Deficient Vegans
The podcast for anyone who’s ever been told vegans can’t get strong, stay fit, or live fully. A mix of science-backed nutrition, exercise advice, vegan food and recipe tips, and just the right amount of chaos to help you thrive on plants and laugh along the way.
Deficient Vegans
Rapid Fire Vegan Myth-busting
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The episode reviews vegan myths on nutrition, health, and cost, plus vegan news on emissions, water pollution, Huel, athletic results, and a coaching Q&A.
Myth-busting Sources
- Vegans can't get enough protein
- Plant protein is incomplete
- Soy lowers testosterone
- Can't be vegan with soy or gluten allergies
- Can't be vegan without a ton of supplements
- Can't build muscle on a vegan diet
- All vegans are skinny
- Vegans just eat salads
- Children can't safely be vegan
- Vegan diets automatically improve health and help weight loss
- Humans are natural carnivores who evolved eating mostly meat
- Eating vegan is privileged and expensive
- Vegan diets kill more animals because crop deaths
- Soy is destroying the rainforest / veganism is bad for the environment
- Dairy and eggs are byproducts, nobody is harmed
- Fish don't feel pain
- If veganism isn't perfect, it's pointless
Chapters
00:02 Podcast Kickoff
02:15 Protein Pollution News
03:04 Vegan Athlete Wins
04:42 Myth Busting Begins
04:50 Protein Myth
06:46 Plant Protein Myth
10:58 Soy Hormone Myth
13:02 Allergy Limits
16:00 Supplement Myths
19:40 Muscle Building Myth
20:59 Vegan Salad Myth
22:47 Vegan Kids Safe?
24:54 Health and Weight Loss
26:54 Human Carnivore Myth
29:54 Nature Isn’t Ethics
31:31 Veganism and Cost
33:45 Crop Death Myth
35:22 Soy and Rainforest
36:30 Small Farms Ethical?
38:55 Dairy and Eggs
40:52 Vegan Land Use
44:03 Leather vs Pleather
48:05 Fish Feel Pain
52:13 Imperfect Veganism Matters
57:08 Veganism and Necessities
58:34 Vegans Keep Talking
1:01:47 Vegan Supplement Basics
1:04:48 Book Club Update
How to Get In Touch
- ⭐️ Deficient Vegans Discord ⭐️
Deficient Vegans
Muscle Deficient Vegan - Fitness & Nutrition
Protein Deficient Vegan - Food & Recipes
Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast. This is episode 64. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi! Hi, everybody. So this week, we're going to kind of go through a lot of vegan myths in a rapid-fire format. It's been a while since we've had a sort of myth-busting episode, so we've got a pretty big list for you here today. We won't get too technical on any of them, but we will have sources for all of them in the show notes if you want to follow up. But first up, new news.
Protein Deficient Vegan:New news!
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So the first piece of news we have is that a Cambridge researcher has ranked 20 different protein sources by their pollution, effectively. The Better Protein Institute score, which was developed by Dr. Chris MacDonald, who is a behavioral scientist and fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, was published on July 28th in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. So the report he published has two different scores. One is greenhouse gas emissions per 100 grams of protein, and then the other score is water pollution per 100 grams of protein. So let's go through some of the protein sources and their scores on the chart. We're going to look first at the greenhouse gas emissions chart from best to worst. So from best to worst, tofu, chia seeds, beans, sunflower seeds, chickpeas, quinoa, Brazil nuts, walnuts, lentils, peanuts, eggs, chicken breast, salmon, tuna, cod, pork chops, cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, lamb chops, and a huge, huge jump for beef steak. So the second highest had a score of about 18, which was the lamb chops, and the beef steak, which was number one, jumped all the way up to a score of about 65.
Protein Deficient Vegan:The next list is for water pollution per 100 grams of protein. From lowest to highest score, lowest being good, chia seeds, tofu, quinoa, beans, chickpeas, walnuts, lamb chops, Brazil nuts, eggs, peanuts, chicken breast, lentils, sunflower seeds, tuna, salmon mozzarella cheese cheddar cheese cod pork chops and then beefsteak is actually the top of this chart too like well over 160 170
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah whereas the second worst on this one was about a 50.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah so yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Beefsteak is huge on the emissions which I think we've talked about in a couple of.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Episodes very very bad yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But we will have a link to the article about this, and the chart is in there as well if you want to get more information. Next up, Danone has cleared the final hurdle to buy out Huel, the vegan meal replacement brand. Huel is a pretty popular one. They have mostly protein shakes, I think, is where they started. I think they actually have some powders and stuff.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They have protein bars, and they also have pre-made meals that you can warm up.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. They position themselves more as, like it says here, a full meal replacement rather than like a protein bar. So they're typically higher calorie. Yeah. But, yeah, they're going to be bought by Danone.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think it was valued at like a billion dollars.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's pretty nuts. It is a popular brand.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I think Danone owns Silk too, right? So they're not unfamiliar with like plant-based products. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It could probably be a good steward. We'll see how it goes. I don't use Huel much. I've had it a couple of times. It's pretty good, but it's pretty pricey. So.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't think I've ever tried it. I hear good things.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And then last up, we have a couple of vegan athletic achievements. Estonian athlete Gert Koovit, sorry if I pronounced that wrong, has secured the bronze and the masters 120 plus kilogram bench press with a 270 kilogram lift wow yeah so that's like uh over well over 500 pounds like 550 pounds something like that holy.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Shit gert that's impressive yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And now at 52 years old his vegan journey began when he faced some sore joints and high blood pressure and then with support from his wife who was a decade-long vegan at that point he changed his diet and he says he felt the benefits immediately, um as he continued Koovit said he developed a deeper vegan mindset towards animals, strengthening both his ethics and his performance.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So if you're trying to convert your partner, never give up.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah. Another example that, you know, changing to a vegan diet is not going to cause a detriment for your athletic performance.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And that you could start out going plant-based and develop the ethics to be a full vegan. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So this was at the European Powerlifting Championships, and there is actually another vegan powerlifter who competed there. There's a Swedish athlete, Fia Kamlund, who competed in the 84-kilogram weight class. And she is a multiple national record holder, and she benched 155 kilograms to take the bronze. And that also contributed to her team getting a bronze overall as well.
