My name is Ryan and you are listening to the Vegan Report.
Today is a very special episode because we are welcoming one of the 15 most influential
vegan athletes.
According to VEG News, our guest Robert Schick is an American bodybuilder and vegan activist
whose most recent book The Impactful Vegan caught my attention.
It is basically a dose of clarity on everything related to vegan and animal advocacy.
So if you feel lost or confused by the vegan world of activism, then the book and this
episode are for you.
You can pre-order The Impactful Vegan now.
Follow the link in the description below.
Robert, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Ryan.
It is a pleasure to be speaking with you today.
Thank you for having me.
Amazing.
I want you to be our tour guide across the labyrinth of vegan activism.
You have met and talked to more animal rights activists than I will ever do.
You have participated in maybe dozens, maybe hundreds of vegan initiatives and events.
And most importantly, you have been vegan since before I was even born.
So you have a sense of the evolution of the vegan movement.
So can you draw us a rough map of the vegan world in terms of advocacy work?
What is your outlook and how did that world evolve since you became a vegan activist?
Yeah, thank you, Ryan.
You're right.
I've been doing this for a very long time, for almost 30 years, since 1995 when I grew
up on a farm and decided to become vegan for the animals and no longer contribute to their
suffering.
As someone who raised animals and sold them at the auction to be turned into food, I wanted
to set a different standard for myself and for society really to extend compassion to
animals and understand that all animals share a universal truth, a single desire to live
a life free of fear, pain and suffering.
So that's what I've been somewhat obsessed with over the last 30 years, how to be effective
and impactful for animals.
So we have to step back a little bit and realize that we've had an animal rights movement in
America and really around the world for about 60 years or so.
And it's working to some degree to get people to care about animals and to look at animals
differently and see them as individuals, not as food.
But we haven't made as much progress as we had hoped.
I mean, if you look at that as a whole, as a movement, we're working on different
causes, we're championing different ideas and pushing different agendas.
And some is working, some is not working, and some is not very effective at all.
And other things can be quite effective.
And so in the Impactful Vegan, what I really wanted to do was distill that down and recognize
and try to understand what makes the biggest impact for animals.
What moves the needle the most?
If we're going to have a finite amount of resources, whether that's money, time, the
numbers of people working on a certain cause or mission to reduce animal suffering, what's
the biggest bang for our buck?
Where can we save the most lives or spare the most lives at the lowest cost as far as
our investment into that effort?
And so I went out and started talking to people.
I talked to nonprofit founders and organizations.
Some of these are vegan animal charities that operate on $50 million budgets annually.
They're obviously able to fundraise quite a bit and they're able to have an impact and
do a lot of good with those resources.
I interviewed for-profit companies as well, companies who have a structure set in place
to be profitable and to be effective.
And these are largely plant-based product companies that displace animal-based foods
in the grocery stores or on restaurant menus and they've been successful at doing so.
How are they doing that?
And surprisingly, I even talked to some non-vegans who are doing a lot of work for animals.
And you might think, well, how is that even possible?
How are people being very influential in reducing animal suffering while still eating animals
themselves?
And it's largely due to the financial investments they give to these plant-based companies,
the opportunities, the doors they open, the connections they have, the relationships with
politicians or members of parliament or other areas of influence.
And then of course, I called upon my own 30 years as a vegan advocate and activist who
really this entire time has had a focus on being effective.
So what's the answer, right?
The answer is to look at a lot of the work that's already been done.
So there are organizations out there like animal charity evaluators, for example, that
has evaluated and scrutinized 3,000 different animal charities to look at their efficacy,
how effective they are, how many animals they spare, how they use their resources, how they're
perceived by the general public, in what ways they have the opportunity to grow and impact
the future, what type of technology they're working on, the size of their base and influence,
their historical background and changes, maybe legislative or policy changes they've enacted,
changes they've been able to push forward that are now talking points or top of mind
for the general public and all of that.
So it took looking into some of the organizations like animal charity evaluators, charity navigator
and some of these other organizations that have already done a lot of the legwork to
find out which organizations are most effective and then discover why they're effective, what
tactics, what approaches they take and how we can apply those into our own lives as individuals
or how we can contribute to these existing organizations that already do a lot of good.
And then it's reflecting on our own set of skills and talents and resources to figure
out how we can best contribute to the world around us.
And then I provide all kinds of stories and examples and interviews and food for thought
and statistics and all of these things throughout the book, which makes, I think, for a really,
really good read so people can get the ideas upfront, learning about effective vegan altruism,
what that means, what that is, learning about how to identify your own strengths and skills
and resources, how to incorporate those into your advocacy, how to stay motivated and inspired
when it's a long road ahead and it's been a difficult road so far and not as much progress
as we had hoped and in the face of adversity and how to celebrate all victories, all wins,
not try to be obsessed with perfection, but try to be focused on forward progress and
to not sweat the small stuff and just make sure we are being effective in our communication,
in our advocacy, in our contributions and do the most that we can to help animals.
Going back to that idea of MAP, there are so many initiatives out there and it is kind
of hard to think, so now what?
Where should I put my time?
Where should I put my money?
And I think that this book is a good answer to that question and I feel like there is
a moment of before and after right now.
I feel like there are more and more critical voices of the vegan movement, of the way we
do advocacy work and that might bring a new change for the better, for the vegan movement.
So do you see change coming in terms of how we organize, how we do activism work and all
of that?
Is there a new generation of activists coming up right now with a critical view of what
was done?
I think so, Ryan.
And the reason for that is because we have to take a step back and listen to those that
we are trying to reach.
So often we think that our ideas are best or our forms of activism and advocacy and
outreach are the right position or the correct position or if they are morally and ethically
correct that also must mean that is what we have to follow because that is what logic
in our brains might think leads us to influencing others.
But we have to understand that we are not our own audience.
It doesn't necessarily matter what inspired you to be vegan or me to be vegan.
