E9H5: Plant vs Animal Based Diets: Part One

Grappling with the choice between steak or salad? Our latest episode delves into the sizzling debate over plant-based and animal-based diets, where we dissect not just the health implications, but the environmental stakes too. As someone who thrives on a diet rich in meats and seafood, courtesy of my chilly regional backdrop, I share how local offerings shape my choices, particularly when winter rolls in. We don't stop at personal anecdotes though; this discussion spans the logic behind letting geography dictate diet and the hidden costs of craving foods flown in from afar. You'll also get a taste of how animal and seafood essentials fuel brain health, and how, with the right ratios, even die-hard meat lovers and vegetarians can find common ground.

Turn up the volume as we peel back the layers on vegetarian and vegan diets, especially when it comes to gut health revelations. Making the switch from a processed-heavy American diet to one brimming with plant goodness can revolutionize your insides, and we explore why. But it's not all green pastures—we scrutinize the potential pitfalls of plants and the dark side of animal farming. From factory farms to sustainable pastures, we weigh in on the real environmental impact of your food choices. And before you pass the peas, you'll want to hear about the ancestral wisdom behind preparing foods that neutralizes plant nasties. Join us as we champion a balanced plate, honoring both personal health and the planet's wellbeing.

Transcript

John Proper: 0:00

Welcome to the Balance Blueprints podcast, where we discuss optimal techniques for health and finances and then break it down to create an individualized and balanced plan. I'm your host, john Proper, here with my co-host, justin Gaines. In this part one of the two series episode Justin and I talk about the war between plant and animal based diets. We go over why plants may be giving so many people health issues, but are they really the enemy and does diet really matter for your long term health? Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy. It's not that intro, it's alright. This whole episode will be animal versus plant based diets, so we're going to focus in on that.

John Proper: 0:37

Yeah, since it's a huge topic and since everyone just wants to fight about it these days, it seems like hopefully we can shine some light on them. I'll walk through how I eat and why I eat that way, and maybe at the end you can decide which one's best for you. But I know the winner.

Justin Gaines: 0:56

I know the winner based off the facts, based off the bio mechanics and all the way our body system works.

John Proper: 1:04

Yeah, definitely, but we'll jump right in. So again, today it seems like if you go online, if you go on social media, I enjoy talking about the culture around health. We actually did it in a recent episode about fitness, but you'll see, it seems like people are either in camp of team veganism, team vegetarianism, meat is terrible, meat causes cancer, meat ruins the environment, and then you have people saying don't eat vegetables, they cause gut problems, they cause autoimmune disease, and these two people like to fight it out. I think it's slowly shifting and we're going to start seeing more people in the middle ground that have a little more reason in common sense, and that's where we're going to kind of attack it. But we'll talk about the benefits of both here.

John Proper: 1:46

And I myself am a very animal based, meat, seafood, heavy eater. My diet consists of mainly that, and the number one reason for that is my geographical region of where I live. So right now we're doing this podcast. I got my window in front of me and there's about six inches of snow. I don't see beautiful fresh berries and apples and avocados and olives. So with my philosophy of kind of mixing modern science with ancient wisdom and ancestral wisdom, you know it makes sense that in the winter especially, my diet would mainly be consistent of stored root vegetables, things I've preserved, but mainly meats and seafood, because that's what's available year round. So that's kind of the first thing I look to of. If someone's saying you know, should I be plant based? Should I be animal based? Where do you live? Because do you live in Antarctica and you're going to be plant based, eating coconuts and avocados shipped in from across the world, like that doesn't make too much sense to me. So that's where I start.

Justin Gaines: 2:54

And the flip side is true of that too then you know, if we're staying with your logic of geographically where you are, you can't do a heavy plant based, especially not during the winter months, being that we're in, you know, upstate New York. But the same would be true from, like, an environmental standpoint. You know you're actually consuming the things that are local to you and within a much smaller radius. But if you were, say, in Iowa, then seafood might be not the best option because it's also not going to be local to you because you're talking I don't know how close to this, to the nearest coast, but I would assume it's somewhere you know four or five, 600 miles away to get to a coastal area where you can actually get, you know a lot of the fresh seafood. Now you may be able to get you know river species and stuff like that, but generally speaking, it sounds like your focus is more geographic focused and local to where you are living.

