Dietitian Reaction: Netflix’s You Are What You Eat (with my husband Vincent)

I'm diving deep into the latest Netflix doc You Are Where You Eat and sharing my views as a registered dietitian. If you haven't heard about it yet, it's a study on identical twins changing their diets and lifestyles for eight weeks in a unique scientific experiment designed to explore how certain foods impact the body.

My husband Vincent is joining me on this one, and we're both scratching our heads over some of the stuff they claimed. We stayed silent the whole way through while watching all 4 episodes so we could wait to discuss our thoughts while mic’d up for the podcast. Listen live as we reveal our thoughts to each other on this episode from the perspective of a registered dietitian + my husband (representing a normal viewer).

From what they did well, uncovering the bad, and the downright bizarre, we're laying it all out there for you. Here's my honest reaction with a bonus of my husband's target viewer opinion.

For my fully researched and complete review, read the article here.

🎉 GIVEAWAY WINNER: Congrats to Meghan!


TOPICS COVERED 👇 

The study setup and design (00:01:45)

Limitations of the study (00:08:33)

Food and Life Expectancy Discrepancy (00:21:07) 

Lack of Citations, Biased Information and Fear Tactics (00:23:22) 

Misleading Information on Dairy (00:26:55) 

Effectiveness of Plant-Based Diet (00:34:17) 

Environmental Impact of Meat Consumption and Production (00:38:01) 

Shift in Documentary Focus (00:42:15) 

Chicken pathogen test (00:48:54) 

Vegan cheese and documentary funding (00:58:51) 

Twin study results (01:00:27) 

Sex drive review in the study (01:03:39) 

Documentary's impact (01:08:16) 

Context and bias in documentaries (01:10:05) 

Veganism and moral implications (01:13:16)

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Transcript

Michelle (00:00:01) - Welcome to Nourished and Free The Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you create a healthy and realistic relationship around food, your body and all things wellness. I'm your host, Michelle Yates, a registered dietitian specializing in eating disorders and disordered eating, as well as health psychology. If you're new here, welcome to what might possibly be your new favorite show? If you enjoy digging into topics like nutrition and mental health, we talk about that a lot here. You'll love the show if you're interested in topics like eating disorders, debunking popular wellness trends, body image, food psychology, and any other challenges that we face today with our relationship with food, be sure you subscribe so you won't miss when a new dose of nourishing free magic drops. Let's dig into today's episode. This is a fun episode. Today I am joined by my husband, Vinnie, and we're going to break down the newest Netflix food documentary called You Are Where You Eat. It's a series actually, I thought it was just going to be like an hour and a half documentary, but I was unpleasantly surprised to find out it was four episodes.

Vincent (00:01:06) - Yeah, yeah, each about an hour long, so. But yeah, we stuck it out. We stuck it.

Michelle (00:01:11) - Out, and I'm glad we did. And this was actually all Vinny's idea. So props to him. Thank you for your support of Yates Nutrition. You're welcome. And bringing good ideas to the table. He had this great idea like, hey, why don't we watch that documentary together and then we can do an episode and talk about like, your reaction versus my reaction if you're new to the show, hopefully you heard my intro and you know that I'm a dietician, so his perspective is going to be different from mine. He's not in the health and sciences field, so.

Vincent (00:01:41) - He's an average Joe.

Michelle (00:01:42) - He's the representative of the average Joe.

Vincent (00:01:45) - I represent probably the majority of the people that will watch.

Michelle (00:01:48) - Probably the target audience. And so we wanted to see what happened. And we haven't talked about it. We haven't talked about our reactions since watching it. We stayed quiet all four episodes, except for a couple of times that we couldn't help but laugh.

Michelle (00:02:03) - Yeah, which we'll get to. And we even went on a trip together this week and we didn't talk about it then. So it's been over a week now ever since we finished and or just a week, actually, and we're finally getting to talk about it. So I'm excited and I'm glad that you're joining me for this episode today. Hopefully this will be insightful for you to hear my perspective and his. And I'm also very excited to see what he has to say.

Vincent (00:02:26) - I'm looking forward to getting into it.

Michelle (00:02:28) - So me too. So let's get into it. So this Netflix documentary was based on a study, and the documentary is basically showing us four sets of twins out of the study. I actually had 22 sets of twins total. So there's more people that were involved in this study, but we didn't really get to see them until at the end when they were in the same conference room going over the results. So I mean, overall, like I do want to say that I, I genuinely enjoyed watching this.

Michelle (00:02:57) - I thought it was like just overall like a well-produced show, but any time that there's a show or a documentary on a research study. Immediately. I'm going to have some flags go up and I'm skeptical, but I really didn't want to go into the I mean, if you've listened to any of my dietitian reviews, I always try to have an open mind, and I always want to be proven wrong by my cynicism and skepticism and see, like, let's see if these people to actually prove me wrong and surprise me by designing this well and not being biased and everything. But anyways, the way that they set up the study was 22 sets of twins. Uh, studies will utilize twins to try and control for the genetic factor. A lot of times it's difficult to do nutrition research because genetics do play such a big part in how we respond to different nutrition and our predisposition to certain diseases and stuff like that. So if you can take out that factor, it's awesome. If you can study twins and try to control the situation in that way, it helps to see if the results you got are.

Michelle (00:04:01) - Because of the things you controlled instead of just genetics. So like right off the bat, I mean, I think that's great. I love a good twin study. Mhm. Um, and so what they did is they took, uh, are they randomly assigned to each twin. They were going to either have the vegetarian diet or the omnivore diet, which is just your traditional like meat eating plus vegetation diet. No limitations basically. And I don't think any of the participants were vegan to begin with. Right. No, none of them are vegan to begin with.

Vincent (00:04:33) - They all loved meat and or cheese.

Michelle (00:04:35) - Yeah, there was a set of twins that were called like the Cheese Twins. They had been on a show because they were in the cheese industry and it was like, yeah.

Vincent (00:04:43) - Yeah, no shows. And they've been on they've been guest stars on other Food Network shows, I think. And yeah.

Michelle (00:04:49) - They were like.

Vincent (00:04:50) - I think two.

Michelle (00:04:51) - Yeah, something like that. So, so none of these individuals had been vegan before doing this study, but they were willing to try it.

Michelle (00:04:59) - And so it was an eight week study. The way they designed it was that four of the weeks they were going to have meals delivered to them that were either based on whichever diet they were assigned, so they were either vegan meals or they were those omnivorous meals. And with the omnivorous diet, they still wanted them to have like a healthful diet. So they tried to limit, like ultra processed foods and added sugars and tried to make it like rich and whole grains and still have some good fruits and vegetables and all of that. So basically they were trying to look at, does a vegan diet do better and produce better results than a healthy diet that doesn't have any restrictions on animal based products? And so the first four weeks they had the meals delivered, the next four weeks they were supposed to make their own meals, trying to see like, how well is the sustainability of this? Can they cook their own meals? Can they stick to it? Do they still have like healthful choices when it's up to them to cook the meals and everything? So they they studied a lot of different things.

Michelle (00:05:59) - They looked at their they tried to like get somewhat of a picture into their gut microbiome. So they took stool samples periodically, especially that they did, um, at the beginning and at the end for sure. I can't remember if they did some in the middle. I think they did. Like I saw a graph on the study that they did, and then they did urine sampling. They did blood tests, they did VO2 max test, they did a Dexa scan to get a sense of not only muscle mass and like bone density, but also visceral adipose tissue, which is the fat in and around your organs, which is notorious for elevating your risk for disease. So they wanted to take a look at that as well. And then anything else I'm missing.

Vincent (00:06:43) - Well, they had some baseline tests like brain and cognitive. Oh that's.

Michelle (00:06:47) - Right. They did look at yeah. They did some cognitive tests to see if their cognition improved at all or changed at all. And they also looked at their biological versus chronological age, which I don't know a lot about.

Michelle (00:06:59) - I'm not a nothing geneticist, but nothing. So that's not my field of study. Um, if anybody is listening to this and they know more about that, I'd love to chat and hear your thoughts on this. But basically they wanted to look at biological age. So chronological is how many days old you are based on the day you were born or years that you are. And then biological is like the age of your cells, essentially. Like you could be a 40 year old, but have this, the healthy cells of a 30 year old or whatever. So what do you.

Vincent (00:07:29) - Think you are?

Michelle (00:07:30) - I have no.

Vincent (00:07:31) - Idea. How old do you biologically think you are?

Michelle (00:07:35) - I don't know.

Vincent (00:07:36) - I think I'm around 50. I feel about twice my age. I wouldn't.

Michelle (00:07:40) - Disagree with.

Vincent (00:07:41) - That.

Michelle (00:07:42) - You get injured super easily.

Vincent (00:07:44) - Yeah, yeah.