We have to understand why omnivores are not or why people are still consuming animals,
what their beliefs are, what their fears are, what their worries and concerns are.
We can't just say, oh, you don't have this moral compass or this North Star.
It's a shortcoming on your end or something like that.
We have to look back at religious context, at cultural heritage, at eating patterns,
at economic situations that people are in, at habits that have been cultivated within
us since we were born and have been embedded in our daily lives and activities since the
beginning and we can't just expect someone to change their worldview overnight because
that's the worldview that we have and we want them to share the same views as us because
we believe them to be morally superior or most impactful for animals or most influential
for the planet and all of that.
And so in the impactful vegan, what I'm really encouraging people to do is look at the data,
look at the evidence, look at the surveys.
This is a very much a data-driven approach.
That's why I look at things like animal charity evaluators who have the data.
I look at phonolytic studies who have the research surveys, who have talked to thousands
of people who are not vegan and asked them what would compel them to go vegan and what
keeps them away from becoming vegan or adopting a vegan lifestyle or even just removing the
word vegan in the first place and what motivates them to contribute to animal suffering or
what would inspire them to take the actions to reduce animal suffering.
To answer your question more directly, I think we're in an era right now where technology
is going to play a major role in animal advocacy.
We know that certain approaches are not quite as effective as we'd hope, like direct disruptive
protests and such are very empowering for vegan advocates and activists.
I've been there myself many times.
They're very empowering for us, but in many ways, they turn people away from veganism,
the exact people that we're trying to reach.
They're just not responding well to that advocacy.
That's based on real surveys, talking to real people.
We can all have those conversations with our friends and family as well.
How often do we change our worldview on anything, especially a very important topic when someone's
yelling and screaming at us and calling us names and making demands or questioning our
character and all that kind of stuff.
It doesn't make us sign up to join that team all that often.
Even if those of us who are perpetuating that know that there are billions of animals suffering
and there's unbelievable, unimaginable suffering happening every second of every day.
We're trying to be proactive.
We're trying to be compassionate.
We're trying to make a difference, yet sometimes our actions are turning people away.
What we need to do is look at technology, look at alternative proteins, look at cultivated
meat, look at precision fermentation, meat and dairy and other foods.
Look at food technology that could literally change the way that meat is made and change
the way that meat is consumed with a far greater reduction in animal suffering using animal
cells and using new technology that is available.
We have to recognize that if we're going to reduce animal suffering, it has to come through
the food system.
99.9% of animal suffering is through the food system.
It's not from belts and wallets and purses and leather jackets and fur and not even through
animal testing either.
That's less than 0.1% of all animal suffering and much of that is even a byproduct of the
food industry like leather and other aspects or a byproduct of the food industry in the
first place.
We have to address this issue first with food and as a society, at least in the Western
world, we prioritize taste, cost and convenience.
We've already shown, we've proven as a society that we don't care how our food is made.
People might say, I'm afraid of these cultivated meat products or I'm afraid of processed foods
or I'm afraid of precision fermentation.
I'm a little nervous about it.
Yet these same individuals are consuming slaughterhouse animals, other ingredients that are the bones
and tendons and ligaments of animals like in gelatin, the scraps of the slaughterhouse
floor that are in hot dogs that all Americans are eating all throughout the year, especially
in the summertime, weigh protein and casein protein drinks that are byproduct of the dairy
industry which many people on paper would oppose taking a baby calf from his mother
and putting that calf on the menu and expensive restaurants as veal and having the mother
turn into a milk producing machine.
Many people might have a problem with that on paper but not through their actions.
They're still eating cheese pizza.
They're still buying milk.
They're still eating cake and pastries and lasagna and things with dairy in them and
they're still having whey protein drinks.
What we have to do I think as a movement is recognize what the barriers are for people
to adopt a more compassionate lifestyle and listen to their fears and concerns about protein
intake and nutrition and wellness and all the loud noise about the carnivore diet or
keto diet or paleo lifestyle and trying to get back to their primal roots and listen
to those concerns and be available to answer those questions and to offer solutions and
to introduce great tasting, affordable and convenient plant-based foods to an audience
that's hungry for information, hungry for knowledge and looking for something new than
the status quo.
If we can really get people to move away from the convenience of the lifestyle that they've
already enjoyed with this high amounts of fast food, animal agriculture products, some
of the worst foods for their own health and for the environment and of course for the
animals and try something different and get them to continue those habits and cultivate
and nurture these new habits of consuming plant-based foods, finding their own favorites,
finding their own favorite plant-based burgers or pizzas or sandwiches or wraps or sushi
or whatever it is and getting them to be enthusiastic supporters to invest in their own dollars
to vote for the types of foods they want to have available and to purchase those foods,
support those companies, support those entities, keep plant-based products on the menu.
Those types of actions will make a really, really big difference especially when we start
going really big with that like impacting the public school system which here in America
impacts 150 million kids a year.
These types of things, working on food allergies, getting dairy and other shellfish and other
things out of the food system that are common allergens and doing that for hundreds of millions
of people, those types of things, passing policy changes that impact billions of animals
like California Proposition 12, these types of big actions can have a huge, huge impact
for animals but there's also the things we need to do daily such as listening to those
who are concerned about what they might be missing out on and providing them with solutions
so they can embrace a plant-based lifestyle with much more confidence.
There is so much to unpack here.
I want to take it from, you talked about as a movement, we should think as a movement,
food as our priority, food animals as being the first target.
When I think about doing stuff as a movement as a whole, I think about strategy and I think
this is something we lack.
Also cohesion because there are so many initiatives like I said before, organizations and activists
out there and I don't feel like they are talking to each other and there is no, for
instance, a big meeting every year to decide here are the issues we are going to focus
all of our energy and resources on for the coming year, here are our goals and this is
the impact we want and are going to make.
