Before the film first premiered in New York and Los Angeles last September, going on to become the number one pre-ordered documentary on iTunes, it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, where The Beet’s Elysabeth Alfano sat down with James Wilkes, the co-producer, and two other members of the cast, including the strongest man alive, Patrik Barboumian, to discuss what makes athletes choose to plant proteins for performance and optimal fitness.

The Game Changers was executive produced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, James Cameron, tennis ace Novak Djokovic, Formula 1 racecar driver Lewis Hamilton and NBA All-Star, Chris Paul, all plant-based athletes. Paul credits his diet for letting him play as well and competitively as others half his age, and Djokovic says going plant-based helped him cure his asthmatic symptoms that used to make it hard for him to breathe during matches. T

he sports world hasn’t been the same since the film’s September 2019 release, as more college coaches report an increasing number of players coming to them saying they want to go plant-based for performance. “They want to do what the pros are doing because they want to be one someday,” says Coach John Shackelton, strength and conditioning coach for Villanova men’s basketball. Meanwhile, in the pros, players are elongating their careers on plant-based diets, like Tom Brady, who at 43 is the oldest starting QB in the league, and they’re recovering from surgeries and achieving new levels of performance after injury, like Patriot’s QB Cam Newton.

James Wilks, along with Former NFL Football Player Lou Smith, Strongman Patrik Baboumian and Founder of the International Anti-Poacher Foundation, Damien Mander sat down with The Beet why they went plant-based and made the film.

Wilks on What Prompted Him to Create the Film and the Myths About Meat

Elysabeth: Tell me about your entire journey from researching about going vegan and being sort of shocked about it and then being angry about what you thought you knew.

James: “Right. Well, I didn’t go into it with any preconceived notions or even looking into the vegan diet.

“I literally got injured, tore both of my knees, and had six months where I thought “what could I do with my time?” So, I started researching diet for optimal recovery and performance and that’s when I came upon the study for Roman Gladiators: 68 skeletons that were analyzed, the only known burial site in the world, and from the strontium-calcium analysis and the radioisotope analysis, they could tell that they were eating almost exclusively plants and that sort of blew my mind. I thought “that can’t be true” and so, you know, spent all of this time, about one thousand hours in the first year, reading peer-reviewed science on nutrition and that’s when I sort of unearthed: That we’ve really been lead to believe this myth, that we have to have meat in order to be healthy, strong, and athletic, and eat other animal products as well, and it’s just simply not true.

“And that sort of sent me on this journey basically and then the more I uncovered how we’ve been marketed to and lied to by the industry, that’s when I realized- I just started getting quite angry about it because not only is it affecting people’s performance but more importantly it’s affecting people’s health. The leading chronic diseases: Heart disease, cancer, and diabetes largely are impacted by what we eat. So, it’s pretty aggravating.”

Elyzabeth: The first myth of meat is that you need meat to be strong and right behind that is you need milk for your bones. So both of those are completely false but the other myth is you if you eat a lot of meat you’re really a manly man. Those tell me about that myth.

James: “The real-men-eat meat myth is a core underlying myth under this. It’s based on identity and this myth that we’ve been sold. And not only is it not necessary but the very foods that men think are making them stronger are actually weakening them and killing more men. It’s actually killing more people. It really is the world’s most dangerous myth. And of course it’s affecting our planet in a negative way.”

Elysabeth: I think it’s really interesting to note that you’re saying that there’s a myth about a manly man eats a lot of meat. Very directly in the film, you say that (meat) actually decreases sexual desire, performance, etc. which I think is very interesting.

James: “We actually did an experiment with Dr. Aaron Spitz who’s the lead delegate of Urology for the American Medical Association and we had already done an experiment with the Miami Dolphins showing how you could reduce blood flow for two to eight hours if you ate an animal-based meal. So, when I met Dr. Spitz, I said “will this affect sexual performance?”  He said “absolutely,” not only do men have increased Prostate Cancer risk the more animal foods they eat, but also the blood flow (is restricted) to their penis where there are some of the smallest arteries in the body.

“So, we did an experiment with some college athletes, or Dr. Spitz did, and we documented that. And there were significant changes to circumference and rigidity of erections and the duration of erections, as well, simply based on a single meal. That can last for up to eight hours. And what do you do after six hours? You eat again. So, you’re in this constant state of what’s called endothelial dysfunction, which also leads to erectile dysfunction.”

Champion Vegan Strongman Patrik Baboumian, age 61

Elysabeth: Tell me what is the most that you have ever lifted and why you think you can do that.

Patrik: Well, the most I’ve ever lifted over my head would be two hundred kilograms which is four hundred fifty [pounds], something like that. And the most weight I ever moved was a fire engine that was twenty-two metric tons.

Elysabeth: A fire engine?

Patrik: Yeah, you’re pulling it like a horse ,so you’ve got it on your back and you just walk with it.

Elysabeth: Now how is that physically possible?

Patrik: So, the sport that I’m doing is called Strongman and you have to have a lot of training and of course, I have the advantage because of my diet. That it helps me being able to compete against guys who are much bigger than I am. I’m not very tall and most of the strongmen are much taller than I am, but I’m recovering very fast because of my diet and everything so that gives me the edge to be able to kick some ass against those guys.

Former Sniper Turned Anti-Poacher Damien Mander on Being a Real Man

Damien: “You ask us men and we picture ourselves and I think we are pictured as, you know, defenders and those that should protect the vulnerable. And animals in our society are the most vulnerable that we have, you know, and if there’s anyone in this world that should be protecting the vulnerable, it should be us guys.

“We should be leading from the front and I think that’s what being a real man is. It’s not about doing all this macho sh*t. It’s actually about acknowledging what’s true and being honest to that. For me, it’s an ethical decision.  I don’t want to f*@k with something that can’t defend itself, you know? Why would you want to do that?

Elysabeth Alfano is a plant-based expert for mainstream media, breaking down the plant-based health, food, culture, business and environmental news for the general public on radio and TV. Follow her @elysabethalfano on all platforms.

The post In One Year of <em>The Game Changers</em>, More Athletes Are Going Plant-Based appeared first on The Beet.

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If you haven’t heard of O’Brady, here are just a few of his accomplishments: He is a ten-time endurance world record holder and represented the United States on the ITU Triathlon World Cup circuit, racing in 25 countries on six continents. In 2016 he set the Explorers Grand Slam and Seven Summits speed records. He became the fastest person to complete the adventurer’s challenges (in 139 days and 131 days, respectively). In 2018, O’Brady set the speed record for the 50 US High Points in 21 days.

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O’Brady tells The Beet about his two most recent extreme endeavors, explaining how he became the first person in history to cross Antarctica unassisted (although many have tried).  In conditions of 24 hours of daylight (making it difficult to sleep), windchills of negative 80 degrees, and almost complete and total isolation while pulling a sled of food and supplies weighing over 370 pounds, O’Brady achieved the unimaginable: traversing of Antarctica on his resources alone. He credits his plant-based diet as the reason for his success where others have failed.  He wasn’t the most experienced to try it, he explains, and everyone who has made the attempt trains equally hard. However, O’Brady found himself actually getting stronger as the days progressed, which he says was a factor of his diet.

Many plant-based professional athletes believe that a diet free of meat and dairy helps them to recover faster and perform better, particularly when coming back from injury or as they get older. Vegan Olympian Dotsie Bausch competed in cycling at the age of 39.5, taking home the Silver, and Tom Brady continues to play football well into his 40s now starting for Tampa Bay after winning six Super Bowl rings with the Patriots.