Protein Deficient Vegan:She's a doctor.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, Dr. Kamlund has been vegan since 2012, and she was vegetarian several years before that. But her shift to veganism came from recognizing the realities of the meat, dairy, and egg industries. So purely an ethical vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:She sounds pretty cool. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So congratulations to them. Sounds awesome. And we love seeing vegan athletes who are able to do well at the highest levels. All right. So let's get into our main segment, which is, again, basically just rapid fire vegan myth busting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like the ones you'd hear most often. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:These are all pretty common. So first up, we have vegans can't get enough protein.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Well, obviously that's not true. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And, you know, this one falls into like.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They just proved that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's true. That's true. Yeah. Enough technically just means medically enough, but it's not even a problem to get enough to be an elite athlete. So whatever your definition of enough here is, this is not true. Vegans can get plenty of protein. If you're trying to really optimize, you might have to plan around it more. You probably will have to plan around it more. But if you're just trying to, like, avoid medical protein deficiency, that's effectively not a thing in developed countries, and you're going to be just fine.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Which doesn't mean that you should, if you're transitioning to a vegan diet, that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't look at that at all.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No, for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You should definitely be tracking, like, the first, maybe even the first month just to see what has protein because some of the things that you probably ate before aren't really an option. And maybe you haven't eaten, like, things like tofu and seitan. So, if you just, like, pull out all your existing omnivore protein sources and don't change that, you could have a problem.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Especially if you're losing weight. You definitely want to keep on it because that means your total food intake is lower. So, you're getting less of some of these nutrients.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So it's easy to do once you know what vegan protein sources are, but it's definitely something you need to learn. Yeah. Some of my favorite protein sources are tofu, TVP, edamame, seitan, or vital wheat gluten. Yeah. What are your favorites?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I really like TVP and seitan. I also really like beans, but they're not percentage-wise super high in protein, but they're a pretty good source for, like, supplemental protein, basically.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Lentils are also really good. Yeah. Edamame puffs, soy milk. Um, we like red lentil pasta. Yeah. We eat that instead of normal pasta.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Um, if you are going vegan or you are vegan and you are having trouble hitting your protein goal, we have a vegan protein database that you can sort by protein percentage and also cost. So we'll link that in the show notes as well. If you want to check that out.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Plus your whole website is high protein vegan recipes.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. We got you covered on the protein. Yeah. It can be done no matter what your goal is.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's right. Uh, so the next myth is that plant protein is incomplete. So a lot of plant proteins are incomplete, and incomplete just means that one or more of the nine essential amino acids is below a threshold that is needed to be considered a complete protein. Typically, this is only going to matter if you have like a really high protein goal or you're trying to optimize your protein for like bodybuilding, something like that. Or if you're just eating like foods in isolation, like if your meal is just seitan, that might be a little weird. But most of the time, there's multiple things on the dish, and they all bring their own assortment of the amino acids. And so, like, your body ends up getting the complete source of protein. Not to mention food, like, is in your body for several hours after you eat, and the amino acids are in your bloodstream for several hours. So, by the time the amino acids go around to getting used, they'll all be there in the sufficient amounts for your body.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I could see this being an issue if you had a really low calorie deficit. Yeah. You might want to pay closer attention to this. or if you have a bunch of allergies. Like if you're allergic to soy, this is probably something you're going to want to pay attention to because soy is actually a complete protein. So that's one of the main protein sources on a vegan diet. So if you have a soy allergy, that may be something you want to pay closer attention to, like if you're just eating seitan a lot.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, soy is the highest quality protein source we have. So if you don't have access to that, I think definitely some more planning is in order.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We do have some other complete protein sources. I think quinoa, nutritional yeast, buckwheat. Yeah. Thank you. There's a handful. But I will say there is another myth on the opposite side, which I've seen a lot of vegan influencers spreading, which is that all plant proteins are complete.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because they contain all of the essential amino acids, but that's not what makes something complete. It has to be in the right quantities.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, there's a problem there because like even if you just Google what is a complete protein, some of the really reputable like medical websites will still list kind of a slightly incorrect definition, which is like something is complete if it contains all nine essential amino acids. But really, that's not how a complete protein is gauged. It's gauged off of the amount of each of the amino acids because, you know, food contains protein and protein contains all the amino acids. So by that definition, everything would be a complete protein. So once you understand that, it's pretty obvious that that's not really what that means. But yeah, there are like kind of two different definitions floating around. And if you go with the more generic definition, then you kind of think everything's complete when it's not.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I honestly think it's being represented inaccurately on purpose.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I could see that too. And I think there's a lot of these, and I think there's maybe probably even some on this list where vegans try to make it look better than it is, where we don't really need to do that. I think we can just say maybe these are some of the minor limitations. do you need to care about it do you not need to care about it if you do need to care about it here's how to work with.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It yeah I feel like this one's similar to like no one's ever been protein deficient as a vegan and like that's obviously not true right like it can happen it could happen if you're not paying attention to it and you don't know what a protein source is and you're not looking at it no doesn't the same with like We don't have to like lie about it to make it seem better because it's easy to do once you learn the stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And also giving people the right information helps them, you know, be healthier. Like if you understand the things that are lower in a vegan diet, like some of the micronutrients, like maybe like iodine, calcium, vitamin B12, obviously things like that. If you represent those correctly and you explain like these are some of the limitations and people will be healthier overall by paying attention to those things and making up for it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I think the other thing is like misrepresenting information around veganism is really dangerous to just like. Like you said, for the health implications, but also I think it makes people less trustworthy of vegans when they're telling half truths, trying to make it seem better. And it makes people like hesitant to go vegan because it's like, what are you guys hiding? Yeah. You know, like.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It makes it super easy to just dismiss you entirely by saying, well, this person's obviously not telling you the whole truth. You can't really believe what they're saying.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I would say like we busted both myths. But the important takeaway, I would say, is if you are spreading information around veganism, make sure you're telling whole truths and providing enough information and education so that people can do it healthily, which means that they'll stay vegan longer, hopefully forever.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The next myth is that soy lowers testosterone. This one's not true. There have been many, many studies on this. And again, I'll have some links in the show notes for some of this stuff. But there have even been analysis of multiple studies. So this is not like a single study thing. But soy has not been shown to lower testosterone at all. One of the more common concerns is that soy increases estrogen. In that case, it's like there have been some studies where a very high amount of daily soy, like more than anybody.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It was like five blocks or something, wasn't it? Like some crazy, crazy number every day.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And even that is typically a pretty mild increase in estrogen because the phytoestrogens in plants are a really weak effect on the human estrogen levels. So, it might cause a really mild increase in estrogen that's basically hard to measure. And even in those cases, higher estrogen is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it's not above like a dangerous level for men anyway.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And in fact, estrogen is linked to heart health and stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it is what they call cardioprotective, which means, you know, if your estrogen gets too low, you're losing some of that protective against heart issues. So all around, there's really no concern with eating soy and male sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen, anything like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And in the same vein, soy actually won't give you man boobs. Yeah. Or boobs at all.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah, there was one study a long time ago where a guy was drinking several cartons of soy milk a day and ended up with gynecomastia, which is basically where males get extra breast tissue, kind of like a female. And basically, they haven't been able to reproduce that. And in his case, he cut back on his soy milk and it went away. So, this was like one weird genetic thing with this person. And the study was even titled An Unusual Case or something like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. They couldn't even like recreate it, right? They tried.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It hasn't been reproduced. And again, like there have been probably 50 studies on this kind of thing since then. And you don't really see that kind of thing with normal soy intake levels.