John Proper: 3:50

Yeah, and it's a great point. My own I guess my not even counter, but thing I would bring up to that is completely agree with you. I think the ratio is really what's going to change a lot. So this, in my opinion, even what you said is what kind of gets rid of veganism as an option, because animals and seafood are basically everywhere all year round, versus, you know, I can't say plants aren't. I mean, you can go and forge something in the winter, but it's going to be very minimal. You won't survive off of it.

John Proper: 4:21

So animals and plants, or animals and seafood, should be included in everyone's diet. In my opinion, and also based on a lot of research, the only reason you might cut it out is if you have some trouble at the moment with low stomach acid, but if you're a healthy individual, it should be included, because they really are everywhere. And you nailed it too with yeah, you probably won't, you shouldn't be eating, you know, alaskan salmon in Iowa, but you should be trying to get some local seafood from lakes or whatever, because that's the one that I still feel humans evolve to be. Humans evolved around bodies of water coasts, so seafood was really very important to them and it really was a foundation, like DHA being a super important nutrient for growing the brain. So it's sometimes difficult to want to go and fish a lake, especially with, maybe, if they're not, the cleanest these days. So I know I'm kind of contradicting myself here, but seafood is one of those nutrients where I think it's just so important for mental health, brain development, gut health that you may want to seek out any form of that is better than no form. But to your point, yeah, you know, eat local. That's the most important thing, and usually what you'll find is animals and seafood are everywhere, so they're usually in everyone's diet. But then you want to look more like equatorial regions. It's going to be a lot more plant and fruit focused, because it's gorgeous around and they have tons of that growing Right right.

John Proper: 5:54

Besides the fact that that's not huge great scientific evidence, I understand that we're just kind of looking to nature and looking to the seasons and it makes logical sense. So some things that are more scientific, that kind of backup, an animal based diet I want to backtrack there because I don't want to support an animal based diet. I want to support an omnivorous diet. I think both animals and plants have great benefits and should both be included in your diet. Like we said before, though, plants change throughout the seasons depending on where you are, so animal products are usually constant and then plants will change. You'll eat a lot more of them in the warmer months, a lot less of them in the colder months.

John Proper: 6:36

But the reason I think we're seeing so many people switch and advocate and go for heavy carnivore, animal based diets and say plants are terrible is because plants can cause a lot of problems with people's immunity, gut issues.

John Proper: 6:54

They do have compounds in them that cause stress to the body, because a plant is stuck in the ground, it can't move, it can't run like animals can, so their defense mechanisms are built in, so when you eat them it kind of harms the animal slightly. Now there's also a flip side to that that these harmful plant chemicals also cause some beneficial stress. If you think about an official stress, like if you think about working out, working out is a stress, but overall it's positive. But what we have to look at there is with plants and working out. The same thing applies where, if you're not in a healthy state to take on that stress, it's going to do more harm than good. So that's a big thing that people are seeing. Oh, these plants give me bloating gas, autoimmune disease. But is it really the plants or is it really that your body is just in an inflamed, not healed, state and the plants are bringing it up? So I think we aren't focusing on what's causing these plants to cause those problems. We're pinning it against the plants a lot.

Justin Gaines: 7:58

And so here you're not talking about like pesticide use and that sort of stuff. You're talking a plant that's just in the most natural state. It's normal defense mechanism against it being consumed by an animal is to have these things in them for lack of a better understanding of it, but things in them that will, that are counterinducive to consuming them as an animal. One of their natural protectors in their in the raw sense, is these defense mechanisms that make it so that it's harder for us to digest the nutrients?