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“Plant-based diets may offer performance advantages. They have consistently been shown to reduce body fat, leading to leaner body composition. Because plants are typically high in carbohydrates, they foster effective glycogen storage,” according to a new study released by the National Institute of Health, and authored by Drs. Neal Barnard and James Loomis, the former doctor for the St. Louis Rams.

“Because many vegetables, fruits, and other plant-based foods are rich in antioxidants, they help reduce oxidative stress,” the study explains. “Diets emphasizing plant foods have also been shown to reduce indicators of inflammation. These features of plant-based diets may present safety and performance advantages for endurance athletes.”

For O’Brady, a plant-based diet turned out to be what made the impossible possible. Here is a portion of Elysabeth’s interview with Colin O’Brady on making history by crossing Antarctica unassisted.

Elysabeth: I love that you decided to take on the personal challenge. So, tell me, I think you said it was fifty-four days, give me the conditions. You’re pulling something that’s like three hundred fifty pounds. It’s negative eighty degrees. What kind of challenges do you face on a daily basis when taking on something like that?

Colin O’Brady: “Yeah, the average temperature in Antarctica is about minus twenty-five, minus thirty, but the wind chill, as you mentioned, you know, it’s fifty or sixty miles per hour winds, so it can definitely get up to minus seventy and minus eighty.  So, I’m pulling my sled with all my supplies in it. The sled started out weighing about 375 pounds. And from the food and the vegan angle, one of the most interesting pieces was how to maximize that weight, or basically how to maximize the best food and nutrition I could have in the sled without making my sled too heavy, because the people who had attempted previously, one person made it nine hundred miles and then fell ill and ultimately died a hundred miles from completing the crossing. Another guy attempted the crossing and ran low on food and supplies and had to be rescued.

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“So, there’s kind of this complicated math equation of how much you can pull. Obviously, if you just brought as much food as you wanted you would have a thousand-pound sled and you could never move it on the first day.  I worked with this company called Standard Process which is a whole foods supplement company to create this basically, specific plant-based food for me that they nicknamed the Colin Bars. We spent a year in a food science lab actually studying all my physiology, all my sort of metrics on my body and we came up with that.

“And although I have kind of opted towards a more plant-based and vegetarian diet throughout my life, I didn’t start them on that premise and say “hey this has to be plant-based.” I said “let’s look at all the options and see how we can optimize this. After all the research, all the testing, all the top doctors working on it, there were about twenty PHDs and doctors working on this, what they came up with that was the actual most optimal solution for my body, for my health, for my sustained endurance was entirely plant-based.

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“And where a lot of people have attempted this project in the past, going back a hundred years, people have used something called pemmican which is essentially like bacon and animal fats and things like that. What they found over time-and kind of one of the reasons I was able to do this and no one in history had ever been able to complete it-was that over a long duration of time all that animal protein and fats were leading to some long term problems for people as the body got more weak and diminished.  Whereas with me, I’m on a fully plant-based solution.

“Of course, people (who attempted this in the past) were losing weight because no one could carry enough calories to replenish all the calories. I myself was actually getting stronger and stronger and my body was recovering faster in between the days with a more, clean plant-based diet. I would attribute that to the huge amount of success in Antarctica.

EA: I’ve interviewed so many plant-based athletes and they all say the same thing, that they recover so much quicker and that allows them to get right back at it and either train or actually perform faster, harder. Is that true for you?

CO: “Yeah, it was amazing.  I continue my work with the company. Also, we created a new derivative of the bars for my most recent crossing, the Drake Passage crossing with a rowboat. Same thing, completely vegan for that crossing as well, which was rowing a boat seven hundred miles from the southern tip of South America to Antarctica.  You know, (that’s) 30 and 40-foot swells, icebergs, you know in a tiny rowboat, no motor, just me and five other people propelling it ourselves. And, you know, I was completely vegan for that project as well, and again it worked incredibly well, and again, that was something no one in history had ever completed either.

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“So, it just goes to show people have attempted these various different challenges and expeditions over time and, you know, I think the mindset is key. I think other pieces of training are key, but nutrition is certainly one of the key factors.  Being able to work with this incredible lab of people and Standard Process’s nutrition innovation center and come up with these plant-based solutions has been amazing to see what I’ve been able to do.”

Maybe pulling a 375-pound sled across Antarctica by yourself for over 50 days in windchills of up to negative 80 isn’t your idea of a good time, but a whole-foods plant-based diet can help the weekend athlete have faster recovery times, stay uninured and keep on winning.  It isn’t just professionals who benefit from less inflammation and faster recovery and you, too, can get your game on!

To watch the full interview, click here.  To watch more Awesome Vegans Influencer Series, click here.

The post Powered by Plants, Ultra-Endurance Athlete Colin O’Brady Solo Transverses Antarctica appeared first on The Beet.

As part of her Series called Awesome Vegans, Elysabeth Alfano interviewed Psychologist and author of Never Binge Again, Dr. Glenn Livingston. You don’t have to be one of the  3.5% of women and 2.0% of men in the US with a binge eating disorder to benefit from Livingston’s advice. Binge Eating Disorder is more than three times more common than the better-known disorders–anorexia and bulimia –– but these tips work on everyday eaters who find themselves out of control on occasion.

Instead of giving in to the feeling when a binge urge hits and you know you’re about to go out of control, try these tips to head off a calorie bomb hitting your otherwise healthy diet. Dr. Livingston shares his tips for never binging again!

The Best 7 Tips to Never Binge Again, by Dr. Glenn Livingston

1. When It Comes to a Rule, Keep It Simple

The number one tip would be to decide on a simple goal. I know a guy who worked as a trucker. All he ate on the road was fast food, all day and he said, “Well I’m not going to stop eating fast food, but I’ll never go back for seconds,” and he lost one hundred fifty pounds with that one rule.”

2. Make Yourself a Rule, and then Followed Your Rule

Rules work much better than guidelines. Come up with a very clear and bright line that distinguishes healthy from unhealthy.  This also avoids you making exceptions for yourself.  If you have something hard and fast, it is easier to stick to it. Otherwise, you find yourself saying, ‘But on Tuesdays at 11:39 AM, it doesn’t count.’

3. It’s Not Me, It’s You: Give Your Cravings a Persona

Make a decision to assign your destructive thoughts to a fictitious entity, one that you can separate from yourself. So the next time you are in Starbucks and there’s a chocolate bar in front of you and you hear a voice in your head saying, “It’s okay, you can just start tomorrow.” You can say back: “Wait a minute. That’s not me talking. That’s my inner food monster and I don’t listen to monsters. I’m going to make this decision for myself.”

4. Breathe to Calm Yourself and Turn off the Alarm Bells

“When you hear your inner food monster squealing, take a breath. Take a deep breath in. Breath out for longer than you breathed in for. That functions to help deactivate the emergency systems [in your head] that are telling you that need the chocolate to survive.”

5. Do Your Research to Give Yourself a Reason

[It’s important] to specifically disempower the false logic in your food monster’s reasoning. So, if your food monster says, “You can just start tomorrow. It’s just as easy,” if you do a little research, you’ll find out that it’s actually not just as easy and once you’ve started healthy habits, sticking with them requires you to invest in them every day. Trying to start over the next day can come with a wave of guilt and self-hatred, so save yourself that process before your start  Knowing the facts about healthy habits sets you up for success.

6. Get It In Writing! Put Pen to Paper

Get all of your food monster’s reasons (aka excuses) on the table in writing. Writing or journaling is a higher brain activity whereas binging is a lower brain activity.  So journaling is another thing that moves the battle ground from your impulses and emotions to your intellect where you can self script and talk yourself into healthy actions and out of unhealthy ones. There are only so many thoughts you can keep in mind at one time because of the limitations of our brain’s short-term memory, but if you put them down on paper, the whole picture becomes clearer to you. Take the time to write it all out: What you are craving, when you crave it, what emotion you may be hoping to push down, or even the calm binging gives you. Once you unravel the story, you have the beginning steps of changing the way it goes.

