0:00

You would start lowering atmosphere ex

0:02

to two concentrations. Like people

0:04

think, oh, can we stabilize them

0:06

or can we make them go up a little bit more slowly?

0:09

You know, you could actually lower them

0:11

and over the course of a couple of decades you could

0:13

pull out of the atmosphere by just doing nothing

0:15

except getting the livestock

0:18

out of the picture, you could lower atmospheric

0:21

concentrations. About the equipment about fifteen years

0:23

loads of current emissions. Everyone.

0:47

I'm Doctor Os and this is the

0:49

Doctor Os podcast. Welcome

0:53

everybody. I thought today we talked about the food

0:55

plant revolution, how you

0:57

can actually make food that's good for humans and

1:00

in the environment. And in order to do

1:02

that, you need to get into the nitty gritty of actually what is

1:04

it about food and science that's so

1:06

confusing? And I want to start off with

1:09

um a discussion with two people

1:11

that are very influential in this space.

1:14

One of them, a physician, has got a very strong belief

1:16

system around the benefits of being

1:18

vegan, and arguments that he's

1:20

making are ones that are embraced and quoted

1:23

by many other in this space.

1:25

And the other, gentleman, actually came from a whole different place

1:27

he was on the faculty at Stanford, wasn't all

1:29

interested in food in the beginning, but he

1:31

has built something 's

1:34

actually it's a meat that that's made

1:36

of vegetables. And I'm talking about garden burger here. I'm

1:38

talking about literally something that's

1:40

made with little vegetable proteins bound together that tastes

1:42

like meat. You can't tell the difference. So let's start up

1:44

with Neil Barnard. Now, Neil has been on the show

1:46

a bunch of times. He's a physician. UM, he's

1:49

adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine

1:51

that George Washington University School of Medicine,

1:53

UH that you know, tons of research bodies

1:56

does a lot of primary research looking at the effects

1:58

that diet on diabetes and by a wait, tronic

2:00

pain. He's on some groundbreaking studies

2:03

on type two diabetes, which is what's going to focus on today.

2:06

And you know, Neil understands the space so

2:08

well and he's not afraid to mix it up. So he

2:10

was not a panel that I was hosting at the Vatican

2:13

with Walter will It's someone that many of you've heard of

2:15

and will be on the show in the future. And the two of them

2:17

got to mix it up a little bit about exactly how

2:20

much of a problem fats are. And

2:22

in that argument, I really wasn't sure who one. Neil

2:24

basically says, you don't want any facts and you died, and

2:27

Walter Willis said, we can't correlate facts with illness.

