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Stuff You Should Know: Plant-Based Diets
Episode Overview In this episode of *Stuff You Should Know*, hosts Josh and Chuck delve into the topic of plant-based diets. They discuss the various forms of plant-based eating, historical context, cultural differences in meat consumption, and the health implications associated with these diets.
Key Concepts and Discussions
What is a Plant-Based Diet?
- Definition: A plant-based diet can range from vegetarianism to veganism, including variations such as:
- Flexitarian: Primarily plant-based with occasional meat.
- Pescatarian: Includes fish but no other meat.
- Lacto-vegetarian: Includes dairy but no eggs.
- Ovo-vegetarian: Includes eggs but no dairy.
- Lacto-ovo vegetarian: Includes both dairy and eggs.
Historical Perspective
- Historical Diets: Historically, many cultures have relied on plant-based diets due to economic circumstances rather than ideology.
- Example: Irish diets before the potato famine relied heavily on potatoes.
- Cultural Differences:
- The U.S. has a high per capita meat consumption, averaging around 123-150 kg per year.
- In contrast, countries like India have a significant vegetarian population due to cultural and religious practices.
Global Meat Consumption Statistics
- World Population: An estimated 2 billion meat-based eaters versus 4 billion plant-based eaters globally.
- Regional Variations:
- African countries vary significantly in meat consumption (e.g., South Africa vs. the Democratic Republic of Congo).
- Asian countries typically consume less meat, with India having the highest percentage of vegetarians.
Reasons for Plant-Based Diets
- Health Reasons:
- Many adopt plant-based diets for health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, and obesity.
- A Mediterranean diet is often recommended for its health outcomes.
- Despite health benefits, it's crucial to be cautious of processed vegan foods.
- Animal Welfare:
- Concerns about factory farming and its treatment of animals motivate many to adopt vegetarian or vegan lifestyles.
- Ethical vegans argue against the normalized consumption of meat, promoting a philosophy of non-carnism.
- Mindful Eating:
- Increasing awareness of food choices and their impact on health and the environment.
- Environmental Impact:
- Meat production has a significantly larger environmental footprint compared to plant-based food production.
- Livestock farming contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and habitat destruction.
Nutritional Considerations
- Nutritional Deficiencies:
- Vegans are at risk of vitamin B12 deficiency since it's primarily found in animal products.
- Protein intake varies, with meat-eaters generally having higher protein consumption.
- Studies indicate potential increased risks for vegetarians and vegans related to bone fractures.
Conclusion
- The episode highlights that while transitioning to a plant-based diet can yield health and environmental benefits, it is essential to approach it mindfully and ensure a balanced intake of nutrients.
Listener Engagement
- The hosts encourage listeners to consider their dietary choices and how they can incorporate more plant-based foods into their diets.
Key Takeaways
- Plant-based diets encompass a variety of eating patterns.
- Historical and cultural contexts significantly influence dietary choices.
- Health, ethics, and environmental concerns are primary motivations for adopting plant-based diets.
- Nutritional awareness is essential for those shifting away from meat-centered diets.
This episode of *Stuff You Should Know* provides a comprehensive overview of plant-based diets, encouraging listeners to reflect on their food choices and the implications of those choices on health and the planet.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:01John Polk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Yes. Health stuff is about learning, laughing and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:49Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. and this is a good old-fashioned rootin' tootin' down-home episode of Stuff You Should Know. Technical difficulties. Please stand by. Yeah, we're a good 20 minutes late, Chuck. Man, because of, well, it's about to say me. It's not my fault. No, it's not your fault. It's the computer's fault. Not even. But who cares about computers? This is, I mean, this is probably literally the opposite of computers because we're talking about plants. Yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you, old school, Chuck, have you ever eaten a plant?
2:31I love living things, so I do not kill plants and eat them. So are you a breathitarian? That's what they are, right? Yeah, where you just don't eat? No, of course I eat plants. You know, Emily, I would argue, has a plant-based diet. Now that I know that a plant-based diet doesn't mean that you're vegan or vegetarian, and as you'll see, depending on the percentage of the website you look at, a lot of people say it really depends on how much you eat, and a certain percentage, like maybe 80 % of your diet is plant-based, and that's easily Emily. She eats vegetables constantly. She always has a radish in her hand?
3:17No, but just her meals. Like her meal, she'll cook like we try to eat the same stuff, but I don't want to sit down and eat Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower for dinner. That's a plant based diet for sure. Yeah. But she'll throw some chicken in there and some fish. So she's sort of pescatarian plus maybe. Yeah. Pescapultritarian. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of terms for all this stuff. I didn't know about a third of these probably. Yeah. They all seem to fall under the umbrella term, like you said, a plant based diet. So like a vegan diet is a plant-based diet, but not all plant-based diets are like vegan diets.
3:51Yeah. That kind of setup. I had never heard of lacto-vegetarian, which basically means throw out all the rest, but I'll eat dairy. Yeah, understandable. There's also ovo-vegetarian. These are terrible names, by the way. Yeah. That means that you include eggs in your vegan diet. Yeah, not oval. That would make even more sense, I think. No, it means that you include ovum in your diet. But I should say it's not a vegan diet at all. Like you can't have any kind of animal products in a vegan diet. Not just like meat or dairy or eggs, but like vegan won't eat honey. We talked about fig wasps recently.
