The Great Plant Based Con Part Two with Jayne Rees Buxton! 536

Jane is an author and journalist , born in the United Kingdom and raised in Canada . Before 2022 , she had published a work of nonfiction , ending the Mother War and two works of fiction lessons in duck shooting and Take Someone Like Me .

She is a graduate of the Kingston University Creative Writing Master's program , where she was awarded the George Markstein Fiction Prize . After the publication of Ending the Mother War , she became a regular spokesperson and writer on work-life issues .

She founded a website and consultancy for working parents called Flametree , which was later incorporated into a major consultancy .

Jane's latest book , released in 2022 , the Great Plant-Based Con while eating a plant's only diet won't improve your health or save the planet , is incredibly well researched and an absolutely fascinating look at how diets that exclude animal foods can damage your health , how big food and big pharma profit when you eat more plants , and why a rich and powerful church

wants to eat meat off your plate , jane Reece Buckson , with an absolute honor . Just to welcome you back to Balmous Body Radio .

I told Nina Tyshill the same thing about the big , fat surprise . You would think this giant book full of tons of information would be difficult to get through , but it's so captivating . I love it every time and I learn something new every time . You did such a wonderful job writing it .

I can't imagine what it would be like to try to memorize everything that you put in there in such a long book . It takes about 18 hours to listen to Just know that everything we talk about today is just going to be anecdotal . We can cite the facts , but don't feel like you need to go into any kind of data for this .

A lot of that was around because of the release of Game Changers , the movie . You remember that one ? It attracted so much attention and made me realize how much money was behind this narrative . Money and power was behind pushing this narrative . What had initially been a personal research project to understand these issues better became something more .

It became a commitment to write the book . I proposed it to my agent and he initially said no , I don't think you're ready to write this book and I don't think the world is ready yet to hear this . It's too counter the narrative . Let's let somebody else do this . I said look , let me convince you .

I went away and I wrote a 130 page proposal with just a few of the facts that you're alluding to . He was then quite blown away by all these facts that he didn't know about . He said , okay , yeah , let's do it . I think he just thought , well , what is she going to write about ?

Because everything he'd been hearing was what the mainstream narrative was telling him . So there we go . That was the start , and it took me a couple of years , almost three actually , by the time we got through the legal process and it was published last year .

Really that was , in a way it's terrible to call COVID a blessing , because it wasn't , but that was an opportunity to really hunker down and do it and do lots of interviews , talk to people all over the world by Zoom , because by then Zoom was becoming a thing , whereas previously I might have been tempted to fly all over the world to see those people and I

didn't have to do that .

How did you not get sucked up into the thought that plant-based diets are the best ? It's the best for your health , it's the best for the environment and everybody knows it's the best ethically . You're not killing animals . What about that message ? Made you second guess it ?

She and I would have conversations about this and we were both very skeptical .

Reading things like Nina Tichholz's book Big Fat Surprise , that's not about plant-based diets , but it's got some similar themes in there . That book had opened my eyes to a whole range of untruths that we had already been told in the area of fat , saturated fat . I approached the subject skeptically for that reason . It wasn't because I loved meat particularly .

I'd always been certainly a meat and veg girl , but leaning heavily towards the veg . In my teens and twenties I was very much a salad girl , as lots of young women are . It wasn't because I particularly loved eating meat and wanted to protect that or anything like that . It was , as I say , that belief that we weren't being told the truth .

Then , the more you dig , of course , the more you realize just how much you're not being told the truth . All you have to do is do a bit of fundamental nutritional research to look at what animal source foods and plants contain and how they interact or not together the whole bioavailability issue with nutrients from plants .

You just need to do a couple of weeks of reading on that , or even less than that , to know that you're onto something .

I'm not a carb fob , but she benefited immensely from doing a low carb diet , which , of course , is another thing that runs against the narrative Most people think oh , you absolutely need carbs , you can't live without them . She turned me onto books like Jason Fung's book , the Obesity Code .

She was also the one that sent me the Eric Keith's book , the Vegetarian Myth . I can't discount the value of having that person in my family who could stimulate my ideas and with whom I could debate everything .

We did 303 , I have to just say there might be a little bit of crossover , but recommend to the listener that you go back and listen to that , because that's where we took the 30,000 foot view of your book . It's amazing to go back and listen to it and realize we barely scratched the surface and still went 90 minutes .

So anyway , if somebody wants to go back and listen to all the content and get a good overview , we'd recommend to go listen to that . I just want to point out a few of my favorite things that maybe are things that are overlooked , not really talked about enough . That I think you did brilliantly .

The first one we did talk about in the first episode , but I think it's worth reiterating . It's one of my favorite points on this book . You do a brilliant job of not only doing what I think we're really good at in this world where we're playing defense , we're saying like whoa , whoa , whoa , hold on , eating meat is not that bad .

