Ep 157 – You Are What You Eat

Giacomo:

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Giacomo.

Dani:

And I’m Dani.

Giacomo:

And this is episode 157.

Dani:

So this is different. We’re actually testing it out, guys. We’re recording it, like with a camera. So if you don’t see a video to accompany this podcast, you will know that it was a failed attempt.

Giacomo:

And when I think of podcasting, I think of my opportunity to not be on the camera and speak. So no pressure, Giacomo, you’re not going to mess this one up, but no, this is going to be good. I actually feel like this will be a nice way to share what we usually talk about without the camera rolling with some video, so that’ll be pretty cool.

Dani:

I’ve already relieved all of the pressure from myself. I’m just going to wear what I’m normally wearing when I’m home working, which is I’m going to dazzle you guys with some combination of legging and hoodie, no matter what, pretty much.

Giacomo:

And I’ll do the polar opposite.

Dani:

Maybe a beanie. It is very cold, but set your expectations low. Here. We’re in my office. We’re in my

brand new office. So if it’s like a tiny bit echoey, it’s not entirely done yet. So I have some sound absorbing things on the wall and a couch, but it’s still a little bit empty in this room.

Giacomo:

Well, the sound absorbing things have the same honeycomb shape that we have for our background logo on our site, which is pretty cool, honestly. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re going to do with this whole space. I feel like it’s not. It’s not even. The bones of it aren’t even 100% finished yet. Maybe like 75%. You’re not even working in here yet?

Dani:

No, I haven’t even set up my computer in here yet. I’m still working at the kitchen table, but it’s fine. It’s fine. So we went to the Providence veg fest yesterday. I said one of my goals this year was to actually go, like, attend more vegfests. I’ve been to probably over 100 expos in my life, but I’m always behind the booth, and that is where I feel most comfortable, is behind the booth. Walking around in veg fest is actually way more stressful to me.

Giacomo:

Well, it was also crowded. They were giving tickets for different times that you could go, and yet it was still the capacity.

Dani:

It was still a half an hour line to get in, even with a timed ticket.

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

Which is kind of crazy providence. You need a bigger space. Period. Full stop. Cause we, like, looked into it as vendors, and they had sold out all their vendor spaces. And then when I got there, I was like, oh, they sold it out because, like, the space isn’t big enough, and they could have had more vendors, but. But overall, it was fun. Got to learn about some new companies.

Giacomo:

We got some stuff. What was the name of that place that we got the oatmeal treat from? I forget.

Dani:

Celebration.

Giacomo:

Celebrated.

Dani:

Celebrated, celebrated.

Giacomo:

That’s the one. And we got some tea for our tea party, which we’ll be having on your birthday morning. You asked, I said, what do you want for your birthday? And your response was, I want a tea party.

Dani:

So we’ll be having tea in London was, like, my absolute favorite experience, and there is nothing like that here. We’re gonna have to recreate it ourselves. So. Yep, turning 38 years old, wanted a tea party.

Giacomo:

You don’t sound like you’re happy about the fact that I just mentioned your birthday and you mentioned your age. 38 years. Listen, I got almost six years on you, so I don’t wanna hear it.

Dani:

So what are we talking about today?

Giacomo:

We are talking about the documentary that recently just came out.

Dani:

Okay, pause. Documentary.

Giacomo:

Yeah, I totally rolled off the tongue. What? I don’t even know how I said that. Docuseries.

Dani:

All right, guys, do you guys watch documentaries or documentaries? Let us know. I have a million notes here, but go on, continue.

Giacomo:

And I’m gonna embarrass myself here. But is it. You are what you eat? Is that the name of the title?

Dani:

Yep. You are what you eat.

Giacomo:

Thank you. The second it came out, I was put onto it when Miyoko posted about how excited she was, and turns out she’s a part of the docu series. And then I found out that they were going to go ahead and do a study using twins. And then I immediately thought to myself, without looking into any of it, well, they must be doing one thing with the set of identical twins, and the outcomes are going to be different.