2:30

But what they both agreed on there's

2:32

a problem with meat and

2:34

diabetes, something that I hadn't thought

2:36

that much about. But I want you to hear it from Neil

2:38

firsthand. You know, your presentation was spectacular

2:41

today, teamed up with four other

2:43

luminaries who you know a

2:45

ton about food. We're trying to explain what that meant,

2:48

especially under the filter of

2:50

the spiritual path that many in the audience

2:52

is seeking. Were at the Vatican after all. I would

2:54

love for you to summarize your main arguments

2:56

for why a vegan lifestyle makes a meaningful

2:58

difference to your health, not just a little nudge in the right direction,

3:01

but a dramatic shift as powerful as many prescription

3:03

medications. Yeah. I really think it's true,

3:05

and and it's started with studies

3:07

where you weren't actually changing anybody's

3:09

diets. You were just looking in observational

3:12

studies people following their their

3:14

own dietary pattern, and the people who were following

3:16

vegetarian diets were slimmer and healthier

3:19

than people following meat based diets. And then the

3:21

people who are following the vegan diet, I mean

3:23

no animal products at all, they were skinniest

3:25

of all. Um, and then when you looked at

3:27

diabetes, dramatically

3:29

lower rates the numbers were in. There's

3:32

a study called the Adventist Health Study to they

3:34

study Seventh day Adventist because they're

3:36

not smokers, they don't drink, but some of the

3:38

differ in diet, so it gives you a great basis

3:41

for comparison. Among the meat eaters,

3:43

you see diabetes around eight percent

3:45

of that population. Among the vegans two

3:48

point nine percent something like that. So,

3:50

but that's just an observational study. So

3:52

my research team has brought people in they've

3:54

got type two diabetes and we put the diet

3:57

to the test, and I

3:59

have to say, it's a works better than any other diet

4:02

when it comes to getting the weight off,

4:05

getting the blood sugar down, getting

4:08

the cholesterol down, getting blood pressure

4:10

down. Um, it just really is

4:12

very very powerful. So I can understand

4:15

most of listeners can as well that if you eat

4:17

less fat, they get less fat.

4:19

That's been an argument that's been made

4:21

for decades, if not longer. But

4:23

you you stunned me anyway. But the magnitude

4:26

of impact on diabetes. You just brought it up again.

4:28

What is the reason why

4:31

eating less fat impacts on diabetes? Mostly

4:33

what they could sugar. It's a completely

4:35

different way of viewing the disease. And

4:37

I gotta tell you, twenty years ago, I couldn't have I

4:40

couldn't have said this because we didn't really

4:42

have the technology. But here's what's happened. If

4:46

you look inside the cells

4:48

of the body, specifically the muscle

4:50

cells. And why muscle cells, because that's

4:52

where glucose is going your your muscles

4:54

are fueled by glucos. Every movement you make,

4:57

that glucos is your gasoline powering

4:59

your muscles. If you got if you've

5:01

got type two diabetes, you've got the

5:03

glucose in the blood. It's trying

5:05

to get into the muscles, but it can't get inside.

5:07

And the reason is what we call insulin resistance.

5:10

The the insulin hormone that's

5:13

like a key to that's trying to open the door

5:15

on that muscle cell to get the glucos inside. The

5:17

key is in the lock, but it just won't open.

5:19

That's insulin resistance. Why

5:21

not. We've looked into the muscles

5:24

of the body with a special technique called mr

5:26

spectroscopy and we found the

5:28

answer. And the answer is microscopic

5:31

fat particles. I mean you can't see these. I mean

5:33

they're much smaller than an individual cell

5:36

um. But as they build up, then

5:39

the insulin attaches to the cell. The

5:41

fat stops it from being able to do any kind

5:43

of signaling anymore. It's like trying to walk

5:45

on a grease covered floor. You slip

5:47

in your fall, so the the insulin doesn't

5:49

work anymore. And so if

5:52

we use a diet that has

5:54

no animal fat in it, it has no animal

5:56

products at all, there's no animal fat, and if we keep

5:58

oils low, that drains

6:00

out of the cell and suddenly the insulin

6:02

can work again. So all those patients

6:04

who have been saying I don't need bread, or

6:07

I don't need sweet potatoes, or I don't need beans, or I

6:09

don't need pasta, in our view, that

6:12

wasn't really the issue. The issue was the build

6:15

up of these microscopic fat particles inside

6:17

the muscle cells, stopping the insulin from working. You

6:19

get that fat out, the diabetes improves, and

6:21

in some cases it's

6:23

just gone, it goes away. You

6:26

might not know the answer to this. I don't. I don't know if anybody does.

6:28

But is it more important to lose weight

6:30

to reduce the diabetes or

6:33

reduce the fat dramatically enough to activate

6:35

the mechanism you're speaking to? Fantastic

6:38

question and I only know part

6:40

of the answer. Um. In two thousand

6:42

three, NIH funded us to do a head to head

6:44

head to head test of a

6:46

vegan diet versus a conventional diet, and

6:49

we found that people's blood sugar control

6:51

control improved dramatically on the vegan diet.

6:53

And so we asked your question is why

6:57

how much of it was weight loss? A

6:59

lot of it was weight us. I'm going to say most of

7:01

it was, probably, but not

7:03

all of it. Um, So even

7:05

after you accounted for the weight

7:08

loss, there was something else. And

7:10

I suspect that what it is is

7:12

you're just not taking fat into your body anymore.