7. Be Confident and Happy in the Decisions You Make

[Consider] why staying with your own rule would make you a happier and better person.For instance, I didn’t make the rule, ‘I’m never going to have chocolate again’ so I could be miserable craving chocolate the rest of my life…. I made [that decision] because I want to be a confident, thin man walking the world as a leader. I made it because I want to be able to hike mountains and enjoy getting to the top. I want to be able to have a romantic relationship with a woman. I want to be able to be a leader and influence millions of people. I could go on and on.

There are dozens of reasons why not having chocolate makes me a happier, better person. When you link it to the future that you’re building for yourself, then you’re much more likely to go forward.  Imagine yourself at the weight you want to be and move towards that positive image.  Remember, skinny doesn’t have to be the goal. Instead think of the goal as: Happy to be off the roller coaster and feeling healthy!

For the full interview click here. To watch more Awesome Vegans Influencer Series, click here.

Elysabeth Alfano is a plant-based expert for mainstream media, breaking down the plant-based health, food, culture, business and environmental news for the general public on radio and TV. Follow her @elysabethalfano on all platforms.

The post The 7 Best Tips to Never Binge Again by the Psychologist Who Wrote the Book appeared first on The Beet.

Regil’s millions of fans love him for his story of resilience in the face of personal conflict. He was the Latin face of McDonald’s and Nestle in Mexico for years, but when he watched Paul McCartney‘s documentary video, Glass Walls, and learned about the cruelty animals endure on factory farms, he felt compelled to go vegan, and it cost him dearly. He walked away from lucrative contracts and since has dedicated himself to building a platform for the Latin American community with his Marco: El Podcast focused on personal growth and spirituality.

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His Instagram posts are replete with writings and inspirational messages:

“I remember when I focused more on what others did or did not do than on what was going on inside of me. This is actually one of the favorite “tricks” of that little voice in your mind. Telling yourself stories about how bad others are is a distraction from your true mission, which is, to transform what is inside you ??? Have you already experienced the difference by changing your priorities?”

Rather than telling others how to behave, he shares his personal transformative thinking:
“Every time I manage to let go of a limiting judgment or thought, a space is created within me where I rest, smile and flow that creativity full of ideas and solutions to handle the challenges I have today. On the other hand, creating and carrying judgment and grudges is like putting heavy stones in my backpack and blaming the stones for my pain and fatigue when I was the one who put them there and I was the one who decided to carry them every day ?? The good news is that I can decide what to do with them because I am free to change the story that I am telling myself about any matter or circumstance. It’s called free will and that’s a gift I was born with and no one can take it away from me ???? How heavy do you want your backpack to be today? Share below if you have already experienced it or would like to try it.

Regil shared his story of how he switch to a vegan lifestyle with The Beet’s interviewer, and host of the Awesome Vegans columns, Elysabeth Alfano, who conducted the interview remotely. Here is their conversation.

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EA: Let’s hear the story about how you went vegan and how this changed your outlook.

MR: “Well, I mean, it’s like in my dark past. I always say when I go to festivals–I speak very often–Or I used to before COVID-19– I used to speak at these festivals in Minnesota, Washington, New York, Mexico, Tulum, you know, many places. I always tell them that I used to be the face of McDonald’s in Mexico for about three years.”

EA: When did this all start to change for you? When did decide to give those up?

MR: “Fifteen years ago, before being vegan, and I was the face of McDonald’s… and I was the face of Nestle. We toured Mexico promoting Nestle milk. I worked for Frito-lay. I worked for all those companies because that’s what I was doing. I was on television, prime time, on great shows and those were the sponsors, and I didn’t know better than that.

“So, I tell people, if I made the change, anyone can make the change, because for me it was not only a lifestyle thing because I was a heavy, heavy, heavy carnivore. For me, a meal without meat was not a meal. So, I let go of all that and it cost me a lot of money because I did have to let go of a lot of income that was coming from those sponsors.

“What happened to me is I watched documentaries. The first one I watched was Glass Walls with Paul McCartney [that he made] with PETA. It’s an amazing documentary that is available on YouTube [and is celebrating its tenth anniversary]. That was before Forks over Knives and The Game Changers and all of these amazing documentaries. That was just one of the ones that showed the animal cruelty and, in my heart, it was really clear that I did not want to be aligned with exploitation, suffering, or anything that would make another living being suffer.

“Well, when I looked at what was happening to the animals I said… I just do not want to be a part of any dynamic that includes torturing someone in order to survive, when we don’t need to do that. So that was it. It cost me a lot of money but, like I say, all the same, if I made the change anyone, believe me, anyone can make the change.”

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EA: I get it: You don’t want to see any kind of suffering, human or otherwise.

MR: “It’s not the problem of the animals…It’s our problem because we have been a part of it one way or another. We have been a part of this unfairness and inequality in the world so it’s about: ‘Let’s stop it.” Let’s stop it right now.’ Let’s be a part of this positive change. That’s it.”

EA: Do you believe that there are no differences between pets and farm animals?

MR: “Of course. Well, that was one of the “Ah-ha!” moments I had when I watched that documentary of Glass Walls with Paul McCartney. I always loved my dogs and I never realized that- I didn’t know, it’s just the marketing, right? You see the cows in the milk marketing and you see they’re happy cows and grazing and free.”

EA: And of course that is not true.

MR: “Not true. When you see what’s happening and you realize, ‘Oh my God! The cows are the same, the pigs are the same. The pigs are even more sensitive and intelligent than dogs.’ Like right now, you know, we’re seeing people horrified with the Chinese markets where they’re doing that celebration again of the dog meat festival when you see all the doggies being eaten and served…”

EA: It’s Awful.

MR: “Yeah, awful, but it’s the same thing we’re doing to the pigs and I just went last week here in Austin to one of the sanctuaries here and I took pictures of them. I have an Instagram account where I share photography, which is my passion, and it’s called ‘Pics By Marco’ and I took pictures of the piggies and they’re so sweet.

“They were so sweet, I mean one of them I was taking pictures of him and he was talking to me like ‘Stop taking pictures, come rub my belly.’ Right? Which is the same thing that Bernie (my dog) does when I’m not close enough to him and when you actually realize that they’re exactly the same! (It was) only in my head, it was different.”

EA: But these animals are the same.

MR: “We tell ourselves: Pigs are not the same as dogs. You wouldn’t eat your dog, but the pigs are not the same. So, therefore, we can exploit and torture (them.) Every time we go into that pattern of “we’re not the same” is when abuse happens and that is the origin of all this misunderstanding: we are the same! We are the same and if we can give that idea and opportunity in all the aspects of our lives, then I think we have a chance to move forward and be more compassionate and more loving and for me that’s the essence of the whole thing.”

The post Marco Antonio Regil Was the Face of McDonald’s and Nestle. Then He Watched Glass Walls and Gave it Up appeared first on The Beet.

In the United States, 99 new veggie-friendly food spots have opened, in England, 46, and in Canada, 19 establishments have opened their doors. These numbers point towards the shifting of worldwide eating habits in favor of plant-forward diets that have been shown to be healthier, better for the environment, and kinder toward animals.