Michelle (00:07:46) - So they did try to measure that by looking at some, some elements of the genetic coding. I don't know that's beyond my scope. But anyway, so they they really did look at a lot of things which I think is cool.

Michelle (00:08:00) - But I mean like there's a lot of limitations to this study. Well, one thing I didn't mention is that they also have them start exercising and following. Oh yeah, a training program with a vegan personal trainer. Um, so on top of like the dietary changes, they also had changes in their exercise patterns. So yeah. So for you, Average Joe, are there any like limitations or things that you're like, huh? Why didn't they do it this way or that way instead or anything like that?

Vincent (00:08:33) - Uh, no, I didn't have any thoughts like that. And I think the reason I think the only thing that was new to me was like the Dexa scan, which I was like, I have no idea how legit this is. Oh, sure. Um, you know, you see, uh, just a, you know, a plastic table with a plastic thing of taking a scan of. Totally. And you're like, okay, I guess that's. What is that actually doing? Maybe you can shed a little bit of light on how that works.

Michelle (00:08:58) - That okay, cool. So the Dexa scan. Is an evidence based method for measuring lean muscle or lean mass, which is muscle mass and adipose tissue and bone density. So it actually is the gold standard for figuring out. Body fat percentage and stuff like that. There's a lot of little things at the gym, like the electrical impedance, things that people try to use that aren't as accurate. Oh yeah, the Dexa scan. No, the Dexa is preferred. And you'll usually see that in research studies that have access to it because it's the most accurate.

Vincent (00:09:33) - So is BMI out. Out. Is it out.

Michelle (00:09:38) - Out of style?

Vincent (00:09:39) - They kind of talked about it how it was out. It was the this is the new cool thing.

Michelle (00:09:44) - They yeah, they did talk about that.

Vincent (00:09:46) - So I was past it was archaic.

Michelle (00:09:49) - They did. Yeah. They did say it was archaic. So the argument that they made and then a lot of people make on BMI is that it doesn't take into account muscle mass, which is true, which means that somebody who's a bodybuilder like Dwayne The Rock Johnson is going to show up as morbidly obese based on the BMI.

Michelle (00:10:06) - So obviously that's not a great indicator of like his body fat percentage, however. And that is true. That's absolutely true that it does. It is limited in that sense. And it also you have to think about the opposite end of that. There's people who are in like the healthy weight range, but they don't have a very much muscle mass. And so are they metabolically healthy without any muscle mass? Probably not. And so it doesn't like there there's those limitations there with BMI, which is why like it's not a good indication to only look at it's not the only thing anybody should look at. And unfortunately there are people in our health care system who get lazy and they only look at BMI and they don't look at anything else, and they don't ask any other questions, and then they make recommendations based on that. But I don't think any like a self-respecting health care professional that uses their brain at a normal amount would say that you should only look at that, okay, there is some connection between BMI and body fat percentage.

Michelle (00:11:05) - There's some interesting research I just found actually a month or two ago, different studies from different populations of the world. Another argument that people make a lot is that BMI is racist. And there these studies were with different populations, especially like the communities that are marginalized. And it was looking at them and the correlation between body fat percentage. And there was actually a pretty strong connection between BMI and body fat. There's just always going to be those outliers because of the muscle mass and not not being taken into account. So should you look at it as your only determinant of am I healthy or not? Absolutely. For good or not, but if it's just used as a screening tool for massive populations, it can have some usefulness. Yeah. So they were very negative about it though. Yeah. But to be fair, they were also looking at so many different other things, which is great. They didn't have any reason to just focus in on that. So yeah. Yeah.

Vincent (00:12:04) - I will say one thing that was interesting to me is one of the twins said something along the lines of like talking, but this was, this was pre the study.

Vincent (00:12:12) - But I think they had. Figured out what diet they were going to do. One of the twins had said, like, hey, it'll be really good to like, eat more vegetables and work out more, but maybe not so good from like. And enjoyment like it might not be enjoyable. Yeah. Um, and that was one of the twins that had the vegan diet, obviously. And so, um, kind of interesting to me just to hear that mindset kind of off the back of like or off the bat of like, yeah, this doesn't really seem fun. Yeah. And enjoyable. And I don't think it will give me, give me life. And so I think we kind of we'll talk a little bit more about that, uh, in some of the later episodes. But that stuck out to me. Yeah, that was really interesting.

Michelle (00:12:55) - There was a ton of resistance before they ever found out what they were assigned. That was like.

Vincent (00:13:01) - Oh yeah, they were all just so upset at first that they got the, uh, vegan diet.

Vincent (00:13:08) - There were a.

Michelle (00:13:08) - Couple of them that were like, I would be okay with getting that, but for the most part, nobody wanted it. Yeah. Which I mean, to be fair, like most people that follow a vegan diet want to because they have some ethical conviction too. But it is interesting, you know, that it's and as you kind of go through the episodes, too, you can see that it was very difficult for them, especially when they got to the last four weeks where they had to make their own food. It was very difficult for them to follow that. Yeah, I mean, for me, like, I think it's interesting to hear you say, like, I wasn't really thinking about the limitations. I just wanted to know if that thing was legit or not, which is, you know, a good question to ask. Um, but for me, there's like there's a few things that are really big limitations to this study. And the thing with like the thing with research, especially nutrition research, is it's complicated.

Michelle (00:13:58) - It's super hard to control for it's hard to get a clear answer about what you want to get a clear answer about or what you're curious about, because there's so many variables and factors. And so to have a good study when it comes to questions involving nutrition, you have to control so many things. And you really want the only difference to be the dietary change. And then with that to you, you also need to take into account what are we changing about the diet? Are we changing the saturated fat intake? If we are, what are we replacing it with? And then is that the same for everybody or are we replacing meats. And if we're doing that, are we doing it at the same ratio as everybody else involved in this study? What amount of calories is everybody consuming? This was the biggest limitation. And red flag to me is that at no point in the documentary did they talk about calorie intake. So for all we know, the vegans were eating way less calories than omnivores, which I did look into the study itself to see if there was any publication about that, about energy intake with these different diets.

Michelle (00:15:15) - And I did see some like averages on energy intake. So it looks like at baseline or I'm sorry, with the first four weeks, the vegans did get an average of about 200 calories less than the omnivores in their diet. And then that was the same for when they started making their own meals. So if you're going to do a study and ask the question of like, is a vegan diet going to produce better health benefits or, you know, help people in some ways, more than an omnivore diet, you need to control for calories, because if something like they're looking at weight, they're looking at muscle mass, they're looking at fat content and adipose tissue and all of that and visceral fat. If you're looking at those things you need to control for calories, if you're asking the question of plant based versus omnivore, not a low calorie, plant based versus omnivore, you know what I mean? Like, does that make sense to you? Like they need to control for calories. They need to make sure they're eating the same amount as their energy needs, that there wasn't a change in their energy intake.

Michelle (00:16:26) - And there was. But from their baseline, everybody had at least 100 calories less, uh, no matter if they were in the vegan diet or the omnivore diet. But the vegans especially had about 300 calories less per day than they did at baseline. So like. Of course they lost weight, right? And they were exercising. That is another big limitation. This is no longer a study about diet. It's about diet and exercise. I have absolutely no idea why they added in the exercise element. Yeah. If this is all about you are what you eat. Mm. No it's not now it's about you are what you eat plus how you exercise.

Vincent (00:17:09) - Yeah. Um I don't know what you want me to say to that. Uh, because that was a really. I mean, I think that just kind of starts the path of, like. What this documentary was actually about. Yeah, well.

Michelle (00:17:22) - Yeah.

Vincent (00:17:23) - I want to get into that now. But like, that is just like the that's just the surface.

Vincent (00:17:29) - Well of adding in the lifestyle changes along with the, with the diet.

Michelle (00:17:34) - Yeah. Well let's get into that here. Let me say one more thing about the, uh, the study limitations, just from like a research mind standpoint. Well two things. Number one, it was an extremely small sample size. You cannot take a study of 22 individuals and say that that's applicable to the rest of the world. That's incredibly small. It's not that you can't do small studies. Sometimes. These small studies are helpful with making little breakthroughs into justifying a bigger study and getting funding for that study. So it's not that it's a useless thing, it's just that this is a Netflix documentary that millions of people are now watching, and they need to know this was a small sample and that doesn't really mean that much. Um, the other thing too is the the macronutrient ranges. So not only is the energy intake, the total calories not being controlled for, but the calories coming from protein versus the calories coming from carbs versus the calories coming from fat, that was something that they didn't really specify.