You also take the offensive to say not only in this chapter is meat bad for you , but in this next chapter . This is how plants are not only not as good for you but maybe could be very harmful for you . Can you talk about the importance of the reason why you set that up ?

We are , as a culture , ridiculous about it . It was important to me to stick in some reality checks there to warn people about , say , the anti-nutrients in plants and for people who don't know what that is , there are various anti-nutrients , such as oxalates and phytates and lectins .

They interfere with the absorption of the nutrients from the plants , but also from the other foods that you're eating in addition to the plants . They stop you absorbing the zinc and the vitamin C quite so much , and the iron . They can also cause other issues as a result of attaching to calcium , for instance .

Oxalates will bind and they will accumulate in your body . Kidney stones is the biggest thing . We've seen evidence of that across the board . Also , arthritic joints , gastrointestinal distress these are all things that most people think could never happen if you're just eating plants , those harmless little things that you pick out of the ground .

It was very important to do that . By the way , I think that recognition of the damage from things like oxalates I perceive in the past 18 months that that has gone up a little bit . When I describe it to people they don't always look at me like I'm crazy .

I think that that's partly because of the great work that Sally Norton has done with her book and her talking . I know you've had her as a guest . There is another woman called Monique Attinger . I think you might have had her on your show as well .

These two women are pushing the boundaries of our understanding on oxalates , for which I think we should all be grateful . Then I went beyond what is specifically in the plants , those anti-nutrients to the question of what is going to be in the plant-based diet in excess that might be harmful .

This was things like vegetable oils , excess carbohydrates because of all the grains and pulses that you're advised to eat in order to get your protein . Ultra-processed foods . They don't have to be part of the diet , but they are very likely going to be , because when you take meat and dairy out meat , eggs and dairy , you're going to have to put other things in .

That's what you fill them with . That's what you tend to fill the diet with . The vegetable oil thing is an interesting thing . That , to me , is another area where I think recognition has altered in the past 18 months . Once again , if I say it to people now , they not only don't think I'm crazy , but they nod and they go oh yeah , I know that .

They know about the toxicity of seed oils , vegetable oils , whatever you want to call them . They are really from seeds . They may not know the detail of everything that's caused , but they are caught on onto the fact that you may be better off with more natural fats from animal foods or an olive oil as a fat monoinsaturated .

Those are just a few of the things I discussed . I got into trouble actually in the initial weeks after the book came out Because of my focus on ultra-processed foods .

I don't know if you saw there was a feature done on the book initially where I went around one of the Whole Foods branches with a journalist and we looked at all of the vegan processed foods in the freezer cabinets . We looked at the ingredients and we had a conversation about that .

This was published in our big newspaper , in the Daily Telegraph , and a lot of people objected to that because their argument was the processed food doesn't have to be part of a vegan diet .

I know that ultimately , if you were very stringent , it wouldn't have to be , but it's entirely unrealistic to think that it won't be because , again , if you're taking out meat and dairy , you've got to fill it with something else . What are you going to do to replace dairy ? We're going to create something which is made out of chemicals .

That's what a dairy-free dairy substitute is made of . If you look at all the ingredients , there'll be 20 different ingredients emulsifiers , starches , sugars in this product as well as a massive amount of processing to get it to be the thick and creamy texture that we're used to .

That's just one example , but there are dozens whereby the very act of replacing an animal-sourced food with its plant-based substitute will involve processing . So , whether you like it or not , the vegan diet is going to contain more ultra-processed food . I firmly believe that . Yeah , totally .

But in my brain I'm thinking salad , I'm thinking fruit and Lira pointed the same thing out Like , yeah , you think that , but you can't live on salad , and so what replaces it is all the ultra-processed crap that causes a lot of harm . And we forget also about the bioavailability . This is something you write about a lot that I love you talked about .

You know plants having things that block the absorption of certain nutrients . Like you might not even be getting what you think you're getting , but the more bioavailable nutrients they all come from animal products , don't they ?

I think he's an awesome functional medicine practitioner and has done a lot in this whole space about animal source foods and the benefits of eating them . He said something I thought was absolutely correct , which is the public health authorities are failing us by not explaining and not being honest about the whole bioavailability issue .

If you've got a package of carrots and it says there's vitamin A in here , what should be notified is that that vitamin A is not going to be absorbed by your body in the same way as the vitamin A from a slice of liver or from an egg .

Not only that , but we vary as human beings in our ability to convert that beta-carotene from the carrot into the usable vitamin A . 50% of us can't do it at all . The other 50% have varying degrees . That's just the most stark example of how bioavailability and conversion rates really impact what we're getting out of our food .

The other one that came home to me recently was about iron . Lily Nichols , who's a great RDN who specializes in pregnancy I bet you've had her on your show or , if you haven't , you should she did a great analysis in pictorial form of how much of each type of food you'd have to eat to get bioavailable iron .