So then I started watching and immediately got excited because these are our peers, these are our people. And that was just pretty cool, seeing Namai and Tori and Miyoko and the doctors, et cetera, et cetera. And then the experiment started to play out, and it was fun. Right?

Dani:

Okay, so we’re gonna back up.

Giacomo:

Okay.

Dani:

And explain what the experiment was.

Giacomo:

Just go for it.

Dani:

So there were 22 sets of identical twins who were randomly assigned to eat vegan for eight weeks or omnivore for eight weeks. And they were checking to see differences in their body composition, their biological clock, their microbiome and their cognitive abilities. So their brain and 21 sets of twins finished. But it is a super interesting concept for a study. I can keep talking. I could literally do all of the talking this episode. So I’m going to try very hard not to.

Giacomo:

Why? I was just. I’m just kidding. I’m only messing with you. Well, whenever something like this comes out, right, there’s two things that happen. One, you have the general bias of the vegan community celebrating it, and it’s media, so it’s sensationalized, it’s telling a story. You’re only going to have so much of it, and then you have the other side who just wants to poke holes in it, right?

Whether it’s people just hating on veganism or people looking at the science and being like, okay, like, what was wrong with this? And so I feel like, like anything else, we just wind up destroying something instead of just taking it for what it is and looking at the pros and looking at the cons. I feel like the pros were that there was a lot put into this and there was a lot of objectivity, but there was also some bias as well.

So I can see both sides of it. In reality, though, I think it was a really cool study in how they took sets of identical twins and they tried to hold as many variables as the same as they possibly could. But I think they could have done a better job with that.

Dani:

Yeah. So I think it very clearly has a bias towards vegan. Right? Very clearly. But you kind of don’t figure that out until like episode two of the four. You’re like, oh yeah, this is definitely like vegan skewed, which, like, personally I don’t have a problem with, obviously, because I am vegan. I believe in all of the things that they were saying, but it feels almost a little bit like a bait and switch while you’re watching it.

That said, I don’t think that the study itself is particularly biased because I don’t think the. That some of the stuff findings in the study were particularly impressive towards the vegan side. And I do want to

talk about things that I really liked about this study and things that I didn’t like about the study or the documentary as a whole. So first of all, on the whole, I think it was a great study because it must be so challenging to find 20 plus sets of identical twins who are

willing to eat either a vegan diet or an omnivorous diet. For eight weeks because, you know, if someone’s already vegan, but they got chosen to do the omnivorous diet, most vegans are not going to do that. So it’s. I can’t imagine how hard it was to find people willing to do this study. And it was like a fairly invasive study also, which I’ll get into.

Giacomo:

That was a fun part about it, the invasiveness of it, and also the part where I feel like they were thorough. There was a lot of thorough testing as opposed to it being, I think.

Dani:

So there was a lot of thorough testing, but I don’t think there was a thorough amount of explaining the results at the end. And that kind of pissed me off and was like, hmm, what are they not showing us? So the documentary itself only followed four sets of twins. So even though there were 21 sets doing it, we are only really learning about four of them while we’re watching it. So go ahead. I’m going to look through my notes, see which part I want to talk about first.

Giacomo:

I was curious where your notes were going to take the conversation.

Dani:

Oh, my gosh. So many. So many sets of notes here. So I did think that it was kind of interesting. So there’s four sets of twins. Like I said, I don’t want to get their names wrong. I’m not great with names in general, so I had to write everybody’s name down. So there were these probably, like 40 year old white men named Michael and Charlie.

Looked like young, 20 black men named John and Jayvon, older philippine asian women named Rosalind and Carolyn, and two south african, I guess they were 40. They said it at the end. 40 year old south african women named Wendy and Pam.

Giacomo:

Asian. What were their names again? That set. I’m spacing on them. Say them again.

