Ethan Brown: The Truth About Beyond Meat from the Man Who Built It — Rebuilding the Broken Food System

25:17And the processes are so similar. It's really neat. Like if you look at the stomach of a cow right there, there's bacteria that's converting non-protein nitrogen into proteins. And they're getting all of that material from plants, obviously. It's not coming out of thin air. And then you look at what's happening in, say, a fava bean. There's a little nodule on the root of that fava bean. And inside that nodule is a microbiome. Inside that microbiome is bacteria. And it's taking the nitrogen from the air. And it's doing what? Amino acids into protein. So it's the same beautiful process of creating protein.

25:55One just takes it from the soil and from the air, and we put it right on your plate. The other is you've got to run all those plants through an animal. So I'm convinced that someday this will be the dominant way of doing it. We've just got to get through all of the misinformation, all the fear, right? Because there's a lot of fear about this. So-and-so is going to lose. It's that we are going to bring innovation back to the American farmer in a way that's beautiful. So I have a farm, and I've had it most of my life. I bought it from my dad. And we had, when I was a child, I grew up in the city, but we spent weekends and summers out there.

26:28And we had Holstein cows. Let's bring real work and real opportunity back to farmers through innovation. That's what we've always done. Let's not block it. Let's embrace it. And that's what this fear campaign is stopping.

26:43Darin Olien:Well, there's so much. We could talk for days on this stuff because all that misinformation also around proteins and the quality of proteins. and every plant we now know has all of the amino acids, even the essential ones. And Dr. Gardner at Stanford has done a ton of work on this. I'll get him on the podcast. He's an amazing guy. He's done a lot of research around the quality of protein. Comes as much of just eating a variety of plant foods. You get probably more than you need. but obviously if you're eating you know vegan macaroni and cheese and donuts you're not going to do it or if you just eat one if you eat rice and that's all you eat you're going to be devoid of a lot of stuff and protein yeah so all of that is just you know it's so for me one of the biggest things is why would I need to to contribute and and kill an animal in order to get what a an idea of a protein when now the science is showing that that's not more superior I think it's a really interesting point and and for me you know even plant-based for a long time so lie it's you do you obviously have discussions with people and you know say well why do you do this and and the people have always done this and so on and so forth.

28:10People have always done a lot of things. And for me, and I can go, both of us, right, we can go toe-to-toe on these things. Well, the ancestors ate a lot of plants, but they also ate animals and all these other things, right? At the end of the day, to me, everything changed in 1859. And this was, and then later in 1880, through this period, Darwin was publishing. And he was saying that, wait a minute, we all come from the same place and we all have the same DNA system, same materials in our body, same infrastructure. We have the same central nervous systems, maybe slightly modified and different.

28:55And so for me, it came down to kindness. If I have the opportunity to allow some other being to live, I'm going to take that opportunity and do it. I don't want to rise in the morning and go to bed at night thinking I've taken away everything someone has. And I think part of what's happened in our culture is that we have adopted so blindly this idea that you and I are subjects and the rest of life on earth objects. There's no scientific basis for that view. There's a cultural basis for it. But how do we get people to think about just kindness? My view, I cannot consider myself a kind person and participate in the modern factory farm system.

29:38I just can't do it. Right.

29:39Darin Olien:And the issue is everything's punted. It's out of sight, out of mind. Yeah. Right? So when you're consuming that burger or that normal burger or whatever, you don't know that death and the challenges that that being encountered. And so it becomes this siloed kind of thing. And I believe integration in our existence is so powerful and underutilized, right? So when we align our values, our morals, what we're committed to on serving in this world and trying to be a kind person, contributing to our life, to the sentient beings, to other humans, like why would we create destruction along the way? And we are, as a country, a freedom-loving people.

30:33I love freedom. You love freedom. It's a beautiful thing to see like a wild horse run, to see bison run, to see a coyote in his habitat or her habitat. And I'd rather see more, not less of that. I'd rather see more freedom, less confinement. And when you start eating directly from plants, by the way,

30:51Darin Olien:you open up all this land for the rest of life on earth. And so our products, and we've got the statistics, It's like 93 % less land is used, right? And there are opportunities around the world that are coming into focus now where farmers are being paid to set aside land to sequester carbon and let biodiversity come back. And that is a sophisticated culture. That is one where we say there is more here than just us. And so I look at the United States and think we have this incredible opportunity to not only solve climate but bring back biodiversity. There's very smart people working on this. They're in this short film we did, Planting Change.