7:15

And I'm talking about even a very thin person.

7:17

Say, um, that person

7:19

doesn't have much way to lose maybe none, but

7:22

even they improve with this kind of diet, let's

7:24

move past human beings to the world we live in. Part

7:27

of the reason the Vatican was interested in this panel

7:30

is because we have a higher obligation

7:32

to protect the place where we live, not

7:34

just for ourselves, but for our families,

7:37

for children, other species. And

7:39

that ethical dilemma that's

7:41

created when we don't take care of the planet,

7:44

we don't take great planet is something that has become

7:46

ever more apparent. You and

7:49

others in the panel felt strongly that the

7:51

single biggest thing we could do to help

7:53

our planet would be move away from

7:55

animal sources of fat. I'd love to hear

7:57

your thoughts on this. I think now

8:01

there is really no question that

8:04

our planet is changing, the environment is being

8:06

degraded, and that the biggest driver of

8:08

that is the way we raise food. Now,

8:11

let me raise my hand and give you a mea culpa. Because

8:13

my family, I come from the Midwest. My

8:16

dad was in the cattle business, and his dad and his dad

8:18

and his dad and I drove cattle myself to

8:21

East St. Louis to slaughter. Do you have any

8:23

pictures of that? By the way, I would have used this, not

8:25

that I'm gonna show you I gotta

8:27

tell you. But here here's

8:29

the thing. For number one,

8:32

UM, cows are not ordering room

8:34

service. They got to eat something. And

8:36

so to raise food, you're raising

8:38

corn and you're raising soybeans. And it's

8:40

acre after acre after When I go home to Fargo,

8:43

you should see it beautiful. It's it's

8:45

as far as the eye can see. Corn plants

8:48

all identical, all

8:52

genetically modified, and

8:54

same with the soy. And to make

8:56

it grow, you also need pesticides,

8:58

fertilizer, um, irrigation,

9:01

and so then the pesticides

9:03

and fertilizer get into the streams, they get into

9:06

the rivers. That's degrading the environment too. And

9:08

then when you feed it to a chicken or

9:11

a pig or something like that, Um,

9:13

all of that pollution is accounted

9:15

for then by the meat product. If

9:17

you feed into a cow, you get

9:19

something else. A cow is ruminate

9:22

animal, unlike a chicken. And so the

9:24

cow swallows the corn,

9:26

and how do you say this,

9:28

delicately, they

9:30

bring it back up and they chew that's

9:33

it. They chew it again, they bring it back up, and

9:35

all the while they are belching

9:38

methane. Methane is simple

9:41

carbon containing molecule

9:43

that is very potent as a

9:45

greenhouse gas. And cows

9:48

are belching up methane all the time. And that's

9:50

true if it is a meat, a cow destined

9:52

for meat, or a cow on a dairy.

9:55

And if you put all the people

9:57

on this planet on one side

9:59

of a balance and all the cows on the other side,

10:01

the cows outweigh us dramatically. I mean

10:03

each one is as big as a sofa, and

10:05

they are belching methane all day long.

10:08

And so people will say, well, we need to capt

10:10

smoke stacks, and you know, true, Uh,

10:12

drive a smaller car, go hybrate, absolutely,

10:16

But if we're not changing our diet, then what

10:18

are we doing. We are destroying the

10:20

rivers, the streams with all that pollution, and

10:22

the greenhouse gases are

10:25

continuing to go into the atmosphere. Is

10:28

it too late to change? I don't know. I

10:30

hope not, um, but we

10:33

time is up. We do need to change. I

10:38

got a lot more questions to go, but first let's take a

10:40

quick break.