John Proper: 8:35

Yeah, exactly, that's a plant. Wild plant, let's say wild fiddleheads are out there, or arugula or something. Yeah, they have. There's a ton of different ones, oxalates being a very common one that people talk about in spinach but they have mechanisms in them that do harm the host, make it harder to digest whether it's the reason of the plant wants to, maybe this is more in fruit, but the plant wants to push it seed through, so you don't digest it, and then that's how fruit gets placed around, or nuts and seeds.

Justin Gaines: 9:11

Right by bird eats the fruit itself, and then doesn't digest the seed and that transports the seed.

John Proper: 9:19

Right, and when you talk about it like this, you see like, oh well, how much damage could that do? And I think that's the point. I don't think it does a ton of damage unless you have a not healed state of body, not healed gut. But then these smaller things are going to cause damage, which a lot of people see. And you bring up a great point. We won't even get there. About pesticides and herbicides that is a lot of thought to why they cause such a big problem. A lot of people bring that up for gluten. Is it really the gluten in the bread or is it really the amount of roundup that they spray on American wheat? That's a whole different topic. But you do avoid a lot of those things, eating animal based as well. As long as you're picking quality animal sources, you're not eating plants covered in pesticides. Often you can also just pick organic.

Justin Gaines: 10:11

Right, and the animals not eating those plants covered in pesticides, because obviously you'll get a buildup of that in the animal proteins.

Justin Gaines: 10:19

Because of it, but I like that we're talking about it in the sense of, because a lot of times when we talk about meat and naturally we're going to talk about meat today we talk about in a sense of we're talking about a very specific type of meat. We're not talking just, you know, walmart, your cheapest meat, that you can buy, meat, because that has all sorts of issues with it. It's interesting to talk about plants in the same way, because I think when vegetarians and vegans get hit with, oh, your diet's not the best for you, because if you're eating this lettuce that's covered in pesticides, well then you're better off eating meat and not eating that because of all the pesticides.

Justin Gaines: 10:53

I think it's good that we're breaking it down in the sense that no plants by themselves, in the best organic, all natural form still have downside to them, still have things that are working against your digestive tract, that's with the highest quality of plant that you're consuming. I think it's good that we're doing that, because we do it on the meat side very consciously. I think it's good that we're comparing apples to apples here, the best quality and form of meat against the best quality and form of plants.

John Proper: 11:28

Yeah, yeah, that's a great thing to just put out. There is that's what we're talking about this topic. Other episodes can be about how to maybe figure out what's the best for your budget, what quality you can pick, but we're talking best quality meat, best quality plants.

Justin Gaines: 11:41

I think it's interesting too that I feel like society as a whole pushes that can't go wrong with plants, that plants are just so good for you, and it's never taught this element of plants have a natural defense mechanism to not be consumed, because all of the plants were consumed completely. Then there wouldn't be plants around and that would be an issue.

John Proper: 12:03

Gaze. I'm trying to stay away from conspiracies. I'm trying to stay away, no, but you're right, plant-based diets are heavily pushed through higher ups, big organizations, celebrities, you see it push a lot and the biggest thing is this idea that animals are destroying the planet. Again, we need to differentiate between the type of animals, how they're raised. I'm not going to sit here and say go buy factory farmed, terrible treated beef. No doubt that is harming the environment. At the same time, if you really break down and this is going to be a different episode, so we're just going to hit it very lightly if you really break down the problems with emissions, because that's usually how cattle and other rumenant animals are attacked through their emissions. It's such a minor, minor amount of emissions coming from them versus, let's just say something like private jets. He's using those to then go talk about, eat a plant-based diet and oh yeah, the plant-based diet to support the entire world. Well, we'd have to monocrop that, which brings tons of issues and environmental problems. In itself, it's a whole different.

Justin Gaines: 13:13

Yeah, and I was even going that far. I was just saying the way nutrition is talked about. I feel like in an entry-level basic nutrition class in a high school, which we know how poorly those are organized in the US when we talk about those things, it's very common for them to bring up the downsides to animal consumption and how that can be poorly raised and grown. I feel like when it comes to plants, the only thing we talk about is pesticides and herbicides and all of those components.