31:30And so it's not just the human health stuff that motivates us. And, you know, you mentioned the swap meat study with Chris Gardner. And Dr. Christopher Gardner, he did a terrific job doing that. And by the way, people are like, oh, well, that was funded by Beyond Meat. You think, like, Stanford is going to, like, risk their reputation for a company like us? Like, it was a rigorous, rigorous study.

31:51Darin Olien:Yeah, it's not necessarily always who funded it. It's how the study is put together. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it was, we didn't have, you know, it was an unrestricted grant that we gave. And the results could have been horrible for us. But we knew, right, that when you go to plants and you keep the saturated fat at the right level and you keep the sodium at the right level and you use ingredients with integrity, you're going to drive great results. So I was like, fine, go for it. Yeah. Do it. And the results speak themselves. Yeah. So let's talk about, like, ingredients. Yeah. So you guys at one point had canola oil and some stuff.

32:29Darin Olien:Coconut oil too. And coconut oil. And listen, the whole seed oil thing is on a weird train, right? And none of the science backs it up anyway. And you're already using non-GMO. At least you were with canola. Yeah, don't touch GMO. Right? So that's important because people will easily jump onto that, well, it's genetically modified, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so that's off the table. You don't use – And why would you – nature does it all. Exactly. Why would you need to do that? Exactly. But with that, you still went in and reinvigorated the formula. So what are some of the things that you did? What are some of the things you changed out?

33:10Darin Olien:What are you excited about in the formula? What's going on there? Well, I mean, your background, you're an athlete in competitive sports and all this. And I love this idea that you can take all the energy that's coming at you and you can use it to be stronger. Like you can just like chisel, you know, just keep stripping it down, stripping it down, stripping it down. And so that's kind of what we did is we said, okay, all these things are coming at us. Like, you know, okay, how can we just get better, right? How can we take out anything that could be of concern? And so, you know, we did. We had this really long-standing program with Stanford, and so I had access to all our doctors and stuff.

33:50We said, I was talking, okay, what can we do here? Like how do we make this unassailable? And so we started switching out the oils, and so took out coconut oil, put in avocado oil, started to dramatically simplify the ingredient list, started to vary the proteins. When I started in the company, there was a lot of soy stuff out there. I said, I want to use soy, I want to use peas, right? And soy is terrific. I drink a ton of soy milk. Love soy. It's complete protein and all that stuff. But I wanted to use something different, so we started using peas. And then peas became pretty dominant. I think people like variety.

34:21They want to have different types of things. So we said, we're going to start using a blend of lentils, peas, brown rice, baba beans, things like that. So we diversified the protein base, brought in the avocado oil. And that's when we started getting all these endorsements, right, all these certifications, rather. And then we launched what we call Beyond 4, which was the sort of newest line of products. and that together with things like our steak, there's nothing to attack. Now it's a marketing thing. How do we get the message out there?

34:52Darin Olien:The Clean Label Project, what does that entail? It's not your label. You had to meet rigorous guidelines. What were some of those guidelines? Because I haven't seen any other food. I guarantee a normal burger from factory farmers is that going to fail that because it's not clean, right? It's going to be tough. Yeah. That is a very rigorous process where they test for all kinds of contaminants. They disallow certain ingredients to begin with, and then it's this process of how do you – because our system is overrun as an agricultural system with toxins and chemicals and things of that nature, and so you've got to be very careful.

35:34What I love about fava beans and about things like lentils that are regenerative, actually regenerative, right, is you don't need to use so much fertilizer. And so we just keep a very clean process. And even the separation process we use, talking about the fava beans, you're literally milling it into flour, and you're placing that flour in an air chamber. There's no caustic chemicals or anything like that. It's separating because the density and particle sizes are different. Heat and pressure. Yes, it's just so neat to me. And, again, it's not eating meat when that was the way to aggregate. like I always think about sun beating down on the plains and there's all this grass that's growing and how do you access that grass if you're a native or someone who just arrives there right and let's say the 1600s well you access that grass through bison right because bison are aggregating all that in their bodies and they're converting it into protein you can use okay well fast forward today there's a process that we can use it's beautiful and clean right It takes the protein right from the plant and aggregates it for you.

36:37So you don't need to use the animal anymore. It seems like a better idea to me. And that's all we're doing.

36:42Darin Olien:Yeah, and that's the thing. Everything gets thrown into these labels, right? Because I've been in hundreds of facilities, food, supplements around the world. I've seen really bad situations and I've seen great. But you see the process. And when you understand science and you understand these compounds and these foods, then you're, in this instance, you're creating a step that nature was doing, but you're eliminating the death step, right? The fear step, the death step. Yeah, so they've already done that process. So, okay, if you look at nature, you learn from nature. One of my greatest teachers should observe nature, and nature will show you how it's going.