4:33They won't eat figs for that reason. I think some vegans. I found a lot of support behind vegans saying like a processed wasp part in a thing is fine. Okay. I'll bet there's some that still won't. Oh, sure. And then there's also lacto-ovo-vegetarian. You're a vegetarian, but you eat eggs and dairy. There's lacto-ovo-bacon-vegetarian. And then there's what you said Emily was, pescatarian, which is… Generally. I mean, you're essentially just, you know, you're eating more vegetables than the average person at this point if you're a pescatarian, I think. That's right. No comment on what that does to your butt.
5:17What, if you just eat seafood? No, if you eat nothing but broccoli and cauliflower all day long. Oh, yeah. Not just your butt, but like the well-being of people around you, too. Yeah, but it's very good for you. She's a much healthier human than I am. Nice. Well, not the part that you're not as healthy, but I'm glad that she is. Yeah, of course. One thing we should point out early on is that there's a sort of exhaustive look at how much meat people eat around the world at a certain point or kind of peppered throughout. And just for comps purposes, in the United States, we average per capita meat consumption between 123 to 150-ish kilograms, depending on where you're looking.
6:01So just kind of put that in your back pocket when we start talking about other countries. Yeah, that really kind of came home to me when I converted it to quarter pounders. Yeah, what's that? Or in Europe, Royale with cheese. That's 1 ,332 quarter pounders a year. That means you're eating almost four quarter pounders worth of meat a day every year at 151.4 kilograms. Man, if only you could do that and live. Right. That's called heaven, my friend. So clearly with those kind of numbers, the U.S. is a meat-based culture. I mean, plenty of people here do not take part in that kind of thing, obviously.
6:43But as you'll see, many cultures around the world historically have plant-based diets and still have plant-based diets. Depending on who you ask, they might say there's about 2 billion meat-based eaters in the world and about 4 billion plant-based eaters. Yeah. So, I mean, that's not too bad. They're really holding things up. Because, I mean, actually, that's the majority. You're saying the majority of the world is plant-based diet. I'm saying$2 billion and$4 billion. I'm not weighing in on percentages. Okay. Yeah, we'll go around the world in a minute, but let's go through history for a little bit first, okay?
7:22Because plant-based diets, especially in the West, they're kind of like a new thing. Maybe they came out of the New Age movement in the 70s and 80s. No. This is really old stuff. In fact, you can make a really good case that plant-based diets, especially like a flexitarian version, is essentially the default diet of humans. Yeah. I mean, it's in some cases or actually in a lot of cases, especially historically speaking, and still in some places today, it's sort of the de facto diet because that's what you have. and you may not have the kind of money to like go get really good meat or something like that.
8:00So if you look back through time and you go back to say like Ireland in the 19th century before the potato famine, they were eating tons of potatoes. There were a lot of poor people in Ireland that were like, hey, we can grow potatoes. They have some vitamins and minerals. Maybe we can milk a cow and eat a little pickled herring. But other than that, we're eating lots and lots of potatoes. Yeah, for sure. This was before the famine when a potato blight came. And when the Irish immigrants really started to come en masse to the United States in the 19th century, they were quite surprised at the abundance and availability and cheapness of meat in the United States.
8:44And that apparently dates back to colonial times where colonists in, well, what would become the United States, were eating more meat than the average person back in England. They were eating essentially the same amount of meat as elites back in the UK. And that's the longstanding thing where meat consumption throughout history in most places is associated with a higher status, an elite status. You're wealthier because it's always been harder to come by. Well, the colonies had a lot more land, so they could grow a lot more livestock. and then hence eat a lot more meat. Yeah, had a lot more land, asterisk.
9:25Right, well put. Yeah, everyone knows what we mean by that. Yeah, and you know, there's, who helped us with the original version of this? Was it Libya? No, Laura. All right, the claw? Dr. Claw. Dr. Claw. She dug up a graph basically about how Italians eat and prior to, well, not that long ago, So they ate what you would call the Mediterranean diet now, and they just called it what we eat because that's what's around here. Right, the diet. Yeah, exactly. Fruit, vegetables, olive oil, legumes, fish, cereals, not a ton of dairy or meat. But they after, I believe after World War II, they started eating a lot more meat.
10:09Before that, it was basically a plant-based diet because as you'll see, once again, no, no, no, Chuck, they're eating lots of fish. Plant-based diet is, we're talking about meat here. Fish get a pass, I guess, as far as plant-based diet goes. It does not mean vegetarian or vegan. Right. And Italy followed the same trajectory that most nations do. Once they reach a certain point of prosperity, meat consumption just starts going through the roof. Whereas before in history, elites, like individual groups of people who are well-off or could afford meat, when an entire nation becomes well-off enough, they start buying meat.
10:46meat consumption just goes up. So after the war, Italy followed that. And you'll see like throughout throughout the world, the more prosperous a nation, the higher their meat consumption, almost almost to a country. Yeah. Which, you know, a cynic might say, well, if every every nation was prosperous, everyone would just eat tons of meat. And it sounds cynical, but like the data sort of says what you just said. Right. You know, if you look at the U.S. in the 19th century, they were roundly encouraging to people eat lots and lots of meat. There was a cholera outbreak in 1832 and the U.S. government said, eat more meat and drink more alcohol and lay off the fruits and vegetables, obviously because of cholera.