Justin Gaines: 13:43

We don't talk about the fact that there's naturally occurring defense mechanisms that are in the plant on a molecular cellular level that just exists whereas with an animal, the defense mechanism is fight, flight, freeze response. Since the animal's dead, they no longer are fighting or flighting. That defense mechanism has been gotten past that because you're at the point where you've eaten the defense mechanism.

John Proper: 14:13

If they did harm to, they already did physically.

Justin Gaines: 14:16

Right. If you were hunting them, then you were in a hunting environment. You try to do it hand-to-hand and not using a rifle or a bow or something that allows you to do a distance. You've already overcome the defense mechanism where, with the plants, you still have that fight when you consume it.

John Proper: 14:33

Let's use that as a going off point of okay, at the beginning I said I am team omnivore. I include both of them. I think it was really pushed in, like you were saying, your very basic level high school nutrition classes because plants have been known to be used as medicinal healers for years. The benefits of them and again I think it really depends on the person here of are you in a healthy state? Okay, then these stressful compounds are going to help you. Are you not in a healthy state? They're going to hurt you. I think it really depends more on the individual and the plant is going to do the same effect either way, but it's how we respond to that plant.

John Proper: 15:14

The beneficial effects, like before medicine and even a lot of modern medicines, are derived from plant compounds. We've known those for a long time. I want to say maybe we didn't know about the harmful effects of plants until maybe more recent. But at the same time there's traditional cookbooks. A very good one is Sally Fallon's cookbook. You look at ancient cultures. They would soak grains in an acidic medium like vinegar and it would help get rid of some of the defense chemicals in the grains. It's easier to digest. These cultures knew about these for a long time. Sometimes it seems like science maybe is just slower to. I don't want to say science. Certain people in the science community will just disregard what ancient wisdom had until it's proven by science. But the problem I think there is, we often see it gets proven eventually.

Justin Gaines: 16:04

Right, there's definitely a place for science and science that allows us to understand why they did these things Right. Sometimes the ancient knowledge is a result of them doing it for 100 years and one grandmother passing it to another grandmother to another grandmother and just passing it down generation to generation to generation. It's because they saw very small sample size. This works really well. Another really small sample size this works really well and they don't see a negative impact. So then it becomes ancestral knowledge.

John Proper: 16:36

Right.

Justin Gaines: 16:36

Right, so it's yes, it wasn't done through science, but it was still using, generally speaking, the scientific process of-.

John Proper: 16:44

Right, what is science? Sample size.

Justin Gaines: 16:47

It just wasn't, it wasn't marked down and it wasn't one variable that they were marking, because that's just not how things were done back then. Right, but so what are some of these compounds? Just to name off a couple different plants that have compounds like. What specifically are we talking about with compounds here, instead of just brushing over it and saying there are compounds?

John Proper: 17:07

what are some of them?

Justin Gaines: 17:08

and what are the negative impacts that our body has to fight to get over them?

John Proper: 17:13

Yeah, I know I keep saying defense compounds because for some reason they're blank on me. Even the one is, I think, phytic acid is the one in grains, so that's the most common one that causes gut issues there, another one being oxalates and spinach. That blocks the absorption of a lot of nutrients in it. A lot of people will say we'll eat spinach for iron, for example. That's a really common thing. You hear what's the best source of iron, and it's comical because you know red meat is very high in iron. So when you Google best sources of iron and red meat doesn't even come up. It's very odd. So spinach being touted for highest in iron. I have it here though. Actually, studies show only 2% of the iron in spinach is actually absorbed by the body, and that's because of these plant compounds, these defense compounds, and spinach, such as oxalates, that will bind to the iron and prevent it from being absorbed by your body. So that's just where it's important.

John Proper: 18:15

We want to differentiate. Iron is not iron. It's the same way we say red meat is not red meat. There's different types of iron here and in the plant source. We're looking at non-heat iron, which is a lot more sensitive to our stomach acid gets destroyed a lot easier. And if we look to red meat, we're looking at heme, iron. That's just how their structure is. One is definitely superior and that's what we're just looking at. Iron here, you know, and really what we're. What I want to attack because I know this episode could come across as Really attacking plants, and we'll get into why also eat plants and think they're beneficial. But it's easy to attack plants because people in this community Are saying plants are equivalent to me, just as good as me, and you don't need me, and it's. That's not the case. You need both.