37:26Darin Olien:So in this instance, the bison was that. Watching it. Yeah, you're watching it, so you're just doing that process for, to make that bioavailable for a human without having the land, the drugs, the animal killing and all of that stuff. That's right. So people need to understand, like, listen, if I had a wand of common sense or openness maybe is a better term, if people were to, like, listen, many of your customers aren't necessarily 100 % plant-based either. Most aren't. So it's also not a silo. we're not here needing to convert people. No, not at all. But this is a highly valued, clean food proven, not by you, but by many other tests, because, gosh, you know, you have to test this stuff.

38:16Darin Olien:Yeah. Like, blah, blah, blah, but show me the science and show me the work. And you guys have done that. We've had to do it. And, you know, it's a personal journey for me. it's one for you too and I think both of us are alike in this regard where this is just our story it's our effort to try to understand the world and produce something that we think is valuable it's not if someone doesn't want it that's okay but let's make sure they understand it yeah and then they can make a decision and and for me that's the the most important and next step of our journey and by the way we're having fun doing this like you and I were talking before the the the podcast started around, you know, we've got a new product that we showed you in a different form a while ago, and it continues to evolve.

39:04And it's four ingredients. And it's, you know, made from fava bean protein, potato protein, and psyllium husk, a great fiber. And then the last ingredient is water. And it's got 27 grams of protein. It's got only 140 calories. It has, like no saturated fat. And it's just a new form of center-of-the-plate protein that it comes like a piece of ground meat. And so we're going to keep doing things like that. It's not trying to be beef, pork, or poultry. It's just trying to be a great source of protein. And I think the work that we can do together is how do we create an even better piece of meat from that?

39:44And so let's use ingenuity and innovation to improve human health, help the farmer, help the earth, healthy animals.

39:50Darin Olien:Yeah, that's and that's it. I mean, it's like if your heart's in the right place, and you and you follow that, then answers will show up just like today, like, you know, there's a company that we were talking to who can scale functionalized plants. And when I was sitting there, I was like, Oh, my God, this is a perfect opportunity to meet these guys, because I was already thinking about that. And so, you know, any supplement that anyone is taking, you're trying to get something that in our modern world has been taken from us just based on our modern world, right? So our soils are depleted, our nutrient value is depleted.

40:30Darin Olien:That's just what's happening. And unfortunately, high amounts of chemicals and drugs in our food and contaminants and heavy metals. So I love the fact that from the Clean Label Act and all of these other things, you're testing all of these things. Because not to mention, you're doing it already. But now everyone's looking. Right? And everyone wants the same thing. You want clean food. And I'm testing with the most valuable subjects that I have, which is my family. Right. That's the first start. So I'm glad that Stanford's doing all their work. But it really is about, you know, and a fun story.

41:18When my son got to college, he was, they test everybody because he's playing basketball there. And they wanted to make sure the kids were healthy enough to play. And this is a true story. The hospital system at this university called the coaching staff and said, why is this kid's blood work so different? And it was just cleaner. And the reason it was was not because of Beyond Meat. It's because he's a normal kid who wants to have a burger after a game and things like that. But he's plant-based. So he could stay plant-based because of Beyond Meat. But does that mean he doesn't eat a lot of legumes and whole foods and things like that?

41:55Of course, he eats a ton of it, sweet potatoes and everything that we look at, big gladiator bowls full of things. But he also has that craving for that animal protein experience. And he can satisfy that with Beyond Meat, and that helps his body stay really clean. And so there's nothing that I'm going to do that's going to jeopardize my family. And so that's like an important thing. It's a mission.

42:18Darin Olien:Yeah. Well, that's the, you know, and I think unfortunately profits over common sense have happened in our world. There's a lot of products that are dangerous and not being tested. Regulatory bodies look the other way. They can't even, even if they have the resources, they're compromised, but they don't even have the resources. There's kind of this regulatory system that's sitting there and not really doing any job that is necessary. So it does fall on the company and the morality of the company, the heart of the company. you want to prove that what you're giving your family is also what you're giving to the larger family.

43:06Darin Olien:This community. Yeah, and then also not hurting some animals in the process. Well, I think it comes down to this point. I mean, if I can say anything about this current moment in our own political history, is that I think the facade that our government is not for sales is finally fallen down. It's clear. And so it comes down to the consumer at this point. And how do we as responsible companies interact for the consumer's benefit? And the great thing about what you and I are doing is that these are decisions that families can make three times a day that can have a tremendous impact on their body.