It was one ounce of clams or a three ounce chicken thigh or 57 cups of broccoli . We get the same amount of bioavailable iron . I'd urge anyone to go to her website and check out that piece . It's fantastic . It's easily available on lilinicholscom .

It brings home the bioavailability issue very , very clearly in a way that I do hope that we will see increased awareness of this , and I do hope we'll see food labeling systems adjusted in the future to account for this .

Speaking of that , you had an entire chapter dedicated to the carnivore diet , which I really respect , because I'm not sure I wanted to not ask you because I don't know how your thoughts have evolved on the carnivore diet since we last talked . But you were not a carnivore .

This is not a carnivore book , but you included it to show the fact that this is at least happening People are not dying . How has your thinking evolved on the carnivore diet itself over time ?

Meat can cure conditions like eczema or psoriasis . It has helped people to cure mental illness , bipolar disorder . There are numerous cases of this emerging all the time At the moment because of the way research is funded , etc . They are very much anecdotal , but there's a mass of anecdotes . A bunch of N1s make a lot of evidence .

N equals 1 make a lot of evidence . I always knew that the diet had the ability to be healing for some people . My editors did resist putting that chapter in and I hung tight because I wanted to make that point . Since then has my thinking evolved ? I think I've just got more examples of how it heals people .

I think I've become more convinced that for some people it is the ultimate . You can get 80 to 90% of your nutrients from a very carefully planned carnivore diet . Whatever you miss is made up for by the healing effects of that diet for particular people I've been privileged to join occasionally a book club which is run by the plant-free MD , anthony Chaffee .

It's a great privilege to be able to keep learning about that diet . I have to tell you , though , that that is one of the things , whereas if I say to somebody that vegetable oils aren't very good for you , they don't look at me like I'm crazy .

When I tell them that all meat diets can be very good for you and very healing , they do look at me like I'm crazy . You're average person that I'm speaking to . I do feel for you guys , because it's an uphill battle persuading people .

I think if we omnivores have been made pariahs , in a way , the past five years and told that we're eating the wrong way , you carnivores get that in spades . You get so much more to contend with in terms of that criticism .

You really get this sense . On something like a book club , it's one thing to listen to Dr Chafee and it's one thing to see him and meet him in person , same as Sean Baker . I know you probably met at least Sean Baker in person big , healthy and Anthony .

So yeah , it's tough for them , but I do have to say you are on the leading edge . Carnivore is getting a little bit more intention . This is the latest New Yorker magazine . It just came out this week and there's an article called Redshift is an all meat diet . What nature intended . So there's actually an article about carnivore .

Now I just have to say it's from the New Yorker . So obviously this is going to be very biased . And so the two main characters are going to be Paul Saladino and the liver king . And they come out and say the liver king was found to be taking tons and tons of steroids .

And then the very end of the article concludes with Paul Saladino himself publishing carnivore code . He has acknowledged the benefits of carbohydrate , he now incorporates fruit honey , kefir into his daily fare and it says in true Paleolithic fashion even meat fluensers struggle to resist the polar plants .

So the stuff in here is like it's not wrong , but it's very biased .

One of the things they talk about is a book that is called Eat Like the Animals , and a point it makes in here is very similar to a point made in Game Changers Remember that big , strong dude and he made the point that , like , if you want to be strong like an ox , you need to eat like an ox , and that's what I'm doing and that's why I'm so strong .

So these guys kind of take the same point and say , like we shouldn't think of ourselves as animals . And here's why . What two animals would you guess they use in here to compare ? This animal eats this , so we should be eating that way as well . This animal eats this .

Whatever it is , they found that protein-laden diets don't just age animals , they kill them faster . Quote are sexy lean mice to eat high protein , low carb diets where the shortest lived of all . They made great looking middle aged corpses .

You know it's insane , so that must infuriate reading something like that . Or do you just laugh ?

It makes it looks extreme , it's . It is frustrating because there are people out there that are suffering with things like eczema . And it says in the article , like it claims the Dr Baker claims , you know that eczema , depression , fibromyalgia , aging ailments that seem to respond positively to the carnivore diet .

And they say it in a way that it's true , but they make it , they make it sound hokey , you know what I mean .

And another part of the article says whoever wrote the book , no meat required . The culture , history and culinary future plant based eating . This observation it takes 100 times more land to produce a calorie of lamb or beef than it does to produce a plant based alternative .

Yeah , the resources for plant based , I mean it's just ridiculous to talk about , never mind that some 80% of farmland is used for livestock feed . Again , that's what people read , and well , that's also a lie .

They never talk about nutrition from those foods . They never talk about essential amino acids or quality protein . And once you start to do that analysis , the landscape shifts a bit in terms of whether certain foods are worth or better for the environment .

And in fact , one of the good things that's happened in the past year since my book came out was a couple of studies have been done reassessing environmental impact according to nutrition delivered .