When I contrast that with the big ag industry, I feel a bit distressed because I learned
in economy classes in college that what made the big ag industry so powerful and incredibly
efficient at influencing governmental policies is that they are a tightly knit group which
behaves uniformly and strategically.
They are not everyone, every Tyson and the rest, all of them doing something separate
and not talking to each other like the vegan movement is right now.
I am thinking about the new technologies here.
You mentioned before lab-grown meat and I see now governments like in Florida banning
lab-grown meat and this is the influence of big ag.
This is the difference between their movement and ours.
They are organized, every one of them is on the same page and they are strategic in their
approach.
What are your thoughts about what I just said and the whole issue?
Those are very good points Ryan and I try to address those in the book to some degree
and my perspective on that would be this.
The movement started, really this animal rights movement started as a movement to help animals.
Animal rights was very clear, reduce animal suffering and this is how we are going to
do this back in the 1960s and probably into the 1970s.
Then as it grew into the 1980s and 1990s and that is when I got into this, it really started
to take on a bunch of different branches.
Think of this as this base of a tree which was for a while when the community was very
small it was very clear about these are the things we are going to do to reduce animal
suffering and promote this vegetarian lifestyle that was probably the word more commonly used
back then.
But they were very clear about what they were doing.
It was to support this idea of plant-based eating, to promote that within our friends
and family and community, talk about the plight of animals, the suffering of animals and a
relatively new factory farm system that has only been around for 100 years or so or less.
This large scale industrialized factory farming is relatively new and it would have been very
much newer in the 1960s and 70s.
So it was trying to slow that down and promote this kind of happy, healthy, a little bit
alternative vegetarian lifestyle.
As we moved into the 90s, it took on lots of different branches from this tree.
We really started to get into this health food scene and started talking about it as
a health movement, as a food movement and bringing in the word veganism a little bit
more commonly and it became a little bit less about animals and more about health and food
for some people.
And then other branches, even back then in the 90s, we were kind of concerned about the
environment.
We had all these oil spills that were massive.
We had the rise in forest fires or all these other things or the elimination of the Amazon
rainforest or the destruction of the Amazon rainforest to grow soybeans or to graze cattle
or obviously to grow soybeans to feed the cattle and all of that as we're doing these
clear cutting initiatives.
I remember that was something that was on my radar in the mid 1990s.
I was even out there protesting that, the clearing of old growth forest.
I was involved in some of that.
So we took on this environmental branch.
So now we have this animal movement.
We have this health branch.
We have this environmental branch.
Then we had this personal ego branch, I think, that came a little bit later, especially with
the rise of the internet of self-identity and labeling that I am a vegan.
This is what I stand for.
This is who I am.
I oppose this.
I oppose you.
And so there hasn't been, to use your word, I believe, a lot of cohesion in the recent
decades, especially probably the last 10 years or so.
It's gone in so many different directions.
And so even within the organizations that I wrote about in my book, even if you look
at the top four of the 3,000 animal charities that have been evaluated based on dozens of
area of criteria, if you look at the top four that I mentioned for 2022, for example, they're
vastly different.
Some are involved in food technology.
Some are involved in reducing animal suffering for primarily chickens, which are some of
the most abused animals in the worst way and in the highest numbers.
Another one is about research and data.
Another one is about wild animals.
These are all totally different.
And to answer your question, and it's a big question and it's really a fundamental question,
how do I even decide out of those top, let's say the top four?
And of course, there's dozens of other organizations from animal sanctuaries that I write about
to for-profit food companies to nonprofit, very creative, like greener by default companies
that use this plant-based by default approach to get plant-based as the default options
in universities and cafeterias and public hospitals and all these incredible places.
How do we know which one to even put our money into, put our support behind, put our energy
behind, and all of that?
I try to tackle that.
I try to look at the net impact and looking at international influence, international
organizations, which one of these top four or top 12 or top 20 that are written about
in the book have a strong impact internationally, where the US dollar stretches so much further,
especially in Africa, in Asia, and Central and South America, where we can make a tenfold,
hundredfold, sometimes even thousandfold difference when you talk about how far money might stretch
in sub-Saharan Africa and the amount of suffering that is going on there for animals in food
system where just environmental conditions are so much worse, whether it's extreme temperatures
or lack of veterinary care or lack of food and just total resources and animal care and
all that kind of stuff.
There's not one really good answer right now.
It comes down to a little bit of personal preference and bias.
We try to eliminate that as much as possible.
But when you're talking about organizations that are all pretty equal as far as they're
just working on completely different things, the future of food technology, helping animals
immediately right now who are in the food system, conducting research to find out what
non-vegans care most about, to know how to create our strategy and messaging.
So at the moment, I think what we have to do is recognize that there are these top tier
organizations right now.
We've already determined that.
And then really just pick the one that resonates the most with you to support.
And the reason I say support these organizations is because of a very simple idea or concept
that whether we like it or not, our contributions, our donations are so much more effective than
our actions.
And that's sometimes a little bit hard for people to wrap their head around.
Like, what do you mean?
My actions, I live this vegan lifestyle.
I don't support animal suffering.
All my money is spent on plant-based foods or on animal-free cosmetics or clothing or
whatever.
But we know based on the numbers that the typical vegan, like you were mentioning early
on, maybe the kind of someone who's not just vegan kind of quietly and personally in their
own life, but even the person that's relatively engaged and outspoken on social media and
they talk to their friends and family and they're very clearly the token vegan in their
community, everybody knows it.
That individual still only spares 100 to 365 animal lives per year.
But if you were to donate just 5% of your annual income for the typical American worker,
which is around $50,000 annually as far as their income, if you donate just 5% of that,
you know, $2,500, whatever that comes out to be, to one of these top animal charities,
you'll spare 6, 7,000 animal lives, 8,000 animal lives.
If you're up to 10%, which is doable for a lot of people really, just set aside $1 for
every 10 you make or for every $100 you make, put 10 into this impact bucket that you want
to contribute to the most effective animal charities, you can spare 16,000 animal lives
per year.
