Investigating Vegan Life With Patricia Kathleen

Dr. Joel Kahn - Practicing cardiologist, Clinical Professor, & Author

Today I am talking with Dr. Joel Kahn. Joel Kahn, MD, FACC of Detroit, Michigan, is a practicing cardiologist, and a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Michigan Medical School. Known as "America’s Healthy Heart Doc", Dr. Kahn has triple board certification in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine and Interventional Cardiology. Dr. Kahn has authored scores of publications in his field including articles, book chapters and monographs. He writes health articles and has five books in publication including Your Whole Heart Solution, Dead Execs Don’t Get Bonuses and The Plant Based Solution. His 6th book, Lipoprotein(a): The Heart’s Silent Killer, is about to be published. He has regular appearances on Dr. Phil, The Doctors Show, Dr. Oz, Larry King Now, Joe Rogan Experience, and with Bassem Yousef.

www.drjoelkahn.com

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I had the fortunate opportunity to speak with America's healthy heart doc, Dr. Joel Kahn. Dr. Kahn is a practicing cardiologist and a clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Key points addressed were Dr. Kahn's books, titled The Plant Based Solution, published in 2018, and his most recent book, Leipold Protein Little, a published in March of 2020. We also conducted a Q&A with Dr. Khan regarding some of the most common inquiries. Our audience had regarding cardiovascular health and Vegan diets. Stay tuned for my informative talk with Dr. Joel Kahn.

 

[00:00:45] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. The dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. If you're enjoying these podcasts, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Fasting and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen, dot com, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:42] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia.

 

[00:01:45] And today, I'm delighted to be sitting down with Dr. Joel Kahn. He is a practicing cardiologist and a clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. You can find out more about all of his endeavors on his Web site. W w w. Dr. Joel Kahn, K. H and dot com. Welcome, Joel.

 

[00:02:05] Thank you very much. Excited to be here.

 

[00:02:08] I am excited to have you on as well. We were talking prior to recording and you're involved in an insane amount of endeavors. But today I'm going to kind of forecast for everyone listening. We're going to unpack a couple of Dr. Kahn's works and then get into some general questions that our audience has reached out and kind of wanted to know on the medical forefront. Before I get to all of that, for everyone listening, I will offer a brief bio on Dr. Khan, as well as a roadmap for today's podcast. Let me start with the roadmap. We'll look at unpacking a couple of books, as I mentioned. One being the plant based solution published in 2020. And then we'll look at another book, Libro Protein A and kind of is the latest launch. And then I'll get into the general questions that a lot of you have reached out regarding some of the covered 19 pandemic inquiries and future scientific research being done as it relates to the Vegan diet and heart health prior to getting into all of that. Let me quickly do a bio on Dr. Kahn. Joel Kahn, M.D., F.A. of Detroit, Michigan, is a practicing cardiologist. Any clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan Medical School known as America's Healthy Heart Doc. Dr. Kahn has triple board certification in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology. He was the first physician in the world to certify and metabolic cardiology within a four m m m I and the University of South Florida. He founded the Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity and Bingham Farms, Michigan. Dr. Kahn has authored scores of publications in his field, including articles, book chapters and monographs. He writes healthy health articles and has five books in publication, including Your Whole Heart Solution Dead Exacts Don't Give Bonuses and the Plant Based Solution. His sixth book, Lipoprotein A., was just released, I believe, in March of this year. The Heart Silent Killer. He has regular appearances on Dr. Phil the Doctor Show, Dr. Oz, Larry King, now Joe Rogan experience and with Bassem Youssef. He has been awarded a Health Hero Award from Detroit Crain's Business. He owns GreenSpace and Go, a health restaurant in suburban Detroit, and he serves as medical director of the largest plant based support group in the USA. W w w dot p and s g dot org. Dr Con again can be found at w. W. W. Dr Joel Corn. Dot com. So I'd like to launch straight into your book and the inquiries that we have within that, namely the plant based solution that was published in 2020. We grabbed a quote from online. That's no disease that can be treated. Oh I'm sorry. It's the dedication that you did in this book that I found to be so pertinent after reading it. And it's no disease that can be treated by diet, should be treated with any other means by an old philosopher in the 12th century. I can't remember. Moloney's how do you pronounce that?

 

[00:05:17] My Munadi My Money is a Spanish Moroccan born rabbi. Physician and I lived in Egypt most of his life. Quite a remarkable history in and of itself.

 

[00:05:30] Yeah. And I like the quote. It reminds me a lot of like let food be thy medicine. People getting into some of the Aristotle and things. The book is described as a passionate, compelling and scientific argument for plant based nutrition.

 

[00:05:45] You get into. For everyone who's listening and hasn't read it or would like to get a brief overview on it. It explores weight loss, how most people get it wrong when it comes to calcium protein, carbs. It's a relationship between lay people's knowledge and the heart health. And then you kind of unpack these different areas. The links between Vegan diet and your sex drive, gut health, brain chemistry, why plants might hold the key to better aging, eating out, stocking your pantry. And the whole thing is kind of wrapped up with this 21 day meal plan and advice for, as I call them, action items or this implant implementation into one's life. And my first question for you is in in your previous book, Dead Exists, Don't Get Bonuses, you focus on the coronary heart disease and you talk about a lot of the statistics and the science behind it. And this one seems to be like an application guide as you and. Talking about earlier. And I'm wondering what the impetus for the change in that was, what what the kind of inspiration behind writing this was.

 

[00:06:50] You know, I spent decades practicing as a cardiologist. And that book called that exact I don't get bonuses and even my previous book, first book called Your Whole Heart Solution at a Real Cardiology Focus. It's my training. It's my practice. It's my primary avocation. But I had not written a book that went deep into plant based nutrition, that went deep into the science and went beyond her disease because the plant based solution goes well beyond our disease to speak about some other entities you talk about. And I wanted to do it. I just needed a resource to give to my patients. And people were asking in a way that didn't require, you know, a month to read, wasn't thick enough to know if your table were shaking. It was the heavy book you'd pick to balance it out. So I wanted it to have content and medical support, of course, but to be an easy read for people. And as you say, to be practical. So it ends with recipes. It ends with pantry, stocking solutions or the very challenging what do you do when you go over family or go to restaurants? Well, you know, very, very grounded in the science literature. I was always amazed. You know, there are a growing number of plant based cardiologists and there should be a growing number of plant based nephrologists and pulmonologists and gynecologists and all the others. I don't like dividing the body into organs. It all works together in one symphony when it's working well. But there really wasn't a book by a cardiologist. And with all respect, Esselstyn trained as a surgeon and Dr. Ornish trained as an internist and others. It just wasn't a bug out there with the experience I had over decades of treating heart attacks and congestive heart failure. And now I'm being part of hospital faculty. So I put that all together. And thank you for your kind words about it. I think it's a practical book.

 

[00:08:47] Absolutely it is. I'm wondering how you chose. How did you curated?

 

[00:08:50] Was it combined from patients that you had over the years or was it from areas that you found to be most integral for the person picking up an informational moment about diet and cardio health?

 

[00:09:03] It was clearly based on, you know, by the time I wrote that book, it came out. I think you mentioned 20, 20, but actually came out in twenty eighteen, to be fair. No problem. I wrote most of it in late twenty seventeen. I mean I've been plant based since nineteen seventy seven. I started cardiology practice in nineteen ninety. So literally by the time I wrote that book I had twenty seven years of experience recommending to heart patients, high blood pressure patients, weight challenged patients, cholesterol patients, diabetic patients, auto immune patients. That there was science to suggest I would add multiple sclerosis patients. There was science to suggest shifting their diet to a complete or nearly complete whole food plant based diet would be of some potential therapeutic benefit. I had so many wonderful results and stunning results and people that avoided surgery and people that hit their goal, reduced their medication. Ever get on a medication, avoid surgery? So it certainly was based on that. This is the real deal. There's nothing theoretical about the science base and the practical application of whole food plant diets. The frustrated group is the small group that are trying hard and don't reach that goal. They're not getting enough blood pressure meds and they're not getting off cholesterol medicine. And that's what I try and help them with in my clinic in suburban Detroit is what are we missing? You know what's missing in their physiology, their chemistry, their genetics, their toxicology or their diet itself?

 

[00:10:29] But majority people respond dramatically well and really just need a little push. A book like mine, watch a couple of videos, have a couple simple recipes. And, you know, you don't need to hold their hand for 30 years. They'll get it because they're gonna feel better in two, three, four weeks. The majority of the time.

 

[00:10:49] Yeah. And ideally, there wouldn't be a lot of handholding, particularly between your clinic. What I like about the book is it talks a lot about prevention and not just treatment of heart disease. I feel like, you know, and when one goes into a cardiologist, there's already an issue. You know, you have a specialty that a lot of people don't talk about prevention. It's more about treatment once there becomes a problem. And so I like the idea of a book coming from the concept of prevention.

 

[00:11:17] Do you feel like we are moving towards that as a society, into a prevention based model, or are we still based in a treatment moment when it comes to cardio health or crawling or crawling if if a average person walked into or maybe you say if a person walked into an average cardiologist office and said, I feel great, I just want you to check me. They probably would be told we don't do that here. Yeah, it's that in every case, in a large practice, there might be one cardiologist in twenty five that has that preventive interest. You know, you'd end up getting a stress test you probably don't need and some routine bloodwork. It's what I do know every day of the week in my clinic and people don't need to have a problem. In fact, I had a wonderful follow up phone call today with a woman who we went through the process of checking her advanced labs. She already was on a excellent diet of plants. And all we did was celebrate the fact you're healthy, you're healthy or healthy. You'll see in 10 years. I mean, that is a wonderful thing. And it ends the relationship and it ends anxiety. Allow these people have a family history like she did of a father with a heart attack at a young age and able to share such good news. But very often it's not such good news. There is heart disease, there is inflammation, there is metabolic abnormalities, vitamin abnormalities, and there's just lots to do. And food is the basis and food fix is most of it. But if you're low in vitamin D, if you're missing, I have to. I mean, I got to be very specific with some of the testing we do. I know nutrition science. Just you know, the reason I wrote the book in part, nutrition science is tough and that's why we see this war of Quito Paleo, you know, Mediterranean diet. There's a Mediterranean diet aren't as aggressive as the pro paleo pro Iquito. Prokhanov for the vegans are weak ninnies and meat eaters are strong and incredible. It's just amazing how contentious it is. It's also difficult to do good nutrition science. It's hard to get a thousand people to eat in different patterns for 20 years and really make measurements. So you've got to do the best with what you have from basic science, from epidemiology, from the few randomized studies like Dr. Ornish. Just you got to take a jam, put it all together and try and be very honest with the data. I mean, once in a while, an article comes out that low fat dairy may be decent for your blood pressure. Well, I'm not going to recommend my patients start drinking milk if they're not. But after recognizer is some data out there. So you got to be fair and authentic.

 

[00:13:52] Yeah. And you mentioned in a previous interview, I think it was a podcast or something we dug up on YouTube. But you talked about and it was kind of a divisive rhetoric, you know.

 

[00:14:02] I think was it more aggrandize than when I watched it at a Google talks between yourself and some experts with them? The names are escaping me, but with Anderson from what?

 

[00:14:13] The Health and Dave Asprey from Bulletproof Coffee. Yeah, well, reporters in California.

 

[00:14:20] Yeah. You talked a lot about in the clip I saw the divisiveness is concerning for someone who's trying to get, you know, good health out of good health information and things like that.

 

[00:14:30] Because you stated in this clip your concern was that if if you hear one camp saying one thing, one camp saying directly opposite the, you know, the client or the public walks away and does nothing and they're walking and they walk and they walk into McDonald's in one days because they say the experts can't figure this out.

 

[00:14:48] I'll just eat what I want to eat and doesn't seem to really matter. So it does really confuse the public. I just give an example. 60 years, a science suggests the more saturated fat, rich foods you eat butter, cheese, pepperoni, bacon, the more likely to develop heart disease and a lot of other things. Diabetes, cancer, dementia. Decades of science. The last 10 years that got very muddied by some very poor science that got big headlines like Time magazine butter's back cover in 2014. But about four or five weeks ago, the most prestigious science group independent of funding did a review paper. Saturated fat causes heart disease. When you cut back butter and cheese and pepperoni and croissance and pizza, you will reduce your cholesterol. You reduce your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. This is the most respected group. So I wrote a couple blogs. I did a interview. All that stuff came on the last week. It did nothing to bring any real unity, even though the science is pretty well unified. If you're entrenched, meat, cheese, butter, eggs, pro science are good for you. You know, you ignore the science. You find some flaw in it even when there really isn't much of a flaw. So it's unfortunate that food wars exist. But it really what I always come back to when I lecture and I'll be quiet. And if you look at the Harvard School of Public Health, they have a food plate from 2011. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy protein. If you look at Canada's food plate, 2019, same beautiful food plate. We look at peace. Cierra physician, Kabbani, responsible medicine, all plant food. There actually is tremendous unanimity around the world by reasonable people that your diet should be brightly colored, whole fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes. I don't add in small amounts of extra meat. Some of these food plates give you the option of adding in small amounts of eggs and meat. I think diets are better when they don't include that. But we're really talking about truly a very tiny debate with tremendous unanimity. But, you know, if you've got a platform and a, you know, a YouTube channel, Alhurra, a blog, you can create a mountain of what is really a molehill of differences.

 

[00:17:09] Yeah. And I like the celebration of unifying factors. You talk a lot about how a lot of these people, you know, everyone is in unison that white flour, sugar, processed foods, these things should not be in one's diet. And beginning from that standpoint, I think is good. And yes, the the visual representations that have come out since 2016 and the advice they're all very similar to looking can turn the old food paradigm where it needs to be, which isn't just on its head.

 

[00:17:37] I think just to complete rubbish. I want to look at the book like a protein A and I told you before we started, I hadn't thought it had launched yet. I was corrected. You said it's been out since March. I think I've been in a little bit. There it is. I think I've been in a little bit of a cave. But what I did see, what I did do is find research from you yourself online, making up a recipe of overnight oats. I'm always amazed. I fancy myself as a very adventurous Vegan cook. And I've been doing a search for 10 years. And it's always amazing to me how there's just this the overnight oats I haven't ever made. And it's so ironic. But I think that it's it points to the utility of books like this. And I'm hoping you can speak because I haven't read it a little bit about the impetus for writing it and what it contains, aside from recipes.

 

[00:18:27] But as I say, started out writing kind of cardiology books for the public, wrote a couple books directly on the Vegan topic. This actually brings the two together. It's a very interesting story I'll blurt out in about two minutes. But it turns out about 60 years ago, a kind of cholesterol. This we get a little science, see that you can inherit from mom and dad was identified in the blood and it is called it's a terrible name. If you're were in the marketing field, Lifebook Protein Live Olay. Anybody can see the cover, the book. The word liberal isn't there. It's lowercase A.. But that's how it's pronounced scientifically. Lipoprotein Little A, you could ask your family doctor, your internist, your gynecologist next routine physical. Can you add a light poke protein little a blood level to my standard blood. It's a form of cholesterol you inherit from your mom and dad. And if you inherit it and if it's high, it can clog up your arteries. It can lead to heart attack, stroke, erectile dysfunction aneurysms and even destroy one of the heart valves in the heart. And it does it very slowly and very progressively because since you inherit it, it's in your blood. From the time of conception forward, the dramatic statement is 25 to 30 percent of people inherit it. So that means 90 million Americans, one point eight billion people worldwide and hardly a doctor in the United States checks the little box to measure it. It's been researched. There's hundreds and hundreds of very high quality research articles and it has been mentioned. If you have a family history, if mom had a stroke at age 48, if dad had bypass surgery at age 52, maybe your doctor should order this. But that's rarely done, even though that's been in the mainstream. But just recently, there's a growing incentive. Maybe everybody should just ask, is it twenty or thirty dollar blood tests? It's not like a fancy genetic test. It's just a blood test. And find out early in life. Did you inherit it or not? It's kind of that's why it's a silent heart killer, because it's silent in part because we don't test for it. And also, by its nature, it's slowly, slowly, slowly can damage vessels. And this tradition also you can get your routine cholesterol. Your cholesterol is one hundred and eighty and your HDL, your LDL. It won't show up on that. And it could be that your lipoproteins is still very high, the standard treatment of cholesterol. Exercise. Change your diet. Take your lipid tour. Take your Crestor or do very little to lower it. If you inherit a high level, I have a whole practice full of people with very high blood levels, and many of them have had a bypass, heart attack, a stroke and other problems, heart valve surgery. The vitamin niacin can lower it, but there's at least some science at a Whole Foods plant. Diet can also lower it. And even if it doesn't lower it much, it'll probably lower the blood pressure to lower the blood sugar, to lower the more commonly checked LDL cholesterol at a lower inflammation. So, you know, that's why the book is Half Science and half beautiful recipes, including the overnight out recipe that I did a little YouTube video on.

 

[00:21:41] I mean, I brought in one of my favorite plant based recipe writers, Beverly Lynn Bennett. I've worked with her before. So it's kind of like the plant based solution, their science. And then there's some practical steps. There's all this gorgeous food and the food and the recipes were specifically selected to be very likely to help control cholesterol, blood pressure, inflammation, blood sugar. They're delicious, but they emphasize things like oats, oats, lower cholesterol by the soluble fiber and the glue cans and a lot of chia hemp flax seeds, which can lower cholesterol and blood pressure. So there it's kind of a heart healthy, delicious diet book with some fascinating science and probably somebody listening right now. Undoubtedly, somebody watching this has a high lipoprotein egg because it's come it's the most common genetic heart risk that exists. But we never talk about it. I'm trying to break that there. But, you know, somebody is going to benefit just by thinking, God, my whole family's riddled with heart disease and they keep telling me we don't know why. No, nobody smoke and nobody has insulin required diabetes. I'm telling you. Check your libro protein, literally.

 

[00:22:53] It reminds me when you're saying this.

 

[00:22:55] We've spoken to a few autoimmune experts about veganism, you know, the vegan diet and the auto immune triggers and things of that nature. And I know from the sound of it, it's going to build regardless, except for, you know, these these things that you can do with diet and maybe niacin.

 

[00:23:13] But he isn't similar. It's not a trigger. It's not a switch that's getting switched on like the autoimmune. Right. It's just destined to build more than genetic.

 

[00:23:22] We know what chromosome we know and which genes are involved. And the trigger is conception. Right. Unlike the idea that there might be a gut issue that triggers lupus or a toxicity from Roundup that might trigger an auto immune disease, a gut damage. So nothing triggers us. It just sits there circulating in the blood, knocking into arteries, knocking in the Arpels, causing a reaction that, again, slowly, slowly, slowly. But by the time you're forty five, you might be sitting on a little ticking time bomb you didn't know about without scaring anybody. But it is possible. Yeah. You talk about the big famous just so people can relate. A lot of people used to watch The Biggest Loser show and there was Jillian Michaels looking repped and there was Bob Harper looking. Well, three years ago, Bob Harper at age 51, had a massive heart attack and almost died. And he announced a couple months later when he had recovered from a very long illness, that he found out he had inherited a very high level of late pope protein, little ache, and he was under treatment now and very optimistic for the future. But what if he found out 10 years before we can argue? What could he have done about it? There is a drug in development that will be the answer to the problem. But in the meantime, get your diet right exercise. Get your weight right. Know your numbers. I mean, take super good care yourself.

 

[00:24:47] Yeah. You talk a lot about kind of affecting. I think it's important, especially for scientists as well. Particularly when you get into book writing and things like that to consider all groups and industries within, you know, the people they are talking about, which are all masses of people in your society. And to that end, I was curious, you know, you talk a lot about fast food. And in even in something I watched you talked about, you know, just as the sad irony of having a Wendy's or McDonald's in their hospital green room before the rat reception. Yeah, but I'm wondering to that end to kind of speaking to everybody, all socioeconomic classes and things of that nature in the book, Libo Lipoprotein Little A.. When you went to form your recipes, did you consider like the nationwide availability of the products of the ingredients that you were putting in those recipes, income, status or other like necessary moments to think about when you were trying to make. Accessible to everybody, but also have the same or the necessary ingredients to help the condition.

 

[00:25:53] You know, in general, a well constructed whole food plan diet is an inexpensive and widely accessible diet. You just got to get back to basics. A lot of the recipes have brown rice. The recipes have Ghinwa. The recipes have beans and peas and lentils. The lagoon family, which if you know, you go to a bulk store and you buy big bags of dried rice and dried beans, you know, you need access to produce. Could be frozen big bags. The book doesn't stress organic because that becomes a price point. Many people get it. It's a nice add on when it's available and when you can afford it. But nonetheless, any well constructed whole food plan diet, even if it's not organic, is going to beat out from a total health standpoint. Almost any plant based plant, animal based meal, whether it's organic or not. So I think it is sensitive to all that. And there are other great resources. I wrote a book two ago with coauthor Ellen Jaffe Jones. She has a great paperback called Vegan on Four Dollars a Day that I would recommend anybody who's really trying. And it was written probably seven, eight years ago. So maybe it's Vegan and six dollars a day now. But there are so many tips in a book like that that you could adapt a few. But it takes a little preparation and, you know, a little bit of courage to dove into these recipes if you're coming from a place that has never really cooked. You've just got to have a chopping board and some good nice.

 

[00:27:25] You mentioned on one of the episodes I saw that an average C.T. scan tips to obtain artery health reports and calcium scan ESAN.

 

[00:27:35] Seventy five to one hundred dollars in most major hospitals. And this is a piece of information. I had no idea. I think you get thousands. I don't have a great idea about how much medical tests cost since the bills. Always astronomical from anything I hear about. And I'm wondering if you have a basic elevator pitch style pieces of advice like that within the cardiac health industry that you give people who kind of run into you and are looking for like your top type five pieces of advice. You talk about men being between the ages of 45 and 50, getting there for a C.T. scan if they haven't had one. And things like that. You have other little pieces of information that you like to give off to people as quickly as possible when you run into them.

 

[00:28:12] Yeah. You know, I have a few little things that roll off my tongue over and over. And one of them is, you know, we can talk about recipes and food, but it takes technology added to great lifestyle to really cement the security that you and I are going to have a sudden medical adverse event or particularly cardiovascular heart adverse event. And, you know, talking about getting a blood test for Lipoprotein Little A is actually a very technical topic. I could go on and on and refine that about the genetics of it, but we don't need to simply just check a box and get it. Similarly, you know what I bring up all the time with patients. Just think about it. You know, somebody recommended you to get a mammogram at age 45. If you're a woman, somebody recommended you get a call and ask could be at age 50 at an annual physical. Did anybody want to check your heart in all that? And even if you say, I know my father had a stent at age 59, did anybody recommend anything? So that's where the entree is to talk about that. There actually has been a test, quick CAT scan, no dye, no needle, no pain, no claustrophobia. It used to be a thousand dollars 20 years ago, but in the hospitals in suburban Detroit and usually around the country, it's one hundred dollar range and you just pay out of pocket and you immediately know I'm weathering life well with clean cut, flexible arteries that are degraded by calcium deposits, which make your arteries hard, hardening of the arteries, or there's a problem. Something's going on. I'm walking around with heart disease. I didn't know about it. You need to find that preventive doctor in your community and work with him or her and get a handle on it and get your diet. You know, the plant based solution done of approved diet. So test, I guess, comes out of my mouth. Prevent, not stent. Lot of people are getting invasive procedures. Stents bypass. All the data, including just in the last six weeks is for the majority of people. This is hardcore science data at the best centers in the world can be approached with medication, diet, fitness and avoid stents. A bypass or prevent that stent is a nice little one. You know, you mention, you know, I just like the word reversal. So many people come to me. They've had heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, gut issues. And just to open Pandora's box, that it may be related to their lifestyle and it may be possible to reverse some or all of it is to most patients an idea that's never been brought up with them before. You know, I had no idea there's a chance I might be able to reduce my blood pressure, blood sugar, blood. Heart medication, if you worked very hard at it, you're going to have to work very hard at it. But gives people a lot of hope and a lot of actually empowerment to know that they know it's not all about the prescription pad the doctor has. It's a lot about the pantry, the grocery store, the fridge aerator, the freezer, the treadmill, the sidewalk, the pillow. You've got to sleep at night. The whole lifestyle that I educate patients.

 

[00:31:17] Yeah. And speaking to lifestyles, I've been on YouTube. And it seems like some of the videos since the Cauvin 19 pandemic has really set in and the stay at home quarantine has been advised.

 

[00:31:29] You have a lot of little I like your videos, the very brief, very succinct, and I'm very diversified. You have a lot of things, combination of exercise and stacking, a combination of exercises, movements, connection to the earth, conquer thing. You talk about melatonin and the recent research being done in treatment, or at least alongside the Kovik 19, the microbiome of an Apple nutrition of sprouts and the sprouting book with a colleague of yours that came out nitric oxide. Are there any other things that you're kind of looking at right now? Vitamins, exercise, et cetera, that you do like that that are kind of at the forefront of what you're what you're looking at with health as diversified as they might be?

 

[00:32:11] Yeah. You know, so just since you brought up the word covered, 19, you know, nobody can authentically say we actually know how to prevent it or treat it. We're struggling to find that pathway. There's a lot of people talking about that. There isn't prominent professor of what's called pulmonary critical care medicine in Norfolk, Virginia, who suggested it might be reasonable to add in some vitamin D, some vitamins, C, some zinc. These are supplements. You can do it in your food. Of course, you know, zinc is a quite rich in soy like hemp and tofu template of melatonin at night is one of his recommendations. And there is finally an antioxidant called quercetin, which is finding garlic and apples and onions and cherries. But there are people that are taking a course. It's an supplement based on reasonable recommendations. Do we know? Has it been studied? We don't. These are very safe, very inexpensive supplements. Pennies a day. Good night's sleep. Maintaining proper body weight, excess body weight has been a risk factor for not doing well if you do contact Koven 19. You might be in a state of constant inflammation. Here you got a virus that triggers massive inflammation. If you started a high point, that's going to be a little easier to reach a critical inflammatory status. And of course, wash your hands and physical distance as appropriate and wear your mask as appropriate for sure. Those are all interesting. There is actually just to mention there's a theory. Again, remember, 25 to 30 percent of people have lipoprotein little they elevated in their blood. One of the bad actions of this special cholesterol inherited Mollica is it can cause blood, the clot. And one of the tragic circumstances in a lot of cases, sick people with Cauvin, 19 in the ICU is all of sudden there's clotting everywhere. There's clotting in the heart, there's clotting in the lungs, there's clotting. It's a theory that lipoprotein the delay may be partly to explain why some people just explode with this terrible issue and others don't. So not now, but maybe the God forbid, the next pandemic will have more people that are where they have lipoprotein little a inherited problem. I'll have a better therapy for MRSA or anything else. I'm working. I'm always working on something. I'm deep, deep right now into the endocannabinoid system. You know, the fact that we have a chemicals in receptors in our body, that when you access cannabis or hemp or know CBD, why does that activate reactions and about. I'm just reading a lot about it. Oh, it is. These are phyto cannabinoids, plant based chemicals that are hacking into our own internal system. Most people don't know we make a series of chemicals in our body that are the authentic cannabis like chemicals, and it just happens to be many plants. But cannabis is the most famous plant. You don't have to smoke it. It could be a hemp oil capsule or A-S, but many plants have a response in the body, just like our own internal system. Some people there may be the future diagnosis. Maybe you have a hypo cannabinoid system. You better add in some cannabinoids like hemp oil. It's a fascinating pathway right now being looked at in anxiety, poor sleep. Some metabolic issues, some pain issues. So I'm pretty deep into learning as much as possible on that.

