James Wilks and Chris Kresser clash over Game Changers, with Wilks defending its plant-based focus, citing WHO/FAO recommendations and studies like Kipstein-Grohbush’s heme iron risks (14–300% higher cardiovascular risk). He argues modern farming disrupts B12 synthesis in animals, requiring supplements even for livestock, while Kresser counters with outdated vegan depletion stats but concedes Wilks’ protein content claims. Both agree processed foods are harmful but disagree on optimal diets—Wilks insists whole-plant-based suffices for athletes, Kresser prioritizes individual flexibility. Ultimately, the debate hinges on evidence interpretation and industry influence, leaving dietary recommendations contested despite shared health goals. [Automatically generated summary]
The beginning of the show, the beginning of your film, you talked about the gladiators and all that stuff and the fact that you were shocked to find out that they had eaten a vegetarian diet.
Okay, so basically, in philosophy, there's this, it's a logical fallacy called appeal to authority, right?
But in the real world, you know, you have to look at experts that are specialists in their field.
So if I, you know, I just got shoulder surgery not long ago, right?
So I went to a shoulder surgeon.
I didn't go to a dentist.
If I want to learn about comedy or, you know, fight announcers, I might come and talk to you, right?
If I want to learn about acupuncture or understand chi more, I might come to Chris because you've got a master's degree in traditional oriental medicine.
You're a licensed acupuncturist, right?
So if I want to learn about that, Chris is someone that I might want to go to.
So what I'm saying is the World Health Organization, the FAO, the American Heart Association, the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines, are all suggesting to eat predominantly plant-based diets, right?
And they're saying that vegetarian and vegan diets are helpful for all life stages, including for pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, adolescents, athletes, and so on.
Because the main question here, in my mind, is whether there is evidence that supports Being on a 100% plant-based diet with no animal products versus a diet that includes a lot of plant foods and some animal foods.
So, the playbook that was used by the smoking industry, so they pay for studies, right?
And we know, even with food, this has been done with cigarettes, it's been done with drugs, it's been done with food, research shows that industry-funded studies are four to eight times more likely I've seen this in articles Saying,
There are some specific claims that chicken eating chicken and fish causes cancer, eating dairy causes cancer, there are quotes from doctors, vegan doctors in the film.
Can we just finish the evaluating evidence and then get to each point?
Because I'm happy to do every critique.
So, basically, the consensus, and you're saying they're changing over time, they are changing, because as we get better at science, the recommendations are becoming more plant-based, despite industry influence from studies and marketing and people being paid off.
No, we can disagree about that, but I'm almost finished with the evaluating evidence.
So basically, what we did when we interviewed the experts is we chose leading experts in their individual fields, collectively with thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature, right?
And this is one of the bummers about making a documentary.
You put the lower third on, people don't get to read it.
So we had the Chair of Nutrition at Harvard, the President of the American College of Cardiology, the Lead Delegate of Urology for the American Medical Association, the Chair of Anthropology at Harvard, the Director of Energy, Environment and Resources at Chatham House, really respected...
Talking about vegan doctors, I saw some of them involved in hunting, some of them involved in animal testing.
I saw one of them eating a chicken sandwich at lunch.
So let's not say that this was a vegan bias coming into it, because that's just not true.
It's also an appeal to an authority, because I can find many illustrious doctors and experts who are highly qualified that will disagree with your point of view that a diet must be 100% plant-based in order to be healthy.
Okay, so all Chris has to do to debunk the film is convince the people watching and listening that he knows more about the consensus and the experts in their field I would understand if this is what you talked about.
I'm actually not that interested in consensus of experts.
I'm looking at the research that is published, the peer-reviewed research that is published, including meta-analyses and even reviews of meta-analyses that have been done.
A perfect example is the whole dairy and cancer section that we talked about, where you had...
Walter Willett argued that dairy products cause cancer, and I pointed to a meta-analysis that looked at over 150 different reviews, and 84% of those found no association.
So how is that not part of this discussion where we're talking about hundreds of scientists across different continents, different countries that are using peer-reviewed science to show this?
But in the movie, just one...
Expert is pointing to, you know, one group of studies without mentioning that.
I'd love to, because at 9 o'clock last night, until 9 o'clock last night, I thought Chris just made a bunch of mistakes interpreting the data, and I'm going to show you how he is misleading people on this study, okay?
Out of 153 reported meta-analyses comparing highest versus lower dairy consumption, 109, 71%, showed no evidence of a statistically significant association between dairy consumption and incidence of cancers.
20 showed a decreased risk of cancers with dairy consumption, and 24 showed an increased risk of cancers with dairy consumption.
Now this is actually, until last night at like 9 o'clock, I realized what he was doing.
Okay?
If you want to go to, I mean, just to sum it up, if you go to slide 110. Wait, can we stay on here for a second?
Okay, so can I just say, the reason you brought this up is because Walter Willett said there was a strong connection between prostate cancer and dairy, correct?
Because one of the main studies in your film was sponsored by the Haas Avocado Board, the one that claims that animal products contribute to inflammation.
Would you disagree that industry-funded research has a four to eight times increased risk compared to non-industry-funded research in finding collusions in their favor?
How many of the 153 meta-analyses, which each also had individual studies in them, are so biased by industry funding that we can't count on the findings?
Well, I would hope that you would know more than I. We can't get very far in this discussion if you're going to claim that we can't even talk about studies in the peer-reviewed literature because industry funding completely biases the findings.
70% of the people in these studies, if you have all these studies, you have 100 studies, and 70% of the people in all these studies are showing an increased risk of cancer.
Or 84%, which is because you add in the decreased risk.
We're not even adding the decreased risk, which shows that you're less likely to get cancer, which is almost the same as an increased risk of cancer, which in my eyes is a wash.
You would assume that we're talking about something that doesn't give you cancer.
I don't agree with that because you're trying to show that these studies...
We are proving or at least making this correlation between consumption of dairy products and cancer.
But the evidence doesn't show that.
If you want to look at it in its entirety, the evidence shows that most of the 71% showed no evidence of it causing cancer.
13% showed it's actually better for you.
You have less risk of cancer than not eating dairy.
And then 16% showed increased risk of cancer.
And again, when you're talking about epidemiology studies, when you're talking about, you know, 16 out of 100, you have to throw in all the other factors in these people's lives.
So you brought this study up because Dr. Walter Willett, who is the chair of nutrition at Harvard, he's one of the most published nutrition scientists of all time, if not the most published.
It's a fallacy unless it's the appeal to valid authority.
Because literally, if I want to know about, are you saying like, so if I want, let's say we look at mixed martial arts, and Chris goes, well, I've never done mixed martial arts, but I think I know more about anthropology, nutrition, like, I know more about boxing, kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling.
So we're talking about the consensus.
We're talking about leading experts in their field with thousands of peer-reviewed There is no consensus.
There are experts who are very illustrious who would disagree and would look at this study and reach the same exact conclusion that I did.
There's no reliable proven connection between dairy and prostate.
You have half studies showing an association, half studies showing no association, not to mention the fact that that's, as you just said, that even if there was A strong correlation.
The question was still, you know, there are a lot of inferences made in the film Whether they were intentional or not on your part, that dairy, people are hearing, oh, dairy is going to cause prostate cancer.
They're going to extend that to cancer.
There are other claims in the film made about dairy and metabolic issues and saturated fat and metabolic issues.
So, the operative question that I'm trying to answer is, do the data support that?
Not does Walter Willett think that, or any other expert in the film, do the data support that conclusion?
And even in that study, The data don't strongly support that.
If you have half studies saying yes, half studies saying no, that's not a clear signal, and it's definitely not evidence of a causal relationship.
So having Walter Willett or anyone say there's a strong relationship and we know the mechanism and it's causal, that happens.
So two out of three people have an intolerance towards dairy in the world.
And if you're talking about a study that shows 50% of the people in these studies that are consuming dairy, there's a correlation between prostate cancer and dairy.
Wouldn't you assume that maybe the same thing that we're talking about, where two-thirds of people are intolerant to something, they consume this thing that's intolerant, it causes inflammation in the body, and that inflammation in the body could possibly be leading to cancer?
Here's what I would suspect there, that if we segmented those people out and said, let's do a study, find out who's intolerant of dairy and find out who isn't, you would see even better results for dairy.
Because despite the fact that some people are lactose intolerant, we're still seeing in that meta-analysis that there's no association in most cases and an inverse association in other cases.
That's why when you see that kind of thing in the data, it's a red flag.
Because there's no logical explanation for why it would cause prostate cancer but no other cancers.
Can you start to think about why is there more of an association there with that?
Jamie, just Google dairy products and inflammation review of the clinical evidence.
This is a systematic review of 52 clinical trials and they found that dairy products were inversely associated with inflammatory markers, which means that people who consume dairy actually had lower levels of inflammatory markers.