11:36But there was also just this idea in America early on that like, you know, we're well fed and we're well bred because we eat red meat and we grow big here in the States. We're not sitting around eating rice and grains and potatoes. Yeah. And that that diet has just spread throughout the world. But again, it doesn't necessarily seem to mean because people are emulating the United States, it just seems like the United States was following a trajectory that other countries are now. Right. Yeah. And Hey, what a great time to set up where countries are now. Because remember those numbers I told you about the United States.
12:14We're going to walk you around the world, everybody. Not in the Wayback Machine. What do we call this? When we're just currently... The Gophar Machine. Yeah, the Gophar and Wide Machine. Mm-hmm.
12:32modern day jump in the go far and wide machine and come with us uh at first to africa uh if you look at continent wide the stat is about 65 grams i'm sorry 65 kilograms of meat per capita uh i i wonder about that number because if you break it down for per country south africa they eat about 65.2 kilograms compared to, let's say, the Democratic Republic of Congo at just over four kilograms. Who's eating more red meat in Africa than South Africa to make that average 65? I don't know. One thing that I recognized from researching this is that there are so many stats that are so different and estimates that are just so different and don't understand why it's so hard to track something like meat consumption.
13:25Like we've got that so commoditized that, I mean, I don't understand how we can't track it. Even for the United States, you rattled off three different estimates for how much meat the United States eats. So who knows, Chuck, who really knows whether any of these numbers are correct or not? Well, no one's ever asked me how much meat I eat. I could skew that. Oh, really? Have you? Oh, I get that all the time. Usually because I have like a big chunk of like steak in my teeth. No, no, no. I mean like an official study. Like, I don't know how they do any of that stuff. It's sort of like weird black magic to me.
14:01But we do know that generally speaking, West African nations eat a little more meat. It's a little more meat heavy than East African nations. But even in West Africa, that's again, I mean, if the average per capita was 65 kilograms, that's like less than half the United States per capita. Right. Yeah. I'm guessing from what I could tell, the United States leads the world in meat consumption. Most other countries, depending on where they are, are going to eat a lot less. But again, like you said, Africa is not some single monolith. It has a bunch of different variation. Asia is the same way. On the whole, Asia eats far less meat compared to one another.
14:43Some eat more, Some eat less. And you get all sorts of weird little statistical blips that come up from that. Yeah. If you look at the top 10 countries around the world with the highest rates of vegetarianism, India and Taiwan are on there. So two of the top 10 are in Asia. Japan and China, they aren't on the list of top 10 percentage vegetarian-wise, but they eat a lot less meat than the U.S. at an average per capita consumption under 75 kilograms. Yeah, and Taiwan's a good example, too. It has a very high percentage of vegetarians, but it also has a really high per capita meat consumption, too.
15:24So it's just basically wacky over there. Yeah, and this is another, like if you look at Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam, they're all under 20 kilograms. And Thailand is at like 25 and Laos at 30. So, I mean, that's way less than the 75 average in Japan and China. Yeah, I would guess Thailand, and I'm not sure about Laos, but I would guess Thailand is wealthier than probably Myanmar or Indonesia. I don't know about Vietnam, but I think a lot of it also has to do with the religious, like what religions are predominant there too. Yeah, which we'll get in. Well, actually, we should take a break before we do that.
16:13But we'll talk about India real quick because they have the highest proportion of vegetarians in the world. Close to 40 percent, 38 percent, 39 percent are vegetarian in India for obvious reasons. And 6.6 kilograms of meat per capita compared to as many as 150 for the U.S. Yeah, exactly. That's very low. It is very low. I say we take a break. We're going to come back to the studio away from the, what was it? The go far and wide machine? Yeah, I love it. We're still inventing new ways to travel in year 17. It still has that new imaginary machine smell in it. Nice. Yeah, anyway, we're going to take a break, everybody, and we'll figure out what we're going to talk about next.
17:05learning stuff with joshua and charles stuff you should know
17:15hi i'm dr priyanka wally and i'm harry kundabolu it's a new year and on the podcast health stuff we're resetting the way we talk about our health which means being honest about what we know what we don't know and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.
17:54We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr.
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19:14New Year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
20:01All right, we're back, and we promised talk of religion, because who doesn't love that? But this is religion as it relates to diet, because depending on your religion, there may be a lot of, you know, rules and restrictions on what they say you should eat because of a bunch of reasons. It can sometimes it shows like purity. Sometimes it's like, no, it shows how dedicated and faithful you are. Sometimes it's like, hey, you get it following rules. Don't eat this on this day. And let's see how you do with that. But for whatever reason, there are plenty of religions that have rules sort of surrounding meat for sure.
20:38Yeah. Some of the most famous ones are kosher. Yeah, it's a big one where you have to actually separate certain kinds of food, like you separate meat, separate dairy. There's also like restrictions and guidelines on how animals are slaughtered. So it's not particularly vegetarian by nature, keeping kosher is. but it makes you so much more mindful that a lot of people just eventually end up being vegetarian just by following a kosher diet. There's also halal is very similar. It has all sorts of permissions and bans and stuff like that on what animals can be eaten, but it's different in that like there's no shellfish allowed or birds of prey, but you can eat rabbits.