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You don't need to be scared of soy. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The next myth is that you can't be vegan if you have soy or gluten allergies.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now, that's not true, but I will say it does make it a little more challenging. I will say like, if you're in a big city, if you have a lot of money, if you don't have allergies, like that is like the dream, right? If you have a lot of time. That makes being a vegan super, super easy. Now, once you start like pulling back each of those like layers of, I don't know, privilege, like it becomes harder to be a vegan. And I would say allergies is one of those. Like it makes it more challenging to figure out which things that you can eat.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Allergies and like severe GI issues and stuff like that. But if you're dealing with allergies specifically, you have your protein database that we talked about a second ago. And it actually has toggles for like, show me soy free things, show me gluten free things. And even if you turn on both of those and you take out soy things and you take out gluten things, there's still quite a bit of protein. This is just protein sources. There's still quite a bit of protein sources on the list. And then there are obviously lots of other foods that are not necessarily primarily protein sources.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah. Does it make it more challenging? Yes. Does it make it impossible? I would say no.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. I would agree.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I will say, caveated with, like, if you have a bunch of overlapping allergies, it could make it incredibly hard to be vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And hard to the point where you're like, I don't really want to do this. Yeah. But even then, like, if you can kind of do your best to eat as little of the stuff you need for medical reasons as possible, and then, you know, outside of food, you're still, you know, following all the vegan principles. Like, you're not using leather or fur or things like that. And, I mean, you're still doing significant reduction in animal harm. So, you do what you can with the cards you've been dealt.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah. Definitely, we're not saying that it's impossible that you could have a medical condition that would prevent you from being 100% plant-based. And I don't think anyone's expecting you to, like, risk your health or well-being to do this stuff. But soy and gluten-free, yeah, you can definitely deal with those. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I will say I've, you know, done some research on this because I've met a couple people that have some pretty significant restrictions. And I see people talk about it online a lot. The closest thing to that does get to multiple overlapping allergies. Right, yeah. Or you're like, I can only eat these four foods.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You have to get protein from somewhere. Right. I do think that the precision fermentation process, Work that's being done, I think will kind of help with some of this stuff because they're making precision fermentation whey egg white powder like that is vegan, but is still, I think, genetically identical to whey or egg white powder. So that helps because like if you if you need to eat something that isn't plant based.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah. If your list is like I could eat eggs or I could eat milk, but I want to be a vegan, then these are going to be things that will be available to you. Some of them already are.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And we're seeing a lot of technology developments in those areas specifically. So I think that'll just make it easier and easier for people with allergies and maybe like GI issues and stuff like you talked about. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, 100%. The next one is you can't be vegan without taking a ton of supplements. So this is very individual. And the only supplement that vegans all need to take is some form of vitamin B12. And that could be either a supplement or a fortified food or something like nutritional yeast. The other things are going to be specific to your diet. So there are some things that vegans will naturally get less of that you might need to keep an eye on, like calcium, iodine, zinc, things like that. vitamin D is another big one. Iron is another big one. So if you're like already anemic and you're trying to go vegan, you're going to have to really think about your iron. One good way to deal with this is to get like track your food in the app cronometer, because cronometer is really good about breaking down micronutrients and whole food. So you can kind of track your food for a couple of weeks and it'll highlight anywhere where there's like a big gap in micronutrients. Like maybe you just notice you're, oh, I'm not getting any vitamin A. So you definitely don't have to take a lot of supplements as a vegan, but the less your diet includes varied whole foods, the more you might have to think about taking some kind of supplement, like a multivitamin or something.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I will say we take a vegan multivitamin called Wholier and it covers a lot of that stuff. And I will say like, just in general, it's not like super expensive to get whatever vitamins or supplements you need to be vegan healthily, even if you need them.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I mean, you know, most of the multivitamins are not sold to vegans. People are taking multivitamins with normal diets because people are eating junk food normal diets, and they're still missing out on multivitamins, even if they're not vegan. So this is just one of those things that's really specific to you. I personally just take the multivitamin just in case I'm, you know, missing some stuff, want to cover some bases, whatever. And then, you know, I do take a couple individual things like algae oil and vitamin D just because, you know, my personal circumstances. I'd prefer to just have a little bit of coverage and take the supplement. Because, again, even before I was vegan, I'm used to taking some vitamins and supplements every day. So that's just part of my natural routine anyway.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I also think, like, protein powder often gets lumped in with the supplements. Yeah. I don't think you need protein powder to be healthy on a vegan diet. There's lots of whole food plant-based protein sources that you could eat instead of taking expensive protein powder.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. Protein powder, I wish people would think of it less as a supplement and more of just convenient powdered food.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Which, because it's convenient and powdered food, it's going to be more expensive on a gram of protein per dollar basis than if you ate a block of tofu. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I will say the stigma around like, oh, no, vegans might have to take a supplement for B12. Like, I don't understand why there's that stigma. It's not a big deal.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I took B12 for like probably the last 20 years before I was vegan. Yeah. And, you know, I've been in like fitness communities and stuff for a long time. And people always talk about taking vitamin B12. So this is another thing that's like it's like pushed on vegans once you start a vegan conversation. But it's actually extremely common outside of vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's just one of those gotchas that people like to throw out. I mean, it's taking vitamins and supplements is very normalized within vast majority of the population so yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But if you had a like a perfect whole food plant-based diet probably the only supplement you would need is vitamin.
Protein Deficient Vegan:B12 yeah unless you're just eating a lot of fortified nutritional yeast yeah i will say what i did when i first went vegan was like six months and i got up i got blood work done just to make sure like nothing crazy was going on and i think that's like a good option yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You can actually if you're in the u.s you can order your own blood test through like quest health or LabCorp and quest uh i know for sure has like a vegan vegetarian specific panel. I think LabCorp has one too, but I'm not 100% sure on that one. So you definitely need to look it up. But I do know for sure Quest has one. And then if you're not in the US, there might be some other options that are really similar. Or you can just ask your doctor to kind of build you a custom panel or something like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:The next myth is you can't build muscle on a vegan diet. Yeah. And all vegans are just skinny.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. So the easiest way to debunk this one is to go to greatveganathletes.com. Basically, that's a site that tracks a bunch of elite vegan athletes but i mean yeah there are vegan bodybuilders you if you scroll instagram you and you're vegan and you're following vegan people i'm sure you've seen the vegan fitness people like uh you know yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Go to the vegan fitness
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Subreddit right yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Tons of strong people
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There yeah i mean you can very clearly build muscle on a vegan diet we've got uh Torre washington who's going to mr olympia this year he's vegan um and a badass the highest level of bodybuilding as a vegan i mean so this is obviously just not true yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And in a similar vein like all vegans are skinny are all omnivores skinny like that's just such a stupid thing to say yeah um vegans come in all shapes and sizes yeah Very dependent on what you eat, how much you eat, and just, like, genetics and stuff, too, you know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think this gets less and less true as, you know, vegan junk food gets better and more prevalent, unfortunately.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, for sure. I mean, maybe this was more true back in the 70s when the options were incredibly limited. But now we have, like, really delicious frozen food options and vegan cheeses.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Vegan pizza.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah. I mean, the junk food's good.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Next myth is that vegans just eat salads.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Shit, I think I eat less salads as a vegan than I did when I was a vegetarian. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think if you go to your website and you look at the homepage, I was looking at it a couple days ago, and it's just like, wow, these are like real food. Because a lot of time you do think like, you know, before you're a vegan, you think like vegans, what do they eat salads, they eat rabbit food, whatever. But then, you know, with like recipes that you make and, you know, other people share and whatever, it's like very obviously like savory comfort food, like real food recipes. Recipes. So this is, I mean, just straight up not true. There are actually a lot of vegans who don't eat salads just as much as non-vegans don't eat salads. Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I think especially like there are many things I like more than salads. I do like a good salad every now and then. Yeah. But I will say that... For me, it's like it was so much easier to make a salad before I went vegan because like there was shredded cheese that I liked and you could top it with like a hard boiled egg or like really good croutons from the store and like a really great dressing. And I think that's harder to find as a vegan, which is probably why.