The Beet’s Elysabeth Alfano, who writes a column on “Awesome Vegans,” recently sat down with HappyCow’s Marketing and Ideas Man Ken Spector, who explained that the mass growth was being led by small restaurants who are perhaps trying to get ahead of the plant-based curve for when the world opens again after the pandemic: “A lot of these place are mom and pop shops. You know that a lot of vegan restaurants aren’t big corporations, a lot of these are smaller restaurants, and there are more opening than closing, during COVID! These are purely vegan restaurants, were not even talking yet about vegan options. That is exploding!”

The data for plant-based demand does indeed back up this explosion of vegan options: A recent study shows that 23 percent of Americans are reaching for more plant-based options during the pandemic and that as meat sales declined for the first time in six years, plant-based products are way up. We’re also seeing amazing new vegan products being launched every day, from Trader Joe’s new cheese-less “cheesecake” to Follow Your Heart’s vegan feta crumbles to Daily Harvest’s dairy-free ice cream line.

When it comes to new plant-based fare, some of our favorite recently-owned restaurants include Toronto’s La Bartola, Oakland-based Malibu’s Burgers, and Hollywood’s VTree. To find vegan and plant-based establishments in your neighborhood, visit our Find Vegan Near Me section, or check out The Beet’s on-site HappyCow widget.

The post More Vegan Restaurants Opened During COVID-19 than Closed, Says HappyCow appeared first on The Beet.

Vegan for almost 30 years, Rip was a full-time, world-class triathlete for over 8 years after competing for the Olympic swimming trials. During that time, plant-based foods allowed him to train harder and recover faster. It doesn’t hurt that Rip had a little bit of guidance from his father, the world-famous plant-based cardiologist who treated patients at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. You may know him from the documentary Forks Over Knives or as the world-renowned pioneer of reversing heart disease through a plant-based diet. Ok, so he had a head start. Still, Rip’s journey is a fascinating one.

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After years as a plant-based athlete, in 1997 Rip became a firefighter in Austin, Texas. As a firefighter, he ended up mostly doing EMT assistance instead of running into burning buildings. The people he helped were usually in life-or-death situations because of health emergencies that arise from complications related to their diets. They dialed 911 in response to shortness of breath, fainting, or chest pain, but the underlying health conditions causing these symptoms were a combination of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease, in other words, all lifestyle-related illnesses. Sadly, by the time the EMT arrived on the scene, most people were beyond saving. This had a profound effect on Rip.

In a far-reaching interview, Rip shares with Elysabeth that he launched his Plant-Strong programs to help people lose the meat, dairy, and processed foods, in the hopes that they don’t find themselves calling 911 in distress. Making the connection to complications from COVID-19, Rip underscores that most of the people who are hospitalized or have died from the virus have had at least one preexisting health condition, such as heart disease, obesity or diabetes, all of which can be abated with a plant-based diet.

As Dr. Dean Ornish told The Beet with Elysabeth, 70% of our immune system resides in our gut. Eating a diverse amount of plants to get enough fiber creates a better immune system helping us fight and ward off disease. (It’s not protein, people. It’s fiber!)  And to be clear, Rip is a fiber expert: He recommends 30 different types of whole plants a week.

More than anything, Rip is probably best known for transitioning his entire squad of manly firefighters over to eating plant-based. As documented in The Game Changers, Rip challenged his tough guys of Engine 2 who were used to eating meat–but also who didn’t feel so great anymore–to go plant-based for 28 days. It led to them continuing that diet for seven years. Engine 2 became a plant-strong culture that people in the Austin firefighting community came to recognize. It created spillover into the firefighters’ families who saw them begin to gain their health and strength back due to a plant-based diet. Despite getting ridiculed initially by other fire stations in the area, the men of Engine 2 began to wear it as a badge of pride that they were healthier than the other stations. Plant-strong and proud of it!

Rip details his start to every day: his breakfast (lunch and dinner) of champions!

Elysabeth: I want to give people some insight into just what you eat every day. So, clue us in, tell us about that breakfast that has twelve different plants in it already.

Rip Esselstyn: Oh my gosh. Well, so I take my commercialized “Rip’s Big Bowl Cereal” that actually will be available online soon on our own website. That just in it of itself has four different varieties of whole-grain cereals. It’s got walnuts and then, with that, I microwave frozen blueberries, peaches, raspberries and blackberries. All these are frozen, and I throw them in the microwave for maybe thirty-five seconds. Throw that into my bowl and then I do a scoop of ground flaxseed meal, chia seeds, and hemp hearts. And then I do oat-based milk.

Elysabeth: So it’s sort of a smoothie?

Rip Esselstyn: Well, I just want you to know, your listeners aren’t going to like me for this, I’m not a fan of smoothies. We’re supposed to masticate our food. I mean your digestive process starts in the mouth when you chew, and I find that it’s just way too easy for people to take in liquid calories because our brain and our stomach don’t register those calories as calories.

One of the things that we do in our workshops and our immersion programs is we teach people why we want to chew our food and the predominant thing we want to drink is water, right? We don’t want to drink alcohol. We don’t want to drink smoothies. We don’t want to drink, you know, soda pops. We don’t want to drink, you know, muscle milk, protein shakes. All that stuff adds up and most Americans, believe it or not, Elysabeth, are drinking one thousand liquid calories a day. One thousand.

Elysabeth: In the form of Coca Cola or orange juice or?

Rip Esselstyn: All of it. Your smoothie, your green juice, your glass of alcohol, your apple juice, your coffee with sugar and creamer, you know it all adds up in a hurry.

Elysabeth: I’m just going add to this because you and I have similar breakfasts-although I am no Rip Esselstyn, that’s for sure. But I take tofu and I add hemp hearts, which I love, and then I add whatever berries I’ve got, usually raspberries, but blueberries or strawberries- whatever I’ve got, and a half a cup of raw oats. I love raw oats and a tablespoon of date syrup and it’s so fast. It’s got gobs of protein. It’s got fiber, it’s got omega 3s and 6s, and I just love it.

Rip Esselstyn: And so you put it in a bowl and eat it?

Elysabeth: Yeah!

Rip Esselstyn: And then is tofu raw or is it cooked?

Elysabeth: Raw!

Rip Esselstyn: It’s raw. Is it an extra firm or is it firm?

Elysabeth: I like extra firm because I don’t want it to kind of fall apart on me. Soft tofu won’t fall apart, but it goes towards the creamier side and I want it to be chunky. And it’s fast, I mean this is another thing, I don’t have time in the morning for breakfast, so it has to be like go-go-go!  You and I are on the same page about breakfast, which I just love.

Rip Esselstyn: Well, that sounds delicious and it sounds sweet which is, you know, right up my alley.

Also, I just learned, I have a podcast called the Plant-Strong Podcast, from Dr. Will Bulsiewicz right, who’s a gastroenterologist – he’s brilliant, was that 70% of our immune system resides in our gut. 70%! And what’s the best way to form a really strong, healthy, basically microbiome and gut? You’ve got to eat a diverse amount of plants to get all those different types of fiber.  His recommendation and I’m going lay it out there right now, is if you’re not getting more than 30 different types of whole plant-based foods into your diet on a weekly basis you’re not getting enough, and that includes you know nuts, seeds, herbs, stuff like that. But I mean just in my breakfast cereal this morning I had twelve different types of whole plant-based foods.

Rip on Being an EMT rather than Fighting Fires.

Elysabeth: Of course, you did. I just want to backtrack a second because you have unpacked a lot of stuff and I want to make sure that people hear it. So, basically, you’re saying, you know, the numbers aren’t good out there for people. Not just those that have flatlined that you’re trying to save but obviously the rest of us that are eating these very unhealthy meat and dairy heavy diets.  You haven’t said it exactly, but I think it really bares letting everyone know, and please don’t be embarrassed, listeners, because I didn’t know until I went vegan: meat has no fiber. You cannot have a healthy diet without fiber. We have these incredibly long intestines and when you eat something with no fiber, it just is going sit there for two or three days. This is the opposite of what you’re talking about which is a healthy diet including 30 different types of varied plants and fiber- whole plants, of course.