21:22But they're both similar-ish in that you really have to pay attention to what you're eating if you're a genuine adherent of this religious diet that's being prescribed to you. Yeah. And if you're wondering, like, well, how does that affect the rate of vegetarianism in Israel? They are second behind India. That's not the only factor, of course. But I think the highest percentage of veganism is in Israel, too, which is, yeah, I don't know why that surprised me, but it did. Okay, good. Noted. There's, I think, so this is another thing too. Like a lot of people just end up being default vegetarians because of their religious diet.
22:05And another good example is the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church, which we talked about in our Haile Selassie episode, I think. They have 200 days a year that are considered fast days where you just can't eat meat, but you can eat plants. So, I mean, for all intents and purposes, you're at least the majority of the year a vegetarian if you're Ethiopian Orthodox. I wonder if 165 days a year they just party down in some state. Probably. What, Seventh-day Adventist? It's not a requirement to be a vegetarian, but they're like, it's not a bad way to live. They kind of endorse it. Yeah, remember they grew out of that whole William Keith and John Kellogg movement of the 19th century.
22:53Yeah, they endorse the movement generally, but about 36 % end up lacto-ovo vegetarians and then 16%, I'm sorry, an additional 16 % eat plant-based diet with maybe a little fish, maybe a little bit of meat. Yeah. Buddhism is very connected to vegetarianism, like a straightforward religious decree like kosher. Instead, it's linked to nonviolence, right? So if your religion forbids violence, you can't really cut the head off of a chicken and eat it very easily. People still do in Buddhist countries, but it's much more or it's much less common and frequent. And in fact, apparently in Japan from 675 to 1872, meat was essentially banned in that country because of the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism.
23:51You got to wait on that chicken to die of natural causes. You just follow it around like a buzzard. He's not looking so good. He looks a little pecan. Hindu is, I love that word, by the way. Good, I'm glad I used it. I heard that word last night on the TV show The Pit, and I realized I just don't use it much. You know what I like that's similar is peckish. I like peckish as well. Yeah, me too. Maybe our musical duo should be peckish. Oh, my God. That is, you just won the band name contest, Chuck, for all time. But everyone would be like, who's peckish and who's peckish? Like, I think Josh is peckish and Chuck is peckish.
24:29It wouldn't matter. We could both be. It would depend on our mood on any given day. Or perhaps we are both peckish. Yeah. At all times. We're always hungry and we're always not looking so good. Hinduism at almost 80 percent eats a plant-based diet, but they, again, it's not required. It's just like, hey, why don't you do this? That kind of thing. Heavily suggested, maybe. Yeah, it's also, I mean, especially since the Hindu nationalist ruling party took over, the Bharatiya Janata party, BJP, they have been enforcing like really strict rules that are Hindu in nature against eating meat so much so that people have been beaten.
25:14I think one person at least has been lynched for eating meat or being associated with the meat trade, specifically beef, because cows are considered sacred in Hinduism. and also similarly in India vegetarianism is linked to social status yeah in in in basically complete contradiction of what it's like in say the west where you know eating meat has long been associated with being an elite or having high status vegetarianism is in India apparently All right. Flip-flopped it. I love it.
26:21And I guess 8 % of Janes are bad Janes. I guess so. I mean, like, how would you show up to, like, the Jane meeting and show your face? Yeah. Or show up to a Jane party with a rack of ribs. Right. That's probably not. That's probably frowned upon, I would say. I would think so. All right. So if, and of course, I'm kidding. No offense to any Janes out there. No, of course not. I'm sure they'd show up and be like, natural causes. Right. And everybody would be like, heck, yeah. So if you're going to eat a plant-based diet, it can look many different ways depending on what you're into. We found some information from Harvard Health.
27:02And obviously one thing that you're going to do is eat lots of veggies like Emily does. They say like, hey, fill half your plate up with veggies and vary the color. Don't eat just like a bunch of green veggies. Like eat veggies of all stripes and colors. Get you some anthracyanins, why don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Also, the way so these are like if you want to start to get into vegetarianism, these are some easy ways to kind of slide into it. Another one is changing the way that you think about meat rather than it being the center or the star of the meal. Just kind of put it to the side like it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, a thumb size piece of steak.
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27:42But I mean, if it more, you know, kind of evenly resembled the grain or the greens on your plate, that would make that would make a lot more sense. Yeah. I'll have the cream spinach, a side of broccoli and a thumb of steak. Right. It's funny. So I use thumb. So have you ever heard that thing about a portion of meat being no bigger than the palm of your hand? For like that's the healthy way to eat meat? Yes. I don't think I've heard that, but I can see that. So not just that, if you cup your hands, that's your serving of fruit and vegetables, and then your thumb is your measure of fats, like a nut butter or something like that.
28:21There's a name for all this. It's called the Zimbabwe hand jive. I've done that dance, but I did not know that was an eating scale. Well, so this guy in 1993, Dr. Kazim Mouji, came up with this way of doing it. It's been widely adopted, but I had no idea that's what it was called. It's a great name. What I do, we host a lot of, especially in the spring and summertime, of people when we go to the lake and just at our house here. We throw dinner parties. We just do a lot of that kind of stuff. And aside from being exhausting, one thing, I'm just kidding. It's actually a lot of fun. But one thing I do, and this goes along with like how you think about meat and how much meat you have, is I don't cook up like, you know, 20 chicken breasts if there's 20 people there.