10:49

Well, the statistic that blew my mind was that we

10:52

have more cows bile mass

10:55

on the planet now than all the other

10:57

trades stural beings together

11:00

times ten now I

11:02

don't know I can invalidate that, because

11:04

who's ever added up all the biomassive tradial

11:06

animals. But you know, if there's any

11:09

any semblance of truth to that statement,

11:11

it's shocking to everybody. In fact, in the

11:13

room of three hundred luminaries who sort

11:15

of know this stuff. One person, one person

11:18

and very back in African American woman put her hand halfway

11:20

up. That was about all uh term

11:22

in terms of endorsing. But I'd love to hear from

11:25

you if you think that's even possible. I do

11:27

think it's possible. And the difference

11:30

between the United States and some other areas

11:33

in the United States also in Europe, you don't

11:35

see these farms anymore. Really, they're industrialized

11:38

where the animals are often in enclosures.

11:40

I recently visited a dairy farm in Indiana.

11:43

You're not gonna see it from the highway. They got

11:45

thirty two thousand cows

11:47

inside there. Um, So

11:49

I think it is true. Goodness.

11:51

That's uh. Let's heat up to debate between

11:54

you, Walt Will, and others about weight

11:56

loss and dietary advice. So assuming

11:59

that we got the high level stuff right, you know, don't

12:01

don't drink trans

12:03

fats, don't just don't

12:06

don't do the things that most people agree are sabotage,

12:08

simple carbar heights. And I know, like, how

12:10

important is it to reduce fat intake

12:13

in order to lose weight? You argue it's

12:16

vital, and your own data has reflected that, others

12:18

like Walter will, well known Harvard

12:20

researcher, argue that doesn't seem to make

12:22

as much of a difference. I keep reading studies saying

12:24

basically, count nutrients, don't count calories.

12:27

To break it down for us, Yeah,

12:29

it's it's a huge debate right now, and we're gonna see

12:31

where where where it ends up. But here's here's what

12:33

my experience has shown and what our research studies have shown,

12:36

is that if your goal

12:39

is to help a person to either lose weight or

12:42

to reverse their diabetes, that's where

12:45

I'm zeroing in. Not just on the

12:47

bad fat that's the butter fat

12:49

or the palm oil or something like that, but

12:51

I'm really zero on on all fats

12:54

and even even extra virgin olive

12:56

oil. You know, you know, And

12:58

and the reason don't don't don't

13:00

get me wrong, it's a better fat, you know, it's

13:02

not gonna harm your arteries

13:05

the way butter will. But all

13:07

fats have nine calories

13:09

packed in every single gram. That's more than carbohydrate,

13:12

more than protein. It's the calorie

13:14

dense food. So if a person is trying to lose weight

13:16

and yet they're eating fatty foods, they're gonna have trouble.

13:18

And I have good friends who

13:21

will look at walnuts

13:24

and almonds and olive oil, and these are foods

13:26

that you'd have to say are healthy. You know,

13:28

if there's a healthy fat, that's it. But

13:32

you can make a person's weight loss just grind

13:34

to a halt by by digging into those foods because

13:36

they are so fatty. And the other thing is not are they

13:38

not only are they dense in calories, but

13:41

if you eat bread, you eat a loaf of bread,

13:43

and eventually that can turn into

13:45

body fat. But it's hard for your body to turn bread

13:48

into fat. You have if you have to break down the glogose molecules

13:51

to turn fat into fat

13:55

really easy for the body. There's no

13:57

metabolic cost to it. If you eat a little

13:59

bit too much all of oil, it's like in your thighs, so

14:02

very easy. Yet, Walter argued that when

14:04

he looks at derawed data from other

14:06

studies, the amount of fat that people

14:08

it doesn't seem to coral with weight loss, perhaps because it

14:10

satiates you. The best example is

14:13

dairy. I'm not aware of data showing

14:15

that skim milk helps you lose weight anymore

14:18

than whole fat milk. Both

14:20

of them might be an issue, and for you probably they are,

14:22

but there's not an incremental benefit of

14:24

torturing yourself a skim milk if you don't like the taste because

14:27

you want to get that satiated elsewhere.

14:29

Yeah, it's it's a great question. I don't know if anyone's

14:32

ever really put it to the test in a good way. Milk

14:34

is a really interesting one because if you take

14:36

whole milk, the main nutrient in it is fat,

14:39

bad fat, saturated fat. You take all that out,

14:42

now I've I've got skim milk or nonfat milk.