Rip Esselstyn: I can tell you as a firefighter, you know, I thought that every shift we’d be taking on a big ol’ barn burner, we’d be going in slaying the dragon. The reality is, and any firefighter will tell you this, 80 – 90% of our call volume we are responding as emergency first responders, as EMTs, given the huge amount of heart attacks, obesity, lifting assistance calls, low blood sugar from type 2 diabetes. You know, we have people take their medical history and we hear about all the shots across the boughs they’ve had with cancer, all about the medications they’re on, the prescription drugs. So, we see it up close and personal this chronic Western disease and how it’s hammering not only America, but, you know, each city and town in America.

“We would go on these 911 emergency calls for people that had chest pain, for people that had angina, for people that had shortness of breath, for people that actually had keeled over and they had flatlined and so now we’re pumping on their chest, you know, we’re intubating, we’re doing whatever we have to do to try and bring these guys back to life, and I can tell you the percentage is not very good. I probably tried to bring back over a hundred fifty people and of those one hundred fifty, I think we had three. Maybe three or four days where we were able to bring them back.

Elizabeth: Virtually everyone dies?

Rip Esselstyn: “When you get there and they’ve flatlined right, so they’re not breathing, they don’t have a pulse, you do everything you can, but usually it’s not good.

“So save yourself and put out your own fire: Get in 30 types of varied plants, whole grains, and seeds so you’ll never need to call in the vegan firefighters, no matter how sexy they might be.

For the full interview with Elysabeth, click here. To watch more Awesome Vegans Influencer Series, click here. Elysabeth Alfano is a plant-based expert for mainstream media, breaking down the plant-based health, food, culture, business and environmental news for the general public on radio and TV. Follow her @elysabethalfano on all platforms.

The post This Fireman Helped His Squad Go Vegan: 7 Years Later, They’re Plant Strong! appeared first on The Beet.

Daniella first appeared on our collective consciousness for her role as Trina Vega in Victorious, the popular Nickelodeon show about the usual social upheaval and traps of high school. The show was canceled despite huge fan appeal after just three seasons but all of the major cast members (Ariana Grande, also a vegan) went on to enormous success.

Daniella’s recent stardom has come from her social media channels, especially Instagram, where she connects with millions of fans around the globe with her incredible candor and authentic approach. They love following her healthy lifestyle, where she talks about being vegan, healthy, and kind while touting her boxes of vegan beauty products.

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A vegan since her early teens, Daniella has parlayed her success as an actress and Instagram star into becoming an ethical and impact investor. She is one of the powerhouse investors supporting vegan companies such as Outstanding Foods (they sell Pork-less Pork Rinds, or as they say: Pork rinds without the pig!). She also is a co-creator of Kinder Beauty Box, a monthly beauty subscription service delivering boxes of vegan cruelty-free, clean beauty, which she founded with her partner, Evanna Lynch, who most notably played Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies.

Motherhood has strengthened her voice to speak out for what matters to her

Daniella has long been living out her vegan life on-line. Back in 2017, she launched her YouTube show is called “D Takes Your V-Card” to help others eat more vegan or plant-based choices. In the first episode, Daniella shows her younger cousin Shane how he can choose to eat plant-based eggs for breakfast. The series was a modest hit, but it gave her a voice in the vegan food and ethical beauty space: She got her most watches when she shared getting her period and searching for vegan, cruelty-free, all-natural feminine hygiene products. It was at the beginning of her vegan beauty journey toward her latest venture, Kinder Beauty.

More recently, motherhood has given Daniella the conviction to speak out about her vegan values, and she said she thinks that being pregnant instilled in her the strength and the platform to promote a vegan lifestyle. “Being pregnant has instilled a totally different level of strength in me. I’ve always been empathetic and just generally very compassionate toward animals, but when it comes to mothers – mother cows – I feel a connection and a strength in me to provide a voice for them that I didn’t even know I really had until being pregnant myself,” she said in a video for Mercy for Animals.

When asked whether she will raise Gio vegan, in an interview with Mercy for Animals’ Compassionate Life, she said: “Nothing makes me more giddy than to imagine him growing up knowing this from birth. Something about having instilled this from infancy seems magical to me. And to be able to give that to him… ”  She added:  “Whatever he decides to do in his life… the best that I can do is shed light on the things that I think matter and speak the truth and watch him sort of run with it.”

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Here Daniella Monet talks about vegan life with The Beet’s Elysabeth Alfano

In this interview, Daniella and Elysabeth discuss how and why Daniella went vegan, how her relatives overcame cancer by doing the same, her favorite recipe, and her vision for using her platform for change in the world. Grab your plant-based milk and watch excerpts from Elysabeth and Daniella’s inspirational, long-form conversation below.

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Elysabeth: So how did you become vegan?

Daniella: Well, first I became a vegetarian at about five years old. Yeah, I was pretty young. I was also very inquisitive.

Elysabeth: Did you choose it or did your parents?

Daniella: I chose it. But I kinda I hate to say this but it really did choose me.  I was in the right place at the right time. I went to a family dude ranch with my family and it was beautiful and everything, but there was one day where they did a rodeo on the property and the guys lassoed the cow’s feet and legs together, flipped them on their backs and literally, it just sounds like the most dramatic fall ever. And then they score them with these horrendous torches to brand them and shortly after that, I think we were eating dinner at the dining hall, and they were serving these steaks and talking about their meats and how they raised them, and so on and so forth. I asked a lot of questions and I got really lucky because I remember my dad being really honest with me, and just saying this is what it is and that was it for me. I did not ever want to eat an animal after that, and I think as I got a little bit older, I learned more about veganism organically. My uncle was dying of cancer and I actually grew up near Follow Your Heart [the vegan mayo and cheese company]. So, I was really fortunate.

Elysabeth: Oh yes, the company Follow Your Heart!

Daniella: But there’s also a restaurant which is amazing. It’s like a tiny little [lunch spot] and it’s been there forever since I was a baby. And so that was really the only experience I had with vegetarian and vegan food and my aunt when my uncle was struggling with cancer, decided to have a chef come over and I think they were related to Follow Your Heart because they were teaching us recipes that he could be eating while he was at home. So, she was like “come on over, you’re vegetarian, you might like this” and I learned about veganism in that moment.

“I realized if you’re struggling with cancer you need to get your health in check. It’s important to take away the animal products and so that triggered it. And in middle school, in about 6th grade, so [when I was] about eleven or twelve years old, I read a book that was called Skinny Bitch, which is so weird that it’s called that, but it’s such an amazing, informative book about animal activism and about what really happens in the food industry. It’s so old now but I would imagine it’s pretty relevant to even today because it talked about (it)- like that was the first time I ever heard about factory farming and what happens in factory farming, and that was it. I just knew– I had already been vegetarian, mostly vegan–and when I was about eleven-years-old, I went completely vegan.

Elysabeth: How was the transition for you? That’s almost twenty years ago now so not many people were doing it, and then your folks were maybe on board or maybe they weren’t, or your friends at school, what did they think?

Daniella: Yeah I think I’ve always just kind of been different. Like people would always say, “Are you going to be okay? Are you going to be able to eat something?” Or you know “I made you this” like people want to help you for sure. My family was pretty supportive I’d say.

My grandma, I remember her trying to sneak meat into the tomato sauce because she was just worried, naive, and worried that I wasn’t getting the right nutrients. But everyone at this point, like my parents both had cancer, at one point, and they both went vegan while they went through treatment. So, they actually came to me and that was a cool moment for sure.