 

[00:35:50] Excellent. I look forward to your findings. And I reached out to some of our audience members and colleagues when I knew I was going to be speaking with a cardiologist today. And I asked them about any questions that they had late or not. I told them I wasn't going to quote any of them. And I have a few I'd like to run by you. One is and kind of a general inquiry that how would one know without pain or some kind of a cardiac arrest moment if there was an issue with their heart.

 

[00:36:22] Yeah. So I don't wait for the cardiac arrest. Very bad way to find out. You have heart disease because recovery from that is very low. Again, just succinctly. Get a few extra blood tests, get blood tests. Go see your doctor. Get your blood pressure check. Get the routine stuff. Maybe ask for the lipoprotein little lei and maybe a test of inflammation. The C reactive protein.

 

[00:36:46] But I'm going to reach over. And just so a visual is always better. This is a practice for sure. But again, if people aren't familiar, there's a great documentary you can find on Netflix called The Widowmaker movie, and I'm not in it. It's about seven, eight years old. But this is a picture of a CAT scan of the heart. That's the bones on the outside. The lungs are black, the heart and the metal. And there's a yellow arrow. If you want to know if you're walking around with silent blocked arteries that you're not aware of, you get is called a coronary artery calcium scan. And you need a prescription generally from your doctor. And you spend, as I say, seventy five. One hundred dollars. If you're being charged more than that. Just call the next hospital. And if you want to learn more about it. The Widowmaker movie, Boom, you'll have all the data you need. And that is now recommended by the American Heart Association and others. This is not a unique viewpoint that I have. Yeah.

 

[00:37:44] OK. And how so? Olive oil, coconut oil and other plant based oils have been something that a lot of people that we've reached out to feel like they've had misinformation about.

 

[00:37:55] And how do you feel about these particular oils when added as condiments or sources to a vegan diet?

 

[00:38:03] So very hot topic when I know a lot about. And I'll give you again a quick answer. You've got to go back to science. Number one, people have been using olive oil for thousands of years. That's not true of coconut oil. It's a basic component of the Mediterranean diet, which we learned in the 1950s resulted in a much lower rate of diabetes, cancer, dementia and heart disease than junky Western foods. So you could ingest in Crete and the island of Crete off of Greece. They drank olive oil like a liter a week. It constituted 40 percent of their calories of their diet. And they had very low rates of these diseases. But it wasn't butter and it wasn't lard and it wasn't ghee. And there's no coconut trees in Crete. It wasn't coconut. There is also very strong data from the Harvard School of Public Health that if you're using butter or if you're using lard and you switch over to extra virgin olive oil, you will def. And actually, it's also true of other plant oils. You will definitely drop your risk statistically of developing heart disease. So olive oil has gotten a very bad rap in some portions of the Vegan world because if you're the very small slice of the pie. It is terrible heart disease. And when somebody comes to me and says, I'm supposed to have bypass surgery next week, what do I do? I'm going to definitely advise them. Whole food, plant based, no added oil diet, because that's consistent with the studies by Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Ornish, Mr. Nathan Pritikin and such. But that's a very small slice. If you're sitting at home and you're healthy. Maybe if add your calcium score down and it's great and you want to drizzle some extra virgin olive oil on your Froogle a salad. God bless you. Enjoy it. It's a delicious way.

 

[00:39:47] And it may actually help you absorb fat soluble vitamins like vitamin D, invite him and even vitamin A out of your foods a little better. So I'm not as rigid that nobody can have oil. Coconut oil has a unique position. It's very high in saturated fat where olive oil, avocado oil and canola oil are very low in saturated fat. And there's just no data that coconut oil actually supports healthy heart lifestyle. It's not part of the Mediterranean diet. Some people mentioned that it just doesn't exist. It's a it's a tropical plant. It's not a Mediterranean basin plant. And there is concern that oil raises cholesterol. The official word to the American Heart and American College of Cardiology Associations is we're concerned avoid eliminated from your diet. Put it on your skin if you want, but don't eat it. There was this trend by Dave Astbury. Here's a cup of coffee. Here's a couple tablespoons of coconut oil. Your brain will be fired up for super function, but some people's cholesterol go insane with that approach. Two hundred to five hundred in three weeks. So if you're going to do it, do it with an experimental mind to at least check your blood work. But I don't use coconut oil. I do use extra virgin olive oil. But I know my arteries are wickedly clean. Thank you.

 

[00:41:09] Absolutely. Well, and to that end, yeah, I did. And once I heard it was going to produce all sorts of brain clarity, I myself down just a straight tablespoon, never felt any clarity. There's that personally.

 

[00:41:21] Try getting a lot of it. You will find clarity in your colon because it causes a very rapid diarrhea. You do.

 

[00:41:28] I did not do enough. That would have stopped me as well. I'm wondering. We've had a lot of feedback from people who've spoken to either advisors, health advisors, to people that said they spoke with doctors, just general M.D. and that said that they shouldn't fast because their calorie intake as vegans is both a little bit more fickle and different from that. They're carnivorous or milk eating counterparts. And Dan, a lot of vegans that are watching the show and listen to it have a relationship with fasting. You yourself have talked about what the doctor, Longo and Autophagy, those things, you know, kind of have been heated conversations even in the Vegan community with cellular repair and things like that. How do you personally stand about vegans fasting from, oh, mad one meal a day, too intermittent or longer? Fast.

 

[00:42:26] On average, a well constructed plan diet has fewer calories in a day than a general American or meat based diet. It's, you know. The food is nutrition dense, but not very calorie dense. If you're eating big salads and beans and peas and grains, you will change up a little bit of use, too much extra virgin olive oil because of the density of calories. And you can bring it up. So we are some people talk about we are like leaning towards fasting naturally day after day after day, because even if it's two or three hundred calories a day, less than our compatriots are eating meat day after day after day, that is less of a metabolic stress on the body. But there is a magic to going a period of time and it may take three or four or even five days of reduced or no calories. I don't do no calorie fasting. I don't do water fasting. I could I'm healthy enough to some people are not healthy enough. Too frail to diabetic to nutritionally imbalanced for heart failure. Some people should. So Dr. Longo created this five day, 800 calorie day plant meal based program called the Fasting Mimicking Diet. That's a trademark name or prolon. That's a trademark. And I'm a big, big advocate because there's some magical responses when you deprive the body of glucose and protein for five days. And this program is a very low glucose, very low protein, high fat, high complex carbohydrate program. With all the food provided, you can you can inhibit some pathways that cause damage and aging. You can activate some pathways that cause rejuvenation, regeneration. You can stimulate stem cells. It's all very high level science. And you will see in 2020 that this particular program, fasting, mimicking diet, combined with cancer, chemotherapy, combined with other programs, is revolutionary, revolutionary, revolutionizing the way we're using nutrition as an adjunct to treating serious disease. But it's a perfectly great choice for somebody just wants to enhance their health. So, you know, there has not been a study. You've got a perfect plant based diet. Will adding on fasting give you some even further health advantage? But there are some people, as I mentioned, they're struggling, they're eating all food based diet, but their weight still isn't at target. Their blood pressure still isn't at Target. Doing fasting with that whole food plant based diet may be the key to turn on metabolism the way they want and get the results they want. Interesting.

 

[00:44:59] Yeah. And finally, we had just a general inquiry as to what your personal thoughts were. And there's been a lot of people a little bit more shocked than not regarding how little their personal doctors or cardiologists and specifically know about nutrition. And I'm wondering if you can speak to your own personal testament as to whether or not you feel like the majority of your colleagues are educated in the science of nutrition and particularly latter day nutrition.

 

[00:45:30] You know, the answer is generally no. There are some that are just completely resistant to the topic and you're not going to get them away from their steak and potato diet. There are some of the younger ones that just can't help but notice the game changers movie they heard about or Tennessee Titans football team or Serena Williams. I mean, it's just too much in the public culture. So they're aware and they may have done some readings from research. There's a growing number of plant based doctors and plant based cardiologists that as many as there should be. But it's growing. But it is frustrating. And again, when you walk into a hospital and there's a Wendy's or you walk in the doctor's dining room and there's fried chicken on a regular basis, you know that there's mixed messages and inconsistent education, that the board exams to become a doctor rarely have any nutrition questions. So that means the curriculum is not going to have much nutrition because one of the goals are going to training is to pass the darn test. And why spend too much time on a topic that's not been tested for? So there's a movement to get more nutrition questions on these board exams, forcing the curriculum to be more nutrition based. I think everybody listening should buy a copy of the plant based solution and gift it to their doctor and we can start a revolution. You know that it's going to take things like that. I mean, I've had the pleasure of giving grand rounds at cardiology departments on nutrition as recently as last week by Xoom and other ways. And it's frankly now 10 percent of the audience has any clue what I'm talking about. And the rest of them are just blown away that there's data about this. But are they blown away and they're going to make changes or are they blown away and they're on to the next topic? I'm only hopeful that it's altering some of their opinion about spend four minutes of your 20 minutes talking to people about nutrition or just tell them to watch forks overnight. I mean, that's what I did for years. I had 15 minutes. One minute was prescription pad. Please watch this movie. I usually actually had at that time DVD they could take home. Now it's just online. So one little statement to a patient can change your life forever.

 

[00:47:41] Is there any index to find or locate cardiologists who are open to or entertaining Vegan or vegetarian diets?

 

[00:47:50] A cardiologist, not exclusively. There is a website article on it called Plant Based Doctors Dot Org. And if you type in your zip code and twenty five mile radius, you know, it might be a therapist, it might be a nurse practitioner and it might be a general internist or cardiologist. But at least from the meetings I go to, there's a few dozen cardiologists, maybe, maybe there's one hundred, but that's out of thousands in the United States.

 

[00:48:18] That's terrifying. Well, I want to say thank you so much, Dr. Khan. We're out of time. I do appreciate you indulging me in our questions and unpacking your books. I really appreciate everything and all of your candor today.

 

[00:48:32] Well, I always appreciate the opportunity. I'm very passionate about talking about what we talked about as one, two, three, four, five people that are listening and maybe 10 times. And many are going to you'll find out something. And even if it's just that blood test lipoprotein little. Hey, but, you know, if you're eating plant based, you are making a quality decision. Don't give up. And if you're having a struggle with it, reach out to somebody in your community or, you know, my clinic does cancels. Let me help you figure out why I click in for you.

 

[00:49:00] Wonderful. Thank you for everyone listening. We've been speaking with Dr. Joel Klein. You can discover more about him, all of his research on W WW, Dr. Jill Concow. You can also purchase all of the books mentioned here on Amazon until we speak again next time.

 

[00:49:17] Remember to eat clean, eat responsibly, stay in love with the world and always bet on yourself. Slainte.

 

 

Talking With Joel Fuhrman; Family physician & NY Times best-selling author

Today I am talking with Joel Fuhrman. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician, seven-time New York Times best-selling author and internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing. In addition to his medical practice in New Jersey, Dr. Fuhrman operates the Eat To Live Retreat in San Diego. He  is the president of the Nutritional Research Foundation and is on the faculty of Northern Arizona University, Health Sciences division. Dr. Fuhrman’s five PBS specials have raised more than $50 million for public broadcasting.

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with family physician and seven time New York Times best selling author Dr. Joel Fuhrman, arguably considered a founder in contemporary Vegan dietary science. Key points addressed were Dr. Fuhrman's core tenants behind his most recent book, Eat for Life. We also discussed his world famous retreat, Eat to Live, and how his axiomatic principles are both applied and proven through clients that participate. We wrap the hour up with listener questions regarding Dr. Fuhrman's recommendations and opinions on common and obscure inquiries. Stay tuned for my informative talk with Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

 

[00:00:44] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. The dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. If you're enjoying these podcasts, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Fasting and roundtable topics they can be found on our Web site, Patricia Kathleen .com, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:42] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today I am ecstatic to be sitting down with Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

 

[00:01:48] Dr. Fuhrman is a family physician and a New York Times best selling author seven times over. You can find out more about everything we talk about, as well as all of Dr. Fuhrman's work on his Web site, W WW. Dr. Fuhrman dot com. That is d r f u h r m a n dot com. Welcome, Dr. Fuhrman.

 

[00:02:08] Thank you. Excited to be here and talk to you.

 

[00:02:10] I'm excited, too, as well. It's a hard road because of your prolific work history.

 

[00:02:17] But I'm going to endeavor to both introduce anybody who hasn't had these splendid opportunity to look at your work and some of the different areas of your career, as well as kind of get into more areas that I feel haven't been explored recently with you. For those of you that are avid fans, for everyone listening. I will offer a brief bio on Dr. Fuhrman before I begin peppering him with questions. But prior to that, a roadmap for today's podcast, just so that you can follow along and see where are Trajector of inquiry is going. We will first look at Dr. Fuhrman's personal history as as it pertains to his wealth of knowledge in whole plant food based Vegan diet and how some of those key terms pertain to him. And then we'll look at unpacking key terms that he has used throughout his career, such as new territory and diet and things of that nature. I will look at things like gee bonds and other things. A lot of you are familiar with him, kind of flesh out some of the areas that he has come to have kind of included in his arsenal of biblical proportion. We'll also look at his eat to live retreat based out of San Diego, California. And then I will look at unpacking a few of his most recent books to kind of garner a sense of where he is headed, as well as look back on a few that have current latter day incredible significance with the covered pandemic. I will also include rapid fire questions that a lot of our audience has written in debt. We were asking us to ask Dr. Fuhrman and then we'll wrap everything up with advice. But before we get to that, a short bio as promised. Joel Fuhrman, M.D., is a board certified family physician, seven time New York Times best selling author and internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing.

 

[00:04:07] In addition to his medical practice in New Jersey, Dr. Fuhrman operates the Eat to Live retreat in San Diego. He is the president of the Nutritional Research Foundation and is on the faculty of Northern Arizona University Health Sciences Division. Dr. Fuhrman, Fuhrman's five PBS specials have raised more than 50 million for public broadcasting. And Dr. Freeman, I know that is a very condensed boil down and maybe even a little outdated biol, which I can allow you to correct right now before we jump into your background.

 

[00:04:44] No, we couldn't. I don't have to. You've got it all OK. OK. It's good enough.

 

[00:04:50] I'm curious. Can you, for anyone who hasn't read any of your literature or know anything about your background, can you kind of describe post medical school, your your entrance into the way and your empire is right now?

 

[00:05:05] Good plant based environment that you came to develop and understand at your own personal story.

 

[00:05:12] Well, to understand my personal story, I was a world class figure skater. It was third in the world in her skating with my younger sister, the nine early 1970s when I was work after I got hurt for I was on crutches for a while.

 

[00:05:26] Mr. 76 Olympics because of an injury. I went into my family's business and I decided after working a few years that what I would my real passion was nutrition and food and natural healing. So I decided to then go back as an adult at the age of 28. I went back to get the postgraduate premedical courses at Columbia because I had graduated from college in nineteen seventy three to graduate 74 as a as a business, as kind of business major in political science major. And in other words, I didn't have the courses to go to medical school. I had to go back to school again to get the specific medical requirements to go back to medical school at the age of 30 to pursue my passion, which was a medical career based on nutritional science. So I didn't I wasn't a conventional physician and then decided to adopt this way of thinking and living. I first adopted this way of thinking and living and and realized its incredible impact it would have on people's ability to reverse disease and get well when we cover their health and I pursue to get an education, a medical degree to pursue my dream and passion of mine. So I've been in practice now for more than three decades, and I I've got tremendous self-satisfaction and personally ward from being able to take people who are very sickly from what are considered chronic, irreversible conditions, everything from asthma for myalgia, migraines, lupus, psoriasis, heart disease, diabetes, and give people the type of information and dietary and nutritional protocols so they can enable complete recoveries and get well again. So my so I developed my scientific and nutritional niche to design diet styles, to maximize human longevity and and tell people that we can win the war on cancer right now. We don't have to have cancer. We don't have to have heart disease. We don't have to get demented. And we can live a long life to which we. Ninety five in 105 years old, we can push the envelope of human longevity, close to 100 years old for the vast majority of people without getting physical and mental frailty and disability. That said, what? So my niche has been to describe to people what is ideal, not to water it down, to make it more acceptable to the masses and more people would like it. My niche was designed for those people who want to know what's best so they can live the longest and use what's best therapeutically to as a therapeutic modality to reverse disease. With that being said, we found over the years that doing what's best can be made to be delicious and can be something you enjoy doing and give you tremendous emotional satisfaction with eating. And it becomes there's no extra enjoyment or living experience that you miss when you eat such a healthy diet. So I kind of just try to dispel the myth that, oh, I'd rather shoot myself and die right now. I'd rather be dead than have to eat that way because I want to enjoy my life more, eat whatever I want, and that's just not true. The more you eat high sugar and highly sweetened and fried foods and more heavily seasoned food salt, it was more dense. Your taste buds, I mean, you get in better health, you enhance your taste. And our and our dietary and recipe repertoire is fantastic. So we actually can show people even have incredibly gourmet tasting food and still not have to worry about getting diseases that afflict other Americans.

 

[00:09:01] Yeah, I find when I speak to Vegan athletes, you coming from this figure skating background and then going to medical school to prove theories that you had already built yourself is unique beyond comparison. However, I'm wondering. Well, with that, I, I find when I speak to Vegan athletes that they have a relationship about healing, natural or let's say more common ailments. You know, muscles that have been stretched too harder, worked you profoundly. And this relationship with food being a fuel and and things like that, that is is beyond what a lot of even chefs that, you know, get into plant based things have. Do you feel like that was the beginning of when you were a figure skater? Do you feel like your relationship with your food and what it was doing to this extreme in a sport that that was the impetus for you beginning your query?

 

[00:09:55] Probably not. OK. It was after that.

 

[00:09:59] What it was. It was parallel to that. It was more the observation of what nutrition can do. I mean, I was involved. My father was overweight and sickly and I was involved in a in and that I learned through the natural hygiene movement and seeing people that were seriously, you know, recover their health to that form of nutrition. And then so I learned about that in subsequent years, obviously refined and took away the myths and and see the problems with some of their tenants. But nevertheless, it was seeing the early people in the field of nutrition being able to get people well, again, from serious illnesses. And how powerful it was and how it never made sense to me that taking drugs, which were poisonous. And, of course, allergenic that putting more drugs in people to give them the ability to continue to hurt themselves with the toxic diet that was nutritionally deficient is going to be the way you get good health. You can't get good health by access to more medical care. Sick with medical care means more drugs, which are poisonous. And don't take away the cause. It just it just inherently made sense to me. When I did the reading of these early pioneers in the history of the nutritional and health movement, the reading by the pioneers made more sense than the reading by the medical. By way of conventional people were thinking. And I kind of put it together and then developed my own way of my own, you know, formulas and my own dietary portfolios to even make it more efficacious.

 

[00:11:24] Yeah.

 

[00:11:25] I'm wondering if you can kind of unpack when the New Cherian diet, first of all, of you would be so kind as to kind of briefly describe or define what that means to you and what you would like your audience to know about it.

 

[00:11:38] And then also tell us about when it was born in in your head.

 

[00:11:46] The word new territory. It defines a diet style that's designed to be could be nutrient rich and also contain all the nutrients humans need to maximize their health. It's another word for a super healthy diet. You know, the word nutrient harriman's nutrient rich, super healthy, designed for human longevity in human health.

 

[00:12:06] There's no other word that I really that encompasses that of a vegan diet doesn't make it healthy. It's Vegan. It doesn't even make it healthy if its whole food vegan, whole food plant based, doesn't even make it healthy. And a diet doesn't even have to be a hundred percent plant based to make Slainte to be neutral barium. So I think the meaning of the word neutral Tarion means we're doing all the right elements. So the most critically important, for example, eating a diet that's rich in green vegetables, whether you read a little bit of animal products or you're a vegan. If your diet is not rich and green vegetables, it's impossible to be healthy. The human body's immune system is dependent on the ability to fight cancer. And the intro to transcription proteins, the body of cells to repair and heal itself is all dependent on exposure to certain foods like onions, green vegetables and mushrooms. Without exposure to those foods, you can't have superior health. What I'm saying right now is that the blue zones around the world identify populations that might live healthier and longer than Americans, but they're not ideal. They usually encompass one or two ideal factors accounting for the benefits of longevity. Well, if we isolate all the science involved and all the studies, the thousands and thousands of studies we've available today, we can do much better in the blue zones can do.

 

[00:13:17] And a neutral Tarion diet in that word describes putting a diet style together with a full portfolio of dietary benefits that a dietary excellence can afford people and let them understand the science that supports it so they can choose to do it. Yes or no, but at least they know that you have a pinnacle of nutritional excellence here with a tremendous amount of irrefutable science that's supporting it. And of course, we're talking here about a diet that's one nutrient rich has a high nutrient bang per caloric block. Number two, it's hormonally favorable. That means we're not going to have we're not we're not eating foods that are high twice, C-MAC, or too much animal protein that could raise IGF one or other assets in the body or other things that could promote death and numbers. And obviously, we're avoiding toxins and other things that are that are potentially damaging chemicals. And, of course, you know, number four, of course, we're trying to be nutritionally complete and not miss any nutritional elements that could benefit or extend human lifespan to include in a diet that's largely plant based or predominant.

 

[00:14:24] I don't use that word plant based much because the word based means more than 50 percent. And with scientists around the world, it has all different meanings. If it's if you're if you're taking a math based course, then it's like 50, 60 percent math and it's not definitive enough. But as some people use plant based, I mean, Vegan another think it means a plant based amines. The American diet is already 70 percent of calories from plants and 30 percent of bugs.

 

[00:14:48] So it's too vague, I think. So I'm trying to be more specific. And we're talking here about it. In any case, I'm also using the conservative use of certain supplementation to make sure like a V as you approach a vegan diet, your diet may not have ideal levels of beach. Well, that may not have ideal levels of DHEA. It may not have ideal levels of zinc. It may not avoid waves of iodine or K2. So we're trying to be very cautious and conservative to make sure we're not giving a person a certain diet that could be causing them a problem later on in life to the long term nutritional deficiencies. So this being cognizant of all the potential downfalls of traditional Vegan advocates.

 

[00:15:31] Yeah, and we've actually had a large part of, you know, some of the interesting rhetoric that's been brought up across industries in this podcast series, which is based on looking at all of Vegan life.

 

[00:15:43] So not just the diet and health, you know, are the food that people normally attached to it, but all of it. The sustainability, the responsibility, all of those things. And one of the biggest fears right now is plant based versus Vegan. And what does two terms mean? And interestingly, my international guests have come on and spoken to us really feel that a plant based term is being adopted criminally by marketing industries and no longer means anything attached to health, but that it's trying to like being fortified with vitamin D was in the 80s and 90s, you know, and all of these things. So it's good that you clarified that for everyone listening and wondering, you you see a lot of your works, your books, anybody who's familiar with you, even when you give your your talks, you you have a very your main point is utility. So you have this incredible scientific work that's constantly evolving that you're keeping up to date, that you're educating people about. But then you also provide platforms and it's kind of your life's work to be able to have people take this infinitely. That's backed by studies and things being done and then put it into utility. And you do that a lot with acronyms and little tidbits that people can kind of latch onto and remember. And one of my favorites is G bombs. And I was hoping that you if you could tell us what that acronym is and why it's kind of this paramount piece of of your platform.

 

[00:17:08] Absolutely, and I do think it's a paramount piece because I was sitting there thinking about what are the five or six most important foods that people need to include in their diet on a regular basis or category of foods that have the most scientific documentation to show protection against cancer. Putting together this anticancer lifestyle style and gee bombs it in, it was a start without an acronym that was some of the different an acronym first.

 

[00:17:36] It migrated to Jeevana, just had self felt better, but it stands for obviously G then bombs B OMB s stands for greens and beans and onions and mushrooms and berries and seeds. And because there's so much data, so much scientific data, we could throw a dart at any of those foods like seeds and say, well, here's the data on seeds that when people, for example, as a women file a study following women with breast cancer for ten years, should a 71 percent decrease risk of breast cancer related deaths for women who had just a third of a milligram of lignin from seed in their diet. Seeds like flax seeds achieve seeds of sesame seeds. And by the way, a teaspoon of ground flax seeds has seven milligrams. That was for women only a third of a milligram of lignin and may reduce the risk of death by 71 percent. We're saying here that that's just one study. Why could alist, you know, 30 studies on an issue and showing that we come to a position of authority, not from looking at one study, but looking at numerous studies that are not only controlled trials, but also the long term epidemiologic studies. Also the studies with large numbers of people looking at heart endpoints like death. We have certain studies, have long term studies have to corroborate the short term studies before you come to more definitive opinion about something. But the point I'm making right now is that each one of these food categories individually show dramatic protection against cancer and even enhancing lifespan even once you have cancer, preventing recurrence of cancer and enhancing life before people have cancer. When we put together a dietary portfolio that includes this for these four categories, then we've reached a program that that's much more protective than even any of the blue any of the blue zones would be to include all those foods in your regular daily food intake. That means having a big salad every day with something raw cruciferous on top and maybe the dressing instead of made from oil and vinegar. It's made from blended nuts or seeds and vinegar and some more tomato sauce or oranges or so, you know, it's we're designing the whole the recipes to go it in conjunction with maximizing nutritional absorption and content of the meal with maybe a bowl of vegetable bean soup or a piece of fruit for dessert. So what I'm saying is whether we're looking at berries or onions or scallions or what are you looking at? Green vegetables. These foods are critically important. And I should say even necessary for four to have an excellent immune function. The minute you remove one major food category, you're going to not going to have optimal the most optimal immune function protection you could have. So in other words. If you took the green vegetables out of the diet, you couldn't have a healthy diet without green vegetables in it. I always make the joke. I say, if you don't like green vegetables, you better live close to a hospital that's going to help you. But the point is, green vegetables are the food that are linked most closely within you with maximizing human longevity. One study with one hundred one hundred thirty thousand people devoted green vegetable intake into five different quintiles. And the ones with the highest quintile of green vegetable intake are 130000 people that are the ones who really had the longest lifespans by four. Not even close. What's the point I'm making is that it's very useful. You look way as you said, it's very important for people to be able to just access that, to know that I have some beans today, have some green, some onion mushroom in my salad or my soup to have some berries. I have some seeds and nuts today that I have some try to give you full dietary portfolio ones. That's one of my acronyms I've been using for years.

 

[00:21:11] Yeah, I like it. And I think that that is it's key.