Just donating 10%, 16,000 animal lives or 5% of your annual income, 8,000 animal lives
or don't donate at all and spare 100 to 300 animal lives.
I mean, you can see the difference.
It's something like 135 times more effective with just 10% of your income.
And of course, some of us who are really deep in this movement, I'm to the point that I
even annoy my wife because of how much I donate because what's mine is hers, right?
And so she sees that I'm giving so much away where I might be contributing 30%, 40%, 50%,
right?
Not just 5% or 10%, but because I'm solidly and have been for a very long time morally,
ethically committed to effectiveness in this movement, I give half of everything that I
make right back into the movement, which I did the math.
I'm combined with some other actions that I write about in the book, like the vegan
strong method.
I'm sparing something like 150,000 to 200,000 animal lives every year.
How do you weigh that against 200 by just being a quiet vegan?
200 animal lives spared or 200,000.
Now I realize not everyone is in a position.
I've written a New York Times bestselling book.
I travel around the world.
I have lots of different revenue streams from being a very creative person.
I have access to lots of resources, products, financial resources, et cetera.
But even if you don't, even if you don't have access to all of that, I show people in the
Impactful Vegan how to leverage what I call your strong V, your skills, talents, resources,
your strength, network, generosity, and volunteering to make a profound impact.
That's what I'm trying to get people to do.
So Ryan, there's no one at the moment, unfortunately, there's no one answer.
I'm not saying everybody give everything you have to the Good Food Institute.
What if their alternative protein plans don't work out?
Then we're in trouble.
I'm not saying go give it all to the Humane League and let's all go help chickens and
just ignore fish and cows and pigs.
But what I am saying is that there are a handful of organizations that are the best at just
their net impact, mathematical equation, and you can decide, I think as an individual,
are you most interested in the future with food technology?
Are you most interested in right now?
Like we've got to get these chickens out of the fast food system right now.
There's another organization to help.
If you're interested in, we have to learn.
We can't just listen to ourselves and be in this own echo chamber and get pats on the
back and listen to our peers tell us we're doing a great job.
We need to invest more money into talking to non-vegans and what is going to help bring
them over to our side of the conversation.
We'll then invest there.
But the bottom line is, and I hate to say it because I'm not a real big fan of capitalism.
I'm just not.
I'm not a big for-profit, money-driven society individual.
It's why I give almost everything away.
I'm just a natural, altruistic person.
But the fact is, money makes a difference.
And the more financial resources we have, the more good we can do.
And we have to use our financial resources for good.
So I am encouraging people to open up not only their hearts but open up their wallets
as well because if you want to make the biggest difference, you do it through contributing
to the most effective causes, not just taking action.
One quick example I just thought of randomly is disaster relief.
Let's say massive earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, just kills lots of just thousands of people
and animals, and there's all kinds of people and animals who are injured and need help
and all that.
What's a better use of your resources for you to go there and just help out by yourself
and with your limited medical experience or knowledge perhaps and do that or to send some
money to the trained experts who know exactly how to prioritize those who need the most
help and can label them as a one, two, or three, someone who is missing a limb or is
bleeding profusely is a higher priority than someone who has a sprained ankle.
And we need to be able to identify that.
And that's what we're doing with animals as well.
We're realizing that there's some animals suffering in far greater degree than others,
and we need to prioritize those and we need to use our resources.
And it just takes our contributions rather than our actions that are going to make the
biggest impact.
Well said and thank you for sharing the initiatives that you have personally taken.
I think it's important to inspire other people.
We often have this culture of, no, I won't say openly what I do in terms of giving or
volunteering and all of that, like a sense of modesty or something like that, but we
should speak up about it because just to inspire our fellow men to do something.
And I want to maybe add a word of notice on everything you said because we're talking
about actions inspired by data, by studies.
So basically, we should say that all of what you said is actions that to the best of our
knowledge are the most impactful actions, which highlights the importance of studying
this movement of, again, like you said, in many terms, understanding who we are and our
place.
And I also want to say that if we're not studying this movement and the activism we do, we can
count on Big Act to study us.
And they are actively studying all of our activism efforts.
There are literally firms that it's the whole mission to understand what we're doing and
how to prevent us from making an impact.
We don't have the luxury of just following our feelings and doing whatever we want.
We have this big Goliath here who wishes for us to fail and to not be impactful at all.
And so we can't just rely on inspiration.
So I feel like you're fighting the emotional side of this movement and trying to bring
the intellectual side more to the forefront of our concerns.
So what do you say about that?
I went a bit everywhere here, but...
Yeah, yeah.
And I know this is a difficult conversation.
And let me tell you, Ryan, something you don't know that nobody knows, believe it or not.
And this is my sixth book.
It's not my first book.
I wrote, this is no exaggeration, I wrote 1000 pages on this subject.
It had to be narrowed down to less than 300 for the book.
This is a very complicated topic.
Even when the book was finished, totally done, even with an editor and everything, the publisher
removed five chapters.
It was too long.
They cut out 80,000 words or something.
It was just too long.
And then I had to write two new chapters, three new chapters.
And then when it was all done again, the book is done, ready to go.
Another editor came in and removed 16% of the entire book, which was tens of thousands
more words.
There's so much to cover here, including what you talked about, that Big Ag is watching.
And guess what?
They're winning.
You know what they're doing right now is the whole process thing, these ultra-process,
these beyond meats and impossible foods.
And those sales are declining.
And if you look on social media and you listen, get outside of your own personal bias and
listen, people are concerned about all these ingredients.
There's one ingredient here, beef.
This one has all these things, you know, pea protein, avocado oil or coconut oil or this
or that.
Now that's only one part of the story.
Obviously this, the plant-based version has far fewer resources in it, far less cruelty
in it, less fat, no dietary cholesterol, all these positive things.