14:44

The main nutrient in non fat milk is

14:47

sugar. It's lactose sugar.

14:49

It's a looking a whole lot like a soda at

14:52

that point, um which it

14:54

I don't mean to say that that it's bad to take the fat

14:56

out of the milk. I think it is, but they should take

14:58

the sugar out too, and take the hormones

15:00

out, and take in fact, take it all

15:02

out, and you'd be left with a glass of water. We're

15:05

already has always appreciate my friend, thank

15:08

you. That's still Barnard. And I'll tell you at least

15:10

he gets you to think differently about stuff.

15:12

He's very passionate, very opinionated.

15:15

This is an area of evolution. It's

15:17

very difficult to study how food affects

15:19

humans because you can't put humans in randomized trials.

15:21

When you say, okay, this group of people only eats meat for

15:23

ten years, and that group is no meat for ten

15:25

years. But when you look at some of the data that he

15:27

has, even if it's not based in humans,

15:29

you at least have to ask the question whether

15:32

the meat that we're eating is potentially

15:34

called responsible for some of the diabetes that we're

15:36

seeing in addition to other potential health problems. Now,

15:39

with that in mind, a lot of yr sit and saying like, oh God,

15:41

dr Ars took my meat away. Now I'm not

15:43

gonna eat broccoli and kale the rest of my life. You

15:45

know, I might live longer or maybe just seem like

15:47

it, And so saying that uh

15:50

brings up the possibility that we might be able to engineer

15:53

meat that's different. So I want you

15:55

to meet Pat Brown. Pat Brown

15:58

started something called impossible meat. This

16:00

is literally meat that

16:02

tastes like meat, looks like meat, as hem

16:05

in it, which is iron, but has no actual

16:08

animal products in it. I think listen to Pat

16:10

Brown. I was fascinated in our discussiones today

16:12

about the numbers you've rattled

16:14

off about the changes

16:16

in biomass on the planet, in

16:18

particular a statement that I've been thinking

16:21

about since you mentioned it, which is, we have ten

16:23

times were biomassive cows now that

16:25

all other terrestrial beings put

16:28

together, all other uh

16:31

wild vertebrates UH

16:33

put together. So which,

16:36

if you can't sure with the audience, the

16:38

dafts, pandas, crocodiles,

16:41

frogs, birds,

16:44

ten times more cows and what was it? Probably way

16:46

more than ten times, but um

16:48

I so there was a guy, uh

16:51

an ecologist named Volk volklau Smill

16:54

who uh, someone

16:56

you probably enjoyed talking to, who

16:59

did a calcul elation about five

17:01

years ago and came up with a similar

17:04

estimate. And I thought, okay,

17:06

um, I'm not I'm not gonna believe it until

17:08

I do the math myself. And so I spent uh

17:12

actually was anticipating this this meeting,

17:15

and kind of because I'm

17:17

going off on tangent so I'm sorry, because Pope

17:20

Francis UH

17:22

has been quite explicit and even in

17:24

his talk today about our

17:26

responsibility to the creatures on Earth

17:29

and so forth, I thought, Okay, I'm gonna

17:31

I'm gonna really do the diligence on this

17:34

because I think this is something that nobody really

17:36

knows and it's horrifying. And

17:39

except that if they asked themselves, when

17:41

was the last time the last time I drove across

17:44

country, whether it was the US or Europe

17:46

or Costa Rica, you name it, what

17:48

animals did I see? Right?

17:51

Cows, cows and cheap the

17:54

occasional prairie dog or you know, squirrel

17:56

or crow or something like that. But it's pretty much that.

17:58

So it's kind of consistent with a body's experience.