Now it's not perfect , but it has shifted the ground a little bit and made people realize that actually beef isn't the offender you think it is once you factor in the essential nutrients which are delivered , and so people can start to make more reasonable choices and say , well , actually maybe worth that land use if we're going to get this quality of food .

So I think that was it . I know you told me I didn't have to remember where it was from . I think that was in nature something , yeah , or frontiers of nature .

.

Like and like how is it getting moved around the planet Makes way more of a difference and it's a shame that , like , even though the numbers from Calspiracy have all been thoroughly debunked , that's all anybody remembers and it's still the documentary that they watch and those numbers stick . So it's frustrating .

Obviously it's a lower number than the 14% that was touted several years ago , but even the 11% is an exaggeration in a way , because it's based , for a start , it's based on a full life cycle analysis for livestock , which doesn't get applied to any other sector .

So we're including everything Everything in the kitchen sink goes into the livestock number , which is not true , say , transport , and it's using GWP 100 instead of GWP star , just to get a bit geeky about the metrics that we use . And a study that just came out in the past week was done by a couple of names that you'll remember Sarah Place , joseph Roundtree .

So they reanalyzed some of the data and modeled the impact of livestock between 2010 and 2020 , using GWP star instead of GWP 100 .

And they found that actually livestock itself was responsible for negligible amounts of warming and that most of the warming was coming from the sort of wet manure , the slurry which is from confined animals , confined monogastrics , gastrics and dairy . So it's really important that we get these metrics correct because then we can attack the problem that really exists .

If the problem is slurry and that is giving off CH4 , then we can start to fix that . We can stop the confinement , we can reduce confinement of animals , we can change the way we deal with that slurry and that's what really we should be doing .

So I think so much research has been done in the 18 months since I was writing and I think it will start to shift the debate a little bit , hopefully if it gets into policymakers hands .

There's no way that this is the biggest problem when we're flying the bazillion jumbo jets every hour in the sky , across the oceans , like what's gonna make the biggest difference . And again , this is a part of your book that I think is overlooked . But I think it's amazing .

You have chapters that go on the defense and say look , cows are not the main problem , here's the number , here's the data . But also you go on the offensive and say raising plants is not a free ticket either , like there's a lot of emissions and land problems there too .

So can you talk a little bit about you know why would we give a free pass for the cultivation of plants when , on that , that may be the bigger problem ?

which are attached to them , that nobody feels that they can jettison that or criticize it . So if you were to say , actually , let's get rid of any soy and corn and let's instead replace , let's get that land back to rejuvenate it , regenerate it , put animals back where they belong , you know you can imagine the uproar .

So people hang on to the idea that all crops must be better than all animal foods , and it's just , you know . And then you get things like avocados using so much water , almonds using so much water . It's sort of brushed under the carpet .

And so if you raise those issues , vegans will say , oh , yeah , yeah , I learned that and I don't eat , I don't drink almond milk anymore , or I limit my avocados or I only buy them from , you know , local water , sustainable kind of sources .

So there's an excuse for everything , there's an answer for everything , rather than looking across the board at the way we produce all kinds of foods and there's a regenerative way of producing and there's a non-regenerative way , and we should be looking to shift everything towards a regenerative way , whether it's a plant or an animal . I think that's our goal

right .

Like you , come to the realization it's a circle and for us to live , we die and we feed the trees , like you mentioned in the book so beautifully . And so , yeah , it's really interesting to consider also , like kind of the third part of the book , which is more about the religion and how that got entangled into everything you write about .

You know the Seventh Day Adventist Church and blue zones . I have hugely gone on the offensive recently on the blue zone since it's being way more popularized . There's a documentary that came out on Netflix . It's trending in the top 10 . So I had an episode with James Connolly where we talked only about the blue zones .

I dropped an episode recently that featured you actually use the clip of yours where we took clips from James Connolly in the past and Blinda Fetke and Gary Fetke and Bill Schindler and Dr Chafee and you as well , with clips about what the blue zones are and why they might not be what they seem . And we're also gonna be talking to Dr Bill Schindler .

He just got back from Sardinia . He was in a blue zone and said he ate way more meat than he did even at home .

They love their potatoes Sure , that's a vegetable but the green vegetables you can hardly get and they love their meat . And I think there are two problems , and you've probably covered all this with James . He knows an awful lot about blue zones , as does Blinda Fetke , but the problem is on two fronts .

I think that it's Dan Butner , isn't it , who's done the documentary . I started following him on Instagram just to drive myself crazy and see what he's saying , and it is driving me crazy , but I have to keep up with what he's all about . There are a couple of problems . One is the way they count centarians in the first place .

So these blue zones aren't even really longevity areas necessarily , because it was a problem with how many centarians they actually managed to count . And the second thing is how they measure the diets . It's a totally made up diet , this Mediterranean diet that they're talking about in the blue zones . As I say , it's very meat heavy , very fish heavy .