Dani:

The Filipina. The Filipina was Rosalind and Carolyn. But my point was that they picked a pretty diverse group of people to showcase in the actual documentary itself. And I did appreciate that. So I liked that right at the beginning, they talked about how if you don’t have muscle, you are unhealthy, regardless of scale weight. Like, I think that’s very important thing that a lot of people don’t think about. Muscle is one of the things that makes you healthy.

So I appreciated that they mentioned that at the beginning when they took everybody’s stats. So I should mention they tested everybody. They tested their body composition, their cardiovascular fitness, their cognitive function, their microbiome, and their biological clock, which I think they tested in blood by looking at telomeres. But I’ll get to that at the end. I think you’re going to regret not having notes for this.

Giacomo:

Why?

Dani:

So, yeah, obviously I suspected that the vegans would do better on the whole, but like, eight weeks is not a lot of time. How much can you really accomplish in body composition in eight weeks?

Giacomo:

I feel like you can accomplish a fair amount in eight weeks, honestly. And your health markers start to change quite a bit. And that was where at the end of it, you saw some real serious results. Now, that’s where I think someone like you and me or someone listening to this podcast can be like, well, duh. Like, of course these things improved, but the kinds of obvious things that improve, like your heart health and your physical fitness, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I forgot, the

specifics don’t matter to me. The point is, like, the parts that were pretty obvious to anyone who has adopted a plant based diet or has been vegan for a while that you want this to prove and inspire people about, they’re not going to see that because you’re going to get too caught up in how this test could have been a little more accurate and that’s where they’re going to start to pull coals in. That’s what kind of pissed me off about it, honestly.

Dani:

I think the test was very accurate. I just, I think that they wanted to control every variable and one that’s very hard to do in a nutritional study. Fair enough. But also, like, this requires people to adhere, you know, and we know how well people adhere in general is not very. But then also, on the one hand, everybody who was in the study was omnivorous previously.

So these people don’t have to learn anything about how to eat, but all of the vegans have to learn how to eat differently. And I think that kind of didn’t like it kind of started them a little bit further behind.

Giacomo:

Right. Because they gave them the chance to have those trifecta meals, but they, they didn’t require them.

Dani:

No, they did. So the first four weeks, trifecta, which is like a meal prep company, but then they had to only eat from trifecta meals. I think it was for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And then they could fill it in with snacks throughout the day for the first four weeks, snacks. And then the final four weeks they had to cook for themselves.

Giacomo:

Right, exactly. That’s where it gets a little tricky.

Dani:

I actually think it got tricky right from the start, honestly, and I’ll tell you why, this was my biggest gripe and I’m kind of jumping to the end here. But I think it’s very important, especially, you know, I’m going to talk a lot about the body composition because I actually think that every other thing that they studied pretty clearly showed that the vegans came out on top. And I’ll talk about that more at the end. But the body composition was pretty freaking disheartening

actually, to watch. Let me get to my, exactly what the results were. Okay, so on the whole, did I write down. No, I didn’t write down the average of everybody. So I’ll start with the white guys, Michael and Charlie. So the vegan lost 2.8 pounds of fat and a half a pound of muscle. The omnivorous guy lost 3.8 pounds of fat, but gained 3.6 pounds of muscle. Okay, so for this pair, not looking good for the vegans, you know what I’m saying?

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

The next pair was the younger black guys from Detroit, John and Jay Vaughn, where the omnivorous guy gained 7.1 pounds of muscle, which is insane for eight weeks, first of all. But they also mentioned

they were like chronic undereaters, they were eating more. But the vegan guy only gained two pounds of muscle, which they touted in the documentary as some huge win, which, yes, to gain two pounds of muscle in eight weeks is awesome.

Giacomo:

But not compared to the other.

Dani:

Not compared to seven. Right? And then the older filipina women, the omnivorous woman lost 7.7 pounds of fat and virtually no muscle. So she lost almost pure fat. And her sister lost five pounds of fat and three pounds of muscle. And then the last set of twins, the south african women, Wendy and Pam, the omnivorous one gained a tiny bit of fat, 0.3 pounds, and lost 3.8 pounds of muscle.