So the hypothesis that dairy is inflammatory and that's why it's causing cancer doesn't seem to hold up.
So first of all, there might be studies he can bring up.
I'm not even a nutrition scientist.
I'm like a combatives trainer, right?
And so you also said that you're not an expert in nutrition.
And so what we have to believe today is that Chris really is – it is about the meta-analyses, but it's about the meta-analyses.
It's about the totality of taking into account all the evidence, not just one meta-analysis or a meta-analysis of a meta-analyses, but all of the data.
And so what you're asking people to believe is that you are better at interpreting the data than people that are experts in their field.
No, actually, we did interview some that I can tell you about in a second, on the other side, and I'll tell you why we didn't include them.
But you're asking people, I would understand it if suddenly Chris has figured out this NutriVore diet, that he figures out something about nutrition, that he knows more about the consensus and more about the majority of leading experts, But to believe that Chris knows more about anthropology, urology, heart disease, environment.
If you're arguing that he is saying that humans primarily ate plant-based diet and animal products were not a significant part of our diet through evolution, then yes, that's what I'm saying.
So, for example, when you go to the US military, right, the Game Changers is the first documentary that has ever been accredited by the Defense Health Agency for the Department of Defense.
It's the first documentary that has ever been supported by the Special Operations Medical Association.
They didn't come into it looking at the science.
This has been evaluated by hundreds of PhD researchers to come to that conclusion, okay?
The Defense Health Agency of the Department of Defense, which decides what the military is eating, they don't give a crap about, oh, let's base our diets on evolution.
They care on what is the science.
And Game Changers is the first documentary that's ever been accredited by the Defense Health Agency.
They didn't look at this and go, okay, this is a vegan propaganda film.
Why are you saying that hundreds of PhDs have reviewed this and reviewed all the data in it to come to this conclusion?
And is this proven?
Is this printed?
Is this some published paper where it shows that hundreds of people have reviewed this film and found all the claims to be credible and that all the debunkings of it are not?
Well, there's a lot from the Defense Health Agency.
There's a lot of people at the Special Operations and Medical Association that came to the decision, and these are master's degrees in nutrition, PhDs in nutrition, to get that accreditation.
That just hasn't happened before.
Because they didn't come into it thinking, this is a vegan propaganda film.
And we can fill the room with experts who agree with me.
You had a debate with a doctor in the UK on a TV show who disagreed with you.
We can always find people who agree and disagree with all kinds of different credentials.
It's disingenuous to claim, like I said, that I'm not here to argue that plants are unhealthy and that we shouldn't be eating a lot of plants.
This is the fallacy that gets created with these kinds of films.
It's not a choice between a standard American crappy processed food diet that contains meat or a vegan diet.
There is a possibility of a plant-based diet, a diet that has a lot of plants that also contains animal products, and comparing that with a 100% plant-based diet, that is the operative question here.
Number one, I've always, for years, have written that dairy is very individual and depends on your tolerance.
Number two, there are a lot of dairy products with virtually no lactose in them.
So, cheese, for example, hard cheeses, no lactose, you know.
Cream, very little lactose.
Butter, no lactose.
Ghee, no lactose.
Yogurt, fermented dairy products like kefir, no lactose.
So while I agree with what you're saying, if someone is lactose intolerant, they should avoid dairy products that contain lactose.
When you look at the studies on dairy and connections with conditions like cancer, inflammation, which I just pointed out with this study, And you look at cardiometabolic outcomes, which I'd like to cover because that includes heart disease and diabetes and overweight, obesity, etc.
There is not any strong evidence that dairy contributes to those conditions.
So you can't say it's bad for you, and then I show epidemiological studies and RCTs, by the way, that were included in that meta-analysis that don't support that, and then you say, oh, we can't trust the research.
The first found that increasing red meat consumption by replacing carbohydrates in the diet of individuals without anemia actually reduced markers of inflammation.
So, Jamie, if you want to pull this, I mean, these are all on the website, cressor.co slash gamechangers, but that study is called Increased Lean Red Meat Intake Does Not Elevate Markers of Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Humans.
Instead of just looking at observational data, which is subject to healthy user bias, these are two RCTs.
So that's one study.
And then there's another RCT in women with anemia inflammation markers on a diet high in red meat or not significantly different from those on a diet high in oily fish.
And then there are also numerous studies of paleo diets which contain meat and other types of animal protein and show that they decrease markers of inflammation including CRP. There's randomized controlled trials showing reductions in interleukin-6 and also in tumor necrosis factor alpha.
In these diets.
So all of this suggests it's not the meat, it's what you eat with the meat that makes the difference.
We have studies of chlorophyll, eating chlorophyll-rich green vegetables decreases the formation of N-nitroso compounds with meat.
We have lots of studies showing that when you eat plants along with the meat, then you don't see the effects that you might see if you're just eating...
As I said last time, and as I've always argued, I'm not a proponent of the carnivore diet.
I'm not a low-carb guy.
I'm not a keto guy.
My fundamental argument is just that the optimal human diet contains both plant and animal foods.
And this focus on individual food components or macronutrients like protein or fat or carbohydrate, we've gotten too much...
It's called nutritionism.
It's just focusing on these individual elements and ignoring the overall pattern of diet quality, which is the most important thing.
And that's what a lot of the more recent studies are showing.
When you look at the diet pattern and diet quality on its...
Overall, that's what actually makes a difference in terms of health and lifespan, not how much of this fat, how much of that fat, whether there's red meat or white meat or fish or whatever.
Let me pause here because this is one of the primary misconceptions that people have about consuming meat.
When they hear studies that say that meat is associated with mortality or high cholesterol or heart disease or all these different factors, We are talking about these kinds of studies where people fill out a form, tell us what you eat.
How many days a week do you eat meat?
How many days a week do you eat this?
What they don't take into account is whether or not these people are going to Wendy's, whether or not they're eating a grass fed steak and broccoli.
Something healthy.
There's a giant difference between those two things, but they're lumped in together because this is meat consumption.
No, I'm saying we should look at the diet quality, the overall diet pattern.
So, for example, Christopher Gardner did a study at Stanford a couple years ago, and he took, instead of saying, you know, low-fat, low-carb, he took two groups and he advised them all to basically eat a healthy diet.
And then one group ate a low-fat, healthy diet, and the other group ate a low-carb, healthy diet.
They all lost weight.
But there wasn't that big of a difference between the two.
So first of all, in terms of health, my opinion would be I'm pretty much macronutrient agnostic.
So I'm not advocating high-carb or low-carb.
I think that people can do healthy and well.
I think for athletes, they need a lot more carbs, which, of course, is getting those from plants.
I think there are certain athletes that can, if it's a slow and steady state where you're getting more fat oxidation, I think that, you know, stone steady state athletes can do, but like an MMA fighter, a soccer player, a basketball player, more carbs.
Let's just point out that Zach Bitter, the man who I had on the podcast yesterday, who holds the world record in running 100 miles in 11 hours, and I think it's 18 minutes, he's on a low-carbohydrate diet.
That's absolute madness to come up with your own definitions.
And this is what I feel that Chris does.
And when you have people like Chris on multiple times, it throws people's perception off as what is a healthy diet because Chris misrepresents the data.
So when we're talking about low carb, moderate carb, or high carb, when you're recommending to your patients low carb, moderate carb, or high carb, these definitions, how are you coming to these conclusions?
And then 40% to 65%, You're not even in the ballpark.
So if you're thinking about using low carbohydrate diets, for example, for weight loss or for diabetes or metabolic issues like Virta Health is doing, then low carb is not going to be 30% to 40%.
That's not going to work.
So that's where my recommendations are coming from.
Based on the optimal range, if you look at the rest of the article, it's going to be like, if you've got diabetes, you're overweight, you're obese, you're trying to lose weight, this is the range that I've found and other experts like the people at Virta Health have found will be most effective.
So you're calling it low-carb because if someone's on a ketogenic, low-carb diet, in order to get into ketosis, you have to have a low number of carbohydrates.
I've got to interrupt because just like in the last five minutes, you showed a study from trying to prove your own point That low-carb and low-fat people had equivalent fat loss.
You just said that.
So why are you now all of a sudden advocating only low-carb diets for losing body fat?
And when you do that, people, no matter what, low carb or high carb, lose weight.
But I think you will agree, as well as almost anybody would, that getting on a low carbohydrate diet and forcing your body into ketosis makes your body burn fat.
In the FAANG meta-analysis, which looks at most of the studies that have been done on that, and then if you also consider that when you add...
Green vegetables and other plant foods, spices, and all of that, it reduces the oxidative capacity of heme iron and reduces the absorption of heme iron.
And, you know, again, we're talking about diet pattern, not just are you eating red meat in McDonald's and fast food restaurants, but are you eating it in the context of an overall healthy diet, and does that have the same effect?