 

[00:21:14] I also think introducing concepts that can seem daunting and breaking them down to serve as much utility as your recipes and things like that, you talk a lot about phyto nutrients and that can be an area that I think that for a layperson is it can be a little daunting or confusing, especially when it's kind of thrown around in different ways in the medical community, in the diet community. And sometimes those are nowhere near the same universe which we can get into. But you have common threads again and for. So your most recent book, Eat for Life. Another one I want to get into briefly is super immunity. And that is pretty self-evident for those of you who've read it. And then there's eight to live. And one of my favorites we talked about before we started recording was fast food genocide, how processed food is killing us and what we can do about it. I think both of those. They all go hand-in-hand. They all talk about how phyto nutrients or the lack there of relating back to this idea of cancer disease and how a lot of those things, Paektu, particularly of a lot of rhetoric about Type two diabetes, how it doesn't need to exist. It's about eating your way into health and fighting disease, 70 tenuously, which I think always go hand-in-hand. But I wanted to ask you really quickly if that was a mouthful. Let's get into super immunity because and anyone who's read it and remembers it or has reread it recently, you eat you very. I don't know if it was ominous or what it was, but you kind of predicted in the beginning of that book what you did was you discussed the future potential of a pandemic due to a weakened immune system from a lack of phyto nutrients coupled with, you know, a mutating viruses around the world. But this was back in 2013. And you you're having this constant conversation about the weakening of the immune system due to the American diet and also these transforming. So my question for you right now, just out the gate, is when Kovik, 19, set in. I can't imagine that you were shocked, but what was your initial stance on realizing that that was happening? And you'd written this book seven years ago?

 

[00:23:26] Well, my initial stance was that everybody's panicking and and you know what?

 

[00:23:32] Why didn't they panic years ago or why doesn't the sphere of cancer make them panic? And it because they're eating great cancer. And 75 percent of our population over the age of 70 dies of heart attacks anyway. Why are they worried about that? What did you do? But but here we have something thrown right in their face that can kill them right away.

 

[00:23:48] So my point, of course, is I understand that this is a it could result in a person with weakened immune system immunity and a person eating a standard diet die right away. But so my initial thought was this message has to get out. People have to know they don't have to be a number or statistic, don't have to be intubated in a hospital or a heart lung machine. They don't have to have there. It's happened to them. They could immediately start to eat properly to support normal immune function and make KOVA 19 a harmless experience. This is a a relatively harmless virus to a healthy person. And even young people are unhealthy. And, you know, it's mostly the elderly and sickly anyway. We still have a majority of people in America have a ubiquitously.

 

[00:24:32] People are nutritionally deficient in immunosuppressed. We have a complete immunosuppressed population that is putting themselves at risk of having a simple corona virus, possibly kill them, which is utterly insane. They should be eating. They should be eating normally. So they have a normal immune response and encoded that has no effect on a person. Hardly even makes them sick. This is so ridiculous that people don't embrace nutritional excellence and stop this needless fear.

 

[00:24:59] Absolutely. I want to switch gears really quickly and look at your eat to live retreat, and I am based out of San Diego.

 

[00:25:07] And I was telling you before we started today that you're you're very famous in these parts, as is the retreat.

 

[00:25:13] People who don't know even a lot about, you know, that the literature behind it and things like that, none of the retreat because of its its remerge beauty and people who have gone come back really changed. I was hoping you can kind of unpack what it is because you don't have it's not just a one kind of moment, you know, a retreat based on X amount of time. There is a variation of different cycles or systems that you've had running through there. And I was hoping you'd kind of touch on a few. And prior to obviously the pandemic, I was hoping you kind of describe the retreat and what it's what was originally built for and some of the systems happening within it.

 

[00:25:53] Yes. And we're still in operation, obviously, right now. But in any case, I have to say that even in my early in my career in Flemington, New Jersey, with my medical practice, I used to rent a 10 bedroom house in the center of town.

 

[00:26:07] So people were coming in from different parts of the country, could stay with me and go into the Boesel of my nutritional protocols, staying with me, you know, two weeks, eight weeks, whatever it is, they stayed there so I could be in charge of their care as I put them on special diets to reverse disease. Then as I carried on my next career for the next 20 years, I always had the back of my mind that. You know, some people are such food addicts and their conditions are so serious that they're that they really need to have a safe place where they can have and they really can be forced abstinence from their addictive food triggers and they can be taught how to make showing how to make the food tastes great, how they can retrain their tastebuds to prefer this way of eating, get skilled in and living this way for themselves, and then set home without those addictions and desires to eat junk food.

 

[00:26:56] And just like with cocaine addiction, you can't go away to a healthy treat for a week or two, be eating healthy, drop ten or fifteen pounds and then expect to go home and to be able to do it easily for the rest of your life, especially somebody with treats, feeding you sprouts and know nothing that tastes good enough to live that way. And so it was always my dream to have a place where people in need could come into my care. And it's working out that way because people come with, you know, with rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis or lupus or asthma or diabetes or out of control, high blood pressure that can't be controlled medications or. And they say, you're under my care. And with such an excellent diet and the way our chefs make it taste great will grow most of the food and our own incredible soil. And we have like the 100 exotic fruit trees, whatever it is. But the point is we feed the most incredibly delicious food. And they see their blood pressure come down and I'm able to wean them off the medication safely and gradually get them off their narcotics, their immunosuppressive drugs, their blood pressure, drugs, diabetic drugs, and whatever it is to have them achieve this degree of nutritional excellence that then leads to a miraculous health transformation and then to gain green the skills that they can do this on their own when they leave. And I love doing it this way and not think of living any other way that they learned it and gotten such benefited. In other words, it takes time for some people to be able to grasp this and apply this. So it really can work in their life, especially if they're in serious condition. Some people can read a book, watch a video comments to some of these podcasts. They can do it great. It can follow the recipes that can change your life for them. And thousands of people have done that and the vast majority of people are going to do this on their own. But I want to be able to reach those people, even those who don't seem to be able to get their act together to do this on their own. I need that extra care and handholding at the beginning. They can come into my retreat. We can help and get started up. And most people it's designed for people to stay two to three months. It's not like a hotel or a you know, or a one of these places come for a week and it's set up for you. You're actually coming into a rental property or you're renting a room for two or three months to live in this environment. You know what it means? Those people are staying here a long time because that's what it takes really to have these miraculous health transformations take place. You just can't do it in a week or two. So I designed it for the people who wanted to put in that long term time here and make a complete health recovery.

 

[00:29:20] And that could be somebody that's obese with my average person is just a person who is significantly overweight and can't control their eating habits. And once they're here for a long time, they don't just lose 50 pounds or more. They learn how to control their eating habits.

 

[00:29:35] And they get not just the physical bit of the physical addiction, but they get the training emotionally and psychological counseling to know all the factors that have caused them to develop those problems with food and food behavior that can really set their life now on a much better direction and a better and a completely different destiny.

 

[00:29:54] Yeah, and that's another core tenet of most of the work that I've read recently of yours. And I really appreciate. I think that it can't be said enough, and I don't think it's digested as quickly as it ought to be.

 

[00:30:04] That food a year at your link between food and addiction and poor food choices and fast food being these addictive agents that are exactly like, you know, illicit drugs and things like that and requiring the same amount of time to recode, you know, the body's biology and teach it to do what it ought to do. And the parallel that you run, like even with the taste buds, you know, where you talk about like we have to strip things away and so that we can start tasting things as they ought to have bad and then no longer wanting the other things. I think it's, um, it's it's a really key issue that everyone who is looking towards health kind of overlook. So, you know, we have been, I would argue, since the 70s trying to get it get out of jail free card and make things faster and easier and better. And I don't think that the human body was built that way. And I'm wondering if you have people or so everyone who wrote into us asking you, there were a lot of requests for, you know, your top three, your quick fix this and that, though your tenant is about this kind of you need to give it the time. There's this 12 weeks that the basis of your retreat, however, to that end.

 

[00:31:14] I do want to ask you about it when you sit down with someone.

 

[00:31:20] Do you have a top three things that you start to kind of break people into? At least looking at having another conversation with themselves about how they're eating, what they're eating, what their relationship with their diet is, do you have those kinds of icebreaker questions that you propose to future clients or anybody at large?

 

[00:31:41] You know, you want you understand that my crew, most of my career has been taken care of, people who have significant medical conditions or significantly overweight, diabetes, heart disease, lupus, psoriasis. They're generally people who are coming to me to get well and they want to have the answers how to get well. And I sit across the table from them and I said, do you do you really want to do this with baby steps and get a little better?

 

[00:32:07] Or do you really want to jump in with both feet to it all the way and get rid of your psoriasis completely, get off your medications, completely become non diabetic, get off your blood pressure medications. Do you want to be totally well, you just want to trick yourself, because what happens is when you get to the baby step approach and you have one foot in both worlds, you still constantly crave those things. You're allowing yourself to have a little bit of number one. And number two, you don't get such great results either because you you have a little bit of oil in your diet or a little bit of fried food. And it's stopped at horsefly policies like a stone. You stop losing weight. You know, you want to drop 20 pounds the first month and fifteen pounds the second one. We want to piddle around with two pounds a month doing it.

 

[00:32:46] Ninety five or 90 percent. And inevitably the person says, No one here, I'm spending this, I'm here to see you and I want you to tell me exactly what to do. And I'll say, great, that's what I want to hear, because I'll tell you something, because you got where you are today because of what you chose to eat, what you feel like eating, what you like to eat, what you think you should be, what you learned you should eat, what you think is best for you to eat. And you should get rid of all that stuff right now and not even think anymore, decide what you want to eat or like to eat. And let me make all those decisions for you and eat just what I tell you to eat. Don't even think about whether you like it or not. Just do it and let's see what kind of results you get and let's see what happens in a few weeks, how much weight you lose, what happens to your blood pressure, your diabetes, how much your pain goes down as you ask improves. Let us let me prove to you that this can completely change your thinking about health and about food. And then I will also prove to you to give me the time that you will like eating this way, the flavor and the taste just as much or more as your old diet. If you grant me the time, those periods of a few months to be in that area where you're not sure which you like better and you'll be missing some of those old foods, you'll be desirous of them. But if you do this, those will lessen with time. You'll desire them less and less, and soon your taste buds will change. You'll start to be craving the foods I'm feeding you right now. So forget about what you think you like or to put yourself into that stress. Just do what's right right now to get totally well. We'll worry about the other stuff later. Do this whether you whether you like it or not right now. And inevitably I show them how I can taste. Great. Well, at the beginning of the first week of an incredible tasting stuff. But I take away that ability that I take away that idea that they should be trying to choose whether this is going to they're going to dislike if don't like it as much, assume you're not going to like it as much the beginning and just do it and get some. Just feel better and you'll see what will happen with time. That's usually what I do. But there's no one formula because different people have different needs. And it's an aunt to do what's best for each person, because sometimes if I'm too hot, too hard with the person, I could turn them off and sometimes be too soft with the person. They're not gonna. That's not gonna be the right way either. You have to really know what a way to know the best way to to handle each particular individual. Most people do better because of the addictive nature of processed foods. Most people do better when you have when you are very clear at the boundaries and you have them jump in with both feet and do everything right at the very beginning. Not everybody, but most people do better that way.

 

[00:35:07] Okay. So I want to kind of get into that just briefly as a tangent.

 

[00:35:11] Well, you know, when I was looking in to the retreat and how it's structured and I couldn't help but notice, first of all, because your own rhetoric, you know, I kin's and poor diet to addiction and things like that, the structure is a great deal, both like for me, the Marine Corps, in the removal of one's personal autonomy in order to build up the stronger engine of, you know, faith and things like that with graduation and also Alcoholics Anonymous rhetoric about, you know, giving this power up to like a greater good and giving their sobriety a chance, then wondering, I don't think that you based it off of either of those. But how did you develop the model that you came up with at the retreat? Was it just out of your own research yielding what what would not work for these very, very sick clients or how is it developed?

 

[00:36:01] Yes, because people are coming here and they want to make sure they're going to safe environment, not tempted by things that they're, you know, like saying we're giving a delicious dessert. They know that that dessert, for example, only has one magical date as a sweetener. It's not has five dates per serving. There's a maximum of one date for sweetening. It's not quite as sweet as a conventional dessert. But after a four week of eating those desserts, they don't want sweeter their taste buds of acclimated to what they love it. But the point I'm making, they're in a safe environment. They're here for a long time. What they want most of all is results. They're not going to spend this amount of time and money and not make sure they get rid of their blood pressure problems with their diabetes, whatever it is, and lose the weight.

 

[00:36:42] They've got to have results, but they don't want to be in discomfort with hunger. They want to still enjoy what they're eating. They want to still have the right type of supportive services, the cooking classes that they want to leave here, making sure they know how to make the food tastes great when they go home. They can not only continue the weight loss, but they continue to have these incredible meals that are so delicious that they're what they're reading over. You know, I have three gourmet chefs that are cooking, doing cooking classes, too. And so they're learning skills, whether you're learning gardening skills and cooking skills. They're learning exercise skills, but they're also learning tremendous amount of skills, psychological skills, mindfulness skills, skills about their personalities. They might come here angry and a food addiction mentality. And the more you're an addict, the more you less of a human who, with your full creativity and capabilities intact, the more addicted you are, the more your primitive brain is driving your behavior. So you no longer can really solve the problems in your life and really do the things you can accomplish. And you're not gonna be as caring or, you know, giving to others or appreciative of the outside world. And you're not when you're narrowly focusing on your addiction to control and your behaviors.

 

[00:37:49] So they learn so much about the nature of addiction, how it's emotionally destroying their life, and how that how those foods have kept them in a prison and how we're not putting them in a prison. We're setting them free. And now they have control to eat everything they want in the framework of good health. But they choose to eat these foods. Now we choose to eat these foods because we enjoy eating them more, because we feel good. And I maintain a great health and they taste great. So we have emotional and psychological satisfaction eating this way in addition to it being good for us. The same time. So the learning process in which they're here, they come out of peer, I have to say, happier, better adjusted and without their you know, and also with more, you know, more satisfaction about who they are as a person. And they so they really feel good about themselves. I think we're a couple. They're not just coming here to wear a diet boot camp. They're also a tremendous amount of the educational process that occurs, whether you.

 

[00:38:46] Yeah. And you mentioned and within that, you talked about your perception of hunger. And I'm kind of an.

 

[00:38:54] Obsessed with some of your rhetoric about this, and I'm hoping that you kind you can expand on it.

 

[00:38:59] You talk about the changing relationship with hunger and the perception of hunger changing as one starts to live with, you know, gee bombs ruling their course and guiding their ships of health and diet. And I'm wondering if you can kind of expand on that and what you mean by that, because I think one's relationship with hunger is at the root of every poor choice in health, you know, and diet that happens. And so can you kind of explain what you mean when you say that and how it changes?

 

[00:39:31] Well, thank you for that. And I think that's one of the legacies I left for the scientific and nutritional community is my excellent explanation and science behind the true nature of hunger and toxic hunger. And I published a study called The Changing Perceptions of Hunger on a high nutrient density diet. I think it was published in 2011 in the medical journal Nutrition Journal. And it's been a journal that's been it's been an article that's been referenced by scientists all over the world and they're discussing hunger and food addiction. So very proud of that, too. I'm also grateful for and proud of the fact that there are hundreds of physicians across this country who have been have modified their practices and changed the philosophy of their care by learning from my books in my practice. So I've been a mentor to many different positions across the country. And at the at the core of this year is that I'm so glad you voiced that, is that it's so difficult for people to control the amount of calories they consume, that they become a calorie consuming monster when their diet is not is not nutritionally adequate.

 

[00:40:38] Because the the more your diet is nutritionally inadequate, the more you build up metabolic waste products and toxic waste products like, you know, like free radicals or advanced glycation end products, YPO fusion, you know, ammonia, urea, whatever it is, you build up more waste products. The body becomes more effective at removing wastes and repairing in the non digesting state.

 

[00:41:06] So the liver is busy absorbing and assimilating and storing calories and changing calories into a form in which they can be stored. When you're eating and digesting. It's when digesting is finished. When the liver takes on this role of taking fat soluble toxins and making them water sibos they can be excreted. The kidney is OK. In other words, with the body becomes more effective, the healing and repairing and the non feeding state. You're not eating food if you see is what you'd spend more time in the non eating state, you live longer. But what I'm saying right now is that when your body is toxic and you're not eating a healthy diet, you can't tolerate the way you feel. You feel you feel too uncomfortable in the non digesting and not eating phase.

 

[00:41:49] So you feel too weak and too fatigued and too shaky and headache and stomach cramping and bubbling. And you just feel all kinds of uncomfortable sensations which you mistakenly think are hunger because eating makes them go away again. And what I'm saying right now, you're forced to overconsume calories just to feel comfortable. And people mistake feeling fatigue. They think fatigue is the need for calories to eat, keep their energy up to eat so they can go exercise. I got to go to the gym. I got to eat to do everything. It's always eating.

 

[00:42:16] And they don't recognize that they're feeling that way because they're not eating. The quality of their diet is nuts. It's not good enough. And they built up too much waste products in their tissues. And that's why they feel so sickly or ill. And they think it's hunger. Because once you adopt a diet that's more in a mesh with what humans needs or it's a diet that's not going to create disease, then those symptoms gradually fade away. And a new perception of hunger takes its place, which is felt in the neck, in the throat or the neck and the upper chest, not in the head of the stomach. So you start to feel hunger as a drawing sensation in your throat, an upper chest. And that's where true hunger lies. And when true hunger directs your desire to eat, then you're instinctually in touch with the right amount of calories. Matter of fact, the precise amount to maintain lean body mass, because I'm claiming that real hunger does not exist to store fat on the body and will never have to eat to maintain fat mass. It's only there to maintain, maintain muscle, utilize skeletal mass. It's not there to maintain fat. In order to become overweight. You had to be eaten outside of the demands of true hunger recreationally or eaten because of talks responding to toxic hunger. So removing toxic hunger, it makes it potentially possible for people to comfortably eat the right amount of calories. And until you do that, it makes it almost impossible for people to maintain their to lose weight and keep it off for the rest of their life.

 

[00:43:45] Yeah, and you mention in fast food genocide as well. I think it was.

 

[00:43:49] And that that fast food and foods like that directly disable the body's ability to even understand hunger anymore and replace it with something completely different, which is so powerful when you view it that way. Everyone says fast food is bad. But I think that book does a really good job attaining it for the true stollen that it is. You know, it's and it's a great thing. I'm wondering, when you get into conversations about it just kind of reaches out to you. We had an inquiry about oil and salt. And this is an area that a lot of health advocates and people get really diversified on.

 

[00:44:26] And you're very clear with it like you are with all of your theories. You don't have this wiggle room.

 

[00:44:30] Gray area, which is nice because it's very concise and easy to understand what you're doing, what you're talking about, where you're coming from, but can you enumerate for everyone listening why your take on oils and I mean actually expressed oils and not healthy fats here, like all avocados or something. But the actual oils being all of them. Why you we strictly eliminate them as well as salt and how that kind of plays into your common perception as to what your advice is.

 

[00:45:01] Certainly, you know, I think probably the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the world's population is convincing them that oil is a health food. It's been the most amazing that people would accept that is as a truth.

 

[00:45:11] I don't think there are many I don't think this is controversial in the sense that if we look among the nutritional science community, my peers who publish nutritional research and I have go to a conference room meeting among scientific peers that that produce wheat nutrition research, I don't think anybody would argue that walnut oil is healthier than a walnut or that avocado oil is healthy within an hour, or that sesame oil is healthier or as healthy as sesame seeds or flaxseed oil is as good as the whole flax seed. I think that universally you're going to find all scientists will have no choice but to agree that the whole food is healthier than a processed food made from that food.

 

[00:45:50] In other words, when you eat the whole seed like a flax seed recently seed, you're getting literally hundreds of beneficial compounds that are removed when you take the oil. But you're also getting the calories absorbed into the bloodstream. One or two calories a minute. You're absorbing the calories over hours. So the body can preferentially burn it for energy as opposed to storing as fat. When you take the sesame oil, the hundred twenty calories a tablespoon or absorb within five minutes and the body can't store, can't burn 120 calories fat over the next 20 minutes, it's gonna have to store it on a start on the body. So it's going to rub up fat storage and it's going to hold my policies or halt the breakdown of fat. When you take an oil, it sets up a biochemical mildew in the body to prevent the loss of fat from the body because you're telling the body's store fat.

 

[00:46:38] Oil is such an unnatural and constant source of concentrated calories that the rush of calories into the bloodstream so rapidly also signal dopamine centers in the brain that signal the addictive center of behavior, the same spot that nicotine or opiates narcotics do or cocaine does.

 

[00:46:57] So oil is an addictive substance. It's an appetite stimulant and it's extremely fattening. Now, people could believe that oil is a health food if they want to. If the whole population wasn't obese. But how does a person justify the use of oil when. Eighty eight percent of our population of a BMI, about twenty three, you know. In other words, you're sitting on and you can work on a computer all day, whereas the excess 500 calories of oil you put on your food gonna go except to your fat stores and fat on the body is pathologic tissue that increases risk of cancer and shortens your lifespan. There's no such thing as a healthy, fat person. And you can't believe you're pouring oil on your food unless you're a professional athlete or physical labor or digging ditches or or having or chopping down trees all day unless you want you. There's no way you got to burn those extra 500 calories, 2000 calories. Will you pour out your food? It's just too fattening. So there's no justification. And I have to insist. I don't even think there's a controversy. The controversy is among people who are trying to either to appeal to people because it is all tied to diets out there. And people know that their diet books written. So people buy them because they want to appeal what people want to eat when we're talking to the scientific community. We're not talking to a bunch of people trying to sell a diet book telling the person what they want to hear. This is good. Cheese is good. Oil is good. Honey is good. Whatever it tell people what they want to hear. It's what money scientists now discussing what's best this versus that. It's not that, you know, this versus that. No eggs might be better than donuts. Let us make eggs. Good. When you compare eggs to beans. They don't do so well. Oil is better than sugar. We can put up studies to show olive oil is better than butter. The prevalence study actually did that. They put it they showed that when people given olive oil to take home with them and to use instead of butter and other sources of fat like animal fat, the risk of heart attack went down by 15 percent. So when the scientists took the oil away from them and told me more nuts and seeds than their heart attack, rates were down by 60 percent. This is a European study. The point I'm making is when you compare olive oil to walnuts or whatnot, then you obviously see no comparison.

 

[00:49:05] You always see better results, more weight loss reversal, diabetes, more protection against cancer, and a dramatic protection against heart attacks and strokes not seen with any type of oil. So I don't really think it's controversial among people who've had a chance to review the full portfolio of research available on the subject.

 

[00:49:24] Right. Yeah, I agree. And I think it is one of the greatest scams that I'm hoping the olive oil industry.

 

[00:49:30] Someone started spreading about, you know, it being healthy for you.

 

[00:49:35] Olive oil. It's coconut oil that's MKC to you. It's black. So it's always people trying to sell some oil to you instead of recognizing that oil is still 120 calories per tablespoon. And the most critical thing for your health is to be grap is gravitate towards your ideal weight and stay there. And you couldn't oil on your food. You're not it's not going to happen. It's going to make that so much more difficult to achieve.

 

[00:49:59] Absolutely. To that end, I have a couple of questions that people have reached out knowing that I was going to speak with you today and I'm going to hit some of those right now, did satisfy our beautiful audience.

 

[00:50:10] And we had a few people right in kind of to the same effect of do you prioritize personally? This is you personally. Dr. Fuhrman at home. Do you prioritize specific kinds of nuts in your own personal diet? For instance, are almonds or macadamia? What you you talk a lot about macadamia nuts and your favorite desserts with the banana and things like that. But do you try to prioritize some nuts above others? And is it due to taste or is it a health way out?

 

[00:50:38] Yes, I do. To the health.

 

[00:50:40] In other words, I used to have recipes years ago because cashews were so much of a favorite, not in that particular recipe to make a salad dressing or a sauce. But now I take out half the cashews and put half hemp seed or water in place of half the cash. Usually hemp seed. I'm trying to achieve that. Half of my nut and seed intake comes from the higher omega three nuts instead of the higher omega six nuts.

 

[00:51:05] That means I still can have half my nut and seed from the high omega six nights like pecans and cashews and pistachio nuts and Brazil nuts. But I'm trying the other half to come from flax seeds, G.U. seeds, hemp seeds and walnuts, you know, so I'm trying to utilize more of that in my recipes. And when I end, it tastes just as good for making a salad dressing or a Thai sauce. And I'm putting in taking out some of the peanut or some of the cashew and putting some hemp seed instead in the recipe, a taste almost the same.

 

[00:51:34] You can really tell the difference because there's more omega three. What I'm saying is it's not the omega three Omega six balance of your diet that determines your health. It's the omega three omega six balance of your cell membranes on your body. And when you're at a favorable weight, your body is going to burn off the extra omega six you consume and hold on to the omega three. It needs keeping a favorable omega six or omega three balance. As long as you're not overweight. When you're overweight. You throw up, you put that alignment in off kilter almost no matter what you eat, because you have so much stored or made a sixth of the body's membranes. So what I'm saying is, yes, I'm not trying to go six to one or three to one at once. What I'm trying to do to have adequate amounts of omega three fatty acids. And I also take DHEA, a Vegan DHEA supplement as well, to preform DHEA. But there's benefits from HLA and there's other benefits from flaxseed. And should you see that hemp seeds and walnuts over and above its omega three content, you know, one or two powerful anticancer effects and the ability to stabilize arrhythmias in the heart. So there's other beneficial effects besides only that Omega three content. So I'm consciously trying to utilize some of those nuts in my daily diet.

 

[00:52:44] Okay. And you mentioned the Vegan DHEA supplements, and we've had people write in asking if you can kind of simply clarify why you take that supplement and whether or not you would advised for everyone to be taking it.

 

[00:52:59] Well, you know, I'm one of. I have a unique experience among living physicians in caring for the Vegan community over a 30 year period. And caring for the natural hygiene community of the people who are vegans starting in the 1940s and 1950s with my father's contemporaries back then and being the doctor, the young doctor, caring for these elders back then and finding a lot of them and a lot of leaders in the Vegan community back then developed medical problems related to omega three fatty acid deficiencies that led to dementia or increased the risk of Parkinson's and developing neurologic problems in later life. They lived a long time. They didn't die young. They developed some serious issues. And I still, I mean, chronically in contact with people who were following Vegan diets, who then develop dementia in their late 80s and 90s and ruined the trajectory of their later life. So in having that experience and drawing blood tests on these people and studying this with intensity and carefulness, not wanting to be advising people to go to a near Vegan or Vegan diet and result in some problem like that, then I'd be develop the expertize to be able to test for it, see the studies that support it, and come to the conclusion that I think are irrefutable at this point, that an unsung element in the Vegan is placing themselves at significant and needless risk of dementia if they do not either supplement with DHEA or check a blood test to make sure their Omega three index is adequate. Because some people can make enough DHEA and Omega three on their own without supplementation. We have differences in genetic ability of conversion enzymes and with dietary manipulation. Some people can make more than they choose not to supplement. So I'm not saying that everybody has to supplement. I'm saying everybody should be cautious enough to take care to achieve adequate DHEA adequacy on a vegan diet, lest they put themselves at needless and and risk. And we have these philosophical vegans and people who will die by the sword for their viewpoints, but they put themselves and their followers at risk because they just work there. They're letting their personal bias and philosophy, you know, advise large numbers of people into dangerous practices.

 

[00:55:19] Instead of being cautious and conservative and a little bit humble, realize we have to bear on the side of caution and make sure that people are OK because a vegan diet is not what people followed them for the millenniums of human history. And we're not really designed to necessarily have optimal levels of all nutrients on a because I can't assume that on any diet, perhaps.

 

[00:55:41] And I'm wondering, do you.

