in the show notes. oomph back. Now, again, we're talking about elite athletes with very specific nutritional It varies. before, you know, if you're 100, if you're 200 pounds, the average American weight is male is

1:24:58 Then it comes down to micronutrients. That produces this vitamin. So in ruminants like cows, in the rumen, which is a chamber in the stomach, You can be coprophagic. we don't agree on a lot of things, but I appreciate his rigor with the science. He has a big article People repeat a lot of these things and then they become dogma. but basically serum B12, which is the marker that's usually used,

1:29:17 And you can see the results here. B12 deficiency can cause serious and even irreversible neurological damage. So homocysteine is a marker that is also more sensitive than serum B12. like Jack Norris, to their credit, do acknowledge it and strongly recommend that people who are on a vegan diet supplement so I thought he was vegan in like 2011 or 12 or something.

1:32:10 those knee braces on and he's going over his research and just happen to have a camera crew It was meant to persuade and convince people. this is how you show the footage you put it out there and it makes it like a little bit better for people to swallow and get you know and i like the scenes of him doing the self-defense demonstrations Slide 64. fuck you up even faster than the gorilla a human who has a gun that eats mcdonald's and kfc i'm serious

1:34:54 Also just objectively false. about oxes, like strong as an ox. There's a myostatin issue, right? The genes are programmed to carry more muscle. It really does. Silly. they kill other monkeys and other animals and eat them. that have been done in Neanderthal groups ranging from 130,000 to 28,000 years ago. And then they compared those isotope levels with contemporary

1:38:51 yeah the skull's the wrong shape right yeah so that's double crazy so that's a homo sapien you know, humans and Neanderthals, you know, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, We've got knives. hominids yeah and the argument that human beings over two million years ago the doubling of the this that that term is very important because people always want to use that for plant-based

1:41:38 you know, Nutrient-dense plant-based food sounds good. human brain size corresponding with consuming more nutrient-dense foods what that means is meat They started to just, it really kind of went from just like, as for other animal products, organizations that do comprehensive evidence reviews trend who's rebelling and eating meat then what else are they doing that is also not healthy and not following the dictates

1:45:16 but this is why we have these large reviews that look at, you know, And everybody went apeshit. And this was a five-paper review. controlled trials. They looked at observational cohort studies. They looked at all kinds of Because that review is inclusive, those who seek to dispute it will be Most people are eating hot dogs with buns and French fries and big gulps.

1:48:55 a religious war going on it's the same weird thing we were talking about earlier now when you have Let's talk about the boners. does if you don't you're an asshole don't eat meat what how'd you get that in there you guys erections, both the circumference, I guess, the size of the erection, the duration, the intensity And then he claims that the athletes

1:51:05 done in a film it was not peer-reviewed there was no it's not scientific at all you know that's the eat a vegetarian diet. Then the next day, give them the band on the second day and make the meat because that would make sense that they were getting more erections and more full erections fruits and vegetables reduced erectile dysfunction. But none of that says it has anything to do with

1:53:43 Right. Yeah. fat had cloudier blood. Well, that's normal. That's just naturally what you would expect from endothelial function, but they tend to be short term, like four weeks. I look for longer term peer-reviewed research, you don't see that relationship that they're talking about. you know... I should say cholesterol is necessary. Yeah. Well, cholesterol is necessary,

1:57:02 which results in severe cholesterol deficiency, diets who have totally optimal, normal cholesterol. And then I have people who go from eating, you know, a low, Margarine. Really? I've never done this experiment. Now they don't have that anymore because the evidence didn't justify having that in the dietary guidelines. you lose face and when people talk about saturated fat and they talk about it as being only a meat or

2:00:26 Full-fat dairy is? Well, so it wasn't until – before 11,000 years, 12,000 years ago, we didn't raise animals for dairy. And so that mutation started to spread. So the people who tend to be lactose tolerant are people of European, for me. Yeah, I think there is a difference. I mean, it contains enzymes in it that help you individual studies, they reviewed 153 studies that were also reviewing other studies. And 84% of the

2:04:09 it is yeah yeah so it's like reefer madness for meat i mean it really is yeah yeah so it's kind are great at this trump is actually a master at this um so you know meat is bad meat is bad meat Yeah. and everybody laughing and having a good time holistically managed, healthy, nutrient-dense I was interviewed by it. It's not going to have Arnold in it.