First of all, he said that what he put up on the screen, I don't know if you've still got the slide, but you said that the heme-iron association was only in Americans, right?
But the conclusion of that study said that heme-iron was associated with cardiovascular disease.
That was the conclusion of the study which he didn't put up on the screen.
Higher dietary intake of heme iron is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, whereas no association was found between cardiovascular disease and non-heme iron intake or total iron intake.
So if you look at this forest plot, for example, this Kipstein-Grohbush, And you can go and look at the, I've looked at the individual studies that they were referencing in the meta-analysis, as has my scientific team.
So basically you see this, this is a 1.86.
With the composite interval being 1.14 to 3.09.
That is statistically significant connection between heme and iron.
And you can look at the conclusions in three of the photos.
In this case, I do not think he was being misleading at all.
It did say what you said in the study, even though you didn't point out the conclusion.
You left out the conclusion of the study.
But what...
Wasn't your fault.
I think you read the study, but you admitted that you don't know how to read forest plots.
And the forest plots, if you did look at them and you knew how to read them, you'd show that there were three in the Netherlands and in Sweden that did show a significant correlation.
Because what you were trying to make out with this point, which I understand when you have a point of view and you're trying to work it backwards, what you end up doing is you try and find studies that suit your position.
And so...
You went and found the study, and you found a quote, even though you didn't like to put the conclusion of the study.
I think that plant foods offset the oxidation, offset in some regard the oxidation that you get from animal foods.
However, if you work out You have oxidative stress, okay?
So if you want to have a meal, do you want the plant foods in the meal to be dealing with the oxidative stress from the animal foods, or do you want the plants to deal with the oxidative stress, allow you to recover faster, and your next workout will be better?
I think it's an easier argument because we're talking about plant-based diets and plant-based diets would be either limiting or eliminating animal products, right?
So for plant-based diets in general, right?
So vegan, maybe some vegetarian, like if you eat turkey on Thanksgiving and then you eat fish once a month, I would say that's a plant-based diet.
You're getting the vast majority of your calories from plants, right?
Well, I think we can get into epidemiology and look at that, but I think we should definitely hit protein, because I think if everyone watching, that's the biggest myth, and it's the biggest sort of gripe, and I think we should definitely hit B12. Let's go with B12, because one of the things that you said that he disputed was, bring up that B12 quote that you said was complete horseshit.
No, I don't disagree that they sometimes get B12, but what about shellfish?
Shellfish are extremely high in B12. They're the highest, even higher than… That's a total non sequitur and it's a strong algorithm.
It's not actually because the implication in the film was the only reason you get B12 from eating animal products is because they're given B12 supplements.
The point about the shellfish was, I never claimed chicken was a great source of B12. I said in the film, even farm animals have to be given B12. You said that it was absolutely false.
Everything that I said about B12, you said was absolutely false.
And then you claim that the same percentage of, you picked one study that showed equal rates of deficiency and ignored the huge amount of literature that shows big differences between vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores in terms of B12 deficiency.
There's something that's added to feed on the left.
So, it says a liquid complementary feeding stuff containing the essential trace elements cobalt, selenium, For the treatment of B12 deficiencies, that's due to some soils being low in cobalt.
So now, if you just go to slide 47. This is the largest supplier of animal feed or supplements in the world.
Okay?
On their website.
Young ruminants require supplemental vitamin B12 prior to full rumen development.
They also say vitamin treatments sometimes administer parenterally to incoming feedlot cattle.
And also B12, by the way, has been shown to increase milk production.
You said there was no evidence that cattle are given B12 and you said that all my statements were absolutely false.
If I said that cattle, specifically that one portion of the statement, that there's no evidence that cattle ever get B12 supplements, then I was wrong about that.
Okay, first of all, when I made the full statement, this is what you first said, that's just all false, that's all just factually wrong, and then later on you said...
There's also zero evidence that B12 is fed to cattle.
That is flat out wrong, and I have just shown that.
So this is in levels of water in the English Lake District.
If you want to go to slide 49...
The vegetables were eaten without being carefully washed, thus strict vegetarians who do not practice hand washing or vegetable cleaning may be untroubled by vitamin B12 of deficiency.
And by the way, the retained vitamin D12 for soil was adequate to prevent B12 deficiency.
So what you're essentially saying is that we're dealing with B12 that was in soil and then in water and that by the chlorination and filtration systems that we use today, that's what's ruining the water and the water does not have the B12 in it anymore.
He didn't necessarily say that was the consensus view.
What he said in the statement was that the reason why we no longer have B12 in the water and in the soil is because of the fact that they add chlorines and pesticides, and it seems like there's evidence to back that up.
So again, people have questioned, did I spend a thousand hours?
Now that I'm giving you the facts, Do you question that I spent a thousand hours and I've spent another two thousand hours looking at peer-reviewed research since then?
I've estimated that I've done, conservative estimate, I've done since then about 3,000 hours because once I started making the film and doing that, then I didn't.
There are also B12 analogs in the soil that aren't absorbed and utilized like true B12. Can we admit the two things that you touched on so far, you got wrong.
Absolutely that it's proven that cattle do receive B12 under whatever circumstances.
I don't know whether it's because they're grass-fed or grain-fed.
I'm assuming they're feedlot animals that don't get proper nutrients from soil, don't get proper nutrients.
I mean, if you're getting these grain-fed, soybean-fed cattle and they're just pouring this dried-out shit into a bucket, these animals are not grazing and they're likely deficient in a lot of different things.
You're not just supplementing by B12, you're supplementing D. You're getting it from someone who supplements it in the feed of the animal, and then you get it that way.
So it says, before industrial farming, farm animals and humans could get B12 by eating traces of dirt on plant foods or by drinking water from rivers or streams.
So you don't think that people will get the idea from hearing that?
That we never needed to consume animal products to get B12. We didn't need to consume.
I agree with you on this, because his statement is essentially saying that the reason why we don't get it today is because of chlorination and fluoridation of water.
So your third point, I said this, you took issue with my claim.
And up to 39% of people tested, including meat eaters, are low in B12. As a result, the best way for humans to get enough B12, whether they eat animal foods or not, is simply take a supplement.
Then you said he didn't provide a reference for that, so it's hard to check.
But again, it contradicts, you know, mounds of evidence on B12 efficiency.
So, can you bring up slide 50, please, Jamie?
You said that I didn't provide a reference, okay?
But in the bottom left, where we put all of the references, and whenever I made a claim about the scientific research...
You rounded up to 40, but I kept it at 39, okay, because I was being specific.
B12 deficiency is far more common than most healthcare practitioners and the general public realize.
Data from the Tufts University Framingham Offspring Study suggests that 40% of people between the ages of 26 and 83 have plasma B12 levels in the low normal range, a range at which many experience neurological symptoms.
That was the opening statement of your B12 ebook, and you claimed that you couldn't find the evidence of that study.
Well, in California, acupuncturists have a four-year master's program, which includes a lot of medical sciences and nutrition research methodology, etc., because we're considered primary care providers in the state of California.
So the training is a lot different than it is in other places.
So...
There's the question of can omnivores develop B12 deficiency?
Yes, they can.
If you go and look at the rest of the e-book, it's because of things like SIBO, bacterial overgrowth, and small intestine.
Joe, can we stick to the point that he made last time?
I'll never get to ribbutt.
Okay.
So, when you referenced the Framingham study, you didn't link to the study, you linked to an article from the USDA about the study.
And that study said, oddly, The researchers found no...
Again, this is the opening statement of your e-book, references this study.
But you didn't mention this part.
Oddly, the researchers found no association between plasma B12 levels and meat, poultry, and fish intake, even though those foods supply the bulk of B12 in the diet.
It's not because people aren't eating enough meat to get their B12, Tucker said, it's the vitamin isn't getting absorbed.
So...
So, this backs up my claim that the safest way to get B12 is to take a supplement.
Now, Chris will just say, for $60...
Can I just finish on this point?
And then you can rebut as much as you want.
So, your claim was, well, people can just go and get...
So, you agree that...
No, I would say that vegans that don't supplement and omnivores, there's a lot more deficiency in vegans, right?
Like, it's a nutrient of concern that vegans should be cautious of.
But then you've got studies that show 11% of omnivores have B12 depletion versus 77% of vegetarians and 92% of vegans.
You know, that's with using holotranscobalamin, which is a much more sensitive marker of B12 deficiency than serum B12, which is really problematic.
And then you have 9 out of 10 comparisons of homocysteine that found higher levels of homocysteine in vegetarians and omnivores and higher levels in vegans compared to vegetarians.
And homocysteine is also a more sensitive marker than serum B12. So there's four stages of B12 deficiency.
And serum B12 will only go down out of range in the fourth and final stage of B12 deficiency.