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:All those things together. Yeah. Really good.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think that's why I make it less because I prefer homemade dressing over store-bought dressing. Yeah. But when we make vegan salads, we go on a kick because like we'll make a big batch of like homemade dressing and I'll make like homemade croutons because the store-bought ones, there's a there's not very many vegan store-bought croutons that are vegan. Yeah. But also they're not very good. So just make your own. Yeah. But yeah, there's all kinds of other stuff that would rather eat than a salad as a vegan. And like if you go to restaurants, you almost can't even get a salad as a vegan because they usually don't even have like salads that you can order that are veganized. Yeah. I don't know where that came from. I think people just don't know what vegan food is.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You should go look it up. It's good.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The next myth is that children can't safely be vegan. So this one, you know, people tend to talk about kids and nutrition a lot more because you're kind of in that developmental stage, all your stuff still trying to grow the way it's supposed to and things like that. But the medical community has settled on the fact that like veganism and vegetarianism are safe and appropriate for all stages of human growth. But as a kid, especially as an infant or something like that, you definitely want to make sure you're paying attention to supplementation more in those stages, probably. Because the kids are picky eaters, for one. And the natural diets might not have all the things they need in them. So like calcium is a big one. Um, there was a study that found vegans as kids were shorter on average and slightly lower bone mineral density. So this is just one of those stages of life where it's important to make sure you're checking all the boxes on your supplementation. Yeah. And as a vegan, that is a little more tricky. So, but there are easy ways to do supplementation for kids.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think this could be true with omnivore kids too. Because like you said, kids are really picky. So if, if, I mean, there are a lot of kids that don't even want to eat meat. Right. Or they just have like weird hangups on food and like they just don't like eating protein or whatever. They won't drink. There's a lot of kids that won't drink cow milk, which is like where like the calcium is usually coming in at. Right. So I think like vitamin deficiencies and stuff in kids are pretty common, which I think is, you know, why the Flintstone vitamins.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Have been pushed for decades. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So just pay attention to supplementation. Make sure you're not really missing anything. Obviously work with your doctor. but in general, the medical community consensus is that you can be vegan and vegetarian at any age, any stage of life.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Similarly, I've heard the myth that Babies can't be vegan because boob milk isn't vegan, but hey, so boob milk's vegan because it's from a human that consents to giving their milk to a child. So, that's how that works.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I have seen that argument a lot and it makes no sense to me.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If a mom wants to give milk to their kid, that's vegan. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The next myth is that vegan diets automatically improve health and help with weight loss.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, this one isn't true. True. I mean, like, it's all going to be very dependent on what you eat, if you're watching what you eat.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I mean, like we were saying, vegan processed food and vegan convenience food options have improved a lot over the last few years. So now you can basically eat the same quality diet, and I mean, like, the same poor quality diet as a vegan that you can as an omnivore.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And it's just as tasty.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. It's just as good. And it's kind of basically the standard American diet, vegan style. So typically processed foods are like a higher calorie density. So, if you're substituting a non-vegan version with the vegan version, but the calorie density is basically the same, then it's not going to automatically cause any weight loss.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. I would say if you're eating like a whole food plant-based diet, you just switched over to that, it's likely that you could lose weight from that just because you're like going to be more full. Yeah. more satiated because of the higher volume of food yeah you
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You probably will in that case i think there's a pretty good chance that if you actually stuck to a strict whole food plant-based diet you would like get to a average weight at some point just because it's hard to overeat calories on that kind of diet yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah but i would say like vegan diet doesn't automatically mean a healthy diet like yeah it's very similar to omnivore it's all very dependent on like what you eat there's a lot of good uh junk food options it just really matters like what you're eating Yeah,
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Definitely.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think this one comes from just like veganism and plant-based eating being used very synonymously, which they're not really the same thing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, there are also a lot of vegans who kind of push the health angle as a universal statement.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And it's like, okay, well, first of all, a lot of people are vegan for ethical reasons, not for health reasons. Right. So they're going to go vegan and then they're like, oh, I'm eating vegan cookies or whatever. It's healthy. And it's like, well, we got to really watch that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:This is, I think, similar to what we said early on. It's like, it's really important to like, not give a few grains of truth, but give the full truth so that people don't have false expectations going into eating vegan food.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, 100%. The next myth is that humans are natural carnivores and evolved from our ancestors who ate mostly meat.
Protein Deficient Vegan:This one annoys the shit out of me.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, go take a bite out of some wild animal in the wild just while it's standing there. Tell me how much of a carnivore you are. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You know what? Another thing. I don't think people really talk about this much. But like when I'm like looking at dogs and cats and stuff and I see how much they can unhinge their jaw. Like how wide they can open their mouth. Yeah. It's like humans can barely open our mouths. It's like. You know what I mean? Like, most humans can't even take a bite of, like, a double vegan cheeseburger. You think we're carnivores? You think we're supposed to be eating raw meat from a deer? Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, I mean, obviously there's scientific evidence going back a long time that humans ate plant food, cooked plant food, things like that. But I think generally, you know, the history of humanity has been eat whatever you can find.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, I don't know that it's necessarily like there, even if there were humans, like, you know, people in frozen climates and stuff like that who ate mostly meat because vegetation doesn't grow. I'm sure there were cases like that, but that doesn't mean that humans are carnivores. And even if that was true, that doesn't necessarily need to be the reason we eat things now. Like, we obviously process plants just fine. We have other options now. We have supermarkets now. Most people have access to a supermarket. So there's just not really a reason to try to base what we decide to do now, on like how our caveman ancestors did things, especially when we have the medical knowledge now to know that in general, the more whole plants you eat, the healthier you are, the better your blood is, the longer you live, less disease, things like that. Like, why would you look at that and still be like, okay, that's good to know, but I'm going to eat like my caveman ancestor.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's funny because I don't really see them doing anything else like their caveman ancestors. You know, I'm just saying like... I mean, the cavemen, they just built fires, right? And lived in caves. Why don't you go fucking do that? Why are you sitting in your house with electricity?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You use air conditioning? Your caveman ancestors didn't use air conditioning. Humans did not evolve to be air conditioned.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You should go sit in a cave with your stupid fire and hit things with clubs.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So anyway, humans are obviously not natural carnivores at the very least. That's a very extreme position. But even the less extreme version where it's like we grew up and evolved eating meat. You have to keep eating meat. Like, that's not, you don't really have to keep eating meat.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's the point of omnivore. It's that your body can process either plant or animal. Right. And then I think there has been newer research coming out that says looking at the diets of cave people, more of their diet was made up of plant foods than we originally thought. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think it's hard to really say, like, what all of them actually did day to day. And again, it's going to be different based off where they lived and what they had access to.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, like if you're like next to the ocean and not at places where vegetation grows, then obviously that's going to be a much different situation, right?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, but I think like you said, they do find more and more that plants were a bigger part of it than they thought. Yeah, yeah. Next up is that animals kill and eat other animals in nature, so eating animals can't be unethical.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that one's always weird to me because it's like, yes, animals kill and eat other animals in nature because animals don't have jobs and can go to grocery stores. Yeah. But you know what animals aren't doing in nature? It's breeding 80 billion land animals a year in factory farms, putting them in tiny, cramped, horrible conditions, and then slaughtering them.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Also, animals do a lot of things in nature that is unethical for humans to do. Like, they kill their own babies. They kill each other all the time. Yeah. Not just to eat. Like, there are animals that, you know, a couple of animals anyway, that just hurt things for fun. Like, dolphins. Right, right. It's like things for fun. That's unethical for a human to do.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. What did I see? Something about... Yeah. Were like basically surgically removing was it they were like taking the liver out of something,