Justin Gaines: 19:07

So you say that one iron is better than the other. Why is one iron better than the other? Is an absorption? Is it the quality of the iron? Why is one necessarily better than the other?

John Proper: 19:18

Yeah, it's a good question and we'll see this with a lot of compounds in plant versus animal foods, iron being the first one. Is the resilience of heme iron it doesn't get destroyed by our stomach acid is easily is non heme iron. So that means and same thing goes for animal products. You don't absorb 100% of the iron there. A lot of it does not get absorbed or get destroyed. But less of heme iron from animal products will get destroyed versus from plant products. Another great example is DHA. This is why I advocate for seafood DHA super important molecule for so many reasons in terms of brain health and even crazier stuff in terms of it's just using every cell and how interacts with light. But a lot of people will say, well, you could just get DHA from algae. But there are different types of DHA and I have this written somewhere else that I can look at it, or I even did a post about it. But DHA from seaweed and Plants in the sea is not easily used by the body. Like fish will eat that, convert it to a DHA that's much more absorbed by the body and then when we eat the fish, we can then absorb that. So I know a lot of people advocate for that. They'll advocate for chia seeds, flax seeds, and they'll say well, ala gets converted to DHA.

John Proper: 20:43

You look at the research. Humans are not good converters of ALA to DHA and these are just omega three fatty acids, just to you know. Go over that. We don't have to go too deep into them. But these are just different types of omega three fatty acids and a lot of vegan vegetarian advocates will say you don't need seafood because you can get DHA from plant sources and you can't.

John Proper: 21:02

We're not good converters. You may get minuscule amounts. And also very common problem these days Many people are eating very high omega six oils tons of vegetable oils, seed oils, canola oil. If you eat a lot of omega six oils, it even makes the conversion of plant sources of ALA to DHA even worse. So there's a lot of factors that go into play and this again ties into. I think we're seeing people do well on animal based diets, because our environments are set up so poorly that it almost is easy for us to fail these days, these days that plant foods have so many of these compounds that cause problems and animal sources just don't. So I think that's why a lot of people are gravitating towards them.

Justin Gaines: 21:50

So so a good versus a not as good source of something has to do more with the bioavailability of the nutrients, the our gut and when, the way our guts operating and how well we can actually convert some of these other compounds into the right form or the form that we need Like. Those are the three big things that you're looking at when you're saying this form is better than that form, when it goes to you.

John Proper: 22:19

Yeah, and for once in our life, we don't want to simplify things to such a degree. I mean it's crazy, because most people might not even know what DHA is. But then the people that do know about DHA, do you know about the structure of DHA? And that there's different structured molecules and one works way better in the human body than the other one. So it's exactly that, and we don't want to oversimplify these things and say irons, iron, dha. Is DHA like? Source matters how our body's working matters, how our gut health is, and then even another cool fact is what we eat with it matters. If we eat two things in combination, they're going to compete with each other and block one or the other, or they may help each other. So a good thing for here, or a good reason to advocate for being an omnivore, is we were talking about if you eat spinach and you cook it, first of all, that's going to help. If you cook it, it's going to get rid of some of those plant chemicals.

Justin Gaines: 23:23

Yeah, it's interesting because usually when foods are talked about, if you eat them up and you cook them, you lose nutrients. It's interesting near the flip side that well, actually, you're helping out the bioavailability of the nutrient by cooking some of these foods. Traditionally at least, I was taught you should eat them raw, because that's the best form.

John Proper: 23:45

I don't know where that came from. I'd love to look at that. But when I hear someone say I'm going raw, vegan or this, I'm just thinking it's great, you're introducing a lot more fruits and vegetables than you probably ate. That's a big reason that vegans and vegetarians see improvements in the first place. They go from a standard American diet which is loaded with processed food to a vegan, vegetarian diet which is mainly plant-based Ding-ding. No wonder we're going to see some benefits there.