 

[00:55:44] How long have you. How is it too late? Like, you know, I'm I'm forty three years old. I haven't. And supplemented. How quickly would you suggest someone do it? And if someone is, you know, an advanced Vegan. Can they start right now and still and have some of the guarantee that you believe you've got by, by supplementing.

 

[00:56:06] Well, I mean, you know, so we go by studies predominantly, and I had all the studies that look at the Omega three index with regard to brain shrinkage or the Omega three index in regard to cognitive impairment. The studies that I've done on this so far all show the same thing.

 

[00:56:26] That lower levels levels, particularly below five, lead to definitive shrinkage in cognitive impairment of the brain, the age. And as the levels get worse below four and below three, you see more definitive brain shrinkage in skin, significant areas of the brain. For memory and for, you know, and from neurologic problems. What I'm saying right now is the studies corroborate each other. Independent studies from one research different will corroborate each other. You develop problems. LAWMAKER three Index. Now, we don't have the data to say at what age of maintaining a level of omega three, index of three. Let's say if you maintain the omega three index to age 65 and then you fixed and got your major three index to six and at the age of 65, would that prevent you from developing dementia at age 85?

 

[00:57:20] Probably.

 

[00:57:22] You know, but I wouldn't take a chance with that, I'd much prefer you to start it whenever you find out about this and have you make it Relix be good your whole life, you know? So what? But if at any point that you haven't done it, start to do it. If you're not demented yet, you can probably protect yourself to a degree. I do agree, though, that once you have a significant amount of dementia or Parkinson's, the brain is not an organ that's easy to heal, but the liver is you know, it's very hard to heal the brain. And you're not going to really be versed dementia by giving person omega three supplements once it's occurred there. That's why this is so important. You can't sue somebody. You know, I've heard a doctor say, oh, well, I watch my patients and if they start to develop problems, they start, then I'll worry about it. Then the time of the first the first symptom gooby dementia. And by that type of significant shrinkage of the brain. And you're not going to grow back a new brain, that doesn't make any sense at all. You know, so you can't wait till you develop a problem. So I'm saying I don't know when a person should start sooner, they start the better. But at any point, if the rebels are abnormal, they should start.

 

[00:58:26] Yeah. One of your mantras has been I've I've heard it. You deliver it. And a lot of the speeches that I've looked up online that I really like because I think it puts onus back where it belongs.

 

[00:58:36] But you said your health is your problem, not your doctors, you know, and it's this whole it goes hand in hand with doctors are treating disease. They're not, you know, promoting health. They're there to fix things, not to create platforms necessarily of it not occurring. And we had a lot of people kind of write in to this to this kind of note. And they were looking for you to advise them as to how to inquiry with their doctors to garner a level of communication, as well as understanding as to how much their doctors understood about nutrition that they themselves align themselves with. And I'm wondering if you can give up a few pieces of advice that you would offer someone to discuss with their doctors so that they can ascertain the doctor's knowledge and also communicate their own requests if they are indeed following the eat for life concepts and Axium Medic's.

 

[00:59:32] I don't agree with that way of thinking. I'm sorry to say. OK. I have to say that.

 

[00:59:38] Doctors have no special expertize in even nutrition or health over and above a lawyer or a plumber, a teacher or a postman.

 

[00:59:47] They may not be. And let's say the doctor did know about nutrition. Should you wait? He developed medical problems the age of 65 and go to a doctor with high blood pressure, diabetes and expect into a partizan nutritional knowledge on you in a 15 and a 10 or 50 minute visit from me. That's what. What do we care what the doctor knows? Sure. The purpose should be to teach the doctor to help the doctor. He's a person who's a human. We want we care about him, too. And we want him to help his health, too, because he's probably overweight and sickly, because he because he doesn't really know much about nutrition. But we don't expect him to be our teacher of health and nutritional policies or or need him to be that we can't expect him to be that. You know, what I'm suggesting is that nutritional science should be taught in grade school and colleges in high school. It should be reading, writing, arithmetic and nutritional science and social studies. It's the most important knowledge we have to import a population to control it. And people can can control their life and their health span. But a doctor, you know, it's like it's like the American Heart Association who tells people, yeah, you should cut your salt intake back to fifteen milligrams after you have heart disease. Well, that's like telling you the way it should cut back on cigarets, maybe quit smoking after you develop lung cancer. The whole thing is just ridiculous. And it's kind of ridiculous to expect your doctor to be you know, if you're into nutrition, who do you care if your doctor knows it, too, because you care about him. You don't want his teachings because he doesn't know as much as you're going to know, because he's not dedicating himself to learning this now.

 

[01:01:13] So to that end, would you equally advise that people not necessarily take nutrition advice from their doctor?

 

[01:01:20] Not only not seek out that communication, but also question heavily or just not listen to advice given by nutrition? Because I know a lot of M.D. they're giving nutritional advice.

 

[01:01:31] Yeah, I mean, I don't think a person makes an appointment to see a physician for nutritional advice. You know, myself excluded, of course. I'm saying that that's been my career. But of course, I'm an unusual doctor. The vast majority of doctors, they're there to see you in a five minute period and to write a script for you so they can get onto the next patient. They're making the money on volume. I'm spending an hour, an hour and a half with initial visit, but I'm even now a. We see people coming in for a month and each of them over a month. But the point I'm making right now is, what do you think your doctor is going to tell you in a five to 10 minute visit that's going to change the way you eat for the rest of your life? It could be motivate you. He's going to convince you. He's going to teach you. Doctors are what most doctors can can go for. We don't need so many doctors because, you know, mostly what doctors do is treat numbers on blood tests with drugs to make them look normal. So you think it's OK to keeping the Diuron because now your numbers look better on a blood test or they did a scan you to think were OK, I take it because now you can keep it the same diet. So whether it's so, what doctors mostly do is give people toxic and even carcinogenic substances called metaphore, pharmaceutical drugs. You know, we give them these substances to make people think they're better or doing better when they're not. So what I'm saying is we didn't have the blood pressure medications that people put forced to change the way they eat and lose the weight. We don't have the cholesterol lowering drugs. People will be forced to lose the way. Change what they get back in good health again. If we don't have a diabetic medication, we will be forced to drop a 30 pounds. Eat the way you're supposed to eat. Get rid of your diabetes. But now they say overweight. They stay skinny and just pop drugs. And then you want your doctor to be a nutritional expert.

 

[01:03:10] I don't think that's the answer to what ails people. I think they've got to take their health into their own hands. It's what they do in their own kitchen, their own life. They've got to learn how to care for themselves. Right. And the goal is to stay away from doctors and medicinal substances.

 

[01:03:24] I don't even go to doctors. I don't even go to myself.

 

[01:03:30] I'm wondering. My final question for today is maybe a little cheeky.

 

[01:03:35] And so I'm not sure if I'll get an answer out of you, but I want to know because you have this incredible voice about immunity and the immune system. And it has been a you know, another core axiom throughout all of your literature, all of your studying, all of your proffering. And I'm wondering, looking, I have to say, with the COVA pandemic, you spoke recently on someone else's podcast. I don't remember her name or I would say it right now. But you talked about immunity and the code of it and your own personal story about, you know, not knowing whether or not you had had it. You'd gotten off a flight. You had like a tickle in your throat. It went away the next day. I'm wondering, just personally, without any knowledge of which we don't have yet. Do you think that there will be any kind of a study with this pandemic? You know, one of the only things that we can do is kind of study groups that weren't hit as hard and why and maybe to do something helpful from that. Do you do you assume or do you suspect that the people who are living in this eat for life mentality that you have, you know, really describe to the world that they will have a better chance of having had covered without suffering from terminal or hospital like symptoms? Or do you think that they will be immunities built by this population? What do you think that any kind of future assumptions?

 

[01:05:02] Do you think that you could give us about immunity and what we're going to learn after that? We find, you know, a helpful immunization for it, the aftermath between immunity, eating this way that you have and.

 

[01:05:19] The correlations, you know, met the match, the way the masses think and the way this the, you know, the medical and health professions teach. I don't see them even taking a look at this to find the answer.

 

[01:05:31] I don't think they're going to come up with all the aftermath and look back and say, yes, if you eat healthy and you eat a salad every day and that's, you know, and you were achieving a normal weight and you were had a low level of white blood cell count, all the things I teach aren't even looked at by the. By these by these people in scientific authority.

 

[01:05:48] So I don't expect them to come up with any, you know, massive new way of looking at things. You knew Niek way of seeing this. I think right now we have sufficient information from the scientific literature, which I've documented, as you know, in my books and writings, that that the coded nineteen virus is harmless to a healthy immune system, the ability of a virus to replicate, invade and then escape immune system, catch capture to cause the category of damage is impossible with a healthy immune system. And we're only seeing this virus attack very sickly people.

 

[01:06:23] And we're seeing it attacks some young people and some people who aren't overweight, who have chronic diseases, but not many. And even those people who are so-called healthy aren't really healthy. They're still eating fast food and fried food and sweets and things and are still. So what I'm saying to you is that we're looking at a new bit. We're looking at an unhealthy population. Our whole population is very unhealthy. That's why Kober is so dangerous. Yes, I'm suggesting that we're not just protecting ourselves more. We're giving ourselves a tremendous degree of security that gives us to remove that fear. And I don't think I have any possibility at all, zero possibility of being hurt by.

 

[01:07:01] And I think most of the people that have followed my advice feel the same way that science is significant enough to feel like that we're totally protected against hospitalization, intubation and death from Cauvin because we live in such a healthy manner. And I even can monitor people when they're overweight and sickly. And I can track their penetration of phytochemicals in their tissues, their inflammatory markers and their white blood cell activity in their body and see how they can improve within weeks to get them to a healthy state. And I encourage people, if they're overweight, to start losing weight at at least two to three pounds a week because you improve immune function dramatically even while you're still overweight with your steadily losing weight towards a healthy weight. So I'm saying right now, a new to Attarian is a person eating a very healthy diet who's at their ideal weight or they're a person in a very healthy diet who is overweight and they're moving steadily towards their ideal weight. And in both cases, they're going to get dramatic degree of protection. Even if you are overweight, if you're following this program because you see in a short period of time, you see things improving right away even. But what if you simply for example, we see people going through gastric bypass and lap band placements, they'll get rid of their diabetes within the first two or three weeks. The mother still overweight. Just because they're losing so much that the body and we start to see certain metabolic and hormonal responses change whether the person's dropping their body weight. So I want people who are overweight to still have some hope. They don't think that just because they're all wakaba going to die if they get cold. But if they start eating healthfully, they start dropping their weight, they start living on these foods and these healthy foods. They can get dramatic amount of protection and they're healthy. They get they get to a point where they have so much protection that Cauvin should be relatively harmless in those populations were totally harmless in those populations and feature issues as well.

 

[01:08:54] Future pandemics, which are in the pipeline, if we can't shift some things, we know that we know that this was going to occur at some point.

 

[01:09:01] And we know that future ones are also going to occur. So you better start taking care of your health and not expecting doctors to care for you, to take you to have all the answers for you, because they don't. And you can't buy good health and a bottle of pills and vaccines. The only way you can be healthy is earning it to live by living a healthy life.

 

[01:09:18] Absolutely. And on that positive note, I'm going to say thank you so much, Dr. Fuhrman, for your time today.

 

[01:09:25] My pleasure. Best of luck to all of you. Absolutely, for everyone listening. We've been speaking with Dr. Joel Fuhrman. You can find out more about everything we've been talking about, about all of the work that he's doing, his books on his Web site, W. Dr. Fuhrman dot com.

 

[01:09:41] And until we speak again next time. Thank you so much for giving me your time. And remember to eat clean, stay well, be responsible, stay in love with the world and each other and always bet on yourself. Slainte.

 

Chatting with Kristin Lajeunesse; Author & Food blogger

Today I chat with Kristin Lajeunesse. Kristin is a published author and founder of the award-winning website Will Travel for Vegan Food (based on a two-year van-dwelling excursion that took her through all 50 states and an eight-month-long around-the-world trip). In January 2011, Kristin quit her 9-5 desk job in an effort to eat at every single vegan restaurant in the country. Kristin continued to travel full-time for 8 consecutive years while building her business from all over the world. Kristin has a Master of Arts in Integrated Marketing Communication from Emerson College. Follow Kristin’s travel excursions at @wtfveganfood.com (Instagram) and her dancer meets copywriter business at @kristinlaj (Instagram).

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

Talking to Tina Newman; Author, makeup artist, and Animal Nursing Assistant

Today I am talking to Tina Newman.Tina is the author of the new vegan children's book series 'Vivi the Supervegan.' She is a writer, makeup artist and qualified Animal Nursing Assistant living in Suffolk, UK. Tina shares her home and life with her husband, dog and her two own little supervegans; Lyla and Ada. She has created 'Vivi the Supervegan' with the hope that her stories will encourage children to take a stand and empower them to be compassionate and kind to all kinds. 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

Speaking with Corinne Safille; Writer, Fitness Instructor & Guru, and Vegan diet advocate

Corinne is currently a writer at Inner Bombshell and Vegans From Venus,  two different lifestyle blogs featuring vegan, organic, plant-based, and cruelty-free brands, companies, and products.  She was a vegetarian for over 20 years who turned vegan four years ago to better her health and that of the planet. As a fitness instructor with over 15 years of experience, she has challenged her client's mindset to adapt to a healthier lifestyle by incorporating more vegan/plant-based food choices. She has also worked as an actress, fashion designer, dancer, choreographer, and scriptwriter. She is a wife, mother to three beautiful little girls, and five adoring animals. Her life's commitment is to be the "Voice" for the "unheard" specifically the magnificent animals of the world.

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

Talking with Ingrid Newkirk; Founder and President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

Ingrid Newkirk is the founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—the largest animal rights organization in the world, with more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide.

She is the author of more than a dozen books that have been translated into several languages, including her latest,Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.

Instagram: @peta  Facebook: @official.peta  Twitter: @peta  Snapchat: @OfficialPETA  Pinterest:  @OfficialPETA  Ingrid Newkirk's Twitter: @IngridNewkirk  PETA's official website: PETA.org

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. 

Speaking with Fiona Oakes; Co-founder of the Vegan Runners & Founder of Towerhill Stables animal rescue and sanctuary

Today I am speaking with Fiona Oakes. Fiona has been vegan since the age of 6 years old.  She is a World Record-breaking Marathon runner currently holding 4 Guinness World Records including being the fastest woman to run a Marathon on every Continent and the North Pole in both days and time elapsed.  She is an Elite road Marathoner having top 20 places in 2 of the World's Major Marathons - London and Berlin and the Great North Run - along with many Marathon wins and course records around the world.  She is also an accomplished ultra runner having completed Marathon des Sables 3 times winning stages of some of the most grueling multi-stage ultra events in the world - all this despite a disability which Medical Professionals advised would render her incapable of running at all due to multiple orthopedic surgeries in her teenage years. 

She is co-founder of the Vegan Runners - now a global resource for all plant-based athletes and 'go-to' destination for anyone interested in combining plant-based living with running events.  She is an Honorary Patron of the Vegan Society, Patron of Freedom for Animals.  Fiona is the Founder of her own animal sanctuary Towerhill Stables, where she currently cares for over 600 rescued animals.  

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I had the rare opportunity to speak with founder of Tower Hill Stables, Animal Rescue and Sanctuary and co-founder of the Vegan runners Fiona Oakes. Key points addressed were Fiona's title of four Guinness World Records in distance running, including being the fastest woman to run a marathon on every continent and the North Pole, and how this endeavor was merely the vehicle to carry her true life's work of rescuing animals and expanding positive imagery about the Vegan lifestyle and philosophy. Stay tuned for my talk with Fiona. 

 

[00:00:44] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. The dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. If you're enjoying these podcasts, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Fasting and roundtable topics they can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen dot COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. 

 

[00:01:40] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today I'm elated to be sitting down with Fiona Oakes. 

 

[00:01:47] Fiona is the co-founder of the Vegan Runners and she is the founder of Tower Hill Stables. Animal Rescue and Sanctuary. You can find out more. 

 

[00:02:02] Hi, Fiona. We're so excited to have you on today. Fantastic. We have a little bit of a time delay, but we're gonna get through that for everyone listening. I'll read a quick bio on it. Absolutely. For everyone listening, I'm going to read a quick bio on Fiona. 

 

[00:02:19] But before that, I'm going to proffer you a quick roadmap for today's podcast. You can follow the trajectory in which our inquiries will be based. We will first look at unpacking Phiona's Vegan story and her life becoming a prolific marathon runner. We'll look at some of her childhood before we launch straight into her marathon running and ultra running career, distinct between our draw distinctions between marathons versus ultramarathons. The reasons why Fiona has been running them. And then we're going to look at some of the particulars within those communities being a Vegan athlete as they pertain to Phiona's story. We'll look at injuries. We'll look at running world records, breaking everything that she has done. And then we'll also unpack. We'll turn our efforts towards looking at a brief overview of the documentary. It was based on Fiona running for good. And then we'll start unpacking the work that she's doing at Tower Hill Stable, which is an impetus for a lot of her work. And we'll wrap everything up with goals and advice that Fiona may have for those of you who are looking to get involved or kind of follow her. A brief bio, as promised on Fiona. Fiona Oakes has been Vegan since the age of six years old. She is a world record breaking marathon runner, currently holding four Guinness World Records, including being the fastest woman to run a marathon on every continent and the North Pole in both days and time elapsed. She is an eat elite road marathon marathoner, having top 20 places in two of the world's major marathons, London and Berlin and the Great North run, along with many marathon winds and course records around the world. She is also an accomplished ultra runner, having completed the marathon, their seventh three time winning stages of some of the most grueling multi-stage ultra events in the world. All this despite a disability which medical professionals advised would render her incapable of running at all due to multiple orthopedic surgeries in her teenage years. She's a co-founder of the Vegan Runners, now a global resource for all plant based athletes and a go to destination for anyone interested in combining plant based living with running events. She is an ordinary pay honorary patron of the Vegan Society, Patron of Freedom for Animals. Fiona is the founder of her own animal sanctuary. Tower Hill Stables, where she currently cares for over 600 rescued animals. Again, you can find out more on w w w dot. Tower Hill Stables dot org. Fiona. Before I begin unpacking a little bit about your running story and your Vegan story within that, I'm hoping that you can draw us. The story about becoming Vegan at the age of six is in and of itself rare. And you had a very unique childhood. I'm wondering if you can. 

 

[00:05:19] Yeah, I mean, I went to the Vegan when I was six years old. I didn't understand the word Viðga and I have to say I've never heard of it. I understand its principle behind it. 

 

[00:05:30] If you love something, you don't harm it. I loved animals. I didn't want to hurt them. I went vegetarian when I was three years old. Simple equation. I don't want to eat the flesh of animals. And as the years went by, I asked my mom, you know what? Why do these other products come from? Where does the letter come from? Where the eggs come from? We never really have milk in the house. And I'm very lucky in that my mom was honest with me and she told me the truth. It was a big thing at the time. This is in the early 1970s. We were lucky in that my mom had a role model, intensive music teacher that taught my mom when she was a child. She was actually a Vegan lady that a new Donelle. What's in the founders of Egen Society in the UK? My mom was kept in touch with them because my mom was a musician. So she was able to articulate to my mom in adult terms what I was going through with trials. It wasn't an easy path for us. Not my parents. You know, parents and my family were vegetarian. Viðga, not even particular big animal Lafitte's. I have to say. And I was very lucky to have the support of my mom. When I went to the hospital and had my surgeries in my teenage years, it was wasn't very, very difficult. Times may in terms of a I was in in plaster, cast a lot on crutches for about three years on and off. But more than that. Veganism was aligned to an eating disorder. And my mom was accused multiple times of child abuse for allowing me to be taken, which was a very, very bad thing because my mom at the time was a nurse. And so obviously she was working in the hospital and it came out, you know, the daughter was following this, what they call a weird diet. And it was very, very difficult time. I got through that, but I missed most of my education. I then went to also study privately to get some sort of qualifications behind me. I was going to be secretary and I came to London to work and. But it was always in my heart. I wanted to be around animals and it was always a dream to start an animal sanctuary. I never thought that dream would ever become a reality. In fact, people write to me now and say, you know, how do we get an animal sanctuary? And I had to say, be creative. Grab every opportunity. Can. There's no kind of set formula. You know, a must be will see. You got a sanctuary. To me, it happened by accident. I was doing a lot rescued from a rented accommodation that was living in and working in London. One of the horses I got a from had an accident. He was taken to the vet. It was 13 weeks. And at that point we decided we can no longer continue with this model, which was basically giving all the people all our money to cast the animals in a way that we didn't find satisfactory. So while I was at the vet having surgery rates we set about. 

 

[00:08:24] Try to trying to get and get trying to get a property with some land, which wasn't easy to live quite near to London. It was a major struggle. I still don't know how it happened. I mean, I always joke and say at the time, my mom was always a great support. She probably got more mortgages in some time, that building society at the time. She'd like borrowed money, my family money. I've got a great aunt who is 98 years old and she got her funeral money under her bed in a and that came out to I to try and get and probably try and get the animal safe. And twenty five years ago, we managed to get a small property, which is Talil Stables. We didn't set it up as a sanctuary or a business or anything like that. It was a place of sanctuary for the animals I'd already rescued and it started from there. But after a few years, probably a couple of three years, I realized. I know I can rescue animals, I can rescue 40 active, rescue 400 animals, but I can't stop the cause of why they're needing rescue, uncomfortably hitting symptoms. I need to do something positive to promote veganism, because if the world were more more vegan friendly or more people were Vegan a plant based, then less animals would go through the factory farming train and hopefully the balance would be tipped at some point and veganism would become the norm. But back in the early notice, it was a struggle. How do you do this? 

 

[00:09:50] You know, there was no you know, for younger people, they forget they don't really know what time before social media, before you could just put something on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook. It was hard. You have to use the mainstream media and press you probably to do that. You have to do something bad, something good, or something very sensationalistic. Well, the only thing that I could think of was to do something good. Always been quite sporty. I was supposed to be for my surgeries. It put an end to my running my network my whole career. When I was in Oxford, up in cycling, because that was continuous motion, like strengthening. So I knew that I was. But, you know, the only sport, especially women's sport, that was garnering any attention in the U.K. was marrison winning that for all the hashtags attached to it because Paula Radcliffe was selling and kind of it was being billed as the toughest thing in athletic event on the calendar. It was grueling if you could do a marista. And he was punishing April. All right. So mentally and physically. So I kind of thought to myself, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could just come PTM and hopefully complete a Morrisson to show definitively that being Vegan is not prohibitive in any way to this most kind of extreme endurance sport. So that's kind of how the marathon running started purely to promote veganism. I didn't do it for any other reason. I still don't run for any other reason than to do that. 

 

[00:11:22] Yeah, I think that's one of the most. I've never heard of another distance runner that doesn't talk about this. This rush or this high or this other emotive. 

 

[00:11:31] This other physical pay-out that running does. And it is using it as a soul for a force of marketing is really unique. I'm wondering, when you started off, you already had your sanctuary, correct? When you started marathon running, it was to get word and promote word out about veganism. Let's really quickly, I kind of want to get on to Tower Hill Stables because you don't run it a lot of sanctuaries, at least in the United States. I'm not sure about UK, but they have a business model behind them. They lead Torvill. Is it all donation based? How is it based? 

 

[00:12:08] Well, actually, when we started it, it was all off funding. We put money into it. And I always said that I could never look anyone in the eye and take their money unless I could very well say I was 100 percent invested in my own sanctuary, financially, physically, mentally, spiritually. I'm giving everything. I've got 100 percent on the line if you want to help me. That's great. And we still put all our own money into it. I work part time as a firefighter. I would say merchant banking for many, many years. My parents live with us all that pensions go into it. And people support the sanctuary. You know, in the membership, you know, that they join and they give regular donations. They fundraise for us. But it's kind of it was it stopped. Everything I've done, it's been kind of starts from gut instinct and the heart with the head kind of adding little bits along the way. So it's not it's not a business model. There isn't a business plan behind anything I've done. When I started running, I didn't think, you know, by year one, I want to do this. By year three, I want a world record. I had to be creative and I've gone with the flow. It's kind of organic and it's grown with me. And yeah, the mogul behind Tower Hill is still it's a very much it's not a business. It's a play. 

 

[00:13:27] It's a home forever home. So the animals. So we'll go I've got 600. I still deliver the day care. It's the way I can do it through continuity. I like to be very, very hands on here, even though I didn't do a lot of mileage with my running. And it's hung to them. It's not a business. It's not a it's not like a petting play store. It's very much geared around them. They I always said, you know, it's not kind of a fun place for me to be if I'm having fun. 

 

[00:13:58] There's something wrong. They're the ones that supposed to be having fun. Ananda The supposed to be providing it for them with me, overseeing it, making sure they've got everything that they need, which is a big project in itself. I mean, 600 animals. I haven't got like six on tiny little hamsters. I've got like 150 pigs. I've got 110 horses. I've got like sixty six cows. I've got over a hundred sheep sheets. I've got a lot bigger animals. So just project managing everything that they need to be where and when they need it. It's a big ask, but it's something I do. It's just from the heart. I love it. I can't imagine not being here for the animals. And the running is always very secondary to running the sanctuary. And I think that's been a great move. Probably my greatest motivator with my running. It's been lack of time. If I don't go out and do it when I get a small window around the animals, I can't find tools. So I'm kind of never got much time to think about or running. I'm just flat out back back into the wellies and back outside doing the sanctuary. And that's what I wanted to portray in the film. I'm very much an amateur amateur running boxing way above my weight when I actually get to races. And I think obviously I've been Vegan for a very, very long time, nearly five decades. And one of my strengths. Some people ask me what my strengths are. My strengths probably is that I know very little, but I always want to learn more. So I don't put myself on a pedestal and think, you know, I am Vegan Svengali. I know everything I've done. I mean, I'm always learning more and more and more whether is sanctuary about my running or my own personal abilities and inhibitive. So when I, I always yeah, I do everything from the heart and go in saying I never really have much time to think about what I'm doing. In fact, when Keegan came and made the documentary and started to ask questions, I had to really delve inside myself for answers because I'd never really stopped to think why I'm doing this. It just feels right. The time grabby go on with it. That's that's how I thought to be, because, you know, veganism over the last few years, it's kind of exploded. But it's been a very, very long, hard struggle for me. And there's been no road levels in terms of what I want to achieve. So I've had to go and set the benchmarks for myself. But, yeah, so it's it's a constant, constant struggle. But it's a long day. I mean, people ask you, how can you see only perhaps three in the morning? I've told you know, it's it's it's three decades I've been doing that. It's the only way I can get done what I need to do in a day. So as I say, you have to be creative if you want to do something. And there's real desire, motive behind what you do. And I believe you can do it. And with my running, I'm always very keen to tell people. I know I have no talent. That is where my strength is. I know that I'm going to have to work very, very hard to achieve what I want. To do the motive is the better I can run, the better. I can do the job I'm out to do, which is promote veganism in a positive way. Obviously, the faster you can run, if you can win races, the top place in races, that's the incentive to get to the finish line quicker. For me, not a trophy or a medal or Keagan came and it's like, where are all your medals? Where all your trophies? I don't know, because when I get home, that's that's the running back door. I'm back out with the animals. I hope that the the the achievement so the results speak for themselves. But I'm not I'm not a big person to talk about what I've done, particularly because I always want to do more. And it's always a great leveler to see that, you know, 70 billion animals go through the animal agricultural industry every year. I've got six hundred rescues here, which is a tiny fraction of what I want to achieve. And, you know, whether people choose to go Vegan or not, we are pushing for that. We're pushing for a better world, for a fairer, more just Woelfel. But it's slow progress. So whatever the animals are suffering while other people are suffering, while ever the zone distribution of resources around the world, I figure that I haven't got an awful lot time or need to sit back and congratulate myself because my job isn't done yet. 