You cannot find a whole grain . Have you ever been to any of those countries and eaten brown bread or brown rice ? Never , and I go to these places a lot never . So it's very problematic , but it's very sexy , it is . They love it . And I saw also on Instagram , for my sins .

I saw that Goldie Horn was promoting Dan's film and I thought , oh God , here we go . Here we go .

And then the number one thing is diet , and you're like why are you disproportionately talking about the diet when you have all these other things that they're doing ? That is awesome , and the diet that they promote is a 90 to 98% plant-based diet . That's what they say .

These people are eating in the blue zones and in every episode I hear Dan Butner , in which me too I've had to listen to some of his episodes . He's given on like plant-based shows to see what he's saying . What's the one thing ? You've got nine pillars . What's the one thing that people should be doing ?

The first answer is well , the first thing is a plant-based diet 90 to 98% plants , with about 12 ounces of meat a month .

So it's like they're using animals in this part of the world . One of the longest lit people they featured in Costa Rica was a rancher . Like he had cows that he was riding around with . Like what the hell do you think he's doing with these cows ? Like come on , yeah .

You totally risked you could rip out what chapter of your book , like Tim Noakes did with the lure of running .

You know research and stuff that came out after or as I was writing it that I didn't manage to put in . So I think , in if anything , the case I was trying to make could be made even stronger by the new evidence that's been coming out . You know the studies since 2021 , which is when I actually need to stop changing everything in the book , you know .

But yeah , carry on .

So that must have been really frustrating to feel like you had more information that was really relevant , that could have made it into the book . But yeah , anyway , you did such a good job with that . I do have a quick question .

I'm not sure if you're even aware of this or not , but you did reference in the book that in 2022 , I believe it was beyond Burger was set to reveal what their CO2 carbon footprint was . Do you know if they ever did that or not ? You don't have to like know the numbers just if they ever did , or not .

So he did come out with his own calculations If it's brown , I'm remembering showing how much less impact his product had . Now he had done all kinds of things , as I recall , which was to factor in opportunity costs , which is very problematic as far as I'm concerned and created this funny number which nobody really believed .

He didn't get a lot of press and not a lot of people were buying it . Since then , of course , a study came out from University of California which showed that plant-based meats could be between four and 25 times worse for the environment . Wow , because of the energy that's used and the water , but primarily energy .

Now again , you'll have people that believe that study and people who don't , but I think it's a good counterpoint to the claims made by beyond .

We also know here that one of our big retailers , tesco , had a big plant-based range and they promoted that on the basis of it being environmentally superior to the real thing , and they were taken to task by the Advertising Standards Commission and found guilty and they had to withdraw their advertising because it was not found to be true or evidence-based .

So these claims may be being made and they'll get repeated by lazy journalists , but they haven't been evidenced , right .

Is it higher than you expected , lower than you expected as far as like , are people getting it ? Are they enjoying it ? Are they rating and reviewing it ? Like , what's that reception been like ?

A couple of the other papers , podcasters like you and others just been so open to sharing the message . So I felt the love , as it were , right and I even

so . Last week no , last month , I should say the book was awarded a prize by the Guild of Food Writers here in the UK and I won the prize for domestic sorry for investigative food writing .

And it also said to me the book has reached some sort of mainstream middle of the road audience . It's not talking to extreme people , it's middle of the road right .

And Delia Smith , who is one of the food icons here she's a great chef in the UK I don't know if you get her books over where you are she also came out and publicly supported the book and she's become a friend and a help . So that's the good side .

The good side and the other good side , I guess , is that the original hate that came out on Amazon originally . There was a war initially where it was very clear that all the vegans reading the book were giving it one star , and that might have been happening . When I spoke to you last June it might have already been happening .

And then other people come on and give it five stars and I thought , well , this is just going to go on until they kill it . It's going to become a one star book , if I'm not careful , or a two star book , and then nobody will want to read it . What's happened is the opposite .

So the power of the those who believe in my message or believe that I should at least be able to talk about my message , the power of those people has proved to be stronger . So the book now has four and a half stars average , with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reviews . So they just got tired of those vegans .

So I said just got tired of putting the one stars up .

Initially , when it came out , I was attacked quite heavily by a group called sentient media , which is very well funded vegan organization , and they also attacked and harassed any individual probably you included on social media who had supported me . So everyone was getting singled out .

And then I had an experience debating a fellow called Earthling Ed at a book festival and that was kind of a little bit out of left field . He didn't really debate fairly and he went on the attack . I later realized that he was not just little or vegan who'd written a book . Activists with good intentions . He's well funded .

He's funded and this is something that I've learned over the past year that a lot of activists are not the moms and pops doing their thing , not the amateurs I should say . They're professionalized and they're getting money from companies like Blue Venture Capital .