And the vegan lost one pound of fat and 6.6 pounds of muscle loss. So across the board, for every single set that we saw, the vegans either lost more muscle or gained less muscle. Like, it’s just not good.

Giacomo:

What is my first thought is protein.

Dani:

Oh, boy, do I have thoughts about this. I went deep on this one. I went deep and I went and found the study. I looked at the study itself to see, first of all, what were they being fed? What were these trifecta meals? Like, what was in them? Go ahead, you can talk for a second while I find it. Oh, found it. Okay, so I understand this is a podcast and this is a lot of numbers and you have to picture it, and that’s tough.

But when they started, before they even started, the average of what people were taking in was 1973 calories and of that, 16% of the calories were coming from protein. So this was before the study started. No, everybody. Everybody before it even started.

Giacomo:

Choose the mean. Okay, go on.

Dani:

Trifecta meals. Okay. The omnivorous group, their average calories was 1815. And 20% of that was coming from protein.

Giacomo:

Protein up by four, average cal up down by 100.

Dani:

So they decreased their calories and increased their protein a little bit. That sounds to me like you’re going to lose body fat, not muscle. Right. The vegan group with the trifecta meals, their average calories were 1628, significant drop. And their protein was 14% coming from protein.

Giacomo:

So a 2% drop in protein and roughly a 300 cal drop, which is very different. Those variables are not even remotely the same.

Dani:

So let’s put that in grams because I don’t like to think of stuff in percentages anyway. Sure, they started on average. This is all the twins, I think, not just before. So they started, on average, 1973 calories and 78 grams of protein. That’s what they were eating before. Not great numbers. Okay, not great numbers in my opinion. But once they started eating the trifecta meals again, the vegans were eating 1628 calories and 56 grams of protein.

Giacomo:

No one should be eating 50 to 60 grams of protein, no matter.

Dani:

Not if you’re trying to improve your body composition.

Giacomo:

No, there’s not a single type of person that I could create an avatar for where I would say, okay, you are good, improving your body composition with sub 60 grams of protein. I honestly can’t even think of someone I’d recommend less than, like, 80. And that’s still, like, I’m not too crazy about this.

Dani:

I’d be very curious to look at John, who was the, one of the black guys who gained the two pounds of muscle. The only one who gained.

Giacomo:

Mixed it up with his snacks, see.

Dani:

If he got more protein in, you know.

Giacomo:

So again, exactly.

Dani:

Vegans were getting 56 grams of protein and 1600 calories. The omnivores were getting 1800 calories and 91 grams of protein. So no shit. No shit. They maintained or gained muscle while the vegans lost it. Like, hello. And then let’s take a look at what they were doing for exercise.

Giacomo:

hmm.

Dani:

Do you even lift, bro? I think I saw two weights. Two people lifting weights at all.

Giacomo:

Wait, this was between everybody?

Dani:

No. So Nimai, I guess, gave them a workout program. And maybe there was just stuff we didn’t see in

the documentary because I find it hard to believe that Nimai would just prescribe cardio for people. But all we saw was like burpees and sprints and push ups and cardio, you know, like explosive cardio, which is not going to help you gain muscle. Actually, I saw three weights, John or Jay von. I can’t tell which one it was. Was doing some rows in the gym.

The white guys, Michael and Charlie. I can’t remember which one’s which. Off the top of my head. Yeah. Michael and Charlie. Michael was the omnivore, and he said that he did all his workouts at the gym. He went to the gym and was like, more into the weight training. Charlie, the vegan moved, I guess, four times in that eight weeks and was doing his workouts at home. So not the same. Like, how can you compare?

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

And then likewise, the filipino women that she lost eight pounds of fat and virtually no muscle. She also said, she added in more heavy resistance training, whereas her sister went on walks.