29:17I cook up a bunch of, you know, whatever kind of cut of chicken and or steak. Sometimes I'll do a couple of meats and I will just I will slice it all up on a big platter. and then you can just get a portion of something rather than saying like, here's a gigantic chicken breast on your plate that you now feel responsible for. Right. And people seem to really like that, you know, like, maybe I'll have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then the rest is our veggie sides. Nice. Yeah, so that's a tip from Chucky. Yeah, you should just set up a carving station and ask to see each person's thumb size.
29:54Yeah. That'd save you a bunch of money. Totally. So let's see, what else? Oh, another good one is to choose different fats, avocados, olive oil, stuff like that. And then just cook at least one vegetarian meal per week. Dip your toe in the pool. Yeah. And if you start doing these kind of things, it's actually really easy to find yourself down the road, like just doing it without thinking about it. And more and more meals throughout the week become vegetarian. Because we'll talk in a minute about why people do this. but a lot of people stop eating as much meat for health reasons or because they want to lose weight.
30:33And if you just kind of start, like you said, dip your toe in like this, it just becomes kind of second nature over time. Yeah, you can get used to something like that. And I think what you'll find if you think you need meat because it's more filling, that's just not true. You get plenty full eating all that other stuff. So, you know, you can give it a whirl. I do that stuff every now and then. Whole grains at breakfast is great. This is basically, again, what Emily does. A lot of oatmeal, buckwheat, barley, quinoa. Eat like a horse, but not as much as a horse. This is a big one for me, Chuck, is eating fruit for dessert.
31:14Because I don't ever eat something like a meal of any kind and not think like, okay, now I have to have something sweet. Oh, really? I just can't not do it. My brain just is wired that way. I am too. Yeah. Okay. So if you just eat like an apple or some strawberries or something like that, it just short circuits that. It does it for you. Yeah. I have just retrained my brain to where I don't seek that. And it's not like I was eating dessert every night. Like the only time I literally have dessert, like a dessert is kind of either if a bunch of people are out to eat and it's an occasion or maybe on vacation or something like that.
31:51But it's not like even eating out in a restaurant. We never eat dessert like that. But I have found just one square of dark chocolate scratches that itch in a nice way. That always feels like a punishment to me. Why? Because it's just one? Just one and it's dark chocolate. Oh, you don't like dark chocolate? It's fine, but it's not going to short circuit that dessert. You know what? I used to not be into dark chocolate, but I love it now. Yeah, good. I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. I'm going to cut the legs out from under you in a little while then. But I don't do that every night, but I'll still, you know, when I want that, when I find myself like, God, I got to have the sweet thing tonight, I'll do one square, sprinkle a couple of little dabs of sea salt on top, and that does it for me.
32:36My God. Why don't you live in Brooklyn? I know. Because I don't have a mayonnaise store. Greens, too, obviously, like leafy vegetables, salads, just eat as much stuff. Like, I love a salad. Emily, you know, she grows that stuff and prepares fresh salads. makes her own salad dressing. She's gotten more into cooking. She never used to do stuff like that at all. But she's, I found myself eating a lot more salad these days. Right. And then the last one is after you do all these things, eat more vegetables, eat a vegetarian meal once a week, eat a salad for dinner. This is actually the key to the whole thing.
33:18Go to bed really early so that your normal breakfast will come much more quickly. I don't eat breakfast, but yeah. That was a joke, by the way. I know. I get it. Okay. Well, thanks for the laugh support. You want to take a break and then come back and talk about why people become vegetarian or vegan? Sure. Okay. Well, we'll be right back again.
33:47Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.
33:57Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that? Or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.
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36:43Okay, Chuck, I think I promised before we left that we'd talk about why people become vegetarian. I already said health reasons, which we'll get into more in a little while. But a lot of people just do it because it's just healthier. Like if you want to eat healthier, most people don't like double or triple down on fried chicken. Like you instead start turning to plants, you know, like people just start eating more plants. And it's almost intuitive. I don't think it even has anything to do with the nutritionist set in the United States convincing people like plants are healthy. I just feel like we just intuitively know that that is healthier than eating like a steak or, again, fried chicken.
37:26Yeah. I feel like there's a place for fried chicken. I'm not knocking that. No. I mean, as you know, it's my favorite food. And I just, you know. I heard you. I got to pick and choose with that stuff. but it's not removed from my life, thank goodness. But you're going to get lots of vitamins and minerals and fiber and antioxidants in your veggies. If you eat legumes, if you're a vegetarian, you probably eat lots of legumes and chickpeas and lima beans and stuff like that, soy. You're going to get lots of protein, amino acids, lots of fiber and antioxidants there, and also no cholesterol, which is, you know, I have cholesterol problems genetically speaking.
38:08So and a lot of people do. So that's a good way to get your cholesterol down. Yeah. And there's a lot of variety in just legumes alone. Like rather than do you want the chicken or the fish, there's something like 20 ,000 species of legumes. And I didn't know this. I ran across this, Chuck. There's a category of food called neglected and underutilized legumes. The saddest legume. They even have an acronym for NULs, right? And there's apparently a ton of legumes that are found around the world that are known to like local cuisine that are just waiting to be adopted to kind of make the plant-based diet even more varied.