2:06:33 I'm in Just hacking at. protein a day you know not quite that much but grams 250 grams not you know he wasn't he wasn't where they did well for a while and then they declined, or maybe they just declined like some So we follow that whole argument through. And then the baby being breastfed by a mom who's nutrient deficient. um but he was stripped of his titles because he tested positive for steroids. So once again, you know, what's happening, it's hard to say.

2:10:08 And then he had this very public, I'm not vegan anymore because it was destroying my health video on YouTube. He tried everything to stay on the vegan diet. Yeah. He is a creationist but the thing is a lot of the people who are commonly referred to, like the Williams sisters, They look like meat eaters. I can't run fucky tea right now. When is this?

2:13:15 It's a James Cameron movie. Yeah. That's right. It's so stupid. And that plants actually exchange more information through mycelium, through their root structure. mollusks just fucking lay there and they happen to be like i said among the most nutrient-dense to talk about that as much with joel because it would have been nine hours instead of four hours

2:16:29 you could do that because we're using that area to grow cow food. grasslands which could create make it a carbon sink rather than having still emissions coming 2.6 to 2.8 kilograms of corn get converted into one kilogram of beef. 94% is green water, which means it just, it's rainfall. And six, only 6% comes from, is No. Exactly. So just for people who aren't aware, there are companies like Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat that are promoting this idea of fake meat that tastes like meat.

2:21:19 It's a Savory Institute hub, so they're following the Regenerative Savory Institute practices. That's something that was offered up as a response to it. Seaweed could help make cows burp less methane now this was the same company that performed a lifecycle analysis for Impossible Burger on their fake meat. So this is a bioengineered protein additive

2:24:30 And according to these documents, So they don't know what the fuck it does. What's in it, what it's what's in it but it doesn't mean it's bad doesn't mean it's bad just haven't done And she says, quote, instead of investing in risky new food technologies that are potential problems masquerading as solutions, shouldn't we be investing in proven beneficial regenerative agriculture and transparent

2:26:25 from eating toxic insects from the pesticides what's the number 7.3 billion animals killed Are small mammals like root rodents less valuable than larger ones like cows? They haven't even been breached. but I eat meat, therefore it's better than what you do because I hunt. The whole thing is very, very strange. harmful for the environment. And if, you know, if you, if you, again, like you think of like

2:29:42 and rotating the animals in a way that it doesn't have the normal natural features. You don't have the habitat for those animals anymore. So we have 60 years of soil left? was coming yeah i got an eight-year-old daughter yeah like that's right 68 there'd be no food when a new study comes out with the meat, Did you watch it just this morning? I think what they're actually acknowledging

2:33:40 and the bacterial species have been shown to promote inflammation, overgrow, and begin to produce inflammatory mediators like TMAO. So I'll briefly address each of those. But before I do that, It wasn't accurate finding, whatever. we've got this exhaustive study that says that it doesn't. But let's humor them and talk about This is the theory. And then our bodies

2:35:55 And then you have groups like the Maasai, N-nitroso compounds and toxic aldehydes that are implicated in colon cancer. But again, No, I don't. And the woman spoke about this. Yeah, case closed. they're gonna typically do better with some with carbohydrate you know substantial portion of carbohydrate in their diet whereas it definitely we're seeing a pattern now of

2:39:11 And again, that guy's doing it on ribeyes. he's doing he knows that as he's approaching competition he needs more glucose replenishes is suggested that you have both protein and carbohydrates. So there's one more slide I want So what does that tell us? Go to the next slide, please, Jamie. There's far less grain-fed, grain fed grain finished beef over there when you eat it it's it's really evident when you

2:42:19 The problem is that research has not shown that eating whole foods rather than taking supplements increases TMAO significantly, especially eating meat and eggs. The number, look at that halibut graph, it's crazy. lower risk of death from early causes, all of the rest of it. So how do we reconcile that here with this TMAO argument? Nobody has ever explained how to reconcile that.

2:44:32 via an enzyme in the liver. Well, we know that about one in three Americans probably have some increase TMAO. So you've got all of these factors that just have to do with, again, crappy lifestyle, a modern paleolithic diet in a Western lifestyle context. So they took, I think they were Italians Meat, non-starchy vegetables, nuts and seeds, Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with them on the problem. I think feedlot, CAFO, beef and livestock production is not the way to go.

2:48:11 and doing things that actually can improve soil quality problem when people don't. It really is because it's confusing for folks. And there's a lot of And they do it with really frustrating and deceptive methods. the bat you know there were just a lot of things that were were were funny um if but sad well chris Thank you. Why did I say Twitter that way?

2:50:54 Thank you.