So these other studies that I shared on the last show are looking at holotranscobalamin, which was the most sensitive marker of B12 depletion.
It's not technically deficiency at that point.
And then you have homocysteine and methylmalonic acid that are less sensitive than holotranscobalamin, but more sensitive than serum B12. Okay.
And this is why I show you that he's handpicking the data that he uses.
And this is where I go back to the fact that it's about the interpretation of the totality of evidence.
And you can't really rely on someone that's not a nutrition expert handpicking studies to suit their bias.
So this is what it said.
In subjects who did not consume vitamins...
The levels were what Chris said, right?
11% in omnivores, 70% in...
So I would agree, like, if you couldn't get B12 anywhere, you should incorporate some animal foods into your diet.
Fair.
Okay, but let's look at some other studies.
So slide 56. And again, I'm only choosing a few.
I'm sure, you know, certainly they're in my favor.
And I'm not saying that vegans don't have lower B12 levels, because some people don't supplement, right?
But I'm showing that you hand-picked a study from 16 years ago.
Slide 56. This is a new study from 2018 with twice the sample size of the ones.
People now know you should take a B12 supplement.
The studied markers indicate a generally sufficient cobalamin status independently of the diet preferences, lacto-over-vegetarian or vegan.
Slide 57. Now this is a study that looked at runners in May of 2019, really current.
And it feels like you might not have the most current data because you said to me in your email that nutrition is only one part of what you do and you have lots of other things that you're doing, right?
So, slide 57. This is comparing vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores.
And like you said before, we shouldn't just look at the markers, we should look at the outcomes, right?
And the outcomes is that vegans and vegetarians with higher homocysteine levels do not have increased risk of cardiovascular disease or diabetes or death from those or from cancer.
I am saying that when you came to B12, all of the statements that I made in the film were true, and you said that they were patently false and you were wrong.
Well, he certainly seems to have gotten it factually wrong that animals, particularly cows, are not given B12 supplements.
He certainly seems to have gotten it factually wrong that at least some of the B12 that people would be able to get in the past, they got from water and soil.
So anyway, you got things factually wrong about B12. So to the people listening or watching, do you really want to put the interpretation of the data in the hands of someone that just got so many things wrong about B12? Well, he got things wrong about your assertions about B12. Yeah, I made four or five claims that still stand that vegetarians and vegans have much higher rates of B12 depletion or deficiency than omnivores.
I don't know how many animals are actually getting those supplements.
All of the chickens are omnivores.
They're not fed omnivorous diets for the most part unless they're free-range chickens.
Have you ever seen a chicken fuck up a mouse?
It's pretty stunning.
Yeah, they're carnivorous little monsters.
Then chickens, and when you get them, and you get those eggs, and the eggs are like a really dull yellow, those are animals that are eating grain only.
Those are vegetarian chickens.
That's not what they want to eat.
What they want to eat is worms and bugs and rodents.
Yeah, there's not, yeah, I mean, we both agree, like, let's just create a false dichotomy, Chris.
If there was a, like, all animal products diet, not just carnivore, but eggs and all this stuff, and then there was a fully plant-based diet, subliminary would be 12. Which one would you advocate?
All he's ever said was that eliminating all animal products from your diet is probably not healthy unless you follow a very strict routine where you make sure that you have all your bases covered nutritionally.
I would extend that and just say that I don't think there's strong evidence suggesting that including some animal products in your whole foods plant-based diet is harmful.
So I just want to point out that, yeah, if you're going to eat 90% plants and you're going to eat the rest of it from animal products, I think that wild-caught elk and kangaroo meat, stuff like that, would be the way to go, by far.
But just to be fair though, even in vegans and vegetarians in all of the studies, They're still getting more fiber, despite the fact that you and I would agree they're not eating the healthiest diet.
Overall, completely plant-based people are the only people that fall within the recommended BMI range, the people that get the most fiber.
I agree, generally, that if you look at people who are on a vegetarian or vegan diet compared with people on the standard American diet, then they're going to have healthier...
You shouldn't just listen to me, but I don't think it's genuine to suggest that there's a consensus that a whole food plant-based diet is a better choice than a plant-based diet that also contains some animal products.
I agree with you that we have no studies on that, and we probably won't, unfortunately, in the near future, because...
So I agree that it's hard, like, again, I've said before that we should be getting the vast majority of our calories from whole plant foods.
I think there's enough in the literature to show, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recognizes that completely vegan diets are helpful for all the life stages, including for athletes.
I think that there's sufficient evidence to go 100%, but I'm not telling people that they should be doing that.
I'm saying people can eat whatever they want, but I think we both agree that people should be getting out junk food, right?
Oh, by the way, on trans fats, So that's why I asked you in the beginning of the show what your position was, because that's the fundamental question for me, is this question that we're talking about right now, which is,
is there sufficient evidence to suggest that everybody, most people, whatever you want to say, should be on 100% or even 95% plant-based diet versus a plant-based diet that contains some animal products?
And my argument all along has been, no, there's not sufficient evidence to claim that.
Because it's relevant because it shows that, like, I don't know why you were vegan or vegetarian.
Maybe it was for, like, animal rights reasons.
Maybe you felt bad for going back to eating meat, so now you need to field proof.
Like, the reason that you need to...
The reason that you need to try to debunk the film is because you've got a massive business selling supplements and protein powders and giving diet advice.
The reason that I'm here is because, and the reason that I came when Joe invited me, and he can probably tell you that it took a few invitations to get me here, is just to provide the other side of the view here.
It's not because Because it materially affects me in any way.
Believe me, I've got lots of other things, as I told you in the email, that I'm focusing on.
Okay, so, can I just, just so I understand your position, and I'm sorry for getting worked up, like, I feel like I'm like an attorney trying to interrogate you, but I feel like I spent a lot of time digging into research.
I had the research checked and checked and checked again.
I had the research checked to make sure that it was not cherry-picking, that it was reflective of the preponderance of evidence.
I thought you just agreed that there is not a consensus that a 100% plant-based diet is better than a diet that includes a lot of plants and some animal products.
So where were the experts that would represent that point of view?
But your claim that, like, the recent study that just came out, and we're getting off track, but the recent study that just came out that said that red meat and processed meat is totally fine, like, you really want to go with that?
Like, to me it feels like you don't have your finger on the pulse, honestly.
So in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the day before the film came out, six studies exonerating red meat and processed meat, all from the same company that are apparently giving recommendations.
Well, guess what?
Exponent and Nutri-Rex and companies like that are not the ones that give public recommendations on what people should be eating, number one.
Okay?
And we talked about this in the film with Exponent.
Nutri-Rex is like another Exponent.
So...
If you look at their recommendations, first of all, Frank Hu, who is now the chair of Nutrition at Harvard, he took Walt Willett's place, said the panel's blanket recommendations that adults should continue their red meat consumption habits is highly irresponsible.
Walter Willett said it's the most egregious abuse of data he's ever seen.
And if you want to follow their recommendations, if you could put up slide 92. So they did the same thing in 2017 for the sugar industry.
So, there was a meta-analysis in the annals of internal...
So this is the same company says, at present, there seems to be no reliable evidence indicating that any of the recommended daily caloric thresholds for sugar intake are strongly associated with negative health effects.
So they did a meta-analysis saying that don't worry about your intake of sugar at all.
That was what their meta-analysis conclusion it came to.
And then two years later, the day before the film came out, and do you really think that's a coincidence?
Do you think that the...
So let me tell you something, okay?
Of our email subscribers, do you know the email address of the person that opens and views our emails the most?
It's from the Beef Checkoff program, and they've been doing that since we started.
So they sign up for our mailing list, they look at when the film is coming out, And you think it's a coincidence that the day before the film comes out, they release a paper exonerating red meat and cancer.
So if you're going to buy into the Nutri-Rex study about red meat and cancer, then to be fair, you've also got to buy into their conclusions about sugar.
I'll tell you who they were paid by.
So financial support for that paper was funded by...
The Technical Committee on Dietary Carbohydrates of ILSI North America.
And ISI is the International Life Sciences Institute.
Sounds pretty legit, right?
So, its members include Coca-Cola, Hershey Company, Pepsi Company, and Red Bull, and a bunch of others.
You claimed this recent study, and I honestly, again, no disrespect, you're busy with lots of other things, you run a successful business, consulting people, selling stuff.
I get you don't have the time.
You weren't able to read a basic forest plot to look at statistical significance and confidence intervals.
I just don't think that you're the one to interpret the data.
So the reason you don't have the...
You haven't seen the hundreds of...
Really respected scientists that have come out saying that this Nutirex study, and by the way, there's an investigation into the Annals of Internal Medicine because of this, for accepting this stuff from Nutirex.