18:00

But yeah, I just thought I wanted to check it up. So I did

18:02

a ton of research. I dug up a bunch

18:04

of papers, uh, And there's

18:07

really no systematic research, but that there's

18:09

you can look at a couple of papers that

18:11

look at Okay, what's the total density of

18:14

vertebrates uh in the Serengetti

18:16

or in Kenyan range lands,

18:19

or in the Patagonian forest

18:21

or uh, you know, the

18:23

Canadian tundra or whatever. And

18:26

I looked at, you know, dozens of these papers

18:29

and did a very conservative estimate

18:32

summing them all up. Uh. And that's

18:34

where I got my number. Uh.

18:36

And I'm actually thinking that because

18:38

there's never been a paper that really uh

18:42

put this all together, you know, a scientific journal

18:45

that I may write up a paper about it, even though

18:47

it's not original research. It's just a compilation

18:49

of stuff. You also pointed

18:52

out massive change that have happened as

18:55

we have moved more and more towards eating

18:58

cows, and you actually showed slides impairing

19:00

the inefficiency of different

19:02

sources of animal meat.

19:05

This almost a cyclopedic. In fact, it

19:07

was if I knew better, I throw away Google because I've

19:10

got you next to me. Now. Was it

19:12

stunned the audience. And I think it's

19:14

a nice way of revisiting something we think we

19:16

already know, which is making animals

19:18

is expensive for society. But it also

19:21

she seems to dwarf a lot of the other things we

19:23

would prefer to blame, like coal fired

19:25

plants and exhaust from cars. It turns

19:27

out the animals that we're eating

19:29

and what we do to in order to make that possible

19:32

is changing the world in ways most of

19:34

us never anticipated. Oh absolutely

19:37

so. UM. Just categorically,

19:39

the use of animals and food production technology

19:42

UM is responsible for more greenhouse gases

19:45

than the entire transportation sector. That's

19:47

something I think that is, at

19:49

least in certain circles, pretty well known. It's

19:52

also by far the biggest user and polluter

19:54

of fresh water. UM. It uses

19:56

somewhere between a quarter and a third of all

19:58

the fresh water on our and it occupies

20:01

about half of Earth's land surface.

20:03

To me, that is both

20:06

the most um kind

20:08

of shocking and yet true

20:10

shocking number. Half. You know, you

20:12

take all the land everything that's not

20:14

covered by ice or water on Earth,

20:16

okay uh, and

20:19

tally up what fraction is being used actively

20:22

being used grazing livestock or raising

20:24

feet crops or livestock. It's half of

20:26

all the land on Earth. It's a land area devoted

20:28

to raising amals for food, bigger than North America

20:30

plus South America plus Australia plus

20:32

Europe. Um

20:35

devoted to that growing all the time

20:37

because the demand is growing. And that's

20:39

land that not only

20:42

previously supported uh

20:44

biodiversity wildlife, but also planned

20:46

biodiversity. You know, when you change, when

20:48

you replace the native

20:51

creatures with cattle

20:53

and sheep, it not only

20:56

uh you know, displaces all the other

20:58

wildlife there because their compete for a very

21:00

limited photosynthetic productivity. It

21:02

changes the plants that

21:04

grow there because different different

21:07

animals, um,

21:09

you know, have different grazing patterns, different patterns

21:11

of walking around, and so forth. So

21:14

we were trying to homogenize

21:16

I mean not no one's trying to do this, but effectively,

21:18

what we're doing is we're homogenizing the

21:20

surface of Earth to basically

21:22

be that simple ecosystem that supports

21:25

you know, livestock. So there's

21:28

a calculation I did, but I can point to the original

21:31

scientific research that basically shows

21:33

that that if you could

21:35

thought experiment, snap your fingers, make

21:38

the land base animal

21:40

food production go away,

21:43

and now just allow the

21:47

vegetation that had existed

21:49

on the land before it was put to that purpose

21:51

to recover, you would

21:54

immediately start doing something

21:56

that no one even contemplates. You would start

21:58

lowering atmospheric to two concentrations.

22:01

Like people think, oh, can we stabilize

22:03

them or can we make them go up a little

22:05

bit more slowly? You know, you could actually lower them.