Michelle (00:18:36) - Um, but I did look into not in the documentary at least. But I did look into the actual published paper, which I'm going to write up a whole article on this, and I'm going to link all of the studies, including the study that this documentary is based on. So if you want to like, see my references and stuff, definitely look at the article. But when it comes to macronutrient ranges, the omnivores had more protein on average. Not surprising. And they had actually fewer carbohydrates. And then they had they had more fat as well, which is also not surprising. So. Again, if you want to look at a plant based diet versus a regular animal included diet. You need to control for the macronutrient range too. Because now how do we know that somebody has change in muscle mass is because of the plant based foods versus the meat foods? If we didn't control protein intake and energy intake too. But like, yeah, it's just like it's a poorly designed study overall. And the reason I bring that up is because what we're going to get into is that I really feel like there was more to this documentary.

Michelle (00:19:48) - So yeah, tell me, tell me more about what you're thinking over there.

Vincent (00:19:52) - Well, I have one word that can that describes my experience of this entire documentary right here.

Michelle (00:20:00) - I'm so excited.

Vincent (00:20:02) - Bamboozled. I have been bamboozled. Explain the the entire trailer, uh, is all about the study. It talks about the twin study, and I think most of the first episode. Focuses on what you just talked about? Yes. Introduces all those concepts. Yes. Introduces the study. You spend most of your time with the four twins. Yeah. Episode two rolls around in the agenda. Start getting pushed. Yeah, I'm going.

Michelle (00:20:35) - To my notes on episode two now. Yep. Which.

Vincent (00:20:37) - Hey. I'm fine with agendas. Push all the agendas you want. Stand up for what you believe in. Sure. Tell the truth about things that people don't aren't aware of, but just do it in a different documentary. Yeah, yeah, that was it. That was that was that was essentially it going actually back to episode one, one of the first things that they talked about was they looked at the two two cities in California, San Bernardino and Loma Linda, and how they are five miles apart.

Vincent (00:21:07) - And they looked at all the differences in what was it like, life expectancy? Yeah, that was a big thing, like health and health and stuff. Uh, and they said the biggest difference is food between those two cities. Mhm. That's a 16 minute drive between those two cities. Mhm. That math, just like, does not make sense to me. I don't know what you think about that, but I. I was like, man, that that's just that's like comparing where we live to. Let me think about this. Omaha is a 25 minute city, and I don't think there's a lot of yeah, you.

Michelle (00:21:42) - Can get to each end in 25. I don't think.

Vincent (00:21:44) - So. That's what I'm kind of comparing it to. But I thought that was just really funny. Well, interesting.

Michelle (00:21:50) - You actually bring up a good point. Like think about like the, the area that we live in, um, it's more affluent and people care more about their health and nutrition and they jump on all the fads and all the things, and so they spend more money towards those things.

Michelle (00:22:05) - If you go 15 minutes. Uh, there's pockets of our city where you certainly do get to a point where it's more, um, like they don't have that luxury to care about those things, and they need to put those finances towards other things. And so, I mean, yeah, like, I think you're going to see that in any city. And so that whole like angle of, oh, that city across the bridge or across the river or whatever they were saying is the one where McDonald's was founded. I think they were saying how like, oh, yeah.

Vincent (00:22:36) - That's right.

Michelle (00:22:37) - That's right. Everybody's obsessed. Like they made it sound like everybody is obsessed with fast food. Their McDonald's just ruin them. And then if you just like, skip over 15 minutes to five miles away or whatever, then they have it so much better. They're living like so much longer. And it's because of the food, because they care more about fresh produce and everything. And I just.

Vincent (00:22:56) - I don't think it's about the food like, yeah, hey, different demographics, income, whatever you want to like relate that to.

Vincent (00:23:04) - Like that is going to have an effect on the food that you buy and the food that you eat. Yeah. And your lifestyle probably to a certain extent. And that's really generalizing it. Um, but at the same time, I don't think that the. They said the biggest difference yeah they did is they did. I don't think it's the biggest difference.

Michelle (00:23:22) - Yeah. I mean it's it's they're giving you they're telling you what they want to tell you. And we don't have like this was another thing about this documentary is that at no point did they cite their references or explain, like any of the sources of where they were getting these, they would throw out random statistics all the time. And that's an example. They would throw out stuff like that, little like stories. And I'm like, how do I even know that this is real or that this is true? So that's something I personally haven't looked into myself. I don't really know, but I. My intuition is that there's probably more context to it that we're missing.

Michelle (00:24:00) - Yeah.

Vincent (00:24:01) - Yeah. I just have to mention this hilarious note that I think we both laughed at is when, uh, one of the, uh, she she was kind of the coach. Uh, you know what I'm going to say? Where she called one of the one of the gentlemen young like you're they were talking about their their doing, their body, um, composition, their body fat like percentage. Yeah. Meeting. And she was just describing, like, the two young men, and they're like, you guys are, um, you guys are young, you know, you're fit. Um, you're handsome.

Michelle (00:24:31) - And it's just so unnecessary.

Vincent (00:24:34) - I just remember both looking at each other like she just call on me, like, why, why.

Michelle (00:24:38) - Why? This was supposed to be a research study. Like.

Vincent (00:24:42) - Yeah, just. I'm like, I don't really know how that applies. Okay.

Michelle (00:24:44) - She asked me. She asked me so much at one. Okay. Do you remember when she was talking to the women? And she was like, I felt like she was fat shaming them.

Michelle (00:24:56) - She was like, you could see how uncomfortable they were as she was going through their baseline. She was going over their muscle mass and their body fat percentage and all that. Their, uh, I think she was also looking at like their insulin resistance and stuff, and she was being so, like, so judgy. And the women looked so uncomfortable and I.

Vincent (00:25:19) - I just I think all of those things, the note that I have here is like, oh, there's just all those meetings just felt like scare tactics. Yeah. And I think this, this entire episode was full of scare tactics about how bad your current lifestyle is and how unhealthy you currently are. Um, and I felt that I was starting to experience that as well as just a viewer, so I can't imagine what they were feeling. Um, but myself, I was like, man, that's like, I gotta, I gotta go get a Dexa scan and I gotta, I gotta start tracking this stuff. And I gotta stop eating, you know, this and that and oh my gosh, like, just the the domino effect, that avalanche of thoughts, um, started to go through my mind when I was just watching other people, body fat percentage, you know, meetings and reviewing that.

Michelle (00:26:10) - And seeing them be shamed for their body fat percentage. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's what they want is for you to start to worry about that and want to make a change. And listen, I am not against motivating people to be healthier, but. Let's do it respectfully. Yeah. And also not try to, like, scare people. I mean, I think there there's a place for being like, hey, these are some facts about our risks when we do these things. But I think a lot of the things that they brought up were just not supported by research. For example, they talked a lot about dairy. They really, really harped on dairy, made it sound like it was the worst thing ever.

Vincent (00:26:55) - Yeah. What was my note on that? It is the dairy increases the chance of Parkinson's and heart disease.

Michelle (00:27:01) - Okay. So.

Vincent (00:27:04) - I don't know if there's truth to that.

Michelle (00:27:05) - No.

Vincent (00:27:06) - But you said it.

Michelle (00:27:07) - So this is the problem. When you get a lot of people in one place that have a bias.

Michelle (00:27:12) - And every single one of the professionals that they interviewed on this show. Um, well, except for there was like a couple attorneys. I don't know what their diets are, but. Everybody from a like anybody that was a scientist or had any involvement in the science fields, they were plant based eaters. And so that was already a bias for them. We all have biases. You know, you can't completely be unbiased. But if you're going to have a research, uh, presentation like this, you need to bring in people from both sides. And they didn't they only had people that were in the plant based world. And so then we're getting all this information that's very anti meat, meat based products or dairy, which you brought up the good point of like one of the things they said was that dairy is unnecessary or harmful. Harmful. They literally said it's harmful. Despite the fact that we have so much research. This is the problem with very biased, very niche information like this. Coming out to mass audiences is that people that aren't in the field don't have the context of all the other research that we've done on this topic, which we've done a lot on dairy, there's over 41 meta analyses.

Michelle (00:28:34) - This is an umbrella review. So umbrella reviews or when we're reviewing a big pool of meta analysis and meta analysis themselves, are reviewing a big pool of studies. So an umbrella review is like one of the best things we can do to just collect all the information that we have on a topic. And it showed. Therefore, it's just so funny to me that they say it's harmful and it increases your risk of what they say. Heart disease and Parkinson's. In this umbrella review of over 41 meta analyses. It's an insane amount of people studied there. They showed that for every 200ml of milk, basically one glass, it led to a lower risk of diseases such as cardiovascular stroke, hypertension, colorectal cancer, metabolic syndrome, obesity and osteoporosis also reduce the risk of type two diabetes and Alzheimer's when it comes to Parkinson's. I don't think we have a lot of convincing evidence on that. And they made it sound like it was. And if we're lowering the risk of Alzheimer's with dairy, then I don't know how, like another neurological condition would.