But if you're going to accept the meta-analysis on red meat and on processed meat for cancer, then you've also got to accept the 2017 study meta-analysis.
And so what you do is, if you want to make beef look better...
If you want to make saturated fat look okay...
Or if you want to make cholesterol okay, you can switch things around in the study to make it look good.
if you want to like look at eggs and for example and i don't want to get like it could turn into a three-hour debate about cholesterol and saturated fat but if you if you give uh if you go from 10 eggs a week to 12 eggs a week it doesn't raise your uh serum cholesterol so that's how they did the study but if you go from no eggs a week to one egg a week it does increase your because there's something called the cholesterol plateau so what the industry does is it tricks you it does but then when you look at eggs and outcomes like cardiovascular disease you don't see well you do but we're getting off track
i was just making a point that industry-funded studies sway the results of the meta-analysis right I think that's fair.
And it's done with the sugar industry, and it was done with tobacco.
And again, I'm not comparing the amount of increased risk of cancer from tobacco.
That was never a claim that was made.
It was the playbook that is used by the drug industry, by the meat industry, by the sugar industry, by the dairy industry.
So even though your film came out and these studies came out right before your film, it's kind of proving your point that this same company that tried to exonerate the sugar industry is also...
Can I just finish the last point and then I'll let you show as many studies as you want?
Because again, you can show as many studies as you want, you can't prove that you're not handpicking them to suit your bias.
You are the one that quoted this study.
It shows that your finger's not on the pulse because hundreds of top scientists have written letters, or joined in the same letter, to the Alzheimer's internal medicine asking for those studies to be retracted.
And there's now an investigation into the annals of internal medicine, yet you are citing that study.
If red meat has been demonized for as long as it has been, and then a study comes out which exonerates it, it would be entirely expected that there would be controversy.
Scientists who discredited meat guidelines didn't report past food industry ties.
The lead researcher, Bradley C. Johnston, said he was not required to report his past relationship with a powerful industry trade group I don't know what that trade group is, but if you scroll down...
I can tell you, in the first one, the sugar one, it was that Pepsi and all this stuff, although they make a non-profit with a fancy sounding name, and then they back it all with industry funding.
Same with the Meek study.
That's why I don't understand why he'd use it.
If you were being objective, You're saying, oh, there's other studies.
But why name this one as though it's got validity?
I think it's likely that it was tied into the film.
But it doesn't matter whether it is.
I'm showing that to...
To present that study as evidence, when the consensus of the scientific researchers is against that study, that is calling for an investigation, that has asked for it to be retracted, the co-author of the paper, who's part of the leadership team at NutraRex, he's the Vance Chancellor of Dean in Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M. Texas A&M is partnered with the Beef Checkoff Program.
And this is also discussed in the New York Times, slide 94. And there's actually, it goes a lot deeper than that.
It actually goes back to Brazilian government.
Let's see, slide 94. Slide 94 is just talking about...
Research group that discounted risks of red meat has ties to program partly backed by beef industry.
So this doesn't necessarily mean what they're saying is incorrect.
And this is where it gets slippery, right?
Because if they found things that happen to be correct, and they release it, but they release it from a shitty company that has said things in the past.
To get to your point, Chris, you agree with the conclusion of that study, and you think that the evidence points that there's many studies that point to the idea that red meat is not, in fact, the culprit.
And the culprit is when you're looking at these epidemiology studies, that you're looking at the overall diet of these people and asking them, do they eat meat?
You're not asking them, what is the quality of the food they eat?
Yeah, so I agree that conflicts of interest are a problem.
And the editorial that was published in Annals alongside of this study said, this is sure to be controversial, but it's based on the most comprehensive review of the evidence to date.
Because that review is inclusive, those who seek to dispute it will be hard-pressed to find appropriate evidence.
The meta-analyses had studies covering millions of participants over 34 years.
There are several other meta-analyses that have been done over the past few years, so I don't know the best way to show these because I've got them in a Google Doc.
So 2017, let's see if I can give you the title, Jamie, maybe you can Google it or something.
Contemporary Review of the Relationship Between Red Meat Consumption and Cardiovascular Risk.
Quote from that study, the review concluded, quote, recent findings demonstrated that despite the presence of heme iron and carnitine, Red meat does not significantly increase cardiovascular risk when it is assumed in recommended doses.
You have 2014 meta-analysis of 13 studies.
Again, this one, Jamie, is called association between Total processed red and white meat consumption all cause cardiovascular disease, heart disease, mortality.
And this is a good example of what you were just saying, Joe.
There was a slight increased association between red meat consumption and cardiovascular mortality And then at the end, no significant associations is observed between any type of meat and heart disease mortality.
Results of the present meta-analysis indicate that processed meat consumption could increase mortality.
These results should be interpreted with caution due to the high heterogeneity observed in most of the analyses as well as the possibility of residual confounding, meaning healthy user bias.
Lippi, in a meta-analysis of 11 studies of red meat consumption and heart disease, concluded that, quote, the current literature data does not support the existence of a clear relationship between a large intake of red meat and increased risk of myocardial ischemia.
And then this is one of the largest that was done.
Let me give you the title of this, Jamie.
Red and processed meat consumption and risk of incident coronary heart disease.
That should bring it up.
That's by Misha et al.
Conclusion.
Consumption of processed meat but not red meat is associated with higher incidence of heart disease and diabetes.
So there's a bunch of meta-analyses that have been done over the years that reached the same conclusion, and we could look at the same, this is for heart disease, but there are also some for cancer.
And you claim that we cherry-picked in the film, right?
But you hand-picked studies to back up your bias.
Not to mention that we've pointed out that the studies in those meta-analyses, some of them are heavily funded by industry, not saying that you should throw all those out, but you don't have the wherewithal to assess the studies in the meta-analysis because you pointed out yourself that you can't even read a forest plot.
So he reads conclusions, right?
He reads conclusions in writing, but has not looked at the actual data.
So, you haven't been able to establish.
When I spent the first thousand hours, I would look at the whole paper, and then I would look at each author, and I would dig into each author to see where their funding was from.
And I'm telling you that the industry is funding studies.
To sway things in their favor.
And you point, it shows that you don't have your finger on the pulse.
I've never claimed that there aren't studies correlating red meat with poor health outcomes.
I never have claimed that and I've said those studies are highly problematic for all of the reasons that I've talked about on the last show and on previous shows.
Healthy user bias.
Problems with data collection, food frequency questionnaires, relative versus absolute risk, confounding like, you know, not looking at physical activity, and the biggest confounder of all, not looking at diet quality.
Well, it's changed a little bit in the past few years.
It definitely was low fat, although that is changing a little bit.
There's some recognition of different fats, may have different effects, etc.
It would be limiting red meat, would be limiting saturated fat, limiting cholesterol, eating a lot of plants and whole foods, limiting sugar, This is a scientific insight.
That's based on, you know, mostly observational research and then some mechanistic studies and some RCTs.
But even RCTs, if you're comparing, again, like some of the studies that are cited, for example, in David Goldman's papers, they're comparing a standard American diet with a plant-based diet.
So in a crossover trial, randomized trial, that's not comparing apples to apples.
But anyways, to get back to your question, I would say about half of what I recommend is consistent if we use the factors that I just said, eating whole foods and...
Not eating processed and refined foods, limiting sugar, all of that.
The areas where I differ are red meat, saturated fat, but not always.
I think that's individual and depends on how people actually respond to saturated fats, and eggs, and total fat content, depending on the person.
And you pointed out last time, I think it was Rhonda Patrick that talked about it too, because obviously I watch your podcast, and you pointed out about these hormetic stressors that we talked about earlier, and so these people that are talking about anti-nutrients in food, they really don't know what they're talking about.
The landscape of dietary requirements and of health, it's enormous.
And just you talking about spending thousands and thousands of hours combing over this research can attest to that.
And Chris, I think you can as well.
I mean, this is a very complicated issue and there's a certain amount of bio-variability.
Different people have different physical requirements, different nutritional requirements.
But I think we're trying to zoom in on what is actually bad for you and what is actually good for you, I think we agree on.
I think we all agree.
Everyone here agrees that...
You basically need a certain amount of vegetables in your diet.
You need vitamins, whether you can get those vitamins from supplements like B12 supplements or whether you can get it from the actual food that you eat.
There's certain dietary requirements that I think we're all in agreement on.
I think where we disagree on is whether or not red meat is bad for you and what kind of red meat we're talking about and why is it bad and what Is it bad when it sits alone, or is it bad when you're eating it with vegetables, which is what we're recommending in the first place?
So if we're recommending that you eat it with vegetables, and these vegetables do have this sort of balancing effect of the negative aspects or the perceived negative aspects, even though there's no evidence that those negative aspects, when eaten by itself, because we don't really have long-term studies on carnivore diet people.