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Wasn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, but they were also wearing, God, what was the hat thing they were doing? It was like the head of an animal, right? Something like that. It was really fucked up.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So anyway, humans wouldn't do that. So why are we cherry picking this one thing like animals eat each other? It's like, okay, but you don't do all those other weird things animals do.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, they also sniff each other's asses. Like, are we doing that? Some people do. Ally McBeal. They did it in Ally McBeal.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Animals just poop wherever they are. Humans can do that, right?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Could.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So, anyway. These are good.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If you haven't seen Allie McBeal, you should watch it on. Remember? They sniffed each other's butts on the playground. No, I don't remember.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The next myth is that eating vegan is privileged and expensive. We actually had a whole episode about this called Veganism is Privileged.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And we'll link that in the show notes so you can, like, get the whole vibe. It's a little bit nuanced to cover in full. But what I will say is that globally, plant-based proteins are almost always the cheapest protein sources, no matter where you are in the globe.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and outside of protein, same for plant-based foods, which, you know, is most food that isn't protein anyway.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Eating rice, like rice is obviously super cheap, super common.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But yeah, there is some privilege that goes into eating vegan. It just assumes that you're... It also depends on how you're eating vegan, right? So, like, if you're doing a whole food plant-based diet, it's certainly much easier usually to be vegan no matter where you are because you're just buying, like, beans and lentils. Like, dried beans and lentils are pretty easy to find, good protein sources.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And the more you rely on processed food, the more expensive it will be, but the more you rely on, like, the whole foods, typically, especially for dry whole foods.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, definitely, I feel like the privilege definitely comes in when we're talking about processed foods or eating out at restaurants and stuff. Yeah. Obviously going to be more expensive and you're going to have to have the privilege of being in an area that has a well-stocked grocery store full of processed meat replacements and dairy replacements or you're like near a bunch of vegan restaurants. But you can almost always do veganism cheaper usually than omnivore depending on, I will say, if you're like in a food desert where you're mostly shopping at gas stations, it can be a lot more challenging because you're mostly dealing with processed foods and the options might be pretty limited.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, the good thing is that most of the cheapest vegan options, like the dry goods, can be bought in bulk. So if you can manage to get to a grocery store like once a month or something, you could potentially buy it in bulk if you can manage that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and you wouldn't really need like fridge space or freezer space because it's shelf stable. Also, an option would be to buy it online and get it shipped to you wherever you are. Because usually you can do that pretty much anywhere and you can buy it in bulk too. But, you know, that also comes down to, like, do you have the money available to buy something in bulk? Right. But, yeah, we covered that in a lot more detail and nuance in a different podcast, and we will link that. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And that had a whole segment about food deserts as well. Yeah. The next myth is that vegan diets kill more animals because crop deaths.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Well, that's definitely not true because who's eating most of the crops? It is factory farmed animals.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, if everybody was eating a vegan diet, we would theoretically have less total crops. So there would be less crop deaths.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And this is like just the same as far as harm reduction in general, like the lower you're eating in the food chain, the less harm you're causing. Because basically, if you're eating plants, like any harm you're causing is contained within however the plants are being produced and harvested. But if you're eating like cow, for instance, like the amount, the total amount of harm that you're causing is you're eating a cow, which there's harm there, obvious harm there. But then you're also responsible for all of the crops that the cow ate in its entire life and whatever harm was caused in growing and harvesting those crops.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I feel like if you like draw out the picture of the crops to how it gets to the human as calories, then it becomes pretty obvious that there are a whole bunch of extra steps that are inefficient between like the ones that involve you eating animals.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, exactly. So, like, the crop death thing is always a little absurd because it's like, well, you as an omnivore are obviously contributing more to crop death because you're eating higher in the food chain.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But also, you know, in a capitalistic society, there is no way to exist without causing harm somewhere. So, like, you're just trying to do the very best you can as a vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You still have to eat food.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's true. The next myth is that soy is destroying the rainforest and veganism is bad for the environment.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So this one's, like, pretty similar to the last one, which is that who's eating all the soy? Because it's not a vegan. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Yeah, this is another one. Like if we cut the animals out as the middlemen, then if we just ate the soy directly, we'd grow a lot less soy. So whatever negative impacts you think soy growing has, it would ironically be a better situation if you just ate more soy.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, exactly. And you'd use less land that the animals are currently using. Yeah. You know, and then we did do an episode that kind of covered this. It was more, it was specifically around monocropping. That gets brought up a lot. we'll link that in the show notes as well because we dug into this pretty deep similar to destroying the rainforest we also covered the water footprint for the environmental angle we covered that in great detail as well which we'll also link yeah um but kind of similar to what we just said like the higher you eat in the food chain like the more you're contributing to like all the other things underneath right so like if you think your water footprint is bad as vegan it's actually like worse if you're eating cows.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So the next myth is if I buy meat from small farms, it's ethical.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I don't know if I would say it's more ethical. I mean, I guess...
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think the reason I've seen used is it's like potentially slightly kinder.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I would say if you're buying animals to eat from a farm that is not keeping them shoved in tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny spaces in a big factory farm, that's obviously like a better life lived for the animal. But is it ethical to kill an animal like far, far before its natural lifespan? Like we're talking like they get to live maybe 10 to 15 percent of their natural lifespan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that's the big sticking point.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that doesn't seem very ethical to me. Right. And then the other thing I will say, just doing some research and stuff, but the vast majority of small farms are still using similar slaughterhouses to the factory farms. So, like, if you have objections to how the slaughterhouses work for factory farms, you should also care about that for small farms because most of those are, like, the same amount of horrificness.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And it sounds like they don't have much of a choice. Like we just read through eating animals and there was a farmer who really liked to use like a specific slaughterhouse that he knew did things in like a quote unquote better way, right?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But basically that one ended up shutting down. He couldn't find another one that operated that way and he just had to send it to one that he hated eventually.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yep. Yeah. Everyone caves eventually on their morals within the animal agriculture industry is what I found. Or they start growing mushrooms.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah. That seems to be the two directions.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's one or the other. But I will also say that even if you are buying, like, let's say that you go buy meat directly from a small farm and then like when you're home cooking, you're only cooking that meat that came from a small farm. I would venture to guess that you at some point are eating out at restaurants regularly. Or you are buying processed foods at some point and, like, you don't know where that meat or dairy products are coming from. And I guarantee it's not a small farm.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No, everything has milk in it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So if you are, like, just eating as an omnivore, I don't think you can avoid getting factory farmed meat at some point.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or some kind of product of factory farming. It's not meat, some kind of dairy product, something like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, because, like, the statistics we've looked at is 99% of all animals are factory farmed. That's a crazy number. You're not going to get away from factory farmed animals if you're eating meat or dairy. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So the next myth is that dairy and eggs are byproducts. No animals are harmed or killed.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now, if you want to hear the detailed explanation of this, we just did a podcast. Was it last week? Last week. Yeah. On basically like what vegetarians are missing. And we cover this in detail. But for the dairy industry, if you didn't know, for a cow to produce milk, they have to be pregnant almost continuously.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then if you're pregnant, they end up having a calf. Then certain choices are made with the calf that could result in it being killed.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then the calf is also separated from its mother, given less milk than it actually needs to be healthy because they're trying to sell as much milk as possible. Right. So, yeah, the calf is going to die one way or another. The male calves. The male calves. Usually they get sold, I think, cheap ground beef is what we read. A couple of options. But it could also be veal, which is very, very, very sad. And I think they only live to be like, what, four months old or something. Yeah. But then you also have to remember, like, that the female calves are going to become dairy cows. Right. And they get to live the same life as their mother, which is not a good one because they're being constantly artificially inseminated in kind of brutal ways and kept pregnant all the time, kept producing milk all the time. And then eventually they are killed once they, quote unquote, dry up, which doesn't mean they don't produce milk anymore. It's just not as economical to keep them alive.