 

[00:18:25] So I'm wondering, you use your body, as you know, in your endeavors, this activity, the sport, you know, you're using it as the ultimate marketing campaign. 

 

[00:18:35] And and because of that, you know, you just said you didn't you had to go back inside and think as the documentary was being filmed. You hadn't had a lot of answers. You were the answer. You know, you were showing people that this this sport could be done by someone living a Vegan lifestyle. And you want to draw attention to Vegan issues and efforts. And I'm wondering when people did approach you along the way. First of all, when you ran your first race, how did you train for it? Did you have a coach? A lot of really intense distance runners have coaches that they're involved with and they come with. How did that all work? 

 

[00:19:14] OK. When I started to think about marrison winning, I thought, I mean, there was no resource on the Internet. So I mean that, you know, it was early notice there was nothing you could not Google Google search, you know. So three hour marathon training program or anything like that. So I started by kind of finding a local short distance race, you know, like a half marathon, seeing if I could do that. And I did. And I won eight an OK. Well, marrison running. I was under the very, very silly misconception that a marathon with two 1/2 marathons back to back. How wrong could I be? No, I heard all these kind of spurious told that a marathon begins at 20 miles. No, no, no. It's like thirteen point one mile. That's halfway through Miles. No, not it's completely wrong. And Marathon really does begin at twenty miles up to that point. You just on cruise control, the last thing, the way you can suffer. So honestly, I learned by trial and error by winning a few local show distance races. I had attracted some attention regarding coaching, but the deal breaker was the veganism. Nobody wanted to coach Vegan isolate. Nobody wanted to waste that time with me. So as I explained, promoting veganism is the only reason I'm out there. So it's it's a deal breaker tonight to take the next level in tomorrow's ceremony was quite a hard decision for me because I realize that the training was going to be so much more specific and time consuming, basically, than for short distance races. You can block your way through a 10K and a half marathon. You can't do it through a marathon. I started off like with trial and error, lots of trials, loss. I was just thinking I could do lots of miles and I would get quicker by doing lots of math. You will get on by running lots of distance, but you won't get a whole lot faster until you do specific speed work. So I kind of looked at what all the people were doing and I formulated my own idea. I realize that you've probably got to do two or three speed sessions a week. That was difficult to me. I did look at joining a local running club, want to say locally quite some distance away. And that speed session was not going to see it because it was done on the track. And I can't when the benefits, that money is too bad. So I have to do my speed, work on a treadmill. I always have done and I always do on it. Some people are a bit sniffy about treadmill work, but that's how I have to do it. And the only thing I do say is on the positive side of treadmills, they don't lie to you. They run at the speed that, you know, they're running out. So, you know, you kind of get a good kind of judge away wrap. But I just formulated my own way and it was all going to be had to be hard pressed to me. So nine sessions a week, three speed sessions with recovery runs longer mid weight on the Hill sessions and a very long run on Sunday. I think the one thing about me that I'm very robust in terms is physically very strong. And I can take the training. And I think that's a testament to my plant based lifestyle. Over two decades, I still put out the results for Cubby. Hey, I was representing my country for Half-Marathon and 10K and Chip to do very well in my race in the South. And so I've got a wide, wide range of events I can do. And I've never had a running injury. I've had injuries which have impacted my running and indeed my knee. It does bother me when I run. When I started running on road marathons at about 20 miles, the continuous motion, the pounding of one stride length was very, very painful. But I realized quickly if I stopped running the pain stop. 

 

[00:23:02] So I realized once it damaged myself, it was just if I could write to the mental barrier of pain, I did. It was Paula Radcliffe that I once listened to and she said, You do not want to go to the start line of any race, least of all a marathon, knowing that you are carrying an injury. I've never been to the start line of any race knowing that I'm not carrying one, but I don't focus on it. I put it behind me, a place on the elite staff. I'm not making excuses for money. I was told I wouldn't work properly. I do live when I run. I didn't realize how much I lived till I saw the film. But I know I'm I'm there on my own merits. I don't want to make excuses. And I started with the Daily Road races purely because it was some time effective for me to Big Morison's a year, autumn and and spring. You literally probably spend four months how training three weeks cycling and go and hit them hard. And it was always I could probably not do that every local race or county race that was on the calendar. But I just wanted something more than that. I wanted to be able to in one soundbite say. A polite place overall in the Amsterdam marrison drunk, a world class race, was also financially very, very struggling because obviously I've got 600 mouths to feed, so mine is better off than the last one I'm actually considering. So being invited to races was cost effective. It wasn't costing me anything to go. It was a strange, bizarre kind of juxtaposition. I mean, I'm literally miss amateur runner, you know, bumming around the house, looking for my trainers and my thoughts and whatever. And then you're on a flight to a race you picked up by a chauffeur driven car. You taken to the elite hotel and you find yourself in a technical meeting with Heilig Guy. So I think it's like, whoa, what's going on here? But it's really it was never planned. I never really thought about it too much. I've never had any problem motivating myself to run because the end goal is always that I want to be the best representative I can. So the animals and for veganism. And if one person sees what I'm doing and he's interested or wants more information or can be convinced that it can be done, then that's my job done. So, yeah, I use the running. 

 

[00:25:27] I mean, I kind of watch how it's gonna be and it's gonna be time consuming to do what I'm doing. It's gonna be really, really hard to run a hundred miles a week, but it's free advertising for the animal sanctuary in terms of people say, you know, hey, what do you do? You know, I run an animal sanctuary. That's great. And also later, after a couple years, it was literally to promote veganism because I haven't actually thought about the potential of starting a dedicated Vegan running clip that came about in 2004 when I got my first elite star in a major marathon that was London. And the guy that I was running with live in. The only kind of running club that had any connection with the reason I was out there was the vegetarian cycling and athletics. And Vader actually said to me, you know, hey, you know, you do realize that you're going to be standing shoulder to shoulder with the best runners in the world. You're going to be going up forty five minutes ahead of the main field. You're going to be you a handful of women, and you're going to have the streets of London to yourself. And the crowds are going to say, well, I'm not. Let's start a vague and running plot. They need to see that word. And it was that simple connection. And, you know, people see you in the elite club just so they know you're a good runner. You don't have to tell people you're a good runner. They know you while you do that with the best. And if you're literally a billboard going through London on private roads with a camera on you, you know, the BBC or whatever, filming it with this big investor, what what could be better? A positive advertising. Can you have to the call if you're out there doing. So that's when we start to Vegan run us back in 2004. And people do ask me, you know, what is your proudest moment within running? And I have to say. I think our big surprise it's being that co-founder of Vegan run is because now I mean, when we started it, I was pretty much the only Vegan in the village in terms of running. Now we've got thousands of members worldwide going out and doing this job. So it's so much more effective than just one first, me doing it. And to be part of that at the beginning does make me, you know, enormously proud of my my fellow Vegan, my fellow Vegan athletes on the job that doing being ambassadors for what we all believe in. 

 

[00:27:40] What do you think? On to that same vein. In that same light. What do you think the most major impact has been for this thing that came? 

 

[00:27:48] Was it the shoe deal was at the drop of the documentary? Was it cofounding Vegan runners that you saw a significant shift, both sociological and financial, that you kind of contributed towards the Vegan effort? Was there any moment over the past decade and a half that you saw this? This thing that I did really shifted it? Was it when you were in the Guinness World Records? Was it obtaining that for the cause for the industry, all of that stuff? 

 

[00:28:16] Yeah, I mean, actually, it's quite controversial in terms of the way veganism has actually moved over the last certainly decade, five years, perhaps Vegan run has grown steadily through membership. That started in 2004. But what I actually found along the way is that I got quite a lot of media interest for what I was doing, but the focus was never on the Vegan part of it. You know, so you might get, you know, the big national newspaper, The Daily Mail, you know, kind of helping you most inspirational woman of the year. So you run off, you buy 50 copies of the newspaper. You know, we do that in ten or eleven and you reading through and, you know, this amazing woman is run across desert and she's done all this to the animals. And you think it's not mentioned the fact that I'm Vegan. And even when I broke the world's records, I had a kind of a newspaper deal that when I came back, you know, I kind of said, look, I'm not spread. One will record. I've broken three, you know, it's story. And eventually they explained to me, look, we've made an error. It was coming up to Christmas. And there were two major supermarkets, Aldi and little, that were trying to break into the kind of luxury market, you know, like Tesco and Science and Waitrose in the U.K. And they were doing a lot of advertising, really, really pushing advertising at the time. And he said, you know, we can't, like, contradict what they're advertising of turkeys and exotic foods by promoting inside our newspaper veganism in such kind of, you know, work out that way because they pay all, they pay our wages, the advertisers pay our wages. 

 

[00:29:54] And it's always been a real struggle to get people to talk about veganism. And I know hopefully is asked about. I was doing the London Marathon and I had the BBC sports correspondent came up to the sanctuary to film me before the race rights and actually challenged him with this. And he said it's basically open until about 2015, 2016. Veganism was aligned with terrorism because a lot of activism was illegal activism, and so they weren't going to promote it. So up until that point, it was really, really difficult and I didn't really know why. So I'm not doing anything. You know, I'm just going out there and hitting the road. How can you top 20 places with a real amateur runner? And I've got this disability, but I think after about 2016. 

 

[00:30:44] Truthfully might be a bit controversial. Now I know she's the real big shift in the Vegan movement. It went to a little bit more plant based and I it's quite well recorded and documented that I was actually filmed for the game changes. So James Wilkes came out in 2013 and filmed wait for this idea. He'd had to make a film about veganism and went back to Hollywoods. And it was it went on hold. You couldn't get the fundraising then back in 2015. He got the fundraising from the Avatar Foundation. James Cameron put money in and he wrote to me and said, Hey, Fjellner, want to come back with Louis Savoy us and we want to film you Sanctuary because you are basically the foremost Viðga athlete that I want in this film. And they came out and they filmed over two or three days only running film with the animals still running up to Morrisson to solve little time. And they went way over that year. I detected a change at kind of a shift in terms of veganism. The diet was becoming more credible, but not the ethic behind it. It was shifted to more plant based. And I think that I was dropped from the film because it looked a bit of a ridiculous juxtaposition that you got athletes on, that you haven't been Vegan that long. And we're talking about performance spikes and benefits of veganism. And I was coming it from a completely different angle to saying I'm vegan because it's the right thing. It just right is wrong time animals. And it was kind of a bit too much of that sense for me. KEAGAN Labor unions. Good. 

 

[00:32:27] That was kind of kind of. 

 

[00:32:30] A pivotal point in, you know, a lot of people became aware of me rich role did the narrative for it. So that helped. And I'm quite low paying, you know, to say what I've done. I don't push myself. I'm not a celebrity. Instagram tried several. I don't particularly want any recognition for myself. Fiona, I only want recognition for the animals and justice. So I'm not somebody who wants to push themselves forward, particularly because I've got my feet on the ground. And I know that what I've done, although it seems enormous to a lot of people for my my own reasoning, I haven't done enough. And I want to do more. Also, I think that a lot of people kind of felt a bit threatened by me because a lot of people are talking a rhetoric, but they have to kind of walk the walk. I haven't got the credentials and I've got like eons of credential. There were many, many years. And I think that they failed in some way negates what they're doing, which is which is not at all, you know, not what I'm thinking. You know, I just want to encourage people to to be vague and not to I don't want to sell them anything. I don't want to. Is stopping me a little bit. You know, the game changes. It was hitting. It's an audience that they felt that they got to sell them something. But, you know, you're going to feel better. You're going to feel great. You're going to have this massive performance by and it's kind of a testament to human beings that they always want a return for. What they're doing was returned return to me. It's just knowing that what I'm doing and it's the right thing and it's not harming others. 

 

[00:34:07] Yeah, my father used to always say, you don't do the right thing to get in to heaven. You do the right thing to do the right thing. It in itself is the reason. And I think that that's crucial. 

 

[00:34:19] You're kind of hitting on a very interesting point that this series has unearthed and really looked at it, particularly from people across all different industries that we've been speaking with. And it's this conversation that's blown up over the past five years. And it's it's fueled by marketing and money and Hollywood, as you are now bringing up. I did notice that you weren't attached to game changers and wondered why, because you are such this, your history and your legacy. I understand the the rebuking of the personal fame and things like that, but it does need a body to be hosted on. And we've chose you've chosen that body as you and your running, you know. And so within that, you have kind of risen through the ranks as a name that gets tossed around a great deal about these prolific athletes that are Vegan and carrying the word about veganism through places like sports where people just thought it couldn't exist. 

 

[00:35:10] And I'm curious where you personally, if someone who didn't know anything about any of this industry was talking with you tomorrow and said wouldn't plant based in being Vegan, what how would you quickly discern that for that? 

 

[00:35:26] Well, plan based is about what you eat. Veganism is the reason behind what you eat, and it's everything in your life. It's the S8. I mean, for instance, could you be plump based and wear leather shoes, you know? Is it just about your food and you? Or is it about the animals and the wider picture and the environment and other human beings suffer because of your food choices? You know what I mean? Yes, me. Veganism is the food. 

 

[00:35:58] The diet is it's just one tiny part of it. It's the it's the ethical sounds about justice for all that's most important. And people are a bit shocked when they you know, they learn about what what how, i.e., I eat like I've always eaten, which is very bright. Basically, I go to a lot of these athletes forums and they're all trying to sell protein powders. And they sat in the other I don't have any of those things. I don't endorse any of those things because it would be a lie to say that I do use them. I have a very, very basic lifestyle. I eat fresh vegetables, i.e. whole grains. I eat, you know, not siy beans, chickpeas. And I have to think very, very carefully about the cost of my food because I have got this massive burden of responsibility caring for the animals. And I would rather see than me, the myself, the and I only one meal a day as well, which people find extraordinary. But since May it suits my lifestyle and happy with that. I don't try to tell the people what to do and how to do it. It's their choices of how they live. That's me. And I'm not top of my list of priorities. When I don't think much about myself, I genuinely don't. 

 

[00:37:20] I think I get the greatest fulfillment is helping others, and that's honestly the troops. It's not a natural reaction to me to want to walk Kammerer. I felt when I went to Hollywood thoughtful. The film premieres when it's good. Rich Well came up to me and congratulated me on the film and said, Oh my God, it's amazing and you're incredible and what you think to it. I said, No, no, I'm saying it. Yeah. And he kind of looks at you haven't seen the film. And I said no because like, who wants to watch itself on a screen, you know? I mean, I don't know. So it made me kind of dragging me down to the front of the auditorium to watch it. And I'm kind of hiding out. I've got to look decent. Yeah. I mean, the desert, you know, it's got all the gear on, you know, the scenery and everything. And the first thing I see is this little kind of crazy moto figure limping out the desert. I look like crazy, but I've got to go right big backpack on. And I say, oh my God, I really love what I run. And I know it looks good when I run into races and people come promoted to news that, hey, you feel right. I've seen your film. Yeah. You know, I was in it and there's like, you know, I thought it was you because I noticed you were limping when you were. Well, you really. Oh yeah. But, you know, I yeah. I mean them to me, the you know, the greatest achievement is that people have seen what I've done and say, you know, hey, I can do that. And I can just mean within the Vegan. So I mean within the disability as well. You know, a lady wrote to me last week coming on social media on Instagram, she said, I've had two surgeries on my patellar and I've now been told that I've got to have it removed and that I will not be able to run or continue with cross country that she did. I will wear a brace for the rest of my life and somebody directed it towards what really good said. I'm right. Thank you. I don't expect you right back. Is there any hope on I said, you know, that's exactly what I was told you got thirty odd years ago and I hope I can inspire you to you know, nothing is written, you know, nothing is written. You can you can write your own book if you choose to sell it. That's that's what I can hope I can inspire others to do. And, you know, if people do want to, you know, are doubtful about Vegan, it's a you know, and I remember once I went to a race now it was a big, big intercounty championship and it was a marathon on a train for it. And my mom would come with me and she was standing with them. The people were handing out the prizes. The lady my risk was there and the race organizers and they said, oh, who you want to forge that? I'm raising my daughter. And this is a really real tough cause. I don't think anybody's ever beaten three hours on this cause it's like ninety. And they said, you know what, you know what time she looking for. And my mom was desperate to say she's not looking for a time. She's looking to win because, you know, winning is what she wants to do for the animals. And I came out to say China was winning. I've broken three hours. And the lady, my rest, when she presented me with the prizes, she said, oh, my gosh. 

 

[00:40:19] She said, I was talking to your mother. And, you know, you've been Vegan said ages, years and years and years. My daughter wants. Vegetarian and I was reluctant to allow it to. I was worried about a growing process, whether it be detrimental. But seeing you at your age thriving, that I've got no issues with it now. So I hope that that's the kind of role model I can offer in terms of the fight. You know, if you're interested, what you're going to be like in 10, 20, 30 is to be plump based or are you going to whatever then look at me because I'm still thriving. I was due to go back to my roots in salt. It's the fourth time I say representing my country on the road, you know, and I'm healthy. I mean, I don't take any medications. I don't take any supplements. I still try, you know, like today I did a three hour room with an eight kilogram backpack and KG White's on my hands. And I look after all the animals and I still am a firefighter. 

 

[00:41:11] Amazing. I want to get into it for everyone listening who doesn't have a background really quickly so that they know what we're talking about. The marathon disserves is really quickly a quick description. 

 

[00:41:22] I scrubbed from the Internet. It's a six day, 251 kilim kilometer ultra marathon, which is approximately the distance of six regular marathons. The longest single stage is ninety one kilometers long. 

 

[00:41:34] This multiday race is held every year in southern Morocco, obviously not this year in the Sahara Desert. It has been regarded as the toughest foot race on Earth. And indeed, as a documentary cited, you're required to purchase funeral insurance prior to entering the race because people have died on it. 

 

[00:41:54] I'm curious first. My first thought was because it didn't capture any footage among your colleagues and fellow runners. What kind of rhetoric do you have before races, particularly on one like this, where you were in a tent with, you know, several other runners? Does anyone ever talk to you about your diet? 

 

[00:42:11] Does anyone ever get into, you know, veganism or how relations with other runners or did they kind of like, let you be? 

 

[00:42:21] Yeah, no, I mean, the first time I did in 2012, veganism was enough, people weren't aware of the word Vegan is little what he wasn't. I remember you literally turn out and you find you take it into the desert a military vehicles and you find 10 very often in the dark. It's late night and you find a place to put your sleeping bag. And that's where you will be for the eight days that you that so you wake up and you kind of me. I probably don't even get to know him the night before. And so the first year with I, you know, some of my guys walking around say, oh, my God, you know, you think you've got about ten. We've got like an Irishman, a Scotsman, a Welshman, an Englishman and a Vegan woman. And it's kind of, you know, you have to kind of convince them that way. Is the bigger woman that was actually. Bethany, if you're running well, if you're strong, if could beat them, they have to kind of look and listen. That year, I had a really, really tough race. In the week before I broke two toes at the animal sanctuary I hosted on them. So I was challenged with either not going to in the cell or going out there with two fractured toes. I elected to go. I had a really, really tough time. It was appalling. By the time the race finished to run alongside, you could see the bones sticking out a little toe. It was it was brutal because, of course, your feet swell in the hay. You get sand in your shoes. It's a really, really tough challenge. But the guys were, you know, took it well because that was the strongest among them. So, you know, they've got to kind of respect you. In 2014, I was in the race and I was riding really, really high in the rankings and top place. But unfortunately, one I templates needed me more than I needed to place in the marathon assailable. He had leukemia and he was on chemotherapy. And by day two, he was wanting to tackle. And I said to him, look, Mike, you know, there are love. I know what this is like. In 2012, I was the first Vegan woman to complete this race. All eyes were on me. I hadn't made a big thing about the fact of fractured toes. It was a tough loss. I was carrying a huge backpack because there was no ethical Vegan like sleeping bags. For me, everything was very, very heavy. I said, I know what you're right. And there are a lot of people around the world looking at you to know that, you know, you've got leukemia. It's not defining what your limitations are. And, you know, tobacco is going to be a really, really bad thing. So if you can get through the next day, which was like 30 or 40 K whatever, it was a long stage you were frightened about. I was frightened about being out there in the Sahara Desert alone in that kind of heat going through the night chemotherapy. I said if no one else will stay with you and you still want to do it all. So we took my rights away and I'll be there at your side. And he came back I and student self into my arms, you know. Each state was taking me about four hours. Was taking him 11 or 12 hours. And he said, does your offer still stands tomorrow? Because I really want to try and do it. And so I mentored him round the long stage. It was very, very tough. He was in a real state. But for me, the running I think the definition of my running is it is compassion over competition, whether that compassion be towards non-human or human animals. It's that's the reason I'm out there. And so in 2017, the guys I shared with I was I didn't have any license as the film or what Keegan was going to show. I mean, a lot people don't realize I'd done the race two, two times before. You did interview someone that's templates. And I was very flattered that one of them did say if you asked them if you had to come back to this godforsaken place, what would you bring? And it was Tafawa, a guy from Kuwait, who actually said to me, except Keegan. I bring Jonah because she just, like, knows everything. Will help everyone. She's funny and I love being around her and I thought that was the very, very great compliment. But, yeah, I mean, you do. I mean, in a race like that, you live very, very close, close proximity with your teammates. You can make or break your race. You don't want to be trudging along saying, you know, I don't want to get back to that goodness awful ten. I'm sharing this, but I've never had that. I've had some really good guys. And even though the experience is particularly brutal, whoever you are in that race, however you're going. It's hard. It takes some very, very dark places. I don't know whether he's just the British or whatever, but we always laugh real. We always want to cue the award invasion and laugh about it, although it's so horrible. You probably don't know why you would be crying. You get through it. It's it's it's a real privilege and a learning curve to be out there. And I think the most appreciated you become when you come back into your civilian world is the resources you turn the tap on and Walter comes out. That's a miracle. You know, you don't think is the Evian or Paria or sparkling or fruit flavored water. And you can drink it because you're so used to being limited and challenge to food. I mean, you carry everything you've got for the whole week. You have to carry from day one on your back. So you pack weighs about eight kilos. It gets lighter as the week goes on because using your food, but you're getting weaker as the week goes on. So everything that's in that pack you appreciate. So I've seen people like trading a piece of toilet paper for a painkiller. You know, it's literally make grown men cry. But it's it's a great leveler. And I think that the main thing you realize is that, you know, at any point in that race, you can put your hand up and say, I've had you know, if I can't go now, I need to go back to the five star hotel. How much is that? Thank you. Some people can't do that. They're living in worse conditions and they've got no hope of ever having anything better. So when you do come home, you cannot allow people to go out that it's a bucket list. You have to Morrisson salt with which you go and take. What is a real living life experience? It can really fulfill you and change your life for the better and a hope that it's still not for me. 

 

[00:48:13] Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like by proxy as you've helped to do it for other people. 

 

[00:48:18] I'm wondering with cofounding Vegan runners in 2004, what the growth has been said in your bio. 

 

[00:48:25] You know, it's become this resource not just for Vegan runners, but Vegan athletes of all kinds. Can you kind of speak to some of the work that you're doing with that? One to three to five years that you're doing with the Vegan runners. 

 

[00:48:39] Well, obviously, to grow the club and obviously grow the club through a positive way for veganism, so obviously, especially now with the cockpit. If you've ever been told to get out there to get exercise and of course, I'm saying even now round where I live and I live in Raleigh, more people out running. So to grow the club and set a satellite is obviously as a club we don't meet into. We do meet for an AGM. But what does sit around all over the country? All over the world. So we've got little satellite groups in towns, which is, you know, going out, training together and growing kind of animal local level. It's been a kind of a national resource up until now. But we want to kind of, you know, start little coaching weekends. I mean, we have we we did one last year here at the sanctuary where we can kind of interconnect on social media. Give each other advice. Give people who are Vegan curious advice. You know, just literally, I suppose we want to get a wider group of a range of Rhona's. I mean, we've got everything from like, you know, Sun Brothers couch to five K open to elite runners, but it's really grow grow the potential of promoting veganism in a positive way through running. Just get the best out there. Make people familiar with it. I mean, it's amazing when you go to races, you know, all round the world and most people have seen a green and black vest now, which is like, wow, you know. So I think internationally we'd like to grow it now and get more Vegan rolls out in in different, different countries. That would be great. Not just the goat, you know, bridge going out and running. And if you can run the best Badgley satellite groups in different countries, because I think it's a really positive way and you've got a really receptive audience on running starts because everyone's out there because they want probably want to improve and constantly looking at new ideas, new diets. 

 

[00:50:28] And we see now with Corona virus and the weight started. Animal agriculture is becoming under intense scrutiny. So people are looking for alternatives. But a great positive alternative is, hey, we're Vegan, we're running. We've been doing it for like nearly two decades. Come and join us. We want to be very welcoming of all people and encourage people. I think that's the main thing to encourage them in a positive way. 

 

[00:50:56] Absolutely. And I think that the compassion coming out of, you know, one of the greatest tragedies in the past hundred years, I think, is to be met with compassion and knowledge. 

 

[00:51:08] You know, a reinvestigation, every conversation with one's self questioning, not just the philosophy and the ethics behind the world and disease, but food sources and sustainability and agriculture. And what we're doing to the Earth and then by proxy to ourselves, you know, and re recognizing the entire cyclical nature of everything that exists on this planet. One cannot be impacted and not affect to the other. And I think that the pandemic, you know, kind of being a reminder of that and reopening investigation and analysis and the attachment to things like running and things like that are it's one of the few silver linings. If there were one to the tragedy, I'm curious, with you moving forward, where would you like to see the movement? There has been this attachment and I've gone on in other episodes, so I won't go on here. But, you know, the attachment that the plant based has been kind of poached and repackaged and used to mean that people are labeling things in the states as plant based when they have egg product in them, it no longer even means vegetarian. You know, it's it's this way of use to fortify everything with vitamins and minerals, milk and things like that are still done. And it was a big thing in the 80s to fortify everything with vitamins because they were stripped of them and they needed to be replaced. And so the same kind of trajectory is happening with plant based. But I'm curious, with the Vegan community as you see it, like gaining the traction that begins all over the world. I was speaking with begins in Australia when Kofod broke out. And there's been this resurgence of people, you know, kind of in all these different pockets really getting excited about it. And this interest level. 

 

[00:52:52] Where do you see it heading? Do you see the conversation kind of expanding and having getting towards the inclusiveness of the humanity and the compassion angle for animal to play more? Or where do you see the future of the Vegan conversation heading? 