Michelle (00:29:48) - It would certainly be harmful to that. But but maybe I'm wrong. I could do some more research on that myself. But as far as I know, we don't have any convincing evidence that that is a strong connection there. There was also a meta analysis of 27 studies that showed that as as your total dairy intake goes up, your risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease goes down. And then we also have some controlled studies, meta analysis of 11 randomized controlled trials. There's also another one. I'll link all of these in my article and explain more about what they were like. But there's a meta analysis of 16 intervention studies and a systematic review of 52 clinical trials. All of these all pointed to the same fact of dairy can be anti-inflammatory, uh, protective for our health. And then there's more showing that dairy has a neutral or even positive effect on cardiovascular outcomes. So, I mean, the evidence isn't there to say something like that. And and there's scaring people into thinking, thinking dairy is the worst thing you could ever do.

Michelle (00:30:51) - Yeah. You know.

Vincent (00:30:54) - I have a quote here. Um, feel free to look what the actual thing is here that they're mentioning. Um, but there's a quote that they said the number one cause of death is the American diet.

Michelle (00:31:07) - I saw that, too.

Vincent (00:31:08) - Uh, so I don't know if you actually want to look up what the number one cause of death is.

Michelle (00:31:12) - The number one cause of death is cardiovascular disease.

Vincent (00:31:14) - Okay, so what are your thoughts? I mean, that is such a such a blanket statement, right? It totally is. And they they talked a lot about the, um, standard American diet. The sad.

Michelle (00:31:26) - The sad. Yeah.

Vincent (00:31:28) - Was your acronym. Um, yeah. So, yeah, just this entire episode was full of scare tactics like that and quotes and random statistics. And we even got into some global warming connections where I said, we're going too far with the global warming connections. Actually, in my note. Uh, that's where it started to lose me of like, okay.

Vincent (00:31:49) - I'm like. For I. First, I sign up for a documentary about a twin study between the vegan and omnivores diet. Okay, now we're getting into all the harmful effects of dairy and meat, and now we're getting into global warming. And so you've lost me now on my original intention of watching this documentary. And so, yeah, do you want to, uh, do you want to talk about the infamous quote, the second infamous quote from this episode?

Michelle (00:32:21) - Well, let me first talk about the number one leading, of course.

Vincent (00:32:24) - Oh, yeah.

Michelle (00:32:25) - Cause of death is the diet. So correction, the number one leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease. And some would argue, well yeah we get cardiovascular disease because of how we eat which is an element of it. But there's still people who develop cardiovascular disease that eat perfectly healthy. So that's lacking nuance as the rest of this documentary is. And in putting so this is a big problem with like people who are pushing agendas with nutrition as they put so much weight on nutrition and act like you can cure diseases and you can solve all of your problems if you just change the way you eat and listen.

Michelle (00:33:04) - I'm a dietitian. I can agree that the way that you eat matters to an extent, but it's not. Food is not medicine. The way that they make it. It, you know, like it's not a substitute for it's not going to change if you're just like all of the rest of the things in your life are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, but you have a perfectly healthy plant based diet. You could still develop cardiovascular disease because you have other risk factors. You know, like food is not a cure all thing. So it's definitely. Lacking nuance. I mean, yes, you could argue that your diet. Contributes to your cardiovascular disease risk as it does, but it's not the only thing. So I didn't like that. I have a question.

Vincent (00:33:50) - For you to kind of play devil's advocate, but no, this is just one of the interviewers that they had. Curious on your thoughts about the mayor who was diagnosed with type two diabetes and yeah, did ignore all medical help and medicine, uh, completely changed his diet to plant based vegan.

Vincent (00:34:11) - And, uh, he was cured.

Michelle (00:34:14) - I think he reverses diabetes.

Vincent (00:34:16) - Reverses diabetes. Yes.

Michelle (00:34:17) - Yeah.

Vincent (00:34:18) - Thoughts?

Michelle (00:34:19) - Yeah. Well, type to you by diabetes is is different from cardiovascular disease because that is largely impacted by your nutrition in your lifestyle. Um, with cardiovascular diseases too, like nuance nuance, nuance here. But with diabetes, like your your diet does have such a direct impact on the disease itself. And so, you know, like that they brought in there was throughout the documentary there's a few different. I would call them advocates of the plant based diet because they weren't health care professionals or anything. They were just like, he was a mayor, right? Yeah, it's like a random mayor being. I'm like, why is this guy random?

Vincent (00:34:58) - But, you know, you get it.

Michelle (00:35:00) - In the context of a food related study.

Vincent (00:35:02) - It's random. Yeah. So it was very random and it was not the most random interviewer.

Michelle (00:35:07) - True. It was not me. It was not.

Michelle (00:35:09) - So anyway, he he was talking about how he got diagnosed with type two diabetes. And the doctor was like, okay, we need to put you on these medications, insulin, etc.. And he was like, no. So he decided to change to a plant based diet and essentially reverses diabetes, which can totally happen. And I think a big reason for that is because overall, when you shift, when you pay attention to your diet period for the first time, typically you do make healthier changes and shifts. Um, there are certainly people who can take care of their diabetes, even reverse some numbers following an omnivore diet, and just be more like intelligent about their carbohydrate intake and be more educated about that because it's, you know, it's a disease of your ability to metabolize carbohydrates. So it's not necessarily that like plant based was the reason. It's probably more so that like, okay, now he was eating a lot more fruits and vegetables, whereas probably he wasn't before. And um, maybe he was eating fewer calories, so he lost some weight or whatever.

Michelle (00:36:17) - And so I, you know, that worked for him. And I think that's great, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. Most patients aren't going to do that. So he's definitely. I mean, you're going to go into a doctor's not going to expect their patient after getting a diagnosis like that to change their diet completely, because typically that's not realistic. People don't do that. Yeah, people are stubborn, you know, and they want to continue the way that they're going, doing what they're doing. And if they can just take a medication to fix it, they'll do that. You know, and a doctor in that situation is it's kind of an emergency situation at that point. So they're not probably going to give you advice to change your diet when they know it's too late for that, or they think it's too late for that. So anyway, I think, you know, it's. Awesome for him and it's clearly working for him and that's great. It's not going to work for everybody, though.

Michelle (00:37:10) - Yeah.

Vincent (00:37:11) - I think that makes sense. Thanks for yeah clarifying that one.

Michelle (00:37:15) - Yeah. We have to talk about. Yeah. The thing that just made us both bust out laughing. I don't think up to this point we had made a peep. About what we were seeing.

Vincent (00:37:28) - All right.

Michelle (00:37:29) - There we go. We got to set the stage of who this was, though.

Vincent (00:37:33) - Okay. Go ahead.

Michelle (00:37:34) - So they bring on the lady that is the founder of the Impossible Burger. So remember my discussion about biases. This is somebody who's highly biased towards the plant based world. And I don't have anything against plant based eating by the way. Again, just from a scientist standpoint, we do need both perspectives or all perspectives. And we didn't have that with this. But anyway so she was talking and I'll let you take it from there.

Vincent (00:38:01) - Every time you. Eat a steak. A little puff goes up in the Amazon. Puff of smoke. That puff is the secondhand smoke from your burger. So for all of you.

Vincent (00:38:19) - I'm speaking directly. To the audience member here. If you eat a burger. You are single handedly. Destroying our Amazon rainforest.

Michelle (00:38:34) - According to this.

Vincent (00:38:35) - I want you to know that. And that makes me want to change. Did it? No, no, not one bit. I have a note here in kind of one of the later episodes that it was, it was like, hey, a lot of these, a lot of these quotes, a lot of these even clips that they're showing or go, they're really scary of, uh, how, you know, animals are treated and yeah, uh, how our meat is produced. Um, and then I just said, but is it enough to change my mind?

Michelle (00:39:04) - And what do you think?

Vincent (00:39:05) - I think, I mean, I'm still still on the train.

Michelle (00:39:09) - Of eating meat.

Vincent (00:39:10) - Still eating meat?

Michelle (00:39:10) - Yeah, yeah.

Vincent (00:39:12) - Uh, big advocate.

Michelle (00:39:14) - Big meat advocate. Yeah. And, you know, for some people, that is enough, I think.

Michelle (00:39:20) - It. I'm not an expert in agriculture. Um or farmer.

Vincent (00:39:27) - And neither of these people.

Michelle (00:39:28) - And neither are those people. No, I think there was one guy on there that was a farmer, but.

Vincent (00:39:32) - Oh, yes, there was, there was. Yeah.

Michelle (00:39:34) - But I mean, he was obviously again biased. Um. Mhm. So I have heard like we actually have friends who are farmers and they talked about similar things in terms of like conditions that chickens are raised in. And so I think I don't think they made that up by any means. I don't think they staged any of that.

Vincent (00:39:49) - No certainly not.