A taste that's very similar, cost that's coming down, accessibility that's in 40 to 80,000
stores worldwide for these plant-based meats.
But the narrative by Big Ag is that this is ultra-processed.
Forgetting the fact that to get an animal from the pasture to your plate is an ultra-processed
process in itself.
That's, they're called processing plants, processing animals.
That's what they do.
They process animals.
But the narrative from Big Ag that has lots of money, that has government ties, that has
government subsidies, that has historical generational farming systems built in, that
has land and resources and all of these things.
And I also want to say, Ryan, it's not that farmers are bad people.
My brother, my own sibling, my younger brother runs a multimillion dollar cattle farming
operation.
I come from a farming background.
My father's an animal scientist.
He taught people for 30 years, college students, and those when he toured around to six continents,
how to raise animals for food.
They're not necessarily bad people.
And I'm not just saying that because they're my own parents and my siblings and all of
that.
I've been with them for 40 years that I've been around or 44 years as it were.
But I've spent a lot of time around farmers and in the agriculture industry.
From my childhood to my years in 4-H to being in agriculture communities, having neighbors
and friends and family in this industry.
That at the end of the day, most of us, regardless of what we do, we're just, we're trying to
make a living for ourselves and our families, whether we're working as a computer programmer
or a podcaster or work at the grocery store down the street or a furniture store, or we
sell animals.
It's oftentimes that's what we know.
That's what we do.
That's what we know how to do.
That's what we pay bills.
So there's all kinds of, there's so much to, as you said, to unpack here about how to be
effective and impactful for animals.
I want to make sure we cover a couple more things.
Maybe I have that opportunity to do that here.
I think personal bias is massive in this, in our movement.
I've already touched on the fact that we think that our forms of advocacy are right.
We think that what we're doing is best.
And for perspective, Ryan, a lot of these organizations that I'm now promoting and supporting
and encouraging people to get behind, I wasn't, I wasn't supporting them until I learned about
them.
I didn't know about Dharma Voices for Animals and the impact they have on the global, the
global food system and how they work in all these developing countries and money stretches
so far working in Sri Lanka and Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand and all of these areas.
They weren't on my radar before, but now they're an organization that I support.
One of those reasons was because I talked to someone personally, a monk in Sri Lanka
who through his connections with parliament, he himself was responsible for preventing
100,000 monkeys from being deported to China to be used in animal testing laboratories.
That's the power of influence, of knowing our strengths and weaknesses and our connections.
He's connected to parliament.
He's a monk.
He's very well respected in his country.
He's plant-based.
He was, he's spasing, neuters dogs and helps prevent that, you know, that type of animal
overpopulation and abandonment and suffering and all that.
And oh, by the way, he also spares, you know, 100,000 primates from being deported to be
tested, you know, in animal laboratories.
There's things like that, that we need to become aware of.
And so what I want to say is look at these comparisons for personal bias.
Let's say, let's say your friend's cat gets hit by a car.
You care about your friend.
You care about your friend's cat.
Naturally, your heartstrings are going to say, you know, you're short on money.
I mean, your friend, you're talking to your friend, hey, here's $500 to help or $1,000
to help with the vet bill, I know how much your cat means to you and all that kind of
stuff.
But you look at that option, let's say it's $1,000.
Keep it easy.
$1,000 to rehabilitate this cat that you play with when you go visit your friend, you know
the cat's name, you have this personal bias toward, you care about this cat, understandably.
But for $1,000, that could prevent tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of
animals being bred and born and brought up in the food system to be slaughtered in the
developing world.
Or it could rescue hundreds or maybe even thousands of animals, particularly chickens,
ones that are pretty affordable to spare and save in the developing world, as the Humane
League talks about being able to spare a chicken's life for as little as 33 cents.
So what do we do given those circumstances?
Do we follow our intuition and our heart and help our friend's cat, which is a nice thing
to do, and help one individual domesticated animal?
Or do we help thousands and thousands of chickens, turkeys, fish, pigs, and other animals who
are suffering, unbelievable, in unbelievable conditions, right here in North America and
throughout the world?
I think we owe it to ourselves and owe it to the animals to take a step back and look
at the massive fishing industry and the animals that suffer in the largest numbers, which
are fish.
Look at the poultry or chicken industry.
We should call it what it is, not use terms like poultry or beef or lamb, but individuals.
These are chickens.
And look at that industry and look at the massive amount of suffering, I think 9 billion
with a B, 9 billion chickens harvested just here in the United States and 65 billion throughout
the world.
And look at how we can make a difference internationally with the resources that we have.
So I think we need to look at personal bias and remove that as much as possible and follow
what the data and evidence suggests.
And that was a really fun adventure or a journey in writing this book is that I knew some of
this, but there's a lot that I didn't know.
There's a lot that I learned throughout this process.
And that changed my perspective because I was now informed of more effective, efficient,
and impactful ways of helping animals that were not on my radar before.
I just assumed that, well, I've been vegan for a long time.
I know what's best.
That's the whole point of writing a book and talking to dozens or hundreds of others, including
people who have been doing this longer than me or who have been more impactful than me
or who run these massive nonprofit organizations with budgets of tens of millions of dollars
who are continuing to get support because they're doing really good stuff.
And then I think we also need to recognize how we can have a more unified voice.
We do have some conferences and conventions.
In fact, I'm going to one soon, the Animal and Vegan Advocacy Summit.
So that is where a lot of advocates get under one roof for three or four days and talk about
strategy, strategy, strategy.
But that's only one organization and there's only about 700 people who go to that at the
moment.
So it's very small compared to what the large industrial agriculture machine is doing with
their messaging, cohesiveness, et cetera.
There are other conferences, too.
I went to another one last year, the Reducitarian Conference.
I was hesitant to go because they're not fully vegan as their message.
Their whole goal is reducing factory farming or eliminating factory farming.