38:47Yeah. I mean, there's 20 ,000. I probably have had five. Yeah. Actually, maybe more, but no, no, no. No, I know what you mean. Yeah. I just had a night. So one of the ones I found was the Bombara ground nut. But you would make a trillion dollars if instead of a mayonnaise operation, you opened a Bombara groundnut operation in Brooklyn. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you would make so much cash, dude, overnight. People just like saying groundnut. Yeah, but that Bombara really sells the groundnut, if you ask me. Yeah, for sure. Obviously, you know, we've mentioned the concerns with red meat. But with beef and pork, people have been, you know, calling for years for less of that in your diet.
39:31And, you know, health practitioners and doctors, because obviously, you know, heart attack, stroke, cancer, all the things that can lead you in that direction once you eat too much red meat. Yeah. And the medical consensus is and remains so that eating red meat, too much red meat is bad for you. Like it just leads to all sorts of negative health outcomes like stroke and heart attack, heart disease, things like that. the problem is despite that consensus studies still come out fairly regularly that question that idea that say no it's not necessarily true and they usually get shouted down but it's enough that it makes like some people question that I feel like because the medical consensus is that for now it's probably okay to kind of follow that philosophy that less meat is healthier than more meat yeah for sure uh another big big reason is animal welfare and just maybe your moral values as a human uh that is a a lot of people switch over to vegetarianism or veganism because the modern factory farming system in the united states is is a horror show and and everybody knows this some people uh some people do it anyway um but it's a big reason you know like vegans are like no, all animals have a right to life and a right to freedom, and we're not doing it right here in the United States, so I'm not going to take part in it.
41:03Yeah, that's a whole subcategory of veganism called ethical vegans, and I think that they could shoulder their own episode because the whole philosophy behind it and the way that they live their lives, it's really interesting. And something I ran across that they counter is the idea of carnism, eating meat, not being normal. And we just take it for normal. And they question that. They're like, who said that eating meat is normal? and that that's like why people like me can feel bad when I pass like a truck full of cows on their way to the slaughter on the highway and then still go eat like a cheeseburger that same day that we just kind of have this idea that carnism is normal and vegans are like, no, that's not true.
41:54So I found that fascinating. I kind of wanted to get into it a little more. Yeah, for sure. I'm not going to tell that story. Mindful eating is another one, which is, I mean, exactly what it sounds like. Just instead of like falling into a pattern and I'll just eat that because that's what I've always eaten or, you know, grab that thing that's quick and brainless to put in my mouth. Grab it by the horns. Yeah, to really just have a heightened awareness of what you're eating, what's going in your body, and every impact from your health to what it means to the world and to that animal. Just being more mindful is another reason that people will go to a plant-based diet.
42:35Yeah, I think that's how people get to that from like religious mandated diets. Yeah, and we'll put environmentalism in its own category because there's a whole section on that. But that's another reason. Okay, let's pick up health outcomes. Let's dive into that a little more. So one of the things that people figure out pretty quickly when they become vegans in particular is that you can get really unhealthy, really quick, just eating food that qualifies as vegan food. There's a ton of processed vegan food out there. A lot of times, a lot of sweetener, including just sugar, is added. And just basically eating packaged food or even French fries, as long as they're cooked in vegetable oil, those are vegan and everyone knows that French fries aren't really good for you.
43:23So there is like a whole kind of blind alley that you have to watch out for when you get into veganism. Yeah, I'm not a vegan, but it's I can still say, you know, word of caution. If you go that route that you have to be more active in in meal planning and because what you really want to do is eat whole foods and eat real foods. So if you're like, I'm going to go vegan and just sort of buy the ultra-processed stuff that is technically vegan, you're not doing yourself any health favors. I mean, you know, you're still doing, and, you know, as far as your moral values are concerned, you're doing right by that, but you want good outcomes all the way around.
44:05So just lean toward whole foods and the Mediterranean diet, which, again, people around the Mediterranean just call it eating. that has roundly been shown over the years to be kind of the one of the ideal diets that you can lean toward. I would say the ideal diet. I mean, as far as health outcomes go, like I can't imagine how much this diet has been studied. And result after result shows that like some kinds of cancers, diabetes, cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, like these things are all lower in people who eat like a Mediterranean diet, like that's just what they eat than people who don't, especially regular meat eaters.
44:50Yeah, for sure. As far as the end of it, you know, we'll kind of go through a little bit about like who's deficient and what, depending on what you eat. If you're looking at protein and saturated fat, you're going to have, obviously, if you're a meat eater, you're going to have the highest intake among anyone and the lowest is going to to be among vegans. That's just makes a lot of sense. If you're a vegetarian or a fish eater, you're going to be somewhere in the middle. And vegetarians are more likely than meat or fish eaters to have, as a result, inadequate protein intake. And vegans even more likely to have inadequate protein intake, I think, more than vegetarians.
45:29Yeah, that's a longstanding chestnut in like the, I guess, I don't want to say bodybuilding community, just people who work out like hardcore that you can't possibly be ripped as a vegan. And our Stuff You Should Know listener, Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein, the guitarist for The Misfits, he is just vegan to the core and he is totally ripped. And in fact, he has his own protein powder called Vegan Monster Protein where you can get ripped yourself if you want to and still be a vegan. I think ripped vegan is that's got to already be a band name. Oh, I wouldn't. Yeah. Maybe that's his sideband, his folk sideband.