Well, clearly you've proven with the B12 issue that he said some things that made you look like you were saying things that were inaccurate and uninformed.
And I mentioned this earlier, but I didn't show it.
So the World Health Organization recommends that people eat a nutritious diet based on a variety of foods originating mainly from plants rather than animals, which you said you could agree with, right?
Because it's like not vegan necessarily, like mainly from plants.
Appropriately planned vegetarian including vegan diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.
That's a weird...
Appropriately planned is a weird way of phrasing it.
These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.
So these women that you hear that are getting arrested because their babies are malnourished because they're following a vegan diet...
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Heart Association, and the 2015 and 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend appropriately planned vegetarian diets for improved health.
That's a statement by Frank, who is the current chair of nutrition at Harvard looking at plant-based diets and cardiovascular health.
And then slide two is the FAO. Sorry, I got the slides in the wrong order.
This is the FAO. I don't know what messed up with the...
It doesn't look like that on my page.
Anyway, households should select predominantly plant-based diets rich in a variety of vegetables and fruits, pulses and legumes, which again, a lot of people on the paleo diet would say is useless, and minimally processed starchy staple foods, The evidence that such diets will prevent or delay a significant proportion of non-communicable chronic diseases is consistent.
So all I'm pointing out here is that you're not in line with the consensus of science and that you don't have the ability to read the papers.
So you would point out that one, you agree that predominantly plant-based is the way to go and that as long as you plan it appropriately, vegan diets can be healthful.
Okay, so it's not on the predominantly getting your calories from plants, which is the scientific consensus.
You're not with saturated fat and cholesterol and a bunch of other things, heme iron.
But anyway, so can we get a protein?
Because we're really here to defend his critiques of the film.
Because, you know, honestly, I've got people that watch the film Changed their diet, started feeling better, watched this podcast where he debunked the film and then called me a lot, you know, like write me a message on Instagram saying you are full of shit.
But anyway, I'm just saying like, it's a shame that you have someone that doesn't really have the capability to really understand the literature coming on here and people buying into it, talking smack on the film where he made a bunch of factually wrong comments.
What it is, is if you don't know what you're doing...
And you've been eating in a certain way for 30 years, and you suddenly take your meat off the plate, and you only eat what was left on the plate, you're going to have a problem.
Oh, and by the way, I'd listened to your 30-minute podcast, trying to take down the film, which came out before you came on Joe's podcast.
And you said that you, and you sort of backed this up, I don't know, this happened like from one article and it got spread and spread and spread, that someone said, you need five tablespoons of peanut butter to get the same amount of protein.
In what world does someone, and you changed your tune a little bit when you came on the podcast, but when I make a peanut butter sandwich, I use bread, two pieces of bread.
How many, like, you would use two pieces of bread and peanut butter sandwich?
But again, we showed a piece of whole wheat bread on there.
We're advocating eating mostly whole foods.
That's a whole grain.
No one is saying...
We even said in the film, if we wanted cherry pick, we'd just try and push plants.
We said white sugar and white flour.
Bad for you.
It was associated with weight gain.
Carbohydrates from whole food sources are associated with better lean body mass, lower body fat percentage, and everything else.
But anyway, so I don't understand your math.
What I think you did is you took that article, because articles that spread from that article forgot to put the bit in parentheses without the two pieces of bread.
So you take five tablespoons of peanut butter, At 4 grams a piece, that's 20 grams, right?
275 calories, and that was on the one that wasn't so lean, and 70% lean beef, and I'm just pointing out there's different ranges, 417 calories for 18 grams of protein, right?
So fatty meat, which you don't think fat, like the animal fat is bad, right?
So can we get slide 20, sweet potato and leek omelette from Chris's site?
Where the protein is coming.
So this is from your site, 18 grams of protein, 410 calories.
The funny thing is, I typed in recipes, and I think this was either first or second came up.
All I do is pick the first two high-protein recipes from your site, because I didn't pick the soup or the salad because I thought it would be unfair, so I picked the first couple.
So sweet potato and leek omelette, the protein coming from eggs, 18 grams of protein, 410 calories.
So first of all, it's low protein by most people's standards, but your standards of protein are much higher.
So that would be far off.
So that would mean to make up for the rest of the day, you would have to have meals that were like almost just protein, or maybe they'd have to buy the protein powder from your website.
In order to make that up.
Anyway, so let's move on to now the, and by the way, slide 23, largest study I've ever done comparing completely plant-based eaters with, like, study showing plant eaters versus meat eaters.
His recommendations, though, what he does is he pushes them to a really high end that isn't consensus, then trying to make it out that it'd be harder to get, which we've already shown you can get enough protein.
Of course, an athlete eats more calories, therefore they get more protein as a percentage.
So I just wanted to show two positions on this, and then we can see if you, again, you don't agree with the consensus of science.
So this is the joint position paper of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine.
Current data suggests that dietary protein intake necessary to support metabolic adaptation, repair, remodeling, and for protein turnover generally ranges from 1.2 to 2.0 grams or kilograms per day.
Per kilogram of body weight per day is one gram per pound of body weight.
So no doubt, and this is what you're talking about, certain athletes like bodybuilders, strength athletes, but the competency of all means to apply to everybody.
Some people could actually build, and this is about optimally building muscle as fast as possible, and some people could do it at one gram, some people might 2.2, but like regularly it looked like 1.6, 1.8, like the scientific consensus of that, and you said that you agree with these ranges.
Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation Method, which is newer.
If you scroll down, Jamie, to the optimal daily protein intake for athletes and similarly active adults, or if you just click on that...
You see in that paragraph, IAO studies and athletes found different numbers because four of the 49 studies in the meta-analysis that had that lower range were conducted in people with resistance training experience.
And also, I think some of the studies that you've looked at, like there's one at 2.3, I've actually got it on my...
Computer I don't have in my slides, but there's one at 2.1 to 3.3.
There's two things about that.
One, it's when you're in a caloric deficit.
Because of gluconeogenesis, you pull some of the protein and you use some of the energy, so there's less protein, less for building.
So if you're a bodybuilder cutting for competition, trying to get down to like 4 or 5%, then your protein requirements go up above that normal range because you're in caloric deficit.
Yeah, and they probably adapt some, because like in normal people, you can actually only, during exercise, you can only get 10% of your energy from the oxidation of protein into glucose.
But, so, the, where are we going?
So, but the 2.3 to 3.1, by the way, it's one in caloric deficit, and it's two based on fat-free mass qualifications.
It's not based on total body weight, which is what all the recommendations are on.
So, the 2.3 to 3.1 in some of these studies, if you did like, okay, if someone was 15% body fat, it would bring it down.
How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle building?
Implications for daily protein distribution showed upward of C1 of 2.2 grams per kilograms a day in cohort of young male bodybuilders.
Although the method of assessment indicator amino acid oxidation technique used in this study has not received universal acceptance for determining optimal protein requirements.
I'm saying if you want to take your IAO, the indicator amino acid oxidation index, if you want to use that, then the upper confidence level is still 2.2.
So the scientific consensus, I just want to make it very clear, that you threw out a bunch of these numbers on high protein, making out that vegans couldn't hit that level.
First of all, I've shown that foods can get that.
I've shown that vegans can get sufficient protein.
And I've shown the scientific consensus on the protein ranges for athletes are not in scientific consensus with these 3.3.
But even if there were, there's no reason you couldn't get it on a plant-based diet.
Because there were so many flaws that I was just like...
I was a truth seeker, right?
So I went for the search for the truth in combat.
Bruce Lee would say, research your own experience, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.
I don't care about all the George Dillman BS about you can knock people out.
I don't care about that.
I don't care about all these traditional styles of martial arts.
I care about what is the truth.
Before I did this, you know, I thought, oh yeah, paleo diet makes sense.
I actually switched to grass-fed beef because of the omega-6 to omega-3 ratios.
I started eating air-chilled chicken.
But then I read the research, and I wasn't biased by, like, anything other than finding out the truth between the optimal diet for health and athletic performance and recovery of my injuries.
And that is the truth, and that is what I have done.
And now we're going to expose how you were incorrect about the protein quality.
So you said, what's a little disingenuous about the film, they said every plant has every amino acid.
Well, yeah, nobody disagrees with that.
But it does have, does it have enough of each of them?
Well, first of all, people do disagree with that.
Like, if you want to search, you know, plants have missing amino acids, people think that it's missing some of the 9% amino acids.
So that's why we put that in the film, okay?
And we did, and I said, you left off part of my quote.
I said, every plant...
Has every amino acid.
That's what you said.
But you left off the end of my quote, which said, every plant has every amino acid in varying proportions.
That is what I said.
And you left out the in varying proportions, which again, I think is disingenuous.
He did not complete my quote.
You handpicked part of my quote to represent your view.
So people, number one, do think that plants are completely...