Elysabeth: When you’re busy, what’s the go-to meal you can make every time? It’s always good. It’s super fast. What’s your go-to meal?

Daniella: Okay, well, if it’s not a salad, which I know sounds so boring, but I eat a salad like every day. No question. I just crave it. I usually make a stir fry. I always have San Marzano organic cento tomatoes, always. So I’ll always have the tomatoes and I’ll throw in any produce that I have, whether it be onions and garlic to start with, olive oil, kale, and then a bean of some sort like a white bean or cannellini or garbanzo, whatever I have. And then, gosh you could go anywhere from there like you could put roasted potatoes and make it more hearty. I mean that’s my go-to.

Elysabeth: Rice and beans is it for me. I mean, how easy can you get.

Daniella: And it’s a complete protein.

Elysabeth: Complete protein! Yeah, really wonderful.

Elysabeth: Do you have a favorite phrase that you live by? I’ll give you a little example while you’re thinking about that. I love to say, “Nose to the grindstone, eyes to the sky.”

Daniella: I got a tattoo about five years ago. It was my first tattoo and I thought about it long and hard and it’s going to sound really young initially, but it really means something to me. It says, “You only live once” and at the time everyone was saying “YOLO, YOLO” whatever. So, I just think to me if you really think about it broader, like your real true body, form, whatever you want to think after us, great. But as this person right now, like I’m living once and I’m going to take advantage of that. So, take adventures, like take risks, you know, especially when you’re younger, you know. Set yourself up for the future so that you can really enjoy.

Elysabeth: There’s this expression I love: “Today’s the day.” Your life is today, you just don’t know about the rest of it, so today’s the day. Today’s the day to go get it, go after it.

Daniella: I love that.

Elysabeth: Yeah super helpful. Okay, so you’ve talked a lot about purpose… What would you like to be known for?

Daniella: I want to be known for being someone who’s just a good person and a good role model. A role model for me has always been important, and I think being on Nickelodeon for twelve years, I grew up in a lot of families’ homes and I was babysitting then, as well. Like I still am very involved with a lot of kids in my family. I’m the oldest of my cousins. I just want people to look up to me and think like, “She may not be perfect, but she’s doing the best she can” and I just hope that people would call me a role model, you know?

Elysabeth: That’s wonderful and I think many do actually.

Daniella: I hope so. I have a lot to learn but I’m willing to share along the way, you know? I’m willing to figure it out at least.

Daniella, with 4 million followers, is so popular because she makes us all want to make positive changes and lives, and live our best lives while we “figure it out.”

To watch the full interview, click here.  To watch more Awesome Vegans Influencer Series, click here.

Elysabeth Alfano is a plant-based journalist covering plant-based health, food, culture, business, and environmental news. Follow her @elysabethalfano on all platforms.

The post Daniella Monet on Being a Vegan Mom and a Role Model for Plant-Based Living appeared first on The Beet.

This doctor says that what happens when you go to the bathroom, and how frequently you eliminate, is a vital message about your diet, and can even predict your risk for breast cancer. If you don’t want to read more, fair warning: We are going to talk about poop. Because what’s happening in your toilet bowl can give you daily information that can help save your life. Remember, this is all about your health, so here goes:

Dr. Terry Mason, Former COO of Illinois’ Cook County Department of Public Health and a leading Urologist, wants to get into the nitty-gritty on the connection between your health and your bowel movements. While we all understand that, like any machine, what goes into it matters in order for it to run well, and we can see from what comes out of it whether things are going smoothly: Cars have exhaust pipes, juicers have pulp catchers and we humans also have a way of seeing if everything is running smoothly in our system, too, but we rarely take advantage of this data.

For our bodies to run well we need to check both the inputs and the outputs. But chances are you never think of your bowel movements as a vital sign for health and wellbeing. Yet Dr. Mason explained why this is vital, during a recent interview for The Beet and my Awesome Vegans Influencer Series, that he wants you to check the quality, the frequency, and the consistency of what is in the bowl.

Dr. Mason’s heart attack sent him on a journey to plant-based eating

First a little background. In 2004, Dr. Terry Mason experienced everyone’s worst nightmare: while running on a treadmill, he had a heart attack. Immediately medical experts committed him to a life of pills and future procedures, to help return him to normal life. Thinking back on his own medical education and realizing that he only received, like most doctors, about four hours of nutritional information while in med school, so Dr. Mason, decided to dive into the facts. Rather than live a life on pills and have to endure multiple operations, Dr. Mason researched what he could do to avoid a life on meds. Ultimately, he found his way to a whole-food, plant-based diet. In doing so, he subsequently lost nearly 50 pounds.

Since then, Dr. Mason has made it his mission to help people find their way to a healthy quality life through plant-based eating, so that they, too, don’t have to commit themselves to a life of pills, doctor appointments and generally not being their most active or healthy. Because who wants a poor quality of life? The average person eats over 57 pounds of chicken a year, Mason tells us, and over 240 of meat. Yet few of us get our recommended five servings of vegetables and fruit a day. It is no wonder that so many Americans are unhealthy and suffering from heart disease, elevated blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Mason’s conviction is that knowing your body and being your healthiest starts with eating healthy, and ends with what comes out of it. Think you are healthy? Eating a mostly plant-based diet filled with fiber can get things moving, in your bowels, your intestines, and that does a body good!  (Consider that Americans need this information. Fun fact: One of Oprah’s most popular TV shows ever was on the subject of poop.)

Here Dr. Mason explains that the link between diet and frequency of bowel movements and cancer. In one study, women with frequent bowel movements had a 46 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those who go to the bathroom less frequently. The act of moving waste through the body, called bowel motility, helps excrete estrogens in the waste, thereby lowering estrogen in the body, to the point that your breast cancer risk goes down. The best way to move things along, Dr. Mason says, is to increase the amount of fiber in your diet.

Fiber only exists in plant-based foods, since it is the cellular infrastructure of plants (animals have skeletons and muscles to keep them upright, plant-based foods need fiber to reach for the sun.) Fiber causes your bowel movements to be regular and less dense, so if you need to keep eating more fiber until you achieve this healthy outcome, just keep adding whole plant-based foods to your diet.

A more recent study backs up the connection between fiber and breast cancer risk. The higher the fiber quotient in your diet, the lower your breast cancer risk. One reason why is the elimination of estrogen through your bathroom habits.

The fact is a regular elimination of bowel acids is healthy, Mason explains, since toxins from the bowel can get re-absorbed into the body if they sit there for too long, and these toxins get stored in the breast, which can increase risk of breast cancer, the study showed. Dr. Mason explains that the more fiber you eat, the more frequently you eliminate your bowels, the healthier it is for your body and your lifetime cancer risk.

“It is totally normal to eliminate right after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and some people have convinced themself they are not comfortable going in a foreign place,” he says. “But if you are eating plant-based and drinking the right amount of water that should lead to regular bowel movements. And if you don’t go at least once a day, add more fiber to your diet.”

Eat more fiber foods to keep things moving

Here is the Interview with Dr. Terry Mason:

Dr. Terry Mason: A study revealed how any woman who has fewer than three bowel movements a week has a four times greater likelihood of developing breast cancer.

Elysabeth: I thought everybody had bowel movements every day. No? Sorry the conversation’s taking a turn now we’re talking about bowel movements.

Dr. Terry Mason: But that’s all a part of life.

Elysabeth: Right, of course. It’s what you put in to get what you put out.