46:10Yeah. Ripped vegan. You might have a vitamin B12 deficiency if you are a vegan because plants don't have B12. I think 52 % of vegans are B12 deficient, 7 % of vegetarians. And if you're a meat eater, you have a less than 1 % chance of being B12 deficient. That's a big deal, too. I mean, like that is a well-known problem for vegans and vegetarians because B12 is used for red blood cell production, cell wall production, nerve function, DNA production. And it's just not in plants. It's in meat. It's in fish. It's in dairy. So you really have to pay attention to that and basically take B12 supplements all the time to make sure you don't become deficient because it's not good.
46:57Yeah, for sure. Here's one thing, though, and this is something that was controlled for BMI even. If you're a vegetarian or vegan, you have a kind of a remarkably, a remarkable statistical risk or higher risk, I guess, of getting bone fracture than a meat eater. And especially when it comes to your hips, the risk of hip fracture with vegetarians, you have a 25 % higher risk of fracturing your hip as a vegetarian. controlling for BMI again, and vegans, 131 % higher chance of hip fracture. Yeah, so part of it is that B12 deficiency because B12 helps produce bone and so bone density. But I also wondered if vegans typically get less protein and therefore have less muscle mass on average.
47:46Obviously, you can get ripped as a vegan, but not everyone does. If you're more susceptible to falling. Like you can lose your balance more easily because you have slightly less muscle mass than a meat eater. And then with less bone density, if you do fall, you're more likely to break a bone. Just my, I wonder. Yeah, yeah. I did mention cancer. You know, I think we often talk about like heart attack and stroke and stuff like that by eating too much red meat. But cancer is another factor that I sort of briefly mentioned. But if you're a vegetarian or vegan, you have a 10 to 18 percent lower risk of cancer than meat eaters.
48:24Although all cause mortality, that's another good band name. And that's three band names. All cause mortality. Still the best is peckish and peckish. All cause. See, that can't be our band name because I can't even say it at the end of the show. So all dash cause mortality was not different, which is surprising between vegetarians and meat eaters and vegans. Yeah. Another thing that surprised me is that vegetarians have a 20 percent higher risk of having a hemorrhagic stroke. uh so we should say all of this data came from a 2021 um analysis of this british cohort of 65 000 brits that have been followed around since the 90s so they managed to look at 20 000 vegetarians so this is a pretty robust study and they found that they have a 20 higher risk of stroke they couldn't they couldn't determine that for vegans i think they only had like 2500 in this cohort but for stroke at least they weren't able to figure out how that affects vegans.
49:31You would assume that it would be an even higher percentage for vegans. But a hemorrhagic stroke is where blood vessels in your brain start bleeding. Again, that would make sense because B12 helps fortify cell walls. And I would think the lack of red blood cell production would have something to do with that too. So I think what we're trying to say, the upshot is, is it's not just like a slam dunk that you're going to be healthier or your lifetime health outcomes are automatically going to be better. But it's still, I mean, it's just if your overall or sorry, if your all dash cause mortality is going to be the same, then I don't know.
50:13I think that kind of makes an argument to eat whichever makes you feel best. Yeah, that's just a weird stat. Yeah, all dash cause. Um, yeah, I don't know. I can't explain it. Maybe someone will have some more information on that. Uh, but earlier we did promise an entire section on the environmental impact of eating animals because that is, uh, that is yet another reason. And, you know, obviously people have all kinds of reasons and it's usually a combination of all these things, but we were learning just, it's become plainly obvious more and more. This isn't the kind of thing I think that especially in America, people like to look at a lot in the past.
50:50But it seems like in the last like 15 years or so, people are sounding the alarm like, hey, besides ethical concerns and health and all that other stuff, like raising animals to eat is kind of a or the way we do it is a disaster for the environment. Yeah. So there's a lot of misleading stats out there that compare the amount of kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the kilograms produced of something, right? That doesn't make any sense because a kilogram of broccoli is a lot less as far as food being spread among people than a kilogram, 2.2 pounds of beef, right? You can feed way more people with 2.2 pounds of beef than you can with 2.2 pounds of broccoli.
51:39So other people - Feed like one and a half people. Exactly. At best. Yeah. But so some people have said, well, let's just alter it a little bit. So we'll measure the kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions for every thousand calories produced. And so that makes it a lot more apples to apples comparison. Yeah. But even still, when you alter it like that, the numbers essentially come out the same, which is that meat production has a much larger carbon footprint than almost any kind of plant production. Although there are some surprises, like, for example, your beloved dark chocolate has a larger carbon footprint than producing poultry or pork, Chuck.
52:19How do you feel about your dark chocolate with salt on top of it now? I didn't kill that chocolate. You know, coffee and chocolate are two pretty notorious, you know, environmental disasters as well on the on the non-meat side, for sure. For sure. The reason why apparently is demand. And there's so much demand for chocolate that the deforestation that results to create more fields for cocoa production, that just is what's giving it such a huge footprint. And I think coffee is relatively the same. um overall though i found a 2019 study from sustainability the journal and they basically said 30 vegetarians have 33 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions based on their diet than a vegan or than meat and a vegan diet has 53 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions it's just that's just how it goes yeah uh and and if you're like well i like eating some meat um the biggest offenders there are beef, lamb, and mutton.