John Proper: 24:14

We're introducing a bunch of beneficial foods, but after time, if we're only eating these, especially raw, uncooked, and we talked about not prepared in the right way, which these preparation techniques take a long time and I know people aren't doing them these days, so we're very busy a lot of raw vegetables are going to cause problems. If we cook them, if we prepare them properly, it's going to get rid of some of those defense compounds. Even when we add other foods to them, like for spinach, we'll keep using that one as an example. You cook it. It gets rid of some of those defense chemicals. You add other things like, let me just make sure, an acid, so usually like some lemon juice. That's going to bring out a lot more of being able to absorb certain nutrients like vitamin C through it.

John Proper: 25:01

Then if you eat spinach with maybe some dairy, such as it was cooked in, maybe butter or cheese as well, so the calcium, like I was saying, in the cheese or butter is going to bind to some of those oxalates as well, those plant chemicals in the spinach, then combining those foods will make the spinach more beneficial. It's a lot to think about and that's why I think these days, with it being so fast-paced, so many moving variables, people are just saying to heck with the plants. I can feel just as good without them and I don't really need them. I think you can get away a lot longer on an animal-based diet than a vegan or vegetarian-based diet. But I just don't think from a sustainable standpoint, from a long-term wanting to exclude those foods for so long, an environmental aspect, it's the best option.

Justin Gaines: 25:57

Right, they're advocating for the omnivore piece. I mean I'm definitely guilty of doing the to heck with it thing, not necessarily to go to the meat side of things, but we're getting to the point with our podcast series here where we're getting into the stuff where, luckily, I have you in my life where I can say, to heck with it. I trust that you're doing the research, I trust that you're getting all this information and then, instead of getting into the nitty-gritty of this.

Justin Gaines: 26:19

I just say, well, how should I do this or what should I consume? What's the best options? Then you're able to say try to stay away from most farm-raised salmon is going to be terrible. The vast majority of us don't buy farm-raised, just look for wild caught and then grab wild caught salmon or wild caught fish and focusing in on these things that instead of going nitty-gritty, just grab these things. I mean, I'm definitely just as guilty of doing that, but I think it's important to be able to understand.

Justin Gaines: 26:49

But one thing I want to circle back to, because you touched on the other two points, but the gut element of it, because I feel like that's one of the number one things that I find with friends that I'm around that are on vegetarian or vegan diets that then say, well, my gut feels so much better, I just feel so much better since being on that vegetarian and or vegan diet. What potentially is causing that? If the bioavailability of the nutrients and it's not the most efficient route, is it saying that maybe it's not the most efficient route but it's still effective? Or is it a case of there was potentially other gut issues going on as a result of more than just meat and that's what's causing it? So I guess can we touch on the gut component of being vegetarian, vegan and why individuals, when they switch to being vegetarian and vegan, feel so much better than on their traditional diets.

John Proper: 27:41

Yeah. So I think it plays mainly into what we just touched on before is that we really need to look at the diet they're coming off of. So if it's a standard American diet and by that we're going to say includes lots of frozen meals, lots of processed food, lots of snacking, lots of junk, someone is taking an unhealthy habit and introducing a more healthy habit. I'm not going to say the best one, but, like we talk about a lot, it's progress. So let's not say it's not good at all. It's on the right track, they're taking steps, the willpower is there, but the benefits there are going to come from just the beneficial compounds, the antioxidants implants, phytonutrients implants the other side of the story and even some of the stressful compounds that are going to be beneficial to these people the side that we didn't talk about as much.

John Proper: 28:37

But these plants do have many beneficial compounds and fruits, you know, antioxidants, vitamin C.