 

[00:53:08] Well, I have hope with coronavirus. People might look at the source and not sort of, say, a Wetmore case, but look at all animal agriculture. And apparently, you know, I mean, because obviously, let's not forget, we've had outbreaks in the Western world with swine flu, with avian flu. This intensive farming industry, it seems to be a little bit overlooked in the UK. We seem to be searching for vaccines and killers and treatments for cholera, but actually not the cause behind it. And I'm not saying branding China any of the you know, we're all guilty. We're all guilty. And for me, what has concerned me a little bit is that. Veganism has been railroaded with this would come based on people misinterpreting what plump face is. And it's being turned into a very consumer based and commercial based entity take when actually veganism is anything but. That is a very ethical. It's how it's considering always how your choice is not just your food choices impact all this. So I would I mean, obviously, there's not there's not going to be one route that suits or so for me if people are Klamt based. That's great. But I think that one concern is that any are rubbish processed food. They think they can put product based on it and people are going to think it's healthy when it isn't. And it can be highly processed and just as bad for the consumer as animal based products. It's only for the animals that it's better. So that's kind of okay for me. But labeling all based as healthy is kind of misleading and I don't want it to backfire. And people then realize, well, actually, that's not the case. I'm eating all these Vegan processed burgers and I'm no healthier and I'm not losing any weight. So I would like it to be strictly a little bit back and say, you know, hey, let's think about the ethics behind this. Obviously not just the delicious food, but let's think about the ethics and why we're making these choices and why we're trying to change. You smuggle. Because for me, the old model of. Commercialism, consumerism, greed, selfishness, just completely raping and pillaging the planet. I've got to stop because we just haven't got a big enough planet. And maybe Mother Nature has been sending out these warning signs for quite a few years and we're ignoring them. And I get the horrible feeling that in the UK, certainly we're looking for. Others say a vaccine. Kobe, 19. So we can go back to the old model. We can't do that. We've got to reinvent from the foundations upwards. A new, more beautiful model for us. Old coexist. Yeah. I mean, I would certainly like veganism to be at the forefront of that ethical veganism in terms of, you know, unfair distribution of resources. You know, so having grown to feed humans, to fatten humans, basically to make them and it's controversial to say it, but one of the groups most susceptible to this, to copy 90 or have an inability to recover from it. Are people who are obese. So surely we should be looking at healthy lifestyle choices for all. And that doesn't seem to be that much focus on not certainly in the UK. It's about go. Well, let's let's find a cure. Let's let's find some way know, you know, fighting this virus. But what if Coffee 20 comes along with coffee. Twenty one comes along. What we're going to do better. So, you know, for me in animal agriculture. What is the most frightening things is the use of antibiotics. We use antibiotics routinely because animals are kept in such appalling conditions. But it's causing antibiotic resistance in humans. So if there are a few outbreaks of things, this antibiotic resistance, which would be cataclysmic to the whole human race. So we need to be addressing these issues rather than just focusing on getting nobody's heard and getting back to normal. We need to really use this as an opportunity if any good can come out of it, of creating a better world for all. 

 

[00:57:23] Absolutely. I agree. And I'm hoping I'm optimistic. You know, I hold a candle out for humanity. 

 

[00:57:31] I think we we have a chance to get it right. You know, we've been getting it wrong for a long time. I truly believe that if you give someone space and time to have a safe and healthy conversation with these issues, they come to the right decision. You know, it's it's affecting all of us. And yet providing for the next generation and their generation and their generation is something that we should all have in common that we want. You know, we want to provide a good life for ourselves, our animals, every creature on this earth, but also the children and their children and people coming after them, the animals that come after that. You know, this idea that you're kind of handing off something that's completely unsustainable and walking away and dying is is. I don't think that most people do that. I think that it's in human nature to be better. And I think it just takes space. And to have these conversations in a healthy and open environment where people can look at actionable. 

 

[00:58:23] And we look back at issues. Yeah. I mean, we look at back at certain issues in history and we think, you know, in the 21st century, how on earth did that ever happen? How on earth did we as humans allow that to happen, perpetuate that happening? Certainly for myself. I don't want to be one of those people that look back home with disgust and vilified. I want, you know, some you know, we tried to make a difference. And I believe if we work together, we will peacefully. I'm not confrontational person. I think that's something with my form of activism. I my rolling out to see its activists and being active to the animals. I don't want to go and pick arguments individually on the street and show horrendous images. I want to show positive images because I actually think from positivity breeds positivity and negativity the same. It breeds anger and aggression. And, you know, obviously we know there are horrendous things happening around the world. But let's look at what we can do to change it. You know, and that's where I'm coming from more. So all I want to be able to say to people is, you know, well, I've done it. You can do it, too. It's not going to be death. I understand people's health concerns. It's not going to be damaging. It's not going to be limiting. And there are so many benefits. It's very liberating. And people say, you know, when I have been out, oh, you can't have that. You can't have it. You'll be you can only go. I can't. It could quite easily have it. I choose not to. And that's the liberation, you know, because we're all been brainwashed all the time. We've got the time saying you should have. They should look this way. You should go to these places. You should have these products. It's going to make you happy. Very liberating to say. Actually, not when my own person and I realized that's not going happen. I need to forge my own path in life, which is going to make me happy. And happiness comes from within and exudes outwards decomp by it. And Collingwood's and that's that's the important message. And, you know, as I've seen people, I have hope that I look quite well, really. And I've seen so many people out now on by out walking with the families on a Sunday afternoon on the beach, you know, doing the things, you know, connecting with nature. And I hope that actually they realize that this is this is better than going around a shopping mall or now and you need a computer or playing a game on the television. This is actually what life really is about, connecting with each other and our environments. 

 

[01:00:44] Absolutely. Yeah, it's a it's another great offshoot from it. 

 

[01:00:48] Well, Fiona, we are out of time, but I want to say thank you so much for taking the last hour and time today. 

 

[01:01:00] Thank you very much. Absolutely. For everyone listening, we have been speaking with Fiona Oaks. She's the co-founder of the Vegan Runners. She is also the founder of Tower Hill Stables. Animal Rescue and Sing. You can find it online at w w w dot. Tower Hill Stables Dot Work. Thank you for giving us your time today. And until we speak again next time. 

 

[01:01:20] Remember to eat clean and responsibly, stay in love with the world and always bet on yourself. 

Talking with Diana Laverdure-Dunetz; Founder of shegoesvegan.com

Today I am talking with Diana Laverdure-Dunetz. Diana holds a Master’s in Animal Science and is an award-winning dog health writer, vegan canine nutritionist and passionate animal activist. She went vegetarian in 2009 and vegan in 2017. Diana’s mission is to end animal abuse and exploitation in all forms and to increase legal punishments for anyone perpetrating animal cruelty. Diana is the founder of two vegan movements: The website She Goes Vegan (www.shegoesvegan.com) empowers women to create a compassionate vegan world that respects all animals, the environment and future generations. Plant-Powered Dog (www.plantpoweredog.com) educates dog guardians on the health and ethical benefits of feeding nutritious plant-based diets to our canine companions. In 2019, Diana created the Plant-Powered Dog Food Summit (www.plantpowereddogfoodsummit.com), which featured 17 global leaders in the fields of plant-based veterinary nutrition, science and animal activism to discuss the facts about plant-based vs. meat-based diets for dogs. Diana and her vegan husband, Rodney, live in South Florida and are involved with many animal rights organizations.

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note this is an automated transcription, please excuse any errors or typos

[00:00:00] In this episode, I had the opportunity to speak with founder, author and Vegan activist Diana Laverdure-Dunetz. Key points addressed were Diana's Web site and its information and services titled She Goes Vegan. Dot com is designed to empower, educate and motivate women from all walks of life to create Vegan lives. We also discussed her recent interactive journaling book titled F Asterix C.K.. Yeah, I'm going Vegan slated to be a game changer when considering implementing veganism into one's life. You can find that on Amazon.com. Stay tuned for my riveting interview with Diana. 

 

[00:00:43] My name is Patricia Kathleen. And this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. Dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. If you're enjoying these podcasts, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Fasting and roundtable topics they can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen dot com, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. 

 

[00:01:40] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today I'm sitting down with Diana, Leverdure-Dunetz. 

 

[00:01:46] She's a founder, author and Vegan activist. You can find out more on her Web site. She goes Vegan dot com. Welcome, Diana. 

 

[00:01:55] Thank you so much for having me. I'm really, really honored to be here. 

 

[00:01:58] Absolutely. I'm very excited to get into your story and talk about everything that you're doing, as well as the new book you've put out, the new journal, Interactive Journal for everyone listening. 

 

[00:02:08] I'll read a quick bio on Diana to give you kind of a foundation, but before that, a quick roadmap of today's podcast and where we'll be headed so you can follow along and have a forecast. We'll first look at Diana's academic and professional history, as well as her personal Vegan story and how that kind of plays into her current endeavors. Then we'll look at two unpacking. She goes Vegan, the Web site, the future classes and services it offers and the current information that she's providing her audience. We'll also look at logistics when w where, why, how are their co-founders? Did she take funding? And we'll get into the ethos behind it. The impetus for launching that Web site. And we'll also look at her interactive journal just recently published on Amazon F Asterisk. C.K.. Yeah, I'm going Vegan. We're gonna get in to a first and foremost the name behind that. There's a reason behind that wonderful title. And then we're gonna talk about what that journal offers its audience and its users. We'll wrap everything up with goals and advice that Diana has for those of you who are looking to follow her or get involved or perhaps emulate some of her career success. As promised, a quick bio on Diana. DianaLaverdure-Dunetz holds a masters in animal science and is an award winning dog health writer, Vegan canine nutritionist and passionate animal activists. She went vegetarian in 2009 and Vegan in 2017. Diana's mission is to end animal abuse and exploitation in all forms and to increase legal punishments for anyone perpetuating animal cruelty. Diana is the founder of two Vegan movements, the site. She goes Vegan w w w dot. She goes Vegan dot com empowers women to create a compassionate Vegan world that respects all animals, the environment and future generations. Plant power dog w w w dot plant power dog dot com educates dog guardians on the health and ethical benefits of feeding, nutrition, nutritious plant based diets to our canine companions. In 2019, Diana created the plant parad dog food summit w w w dot plant Power Dog Food Summit icon, which featured 17 global leaders in the fields of plant based vegetable, veterinary nutrition science and animal activism. To discuss the fact about plant based versus meat based diets for dogs. Diane and her Vegan husband, Rodney, live in South Florida and are involved with many animal rights organizations. So, Diana, I think that's fascinating. And you and I talked off the record. I was using Vegan dog food for the past 10 years, and I'm really excited to see more companies join that revolution and can kind of unpack that. But I want to first start off with, if you could give us a brief summary of not all of it, but the pieces that you feel pertained to where you are now, of your academic background and early professional life and your Vegan story as it's kind of intertwined throughout all of that that brought you to creating. She goes Vegan. 

 

[00:05:05] Sure. And I think, like all of us, it's been a journey. And I actually started out in life and professional life as a writer. So that's what I did since I was a child. I wrote stories and and really, as a kid, didn't think I'm going to grow up to be a canine nutritionist or I'm going to grow up and start any Vegan movement. That certainly wasn't on my mind. I hear so many Vegan stories where actually they say when they were a child, they couldn't look at meat. I wish I had been that enlightened, does a child, but I was not. You know, I grew up in a family where my mom served meat and made need and animal products. My grandfather was a kosher butcher. So there you go. And that was just a fact of life. So what happened was I adopted in 2002, the dog that changed my life. His name was Chase, and he was with me for 16 and a half years. And what happened was having adopted a rescue dog. I learned, of course, so much. I got immersed in actually the shelter where I adopted him from and immersed in the community of an abused cats and dogs, which many people are into that. But what happened with me was I couldn't stop there. You know, we often think of abused cats, dogs, companion animals. And we shudder at the thought, of course, but we don't think about the torture and abuse and brutality and the hell that all of these other species endure every single day. So adopting chase expanded my mind to the abuse going on in all species. By that time, I will make a very long story short also due to health issues that Chase had. I was feeding him a fresh food diet in order to create a healthier individual. It was not Vegan and that led me into the world of canine nutrition and hence the Masters, because I was now working with veterinarians and serious scientists and I wanted to show that I was also serious and academically educated in the field. But what happened was, even as a vegetarian for many, many years, I was continuing to create meat based diets for dogs because, quite frankly, I bought into the bullshit and the hype that dogs need to eat their wolves and they need to eat meat to thrive, that you're a little Pekinese or Pomeranian or whomever is really a wolf inside and even even your German shepherd generic, which is what Chase was, you know, that they're that that they're really wolves. And when I decided I could no longer myself harm any animal in any way and said, that's it, you know, told my husband, we're not going to be vegetarian, we're gonna go vegan. He pointed out the hypocrisy of what I was doing every day and I could no longer do this and create these meat based diets for dogs. It was killing me inside. And I decided, well, maybe I'll just leave the business and my husband said, don't leave the business. Do some research and see, you know, look into this. And I did. And it turned out, thankfully, that actually plant based diets for dogs, not only can they thrive, but, you know, can they live on them, but they can thrive on them. They're super healthy. Many veterinarians believe that it's these high meat diets and the bio accumulation of toxins in animals and tissue that are causing all the cancer that we're seeing and all the chronic illnesses. Yeah. So that's what led me to create a movement called Plant Power Dog and to create the plant powered dog food summit. And now I'm just so grateful to be able to combine the dog nutrition knowledge and and help dogs without harming any other animals. So VegFest been amazing. And then I decided, well, I don't want to stop with the dog food world. You know, not everyone has a dog. What. What more can I do? So that came to she goes Vegan and why she goes vegan and not everyone goes. Yeah. Because I truly believe that women have an innate empathy. There is unfortunately my cheese mo surrounding meat eating. And you know, that's that's been more qualified people than I have studied and written about that. But women really I feel are innately. Veganism and sexuality and how women have been treated in a sexual manner. You know, as body parts, it's it's it's a really parallel type of issue. So I feel that women can really relate to what animals go through. And so I feel that we also have about seventy five, seventy seven percent of the purchasing power in the country and in the world. So, you know, we have the power, we have the empathy and we can make the difference. So that's my goal was she goes Vegan is to really empower all women to go Vegan and to create just a kind of world for everybody. And I love that. 

 

[00:11:04] And I love that you have like an audience. You know, I think that people get nervous about excluding, especially when you're trying to educate. However, it's not saying men can't get on your Web site, but that link is really fascinating. 

 

[00:11:17] And I know a lot of feminist theorists have made that comparison and analogy. Use the metaphor of, you know, a lot of the abuse that's happened towards women and women identified or populations considered other, you know, this comparison to making them animal like so that we can disassociate and actually abuse them. And therefore, even, you know, acknowledging that that's how we disassociate with animals, you can treat them less than humane. 

 

[00:11:44] And I think it's a fascinating that you've made that connection. And that's one of the impetuses for you, targeting it towards women. Women identified people. I'm wondering, when you jump on your site, you have your story there. You have articles you've presented. I know that, you know, you have classes that are there and you're kind of coming forth because this is all a very current endeavor. And I also know that you work one on one still with clients that have ailing dogs who need your personal expertize and things like that. I'm wondering, I like the articles you chose and I wonder how you curate them because you have a very specific tonality with your Vegan mission and as an animal activist and things like that. And so I'm wondering, is there any way that you choose to pepper? It must you must be aware that it brands you, you know, to to put other people's information on your site. And so I'm curious as to how you go about curating it or if it's just like a pleasure of your own and you know of your moment to, like, go through and post things for your audience. 

 

[00:12:48] Sure. Well, I write everything myself. I always have. I don't accept. Well, an unplanned powered dog. I have. I have. Except a couple of guest post from veterinarians and true experts in the field. But in general, I everything is written by myself. And as far as the content, it's very purposefully directed towards the. And I hate to use this word because none of us are average, but towards the everyday woman who wants to make a difference and who is facing her own challenges in life, whether she is a caretaker for her parents or whether she's raising children and whether she has a partner, who it's it's causing a rift in the relationship because the partner doesn't want to be Vegan. So my niche, if you will, are everyday issues that women aspiring to what we know to veganism go through. I think there are a lot of people who do great things, bringing together Vegan business people and Vegan business women, and that is completely wonderful. I want to address the everyday needs of the person of the woman who wants to go Vegan and create a kind of world. Yeah. Everything I write is is is really geared for her. 

 

[00:14:12] That's it, and it's a wonderful guide. 

 

[00:14:13] I think that people overlook this kind of need for people addressing all angles of the life, you know, because Vegan is not everyone freaked? Well, the majority of people I speak to who don't have a lot of information about veganism view it as a diet. And there's people who are involved with it, know that it very quickly becomes a lifestyle, a philosophy. It's it's a spirituality. It becomes a lot of different things quite quickly for most people who practice it, regardless of one's entry point, you know, regardless of your gateway drug, as I always say, you can come in there having just suffered a heart attack or having a spiritual awakening. But usually you'll start looking into the benefits of the health or the spirituality or the welfare of the environment and the beauty and humanity of the animals and all of those things within time. And so it's it's it's good to I think it's fascinating because your site is one of the first ones that I've seen where it's approaching veganism from that aspect. You know, you are coming at it from these social interpersonal relationships, like all of those things would matter if it wasn't just a diet, if it was really a way of living, you know, and it a reality. 

 

[00:15:19] So I'm hoping that you say that. That's exactly right. And that's sort of my credo, is that I put a plant based is a diet. Vegan is a lifestyle. 

 

[00:15:32] Yeah. OK. And that brings me to I'm really glad you just said that, because it brings me to my point. I always I wait for people to drop it. 

 

[00:15:42] I always say, you know, the podcast is called Investigating Vegan Life. And so I'm not afraid of the V word, but a lot of people I interview are. And there's a marketing reason behind that. There's a lot of other reasons. But so for you, I always ask people to define those to the second they drop in the word plant based or Vegan to differentiate. So plant based is a diet and Vegan is a lifestyle for you. 

 

[00:16:05] Correct. And as a matter of fact, I have an article just dedicated to that. What's the difference between plant based and Vegan? And why does it matter? And it does matter because so many times someone will say to me, Oh, I was vegan for ten years, and then I decided to, you know, not to be one day. You were plant based for 10 years, OK? Because that isn't Vegan is based on plant based is based on what is in it for me. And I'm not saying this in a derogatory manner, but you kind of put the nail, the nail hit the nail on the head when you said if if you're entering it from the health standpoint, that type of thing is really generally when someone becomes plant based. They've had a health crisis. Vegan is not focused on the ME. It's focused on the individual outside of us that is being harmed. Okay, so plant based, what is really this diet doing for me? What is this lifestyle doing to create peace for other individuals? So for me, when you when you're looking at what goes on in factory farms and what goes on with animal testing and what goes on with or you don't one day decide that doesn't work for you. Right. Because you have it's a core value. Right. If that's your quote, you don't. At least for me, you don't change your core values. You know, in a snap. But you might I heard I was once you don't you ever go down the Internet rabbit hole. Right? I got on a Gwyneth Paltrow Web site. And I don't I've never done that before. But something that I was researching led me there. And there was a conversation, much like you and I are having, that a woman was having with when, if and when it was disgusting how much she loves to cook. And it was all going quite well. And then I heard this woman say something that if my head could have exploded, it would have. The woman said to Gwyneth Paltrow, I was vegan for ten years and then I smelled you cooking sausage, pork, sausage, and it just smells so good. I had to have that sausage and you made me not vegan. And that just blew my mind. Yeah. That woman is not was not Vegan. That woman, if she were Vegan would have been disgusted by the sausage. She would have seen the sentient, intelligent, beautiful, loving animal. Not not a sizzling pork sausage. Right. 

 

[00:18:59] Yeah. And it sounds like the motivation for what had the way she was eating may have already been obtained. 

 

[00:19:07] You know, I know that a lot of people look into veganism for when you're not dying of a cardiac arrest, it's to lose weight or other things like that. I've had I've spoken to several people, male and female, that say, you know, idea I did that to lose some weight. Bill Clinton was Vegan for a bit. So, you know, I went for it and. And they lost the weight and they went back. And I it's it's a very similar thing. I usually try to remind them, like, well, I think what you did was engaged in a diet that worked for you, that eliminated animal products. But Vegan, I think you're right about that. That term does carry heavier. 

 

[00:19:42] And I think that's why some people stray away from it. I think that, you know this. If you have a product you're peddling, you know, you kind of want to include everybody. And now there are tons of products that there's a lot of anger in the communities, plant based Vegan and everything else, and even organic communities, because marketing is, you know, Mad Men are no stranger to adaptation. And everything was fortified in the 80s and now everything is plant based. So you can have something that has egg and, you know, gelatin in it, have this plant based like little logo on the front. And so it's clear it's I think it's good to delineate it from people who are looking for the safety label of Vegan. 

 

[00:20:21] That's right. And, you know, I want to be cautious in that. I am not. I'm grateful for everybody who eat plant based, because if you do eat plant based, then you're saving animals regardless of what your motivation is. So if everybody a plant based. That would be amazing. But I just think it's really important to understand the difference between a diet and a lifestyle. Absolutely. 

 

[00:20:50] What I'm looking at that I kind of want to unpack the interactive guided journal just published on Amazon. And it's f Asterix C.K.. 

 

[00:20:59] Yeah, I'm going Vegan exclamation point. And prior to us starting to record this, you and I got into it, you know, from one writer to another. I said, how are we going to go about this? Do you want to say the F word? And you had said it just came out. I haven't really thought about it. You know, auditorily, the spoken word was a little bit different than that written. And then we got into very, very quickly we got into the ethos of why you chose that title. So. Can you kind of enumerate on that now for us? 

 

[00:21:28] Yeah, and it's it ties in so well to what we're just talking about, I don't think. And I'm just going to say it. I don't think you'd say, fuck. Yeah. Go and plant based. OK. It's true. It does not have the same cachet that they have with say shit. 

 

[00:21:45] So it's like, yeah, I'm not just I'm not I'm not just going be in, you know, it's ongoing. Vegan fuck. Yeah. I'm go and Vegan. Yeah. You know, because it means something to me. And in the values behind it means something to me in in the concept that all animals have the right to live in peace means something to me. So it's like yeah, it's meant to purposefully just kind of really grab you. And the rationale behind it was there are tons of amazing cookbooks out there. I am not a recipe developer year. I own most of them. And, you know, tons of great books to tell you why you should be Vegan and all of that sort of thing. But what I wanted this to do was. To capture the person on an emotional level and kind of hold their hand as they explore their own their own motives and get to know them in their own self discovery journey, because I think that most of us who are Vegan will say it's a journey of self discovery. 

 

[00:22:58] And so in Ewing, ever changing, you know, I don't there is no Everest. I haven't summited yet. And I'm going on 10 years. And it's just, you know, and that's the kind of the beauty of it. 

 

[00:23:09] You know, our bodies don't stop changing. Like, why would you know your faith and your belief system and your analysis? I do want to touch on some of the aspects of the book that I scrubbed from online. The Journal you list off these things and you just said that it's kind of this accompaniment. And I'm glad that I was able to really dove in because I when someone talks about an interactive journal, I expect them to deliver. 

 

[00:23:34] And I think that that's what your analysis frequently does, even the way you come at your writing. You know, you come at this kind of whole person effect from your Web site and the way that you write things like you just mentioned, writing for the social relationships and how those can be strained by veganism. But in fuck you. I'm going vegan. You mentioned that it gets you. It's meant to get people clear, set goals get motivated. It's simple steps, easy plans. You recording options like being able to record and note things, overlook your and oversee your feelings, track your records and emotions and review your progress. And it feels like it's very stepped out as to because I think a lot of people like to keep it tight and tidy like these three steps. But that's not how we are as human beings. We have all these different facets, you know, and so having this kind of this litany of what it's going to produce if you're in you know, if you're doing this interactive journal, I think is is really empowering. And it's what someone needs because it is this all encompassing lifestyle, you know, and you're gonna have a lot of different areas that are clocking different successes and happiness barometers in the beginning than others. What would you say is, was the main impetus? You know, you have this. I will say as a side note from speaking with over the past two months, I've spoken to about 50 different vegans from all different walks of life, from scientists to mothers raising children, you know, and back again. And I will say the one thing is that when people talk about becoming Vegan, it's very much so in the exact same moment of you describing your title. 

 

[00:25:14] It's never like, well, and then after, you know, 15 years of gentle study, I slowly decided that I'd be Vegan. 

 

[00:25:20] It's this moment where they're like, I'm Vegan. This is it. You know, and so the fuck. Yeah, I'm going vegan is really appropriate to that end. But I'm wondering what inspired you to actually capture that and then help write an interactive journal? Was it your own study or was it to help someone else out? 

 

[00:25:38] It was based on my own experience because so something that's recently over the last few years, more so, I discovered a practice called Kysen. And what Kysen is is is kind of means continuous improvement in Japanese. And it's based on the ancient philosophy and ancient philosophy and. I think you can make that ready decision, like, yeah, I'm going Vegan. But a lot of times what comes next can be can seem very intimidating. OK, what do I do now? How do I step it out? How do I really do this? Maybe it isn't practical for me to just get rid of everything in one fell swoop. You know, on a practical level, it can be different. So I took the concept of Kysen, which is continuous improvement, and stepped it out over three months to guide people week by week, month, month one, month to month three and each week within that month. And how what tiny step Kaizen is all about taking small steps to reach large goals. So it might work for somebody to say overnight, I'm going Vegan into just do that. But for many people, smaller steps make more sense. So it's based on that philosophy of the accumulation of smaller, non-threatening steps to eventually reach a very large goal. And in the interim of that, you get to explore how you feel about it. So I came up with guided prompts that I felt would resonate based on my experience, with my own journey with others, other vegans. So it's really kind of I call it like having your best friend by your side to hold your hand while while you're doing this. But your best friend also happens to be like a Vegan expert. 

 

[00:27:46] Yeah, absolutely. I like the guided prompts. I think they're necessary, you know, to get anyone going. And I think that that Japanese philosophy is winning the award for this year for me. I've got a lot of people bring up different key aspects, that they have an icky guy and different things that they've kind of dropped into and thought this is life changing. And I was like, all right, we all need to take a trip to Tokyo and start reading again. 

 

[00:28:14] But I am. I love that. 

 

[00:28:16] I haven't ever heard of them, Kysen. And I'm going to look it up and look more into it. And it's true. We can't hear certain truths enough. You know, of course, every mountain has begun with a step, every skyscrapers, the first stone. But we just don't put that in place enough. And it's also very, very difficult without prompts that you're offering to know how and where to begin. Even as an adult, as it is a grown woman running, you know, a very full load. I, I still find it difficult nature and figuring out the first step of a new endeavor. I'm wondering looking forward to the future. You've got you know, you've got a lot of balls in the air and there's a lot of pivot's and things like that that you could do. And before I ask you about your goals for each of your endeavor, I'm kind of wondering everyone I've spoken to Vegan a not over the past six months for podcasting and documentary film work, has a conversation that they've had well, since the pandemic. Let's go back to January. This changed their relationship with their business and with their the way that they are viewing their diet and food and environment and sustainability. And you don't have to be Vegan. You just have to be alive and well right now in the world to have had these conversations with yourself. And I'm wondering, because you you regularly have these conversations. It's your line of work and your vegan lifestyle. Can you speak to how the COPD 19 pandemic has altered or changed or reinstated some of your core truths or axiomatic beliefs? 