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And still well before their natural lifespan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think it's like, I don't know, somewhere in the three to six year range. So, not very long, especially when they can live 15 to 20 years in real life. Yeah. So, yeah, lots of victims there in the dairy industry, similar to the egg industry.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So, in the egg industry, you know, a lot of the chicks that come out of eggs that are fertilized are basically just immediately killed. So, there's a lot of death there as well.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, because they're males and males can't lay eggs. Right. And if you didn't know, there's actually two types of chickens in the factory farming industry. there are layers that lay eggs and then there are broilers which are used for meat and those two never cross no so like you because of just basically their body shape right like layers are optimized to lay eggs broilers are optimized to gain weight quickly in places that are good for meat right and so you would never raise a male layer chicken in the broiler industry because it's uneconomical so it's around six to seven billion layer male chicks die every year within hours of being sexed which is really sad and then um you also have to think about the laying hens that are laying all of these eggs they're living in pretty inhumane conditions and they are getting killed off pretty early in their lifespan too i think they don't even get to live out 40% of their natural lifespan because they just become less productive with egg laying yeah so and they also have a lot of bone issues just how they've been genetically bred there are victims in both dairy and egg it's it's actually pretty similar to the meat industry as far as like harm and death yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The next myth we have is that a vegan world is impossible because there's not enough land to grow crops, so again we mentioned this kind of before but actually if there was a vegan world there would be fewer total crops because right now we're being really inefficient with those crops by feeding them to animals first and then eating the animals, So it would make a lot more sense from a pure calorie per square foot perspective to just eat the crops directly and we'd need fewer.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think I read something that only 20% of all worldwide calories are coming from animal products. But it was like some very large amount of percentage of all the crops are going to animal feed.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I don't know. I feel like it was something like 70 or 80% of that land was used to provide 20% of our calories.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it was like a crazy number. Oh, yeah. And then there's this other statistic, which is basically researchers have looked at if all of the other countries around the globe ate meat and dairy to the amount that the normal American eats it, we would need like four more planet Earths to contain all of these animals.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. That wouldn't make sense. So, I mean, even if we kept, if we stopped eating animals and we kept the same crop footprint, we'd be able to feed a lot more people a lot more food. Yeah. So that sounds pretty good to me.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And we could potentially have a bunch of the land reopened that used to be like housing animals.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, because there is some pasture land that can't be necessarily grown. You can't grow crops in it. So you could just kind of rewild some of that pasture land.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But they are coming out with technological advances that would allow humans to actually digest algae. We talked about that on a few episodes ago. But basically, they're like somehow concentrating the protein out of algae. Or not algae, alfalfa.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Alfalfa, yeah, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, yeah, technological advances happen every day. And definitely if we started moving more towards a vegan world, like, we would have more funding towards, like, how do we make this the most efficient thing possible to use the least amount of land and be the least amount of harm on the environment. Yeah. And then we also covered this quite a bit in our monocropping episode, which is going to be linked in the show notes as well.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yep. The next myth is that leather is way more environmentally friendly than pleather. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:This one, I see this one a lot. And for some reason, leather has been greenwashed really heavily to the point where people genuinely think leather is somehow super environmentally friendly.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, pleather is not great environmentally wise, but leather is not necessarily better. Pleather doesn't involve killing animals.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. And I will say that the term pleather covers a lot. I think it's, you know, most people think pleather and they assume plastic, but actually there's a lot of advances happening here as well where they're using like. types of leather yeah they're using like cactus skin or like fruit leather there's like a whole bunch of advances happening in the textile space for vegan options right and uh the thing with leather is like if you're a vegan and you're thinking you know maybe leather isn't that harmful because like the cow's getting killed anyway leather is actually considered a co-product not a by-product right um the sale of leather actually makes it more profitable to raise cows for meat.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, there are some cases where it might not make sense to the economics of the farm if they weren't able to sell the leather as well, which means it's not really a byproduct.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, which means it's not really no harm. And then I will also say that there are a lot of worker issues with the production of leather. Like, it's actually an incredibly dangerous industry. I think we're going to do a leather episode where we kind of cover the actual worker safety issues, but not good there either. It's also not good for the environment. and Um, I've seen like a few people asking, is it okay if I buy secondhand leather? I would say me personally, I wouldn't. The thing with leather in general is like, if somebody wants a leather product, they want a leather product, right? So like, if somebody that's not vegan was willing to buy something from the secondhand shop, they're going to look there first. But if they really want a leather jacket, they're going to get a leather jacket. Right. So, like, if you, a vegan, go and buys things from the second-hand store thinking, no harm, no foul, like, you're making it less available for people that don't have moral objections to leather, and they're just going to go buy the new stuff. It's kind of increasing the demand. I will say there is, like, in my opinion, one caveat for leather usage, and that is, like, with work. I mean, you can't really, I worked in an industry where you can't get away with it, yeah. Yeah. Like where I worked at a refinery, we weren't allowed having non-leather shoes. Like the boots had to be leather. Like it was in the safety policy. It couldn't even be pleather. So yeah, you're going to obviously have to follow the safety policies of your company. Right. I would say that another one is maybe like a car. I wouldn't necessarily go out and buy a new car with leather seats, but if you have like a limited budget and you're just trying to buy a used car, like you have to be able to get what you can get, you know, and like older cars might not have pleather options. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:On the bright side, I think it's pretty uncommon for cars to use like actual leather these days. Oh, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. A lot of them are moving more towards like pleather or canvas-y options.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And pleather, especially like the worst forms of pleather, have their own issues with like plastics and plastic industry is awful and microplastics and things like that. So definitely not saying go buy all the pleather. But like you said, there are way more sustainable options coming out. Or if you're talking about things like belts and wallets, there's like canvas, metal, like other options. If you have to choose between pleather and leather. Just go a complete different direction.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And as far as like shoes go, I know that I think a lot of people want like work boots that are leather because they last longer and stuff. But I would say like for me, I don't really buy work boots anymore. But I buy tennis shoes a lot. And honestly, what I found is like the soles always wear out before any of the rest of the shoe wears out anyway. So, like, it's really not a big deal to buy pleather shoes. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because, like, even if they were leather, like, the sole's going to wear before the shit starts falling apart.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And I've seen some of the boot companies even. They have, like, composite materials now, and they don't use leather boots. Like, I've got a pair of, like, composite brunt boots, I think they are. So, they're not leather. And they have the steel toe and all those same stuff and whatever. But you don't have to have leather in them. The next myth is that fish don't feel pain.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think we've, this has been very proven that fish do in fact feel pain.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, so there's at least one study where, we'll link in the show notes, where fish had basically like a pain response to something. And then when they gave them morphine, they went back to behaving normally, which kind of would imply that the fish was feeling pain and the morphine helped relieve the pain. And then, you know, they were able to behave normally and kind of like a human would.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think it's interesting because I was a vegetarian for a long time and no one was ever like, oh, do you eat? I'd be like, I'm a vegetarian and no one else was ever like, so you eat cow though, right? But I had a shit ton of people be like, but you still eat fish. And for some reason, like just the general population doesn't view fish as like meat or even necessarily like, I almost feel like it's like, they don't even view it as an animal. Yeah. And part of me is like, I think it's because we're so detached from what is happening in the ocean. Right. You know, like we're not like walking around interacting with fish. And then also they just, I feel like show things differently than like normal, like land animals that you would interact with. Yeah. So I feel like people just don't really understand that like obviously fish feel pain.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. They don't have like arms and legs, so they can't really express emotion. Yeah. They just, like, flop around, you know, and they can't even vocalize for the most part. So, yeah, it's just really hard for you to understand, like, this fish is feeling something.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I will say, I think because fishing is such, like, a pastime that people do, I think that people get very desensitized to, like, what fish feel or, like, are fish animals, like— Or just because like, and I think it kind of goes hand in hand with like, there are a lot of people that go fishing and it's like, oh, it's just catch and release. Like nobody's hurt. Yeah. And it's like, why do you think that? Like you've just hooked a fish. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And I think that's pretty obvious. Like, I don't know. I obviously growing up, I used to fish with my grandfather and like we released some, but it was like obvious that the fish was hurt. Like you're not like, oh, catch and release is totally harmless. Like there was a hook involved.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't know. I remember my dad being like, it's really not a big deal. They get stuck in their mouth and then they go on and they're fine. I just remember asking my dad and he said that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think a lot of people think that. And it's like, I don't know. I think a lot of people do think that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's not harmless and they do get hurt and they do feel pain.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, yeah, I'm not really sure. There's just this very big disconnect with like fish in general, thinking that they're pain free. Similar to like lobsters. People like boil lobsters alive. That's fucking disgusting. like they feel all of that which is heartbreaking