So Blue Venture Capital very clever Funding influencers such as Earthling Ed and Dr Greger , on the one hand , putting their money into plant-based alternatives as well . So they're obviously doing this as a strategy to make money . So people need to be aware of that , that there is money at stake here , and these people are not neutral .

The other person who attacked me was kind of interesting was this guy , you'll know him called Plant Chomper .

I suddenly discovered one day he'd done three episodes on my book and I watched the first one and I realized that actually it was mostly ad hominem attacks . So he was questioning my credibility and questioning the credibility of my sources , and anytime he brought up any information that he didn't agree with , he couldn't really say what I'd got wrong about that .

So he , for instance , he accused me of getting it all wrong about the Minnesota Coronary Study , and she never even read it . I guess she never even read the study . He said you never told me what I got wrong , though he never said what is right . So I was obviously . You get upset about these things when they first happen .

And then I saw it in a different light and I thought you know , there's that saying where first they ignore you , then they laugh at you , then they attack you and then you win . So I thought , okay , plant chomper , you've gone straight in for attack . So it must mean I'm about to win . That's amazing .

You know , he didn't even bother with humiliating me , he just attacked . So that was kind of an interesting experience . But that's in the past and that video is out there . But I think hopefully , you know , other people would look at it and realize that he hasn't been entirely fair in his criticisms .

Then I have this very strange experience and sort of what I would call friendly fire on one podcast , and it was a comedian in the UK who emailed me and said oh , I noticed you're getting attacked and I really want to give you a chance to speak out . I think you're very brave and you know I support what you're doing . Come on to my show .

So we went on the show , we talked about the book and a bunch of other topics that came up , and then , when she produced the podcast , she added an introduction which basically said this woman is crazy and I don't agree with anything she says more or less .

So I emailed her and I said I really don't appreciate that introduction and I'd love it if you could take the episode down if you don't like it . Right ?

It turned out that what she was upset about was that at one point I had talked about the meat heavy , ketogenic diet , not because I'm on one , not because I love meat , but because I have seen it , as we discussed earlier .

I've seen it do great things for people and I was referring in particular to it being used to treat epilepsy and to improve symptoms of autism . And she objected to that because , as she said in her introduction , we should not be thinking of autism as something that needs to be cured . Autistic people are , you know , they're just different people , right ?

So that was her main objection to me and therefore she pilloried me and , as I say , it was friendly fire because I thought she was going to be an easy discussion .

When I had a conversation with Dr Chaffee about that , he was incensed and he said he has personally known autistic people who have had to cut all carbohydrates out of their diet in order to manage symptoms and to be able to speak . You know , there's one boy he knows who could only speak if he had no carbohydrates in his diet .

That's quite powerful and , whatever way you look at it , we need to be absolutely compassionate towards and understanding about people who have autism or epilepsy or whatever .

But I don't think you can question the fact that those people and the families of those people would like to have symptoms managed better so that they can live full and easier lives , and I don't think that that's saying anything . Outrageous in saying right .

So when males disagree with me , a couple of instances have been some real misogynistic attacks , some vile pictures and vile comments , and one got out of hand last November and I actually came off Twitter for two months as a result because I just thought , woo , this is too much and it was a cup .

One of the people involved was a doctor at a very prominent New York hospital , I have to tell you , and he was so vile and his posts were so disgusting that a lot of people came to my defense on Twitter and he ended up having to apologize profusely because I threatened to take him to his university .

Wow , and if I had , if I had , he would have been fired . Wow , he would have been fired . He's damn lucky . So , you know it's ugly out there . You know it can be really ugly .

I think it's so interesting that you've been involved in so many debates . I largely don't think they're very productive , although I believe you were not only an attendee at the at the public health collaboration in the UK this year . Yes , you also moderated a debate the second day , correct ?

I don't think that they play fair . I think they try to undermine and they shoot stuff at you in order to catch you out . A prime example was when this was done to Chris Cressor by James Wilkes . You remember that on the Rogan show Terrible , shouting him down , absolutely trying to undermine and just discombobulate him .

And Chris is a smart guy and he handled it as well as possible . But if that's what vegan debating is like , then , sorry , no , I'm not going to do it .

People had their time and space . I don't know . Respect , yes , awesome , that's . That's all I think anybody in this world wants is like show your work , tell us your thoughts , like how do you think about things ? And I asked them this question . I'll ask you the same question . I think I know your answer because you already said it about your book .

But was there anything that was like a compelling argument from the plant-based side that you were like , oh , I hadn't considered that , or oh like maybe , maybe you know I should soften my stance about something . Was there anything like that ?

They were losing the strength of their arguments they did rely on most of the time particularly the one who was zoomed in from somewhere else , from America relied upon a lot of the epidemiology , which I know to be bogus . I can't tell you anything .

There was nothing new that he said which made me go oh wow , I haven't seen that research before and that's a good point . Nothing made me change my mind in that debate . What has sometimes stopped me in my tracks is when I read about or hear from or see somebody who is really healthy and has been on a vegan diet for , say , 25 years .