22:08

And over the course of a couple of decades you could

22:10

pull out of the atmosphere by just doing nothing

22:13

except getting the livestock

22:15

out of the picture. You could lower atmosphere

22:18

concentrations by the equivalent about fifteen years

22:21

worth of current emissions. That

22:23

to me is magical and this

22:25

is one of the one of the things that most motivates

22:28

me. So the mission of my company is to completely replace animals

22:30

in the food system. And

22:32

we're dead serious both about that goal

22:34

and the timeline because

22:36

it's so urgent. And if we can

22:38

make this happen over the next couple of decades,

22:41

I think, you know, it solves so many problems.

22:43

It gets rid of uh, it

22:45

turns back the clock on

22:47

on greenhouse

22:50

gas emissions and climate

22:52

change. It relieves

22:55

the biggest source of pressure on the fresh water

22:57

supply, which is probably the

23:00

biggest single source of trigger

23:03

of of conflicts, and you know, regional

23:05

and warfare and so forth, and

23:08

the other biggest sources conflict over land.

23:10

And this is So here's here's another

23:13

interesting statistic which I can give you the data for. If

23:16

you take all the cities

23:18

on Earth, or another way of looking

23:20

at if you take every structure,

23:22

building, highway, road, beautiful

23:25

wall um on Earth

23:27

and you put them all together, they occupy

23:30

a land area of about half a percent

23:32

of earth surface. It's one

23:35

of the area occupied by land

23:37

based animal farming. UM.

23:39

So people think of

23:42

like, oh man, we're going to mess up with ecosystems

23:44

because the cities are expanding into

23:47

farmland and so forth. That is completely

23:50

wrong. It's the farmland that's

23:52

the problem. The cities add up to virtually

23:54

nothing and um

23:57

for all practical purposes, the land footprint a few

24:00

andy is animal

24:02

farming full stop. Does

24:07

last word to come after the break? You're

24:19

a professor at Stamford, would

24:21

your specially um?

24:23

Well, I was trained as a pediatrician um.

24:26

But when I but then I did post doc

24:29

um in microbiology virology,

24:31

studying how the AIDS virus replicates and and

24:34

that's why I started doing it at Stanford.

24:36

But then, relatively early

24:38

on I started when I saw that the genome

24:40

was on the horizon. I started developing

24:43

tools for basically

24:46

being able to look at UM the expression

24:49

and the behavior of all the genes and the genome at once,

24:52

and UM called DNA micro ray and

24:54

that UM. And then I started applying

24:57

that to both kind of like fundamental biological

24:59

problems related to you know, how to cells

25:02

program themselves and so forth, and

25:05

the diversity of cells in your body and so forth,

25:08

and also cancer diagnostics UM,

25:11

and a bunch of other things. I mean, I actually, UM,

25:13

someone in my lab did the first study that UH

25:18

comprehensively described how a newborn

25:20

baby acquires it's microbiome UM.

25:23

So. And the great thing was because I was at Stanford, I was

25:25

supported by Howard Hughes. I could literally do anything I

25:27

wanted. It was the best job in the world. You

25:29

may think you have a pretty good job, and you probably have a pretty

25:31

good gig, but I I could

25:34

basically just get

25:37

a new idea and start working on it and have

25:39

the resources to do it in great colleagues and students

25:41

and so forth. So that's what I gave up to take

25:43

on this, you know, this mission

25:45

of impossible foods and and I have no

25:48

qualms about it. But but boy, I have

25:50

a good good U in my Stanford

25:52

career look porn to the name of the company being changed

25:54

to not Impossible Foods. Pat Brown, thank

25:56

you very much, thank you. That's

25:58

Pat Brown here. You know, get Sky by the way, got

26:01

his empty and PhD in bow chemistry at

26:03

the University of Chicago. Was that Stanford,

26:06

you know, developing DNA micro arrays.

26:09

You know, forget about all the stuff. You'd never have to know it.

26:11

But this is a true basic scientist

26:13

guy. You know that the new technologies that

26:15

he's making allow us to look at how

26:18

genes in a genome work. I mean, what the heck is

26:20

he doing making meat? Well?