 

[00:29:53] Yeah, I would say it's reinforced and reinstated them, as you're saying, and it's quite interesting because there is a wonderful research organization out there called Analytics and they are dedicated to helping those of us who are Vegan with proper research in which to which to use to influence others. And they came out with a wonderful study. And I actually wrote an article that really just took all the aspects of their study on Koban 19 and what people understood about this and where it originated from. And I believe it was something like 16 percent, maybe a little bit more of people even understood how Koven 19 originated. And then it came from animals and then it came from having lively animals and dead animals in close proximity and from these wet markets. So whereas vegans are immersed in this knowledge on a day to day basis. You know, we've seen these types of things before. We've seen mad cow disease. We've seen these things, the jet. We have to understand that the general population isn't necessarily immersed in this. So I'm hoping that there is a silver lining to this and that that silver lining will be a greater awareness that when we when we intrude upon nature, we are not just harming nature. We truly are harming ourselves. We can't we can't do it and not have it come back and bite us in the ass. It's just wrong. So even if there are those among us who haven't yet reached a point of empathy for animals and for other species, if they have empathy for their for the human race or for their own families or their own selves. This should be proof that we have to respect all living beings. 

 

[00:32:01] Yeah. And I think you said it best when you said, you know, for things not to turn around and come bite us in the ass. 

 

[00:32:07] And, you know, in early childhood, one of the first markers is when you're raising children or even in child psychology is called object permanence. 

 

[00:32:16] And it's the understanding that when something disappears, it's not truly just dropped off the face of the earth. And once a child realizes that their entire cognitive psyche kind of shifts in their personality changes and it's the same thing, the idea that there's this free lunch, that you could be hurting an animal, an environment in the world and not have it somehow come back to affect you and your own kin, one day is virtually impossible. And we've all known it since we were about two and discovered object permanence. You know, simply something not seen doesn't mean it won't come back to affect you again or doesn't exist. And so I think that is really, really great observation. I'm wondering, when you look at you just came out with your book and it's like you being in labor and my asking you when you're having your next child, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Do you see more books in your future as far as did you receive enough gratification out of it, or will you just really focus on this one for the next couple of years and then look at it? 

 

[00:33:14] So I appreciate your calling this a book. I think of it more as a book written by the person who has it more than myself. In the past, I wrote two books that took years to write each one. Mostly, though, I guess the most popular one was called Canine Neutra Genomics. And Nutro Genomics is the science of how nutrition affects our genome. Back then, I was not Vegan and I would write a very different view of that now, but nevertheless, it was. It didn't take quite a long time and was definitely about a three year birthing process. I think the beauty of this journal is that in it it really while it's my brain child and I'm very close to it, I'm giving it over more readily to other people to really make it their own. So I actually do have a kind of accompaniment to it in the works right now that I you know, it's kind of like, oh, I can now do this with this and guide people in this way and I can do this with this. So it's kind of gotten a lot of the wheels turning as to where can I go with this, because I think you seem to say the guided journal is help you and they really help me and journaling really helps me. So I'm at a point where I'm thinking, what more can I do with this to help people? I would also eventually like to do some some courses, maybe an online course. And again, that would be to help the. Every day, woman is struggling already with other aspects of her life to find balance and to make veganism a part of her life. It might not be able to be the all encompassing. You know, I think about this, you know, all day, every day. But I am Vegan and it's part of my identity and I'm putting that out there to the world. That's the type of woman that I'm hoping might want to grow more and take a course on on how to do this. So absolutely. 

 

[00:35:24] And I think you're right about that. Will there be so the courses I'm assuming would go through, she goes Vegan. Do you think you'll do any partnership thing or will you ever look into, like, bringing anyone else on? 

 

[00:35:37] I've talked to a lot of Vegan business owners that get very into the power of partnership being and multiplying the voice or sponsorships and things like that. It kind of depends on how you want to cut it and there's short term partnerships and things of that nature. But have you ever considered doing that or you're just you're just still kind of developing her as she is? 

 

[00:35:55] Yeah. Right now, I'm still in the development phase with the when I wrote the books on canine nutrition, I did partner with a very well-respected veterinarian. And that makes sense at that time. On the Vegan journey that I'm on now, right now in the development phase, I'm going to see where it takes me as a solo kronur. But I never say no to amazing opportunities and partnerships. So we'll see. It's really like a sort of we'll see how it develops type thing. 

 

[00:36:30] Yeah, absolutely. Well, I always wrap up beyond while I try to wrap up with everybody who's authored, you know, books and things of that nature. 

 

[00:36:38] I think that there is a lot of advice that you offer and you go through and some things resonate more with the author themselves and other things. And I'm curious to ask you kind of as my final inquiry today, looking at the fuck. Yeah, I'm going Vegan Interactive Journal. 

 

[00:36:53] You have this interactive guide, but you offer a lot of information or these very utility based steps that are very realistic, like you said, for implementation of taking technique from philosophy to everyday practice. And I'm wondering if you picked like a top two or three of those pieces that were you considered to be kind of your your take away points? What would they be? 

 

[00:37:20] Are we talking in the context of going Vegan? Yeah. 

 

[00:37:23] When did the Journal capturing I mean, you have these ideas of goals and motivation and things like that, like what would be the top three things that you would hope to take away from? You know, using the journal would be at first blush. 

 

[00:37:36] Yeah, I would hope the top three things would be. You said it really, really well, sort of. It's a combination of utilitarian and self discovery. So I would hope the top three things would be to take the guesswork out of the process, to actually know that on week one. Here's what I'm going to do. And on week 10. I'm now here and here's here's my next step. So really having it be very utilitarian. And then, you know, at the same time, kind of the second point would be that I get to now go on my own journal of self discovery while I'm doing this, which is just so important, because if we do anything without understanding why we're doing it, that's when it won't stick. So the combination of the utilitarian than the self discovery with the guided journal, and then it also enables us another practicality is to actually sort of have a mindfulness food planner where we're not just I as I as I'm talking, I guess I really enjoyed the combination of the practical and the mindful. So the food prep planner and the meal planner, they enable you to lay these things out. But they also ask you questions like, who was I with when I eat this? How did I feel? How did they make me feel? Because maybe you're with somebody. And they said, oh, really? You're going to, you know, have that veggie burger for lunch. You know, how can you eat that or don't you will meet Allard's and we might not think about it or give it much importance in the moment, but it affects us because part of going vegan is what I've experienced and learned from others is how we're perceived when we go to family gatherings, when we're with friends. So those are really the top three things. You know, how do I do this on a utilitarian basis and then how am I processing this emotionally and mindfully? 

 

[00:39:40] Yeah, absolutely. That's and it's exciting. I think everyone should jump on and check it out. Download even if you're Vegan do it. Buy it. Yes, I am. 

 

[00:39:49] I am so thankful for your time today, Diana. We are out of time. But I just wanted to say I really appreciate you. I know you're busy. 

 

[00:39:56] You've got a lot of projects in the works and things that have just launched. And I feel really honored that you took the time to speak with myself and let our audience hear about all of your knowledge and your personal stories within that. Thank you so much. 

 

[00:40:08] Well, thank you, Patricia. I am so grateful you've had me on and it's been a real pleasure. Thank you. 

 

[00:40:14] Definitely. And for everyone listening, we have been speaking with Diana levered to Doenitz you. She's a founder and author. You can find her more about her. On she goes. Vegan dot com. And thank you for giving us your time today. And still, we speak again next time. 

 

[00:40:31] Remember to eat clean and responsibly, stay in love with the world and always bet on yourself.

Speaking With Isabelle Steichen; Founder, Certified plant-based nutritionist, and Podcaster

Today I am speaking with Isabelle Steichen. Isabelle Steichen grew up in Luxembourg and moved from Europe to the US in 2013. She also transitioned to a plant based diet the same year and her decision was driven by ethical, environmental and heath reasons. As a long time passionate vegan, certified in plant based nutrition from e-Cornell, as well as the founder of the Plantiful Podcast, she is now combining her startup background with her desire to spread plant based eating with her new business Lupii. Lupii is here to help people live plantiful lives through the power of the small-but-mighty lupini bean, which is not only good for humans but also for mama nature. 

www.getlupii.com

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. 

 

TRANSCRIPTION

* Please note this is an automated transcription, please excuse any errors or typos

 

[00:00:00] In this episode, I had the opportunity to sit down with founder, certified plant based nutritionists and podcasters Isabella Steichen key points addressed where Isabella's company, Lupi, a company producing products based on the powerful Lapine Bean. Isabella and I also discussed the various terms and subsequent conditions involved in the plant based food industries and how this translates to the current state of the worldwide covered 19 pandemic. Stay tuned for my fascinating chat with Isabella Steichen. 

 

[00:00:39] My name is Patricia Kathleen. And this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. The dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. If you're enjoying these podcasts, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Fasting and roundtable topics they can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen ICOM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Being and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. 

 

[00:01:36] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. 

 

[00:01:38] And today I'm sitting down with Isabella Steichen. She's the founder, a certified plant based nutritionist and podcast. Or you can find out more about the information we talk about today. And her company on Get Lupi dot com. That is g. T. L. You p. I dot com. Welcome, Isabel. 

 

[00:01:56] Hey, it's nice to be here. I'm excited. Thank you for having me. 

 

[00:01:59] Absolutely. I'm excited to talk to you as well. I like your company. We talked off the record briefly about it. The Web site presence and everything else. I think it's really cool what you're doing with it and for everyone listening. I will read a quick bio on his web before I do that. A roadmap of today's podcast, in case you would like to forecast the trajectory of our rhetoric. We'll first be looking at Isabelle's academic and professional background and personal plant based journey leading up to launching her company. And then we will directly turn into unpacking Lupi and the plant. It's a plant based protein for planet based people. The company itself has products will unpack that. We'll also get into the logistics of the who, what, when, where, how and why for all of you nerdy entrepreneurs and founders out there that care about those back end deals. And then we will also look at the ethos of the company and the impetus for launching it. And within that, we'll look at rhetoric regarding the responsibility, environmentally stable questions, as well as the questions we're getting. The pandemic of covered 19 and how those interplay with a lot of the ethos around companies like this. And then we'll wrap everything up with goals that the company and Isabella herself is looking to towards for the next one to three years. As promised, a quick bio on Isabel before I start prepping, peppering her with questions. Isabel Steichen grew up in Luxembourg and moved from Europe to the US in 2013. She also transition to a plant based diet. The same year. And her decision was driven by ethical, environmental and health reasons. Since moving to New York City, Isabelle worked closely with founding teams for various early stage RBC backed startups in the food and tech space. Her first role was at Kitchen Surfing and on Demand Chef Service Startup, where she launched the business in new markets and scaled the OnDemand chef team. Most recently, Isabelle ran the operations and customer service team at SOYER, a Brooklyn based education software company. As a longtime, passionate Vegan certified in plant based nutrition from Cornell, as well as the founder of the Plentiful podcast, she is now combining her startup background with her desire to spread plant based eating with her new business. Loopy Loopy is here to help people live. Plant four lives through their power of the small but mighty Lapine Bean, which is not only good for humans but also for momma nature. So and again, the website is Get Lupi dot com. 

 

[00:04:31] So Isabelle, before we launch into Get Lupi, I'm hoping that you can kind of draw us an academic background and early professional life as well as like your plant Vaisse journey and how that all kind of led you into launching Get Lupi. 

 

[00:04:52] Yeah, totally. So as you mentioned earlier, I actually grew up in Luxembourg, which is a small little country in Europe, and went to elementary and high school there. And then I moved to France to go and get an undergrad degree. And then also I went to grad school in France. So I studied political science and econ during undergrad. And I actually did a study abroad here in the United States during undergrad. I went to Hamilton College, which is a small liberal arts school upstate New York. So I got kind of a feel for this state then for American education while I was there. 

 

[00:05:32] And then I decided to go back to Paris and pursue a master's degree in urban planning. And so urban planning is like all about city design and thinking about how people behave and live in urban spaces and knowing that, you know, the world is moving towards more urbanization. That was something that I was always really interested. I'm passionate about and thinking about cities from a holistic perspective. And so that's what I went to school for. And then I ended up moving to the states in 2013. So right when I finished grad school, that was motivated by the fact that I had met my husband's undergrad. When I studied abroad of Hamilton, I met him. He's American. He went to school here. We started dating. And we did long distance for a while. 

 

[00:06:20] And then I you know, I had studied urban planning and had actually specialized on North American cities. So it felt like moving to New York was a great way for me to bring or kind of start my professional career, but also be with the person who I love. And so I ended up moving here and I worked in urban planning for about a year or so. I worked for a nonprofit that was managing one of the neighborhoods around Bryant Park, as well as the park itself. And I really loved the team there and I loved the mission. But I felt I felt that I wanted something very different. And I had a few friends that were working for startups. And so I started getting really curious about that. You know, the education space in Europe is different, but also the professional space when it comes to startups innovation. It's just very different. I think it's very much based on how kids are raised in Europe. And I think there's just maybe different incentives around innovation, but it's just not as evolved as it is in the States. And so I was very intrigued by that. 

 

[00:07:27] And I ended up getting my first job at an early stage tech food startup called Kitchen Surfing, as you mentioned in the bio. It was. Did the service change the business more? I mean, to change the business model a few times. But it was in a nutshell, like an On-Demand chef service. So we were basically deploying chefs on a weekly night and sending them to people's homes and having them cook meals there with like 30, 40 minutes and then move on to the next person's home. So it was this really interesting tech enabled food startup that was very specific to the New York City market, actually, because nowhere else, I think, in the world. Is there a need for like this, like rapid service that that exists in New York. So was there for a while and helped to scale the team and expand the business into new markets. And really, I would say that was I called the startup bucket there because I really loved being part of the early stage team. I loved how I saw that anything and everything I was doing had a direct impact on the outcome of the business and the trajectory of the business. And I was employee, I think there were seven or eight there. 

 

[00:08:37] And so I saw the team grow and double and triple in size and move from like a townhouse and go like Brooklyn, which is very far from Manhattan to, you know, a fancy office in Soho. And so really saw the company go through very different stages. 

 

[00:08:55] And that really made me so much more excited even about being part of a startup. And just seeing the direct impact of your work on an everyday basis like that. And so I ended up spending my career on the last year years for various different startups, mostly actually in the tech space. And most recently I was with Sawyer, which is an amazing online platform and software company for education businesses. And I learned a ton about product development and tech and coding and things like that that I never thought I would ever be exposed to. 

 

[00:09:34] And so I think that would be the second piece that I love about startups is that, you know, you get hired for a specific role, but really you do a lot of different things and you grow in two different roles throughout the life span of the company and really evolve and learn new skills. And that's something that. I truly appreciate. I like the fact that you can really acquire very new skill sets when you're exposed to things that, you know, just come up like they do in a startup. Well, you have to be nimble and adapt and have a growth mindset. And so. Yeah. So that's a little bit about my my professional background in a nutshell. And then you asked about my plan based journey. And I think it's very much linked to my whole trajectory, especially since I moved to the States. I decide to go Vegan when I moved here. And it wasn't coincidental in the sense that I had been playing or playing with the thought of totally cutting out animal products for a while. 

 

[00:10:37] But I grew up in a I wouldn't say very traditional European family. And I had a French grandmother and cheese was an essential part of our culture. And so where a lot of meat dishes. But I personally always struggled with the concept of eating animals and why we were making a distinction between the animals that we loved, like our dogs and cats and the animals that we did end up on our plate. And so I always wanted to be vegetarian or be getting. But growing up with my family, that just was not an option. And then when I moved out from home to France for undergrad and grad school, I pretty much was vegetarian because I was cooking for myself. And then I started just getting more and more into researching, you know, the sustainability aspects and the economic aspects of animal agriculture and realized that especially in the states, it's a it's a you know, it's up a scale that is just very hard. In terms of animal ethics. 

 

[00:11:40] And so I put all of that together and I decided to go vegan when I move to New York because I felt culturally more free to express that part of my identity in a in a city that is so diverse and so open minded, where so many people follow different diets. There was no judgment associated to me eating plant based or being Vegan. And so took that leap. And then I really went on a journey, I want to say, because I started learning more and more about it and I started this podcast is like a side project to my full time job. And my husband, who, you know, is grew up in a very traditional American diet, ended up going vegan a few years ago, totally kind of motivated by by by himself coming coming to it more from the health angle. And so I ended up doing a plant based nutrition certification to learn more about plant based eating and health and put all of that together. I realized that, you know, one of the things that I want to do is how people empower them to make more mindful choices when it comes to our food, mindful choices for themselves, for their health, but also for the environment and the sustainability of our planet. And so it all kind of came together and culminated with me launching Lupi because I was able to bring my startup background, an early, early stage company background, and combine that with this deep passion that I have for her to plan a space. 

 

[00:13:12] Yeah, well, so here in lies. I always wait for my guests to drop it first. I try to see how long I can go. But you did enter into mix the two terms and you said that, you know, you became Vegan. 

 

[00:13:26] And I always use the term plant based, particularly with people who have companies such as yourself, because that seems to be the chosen term. But before we get into any more dialog about how the two of us see or don't see the term, similarly, how do you define Vegan and how do you define plant based? 

 

[00:13:44] Yeah, that's a great question. So I would call Lupi a plant based company, because we are making foods out of plants and we are not here to prescribe any ethical convictions on people. I do think that veganism has an ethical connotation. And I would refer to myself as being an ethical vegan in the sense that I'm trying to avoid plen animal based products in all areas of my life. So I don't wear leather or wool and I don't eat any animal products. And that's very important to me. On a personal level. But that I feel is very much a personal choice. And what we do with Lupi is help people who are trying to eat more clients, include more plants in a sustainable way into their diets. And so I think that's where I see the distinction. I see that there is an ethical connotation of veganism and a more healthy connotation of plant based eating. I am both right. I'm a fan base leader. I care about it for health perspectives. But I also from a health perspective. But I'm also vegan. I want to add here that these terms and terminology can be problematic at times because it seems very binary. It seems like, you know, my co-founder, Ali, always talks about how she like I actually don't want a label because I find that limiting the sentence. And I think she's very right about that, because I think you need to think about this as a spectrum and not as a binary choice. And so I think what turns a lot of people off is when you hear Vegan, you think you have to be like militant or do everything in a prescribed way. And I just don't think that that is what veganism should be about or plumpness eating should be about. 

 

[00:15:35] Yeah. And likewise, on the other end of that pendulum is people who feel comforted by the umbrella. You know, plant bases become one of the top 10 key marketing terms for every industry, like fortified with vitamin D was in the 80s, you know, and so people are saying things are plant based on their label if it has any kind of a vegetable in it. 

 

[00:15:56] And it could be a product that is strictly not Vegan. And worse, it could have preservatives. It's starting to become this very wishy washy, untrustworthy term. And so I think it's it's it's cool for me because I love the opportunity to make people redefine themselves and to look into how people are defining their terms. And it's causing a lot of questions to come out. And so and I didn't you know, having one term to describe 16 things is really complicated. So having Vegan plant based in 50 more doesn't bug me. But not having people question or define themselves, I think is where a lot of the inconsistencies are coming from. So I'm glad that you did. And since you used Lupi as an example, let's kind of climb into what it is you and I talked about my first observations when I hit your website. I was, you know, immediately presented with iconography and we call it art back in the day. But pictures and photographs that for me had this kind of throwback feel to the 70s, you have a great deal of representation of different ethnic groups and generations and things like that. And it's all based around this product that you have. So can you start off by telling us what the products are that you create and then we'll get into the logistics of the company? 

 

[00:17:15] Yeah, totally. Yeah. So. So Lupi is here to help people live plant for life. So whatever that means for you, no matter if you're trying to be 100, some plant base or if you're just dabbling. We want to be here for you and we want to be inclusive in that way. And so I think when you point out how the website speaks to you from this inclusiveness perspective, I think that's something that feels really that we feel very strongly about, is that we don't want to alienate people and we want to meet people where they are. We launched Lupi in January. So we are we are celebrating company and we launched our first suite of products, which are two would be bite's. 

 

[00:17:53] And so to be by it's this little scrap or Secombe in three different flavors currently taking your lemon cranberry peanut butter counted and with better cinnamon raisin or the three different flavors. 

 

[00:18:05] And that's the first product of hopefully many. So how we see Lupi is we see it as a platform for this incredible ingredient called Luchini B, which is kind of underrated and undiscovered here in the United States. So it's an ingredient that is originally from Europe, from the Mediterranean region in Italy. And Greece has been consuming lapine beans for, I want to say centuries. But it's something that I had been researching and thinking a lot about. How how does nobody interstate's know about this being that happens to be to being with the highest concentration of pompous protein. When I know that a lot of kids are struggling with nutrition and specifically with protein when it comes to eating Clockface. And so we are here to hero this ingredient and build a platform for it through. Through Luby and through what we are doing. 

 

[00:18:59] Very cool. So when you went into product development, seems tricky. 

 

[00:19:04] It seems like a completely different beast when it comes to, you know, Vegan worlds and things like that. How long did it take you guys to source everything that you needed to from the manufacturer and distributing and things of that nature? Are you in? I mean, brick and mortar, everyone, you know, it hasn't really been a hot topic for it over the past couple of months due to reasons of the pandemic. Are you in brick and mortar stores or did you start with a completely virtual presence? 

 

[00:19:31] Yes, these are great questions. So starting with your last question, first, our initial launch strategy was only focused on physical distribution. So we were in about 40 accounts in the New York City area, mostly independent health stores and independent grocery stores. And then we were selling directly to office spaces as well as yoga studios engines. And so a lot of that has been obviously put on hold due to what's going on in the world. And to react quickly, shift gears and focus on our online distribution. 

 

[00:20:03] And we always have the website. We always had an online storage was in our focus as it is a very distinct channel. And so we just took our playbook for it out the window and created a new one and focused on that. And so we are now available mostly through the Web site. And then we saw on some other platforms like Amazon and Bubble and some some other online retailers. In terms of your question of how long has this all, how long does this all take? So I want to maybe put it together and like the different steps and pieces. So I had been really fascinated by this ingredient. 

 

[00:20:40] And I really mean that, like reading everything and talking to everyone who knew anything about it. Well, both people in the States as well as abroad for a few years now. And I have been playing around with it in my kitchen and making different variations of recipes and loopy, loopy bites originally was actually two rounds and it were this little around balls that I'd made them all types of different flavors. 

 

[00:21:06] And I did sell them for a split second at a store. I'd like a Vegan. She started at Vegan specialty store in Brooklyn and down the street for me, just to kind of test like, was there a market? Was there interest? And it all kind of came together in fall of 2018 where I decided to leave my last full time job. And through various kind of opportunities, I was connected with a startup studio in Manhattan called Human Ventures and Day. They like to invest in two entrepreneurs and businesses that have a positive impact on humans on the planet and the environment. And so I we connected with a founder, Heather, and clearly I saw that there was an opportunity for us to work together. 

 

[00:21:51] So I basically started working with them and and kind of took this idea. That was Luby before it was Lupi. 

 

[00:22:04] And it's a bunch of market research and made everything a little bit tighter and then realized that if I wanted to launch a food business, I needed to get some expertize from the food world and food space. And so luckily, I was introduced to Ali, who's today my co-founder. I'm through a kind of connection. We both I remember when we grab coffee for the first time on a Saturday morning, we were both, like, not really thinking much of it. And when we met, it was kind of like love at first sight. We we share a passion for eating the both plant based leaders. And she was ready to leave her job and jumped into this with me. And her background is in traditional CPG. She's worked for Pepsi and for a few other bigger companies and the more corporate space and has been mostly focused on branding and marketing. So my ops experience in startups and her experience and branding and marketing was a great combination. So we got together and that's when we really started functioning the recipe and scaling it from my home kitchen to a commercial kitchen to then a Coke hopper. And that's when we started building up the brand and the supply chain. 

 

[00:23:19] So we did find over the last year, you know, we officially start working together in May of last year. And so for six months, we were just heads down focused on all of these moving pieces. And then we ended up launching come January 1st of this year. 

 

[00:23:34] Fantastic. Congratulations. Did you guys take funding or was it bootstrapped? 

 

[00:23:38] Yeah, we did. To take some Creecy funding from Human Ventures to UPS to do that. And they were super excited about the idea. So they invested. But, you know, we are a scrappy early stage startup. It's just Ali and myself. And then we have a really amazing person on a team, Meghan, who is doing all of our social and so much more. And we were getting some help with fulfillment. But that's basically it. We're still a really small team and trying to be really, really scrappy. 

 

[00:24:09] Absolutely. 

 

[00:24:10] I'm wondering with especially with startups, you know, it feels like because of the scrappiness, you're talking about this kind of Alleycat mentality. A lot of people have. 

 

[00:24:22] I find that younger the company, the more apt and prone they are to addressing, you know, a conversation or a dialog between their company or their product and customers regarding Kofod and and in particular, you know, plant based Vegan companies have this very delicate but important narrative with that, because, you know, the analysis, regardless of where you stand on the history of the epithet or the pandemic or any of that which this podcast is not endeavor to look into, what it has done for the majority of civilization has caused people to reanalyzed food sources and and health and really look at what health is in this latter day and what it means to someone and your company being this company based on this very healthful product. You know, the Lupino being and I'm wondering if you have had a chance to you and your co-founder, Ali, if you guys have spoken about messaging that for your customer moving forward. 

 

[00:25:25] Yeah, I mean, I think health is is an essential part of what we are trying to do with Lupi. You know, what makes us different is not only that we're using Lapine beans, which are these incredibly powerful, which fish Latricia's and little beans, but also the fact that we're using the whole being an albar. There is no other protein bar that it's using the whole bean. And why is that important? Because you get all the fiber so you don't get something super process of a stripped of nutrition. You get the real whole ingredients. And there has been a trend over the last few years and I see a trend. But really, it's a movement towards eating more real food. And that's really what we're spending for. So all of our bars in five or six ingredients, you can identify all of them. They are simple. They are, you know, straightforward. There's nothing hidden in it. And so I think that that's really essential. And we we have found that our consumers really, truly resonate with the fact that it's a wholesome product, that it's made out of whole real ingredients. In a way, it's something you could make in your kitchen at home. And I think that's one of the value crops when it comes to the pandemic. 

 

[00:26:33] I think what's interesting this time around is that, you know, people are suffering obviously economically and financially, not only from a health perspective, but it's very different than what happened, for example, in 2008, I think, where, you know, there was a lot. 

 

[00:26:50] It was a big economic impact on people's lives. Then people will stop spending money on certain things in those times. What we've seen here is there's actually been a focus of consumers, of spending money on healthy, real, wholesome products. And it's almost like people are rewarding themselves and they are investing into their health. And I think it's one because we are in 2020 and people. There has been a shift. Like I said, in terms of people's mindset around eating better, we'll hold some food and realizing it can be delicious and convenient and still really good for you. But also, this pandemic, you know, it is health related. It is all about how, you know, how can you protect yourself as much as possible from the impact. And I think investing into your health, eating good food, taking care of your sleep and your stress levels is something that you can do and you have control over. And I think consumers are really resonating with that understanding. 

 

[00:27:49] Yeah, absolutely. And to that end, I'm wondering, have you guys looked down the road in your goal of making? Have you thought about future products or future flavors on the product? 

 

[00:27:58] Has it was any of that ever written into, like the beginning plans of what you're doing? And if so, can you enumerate on what they are? 