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think it's interesting that there's more compassion for some of the bigger fish that can.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Vocalize yeah like
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Dolphins and whales and stuff like okay we can hear them make sounds so now we think that they have more feeling i mean i know dolphins are super smart but like why does that lead us to believe that like less smart fish wouldn't also kind of feel the same.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Things it's something like octopus like yeah because they're so intelligent they have arms yeah they have arms and stuff oh my god i actually saw a video where there was like a lot pretty large shark that washed up on the beach and was like stuck could not get back into the ocean because it was like beached and there were multiple people risking their lives their literal lives because you know a shark can kill you and they kill people sometimes they were risking their lives to push this shark into the ocean and then i was like i'm unfortunately curious to what people think of things even though i need to stay out of comment section because i always get pissed off because i'm like reading through the comments and people are like they're so brave that poor baby shark and i'm like you're probably writing this while eating a like long john silvers for lunch what the fuck are you talking about like it's actually just wild like the lengths people will go to to like save animals that they see in distress and But, like, once that animal is now dead on your plate, like, you never give it a second thought of, like, what it went through. I don't know. It's just kind of odd.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's a little odd. The next myth we have is that if veganism isn't perfect, it's pointless.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now, obviously, that's not true. I think I would rather have a world, an entire world of imperfect vegans than a world with 1% of perfect vegans.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, absolutely. I mean, the ultimate goal is reduction of animal harm, right? And as far as practicable and possible, but also just reduction in general. So even the people who are doing like a couple of vegan meals a week, a couple of vegan days a week, potentially, and they still don't buy leather or fur or stuff like that. Like all of that stuff contributes to a reduction in animal harm, which is good.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It adds up and it also normalizes it, which I think lowers the barrier for people to try it. It's kind of like the Meatless Monday thing. You might think, OK, well, if you can do Meatless Monday, why aren't you also doing Meatless Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? And it's like, well, some people, it's just, they're just not going to get there that fast. Right. But like meatless Monday could lead to meatless, like meatless Monday and Sunday, or it could lead to like half of their meals are meatless, you know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And they can come to the realization on their own, like, hey, well, I eat this every Monday. I really like it. Maybe I'll also try some stuff on some other days or, or maybe even to the point where they're like, well, okay, well, why am I eating meat at all? Yeah. Because I really like this food and I don't have to contribute to it. So, I mean, as long as you are not like, OK, if somebody came to you and they were like, I'm doing meatless Mondays and you're like, oh, you're a piece of shit because you're not all vegan all the time. They're like, OK, well.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't want to join your club. You're mean.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Going back to meat Mondays. I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, if you came in, you're like, oh, that's cool. Like, have you tried some of these recipes or this stuff and blah, blah, blah. And maybe they'd be more willing to try stuff on other days and then eventually just, you know, only be eating vegan things altogether.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Now, I'm not saying that everyone should call themselves vegan if they aren't vegan and like, you know. Yeah. You can't say I'm 10% vegan, right? Right. Like, and I don't even agree with like saying I'm 95% vegan or I'm vegan, but cheese. You're a vegetarian. Yeah. I'm not saying we have to change the definition of what is vegan. But what I am saying is we should be, in my opinion, we should be celebrating all of the baby steps they get you to veganism. Even if you never get fully to veganism, we should be like celebrating, supporting, answering questions, providing information and resources to anyone that wants to try to reduce at all because that shit adds up. Yeah. And like not only does it add up, it's like it makes it more easy for other people to see it and be like, oh, I could do that. You know what I mean? Because like what I will say is the vast majority of people that are omnivores and have been omnivores their entire life. If they see somebody that's doing Meatless Monday versus someone who's vegan, they're much more likely to try or be encouraged by someone who's Meatless Monday because that's closer to where they currently are. Yeah. You know, so like, I don't know. I think there are a lot of very hardcore vegans that say that none of this matters unless the world is vegan and blah, blah, blah. And, yeah, I think we all want that. We all want a perfectly vegan world where no animals are harmed. But that is, like, potentially hundreds of years in the future, if ever. I know that sounds bleak. But, like, certainly we're not going to see a fully vegan future. We're not going to live that long. But, like, I think because of that, I think it can make you really depressed. So it's helpful to look at things as like small victories, small wins and celebrate them. You know, like personally, my parents have switched to vegan butter and vegan ice cream. And I know that's not much, but my parents are not vegan. They are not vegan types at all. The fact that they have switched to products is like... a hugely massive deal for me it is like exciting every time i think about it i know it's not much i know they probably will never go fully vegan yeah it's like it's a little bit of a reduction and i think it's exciting
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also it's kind of selfishly more people trying meatless monday and stuff helps like actual vegans with options because i guess millions of people are doing meatless monday that's creating a lot more demand for vegan products at the store and then we end up having more options more reliable you know things we can.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Use yeah exactly yeah the normalization of just people eating meatless meals is incredibly important.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Even restaurants. Like restaurant demand would also be huge and then all the vegans would have better options at restaurants which would probably cause more people to go vegan easier. So all these little like baby steps from the non-vegans kind of help push the demand to a point where it's easier for everybody to make it more.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's like a snowball effect.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Exactly.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So celebrate people that are trying. Please don't be mean to them. Most of the time they won't join us if you're mean. I mean, some people might.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I mean, a lot of people just out of like spite will be like, wow, that person was an asshole to me. I'm never going to try this like meatless Monday thing again.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Humans are very petty.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Us included.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, no, for sure. I like to prove people wrong. Probably not at the animal's sake, but if they're not already there. You know what I mean? Like, if you don't already have someone on board with the animal ethics, like, you being a dick to them isn't going to change their mind. They're just going to be petty towards you.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, 100%. The next myth we have is that vegans shouldn't drive cars because they hit bugs. Or, there's multiple forms of the same myth, or vegans shouldn't take medicine or vaccines that contain animal products. Or your car isn't vegan. Or your phone isn't vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You're not a vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think this is like, in my opinion, like the last ditch effort of like, I've tried all of my other excuses. Let me do this one where it's like, none of us can be vegan in a capitalistic society. So there's no point in trying. That's fucking dumb.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And it falls under the veganism definition I mentioned before, which is like the reduction of animal harm as far as is practicable and possible. Like some of these things are not practicable or maybe even in the case of medicine, it's not possible because there's like you have to have some medicines to live and be healthy. And some of those things may not be vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And, um, yeah, I don't think any vegan would expect you to not take life-saving medication or you're not a vegan. Um, we need you alive and promoting veganism so that other people can learn about veganism. So, you know, you can't make an impact if you're not here. Yeah. Got to take care of yourself first. And then like, obviously if you need a car, you need a fucking car.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You probably need a phone.