Michelle (00:39:51) - But. Again, I do think it's lacking context in some sense. I'm not excusing the conditions that these animals are put in. I don't think it's okay either to have what did they say? Like a, uh, ten chickens per square foot or something, like they're all on top of each other, like.

Vincent (00:40:09) - Uh, yeah. You get, uh, each chicken gets about the size of a, uh, like a sheet of paper.

Vincent (00:40:14) - Yeah. To live in. So I think, I think this is where the documentary totally could have been just something completely different because I think, like, as we got to some of those topics, I was really intrigued. I didn't, you know, I didn't know I was signing up to watch a lot of this. Yeah. Uh, but in the midst of it, I was like, hey, I can really, really appreciate the research and the truth that is just coming. Yeah. To my, uh, to my awareness. And I had nothing against the poor conditions that. Yeah, cows and chickens and, um, weren't.

Michelle (00:40:52) - Even humans to like, they were showing the the individuals that their neighborhoods are by, like, the hog plants and stuff.

Vincent (00:40:57) - Oh, yeah.

Michelle (00:40:58) - No, I can't remember. They call that cable kaypoh something. I don't know Kato's I don't uh.

Vincent (00:41:05) - Uh, I don't remember.

Michelle (00:41:06) - I don't know, but, um.

Vincent (00:41:08) - Yeah, I want to I want to circle back to kind of what we were introduced to, uh, to Daniel, uh, I think, hum, I think is how you pronounce his last name.

Vincent (00:41:19) - Might be something different. Uh, from 11 Madison Park. Oh, yeah. Michelin starred. The three Michelin star restaurant. Um, that went from, uh, they changed their their entire menu to plant based vegan. I don't mind that at all. Mm. I like vegan foods. Yeah. You know, so I don't have, I don't have bias like towards that or against it, you know, by any means. But I thought that he actually asked he said we, we we should ask. And it's good to know where our food comes from. Yeah. Um, so. There's one of the positives.

Michelle (00:41:54) - Yeah I actually I did enjoy that. I think to what to your point of like, hey, this is just kind of turning into a different thing though. You know, it started out as like a study on you are what you eat. Except now we're also bringing in exercise and stuff. So it's really not about that. It started out that way. And then it turned into here's why you should be vegan.

Michelle (00:42:15) - And all the reasons that the creators of that documentary want you to see. And so again, like, I'm not against plant based eating, I think in general we do need to eat more. And I really love actually plant based foods. And I think this, this documentary did a really good job of. Whetting your appetite for more plant based foods. I think with the with the restaurant owner. I mean, they were showing beautiful dishes that were fully vegan. And so it really did like put you in the mood. And when we went to Dallas after, I was looking for vegetarian and vegan options and I'm like.

Vincent (00:42:58) - Oh man, can we talk? Can we talk about that for a second? Can I share that with our viewers? Where we first went to Shake Shack? Yeah, absolutely. So my favorite burger is from Shake Shack and Michelle has never had one. And um, we, we.

Michelle (00:43:13) - I think I had one in an airport at one time though. Did you. Yeah.

Vincent (00:43:17) - Well, I wanted her to have it again either way. Um, you must have forgot. I don't know, because you felt like it was your first time.

Michelle (00:43:26) - Yeah, I don't know.

Vincent (00:43:27) - Either way. We go to Shake Shack, and I'm really excited for Michelle to, like, try a Shake Shack burger and experience the most delicious burger that I've ever had. And, um, we go up there and we order just at, like, the little kiosk. Um, I get the original double with, uh, fries and a chocolate shake.

Michelle (00:43:47) - A sad diet. Yeah.

Vincent (00:43:48) - And my lovely, lovely wife at Shake Shack orders a, uh, vegan Impossible Burger. Lettuce wrapped.

Michelle (00:43:56) - It wasn't vegan because I had cheese on it.

Vincent (00:43:58) - Oh, okay. It had cheese on it. Yeah. So orders an Impossible Burger lettuce wrap.

Michelle (00:44:02) - I know, it sounded so good. I was.

Vincent (00:44:03) - So disappointed.

Michelle (00:44:04) - I know it was so good, though.

Vincent (00:44:05) - I was like, why are we even?

Michelle (00:44:06) - I really I don't know that that was because of the documentary though.

Michelle (00:44:10) - Because I do really love veggie burger.

Vincent (00:44:13) - You do? Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle (00:44:15) - And I love turkey burgers, but and I really, I just like, didn't want anything super heavy and I wanted the fry. I wanted to enjoy my fries. And so I was like, ah, I'd rather like put my carbs towards that. Whatever.

Vincent (00:44:26) - I love that you listened to your body, I really did.

Michelle (00:44:29) - Yeah, I really did. But I will say the next day or maybe it was the same day. Yeah, it was the same day. We got dinner that night and I. 100% influenced by the documentary in a positive way was like, actually, I want to try this vegan dish or I don't know if it was vegan. I think it was, yeah, it was fully vegan now that. I look back on it, but it was delicious. And it was. Yeah. And generally speaking, like I personally feel physically really, really good when I have more plant based foods. I think most people do, but I'm not like, scared to the point of never allowing myself to eat meat because sometimes that's like really what I want, you know? And I think that's okay.

Michelle (00:45:12) - Sometimes I'm not going to. Be burning down an Amazon forest. If I order a steak every once in a while.

Vincent (00:45:19) - Yeah, I'm gonna eat a little bit more fat.

Michelle (00:45:21) - Checking I do too. And that's the thing. Maybe there is some truth to that, but I just think, yeah, maybe they're taking these tiny truths and elevating it like, this is just kind of what people do when they want to scare you into thinking the way they do is they take tiny truths and they elevate it to a thousand.

Vincent (00:45:36) - Yeah. In the context behind that saying, we probably should have mentioned this before I said it, but, um, they were they were talking about the increase in meat production. And in order to keep up with that, they're chopping down trees in the Amazon, making pastures.

Michelle (00:45:55) - Yeah. To make pastures for the cattle, raising cattle. They said that the Amazon was the number one importer of beef right to the US. Yeah.

Vincent (00:46:04) - Hey, that's I mean that's, that's happening.

Vincent (00:46:06) - Right. But I think I think just knowing that is probably enough is better than throwing it out. Courageous quote. That is like taking to the nines of like when you eat a steak, a puff of smoke or a tree falls down in the Amazon. I'm like, okay.

Michelle (00:46:26) - Um, yeah, that's just like super manipulative.

Vincent (00:46:29) - It is, it is. So I feel like your viewers are probably wondering, where are the twins? And at this point, we were wondering that I was wondering, uh, that's what episode two was, was all about what we just.

Michelle (00:46:43) - Talked about, episode two.

Vincent (00:46:45) - We did not talk much about it, and in that we kind of revisit them in episode three. Um, they.

Michelle (00:46:51) - Were they were in the beginning with the low key fat shaming. They were on the women. And yeah, so they were in the beginning there. And then like the majority of the episode was all this agenda. And then the third episode was actually a lot of agenda pushing.

Michelle (00:47:04) - As the agendas continue, the agendas continued, continued. At one point, I don't know if you caught this, but it won't. At one point they had an attorney talking about bacteria and antibiotics, and I have a note that just says lol, why? Like, why are we having a lawyer talk about antibiotics and bacteria? Where is the microbiologist? Where is an epidemiologist to talk about stuff like this? That was like a big issue I had with this series is that and that's like usually a big red flag that somebody is pushing an agenda is that they don't actually have the experts in the field talking about the topic, and it's randos that have opinions on it. Yeah, not that this person is an intelligent like I don't want to like be dissing that person. It's just like you're trying to make it a point. You need to bring in people that are experts in the field.

Vincent (00:47:54) - Yeah. And from an average Joe perspective, like I don't really. Like I. I don't look at titles.

Vincent (00:48:01) - Yeah.

Michelle (00:48:01) - I was wondering that like, do you notice that people.

Vincent (00:48:03) - Just come on and they just are confident. They seem like they know what they're talking about. And you're right, maybe this maybe this person does. Right. But that's just there's just so much influence. Yeah. There. Yeah. Um, when someone goes into, um, I mean, some people are watching these documentaries for, uh, entertainment. Some of them are thinking about changing their diet. Yeah. And. Maybe that's who they're targeting, honestly. And you just put somebody up there that isn't an expert. But but.

Michelle (00:48:35) - They sound like they know.

Vincent (00:48:36) - What they're talking about.

Michelle (00:48:38) - For a lot of people, that's good enough.

Vincent (00:48:40) - Yeah. Incredibly influential. Yeah. Um, I don't I don't feel the need to talk any more about the, the agendas of this episode. It kind of continued on. Uh, but there's some other stuff too. They talked about. They did a they did a chicken pathogen test.