Dr. Terry Mason: What you put in determines when you let it out and how often and what happens is (that) when you’re only having two to three bowel movements a week but you’re eating two to three times a day…

Elysabeth: I don’t…how can your system actually hold that?

Dr. Terry Mason: Well that’s what we have right now. That’s what people are doing because a lot of the foods they’re eating don’t have any fiber.

Elysabeth: Meat has no fiber! I just learned this. I knew it had cholesterol, but I didn’t know it had no fiber.

Dr. Terry Mason: Fiber comes from the cellulose in the plant.

Elysabeth: Can’t be healthy without fiber.

Dr. Terry Mason:  You can’t be healthy without fiber. So what happens, according to the study, these 1,481 women were in the study, and basically they looked at those women who have fewer than two bowel movements a week. An aspirator took out fluid from their breasts and they found that there were pre-cancerous changes in that fluid [called dysplasia]. And it’s because they weren’t eliminating the excess bile acids which are necessary to help break down the fats and the cholesterol in your blood.

But when you’re not eliminating those every, single day it gets reabsorbed into the bloodstream and when it gets reabsorbed into the bloodstream it concentrates in the breast. They checked these bile acids and checked to see if they themselves could cause cancer and they did. That’s what the study showed.

When you go from eating the standard American diet to eating a plant-based diet and you’re drinking water and now you’re having a far more normal frequency of bowel movements like: You eat, you poop. Just like your kids. It’s totally normal that after breakfast you should poop, after lunch you should poop.

Elysabeth: So you think people should poop three times a day?

Dr. Terry Mason: If they’re eating three times a day.

Elysabeth: Okay, noted.

Dr. Terry Mason: Well a lot of people don’t because they’ve trained themselves that they don’t like to poop in foreign places.

Elysabeth: Please weigh in everybody I’d love to know what you think about this. Yes, you also have to be comfortable in the spot.

Dr. Terry Mason: Well that’s what I say. They don’t like going in a foreign place and so you can always hold it but theoretically when you’re eating plant-based and you’re drinking the water, you will poop.

Elysabeth: Yeah and it’s wonderful!

Dr. Terry Mason: Yes and it’s important.

So eat your plants! Another option for someone with constipation is to use a fiber supplement such as Metamucil. Get your fiber! And head to the bathroom several times a day, for your health. To watch the full interview, click here.

Elysabeth Alfano is a plant-based expert for mainstream media, breaking down the plant-based health, food, culture, business, and environmental news on radio and TV. Follow her @elysabethalfano on all platforms.

The post To Be Your Healthiest, Pay Attention to What Happens In the Bathroom appeared first on The Beet.

Since the company’s IPO in May of 2019 the Beyond Meat stock has been on a headline-making rollercoaster, first down, then up, and now soaring 50 percent above its initial offering. As consumers began questioning the safety of the meat supply during the pandemic, demand for Beyond Meat soared, as did its stock price, which climbed into the triple digits in early May and has hovered above $150 through June, triple its low of $54 and change.

Brown never seemed to sweat. Through all this his focus has been intensely trained on the future of food, and how to innovate everything from protein sources to texture to color and smell, and create products that so closely mimick the real thing that consumers will never miss their old burger or sausage habits.

To hear Brown talk about it, the future of food will save the planet, help prevent disease, and be kinder to animals, so it’s a triple win. Beyond is now distributed in China and Europe and most of the recognized supermarkets and chains in the US. Beyond Meat offerings can be found at Duunkinm, Subway, Carl’s Jr., Del Taco, and Starbucks, to name a few. The company originally launched with plant-based chicken strips and then moved into plant-based burgers, first with the Beyond Meat Burger 1.0, then improving on the formula. Brown quickly pushed forward for a better Burger 2.0 and subsequently added Beyond Meat sausages.

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With his engineering background and drive, one would think that Brown would be relatively unapproachable. Nothing could be further from the truth; he loves nothing more than to cook up some meatless sausages for guests wearing n jeans and a t-shirt, as he did for me, even before they went to market last year.

Brown is determined to change the way people eat and think about protein sources, for their health, the environment, and animals. Here is his take on how eating healthy is big business.

EA for The Beet: Do You Eat Beyond Chicken for Breakfast?

EB: I’m very focused on, Will my diet sustain me throughout the day?  You can see marked differences in your productivity based on the food you eat, right? So, if you have a carb-heavy breakfast, for example, you just don’t perform as well, right? For many years, I just had our chicken strips for breakfast because I really wanted that core protein and that feeling of alertness that you get when you have a higher level of protein in the morning.

“When people are interviewing with me, I always say, approach the day like it’s a game. Have you gotten your rest? Have you eaten properly? So you can get through and be intense throughout the workday. I always try to give that advice to people because that’s all we’ve got –is our time. And so [I say] build your day around functioning at as high a level as possible.

EA for The Beet: I love this. That we should organize our day like an athlete does, that we would all think about our performance, throughout the day.

EB: “Yeah, in fact, we have a whole group of athletes out there promoting the fact that they’re performing better on plant-based protein.

EA for The Beet: And what is the future of food? Is Plant-Based Eating Inevitable?

EB: “I don’t think that we’re going to go to a diet where we’re consuming just plants and vegetables in their native form. (However,) I think that we can absolutely shift that meat consumption from animal-based meat to plant-based meat and I think that will happen. I think it’s almost inevitable.

“I came out of the alternative energy sector where the company I was with spent a billion dollars developing fuel cells. That’s an important solution: Creating emission-free vehicles. But what if you create a more sustainable source of meat for the standard plate. How big would that be? So why not spend a billion? Why not spend ten million dollars doing that?”

EA for The Beet: Do you have any pets?

EB: We have turtles, a tortoise, a pig. In fact, my pig is on my (Beyond Meat) shirt with a “W” for Wilbur.

EA for The Beet: The pig on the Beyond Meat shirt is for your pig?

EB: I begged the kids not to name him Wilbur. Please don’t name him Wilbur. Every pig is named Wilbur. But Wilbur it is!

EA for The Beet: Do you think they are any different than farm animals?

EB: No and that’s the thing, one of the motivating factors that got me into this business was my Dad’s a professor and that gives him some time on the weekends to do things. He grew up in the country and we grew up in the country because he wanted us to have that experience. So, we bought a farm in the Western part of the state. I would be up there on the weekends and during the summers and I would just think in my mind about the difference between the two. (The farm animals) were treated fine, but I would think about the difference between the cows in the barn, or any animal, and the ones that were sleeping in my bed. I didn’t understand it at the time, but as I grew older and particularly as I read Darwin: his whole point is that there are only variations and small degrees of difference. So, there is no difference that would justify different treatment, right? And that I think is a scientific fact and one that our ethics have yet to catch up with.

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In an interview with Brown last spring on Good Food Podcast hosted by Evan Kleiman, Alfano did an in-depth interview with Brown as she visited the El Segundo, California Beyond Meat factory, where she asked Brown what was on the horizon for  Beyond Meat:

EA: What’s Next? Steak and Bacon?

EB: “Bacon is of particular interest to me, because of the delicious nature of it, plus the fact that I have a pet pig. Let’s resolve this issue!’”

EA for The Beet: What do you wish you knew 10 years ago that you know now. 

EB: Don’t live small. On an everyday basis. I knew this but I didn’t act on it every day. So on an everyday basis, just be who you are and don’t live small.

EA for The Beet: What do you want to be known for?

EB: I would love for the company to be known as a group of people that separated beef from animals.

For the full interview, click here. To watch other interviews from the Awesome Vegans Influencer Series with Elysabeth Alfano, click here. 

Elysabeth Alfano is a plant-based expert for mainstream media, covering the plant-based health, food, business, and environmental news for the general public.