But I was very skeptical.
In fact, I questioned them, especially my earlier writings.
I didn't make it into the book, but I was very critical of the hypocrisy of this organization
that even their founding members who are committed to reducing and eliminating factory farming
still eat animals.
How is this possible?
But I went to the conference and I learned that because they come from a more academic,
intellectual, corporate approach, they are effective in their own campaigns and methods
because they took emotion out of it.
Whereas a lot of people who are in the animal rights, like I am, very ethically driven,
morally driven based on the actions that we take and what we will and will not support,
we kind of get blinded by that ethical perspective that someone else outside of our bubble might
have better ideas.
And especially when you look at this organization, again, I was hesitant to even endorse them
or promote them or even support them in any kind of way.
This reducitarian concept, I thought it was just so hypocritical and so weak and lacking
like this fortitude and strength of spine and ethics and morals and all these things.
But they have intel, they have knowledge about factory farming and what makes that work and
how to talk with farmers and reduce those government subsidies, reduce the profits,
which makes that as a career or job less enticing and have things like transformation, transforming
people out of farming, animals and farming mushrooms or plant crops instead.
And to that point, even my own brother is doing more of that, whereas it's sometimes
hard to profit farming cows or cattle.
And so now he told me that 75% of his farming on a thousand acres or whatever the space
is, is oats and barley and other plant crops because you've got to follow the money, you've
got to follow the economics.
And so there are some organizations out there that are trying to mobilize, that are trying
to get people under one roof and have conversations.
The problem is, Ryan, is that as you know, veganism is an animal rights movement, giving
voice to the voiceless and helping animals.
Yet people are more likely to come into this overall fold, under this big umbrella, they're
more likely to enter for their own personal health reasons because they've heard that
a plant-based diet is good at dropping weight because it's low in calories, it's good at
fighting disease because it's high in antioxidants and it has anti-inflammatory properties rather
than pro-inflammatory properties, it's good at reducing cholesterol because there's no
dietary cholesterol in a plant-based diet.
It's also good at fighting disease because it has anti-cancer compounds in it.
It has 64 times more antioxidants than animal-based foods.
Fiber is only found in plants.
97% of Americans don't get enough fiber.
People are brought into this overall movement, this vegan, we'll use the vegan as the umbrella,
for health or for the environment, but they're not necessarily on board for the core reason
the movement exists.
That's what makes it hard to have one universal, unified voice because we're coming at all
these different angles to care about the same thing.
Whereas perhaps in animal agriculture, the core mission is to feed a population as effectively
as possible using animals as a means to do that and to profit as much as possible in
order to keep doing it and to work with governments and work with communities to make sure their
products are on every plate in front of every American or every person in the Western world
and they do a very, very good job at that.
We have a long road ahead, but I'd like to think that I provide a lot of solutions and
a lot of hope and a lot of inspiration.
I also call upon data that suggests that meat consumption is an all-time low in the UK since
they started recording this in the 1970s.
It's also an all-time low in Germany.
Also profits for plant-based foods are at an all-time high in America.
Even if animal consumption is still at record pace, that's largely due to population growth,
which is also very rapid.
But as a society, and maybe it's similar in Canada as well, we are making very, very good
progress and we're also able to identify why we're making that progress, which in many
cases, as I argue, is through food technology and innovation and bringing costs down, convenience
more palatable, and of course, making the taste more enjoyable, which at the end of
the day, we're trying to reach this omnivorous audience.
That's ultimately what we have to do.
I like that you're trying to elevate the discussion around veganism and advocacy work.
I think when I see vegans screaming inside a butcher shop or inside a restaurant, I feel
like I want to join them.
That would make me feel really good to scream at all of those people.
But is it doing some good to animals?
No.
It's pretty clear.
Okay, so it is easier to confront a big ag and to face them as adversaries or enemies.
We understand their incentives, like you said, we understand their goals and what they are
about.
But then, because again of the emotional, it is much harder to deal with the non-vegan
population because just like in your case, they are our friends, they are our family,
they are our loved ones, members of our community, people we care about.
At the same time, they are enemies of our movement in a different way than big ag, of
course.
It's complicated.
How should we deal with those non-vegans?
You talked about it a little bit, but I want to go at the heart of this issue and maybe
try to reimagine our relationship with the non-vegan population.
I think your book is very helpful in that aim.
What would you say about that?
We have entire sections about the book on that topic and we quote work from Melanie
Joy, who is fantastic and has done amazing work in this movement for decades.
We quote many other people and we interview people and tell stories and examples and use
evidence and data to support these ideas.
I know it's hard to articulate everything that is in this book and the topics that are
covered and how we address those things.
I'll try briefly for this particular topic.
What we have to do is see non-vegans as allies and find ways where they can support the work
that we do.
I can't tell you how many non-vegan friends and family I have that are allies who go out
there and support my books and help them become bestsellers, which then gives me a bigger
platform and gain more followers.
I have very much non-vegan family members who are very passionate about eating animals,
but they will very enthusiastically tell their friends and others about their cousin or their
nephew, me, because I've made some sort of influence on the world stage and they're kind
of proud to be associated with.
My cousin is this New York Times bestselling author and he's this champion vegan bodybuilder
and he's in great shape.
If you have questions about becoming vegetarian or reducing meat or if you have an allergy
to dairy, which 70% of the world does, then he's a good resource for that.
We've got to allow these individuals to be allies for us.
We do that through eating by positive example and not alienating people and excluding them
and saying you're an awful person and I hope you die and all these other things because
you kill animals through your actions and what you pay other people to do and the food
that you eat and all of that.
I have an entire – it's one of my favorite sections actually in the book – an entire
section called the Vegan Strong Method, which essentially is leading by positive example
and getting plant-based foods and products into the hands of non-vegans so then they
get exposed to this, get a chance to replace calories that would have been consumed by
animal-based foods, replace those with plants, and get these individuals to incorporate these
foods into their lifestyle on a more regular basis, whether that person becomes full-on
vegan or not.