43:45And it can be between us and the consumer. And I think the ultimate thing about what we're doing and disruption of an incumbent industry is if you look at history, and I have to do this a lot because it's challenging, you know, and you feel sometimes like, man, how am I going to get through this, right? But you look at other disruptions, right? And I was just back east recently, and I grew up in the east coast. And in those cities in the 1890s, there was just this enormous amount of horseshit, no way to put it, because all these horse-drawn carriages, right? And there was literally so much that they couldn't figure out how to clean it up because in order to clean it up, they needed to do what?

44:22Bring more horses in to drag it out. So it was just sort of solved this problem. And so over time, they had all these ways of trying to do it, and they finally just displaced the horse with a streetcar that was electrified. And this guy Leo Daft in 1885 introduced it. Within decades, there were no more horses anywhere. And what drove that was not moral outrage or disgust. It was the fact that it took 3.7 cents per mile to move someone with a horse versus 2.4 cents to do an electric streetcar. So what we're doing will ultimately be far cheaper than animal protein because we're skipping that step of growing a crop, feeding it to the animal, harvesting the animal.

45:02So we just got to get there. We got to get there at scale. Right. And what's neat, if you look at some of our markets, we're starting to see that we can produce products at the same cost structure of animal protein on far fewer lines. Animal protein has thousands and thousands of lines. We've got like a few. Imagine as we scale how inexpensive we can make protein someday. That's exciting.

45:26Darin Olien:Yeah. And for the people that care about our world and the environment, it feels like we can't do anything. but when we band together, we certainly can, right? Absolutely can. Right? And so sometimes, you know, it gets thrown into climate change. But for me, coming from the Midwest, I use a different term, right? I use terms like polluting. People can understand. That's right. Right? So if you have these confined animal facilities, what comes out of that? It's just pure, gnarly aftermath and poison. And now we know that many of the PFAS exposure is coming because of the water that the animals are being exposed to.

46:18Darin Olien:And PFAS is a really gnarly chemical, unfortunately created in my state of Minnesota, or 3M. So we're not looking at all of this stuff. when you're attacked by this meat or it's that, but there's so many different factors here. And so by your methodology of supporting the farmer and doing simple processes, you're not creating this polluting effect that is so dangerous. And it's not out there, meaning that that same farmer is now infected all of the farms around it and the communities and all of that stuff. And so a clean product can, you know. I just find it so fascinating that what you just described, we can clean our rivers at the same time that we're cleaning our arteries.

47:18Like there's something spiritual about that, right? Like why is that, you know, that it happens to be so coincident that what's good for your body is also good for this earth. And, you know, I think about the Midwest, and I think about Woody Guthrie songs and, you know, Dust Bowl and things like that. And I look at what's happening now when you're doing this regenerative pulses and legumes and so on, just restoring that soil. Yeah. I mean, it's great, and we've just got to do more of it.

47:48Darin Olien:And cleaning it, you know, the middle of our country, the Mississippi River, which I went to school right by in St. Paul, and there was no way you would get into that. you know and because it's it's it's cancer alley it's full of isn't that wild of just pesticides glyphosate you name it isn't that wild yeah and so it's just it's a funnel it's a vein in the like all the way down the united states dumping in the gulf of mexico so it's this example of what is going on and then again most of that food that they're growing is food for the cattle Yeah. Right. So it's this weird thing. But when you you go back again, follow nature, it cleans itself up.

48:32Darin Olien:Yeah, that's right. Right. It knows what to do. Yeah. And that's that's what's exciting to me. But it's it's again, these siloed conversations. So now, like you have been through hell. It's been rough. Right? It's been, and my education and learning and getting to the facility, I get really excited when people are doing some really cool stuff and innovating. And, like, I immediately felt like family when I walked in. Yeah, 100%. Right? I was like, oh, my God, these guys are really doing it. And I had to reorient myself to I was wrong. I was wrong about the processing because I became a victim because I didn't look enough.

49:21Darin Olien:I became a victim of that story too. Well, there's so much information out there. You're just living your life, right? And so you're focused on one area of research and you're kind of hearing this noise. That's why it works. And for us, it's like if we can use all this to just get stronger, it'll be okay. It hasn't been pleasant. It hasn't been, you know, I tell people that, you know, it's tough to be the CEO of a public company that stops growing. It's just like, but look, it's what else would I be doing? You know, this is a massive effort. It's an issue of sort of life's work. It's not necessarily a job.