That belies everything that I know to be true about nutrition and protein and cell deterioration and all the other things that I think long-term vegan diets can cause . I think that the reason we sometimes see that in people is because of this incredible difference in our biologies and the different capabilities . Some people maybe can really thrive on these diets .

I think Dr Paul Check are you aware of his work ? He's talking to him . He said yeah , there are going to be hands full of people who are metabolically different , and he believes very much in the metabolic typing theories about how there are seven types , I think , or 10 types , and we all are a different one .

There will be some people who do so much better on plants , but there are also many , many , many who don't . That's all I'm trying to say is don't make everybody eat the same thing . Don't make the whole world eat the same thing . Don't make us all suffer because some people seem to be able to do it .

The most vexing part about nutrition , the part I hate the most , is I don't know . I don't know what's good for you . I know what works for me today , right now . That might change tomorrow , I don't know . It's hard , it's really tough .

Right , we don't know everything . It's honest , we're trying to learn . We're trying to learn , push our knowledge forward and push it forward in a way that allows , as you've just said , each individual to do the thing that's best for them .

More people seem to know what it means , or think they know what it means , and more people talk about it , and there's a couple of dedicated , you know , here we now have a radio station called 89HA which is run by Finlow Costain Another great guy for you to talk to .

He's got a whole radio station which is devoted to regenerative forms of agriculture and bringing the research out on that . So I think that that's a real positive . I hesitate to call it a collapse , but the down slide , the downward trend in the commercial fortunes of plant-based meat suppliers is an interesting phenomenon . Let's just say that that has changed .

So when I started writing the book , it was all systems go . They were going to be the next best thing . They were going to take over the world within five years . Right Now early 2023 , beyond meat sales have collapsed . We've had in the UK a company called the Meatless Farm , which I wrote about as being quite strong at the time bankrupt .

Other companies here have given up on their vegan lines . They've just gone back to whatever they're doing they used to do . So I think all is not well in that world and it's not like I'm cheering about that , but I am appreciating a bit of a reality check . There are reasons why that's happening .

There's also been a reality check on the whole subject of alternative meats , like lab-grown meats , and there was a I don't know if you saw the head of the Berkeley School of Alt Meat came out in a very big piece I think it was in the Atlantic or Washington Post where he said you know what ? Lab-based meat is never going to work .

Now he's a man studying this , he believes in it , he's a vegetarian and he doesn't think it's going to be scalable . And for him to say that it's quite significant , I think . So there's going to be a big reality check within the next 10 years around that Interesting , yeah .

And then , on a totally anecdotal , personal level and you can shoot me for that if you like , but I'm going to tell you that I have seen in my circle , amongst the young people that I know is shift away from plants , only diets . You know , my daughter's wedding 100 guests , most of them under the age of 35 , one vegetarian request .

Wow , wow , it's quite something . Right Now we were in Morocco , the land of the , you know the lamb tajin . So people may have been trying to just fall in line with what was being offered , but I don't think so . I think something's happening .

I think all the buzz about it , all the people wanting to try it , all people feeling they needed to , was kind of a burst a couple of years ago and people are now becoming a bit more reasonable , considered thinking about it a bit more , maybe , and and a lot of them maybe did try it and didn't feel so great .

And so they they went back to adding a bit of fish , a bit of meat .

So , interesting observations . Like , like you said , they're just observations , but I was going to ask you what , what you were noticing in the , in the plant based and vegan world , whether maybe the trend is kind of kind of ticking off and , like you said , people just were not feeling that great .

So I don't know what's happening with that group . They may still be in the throes of you know , the guilt trip , because I know they're guilt tripped into lots of things and they're very anxious generation about everything you know climate food , climate change and everything is tied up in climate change , including what they eat .

So that may be a different story with them .

It's more alternative , maybe more people listening to Rogan or other podcasts out there , and maybe they're just going to get so fed up with this nonsense that they might find alternate ways of doing things , including eating more meat and eating less plants , and maybe that helps kind of turn this message around once and for all .

You are , you know , kicking around in your head and want to maybe explore a little bit more in the future .

So if anyone needs to write the next book on that , a sequel to Big Fat , Surprise End is Nina .

Right , I'm thinking how is it that we had evidence that back in the 60s and 70s , with several trials Minnesota , coronary Sydney , heart Diet , diet Heart , the Women's Health Initiative we had the evidence then that said that switching away from saturated fat did not impact heart disease levels in any way positively and it caused other problems .

So it caused all cause mortality went up and cancers and things like that . So we had it then .

We've since had dozens of meta analyses which conclude the same , including one that just came out last week from McMaster University saying you know , saturated fat really doesn't play any significant role at all in heart disease and all the studies that say that it plays even a small role are of low certainty and low quality .