I have plenty of examples from my own personal life of doing precisely that.
I have some good friends, for example, who are intellectually on board with veganism
but not through practice.
They totally get it, but their habits are just when confronted with a menu at a restaurant,
they're going to go with eating chicken or what they're used to because that's just
what their default idea is.
Or when they're into fitness and exercise, they're going to go buy whey protein because
it's cheaper, it's what everyone else is doing, and it's what they learned, and they
want to build muscle, and they're concerned about their own results.
That's what they're going to do.
For these friends, and it's friends and family and even some strangers in some regard, this
is what I do.
I recognize what they're looking for, what their needs are.
Then I provide them with these opportunities.
I have, for example, even right here on my desk, I think, stacks of free Beyond Meat
products.
I have free Impossible Food.
You don't even have to pay for it.
It's a $10.99 value.
I pass these out like crazy.
I passed out $100,000 worth of Beyond Meat coupons in one year.
Thank you to Beyond Meat for that opportunity, by the way.
What I've done is I've introduced plant-based meats to all my friends and family, even if
they never go buy them again.
At least for that particular meal, it spares animals that would have been on their plate.
You know what, Ryan, what happens?
They do go buy them again.
They remember my generosity.
They remember the fact that they like the way it tasted, or they like the experience,
or they feel better about it because they're already emotionally or intellectually on board,
and they want to make a compassionate choice if only someone helps guide them.
I provide all these different things for my friends.
I have a weightlifting friend.
I give him, because of my connections, I get all the free plant-based products that I want.
I get hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of plant-based products donated to me.
I'm staring out into a basement full of them right now, of protein powders and nut butters
and vegan jerky, and there's vegan Parmesan cheese.
There's oat milk lattes.
There's ready-to-drink protein drinks.
There's cereal, breakfast cereal.
There's these plant-based meats.
There's pre-workout drinks.
There's bars.
I mean, I'm surrounded by this stuff.
This is part of my vegan strong method.
You know what I do with it?
I send it to my friends.
I give it to my friends who are, if they're eating animal-based jerky, I give them plant-based
jerky.
I give them cheese on their pasta and on their food.
I give them this plant-based cheese.
My weightlifting friends, I give them tubs of plant-based protein powder because I know
they're going to be using one serving or two servings every single day, and it's going
to come from whey protein or casein if I don't do it.
And guess what, Ryan?
The same thing happens.
They start using a product for 30 days, 60 days.
All of a sudden, that becomes their new preference.
That's their new default.
That's what they, now they go out and buy it.
So it's not just me paying for shipping and paying money out of pocket, which I do, or
give them when I go visit in person or whatever.
But now I've helped condition them to make a plant-based meat something that's going
to be their default option.
Or when it's time for them to order new protein powder, they've already been using this plant-based
one for months.
They're like, yeah, that's what I want more of.
Now they invest their own dollars.
So that's how I look at non-vegan allies as people who can help support the movement,
can invest their own money into it once we introduce them to these foods and beverages
and sports nutrition products and the reasons why it's a more compassionate way to go.
I think one of the problems is that many vegans, myself included, for a very long time have
my own personal bias, or we have our own personal bias to want people to share the same values
that we do.
We wish our parents would get on board, not just because of their own personal health
or maybe it'll help their longevity or prevent heart disease or whatever.
But we want them to share our value system.
We feel closer to them.
Our parents, our spouses, our partners, our children, our siblings, our loved ones, we
want them to share value system.
But as Paul Shapiro beautifully said in the book when I interviewed him, we can't just
win arguments.
We can't just be out there.
I know you feel motivated.
I want to go out there shouting and yelling, and I want to feel like I'm standing up for
animals.
I am making a difference in their lives.
I'm responsible for their liberation.
I get that emotionally.
But as Paul Shapiro said, we can't just win arguments with non-vegans.
We have to win them over.
I win people over all the time.
I win non-vegans over all the time because I have my fitness results.
I'm fit.
I have this positive attitude.
I'm very generous.
I give products to people.
I rarely even leave the house without having a bag full of plant-based products in the
car in case I come across someone, whether it's someone holding a sign in need and I
know they're going to get cheap fast food from someone else or money or whatever.
But I can give them plant-based foods, whether that's fruit or bars or something I know that's
going to resonate with them.
I'm not going to give them nutritional yeast, but I'm going to give them a plant-based chocolate
bar or multiple chocolate bars or nut butters or something that's very common, that's going
to be very tasty and it's going to help alleviate some of their hunger and suffering or simply
bananas and oranges, which I keep in the car for that purpose.
Or when I go to the gym and I meet some people and they see my vegan shirt and they see that
I'm in shape, they see that I'm fit and strong and they want to ask me questions.
They say, hold on a second.
I got something for you.
Hold on a second.
I've got my gym bag right there.
I work with 150 plant-based companies.
This is my gift to you.
This is a plant-based protein.
It's pea protein.
It has all the essential amino acids.
It's really good for muscle recovery.
Take it after workout.
You don't need the whey protein.
This is an alternative to that.
This is actually an upgrade, a step up, like that kind of stuff.
That's how you work.
And of course, I tour.
That's all in the book too.
I tour to events with tens of thousands of non-vegans at fitness expos and I lead by
example and I distribute something around 5,000 to 25,000 plant-based products at every
expo that I go to just for free.
And that's another way to engage with potential allies.
The worst thing we can do is alienate people.
And I see it on social media all the time, including many of my friends and colleagues.
And I know their heart is in the right place.
I know it.
And in some ways, they do make a positive impact because they inspire us to be more
active or to be more outgoing or to take initiative or to care more.
I get it.
But so many of these online videos of debates and arguments and name calling and, you know,
look at this loser on the carnivore diet and, you know, they're going to die soon from heart
disease and all this stuff.