Giacomo:

This is really weird that there’s this correlation between the omnivores and them lifting more. I don’t know if this is a reach. I’m just very curious to know why the omnivores seem to have lifted more than the ones who were on a plant based diet.

Dani:

Well, I just think that when it comes to body composition, it’s probably my only gripe with this study. And maybe that’s because I don’t understand the other stuff as well that they were looking into. Maybe there was weird stuff there, too. I don’t know. But body composition, of course, the vegans showed up worse.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

And the workouts were not even equated for. And clearly the food was not equated for.

Giacomo:

Mean, this stuff wasn’t even discussed or talked about.

Dani:

I just. Well, I don’t expect everybody to understand this stuff as thoroughly as you and I do, so I don’t expect the participants to.

Giacomo:

But.

Dani:

But, you know, they’re under the impression they’re doing everything equally and they’re not.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

Now, one of the things to take into consideration was that they were allowed to eat to satiety. So I suppose it’s possible that they just did. The vegans just didn’t finish their meals or something, but I don’t think they monitored it that closely. I think that the vegans ended up eating a little bit less because vegan food is more filling. I think that’s possible.

But either way, when it comes to body composition, which seems to be where everybody’s coming down with the huge criticisms, like, see, veganism sucks because these people all lost muscle and the other people didn’t, or they gained muscle. And it’s like, well, things were not equal here. Even if they seemed to say that they were equal, they were not.

Giacomo:

It was weird that they were so focused on body composition and physical fitness and muscle gain, end or loss, and they didn’t think to focus on protein.

Dani:

They didn’t think to make sure that it actually was equal.

Giacomo:

It’s the reason why I don’t even have words right now. Like, that is literally the thing that vegans get attacked for more than anything, is that where are you going to get your protein? It’s the one of, it is the most common question.

Dani:

Don’t scream into your bunch.

Giacomo:

As you could tell, I’m pretty worked up about it. Like, we’re better than this.

Dani:

Yeah. Well, here’s the thing. The study said, this is what they said. They didn’t want to compare a vegan diet to a junk food omnivore diet.

Giacomo:

Okay.

Dani:

Like, they didn’t want to compare a vegan diet to a bad omnivore diet. But I feel like they compared a really good omnivore diet to a bad vegan diet.

Giacomo:

This isn’t the seventies. We have options. We are smart. We know what we’re doing.

Dani:

There was one scene towards the end where the white guys, Michael and Charlie, they’re having a barbecue in their backyard and the omnivore is making a burger for himself and the vegan is having a portobello mushroom.

Giacomo:

Oh no.

Dani:

Like what?

Giacomo:

What? I love whole foods and I love a whole food plant based diet. I don’t like a whole food plant based diet. It doesn’t count for protein, tofu, tempeh, seitan or anything else along the way.

Dani:

I mean, we saw some of those things throughout the documentary, which is great. And I did appreciate it didn’t look like that everybody was eating 100% whole foods.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

But I still, I just, it sits wrong with me. It sits wrong with me.

Giacomo:

Maybe there could have been a little bit of education around that when they got them started.

Dani:

Maybe. But I have so many questions. Right? Like, oof, gosh, could we do this again with it actually being equal? And if we did, I suspect we would see better results in the body composition. But would the results be as good in the other areas? I don’t know. You know, they looked at cholesterol and every single one of the omnivorous people, their cholesterol went up, even though it seemed like it was an improvement over what they were eating before omnivorous or.

Giacomo:

Not so went up. Yeah. Early in our conversation, that’s the obvious, of course.

Dani:

And maybe it went up because the omnivorous group did have an increase in protein, but it was coming from animal sources, so. And all of the vegans on average were down 10% in their ldl, the bad cholesterol. So that’s awesome. Would it be the same if it was equated for in terms of actual nutrition? I don’t know.

Giacomo:

You’re not winning anyone overdose that is interested in the way that they look or interested in the way that they perform. You’ve seen the sacrifices out there that jocks will make in order to look better and perform better. Some people are literally willing to die for their sports.