John Proper: 28:43

So I think that's what's probably going to see, that initial helping of the gut, because usually in my line of work with the people I've seen most of them do come with gut problems after being on a vegetarian and vegan diet for so long. So I haven't seen too many people really rave about that. Their gut feels great on that because after a while of it being on it, we'll get into why it's maybe not the best. But from the start, if you have someone switching over and they say, you know, I feel better, I feel this, my gut feels I digest food a lot better, I think you're just going to have the benefits of maybe you were eating zero fiber and now you're eating fiber. You know, maybe you were getting really no vitamins and minerals because your diet was really lacking and now you're introducing a rainbow of fruits and vegetables and you're going to get a lot more vitamins and minerals to help out important processes in the body. So I think initially we're going to just see.

Justin Gaines: 29:41

it's that boost of almost like yeah, yeah, what about some like two of the people that like come straight to my mind, though, that I've talked about extensively with this or I'm like good diets and then eliminated the meat element and swear that they felt better, and which my response always to somebody who's like that is if it works for you, it works for you. Yeah, that's great. I'm glad that you are feeling better, but I'm curious what you see as far as like what?

Justin Gaines: 30:13

because if on paper that's not what should be happening, what are potentially some rationales or some reasons on why it would be happening?

John Proper: 30:21

Yeah, number one is probably going to be a huge one because it might be a career change for me in the near future but the power of the mind. If someone really thinks something is causing them harm and with meat there's a big spiritual aspect behind it for some people. I don't subscribe to this camp or believe in this ideology, but some people do think you are a lot cleaner or pure when you don't eat the flesh of another animal. So whether there's a spiritual component there, whether there's just a mental thing of I really think this food isn't right for me, I'm eating it because that's what I'm supposed to do and I finally give it up, there's going to be a big difference there. The mind has great control over the body. If it's junk meat, that might be another one. If they're eating really poorly raised, not good quality meat maybe lots of processed chicken or people say I'm going to give up meat, you're like well, what's the meat you're eating? I was eating chicken, mcnuggets and Big Macs. It's like all right, so we weren't eating quality meat. But let's say someone is eating quality meat and that's what they give up. It sounds like the person you're talking about is obviously conscious of their health. I would say it's probably that mind aspect.

John Proper: 31:34

Number two people do well on different diets. Not everyone is made for the same diet. With that said, I still think meat should be included in everyone's diet. Now the amount can be different per person, but long term I think you're going to start seeing problems. Then maybe the immediate and this is a great segue.

John Proper: 31:58

The first one that I would think is as you age, muscle mass is very important and a lot of people will get into. Well, you can get protein from plants and vegetables. If we look at this, if we break this down one from a weight loss and overall health aspect, it's not equivalent To get the same amount of grams of protein from plant sources or something like peanut butter. A lot of people love to use that one. You're going to be eating way more calories Then. This is going to lead to weight gain because to get the same amount of protein which everyone needs a certain amount of protein you're going to have to eat much more calories in plant foods to obtain that protein. The second key aspect of that is again, we don't want to oversimplify protein it's about amino acids. Meat has a very specific amino acid profile that plants don't, everyone would come back and say, well, you can mix and match different plants, and you can. But in this busy world I know a lot of those people aren't doing that Great. It's interesting.

Justin Gaines: 33:04

I've never thought about the mental component of it. You could be telling yourself a storyline or firmly believing it too. I don't want to downplay somebody's mental position on something, but you could be in your mind, have a certain viewpoint of something and then, as a result of that, that's causing your body to react a certain way to the foods you're eating. Very interesting that that has such a high impact on your digestion.

John Proper: 33:35

It's crazy to see the research. The reason I'm getting into this is because I'm someone who I found has tons of healthy habits and, on paper, should feel great, but what's going on in your head that's not allowing you to feel great. I think it's crazy and I think we underestimate the power of the brain. If we think something's bad, even if it's not that bad, but we don't do it, we feel great. If we think something's bad again, it's not that bad, and we do it it could be way worse for us than it actually should be. That power there, I think, is probably the biggest thing.