Michelle (00:48:54) - The e-coli, uh.

Vincent (00:48:55) - Um, uh, in the kitchen, they had actually one of the twins make a meal with raw chicken. Uh, and then they black lighted the whole thing afterwards. And the twins didn't know that they were doing this experiment, so they just kind of behaved normally. That was super disgusting and made me want to clean my kitchen, so I guess that's good, I don't know. Yeah.

Michelle (00:49:14) - Well, like I'm not a microbiologist either or epidemiologist. And so I actually I probably should reach out to a friend of mine about this. And because I am curious about that, they do show with the blacklight, like where E coli had basically spread throughout the whole kitchen. And I think like my question about that is like, well, how long does E coli actually survive for on a non-living, uh, surface and in an organic surface? And so that's something I'm curious about. I did try to look it up and it looks like it can actually last a while, so maybe that is fully accurate.

Michelle (00:49:46) - But at this point, though, in the documentary I am very skeptical of anything that you're doing like this because it's clear that they are trying to scare us. So things like this, even though it might be a totally legit method of figuring out E coli spreading and contamination and maybe e-coli is something that lasts for a really long time and that is really serious, like, you know, etc. etc. I am very skeptical and I'm like, well, how do I know that even matters? Because at this point you've been talking about how every time I eat a burger, I'm throwing up smoke in the Amazon forest. So and then they also talked a lot about like the farm versus farm raised salmon, which I didn't know about. I'm not familiar with that.

Vincent (00:50:23) - I've heard of that. Yeah. There's been a people have talked about how salmon isn't actually the color that you see in the supermarket. And I didn't really catch that in the documentary, but.

Michelle (00:50:34) - They did say that at one point they did change the color.

Vincent (00:50:36) - Yeah. I mean, I've never. Seeing a piece of salmon like they had shown. Yeah. I mean, the one that they did show, I was like, yes, that is disgusting. That is full of fat. It looks slimy, gross. It looked like it was diseased.

Michelle (00:50:52) - But and maybe that's the area we live in. Maybe we personally have access to really great salmon. Mhm. Um, so that's just again something I'm not an expert in. I am.

Vincent (00:51:02) - Not, I don't first of all I don't know how we do have access to good salmon. We live in the middle of the country. It's a great question. I don't know if it's getting here. It's got to be able to get anywhere. So yeah. Uh, I don't really know about that, but I do love.

Michelle (00:51:17) - My Costco wild caught salmon, though.

Vincent (00:51:18) - Yeah, I did say that maybe this was a typo. I don't know if it was actually called this, but by catching, um, when they, when they just, they throw that huge net out and they're just pulling in anything and they were showing all different types of, of animals, not even fish that were caught in that.

Vincent (00:51:35) - And, um, you know, turtles and yeah, I forgot some of the other ones, but um, super depressing.

Michelle (00:51:41) - Yeah, I know that did pull on my heartstrings for sure.

Vincent (00:51:44) - Very depressing. And I don't really. But do they.

Michelle (00:51:48) - Throw them back in though, like, are they not.

Vincent (00:51:50) - Showing, I don't know, hurt?

Michelle (00:51:51) - Or they actually take care of those animals that they caught that were supposed to be like, again, like we're lacking context. Yeah.

Vincent (00:51:57) - Kind of stops there. And yeah, I think what I felt in that moment was just like. All this has. This has to end. This has to. We have to stop eating fish. We have can't eat salmon anymore. Like we're just contributing to this problem. And that was kind of a fleeting thought. Yeah.

Michelle (00:52:16) - He ordered salmon on Monday.

Vincent (00:52:18) - Yeah. It's delicious. It was delicious. It was. It was really good. Um, but yeah, just I know we're already getting back into the agendas of of this now.

Michelle (00:52:27) - But I think you like your point of view is so interesting that you are being influenced in the moment of that. And. I think. Like when you're in. A science based field. You're very used to being, like, cautious to believe things. And you have a lot of, like, things that you're rifling through of evaluating if something is accurate and credible and etc.. And so this is like a really good perspective of what happens when somebody who doesn't have that background is going to be so easily influenced into buying into whatever this type of thing is selling. Yeah.

Vincent (00:53:06) - I think.

Michelle (00:53:07) - At least.

Vincent (00:53:07) - Momentarily. Yeah. Because by the time of like this episode, this was later in episode three, I felt like I was I was off the I was off the train, I was annoyed, I'm super annoying. Yeah. We haven't looked. I mean, we've spent such minimal time with the twins and I'm, I'm really curious about that study, but you just keep talking to me about talking at me and how I.

Michelle (00:53:30) - Well, how terrible of a person you are, how.

Vincent (00:53:31) - Terrible person I am. Because I eat meat. Um, yeah. And so I was getting quite annoyed. Yeah, but back to back to the twins episode for. This. Yeah. This is in this is actually in episode three that they mentioned this. Uh, this is actually just one thing about. Uh, Charlie, one of the, uh. Yeah, one of the twins. He was one of the cheese. One of the cheese twins. They were kind of doing a status update, I think about, um, on their workouts. Oh, my gosh, I know what you're gonna say. Um, he he moved three times. Yeah, in four weeks. Yeah, during the study. So I have two things to say to that. Why two things to say? Hey, maybe you shouldn't have done this study. To that point, something unexpected could have came up. I don't know this man. I don't know his family.

Vincent (00:54:19) - I don't know his life. I'm not judging. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you shouldn't have done this study. Yeah. Second thing is, they're just like. Crapping on him totally for his commitment. The trainer. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

Michelle (00:54:31) - The trainer was like, I don't think this guy is committed.

Vincent (00:54:35) - Yeah, like, okay, I don't know what's going on. Maybe you shouldn't have done this study. There was maybe he knew what what was going on. Maybe he did it. But like, let's have just a moment of grace. Yeah. For this guy, I mean, three times in four weeks. He has a family. His children.

Michelle (00:54:52) - Yeah. They showed him, like, working out with his kids and stuff. Like, the dude was literally doing the best he could. And this trainer is just like, I don't know about his commitment, I don't know. Yeah, and I get it. Because, like, from a study, you do want the participants to be fully compliant.

Michelle (00:55:05) - Um, again, there's so many variables that we're trying to control. And compliance is like, you got to actually follow the study so that we know if what the results are because of the intervention.

Vincent (00:55:16) - But but they're humans at the end of the.

Michelle (00:55:19) - Day, they're humans. And I just didn't like the way they were talking about them. Yeah.

Vincent (00:55:23) - Oh, this is judgy. What did you think about D Street Gardens?

Michelle (00:55:28) - Oh, I was bored of that. I didn't pay attention. To be honest. I thought it was cool, I mean, I. Was watching, but I didn't absorb much. Yeah, if that makes sense.

Vincent (00:55:38) - Yeah, I thought it was cool.

Michelle (00:55:39) - I didn't take any notes.

Vincent (00:55:40) - It was a, I think I call it a company. And, um, in Detroit that plants, gardens and all the lots that have been, um, houses have been condemned and torn down and, um, they, they plant a lot of foods that are maybe specific to the culture and community.

Vincent (00:55:55) - Um, yeah, to the community. And so, yeah, I just thought that was really cool. Yeah. They started that off by like pushing a little bit of agendas, and I was like, okay, we got to like, get that out of the way. Um, and then at the end of the day, I thought what they were doing was still really cool. And so. Oh, I agree.

Michelle (00:56:10) - Yeah. I think things like that are really awesome. Yeah. And it helps to bring. More access to food. And that's something I talk about too, is that there are so many places that don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. And I think, you know, if you go on social media and you look at the influencers who are shaming you into eating more fruits and vegetables, that's something they don't think about is that food insecurity is a real thing, and not being able to go by fresh fruits and vegetables is a real thing. There are communities that don't have them in their stores, and so I'm glad that they brought that up.

Michelle (00:56:45) - Because I think a lot of people get stuck in their bubble of privilege and they forget that, and then they judge other people who don't eat like them and miss that. That's a big reason why is because they don't have access. So it's great when there's things like that. And I don't know about that specific area of Detroit about their access, accessibility to fruits and vegetables. But I mean, let's say that they didn't and they bring in a garden situation like that. I think that's really, really cool. Um, it did feel a little bit random, though. I think that's maybe why I tuned out a bit.

Vincent (00:57:14) - And random is another good word to describe this documentary. So yeah. Episode four.

Michelle (00:57:21) - Results. Results are in baby.

Vincent (00:57:23) - The results are in, but I have one. I have one note at the top. I don't know where I was at mentally at this point of the documentary, but I just said, I don't care about your fake meat companies. Ha! I was so done.