Dani:

They also looked at TMAO, which is a marker of inflammation. The omnivores were up in inflammation. The vegans were down. Now, they didn’t tell us how much. So I don’t know if it was statistically significant or not. And again, I’m like, oh my God, did I just watch 4 hours of a documentary for you to not actually tell me the results fully at the end?

It was frustrating, which again, is why I, like, looked up the study, but I didn’t look up that part. They looked at the microbiome, so they looked at bifidobacterium, which is one of the really good bacterias in our gut. And the vegans went up in that, and the omnivores stayed the same. Again, I don’t know how much they went up. And the last thing they looked at was, I thought this was interesting. Epigenome, which biological clock, like your biological age versus the actual day

you were born. And one of the things they looked at was the telomeres, the length of the telomeres, which are little caps on the end of your DNA. And the longer they are, kind of the younger you are biologically, and they naturally get shorter as we age. Right. But they started the same. And at the end, the vegan group, their telomeres were longer.

Giacomo:

Right. You have a good baseline to go off of here because biological age improves, cholesterol improves, and your inflammation improves. And that’s at the bottom of your pyramid, in all honesty. So there’s going to be an ongoing argument where you’re winning all day, every day when it comes to plant based diet and going vegan, it’s a no brainer.

The question here is, how do we sell it to the masses and how do we do it properly? Because there’s

these fears, there’s the reasoning, there’s this, there’s that, right? If all we cared about was longevity, and being healthy, then we’d all live long. But obviously people have, humans have all kinds of reasons for wanting to, whatever.

Dani:

Adopt a plant based diet or.

Giacomo:

No, no. My train of thought is people have all kinds of reasons for what they want to do with their body and how, as opposed to just saying, I want to live in my body for as long as possible. So you have a percentage of people like that, but they’re nothing. I wouldn’t say that’s 50% or more, honestly.

Dani:

Right. Like I said, overall, I do think it was a good study, but I think it could have been a better study and like, easily, like, I think it easily could have been a better study if not for this one small change.

Giacomo:

True.

Dani:

So I heard a lot of people say they felt like it was really commercialized. Like there was a lot of product placement throughout the documentary. There was, but I don’t know, it didn’t bother me because I’m hoping that most of the people watching this are, you know, maybe they’ve never heard of these things before.

Like Miyoko Shinner of Myoko’s cheese was in it a lot, talking about cheese. And that is a really tough one for a lot of people. Yeah, that is the hardest thing for people to give up.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

Always say, oh, I could go vegan, but cheese. So I thought it was interesting that they had her, but like,

you can’t taste a documentary, so it’s hard to sit down and be like, but it’s really, really good. Like, you have to actually try it. So hopefully people do, like, I hope that they do. What else? Obviously trifecta.

I mean, good on them for sponsoring this entire, like, they, that’s a big deal that they did that. So hopefully, and I appreciate that they offer vegan meals. I just don’t think they’re very good vegan meals. And that sucks because I would love to, like, yeah, this is a great option.

Giacomo:

Do you feel like they’re a good starter meal as far as, like the base and you just add your protein to it?

Dani:

Kind of. But like, what are you paying for then? And I also do think, because I’ve looked at this, it works if someone’s eating 3000 calories a day. My client Alex, who was competing in bodybuilding, used the trifecta meals and added protein to them, but they have like 80 grams of carbs.

Giacomo:

Can you think of a good mail order delivery service?

Dani:

I’ve looked at a bunch of them and sometimes they’re good and sometimes they’re not good. And with a lot of these you don’t get to pick which meals you get, so I haven’t seen any that I love yet. I found a couple of things on v stro that you can order a la carte. I haven’t tried them. Some of my clients have.

Giacomo:

So we have to basically convince one of these delivery companies to have plant based meals that have more protein. And essentially, if you’re listening, please, if you’re one of these companies or someone who has, like, an in with them, like, let them know.

Dani:

Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it should be that hard.