The post What’s Next for Beyond Meat? CEO Says: “Bacon Is of Interest to Me!” appeared first on The Beet.

You’ll recall that Chef AJ lost 100 pounds on a plant-based diet, and eating what could be considered the “opposite” of a keto approach: No oil, at all, but potatoes and complex starches that are plant-based are okay (like quinoa).

For many years in her 20s, AJ explains that she weighed as much as 200 pounds. She was addicted to food. Then in her 50s, she lost about half her size. In one year, back in 2012, she went from 165 pounds to a final “fighting’ weight of 115 pounds. As amazing as that is, sometimes the biggest trick for any dieter isn’t losing the weight, as hard as that is, but keeping it off. As a follow up to our last article covering Chef AJ’s tips for saving calories in a plant-based kitchen, Elysabeth Alfano catches up with Chef AJ to find out what tips and tricks she can share with us for keeping the weight off, month after month, year after year.

Here’s how Chef AJ keeps the weight off and stays slim on a plant-based diet

Chef AJ’s Stay Slim Tip 1. Keep it to Two Meals A Day But Make Them Count

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating two meals a day as long as you’re getting enough calories and have enough energy to do what you want. Also, I’m really, really busy and taking time to eat is almost annoying at times. Especially because I’m eating plants and you have to chew them and it takes some time. So, I think two meals a day is enough.

Lunch is Roasted Yams With Broccoli, Which Keeps You Full for Hours

“I had lunch before this interview. I had my favorite lunch, and I eat it almost every day. I love sweet potatoes and I especially love Hannah Yams. I love them roasted. They taste like cake. That’s the best way I can describe it, so I usually have it with broccoli because the combination is delicious. About a pound of broccoli and a pound and a half of roasted sweet potatoes, and that will hold me for almost 5 hours.”

Dinner is Quick and Easy Stir Fry Vegetables, Mango and Rice, but Hold the Oil

“Tonight, I know we’re having stir fry. I’ll cook up some rice in the rice cooker and I’ll have vegetables like purple cabbage and carrots and scallions and maybe some ginger garlic, turmeric, I don’t know. All this stuff is in the freezer so I’m really big on batch cooking and having stuff in the freezer so there’s always food at my house that’s always basically ready and it just has to be assembled. So I don’t have to spend that much time thinking about it.

“We always put mango, or pineapple, or some kind of fruit in our stir fry. It just makes it just delicious.”

Chef AJ’s Stay Slim Tip 2. Focus on What You Are Eating. Not What You Aren’t Eating

So much of being successful on a diet is shifting our mindset so that we don’t see our new routine as a punishment, but as a reward: We get to be healthy and feel better! Clean eating is our path to a more joyful life, Chef AJ explains.

“Instead of thinking about all the things you have to give up, think about addition, rather than subtraction. Think about how you can find ways to add more fruits and vegetables to your diet that are easy, delicious, and fun [to make and eat].

“People say ‘A vegan diet? It’s so restrictive.’ Think about people that aren’t vegan. How many actual animals are you eating? Like maybe 4? People eat cows, pigs, chicken, maybe some fish, right? Okay, so if you look at the bean category or the legume category, there are 18,000 different kinds. And when you think of the thousands of different types of whole grains, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, fruits, and vegetables. And the other thing is, in an animal-based diet, when I think about Thanksgiving, all the food is gray. They have gravy, a turkey. I mean, it’s so colorless. But [plant-based] food is so colorful. We’re primates, we’re attracted to color and that’s what fruits and vegetables are.”

Chef AJ adds that one of the biggest things we are not getting by eating plants is all the chemicals and hormones from dairy. She adds:

“Dairy is not only not healthy food, it’s just not food. I mean there’s no evidence that dairy is healthy for anyone other than the baby calf…  So, I would tell people, even if they didn’t want to go full-on vegan at least eliminate dairy. You will feel so much better.

“You won’t get acne, you won’t get ear infections, even chronic conditions, like diabetes. I do recommend that everybody take [eliminating dairy] as a first step.’

She adds that even people not willing to give up meat entirely should reduce their intake;

“Let’s say you aren’t ready to give up your dead animal flesh right away. Okay, maybe you can minimize it. Maybe you don’t have to eat it three times a day, seven days a week. Maybe you can cut back a little and instead of beef chili make bean chili. Instead of spaghetti and meat sauce, spaghetti primavera with marinara sauce. So do as many swaps as you can for plants (and get rid of dairy) that’s where I would tell people to start that aren’t ready to go whole tofu right away.”

Chef AJ’s Stay Slim Tip 3. Understand the Idea of Calorie Density

You may have heard the term, calorie density, but what exactly does it mean?  Calorie density, also known as calories per pound, is how much energy, i.e. calories, is provided per unit measure of food. Calorie-dense foods, such as oil and refined sugar, provide many calories in a small amount of healthy whole foods. So you eat these calorie-dense foods and don’t feel full or satisfied, you just packed on a boatload of calories and are left wanting more. Conversely, low calorie-dense foods (such as fruits and veggies) fill you up with fewer calories and keep your diet headed in the right direction.

Chef AJ says she wishes she knew and understood calorie density years ago when she was struggling to lose weight but now it’s her secrets to keeping the weight off and staying satisfied.

“You want to know the calorie density [of food you eat] because you’ll realize, ‘Wow! Cheese has 1,600 calories a pound! I could have a pound of cheese or I could have a pound of broccoli for about 100 calories, and when you understand that foods have caloric densities varying from 100 calories a pound for vegetables to 4,000 for oil, you just have to change what you’re eating.  When you change what you’re eating, you don’t have to change how much. In fact, you can actually eat more.

“My meals are very large, because I eat in accordance with the principles of calorie density, so I’m eating food that is very calorically diluted but nutritionally full. I can eat these huge salads and huge bowls of vegetables and potatoes and starches because it’s really very calorically diluted, yet very nutrient-dense.  I’m very happy eating this way and being able to maintain a 50-pound weight loss now for eight years which is extraordinary because like I said, until I was 52, I was overweight or obese.”

It’s one thing to understand the concept of calorie density, and it’s another to know how to execute it.

“You want foods with a caloric density of 600 calories per pound or less. That’s fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains because these are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, full of fiber and micro-nutrients, and you can eat as much of them as you want, and you won’t be overweight.

“It’s a game-changer. It’s not the same as counting calories, which doesn’t work. I wish I had known that sooner.

Chef AJ’s Stay Slim Tip 4. Don’t Cheat Sleep. Ever! Learn Go to Bed Early

“It took a long time for me to realize how important sleep was. People just think about diet and exercise.  No no! Diet, sleep and exercise. Sleep is the third leg of the stool. Maybe the fourth would be sunshine. You have to go to bed on time. I run an online summit, called The Truth About Weight Loss and we learn from these doctors about what happens during sleep, how it literally washes our brain. The hours from 10 pm to midnight are the most important hours for this, and if we go to bed late, we miss the cleansing hours.

“So I taught myself to go to bed early. You do that by getting up early and by getting up early, you’re going to be tired at first for a few days. But I don’t use any stimulants like coffee. Sleep is important, and I’ve got to be in bed by ten o’clock.”

“In short, dieting doesn’t have to be a death sentence. In fact, it is a life sentence for feeling great and getting your health back.  Eat the colors of the rainbow, watch out for calorie-dense foods, get your sleep, and work out [how to pass up] the meat and dairy. Now: Envision it!  You’re almost there!”

For the full interview, click here.

The post Chef AJ’s 4 Tips For Losing 100 Pounds on a Plant-Based Diet and Keeping It Off appeared first on The Beet.