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That doesn't make you not vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. So these arguments, like you said, I think they're just last ditch efforts. And I don't think they're really the point of veganism. And then the last myth we have is that vegans won't stop telling everyone they're vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I have personally found quite the opposite, is that if people find out I'm vegan, they won't shut up about it. Yeah. You know, it's like, and they can spot it too. Like, I can't even tell you, especially, like, even when I was a vegetarian, like, how many times it's, like, we'd have lunches or something and I'm, like, only picking cheese pizza or, like, I'm only eating a salad or something. And, like, people pick up after seeing it a couple times and they're, like, do you not eat meat? Why don't you eat meat? What's going on? What's wrong with you? And you don't even have to say it. They'll just. And not only that, if you tell one person, that shit will spread like wildfire. Oh, yeah. Like, the whole office will know by the end of the day that you're a weird little vegan. So, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, and I think people... I think that it comes up so much because, like, the people you're around every day, you kind of have to bring it up because you probably eat with them a lot. Right. And they, for whatever reason, I feel like people get, like, amnesia about this kind of thing. Because you'll go out with somebody and be like, I'm a vegan. We got to do this. And the next time they're like, hey, do you want to go to the ice cream factory or whatever? And you're like, still a vegan. I don't. Yeah. So now from their perspective, like, wow, all they talk about is how they're a vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah. Or, like, they're catering in lunch for work. So you're like, just remember, I'm a vegan. Yeah. So that you can eat with everyone else.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But I think this would be very similar to like if someone had a nut allergy. I'm not accusing them of talking about their nut allergy all the time.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Totally ever talking about it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They just want to be able to eat food and not die. So, yeah, I think it's the same with the vegan thing. And I would say for the most part, most vegans don't even really want to have those awkward conversations.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No. Yeah, typically. It depends on the people. But with people I know, I bring it up. We talk about things like that a lot because we talk about food. Yeah. But with people I don't know, I don't really bring it up unless I have to. Like we're going to eat together.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I will say one of the things I personally hate the most is eating with a bunch of omnivores I don't know very well. And I'm the only one eating something different. And they're all staring at me and now asking me 20 fucking questions while they're all eating meat. Yeah. And they're like, well, why are you? Why don't you eat meat? And it's like, do you want me to tell you what happened to the cow on your plate? Like, why are you asking me this right now? You're making this awkward.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I guess the exception is like vegan clothing. like we've got like an herbivore hat and a couple shirts that say vegan or whatever.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But that's just
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Fun yeah yeah it's like.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I have a lot of vegan apparel as well, but, like, for me, it's like, yeah, I'm kind of supporting vegan companies. There is this one brand, I can't remember what it's called, like, Vegan Outfitters or something. It's based out of the UK. I bought a lot of their clothes because it's, like, a vegan company. All their clothing is vegan. And then, anyways, it's a vegan place. But their clothing isn't, like, obviously vegan. It doesn't say vegan on it. It's more of just, like, cool designs and stuff. But, like, I know it's from a vegan company that cares about animals, so I buy from there. Cool.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So that is pretty much all the myths we had to cover today. Hopefully you learn something new. You got some information that you can help spread around or send to people who give you some of these arguments.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel like we could do several of these myth busting episodes. There's just like so many.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, there might be. Some of these are pretty in-depth. And there are a lot of other myths that we didn't cover here. But yeah, I'll try to put potentially all these, at least most of these, have some sort of source in the show notes. So we're not just talking out of our ass. Let's get into the bite-sized coaching. In case you don't know, I'm a personal trainer. So every episode here, we do a very brief question and answer session where, you know, I cover a question that a client has asked me or might ask me or somebody online has potentially asked me. So you read the questions.
Protein Deficient Vegan:He's finally learning. I always get to read the questions. Okay, Mr. Personal Trainer. Okay. What supplements would you recommend to someone transitioning to vegan or a plant-based diet?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So for somebody transitioning, I think it's probably a different recommendation than somebody who just is vegan. I think if you're transitioning, it would be a good idea to take a multivitamin while you figure out what's going on, like a multivitamin, multimineral. Yeah. And then like track your food for the first couple of weeks, at least, and Cronometer, like we mentioned earlier, to see where your food gaps might be. And then you can kind of pull back your supplements based on what you're seeing in your typical diet. Or you could just keep taking the multivitamin, which is what I do.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now, what would you, like, if someone were looking for a multivitamin for this, what would you tell them it should include?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So, I think some of the things it should include. B12 is the top one, like, mandatory. You have to find some way to get B12 as a vegan, whether that's a multivitamin supplement or a fortified food. So, B12. Other things you should look for are vitamin D3, iron, calcium, potentially. You don't always want to supplement calcium. It's better to try to get that from food, so try your best. Things like iodine, vitamin K2 potentially helps with the vitamin D3. Some of the others are like omega-3 potentially. You might get less omega-3 as a vegan. You could take an algae oil supplement separately or you could take it in your multivitamin. And then some other things are like zinc. Zinc might be slightly lower for a vegan. And then iron. Obviously, iron's another big one that might be slightly lower for a vegan. So those are some of the things that are lower on a vegan diet. So as you are transitioning, might not be properly covered. But all that stuff could be included in a multivitamin.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Now, I know that protein powder often gets lumped in with supplements. Would you recommend someone taking like a scoop of protein powder every day when they're first transitioning?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I think you'll probably take a little while to figure out like what vegan protein sources you really like, especially the high quality ones. So I think that'd probably be a good idea. Just take a scoop of protein powder, especially like if you're somebody that's into fitness and working out, my list might get slightly longer. I'd probably do like creatine because vegans are a little lower in creatine in general and even non-vegans take creatine every day. So I'd probably go ahead and jump on the creatine. Other than that, you don't really need a lot of other supplements, but there are some that could potentially help, especially if you're actually like play a sport. There are some other supplements that might be worth taking. But if you're just like working out, you're a vegan, you're transitioning. I think creatine is really the only sports supplement you probably need. Protein powder could be a good choice to just have like one scoop a day and then kind of the multivitamins that you're talking about.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Sounds good.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So let's get into our updates for the week. So our Deficient Vegans Discord server is up over 400 people now.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, no, that was... That was like a fever dream. Because I think last week we said it was like 270 something. Yeah. And then, I don't know, I posted about the book club. People are very excited about the book club. And then it just like went apeshit.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. The next book, The Impactful Vegan by Robert Cheeke, starts next Tuesday.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So not this Tuesday, not tomorrow when you hear it. Yeah, what's the date? But the next Tuesday, it's September 1st. Yeah. Easy to remember. Yeah. We're going to be doing it in four sections. So basically, the book club will span for four weeks. Right. And we'll be doing a section a week. If you're in our Discord or if you're joining the Discord, we have that in the book club announcements. And it kind of like breaks down which pages you should read for each week and which pages will be discussed each week.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And we do have the Deficient Vegans Discord in the show notes here if you want to join and get involved in the book club and stuff like that. The raffle is already over. We shipped out the books to the winners. But you can get your own copy. You can probably get it on Libby. I haven't actually looked to see if it's a blog.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think you can get it on Libby. It's also on Audible if you don't want to get a physical copy. I think it's on Kindle, too. Lots of options.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So join us there, and we'd really like to see everybody. We've got plenty of new friends in the book club.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yes. I think it's going to be hopping. And The Impactful Vegan, if you don't know what it's about, it's kind of like... If you're reading it, you're probably already vegan and you're kind of, like, looking for things, ways to do more good as a vegan. It's a pretty, I really like, this is probably my favorite vegan book because it talks about, like, things that you can do to make a bigger difference as a vegan and, like, where you should be dedicating your time and resources to make the most impact.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think it's kind of like the kind of advice that you don't really hear much, which is why I like the book so much, because a lot of the vegan activism stuff you hear is about like street activism, which is kind of the opposite of what this book covers. So it covers like all the other things you could kind of do.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think it does touch on street activism. I really like that, so Robert Cheeke is the author and he does cite his sources of like where he's getting this information from, whether it's, I think some of the studies are from Faunalytics, which we love over here. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's like a really interesting book if you're just trying to make a bigger difference as a vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure. I like it a lot. Yeah. So if you're listening to the podcast and you enjoy it, if you could comment and review, if you could review and like and subscribe, depending on what platform you're looking on, that really helps us out a lot. Also, if you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can leave us a comment. We'd love to hear from you guys. If you have any questions or ideas about the podcast, anything you want answered, anything you'd like to see us cover, please send us a message. All right. Well, I think that's it. Do you want to say bye? Bye, guys. Bye, everybody.