Michelle (00:57:39) - The cheese lady there is a vegan cheese lady. It honestly felt like an ad for Impossible Burger. Well, they actually didn't talk about that very much, but the the founder was on it. She's the Amazon forest lady talking about the smoke in the Amazon. Um, but it felt like an ad for vegan cheese specifically. I can't remember the name of the company. I kept calling it Mykonos as a joke.

Vincent (00:58:01) - It's not on here, but I removed it for some Miyako or something. Yeah, it was Mcos.

Michelle (00:58:05) - Um, it looked good, but also that that had to be so expensive.

Vincent (00:58:09) - Yeah, I said that. I was like, I'm like. I'm like, okay, she is cheap. Like, I don't think cashews are cheap. I think I look at a.

Michelle (00:58:15) - Pig and cheese is not.

Vincent (00:58:15) - Cheap and it's like.

Michelle (00:58:16) - Vegan. Anything is not cheap. That's true unless it's literally just fruits and vegetables from the produce section. So yeah, I mean or canned fruits and vegetables or frozen.

Michelle (00:58:26) - But, but when we get into vegan products that are imitating meat products, the markup is insane. Yeah. And and imitating dairy products, the markup is insane. So I'd be curious to see how much one of those things cost. Because it's not. It can't be good. Yeah, but it felt like a big ad for her cheese company.

Vincent (00:58:45) - Well, do you know who funded this documentary?

Michelle (00:58:51) - I don't know if I do, actually.

Vincent (00:58:53) - Impossible meets funded.

Michelle (00:58:54) - Oh, I did see that.

Vincent (00:58:55) - The documentary.

Michelle (00:58:56) - You're right. Yeah, yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah.

Vincent (00:58:59) - And, hey, maybe a lot of people enjoyed this documentary and it was very helpful for them. I'm not going to discount that to just do a refresher of this documentary, since it's been a week since we finished it, all I did was type in YouTube. You are what you eat. Um, twin. Um, study.

Michelle (00:59:17) - Twin study. Yeah.

Vincent (00:59:20) - I first 10 to 20 videos were just debunking talking about the lies of this documentary, talking a lot about the propaganda and the agendas.

Vincent (00:59:29) - And so what we got into, like, probably scratches the surface on what a lot of these other people have probably started to uncover. Um, so it was not, I was assured by that of like, okay, it's not just me having this experience of like, why do I just feel trampled on when all I wanted to know was like, what the effects of ah of ah, of a omnivores and vegan diet.

Michelle (00:59:54) - Yeah, yeah.

Vincent (00:59:56) - And I just feel taking.

Michelle (00:59:58) - And study funding is something to do. They did they found the study or they found the documentary. Probably both. Right. Okay. I think, uh, we could look into that and verify that all verify that in my article actually, um, because I haven't finished writing that yet. So the source of funding does matter. It's something you should consider when it comes to a study. It's not always like a make or break thing, but when you already have all of this evidence of. Feels like there's some agendas being pushed.

Michelle (01:00:27) - It's it's something to consider. So it doesn't surprise me at all. Mhm. Yeah. Well let's talk about their results and kind of wrap this thing up here. Let's do it. Something that I was waiting for for three episodes and had to get through a whole bunch of crap. In order to get to. So in general, what we saw was that the. Vegans lost. Musk. Well, let's actually go to him by twin because as we said, there's 22 total in this 22.

Vincent (01:01:00) - Sets.

Michelle (01:01:01) - Sets total. So 44 people. Yeah. Um, I thought it was 11 sets. Actually, no, it.

Vincent (01:01:06) - Was 22 sets. Okay, I think.

Michelle (01:01:10) - Now we're second guessing.

Vincent (01:01:11) - Yeah. Now, now the math. Either way, whether there was 22 people or 22 sets, we probably spent 25 to 30 minutes of a four episode, hour long per episode documentary. We spent 20 minutes with four of them.

Michelle (01:01:27) - Four of them? Yeah, four of them. So four sets? Yeah.

Vincent (01:01:31) - If you haven't watched it and you're going to have the expectation.

Michelle (01:01:34) - Yeah, yeah. You just need to know what you're getting little to.

Vincent (01:01:36) - No time with.

Michelle (01:01:37) - Them. True true true. So the cheese twins, the carnivore lost fat and gained muscle. The vegan lost muscle. Uh, I can't remember if he lost weight in general. Do you remember? No. Do you have a note.

Vincent (01:01:57) - On which twin do you.

Michelle (01:01:58) - Know? The vegan. The one that wasn't committed enough. Quotation.

Vincent (01:02:01) - Oh, um. I don't.

Michelle (01:02:06) - I was kind of interested in muscle mass, so those were the main notes that I took. Oh, and something to was as they were going through the sets of twins, they would kind of pick and choose which data they showed, which is sketch. Uh, sole source. But anyway, so that could be an element of my notes here. But, um, so not surprising that the vegan lost muscle and that the carnivore gained muscle because proportionately, it probably having more calories and protein.

Michelle (01:02:36) - Well, we know on average they were. And then Pam and Wendy the vegan lost £7 of muscle in eight weeks, which is quite a lot to lose in eight weeks. The omnivore lost less muscle, but only £3 total. Um, that was all muscle, so it was still less than the vegan counterpart. But the only way she lost was muscle.

Vincent (01:02:59) - Didn't the health professional even just blame her? Um. Her workouts?

Michelle (01:03:04) - Yeah, I think so. Oh, yeah. Because they added cardio. In addition, I think they. Yeah, they were basically the judgy lady. The fat shaming lady was coming up with all these reasons why they didn't do good enough, and I didn't. I didn't like it. It was very uncomfortable for them. Mhm. Oh and interestingly with the women I don't know why they didn't do this with the men too. I mean I do because they explained that there was a study done on. Men. Examining sex drive changes between a vegan diet and an omnivore diet.

Michelle (01:03:39) - Yeah, this is a whole other thing we haven't gone into yet. And so there was a pre-existing study done on just men, so they wanted to see how it would affect women. But I don't know why they wouldn't just evaluate that with all of them. Then why? Like you already have everybody there taking all these measurements. Why don't you just test the men too? They only did it for the women. And it just kind of seems like lazy science to me, but. Anyway, the vegans apparently had a big increase in sex drive. Caroline and Rosalind and another set of women. The vegan lost £5 of fat and £3 of muscle. She also lost half a pound of visceral fat. This was the only set of twins that they talked about. Visceral fat, um. The omnivore maintained her muscle but lost her on £8 of fat, but her visceral fat slightly went up. And then both had an increase in sex drive the vegan the most. Um. Yeah. I have a note on Pam and Wendy.

Michelle (01:04:39) - Tons of shame from Dexa lady. Yes.

Vincent (01:04:42) - Yes, I have that same thoughts on payment.

Michelle (01:04:44) - Wendy's resolved tons of shame from decks of lady. And then John and John and Javon the vegan lost the most visceral fat. He put on £2 of muscle. The omnivore didn't lose much of visceral, but he gained £7 of muscle. Yeah. So overall, overall, if we're looking at if we're zooming out, there's exceptions among twins in certain places. But the omnivores. Gained or maintained more muscle. Then the vegans. In some cases they still lost muscle, but maybe not as much as the vegans. And then, um. They didn't do a great job of presenting graphs either of like overall, here's what we saw. Like I think the vegans overall lost more weight, but I'm not hundred percent sure you could look at the paper though. Like we could look at the paper.

Vincent (01:05:39) - Yeah. But I mean I got that impression. Yeah.

Michelle (01:05:42) - That's like we got that impression. Yeah.

Vincent (01:05:44) - That's where my mind was, was like okay.

Michelle (01:05:46) - The but we also know they were eating fewer calories once I dug into the actual numbers on the paper. And they didn't clarify that in the documentary was that they were also eating fewer calories. So it's just yeah, it's a really poor study design. And the results, like you have to take them with a grain of salt because the design was so poor. If the design, if there was so many things changed about it, then we could look at these results and actually learn something. But because so many things were irregular and and not controlled for I, I don't know that these results are because of plant based versus omnivore. They could be because of exercise, because of calories, because of macronutrient distribution. They could be because of I don't know how committed somebody was to this study. You know, like there's just so many factors. Yeah. One thing that is control for is genetics. I'll give them that. There you go. Got that right. So yeah. What do you think about the results.

Michelle (01:06:53) - Any other thoughts?

Vincent (01:06:55) - Not really. I. My initial idea behind, like this episode of your podcast was I was actually hoping that this documentary would really have an effect on me and really convinced me. Of something else interesting, and that I would actually be able to come here and be d convinced by you, um, or whatever. And, uh, unfortunately, that wasn't the case because this was just one of the worst documentaries I've ever watched.

Michelle (01:07:31) - And so I want to be so, so, so incredibly clear that I have nothing against plant based diets.

Vincent (01:07:36) - Yeah, nothing.