49:58Darin Olien:What are you excited about? Like, I get excited because when I learned and you and I, like in our first conversation, I think before we could even sit down, we're just like, It was on Zoom, actually. All of a sudden, we're off. That is what I'm excited about, is the stuff that you and I were talking about. Yeah. It's such an opportunity to continue to use science and innovation and add to someone's life, not just the lower-level food that is being pushed around. It's just over-processed. People don't care much about the health. They care about profits solely. so what are you excited about now in the face of being having to toggle the past and learn from it being where you're at now but also having to keep your eye on the future yeah what's that like now and you know it's fun and i wake up every day excited because of the kind of things that you and i get to talk about which are you know how do you now take this to another level where you know there's that Mark Twain quote that I love where he's like, you know, he says, I wish I could have written you a shorter letter.

51:09I just didn't have time. Right. And that's our journey right now is how do we break all this sophisticated stuff we're doing down into three, four or five ingredients, you know, and just strip it away and create, use physical processes and force to, to create products with fewer ingredients that are very recognizable to the consumer. And that's, that's the journey we're on now. And then once we create that foundation, then how do we do the stuff that we're talking about? We're like add in polyphenols. Let's make sure the fiber counts up at five grams. All right. Let's make it up at six now. So you create a perfect piece of meat, right?

51:45That I think is like, that's incredibly exciting to me because then you're delivering, we don't need enough plants, obviously, in the United States. So one thing we can do is try to present plants in a way that's going to appeal to the average consumer. And that's what we're working on.

52:00Darin Olien:And that's the beautiful thing. And like every deep scientist understanding where we came from, we were eating 3 ,000 different types of plants. 3 ,000. Now we're barely at 30. So again, I don't want to be siloed even in this conversation. So anyone who eats meat and wants to continue to do their thing, cool. Add this to your life because you're also getting an easy way to have a clean, tested, powerful food that is recognizable to your adjusted palate. And it's a great way to get in more fiber and get in more plants and diversify. So I love that aspect of it because, again, we're too siloed. We actually need to come together.

52:51Darin Olien:It makes sense. It makes common sense to support the farmers and to grow food healthfully, right? And that's where I love, and I love where you're going. I think we're going to have fun building together. I mean, it's, you know, I see kids now who grew up eating Beyond Meat who will prefer the taste of it, right? Because we're not exactly like animal protein. There's still variations, right? Sure. But that's not what's important. does it taste really good and does it provide you with amazing amounts of protein, very clean ingredients. And so I am interested in that angle of, you know, you've got chicken, pork, and beef, but what's the fourth lane?

53:34Like, you know, where it's not just seafood, right? But are there proteins that we can build right from plants that just taste great but aren't trying to be one thing or the other? They're just what they are. And I think that's, for us, kind of the next frontier. And, you know, you look, I mean, tastes change so much. throughout history. I mean, what we ate when we were Romans or when we were whatever, you know, is very different from what we eat today, you know, and we have to continue to evolve.

54:00Darin Olien:Yeah, I love it. And just to finalize some of this stuff on, you know, I'll talk to Dr. Gardner too, but all of the research that's been done hasn't shown that beef is any more superior protein or the the the the swab studies the cholesterol in fact it's better yeah right so what are some of the things that excites you when you get some of those studies back yes i mean i think the main thing about all of that is uh when you walk into a facility on the way in there there's like a kind of a piece of art that when you build a new new facility in el segundo they have you commission some art and it's part of it is fine and what I decided to do was I had a sculpture built that was one side of it was a leaf and the other side was a feather and I think most people walk by it and just think it's either a leaf or a feather but I wanted to make the point that there's this common origin of life and that there's DNA in plants and there's DNA in animals and there's the same building blocks the you know the carbon the hydrogen nitrogen and all this stuff, right?

55:07It's all the same, right? And so the big misunderstanding is there's something vastly superior about animal protein. It's just all about like what amino acids you're getting. And if we can now start to use the human brain to build these pieces of meat that are just optimized for my body and your body, unlock stuff. And that I think is what excites me the most.

55:29Darin Olien:I love it, man. And thank you for your commitment, your dedication, because resiliency shows the colors, man. When things happen and then you stand up through it all, that tells me where you're coming from. I appreciate that, man. Right. Well, thank you for being open and using your intellect to really help people see this. And, you know, I think you just learn, like, what you're fighting for. And that's what keeps you going, you know. It's like you know what you're doing is going to bring benefit. And then particularly when it's being challenged, you just got to find that resolve. You got to fight.

56:12Darin Olien:You got to fight for what's right. That's right. To party. Turn on the music. That was good. That was awesome. That was great. Thanks, brother. Great questions. Thank you. Thank you, man. Thank you.