Giacomo:

hmm.

Dani:

Whatever, on the whole. Oh, I forgot to mention, when they checked the cognitive function, there wasn’t really any change in either. But they attributed that to the fact that most of the people in the study were, like, young and healthy.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

So they would suspect that if they followed them for much longer, they would start to see more of those differences in cognitive function. But I don’t think they did. So on the whole, I think it was a documentary that was trying to do a lot. Like, there was a lot going on in that documentary.

Giacomo:

The concept was incredible. The second I became, like, even remotely familiar with it, even in the beginning of the first episode, I had very high hopes, and I still think that the idea is wonderful. I don’t know if now that this documentary is out, something like this is gonna be replicated. Like, a lot has to go into doing something like that. So that’s unfortunate, but I do feel like the idea, in and of itself was a really, really good one.

Dani:

I was just confused. I agree, but I was just confused by. They kind of hit every angle when in. Over the course of the four episodes, they talked about animal rights. Like, a fair amount, actually, which, as an animal rights vegan, I’m like, yay. But I was like, ooh, does this belong in this documentary? I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s gonna turn a lot of people off.

Giacomo:

So it was a little messy, the storyline.

Dani:

Yeah, I felt like it was a little bit messy. They talked about the environment, some climate change issues, although they didn’t talk a lot about that. They talked about food deserts, which I appreciated that they mentioned that a lot of people are living in places where they don’t have good access to

fresh, healthy, whole food plants.

Like, they. It’s just not there. And I appreciated that they talked about that, because I feel like a lot of vegans forget that some people. It is much harder. A lot of people are doing their grocery shopping at a gas station, and what are you gonna do? You know? So there was a lot of other things that they tell. Oh, the sex thing.

Giacomo:

That was hysterical. I’ve thought about that at least five times on this conversation. I was wondering if we were gonna mention that. Well, this is one of those things where it’s an attention grabber, perhaps.

Dani:

I don’t know. I’m not a prude, but I thought it was pretty gross. Honestly, I don’t think we needed to see, so. Okay. They were testing. It seemed to me like they were testing blood flow, but they were testing it via the women, only, I might add, if you noticed that it was just the women.

Giacomo:

Interesting. Maybe it’s easier to measure blood flow with men.

Dani:

Yeah, it’s easier to measure blood flow with men because, like, you get an erection, your blood flow is working.

Giacomo:

Okay.

Dani:

You know.

Giacomo:

Gotcha.

Dani:

So they mentioned briefly, like, oh, there are other studies that, like, why didn’t you do that study here then, too? So they bring these women in, and they have them, like, pick out porn and watch it in a room while they, like, videotape their crotchal region to see how much body heat it produces at the beginning and at the end. And everybody had increases, but the vegans had more increases, so, yay. I guess.

Giacomo:

I like, honestly, I like the concept behind it, because this is what some of our team does. Honestly, behind the booth, we start to try to attack the whole idea of, well, how are your sex hormones? How are your hormones? Are they healthy? Do you want them to stay that way?

Dani:

Yeah, they don’t say it that politely, though. Some of the guys that work the vegan strong food, you know, we’ll have men come up and talk about, like, oh, real men eat meat, blah, blah, blah. And their responses are, like, basically like, well, can you get it up, buddy?

Giacomo:

I’m sorry, but we have to go toe to toe. And when you come to the meat industry, they sexualize everything. And they always talk this constant. This constant discussion about your libido. And we’re sitting here, like, getting all, like, touchy and feely about it, but in reality, like, they’ll straight up leave. Like, I’m eating a burger and now I’m sexy, and I’m gonna go have sex. Like, that’s literally what half the commercials are out there that are selling this.

Dani:

Are they?

Giacomo:

I mean, I’m dumbing it down, but. But they do go for it, Dani. I guess they do go for it.

Dani:

All american type of things.

Giacomo:

So if you can somehow grab people’s attention and also play the card of, like, well, your sexual health will improve.