Michelle (01:07:37) - We do need to eat more of those. And I'm going to say that over and over, because I don't want this to be misconstrued, that I think that this is a ridiculous push to get people to eat more plants when we shouldn't, because I don't agree with that. I think we should.

Vincent (01:07:51) - I think they could have focused on that more. Yeah. In in within the the study. Yeah. We didn't I don't think we had to go into as much of the agendas.

Vincent (01:08:01) - Obviously not. That's not what I was looking for. That's not what I was like wanting to experience. Um, I was more interested in the science and to be convinced, uh, scientifically, that this was a better option.

Michelle (01:08:16) - But it was a poorly designed study.

Vincent (01:08:18) - So not, uh, I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be convinced morally. Yeah. And that that's where the documentary kind of verges on. And so my my final thoughts here, um, I said this documentary is exceptionally influential and at times feels like it uses big words or trigger words that almost scare you into thinking what you are currently doing is wrong.

Vincent (01:08:42) - Doesn't verge much on encouraging you to eat more fruits and vegetables. Yeah, I think it says that. But it says like that's just not enough. Yeah. And so it really makes you feel like you're. Doing it wrong, or you're a bad person because you do this or that. And ultimately I just felt. Kind of attacked, you know, slightly.

Vincent (01:09:06) - I don't really like to use that. I don't really want to use that word, but in a way, I was like, man, why are you coming at me so strong?

Michelle (01:09:14) - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vincent (01:09:16) - So from the average Joe, um, that was my experience. I really didn't have to be convinced of anything. Uh, reconvened. Re convinced of anything because, uh, I wasn't really convinced in the first place. Yeah.

Michelle (01:09:28) - So, yeah, that's interesting. And I, you know, from my standpoint, that's how I expect people to receive that. Well, besides, I would think people would be swayed towards like, oh my gosh, I should only eat plants now. Yeah. Um, I.

Vincent (01:09:41) - Think if they watched the first episode or two, maybe, um, um. I think I left feeling very different after the second episode than I did the last episode.

Michelle (01:09:53) - Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And, you know, like. This is what we see with all documentaries on food, is it's just one big agenda of trying to scare you, to eat a different way.

Michelle (01:10:05) - And I see this all the time on social media. Somebody standing in a grocery store picking up a food and saying, this ingredient is killing you. I'm not even joking. It happens all the time, and it's a terrible tactic, but it works. It really does work. People buy it because it's scary. You know? Fear is a big motivating emotion, and it's unfortunate that people take advantage of that in order to have people. You know, buy into their way of being, or buy into the vegan cheese, or buy into the Impossible Burger or whatever it is. And so I think what we've seen from this documentary and this study itself, well, the documentary, I think you said it really well, it's a moral push. The documentary takes something that's supposed to be scientific and makes it moral. And then the paper itself, that it was supposed to be the documentary supposed to be based on, was just a really poorly designed study that had a ton of bias all over it. And.

Michelle (01:11:07) - I think it's important for people to know that you can go to PubMed, you can go to a database of research studies, and you can find a study that supports whatever you want to support. But you need to read that study and interpret it in the broad sense of all the other research out there on that topic. You can't cherry pick data and and think that you have it right now. You only have it right if you're taking into account everything on that information on that topic that you have and you know how to interpret it intelligently. And so and I it's not like I'm perfect at this by any means, but it's important that the average consumer doesn't get fooled into thinking dairy is harmful or meat is always harmful. You know, like. We didn't even get into that, but I'll talk about it in the article. Meat is not going to automatically kill you or automatically give you cancer. Yes, there's some increased risk, but it goes from like especially with like the processed meats, like they talked about that and how there's, you know, the latest, uh, who recommendation is saying that processed meats is a carcinogen and everything.

Michelle (01:12:14) - But if you actually look at the risk, it takes your risk for colon cancer from 4% to 5% to have all kinds of processed meats, including like bacon and things that we know are high in saturated fat and are great for your cholesterol and all of that. So it's just like context, people context. And we're missing that in these types of documentaries and in people who have such a specific agenda that they want to push and a bias that they're really. They've got their blinders on about. And so that was you know, my overall impression of this was that. This is a really poorly designed study. It's probably going to scare a lot of people into changing the way they eat, probably unnecessarily. You don't necessarily need to be fully vegan to be healthier if you want to do that for ethical reasons. I don't have anything against that. You can absolutely do that. I'm fine with that and I support that. But there's no reason to go fully vegan under the guise of it's healthier because you can be healthier without changing your life that drastically.

Michelle (01:13:15) - Yeah.

Vincent (01:13:16) - I think that's yeah, I think that's great and really helpful to distinguish because I can see the moral reasons, like for being vegan. Yeah, totally. And there's there's a lot of times that I was, I was feeling that, um, yeah. And I get it.

Michelle (01:13:31) - And it's thought provoking.

Vincent (01:13:33) - It is, it is thought provoking. Um, I mean, that's a whole nother episode if you want to get into that. But, you know, there's I don't feel.

Michelle (01:13:41) - Like I'm an expert on that, though.

Vincent (01:13:42) - Yeah, neither am I. Um, so. Yeah. It was interesting.

Michelle (01:13:48) - It was an interesting experience.

Vincent (01:13:49) - It was fun to do it with you. It was super fun, I enjoyed. I really wish we could have talked about it more.

Michelle (01:13:54) - I know I feel like I'm a little bit fuzzy now because we like we watched it and then we went out of town and we didn't have a chance to record this until now, but I am going to write up a full article.

Michelle (01:14:05) - I'm going to get all of these little things that I'm going to cross all the T's and dot all the I's essentially, and make sure I get all my references in there for you, for anybody that wants it and make sure all my facts are right. Yeah. Um, but it's, you know, this episode was supposed to be a reaction episode. So I think, I think we did a pretty good job of that, I think.

Vincent (01:14:23) - So I, we could talk for a couple more hours.

Michelle (01:14:27) - I think we could. Yeah. There's so much more.

Vincent (01:14:30) - Yeah. Uh, I don't know if you want to encourage your listeners to watch this, this documentary or not, but, uh, I don't I don't recommend it unless you want to do it.

Michelle (01:14:42) - I don't I don't recommend I don't recommend it because I know how impressionable people are, are. And unless you can go into it with skepticism, a healthy dose of skepticism, which you absolutely need with something like this. Again, I think it.

Michelle (01:14:57) - I love how it romanticizes fruits and vegetables more. It makes you crave them more. It makes you more excited to eat them. It makes you want them more. I think that's amazing and I love that about this documentary. And I think, you know, when we have extremist things like this and very radical movements. It's typically too radical, but because it was radical, it does help people make some change in a good direction. Um, maybe not fully in the direction that they, in the original people intended. So I think this could have some positive impact. But again, my fear with it is that people are going to watch it and they're going to be afraid to eat food, which happens a lot. So and they're going to, you know, feel like the foods they have access to aren't good enough. And so then they just don't end up eating a balanced diet because, you know, they can't afford what they feel like they're supposed to eat. So I don't I don't recommend it.

Vincent (01:16:01) - But if you do, just listen to this podcast as well and.

Michelle (01:16:04) - Let me know your thoughts too. And I'm super curious to hear like how other other average Joes. Obviously Vinny is an average Joe. He's not all average Joes, though he doesn't represent everybody in the world.

Vincent (01:16:16) - I'm happy to though. If you guys want me to, just let me know. I'm happy to advocate.

Michelle (01:16:20) - Yeah, sure. So. And I don't represent all professionals either. So I mean, this is really just our opinions on it. Yeah. And I hope that somebody finds it helpful and insightful, but I am really curious to hear what other people think and, um, how it landed on you. So I'm gonna say it one more time just in case, because people love to take bits and pieces of what you say out of context. I am not against plant based diets, or incorporating more fruits and vegetables and plant based foods into your life. I think that's wonderful and I'm always going to support people doing that.

Michelle (01:16:56) - I don't agree with. Shaming people into doing that, though, and putting unnecessary fear in them. That's what I don't agree with. So hopefully you found this episode exciting and fun as we did. We loved it. And if you want to see more of him and more episodes like this, let me know. Quick plug if you haven't already rated or left a review on the show, please be sure you do that. It actually helps. I had a chart moment of being in the top. I think I was like spot number 63 on top 100 charts recently. The only reason I'm able to get on charts is if you leave ratings and reviews. So please continue to do that and help me climb up those charts so that we can spread the good word and get more people some evidence based information on their relationship with food and how to live a healthy lifestyle and become ultimately nourished and free. So thank.

Vincent (01:17:49) - You. Come on people, come on, let's help a girl out.

Michelle (01:17:54) - You're ruining it.

Michelle (01:17:57) - So thank you to everybody who is listening and who has obviously left a rating or review. I appreciate you all and I hope you enjoyed this. We'll catch you next time.