It baffles me , it literally baffles me , why organizations like Harvard , like the American Heart Association , cling to the dogma against saturated fat . I don't know what's going to shift it . I honestly don't . There's professional and institutional pride at stake .

Can the American Heart Association really turn around now , after decades of being anti , to being pro , without losing credibility ? Probably not . All the same , it baffles me that more journalists don't call them out on it , more journalists aren't writing this story , more journalists aren't digging it out . Literally , it's very strange .

We would have that available on every street corner , and we don't know how to do that because institutions don't make money when you explore alternate things , and so it's exciting to think that there's an underground movement of people that are learning this . They're picking up your book .

It's also exciting to know that there is crowdfunding going on for studies like what Dave Feldman is doing . Have you followed along with what Dave ?

When he showed it , the entire audience gasped . It was unbelievable 100 people , keto Carnivore , for I think the average was 4.5 years prior to doing the measurement 60 males , 40 females . Average age was in the 50s , I want to say mid 50s . So this is a good sample size , middle age dudes that you would hope would show okay , you've got some build up .

Of course you would have some build up . They all had one thing in common as far as their cholesterol . They were all diagnosed hypercholesterolemia . Some of them had other risk factors , but all 100% of them had elevated LDL cholesterol . The average I can't remember if it's the average total cholesterol or the average LDL cholesterol was like 259 .

So it's very , very high cholesterol . I want to say that was LDL , I can't remember . So they did the more advanced heart screening where they looked at I'm going to goof this up too .

I think they looked at nine different sites in three different ways or in 3D , and based on that they could , or they looked at nine different sites and they could give a score of 0 , 1 , 2 , or 3 for the most severe Proliminary data . We're just going to follow these people for a year and we're going to see what happens , but this is where we are .

Presumably . These people have been following the Keto diet for as long as they say that average of 4.5 to 5 years . They all have very high cholesterol . There was not one participant that had a score out of 45 that was above a 10 , not one score in the double digits . A majority of the people were a zero .

And it's expensive and you know to fly all these people back again is going to be very expensive . But to see that these people have very elevated cholesterol and have no issues in their arteries is insane . So to see the follow up on those numbers to see if anything has shifted is going to be fantastic , but it is very , very promising .

And I was tasked this week of writing with writing a letter to the specialist querying this and giving some of the evidence that I'm aware of .

So I had to write this very concise letter to this specialist and there's some good stuff in there and I just want them to answer it and one of the reasons I'm doing it is obviously I want to do the best thing for my husband , but I also want to prod the cardiologist into realizing that there is another point of view and respond to me what do you think

of this data ? You know , I want to know what they think , but sounds like I need to be including a little bit about , maybe the preliminary results from Dave Feldman's .

And it's one thing when you see the numbers and there's 100 people in the study and then you go to conferences and you meet people , that it's like I either have to be really high LDL cholesterol or I get bipolar , like my friend Robin , like that's a tough decision to make .

But when it's in your own home and you've got to decide about really important people in your life and what you should do , it makes you nervous doesn't it it ? makes you a little nervous .

So I think it's natural to be a bit nervous , but I think we have to be rational , we have to really fight that . Amongst the things that remain baffling to me is why Peter Atea remains a fan of statin therapy With everything else .

He knows everything in his book Outlive , which is generally a very big , good piece of work about what really causes heart disease . He then goes yeah , but take a statin . I just don't understand it . That baffles me too .

He's even been asked on the podcast about what do we know about these lean mass hyper responders or how did diet affect ? Some of these things Like what about a ketogenic diet ? And he just dodges it . There's no time that he wants to address it . Yeah , it's . Yeah , I lament that as well . It's a real shame because I love the dude , I loved his content .

He has taught me so much in my career . 95% of Outlive is amazing . I got asked in Feldman about you know . He talks about Mendelian randomizations and Dave shed some light on that . That's just basically epidemiology , so it is . It is a shame . That's really one case that I I'm really bummed out at . Yeah , yeah as well .

Is there some fear of litigation if you're not covering or dotting your eyes and crossing your T's with with statin therapy ? Is it just a kind of like just going to recommend this because it's not going to do too many people any harm ? It'll at least cover my backside ? Yeah , I don't know . It looks suspicious to me and I'm baffled .

But , jane , this has been an amazing conversation that I've been looking forward to for a very long time and , if nothing else , it got me to re-listen your book again , which I absolutely love . But for the listener , where can they go to find you and connect with you in your work ?

So wait a couple of days and all the stuff will be up there .

I appreciate your writing style and everything you talk about , and thank you so very much for taking the time to be better and sure to get in again today Thank you . I hope to see you again . Yes , such an honor , and this has been another episode of Balanced Body Radio , as always . Thank you so very much for listening to Balanced Body Radio .

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So it has been three years now , and to see that we have generated over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable to me . This year in particular has been such a blast to travel to different health conferences and not only meet some of our amazing guests , but also to meet many of you , our listeners and supporters .

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