A lot of people think, just like, you know, there's articles saying, well, no one thinks that protein gives them energy.
I've got five studies here, the only five studies that I could find, on the knowledge of collegiate athletes, and around 50% in each of the studies think that protein is what gives you energy.
So people were saying, like, why did you put that in the film?
That's a straw man.
People don't think that protein gives you energy.
About 50% of collegiate athletes think that protein gives you energy.
Right, it looks at crude protein, it looks at the total amount of protein absorption, not the individual amino acids, because different individual amino acids absorb differently, so that was one of the benefits of the DS scoring.
That someone is talking about these systems that does not know how...
Okay, so slide 27. And I'll tell you one of the benefits of the DIAS. And I think you might have mentioned this, so I think you might know more than you're letting on.
So one of the benefits is the oro-ileal digestibility.
So the PDCAAS, right, that took the whole digestive tract to what came out of the end.
Now, PDC-AS was mostly in rats, and this is done in rats, and there's some in humans, but it's mostly done in pigs, because it's a more similar digestibility to humans.
And they're basically assessing how much of that protein was absorbed, right?
And how much of the amino acids were absorbed.
Now, some people make the argument, even the FAO point out the flaws, some people make the argument, well, pigs have a different digestibility rate, which is true, and they have a different amino acid profile requirement.
Different.
So some people would say, therefore, DAS, bunch of crap.
Right?
I'm not going to make that argument.
Even though it's tested in animals, primarily not in humans, they've got a different amino acid requirement and different digestibility capability.
Okay?
So, I mean, would you think that that score is the best one to use for humans?
This is a quote from last time when you were trying to bash the film.
It's all about protein quality, and this, as you said, is an established science, a firmly established science.
He was talking to you, obviously, and you must have said it was established.
They look at this, especially in, like, third-world countries where protein deficiency is common, so they try to figure out how to address this.
Okay?
Now, the FAO, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, what is their purpose?
Chris?
I've got a slide if you want to prove, but it's basically defeating hunger, providing food security, not for America or for England, but for more than 130 countries where people are starving, malnutrition.
That is their purpose.
So you've got to look at it through the lens of that.
If you can just put up slide 29, because I just want to really back these claims up.
I know the slides are getting kind of boring, and I again apologize for people just listening.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has developed methods to evaluate the protein quality of food items, and in 2011, the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score, D-I-A-A-S, was recommended as a successor to their previous method.
I'm even going to forego, like, I'm not going to argue about the animal having different amino acid requirements, even though that's, like, that's pretty funny, right?
Like, why are you assessing?
Anyway, so I'm not going to have that argument.
What I'm going to have is I'm going to go with everything so far, FAO, they're endorsing it over the PDS, a lot of experts endorsing it over the DIAS, over the PDCAS. Okay.
So now in slide 31, it's made for starving children, okay?
So I would agree, if you're in a caloric deficit, and you're in a country where there's very little protein, and you're only getting 30 grams of protein a day, let's just say that the animal, like, take the animal stuff out of it, and, like, the way that the method is flawed, which the FAO points out.
But let's just say it's legit.
I would agree.
I would say, eat, get your protein from meat.
I would agree.
Because that's what it was designed for.
As you can see, In looking at post-exercise skeletal muscle, the DIAS does not attempt to consider how scores translate into optimizing more downstream physiological targets of interest to a physically active person or athlete.
So it wasn't designed for that system.
It was designed for starving people in countries where they were not getting enough protein and they weren't getting enough protein, as you would call, high quality.
Okay?
So...
So would you recognize that it wasn't developed for that system?
Now, in the 2018 Journal of International Sports Nutrition, slide 32, Society of Sports Nutrition, Because you like to say it's all about muscle protein synthesis, right?
Do you disagree that like eating four or five times a day at 20 to 25 grams of high quality protein, whatever you want to take, high score, whatever, under the scoring system you agree with, do you agree that that is the amount to maximize muscle protein when it shows that that does for a four hour window, acute muscle protein is this?
So I think we're on the same page that 20-25 grams has basically been shown in a single sitting over a four-hour window in what we call acute, short-term.
That's been shown to maximize muscle proteins in this.
And that is because 20 grams, and it's been shown actually you can get less with like egg, you could get like 17 grams or something.
Because basically you're hitting two things.
You're hitting leucine.
You're getting 1.82 grams of leucine.
Which is basically like a foreman, right?
It's like telling the others, like, hey, you should build protein.
If you don't have any leucine, even if you had all the essential amino acids you want except for leucine, you wouldn't have the foreman telling all the workers to, like, build the muscle, basically.
That's what leucine is.
So you're getting enough leucine, and you're getting 8 to 10 grams of essential amino acids.
That is what is important in the acute stage of muscle proteins instance.
You're getting 8 to 10 grams of...
And we can get more granular, like it's, you know, 0.0 grams per pound of body weight.
But this is basically accepted.
And in fact, they've shown that, like, even if you're 400 pounds, you know, you probably don't need even more than 20-25 grams.
For some reason, there's something in that number about getting the leucine amount.
It doesn't really matter how big you are.
You know, there's a small percentage of people that say you might need a bit more, 2.5 or whatever, but consensus is this 20-25 grams.
And I'm sorry this is, like, long, but it's important to, like, break down.
So, by the way, just going back to your DS scoring, you're basically looking at, like, rules for Jiu Jitsu tournament, like a Gi Jiu Jitsu tournament, and you're trying to apply them to MMA. So, just because Jiu Jitsu is involved in MMA, it doesn't mean that a scoring system for, like, IBJJF or whatever, that doesn't mean that that's the best scoring system for MMA, right?
So, essentially, and this isn't just my opinion, okay?
This is scientific literature, not an article that you just pulled on on examine.com.
That's not how science works.
You don't just pull up an article.
So, slide 33. And it's very clear.
This is just very obvious.
It's not...
It can't...
It cannot just be about short-term acute muscle protein synthesis, right?
It can't be.
Because you wouldn't be hitting the 1.6 to 2.2.
So, this states...
Acute anabolic responses are not necessarily associated with long-term muscular gains.
The topic can only be answered by assessing the results of long-digital studies that directly measure changes in lean mass with the provision of varying protein dosages.
Okay, so you agree that it's not just about short-term muscle processes.
Okay, so what it is, Joe, it doesn't matter.
At a certain point, it doesn't matter because, yeah, let's say you're going to have four times a day, and let's say you're going to have 160 grams of protein, and you have 40 grams, right, of protein four times a day, that's 160 grams.
So if you're going to optimize muscle mass, and by the way, how much muscle have you put on in the last 15 years?
So if your goal is to do something and take creatine or protein, You know, these athletic endeavours, like you pointed out, the thing that Patrick does, and we can get into, by the way, the misrepresentation from Robert O'Hurst into Patrick's records, if you want, because there was a lot of claims that were made that were completely false again.
So, basically, if you get enough protein, if you hit one of the windows, if you hit the 1.6 to 2.2 with plant protein, you can hit the muscle protein synthesis.
So what you're saying is that as long as you're getting this 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of protein, whether it's lentils or peanut butter, that you have enough amino acids to achieve the desired results.
And it's essentially the exact same as if you're hitting that 2.2 grams.
If you're getting 2.2 grams of protein and you're doing it and you're not doing it in the way that you said where you're not planning it and not making sure you're getting enough leucine, which is low...
The more precise data collected so far in humans assessing real specific oral ileal nitrogen digestibility has shown that the differences in the digestibility between plant and animal protein sources are only a few percent contrary to historical findings in rats or determinations using less precise methods in humans.
So, when you heat food, the likelihood is, even though it hasn't been tested, we know that the digestibility is less in plants by a few percent.
Only a few percent.
Not the 40% versus 100% that he was claiming last time.
That's old science.
I'm talking about current science.
Right?
And there's only a few percent difference and they imagine that not only if you heated it That you would get equivalent.
You might even get more because you're killing the trypsin inhibitors by heating it.
So that whole nonsense about the quantity, you were wrong.
The quality, the DR score was not designed for that.
It doesn't matter when you get enough protein.
So as long as you get enough protein, you're using measures for an organization that is looking at hunger.
We're talking about if people have got enough.
I agree.
If you're in a developing country and you have very little diversity of plant foods and maybe not enough and there's some animals, you should be eating the animals.
I agree.
But that is not what it was designed for and it doesn't matter.
The amino acid profile doesn't matter and the digestion doesn't matter when you get enough protein.
And, you know, my original argument and what we started out talking about was, so you take the film and the claims of the film, the specific claims of the film, and then you also take the question that we started talking about, which was, Is there evidence that a 100% plant-based diet is better than a diet that contains animal foods and plant foods?
And there were a lot of claims in the film that we talked about, about dairy products causing cancer, dairy products contributing to cardiovascular disease, chicken and fish causing cancer.