Dani:

Yeah, I agree. You know, high cholesterol leads to poorer blood flow, leads to poorer sex lives, especially for men. But I just thought this part of the documentary was, like, weird and unnecessary.

Giacomo:

It was a little weird.

Dani:

And I just, I can’t imagine sitting next to my sister and being like, oh, I’m gonna pick this porn and you’re gonna pick that porn and hehehe. We’re gonna go watch porn in a separate rooms. Like, I don’t know, man, I’m not a prude, but it just kinda gave me the ick.

Giacomo:

So it was a little funny, put it that way. It was a little quirky, I guess. I don’t know.

Dani:

Yeah, but, you know, I guess I don’t really know how to sum this up, but I do think that it was a net positive.

Giacomo:

Here’s a real question. Is this documentary going to help people go vegan? Is it going to change people’s minds the way some other documentaries that were controversial in other ways, like game changers, for example, or what was it? What the hell?

Dani:

What the hell?

Giacomo:

There was a lot of controversy around the science behind those, but guess what? Who cares? Because it changed people and people went vegan because those documentaries is this documentary have the same impact?

Dani:

I guess we’ll see. But I don’t think so.

Giacomo:

I don’t think so either.

Dani:

I don’t think so. I don’t. Which is unfortunate, unfortunately. I think that most people care what they look like, and most people want to look better more than they want to worry about their telomere length, you know? And unfortunately, I don’t think that the results for that part were even remotely compelling or convincing. If I saw that and I didn’t know anything about this, I’d be like, ugh, no, thank you. They’re losing muscle and.

Giacomo:

Yeah, yeah. So sad. It is sad.

Dani:

And the kicker is, it didn’t have to be that way. I mean, I can’t say for certain that, you know, the vegans would have come out on top if it was, you know, equated for nutritionally, but I think they would have at least come out neck and neck.

Giacomo:

Oh, yeah. And if your muscle is neck and neck and all your health markers are improving, well, duh. Of course you’re gonna want to be the healthier out of the two while still getting everything else you want.

Dani:

Yeah, I.

Giacomo:

No one wants to lose muscle. That’s not. First of all, that’s not exactly healthy. It isn’t?

Dani:

Yeah. And I wish that they had just kind of stated, like, on the outset that that’s what they were looking for. Like we are. Look, we have a hypothesis that vegan diets are better for you and this, this, this and this, and now we’re going to run a legitimate cause. It was a legitimate study. It was legitimate. A lot of people like, oh, the study itself was biased.

I don’t think it was, I think the documentary was biased, but I don’t think the study itself was. But I just wish they had said like, hey, we think this and we’re gonna check and see instead of being like, we’re gonna do these two things and we have no idea what we expect will happen.

Giacomo:

Gotcha. It was one of those things where they were just trying to surprise everybody at the end, even though they already obviously had a clear agenda. Well, in their, in the defense of that narrative, it was pretty obvious to them that that was going to be the outcome, but they could have done a better job telling the story. Yeah.

Dani:

And I just don’t think it was as compelling of an outcome as they expected it to be, which kind of stinks.

Giacomo:

It’s a shame is what it is.

Dani:

I don’t know, I don’t know if we have anything else to say, so I might just wrap it up. A lot of you guys asked for this particular podcast, so I hope that these thoughts were like helpful or interesting to you. If you have any questions, if there’s anything you want to chat about, if you have a completely different take on it, like just shoot us an email coacheganproteins.com.

and if you’re interested in one on one coaching, that’s what we do. So shoot us an email or go to

veganproteins.com and apply and you’ll hear back from us like within a business day for sure.

Giacomo:

Absolutely.

Dani:

So now that we’re recording the video, I’m like, what’s the send off again? I got it, I got it.

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

Alright everybody, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels Radio. Feel free to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and check out veganproteins.com. if you have any questions, shoot us an email coacheganeganproteins.com. my name is Dani and I’m Jacqueline. We will talk to you soon.