John Proper: 34:10

Then again, I don't want to take it away if someone feels great, but I just don't want to risk with the research I've seen in 20 to 30 years, how are you going to age without those very essential nutrients Like we talked about DHA, proper amino acids I don't want to put myself through that because I've seen the research of those are essential nutrients for optimal, long health. Like we said at the beginning, we're talking about living optimally versus surviving. I've known people that say hey, I know it's not optimal, I don't care, I'm not eating animal foods because this is why I believe I say look long as you know that you're choosing a path of surviving instead of living optimally, that's fine. That's your choice. That's your choice.

Justin Gaines: 34:54

Right Right From the psychological component it sounds like there's probably some psychological benefits because they're fully bought into that mental Fully believe that who knows what the incremental increase would be as they introduce plant food or animal-based foods into that. It may be negligible because of the psychological viewpoint that they have on the diet that they're consuming.

John Proper: 35:18

That's a great point. We can even wrap up a lot of this with. Diet is becoming one of the lowest things on my totem poles of importance of health. I don't want to say lowest, as in I put other things above it, I'm talking like top five things. We see so many people thrive on so many different diets because maybe their light, environment's, very, their stress, is under control, they have purpose in their life. We look at the blue zones where they have community, they walk a lot, they exercise. If everyone's doing all those things right and we're over here arguing, should I eat plants, should I not eat plants? It's like let's fry up some bigger fish here. Literally, let's eat some DHA, but literally, yeah, you see a lot of people. It's like let's stop trying to figure out. Oh my God, why are so many diets working, so many different ones working? Maybe it's the other things. Diet is important, but is it the end picture? No, it's not.

Justin Gaines: 36:14

Right, right, optimize, like we talk about survival versus optimization. But even just a little bit further back of, like you said, if you can focus on optimizing your diet, but if you're constantly under artificial light and you're not getting out and exercising and having a relationship with others and doing all these components, you're the best diet in the world on paper, but you're highly inefficient in all the other categories.

Justin Gaines: 36:39

It's not going to matter at the end of the day because you're not optimizing the bigger picture, you're not looking at a balanced perspective, you're just looking at one piece of the pie and saying this is the most important part.

John Proper: 36:52

Definitely, and I think we're seeing a lot of this with a lot of people, especially in my journey. That's where I'm shifting, because in terms of a perfect diet on paper, I don't think I could really change mine much, but I don't think it was reflecting how I was feeling and that's where you're pulling in all of these other areas, your light environment Now I have that one pretty good, but you want to look at healing past traumas and relationships. I think those are equally or almost more important for a long, optimal life.

Justin Gaines: 37:24

Right, you almost want to triage your health journey and see which categories you're the worst in, attack those first, optimize them to a certain level and then pivot and optimize other pieces so that you get to a spot where, all right, I'm doing really well above a baseline on all of these categories. Now I can go in and be nitty gritty about Maybe I should be eating more animal-based foods, or maybe I should be spending more time in meditation or spending more time exercising.

Justin Gaines: 37:54

But if you're not doing anything in one of those categories. That's going to be more important than sitting here and arguing about plant-based versus animal-based.

John Proper: 38:04

And I know people probably know this, but I just want to say the thing too, because I do see this push a lot too. Where long as you are happy and love yourself, none of that stuff matters. I'm not in that camp. I think you need to do a little bit of everything. I think we sometimes move towards a diet or exercise or that doesn't matter, as long as you are happy with yourself. Not to say not being happy with yourself isn't real. But I just bring up the question of are you truly happy with yourself if you're not even trying to eat healthy? Do some form of exercise, because those are forms of self-love. You are doing those things because you love yourself. You want yourself to be healthy for the long run and for others. So again, everything's on a scale and it tips one way or the other so fast.

Justin Gaines: 38:57

No, for sure. I think we're going to wrap it up there. We have plenty of topics that we've got to go deeper into, but we'll wrap it up there for this one and segue into all the other topics in future podcasts.

John Proper: 39:09

Perfect man. Yeah, I got a part two here with stuff so we can do that next time. We'll keep diving into the plant versus animal-based foods. Thanks for listening to our podcast.

Justin Gaines: 39:18

We hope this helps you on your balanced freedom journey.

John Proper: 39:20

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Justin Gaines: 39:23

Until next time, stay balanced.