53:25Yeah, I thought that was weird. Beef produces 60 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram, and a kilogram of poultry is only six, but you compare that to a kilogram of just some English peas. That's under one kilogram of greenhouse gas emissions produced. So you might think that as far as water consumption goes, the plants would far outpace like a meat diet because you got to water vegetables. But generally, there are just a few plant-based foods that have a bigger water footprint than beef. Yeah, beef is just the worst offender of all. But livestock, raising livestock in general, apparently one-fifth to one-quarter of all the water used by humans goes to raising livestock, which is nuts.
54:14But the reason why is because not only do you need water to keep that head of cattle alive until you decide to kill it, you also need water to grow the grain that you feed that head of cattle. So they're just consuming all over the place, especially as far as water is concerned. Yeah. And just so you know, there are like zero sort of vegetables that outpace beef. The two that do outpace beef that I was referring to are chocolate and almonds. Yeah. And who considers an almond a vegetable? Come on, give it up. And I think as far as lamb and mutton go, the two other biggest offenders in the meat category, only cashews, pistachios, and hazelnuts consume more water to produce than lamb and mutton.
54:57Hazelnuts are so great. Far and away the best nut. Oh, you think? Not the ground nut? I haven't had one yet. Well, peanuts apparently are a ground nut. I have not had the Bambara ground nut yet, so I should wait and reserve judgment. Yeah, peanuts, they grow underground, right? Yep, they're a ground nut. I can just see Jimmy Carter holding a big thing of peanuts and roots with dirt falling off of them. RIP and God bless that man. That's right. The U.S. maintains about 9 billion, 9 billion livestock to get the meat that it needs or wants, I guess, is the better way to say it. And if that grain went to humans, it'd be enough for 840 million people that have plant-based diets.
55:43Yes. And there was another thing that I came across that I was kind of surprised by that totally makes sense, is if we, en masse as a species, humans, essentially abandon livestock production, beef production or meat production in favor of a plant-based diet, just basically globally, the chance of communicable diseases developing would drop drastically. because 75 % of emerging communicable diseases are zoonotic, which means humans get them from animals, and we make our closest contact with animals through the livestock industry. Yeah, and at petting zoos. Yeah. I mean, as long as it wasn't grown in a lab, you can kiss communicable diseases goodbye.
56:28Yeah. The other environmental disaster of raising livestock, and this is more and more lately, is the habitat destruction to raise all these animals. You're talking about extinction of plant and animal species and thousands more being threatened in the years upcoming because of habitat destruction. And it's also true for some kinds of agriculture. We've talked about palm oil cultivation being a big problem for a lot of stuff, specifically orangutan populations, or at least by example. But beef, once again, is the biggest factor. Beef drives 41 % of tropical deforestation globally, whereas palm oil and soy, which are two sort of offenders on the other side, are only 18 % combined.
57:17That's all, just 18 % of deforestation. Yeah, but I mean, the one takeaway here is beef bad. It's what's for dinner and what ruined the planet. Yeah. I mean, it's far and away leading the way in all the bad categories, you know. It really does. So, yeah, I mean, we've just kind of touched the surface, especially on the environmental impact. There's a lot to dig into there if that interested you. But I feel like we gave some good reasons for people to adopt a plant-based diet. I don't know if I'm going to fully, but I'd like to think it's – I'm kind of partway there already. Yeah. I eat more vegetables now.
57:57I eat way less red meat than I used to. Yeah. For just like all the reasons that we talked about. Yeah, I've cut my four quarter pounders with cheese every day in half. And I eat both halves. Since Chuck kind of laughed at my last joke, I think everybody, that means we should probably slog along to Listener Mail. That was a real laugh. That was an Josh laugh. Yeah, I know. I love those two. All right. this from a smithy because of us actually oh yeah I saw this one hey guys I've always had a bit of an interest in metalworking and as of about five years ago I've had an interest in your show I'd say your show has been the longest running podcast of my life actually I remember listening to your episode about blacksmithing four years ago and that kind of set off the domino effect of me getting really into blacksmithing as a hobby I'm definitely one of those that like to collect hobbies with most passing in about six months and I never pick it up again, but not true with blacksmithing.
58:57I've stuck with it since your episode came out, and I'd like to say I've come a long way with it. I've attached a few pictures of my work, which is very good, by the way, starting with early works and all the way to the two I completed about a week ago. I thought you might be interested in seeing how your show kicked off one of my favorite hobbies I've ever had, so thanks for that. And that is from Tate Avent, and you can find Tate. Just look up Tater Makes, T-A-I-T-E-R-M-A-K-E-S and check out Tate's work. Well, thanks a lot, Tate. That is awesome. Congratulations on your awesome hobby and getting so good at it.
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1:00:06Hey, it's Joel. And Matt from HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement.
1:00:43the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay, but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
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From the publisher
You don’t have to be a hardcore vegan to eat a plant-based diet (although you can be). There’s a whole variety of degrees people adopt phasing out meat from their plates. One kind is even called flexitarian for goodness sake. Seems pretty welcoming to us.
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