 

[00:28:04] Yeah, totally. So, yes, we have a lot of ideas, a lot of thoughts and a lot of things in the making. Obviously, you know, we are Starbucks, so we we're always changing things and adapting to the environment. We're definitely thinking about a few new flavors in the future. So that's definitely in the pipeline. We have been talking and thinking about other products, and I think that will be very much driven by what our consumers want because we want to co create this company and Lupi and the products with our consumers. But the cool thing is Luchini beans are very versatile and they can be adapted and used in different applications. So there's definitely a lot of opportunity there. 

 

[00:28:49] Yeah, it's an exciting time for you guys. And as things, you know, as hopefully as as a cure comes forward from the pandemic or an immunization, at the very least we can return and, you know, we can start looking forward to new products from you guys. That's going to be exciting. Isabel, we are out of time. But I want to say thank you so much for speaking with us about your company and all of your Vegan knowledge. I really do appreciate it and appreciate your time today. 

 

[00:29:19] Thank you so much for having me. It was really awesome talking to you. 

 

[00:29:22] Absolutely. For everyone listening, we've been speaking with Isabel Steichen. She's founder, a certified plant based nutritionist and podcast. Or you can find out more about her and her company on Get Lupi dot com. Thank you for giving us your time today until we speak again next time. 

 

[00:29:39] Remember to eat clean and responsibly, stay in love with the world and always bet on yourself. Such as? 

Chatting With Julieanna Hever; Plant-Based Dietitian, Author, TEDx speaker, and instructor

Today I am chatting with Julieanna Hever. Julieanna Hever, MS, RD, CPT, The Plant-Based Dietitian, has a BA in Theatre and an MS in Nutrition, bridging her biggest passions for food, presenting, and helping people. She has authored five books, including The Healthspan Solution, Plant-Based Nutrition (Idiot’s Guides), and The Vegiterranean Diet, and two peer-reviewed journal articles on plant-based nutrition for healthcare professionals.

HealthspanSolution.com and PlantBasedDietitian.com

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. 

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note this is an automated transcription, please excuse any errors or typos

[00:00:00] In this episode, I had the opportunity to speak with plant based dietitian, author and Ted speaker Julianna Hever key points addressed were three of her five books titled The Health Span Solution, Plant based Nutrition and the Vegetarian Diet. We also get into the current trends and terminology in the ever changing science and community of fasting, while discussing how she helps her audience incorporate fasting into their lives. Stay tuned for my awesome chat with Julianna Hever. 

 

[00:00:36] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen.COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. Hi, everyone, and welcome back. 

 

[00:01:30] I'm Patricia, your host, and today I'm speaking with Julianna Hever, she is a plant based dietitian, author and Ted speaker. You can find out more on both of her Web sites. Health span solution, dot com and plant based dietitian, dot com. Welcome, Julianna. 

 

[00:01:46] Thank you so much for having me. 

 

[00:01:48] Absolutely. I look forward to unpacking everything that you've done. And for everyone listening or watching Vodcast, we will first. 

 

[00:01:54] Well, we'll read a bio on Julianna. But before I do that, to give you a roadmap of what we'll be looking at today and kind of unearthing, I'm going to look at three of her books. Julianne has written several books, and namely, I'm going to look at three, the vegetarian diet. Number one, the second one, we plant based Nutrition Idiot's Guide. And third one will be the Health Spend Solution published in 2019. And outside of that, we'll unpack kind of the ethos and the philosophy behind that. We will also begin with an academic, personal and professional platform. I'll ask you in on it to define kind of how she came to writing these books and other works that she's working on within her Web sites. We'll also get into some of the specifics in the ethos behind terms and terminology in the current climate. Discussing the Kofod 19 pandemic briefly and some of the terms that are ever changing in the world of veganism and vegetarianism. We'll wrap everything up with it. Goals and advice. Giuliani may have for her current work endeavors or even personal endeavors. So a quick bio as promised on Juliana. Juliana Giuliani is an M.S. R.D. CBT, the plant based dietician, has a B.A. in theater and an M.S. in nutrition, bridging her biggest passions for food, presenting and helping people. She has authored five books, including Health Spend Solution, Plant based Nutrition, Idiot's Guide and the Vegetarian Diet, and two peer reviewed journal articles on plant based nutrition for health care professionals. She was the host of What Would Juliano Do? Gave a TED talk and instructed for the E Cornell plant based nutrition certification program. She's appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, Harry and The Steve Harvey Show. Julianna is the co-founder and nutrition director for Afro's, co-host of the podcast Science and Sorcery. And she speaks, she speaks and consults with clients around the globe. You can find her again at Plett, these dietician, icon and health spend solution Duckhorn. So, Juliano, I'm excited to kind of climb through. You are no stranger to being peppered with questions, but prior to getting into your current works, the three books we mentioned, I'm hoping you can kind of draw an academic and professional background and intermixed with your own personal narrative or story regarding vegetarian and vegan lifestyle. 

 

[00:04:17] Oh, there's. Where do we begin? Well, I was always interested in nutrition and fitness. Always like since I was a child, I have audiotapes of me teaching aerobics to my cousins and friends at five years old. And it was always kind of interested in learning more about what we eat and how it impacts your body and health and all that. And so I just started reading and reading, reading probably around teenage years when I stumbled upon a book called Diet for a New America and learned about the implications of what ends up on our plate. It changed me. It kind of had a really profound influence on how I saw our food and our plate. And I decided I wanted to omit animal products from my diet. But at that time, there was no Internet and there was no you know, I didn't have anyone to really go to or ask questions about. So I cut out animal products, tried to navigate the situation kind of by myself. And of course, my parents were worried about me as most parents would be because I wasn't cooking. I was I would just kind of, you know, doing my own thing. And so I they had they actually listed their friend, who is a nurse, to instill fear in me of being deficient in protein. And I heard and, you know, all that and it was effective. And I got scared back into, you know, eating the standard traditional diet. But I was still I still had a lot of question marks and I was sure that there was a way more to this story. And I just kept investigating and learning and learning. And then I became a personal trainer while I was an undergraduate because I was an actress in Los Angeles. And, you know, this is always the whole you know, I have to lose weight. You know, four camera ready, Bubba, blah. And that led me to two personal training. Fell in love with personal training because it brought my passion for fitness into being. And I started training. Rawly was acting on the side. But everyone started asking me questions about nutrition. And I was not willing to just, you know, regurgitate the information I had learned and aggregated in a chapter of a personal training handbook and from my own personal education. So right away, I. I signed up. I applied for graduate school and a dietetics program. And I was doing that and I fell in love. It was the first time in my life that I loved school and was getting straight A's and just loved I was just lapping it all up. The biochemistry, the clinical nutrition, just all of it. 

 

[00:06:41] And so did my internship and lots of science and learning how to dig deep into the science, something I hadn't really, you know, delved into prior to that as much. 

 

[00:06:55] And so when I finished graduate school, that's when I started going back and finding out. Oh, wait a second. Yes, you can get protein from plants and yes, you can get iron better sourced from plants. And once I found all of that and started digging and digging and digging, that was it. I changed my diet. I went all out. I was an adult. So it was it was my time I could do. I wasn't living under my parents' roof anymore. And my health changed profoundly. Just personally, I. I ameliorated lifelong sinus infections and G.I. problems. I had so many G.I. problems. 

 

[00:07:32] I was in the hospital so many times, in fact, so many times and so many different types of health care practitioners that I saw. Not once was I asked, what do you eat? Which was kind of mind blowing. So it changed my health. 

 

[00:07:45] And then I started implementing these changes with my clients and was blown away by the efficacy and the results that I was seeing with my clients that I had not seen prior when utilizing the tools that I had been given in graduate school and an internship. So once I started teaching plant based to my clients and seeing them, you know, I always say results are typical. They would get off their medications. They would reverse diseases that were supposed to be lifelong, like advanced cardiovascular disease or Type two diabetes or hypertension or, you know, hyperlipidemia, things that were not supposed to get better that doctors don't expect to see you get better. They were getting better. And I it's been now 15 years and this every day. I keep saying results are typical because we see extraordinary things happen. And I'm so glad there's no looking back after that. 

 

[00:08:33] Absolutely. So I'm wondering what it sounds like you were already on this correct career trajectory as you kind of the benefits of the lifestyle start to kick in for you personally. 

 

[00:08:43] What prompted you to write your first book or endeavor in your first Web site? Which what was the first movement after you became certified? 

 

[00:08:53] That's a good question. I I was like I was transitioning because I was personal training. Got pregnant at the end of my education. 

 

[00:09:02] And then we had my first child and I was like, okay, well, my ex-husband is a physician. So he was like, okay, well, you can, you know, raise the kids. So it's like I dropped my personal training business. And that's when I just finished grad school was like, okay. So I just kept reading and learning, started changing, you know, seeing clients in a different way, not personal training anymore. And persay like not going to I was going to people's homes, you know, three times a week. And working them out like that was what I was doing prior to having babies. But then I had my two children and I was at home and I was going on weekends to see a client or work try. I was trying to integrate telehealth, which is quite interesting because now it's like this is the best time ever. But this was a long time ago before it was really a thing. So while I was at home researching, I guess, and starting to see clients kind of sporadically, I was I was asked to give talks. I was I started a Web site. I started yet I was getting on social media. And then fortuitously, because I've always wanted to write a book, I just don't know what or when or how or what. But literally, I got an email, so I it was it must have been from my blog was out there or something. And this agent who's now still my agent, reached out and said, we're looking for someone to write. It was at the time Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Nutrition. And so I basically had to do a proposal and I'd never done this before. So it was kind of this last minute does I feel like it was just this gift and I got the job. I changed the title to The Complete Idiot's Guide to Plant Based Nutrition, and it published in 2011. And it's just, you know, and that was it. And then like, for instance, after that published, I got a phone call from a producer from Dr. Oz Show, like everything just kind of sort of happened. I think plant based was becoming a huge thing. You know, especially that's part of why was transitioning away from the word Vegan because I like to focus on you. I'm an I'm a dietitian. 

 

[00:10:48] I focus on the health aspects of it. I'm not an ethicist or, you know, don't like to talk about all the other stuff that are involved in it to that now that you just dropped that. 

 

[00:10:57] That's one of my biggest questions for all guests that I try to have on in this series. And that is the number one divisive and kind of heated factor right now. 

 

[00:11:08] How do you yourself personally define Vegan and plant based. Those two terms? 

 

[00:11:14] Yes. So I did that in my first book and I've been doing ever since and every book and it has kind of evolved in and devolved and it's really interesting. So basically, the most basic way to describe it is a vegan diet is basically an exclusive definition. It means I do not eat or use animals, and that's really the extent of it. It is a diet that is does not include animals. Doesn't mean what it is. And that's why I gravitated towards the term whole food plant based diet that I was initiated by Dr T Colin Campbell. And a Whole Foods plant based diet means I eat a diet based on whole plant foods. And then we've since evolved. This are our last book. Our most recent book is The Health Band Solution, and we talk about a health band diet and we're actually even gravitating more, I guess. Away from the terms just because it's gotten so cloudy, you know, and there's as onset like ever since this happened, you know, in the last decade, even there's been a huge, huge explosion of plant based foods which aren't necessarily in alignment with a health band promoting or healthful promoting diet. Right. 

 

[00:12:24] And herein lies the rub. Regardless of the Vegan term, which a lot of people felt was politicized. 

 

[00:12:30] You're saying it's based on exclusions rather than inclusions. There's another issue with the plant based in that it's being attached like fortified with vitamin D was in the 80s. Every one who wants to push it is something healthy or good for you is saying plant based. And the item, first of all, is, you know, containing animal products. So vegans are having a hard time attaching themselves to that term anymore. And it's frequently attached to things that have preservatives and that are notoriously unhealthy. And so do you. Do you foresee something coming off the ocean that's, you know, even a newer term than plant based? Or do you think it still will be like a guiding light for people trying to do? Or will it be Whole Foods plant based, which is a new argument about this? You know, it has to be like a complete food. How do you. 

 

[00:13:16] Well, it's actually a Whole Foods plant based diet has is not new. It's an old term. And the way it's being changed, like things like, you know, saying I'm not only what's the word, it's a I can't think of the word right now that people are using a lot of. I'm blanking on the word, there's a word for it. Like, that's basically another word, another like euphemism for an omnivore diet. It'll come to me. But I am. We did change the terminology. We are seeing health span now because. Well, my focus now is on health, man and and wellness. And it's we have kind of defined that now the diet as a diet based on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices in tasty combinations of soup, salad sites and sweets. So we're kind of taking it to the next level because there is so much obfuscation when it comes to nutrition and diet and like just everywhere. And a lot of that stems from what we call macro confusion, the use of carbs, protein and fat to define food groups and to define how we eat and what we avoid. And it's absolutely meaningless. Absolutely confusing. And has we want to get that terminology out of our conversations. We want to focus on foods. So, yes, it's going to change. And it's you know, people are going to call what we know. Now, I hear plant based diets include meat, but don't exclude him. It just gets so wishy washy. And there really it doesn't really matter much because it's really semantics. 

 

[00:14:49] Well, and I think that that's the key term of having everyone who you're looking at when you're looking at worlds of veganism or any other dietary restrictions fruitarian sorry, like it's an area in which are people that are, you know, using meat flexibly or the integration of vegetables flexibly, depending on how you look at it. 

 

[00:15:08] However, I think it's very key to understand that you need to make people define their terms, which is why I asked you to define the difference for you between Vegan and plant based, because anytime you're looking at a company or an author, you need to make sure because these terms are so flexible right now, as is everything in our society in the United States, things are being redefining, redefined across the board. I think it's key to make sure that you realize how people are defining themselves into that. And I'm hoping that we can look at the vegetarian diet. 

 

[00:15:39] And let me read you a quick synopsis and then get your take on what that particular book is back. And then we'll double back to the plant based Nutrition Idiot's Guide, because I know that that was revamped in 2018. But you mentioned that in 2012, the vegetarian diet, and it takes that Medd to a whole new level by focusing on whole plant foods that promote long term wellness and ideal weight management. You can reap the benefits from the most research to belove diet, made even healthier the vegetarian diet and then did the things that it offers is comprehensive nutritional info, shopping lists, 40 recipes, flexible meal plans and strategy for overall health. So when you launched this in 2012, it was again a little bit before its time when Mediterranean diets were just kind of being analyzed for obviously their cardiovascular health and things of that nature. What what was your main impetus for writing this book? 

 

[00:16:35] Well, yes, actually, I was looking at the literature on the Mediterranean diet that's quite old. You know, since maybe 50, 60, 70 started in the 1950s, 1960s at that point. It's like that's when it all kind of evolved. And what happens every year is that we get these reports. You know, the best diet, the healthiest diet, because people always kind of looking for that. And the Mediterranean diet kind of wins almost every year. You know, the healthiest diet for cardiovascular disease for for everything. And I was looking at the literature on wholefood plant based diet where quite literally, it's the only diet that has ever reversed advance stage cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes. It has so much amazing evidence supporting the reduction of medication, all the things I noted before that I witnessed now with clients. And there's just a plethora of research showing that. So I kept wondering, well, why is the Mediterranean diet getting all the props when look at what a plant based diet really can do. And so that made me kind of want to dig deep and go all the way back to the beginning of the so-called Mediterranean diet, which really originated with and so Ki's work. And that's where it was really brought back to the United States. And what I determined and what I looked at was, well, wait a minute, the actual the actual diet was mostly a whole food plant based diet, predominantly based on eating whole plants. It wasn't the fish and the olive oil and the red wine that we've kind of interpreted it now. You know, convenience is like, oh, I'm just going to pour some olive oil all over my steak and have a glass of red wine and I'm going to get all the benefit. And that just simply isn't true. So I kind of identified a few reasons why it was effective. And mostly mostly because it's a whole food plant based diet. 

 

[00:18:21] Yeah, absolutely. And I think it impacts it fairly well from the skimming I did of it. Turning back to plant based Nutrition Idiot's Guide, and you offer a new food triangle, which I know is kind of the the beginners look into, you know, reassessing what we all were taught as children about food I think still are. 

 

[00:18:40] The food triangle, as far as I know, is still ridiculously disproportionate and funded by the industries that it represents. But I think that you offering the new perspective of the macro in nutrients that you were kind of discussing and the latest science on the. Different priorities. Common recipes and different things like that health span, as you mentioned, in menus, when you talk about, you know, a complete guide. Do you feel like someone who doesn't know anything about veganism can go out picture or purchase this book, garner a really good sense of the diet of plant based? You know, hopefully a plant based diet as well as kind of implementation steps, or does it feature more one aspect than the other? 

 

[00:19:25] No, it's it's an idiot's guide. And I mean, some people say, how could this be an idiot's guide? It's really scientifically intensive, but it is used for the lay person. And it is a reference. It is. We put so much into this book. It's like all the whys, all the research behind it. We weren't allowed to reference in that book. So we're excited about our new book where we were able to include the references. And we both, between me and my partner, recognized we have about five papers on plant based diet that are really well referenced specifically for physicians and health care professionals. But that's what the whole what we love about the Idiot's Guide plant based intuition is that it's it's for everyone, like anyone could read it, understand it. And then it's not only the whys in the background, but it's like a chapter for children and infants and pregnancy and seniors and athletes. We work with a lot of athletes, a chapter on weight loss, like all the different populations and time of life where things may change nutritionally. And it's like everything, all what you need, what to focus on and then how to do it. So we have I think there's at least 50 recipes in the book. And, you know, what about nutrition and supplements? And there's basically like everything you need to know about eating plants is in that book. Cool. 

 

[00:20:40] I mean, that sounds great. So then it begs the question, the health span solution, which let me read you a quick synopsis with Scrubs from online. Not my words. And share the simple and effective diet that has allow their clients to lose weight. 

 

[00:20:54] Reverse disease, reduce or eliminate medication use and archive optimal health. Achieve optimal health. This accessible and easy to follow guide examines the health risks posed by a typical Western eating habits and explains a how a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices can lead to lower blood pressure, healthy weight management and longer life. So if Idiot's Guide is to this comprehensive understanding, then would you argue that the health spend solution gets into disease and disease prevention? 

 

[00:21:29] Well, OK. So the first book, The Idiot's Guide, has everything you need to know about eating plants. What I've always wanted and dreamed about and fantasized about was having a colorful cookbook with pictures and images and all of that. 

 

[00:21:43] And that's what we did with the house band solution. I came together with Ray cronies almost four years ago and our work was so synergistic he brought all of this house span of metabolism, both two very different subjects. But that was his specialty. And so it's what we kind of combined are our work. We both mean what running around the world saying things like carbs are not a food group. We both had means that we had made and everyone else was looking at us like we had two heads, which was kind of funny because our paths had never crossed. So basically, this book is kind of a beautiful collaboration of everything we've wanted to do. He went to culinary school and while I've been you know, I didn't and I as a dietician, I'm always asked to do recipes. I had my own TV show, Rove's doing recipes and developing recipes. And that just kind of evolved. And I had to teach myself, well, he's got all those actual skills that he learned. So it's been really extraordinary to put our heads together and our work together. And I think that health solution is a combination of that. It is a cookbook. It's got over 100 recipes. So the emphasis is on food. But what we did really kind of crazy different is that the first four chapters, instead of doing like pantry lists and ingredients and basics, what you would find in most cookbooks, we did all we we concisely compacted a ton of science into four chapters. We we're so grateful that our publishers DKA enabled does it allowed us to kind of really just deep dove into the science because we wanted to share have all these great tools like a food triangle, which is not the food pyramid or you know, we've changed it because we want to change the language of food. We want to get away from macro confusion and we define all of that in the first four chapters. So it's kind of really dense and you get everything into four chapters. And then we had a great time making delicious soup, salad sides and sweets. We got rid of breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and desserts. And we because it's we don't care about time of day eating. We just wanted to eat that list, though. That list of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lykins mushrooms, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices. So we're really excited about this book. And it's just it's just it's different. 

 

[00:23:45] It's got very similar information, distilled, but it's mostly focused on on how to do it, what to eat and how delicious eating this way really is. 

 

[00:23:55] Yeah, it's so. And I think the. Biography, probably captured on a lot of your pages, is a representation of the vibrancy of the way of eating as well. 

 

[00:24:04] Speaking to a former guest on the series just a couple of days ago who is a chef, and she just said we're drawn towards vibrant colors and he knows a plant based diet is is never there's nothing more fulfilled than that. That's why they have to put those chemicals into other things to make them more vibrant. You know, the salmon that you're eating and things of that nature and you buy raw. I'm curious, you mentioned the first few chapters being chock full of, you know, all of your scientific research and things like that. What are the top three takeaways for you? The most poignant parts about those chapters in the research that you're bringing, like your boiled down tinctures, you're axiomatic three or four points from those chapters. 

 

[00:24:44] It's a good question. I would say because we're trying to change the language. Again, macro confusion is a topic that is quite unique. And one of our biggest call to action to people, because we want people to think about food differently. And that's what we do in our lifestyle transformation company, is that we our goal is to change people's relationship with food. That is that is what we love doing. And I think that we kind of define that in the book. I would say the second thing maybe is the six daily threes. We talk about how to prioritize foods because we think about that big list of foods and all the I mean, I always say infinite combinations that we could put those ingredients together in tasty combinations. I would say that, you know, you want to prioritize from a nutritional standpoint because I still you know, I'm a dietitian. I still want people to get all their nutrition. And so we use a six daily 3s as a way to look at exactly what to kind of prioritize overall. And then, gosh, I have to pick a third one talking about health span. You know what we're talking about? There's a lot of data on health span and we're warehouse man and plant based nutrition collide. And where there's as beautiful, you know, cross CrossLink, is that perhaps a one of the reasons, you know, we always talk about the antiinflammatory benefits and what you're not getting by avoiding me and animal products, all those different things are really important and why we have all these extraordinary health advantages of eating plants, but where the housemen evidence shows and where it kind of comes together, is that the only way we've ever extended health span and longevity in all model organisms tested in a nutritional perspective from yeast to rodents to our primate cousins, is with dietary restriction without malnutrition. So while I was going around for the, I don't know, 10, 12 years before I met Raymon saying, you know, defending the adequacy of a plant based diet, you can get your like I said, where I came from, you can get your protein, you can get your iron, you can perhaps the reason it's so healthful is because of what it naturally limits. So maybe not having and, you know, not being obsessed with protein like so many people are. That is perhaps what is contributing to these health span and just wellness benefits of eating based diet. 

 

[00:27:13] Yeah, that's fascinating. It's a good flip on its head. I like that idea. 

 

[00:27:17] And investigating things from different angles. I'm wondering, are you clearly are in conversation with a great deal of colleagues and your partner that you've done a lot of these books with endeavoring? I'm wondering about any realizations you've had with the Cauvin 19 pandemic as of late in conversation with these plant based diet and the benefits that come from obviously your history with, you know, health increase performance, all of that returning to optimal health. Have you come away with any. Everyone has kind of reignited a refounded their relationship with healthy living. The world at large is starting to question unhealthy living and histories of where the food's coming from and things of that nature. But I'm asked. I'm wondering if you personally have had any new realizations in this time of quarantine and the pandemic about your own personal knowledge or trajectory with plant based living? 

 

[00:28:15] It's a good question. I don't think anything has changed for me personally. I just think it strengthens my resolve for what I've seen prior to this and what I've read and learned. And, you know, a hopeful plant based diet is extraordinary because of all of its foundational advantages. Like, you know, Anslem from an antiinflammatory. Properties are crucial, you know, not taking in things that are disease promoting, you know, the thing, the compounds that we find in animal products. The whole reason that we ended up here, perhaps, you know, the although the zoonotic impacts of of eating animals and producing animals, you know what's happening. You know, when you look at factory farming and antibiotic usage, that's where 70 to 80 percent of antibiotics are used, which is obviously propagating the whole superbugs in. And all these things that are potentially huge and could potentially cause more problems in the future. So I think that all of that. There's so many advantages to sticking to plants. I think it's also it's been interesting. As a dietitian and as a coach for my clients, because a lot of people work, they always come to me. And this is kind of the first time where they're like, oh, I have to get back in the kitchen or, you know, maybe I can't get me at the store. And so it's kind of forced people to rethink food. Like you said beautifully, it's a great opportunity. I think this is a great time. We've been trying to inspire our clients to, you know, be comfortable with just sticking to these staple foods. But it hasn't changed our approach. I would say there's going to be a lot of interesting stuff that comes out of this from a research perspective. I'm already starting to read on the initial stuff about vitamin D. We just had a wonderful interview with Paul Stamets, who's the expert in mushrooms and and that the efficacy of just of mushrooms as medicine. So there's so many amazing properties that you can get from a plant based diet. There's so many reasons to avoid animal products. And I think that this just adds to that. You know, just a very enormous reason to consider, you know, moving in this direction. I never like to tell people what they should. They have to eat or wide and then try to convince anyone, like I stop trying to convince people several years ago. But I'm happy to share as much information as I can and help people go through that process. But, you know, it's it's a very personal decision, what you put in your body. But, you know, we've seen a lot of it. It would be interesting to see later people's diets. And, you know, we've I think one of the very interesting things I've noticed, too, is that what we're hearing about that the people that have the more severe implications after they've contracted the disease are the people that know the morbidity and mortality rates with Koven, 19 happened to be coinciding with these comorbidities. And what are those comorbidities? Are things that we know can be you know, your risk can be reduced by a plant based diet. Type two diabetes. You know, obesity. All these things that we know. A plant based diet can help ameliorate would help decrease your risk. Possibly. We'll see. This can reduce your risk for certain things like what we're seeing with coronavirus. 

 

[00:31:18] Absolutely. All very good points. I'm wondering I'm looking forward to the future lot. Again, with the pandemic is a lot a lot of people as time to reflect about future prospects and goals and revamp what's important to them. 

 

[00:31:30] What do you see on your horizon? Is there another book in play? What is happening for you? I know you've got your podcast going and other current endeavors, but what goals you have moving forward? 

 

[00:31:41] Yes, well, we've been, you know, so busy with clients. Fortunately, you know, a lot of people need to get healthy and they're coming to us. And we really just want to be able to help as many people as we can. And we have to turn people away because there's only two of us right now. So we are trying to scale our company so that we get. As many people as possible, and we're building a an automated course, so a it'll be a 42 days, a six week health span transformation program that'll be all online. And so we're working on on developing content for that so that we can expand our horizons and just help as many people as possible. And there's other projects as our next book we are working right now are our publishers are asking for the proposal. So we're working on that. And there's just so many exciting things that we're doing. 

 

[00:32:27] That's wonderful. I look forward to all of it. I can't wait to investigate more about it when it comes out. We are out of time. But Julianne, I wanted to say thank you so much for speaking with us today and giving us all of your information. 

 

[00:32:39] Thank you so much for Tisha. I appreciate it. 

 

[00:32:41] Absolutely. For those of you who have been listening, we've been speaking with Julianna Haver. She's a plant based dietitian, author and Ted Speaker. You can locate more information about her on both Web sites. Health span solution, dot com and plant based dietitian, dot com. Thank you. For those of you who have been listening. We really appreciate your time today until we speak again next time. 

 

[00:33:01] Remember to eat clean, eat well, stay safe, stay in love and always bet on yourself. Sunshine.