Red meat clogging the arteries that we address and haven't had a chance to go into detail on in this show.
But Joe asked you about protein, and we were talking about protein, and what you just did there is you segued into something else.
So can you answer definitively, do you think I've presented very good arguments against your rebuttal about both protein quality, including the amount and the ratio, and about protein quality and quantity, including digestibility and amino acid scores?
B12! I think the qualities and quantities still matter.
So even though that scale was developed for the FAO, there's still a difference, a quantitative difference in the amino acid profile and digestibility.
But if it's about amino acids and it's about protein content and digestibility, if what he's saying is correct, then there really is no need to eat meat.
I mean, you can, like, come up with some other, like, we can go at nutrient, if you want to look at nutrient profiles and, like, then we can look at that.
But you've got to admit I've presented some good arguments in both favor of quantity and quality.
We're talking about, like, we don't really have that much time left, unfortunately, because we are here at three and a half hours in, and I have another one right after this.
But what about the film do you think he hasn't refuted your criticisms?
There's no research to suggest that protein recommendations are different for athletes following a vegetarian diet than for those on an omnivorous diet.
In the interview, or in the film, when you said, and I've seen you say this on interviews, we have 22 years of research showing that a single high-fat meal impairs endothelial function.
Well, I got a bunch that actually contradict that.
So, the same study, the same researcher that did that study, Found that taking vitamin C and E after the high-fat meal completely eliminated the effect that it had on endothelial function, which suggests that a healthy omnivorous diet with plants wouldn't have the same impact.
There was a 2019 review, and this will be at kresser.co slash gamechangers.com.
Adding nuts, avocados, olives, berries, spice blends, orange juice, red wine, and protein, including milk protein, to a high-fat meal prevents endothelial dysfunction and oxidative stress.
We've got several studies that suggest that dairy and egg proteins improve endothelial function.
2015 controlled trial with 52 subjects.
Dietary proteins, including milk and egg, improved endothelial function.
2006 study, adding dietary protein to a high-fat meal, prevented postprandial endothelial dysfunction.
We have 2009 study, followed subjects for 12 weeks.
A low-carb diet improved endothelial function, whereas a low-fat diet decreased it.
The point is that low-carb diets that contain animal products and that milk and egg protein have been shown to improve endothelial function, not worsen it.
The claim in the film was that animal protein worsens endothelial function.
But the claim that was made in the film is that animal proteins worsen endothelial function.
I just listed a whole bunch of studies, especially those suggesting, here's one that says, influence of food patterns on endothelial biomarkers is a systematic review.
The conclusion was that healthy food patterns, abundant in fruits and vegetables, had a beneficial impact on endothelial function.
Westernized patterns, higher intakes of processed meats, sweets, fried foods, refined grains were positively associated to influence.
Okay, so for example, slide 71. I purposely didn't include those studies because I don't think that they're a good thing to compare to.
So, slide 71...
Okay, this is nice because there's a graph, right?
So you can see, so, oh, everyone's saying like that fat in the blood, that's normal.
Well, what do you mean by normal?
Yeah, lots of people do that.
That's normal.
That doesn't mean it's optimal when you see the fat in the blood like that.
And by the way, it was a film.
We couldn't throw everything in.
So when you see fat, that's called postprandial lipemia.
That means after a meal, fat in the blood, right?
That is associated with up to a 50% decreased endothelial function, which means less nitric oxide is produced, which means that the arteries can't open up as much, less oxygen, less nutrients to the muscles, okay?
So, that is associated.
As you can see in this graph, I don't know, so the solid line is the triglycerides, this is after the meal, okay, which was, by the way, a shake of whipping cream and liquid chocolate and nonfat dry milk, okay, As you eat the meal, you can see that the triglycerides go up.
That's the fat in your blood.
See between two and four hours, it kind of peaks.
We measured those athletes at two hours.
And again, this is not just a film.
It's been done for over 20 years in the scientific literature.
So as you can see in the graph, right, Joe?
As the dotted line goes up, that's the appearance of more fat in the blood.
Right, you get that lactescence, the milkiness of the blood.
You can see that very clearly that the flow-media dilation drops.
So it drops by 11%, okay?
If you look, for example, does that make sense?
So that when you have those fat in the blood, your ability to, your arteries to expand goes down.
There's no, like what, that's not an Egg McMuffin.
That is a milk and whipping cream, and that's it.
So now if you go to slide 73...
Now I agree, this had some...
So they compare...
Now here...
Yeah, we can skip to the next one.
That was 11%.
Okay, so here what I've done is...
The only thing I've changed about this graph is I put the green dots for the plant-based meal and the red dots for the animal-based meal.
So they were eating Korean barbecue, egg, milk, oil, mayonnaise, rice, and vegetables.
And on the other hand, they were having a vegan meal of soup, kimchi, vegetables, orange juice, apple.
So it was matched for calories at 800 calories.
The green is in red, and the, sorry, the green is plants, and the red is animal-based.
So, I don't know if you want to go into, but basically, I mean, you've slide 74. Again, please try to remember, a lot of people are listening to this.
So what that's saying, acute means short term and chronic is long term.
Under acute thing, it affects your endothelial function, your ability to exercise and perform, and in the long term affects chronic conditions like heart disease.
And if you go to slide 75...
Remember that chart that we looked at with the green dots and the red dots?
After 12 weeks, peak flow-mediated dilation at 3 hours increased from 5.1% to 6.5% in the carbohydrate-restricted group and decreased from 7.9% to 5.2% in the low-fat diet group.
Can I just say, for example, you said you were trying to refute the study about the increased risk of colon cancer between vegetarians and non-vegetarians, right?
The three times increased risk for those who had white meat, like fish or chicken, once or twice a week.
And then you go to a meta-analysis, which is not comparing...
I took a master's level research methodology class.
I'm referring to studies that are in the peer-reviewed literature, James, and you haven't answered the question.
If protein impairs endothelial function, why are studies showing that milk and egg don't George Dillman did a study showing that the heart rate went up when he did a knockout without touching someone.
Parallel is that the scientific consensus says that we should be in predominantly plant-based diets and that vegan and even vegan diets are helpful for all stages of life cycle.
I've shown that you can get enough protein.
I've shown that the quality DS scoring doesn't matter.
I've shown that the B12 stuff that you got is completely wrong.
What else do you want me to show you?
You want me to show you that even despite having lower creatine levels, because people have pointed out in the film, oh, you said as long as you get all the amino acids, that's enough.
You didn't point out that the study said vegetarians have lower creatine sores, therefore it may affect performance.
They didn't test it.
I've got a bunch of studies where it has been tested, where they had vegetarians and meat eaters had equivocal fat-free mass, equivocal power output, equivalent time to fatigue, despite lower creatine levels.
And we know that creatine is ergogenic.
I've also got other studies showing that when vegetarians actually take supplemental creatine, they get increased gains of over one pound of muscle over the meat eaters.
So despite lower creatine, which we know is the most studied supplement They're getting that because their intake of creatine is lower.
Right, but it points out that despite lower creatine source, which we know are ergogenic, which are performance-enhancing, they still have equivocal fat-free mass, muscle, and power output and time to fatigue.
And when you add creatine in, you get a benefit.
Now, I'm not saying that everyone should be taking creatine, but if you're trying to build as much muscle as possible, I think you should.
And by the way, meat eaters also tend to supplement that are trying to bodybuild with creatine as well.
So I'm saying that despite the fact of lower creatine, which we know...
Would you argue that's probably the most well-studied and best...
So despite lower creatine, people on plant-based diets can still have as much muscle mass.
And when they hate creatine, they get even more than the meat-eaters.
And I've got a bunch of science to prove that too.
So basically, Joe...
If someone watched the last episode where he tried to debunk the film for 2 hours and 50 minutes, do you feel that I've fairly addressed a lot of the critiques?
And I can address a lot more.
He talks about nutrient quality.
He likes to refer to diet quality.
He says that we're lowering certain nutrients.
Yeah, vegans are low, typically in B12 and D, calcium and zinc, because they eat a bunch of shit.
But meat eaters are low in about 9%.
So he likes to point to a nutrient score which favors a paleo-type diet.
So you're looking at the overall group of them versus the people that are doing it as recommended by these studies that are showing the appropriate amount of amino acids they're doing it or they're bound.
So anyway, forget all of the useful videos that are on there.
They do like three-minute videos for people to learn about the science.
It gives all the references.
But the useful thing, the really useful thing is he has like the daily dozen, you know, about what all of the evidence is showing we should be eating.
Whether you're eating meat or not all of the evidence showing like how much legumes how much fruits how much vegetables You know the flaxseed and you know these types of things So it's just like it's like a fridge magnet you can throw in your fridge and James you made an excellent point Chris, do you have anything to say in closing?