26:22

He looked around and realized that there

26:25

was a way to make delicious, affordable meat and

26:27

dairy products directly from plants.

26:29

And he thought, if I could do that, it's better for the consumers,

26:32

but it's especially better for the environment.

26:34

And then he began to quote a

26:37

bunch of facts that you all, I hope heard,

26:39

that we have ten times more

26:42

cow biomass than all other wild

26:44

terrestrial beings put

26:46

together. Think about that. That's why when you drive

26:49

along on the road you see mostly cows.

26:51

You know, you don't see drafts, obviously, but you don't even see

26:53

horses that often were you were that, Lisa,

26:56

No, not what what caught your

26:58

attention because you're in that panel, Um, and you

27:00

heard how passionate he was about the environment, even

27:03

more so than human health. Well,

27:05

yeah, it's hard to it's hard to deny the repercussions

27:09

of eating a meat an animal

27:11

product based diet. So so what do you what

27:13

caught your attention on what Pat Brown was saying? Well,

27:17

certainly the impact on the environment

27:19

of eating meat and the fact that we're going to be we're already

27:21

over seven billion people I think, and um,

27:23

just eating meat is

27:25

not sustainable, especially as the rest of the world

27:28

models their diets on ours. So well,

27:30

I tell you what caught my attention is, You've got a

27:32

guy, Pat Brown who's a member of the National Academy

27:34

of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Right,

27:37

he's gotten the American Cancer Society

27:39

Medal of Honor. This is huge,

27:42

brilliant. But he's a member

27:44

of our most respected organizations

27:46

and he's out there saying it can't

27:49

go on. We don't actually have the ability

27:51

to make enough meat for all the people on the planet. Literally,

27:53

you couldn't do it, and it you know, leaves

27:56

the lots of things that no one want's

27:58

talk about, you know, pollution and energy consumption.

28:00

I get all that, but here's the part that works me up. You

28:03

and I and all of people listening right now. We're

28:05

actually paying a lot of money to make sure that meat

28:07

is cheap. That's right. If you don't know what, wake

28:09

up. Meat is probably a third the price,

28:12

maybe half the price that it would be it wasn't for subsidies.

28:14

And it's not bad people doing bad things, but every

28:17

part of the chain and the people who are making the soy

28:19

or whatever, the the the

28:21

couch eating, and then you have the energy

28:24

to transport the product that costs

28:26

money. And and then and then you know, the

28:29

retail areas. Everything costs money,

28:31

and it's all subsidized so it's made more affordable.

28:33

And I'm saying, hey, listen, why don't we just either subsidize

28:36

the vegetables as much so the broccoli

28:38

is one third the price so the tobatoes, or subsidize

28:41

none of it, which is where I land. Just let it,

28:43

Let let business run. I think we're all Americans.

28:45

We believe in competition. I'm an entrepreneurial person.

28:48

Uh you know, as long as the equal playing field

28:50

that everyone just earn their money. I don't want to hurt

28:52

anybody's business. Just don't subsubdize

28:55

people to do stuff, because you perversely influence

28:57

the process. So take away this subsidies

29:00

from the things that we don't really believe

29:02

are good for us, or

29:05

at least give equal amounts, if not more, to the foods

29:07

we think are good for us. But using the Pat

29:09

Brown and Neo Barnard and Walter Will and all

29:11

these famous iconic figures

29:14

participating in this Vatican panel on

29:17

the food plant Revolution, I

29:19

began to appreciate and respect much more why the

29:22

Pope had pulled had pulled together these folks, Because

29:24

what he's basically saying is there are opportunities

29:26

for to do things that are good for humans and for

29:29

the environment, and for the and the planet

29:31

where which we are the custodians of and

29:34

the temple of the Solar. Our body has to be protected.

29:37

And so for us to ignore the

29:39

opportunities to improve everything

29:42

around us by making wash or food decisions is

29:45

not the right thing for us to do. It's it doesn't fulfill

29:47

our spiritual journey. So think

29:49

about that, guys, Happy eating