That doesn't really win people over to join our side of this conversation.
What I believe does and what the data suggests, like literal survey data of thousands of omnivores,
what it does suggest is that news articles, books, positive social media posts, things
of that nature, conversations, those move the needle to help animals.
Celebrities only help to a small degree.
Billboards are really not that effective at all.
They don't.
Vegans see it and they give thumbs up.
Wow, look at that vegan billboard.
Omnivores don't even notice it or it doesn't change their behavior.
They don't see a billboard and all of a sudden, oh, I'm having a revelation here.
I'm changing my worldview overnight.
I can't believe I ate animals for the last 50 years.
That billboard told me I shouldn't.
It just doesn't work that way.
News articles, information articles, opinion letters to the editor, opinion letters, books
that are evidence based, factual, conversations, inspirational, thoughtful videos, those kind
of things, those types of outreach help much more than the disruptive protests and such,
at least as far as winning over omnivores.
Now, you could argue that maybe some of these disruptive protests free a bunch of animals
and as long as they find homes and all that, there's value in that.
Or if it gets like a certain farm, like a fur farm shut down, that's a positive thing.
But again, remember that 99.9% of animal suffering is in the food system.
We've got to tackle that.
It's the best of our ability and sometimes that even means winning over these agriculture
companies.
I just came from the Natural Products Expo West.
I was there like three days ago.
The biggest Natural Products Expo in the world.
I go every year, three or four thousand exhibitors there.
There are many mainstream companies that are offering plant-based products now.
You know what I saw, Ryan, for the first time?
I saw Muscle Milk.
You know, the big popular Muscle Milk brand, they have a plant-based version now.
That's I think something to be celebrated.
Even though, yes, you're paying money, it still goes to the parent company.
It's probably Nestle or somebody like that.
I don't even know who it is that owns Muscle Milk.
But when you vote for that plant-based item, it helps make it more prominent.
I even asked them, I said, are you, is this a product that you're actually promoting or
is it just for, you know, for show or is it something that you plan to promote or is it
nationwide?
They said, yeah, yeah, this is a product we plan to push nationwide.
Very much like Burger King and the Impossible Whopper or all of these other entities that
are creating plant-based versions.
Again, I'm there in the trenches, on the front lines, talking to these companies.
In fact, two of the companies that I work with that were not vegan companies, they offered
a plant-based version, you know, and I promoted it like crazy.
I supported them.
I invested money into buying their product and getting my thousands of followers to buy
them to the plant-based versions.
Now at least two of those companies that were not vegan are now totally vegan.
They got rid of their dairy options because the demand was high enough for the oat milk
version of the coffee that they got rid of the dairy.
Now I don't know if that had anything to do with me or not, but I think there were enough
people like me that voted for the products that we wanted that company to offer and they
did that.
The other one was a bar company, a snack company.
They did the same thing.
They had non-vegan ingredients in their bars and through our initiative through the Vegan
Strong Method, we distributed their plant-based versions to audiences all throughout America,
thousands of people, as well as online through shipments that we do, shipping products with
my books or with my plant-based box bundles, that kind of thing.
Again, the demand was increased enough that they decided to turn the whole company vegan.
Those are some success stories.
There's many throughout the book as well from catering companies that use this plant-based
by default approach and decided to offer plant-based options and realized that a thousand people
a day for this catering company, for example, I wrote about it in the book, had no problem
with one of their meals throughout the day being totally plant-based that they made it
a permanent thing.
They only serve vegan food now, a thousand meals a day and their company was previously
serving animals.
But during this COVID pandemic, they had a shift in their mentality and realized that
they needed to take a stronger stance on animals in the food system and the environmental implications
and costs.
And as a company, they decided they were going to do plant-based foods only and even have
a vegan mission on their website.
Business did not slow down.
And in fact, it's soaring a thousand vegan meals every single day that they serve.
And that's just part of their agenda.
And then there's organizations, I know we're running out of time.
I didn't even mention yet like Food for Life Global.
Can you imagine what they do?
Ryan, are you familiar with Food for Life Global?
No, but by the way, if you want to go a bit over time, I'm okay with that.
I just wanted to share some of these exciting things that I know there's a lot to be concerned
about and the messaging and veganism and animal agriculture stranglehold on the movement and
all this stuff.
But there's organizations like Food for Life Global.
They've been around for more than 40 years.
They provide, are you ready for this?
They provide one million vegan meals to hungry children in the developing world every single
day.
Not every year.
I just told you about a company that serves a thousand meals a day and that's incredible.
A thousand vegan meals a day and I was all excited about it.
This company out in Hawaii.
But now I'm talking about an organization that feeds one million vegan meals to hungry
children every single day for as little as 50 cents per meal.
How the heck do they do that?
Well, they provide grants for local organizations in places like Kenya and Uganda and all throughout
Africa, and in Central America and in India and poorer countries where you can get a major
plant-based meal in the local cuisine different in Morocco compared to India, compared to
Paraguay.
Whatever that local cuisine is, the US dollar can get you a meal for a hungry child for
less than 50 cents a day.
And so these grants that Food for Life Global provides, these local entities in these developing
countries, are grants of 500 to 20,000 US dollars each, but they provide collectively
a million vegan meals a day.
We know that there's one billion, just about, 800 million starving people in the world every
single day.
Two billion that are undernourished.
So about a billion people starving and double that who are food inadequate, food insecure.
And Food for Life Global is going in and helping with that, providing only plant-based meals
to those in need, particularly children.
And to this day, you can go to their website, there's a counter on their website.
It's going every second of the day because even during this conversation, they would
have said, what's the math on that?
Tens of thousands or even maybe close to a hundred thousand children just during this
hour long conversation.
It's incredible.
They've provided, last I checked, over 8.6 billion meals.
And I met the co-founder in person.
Not only do they do that, they also own an animal sanctuary in Columbia.
I interviewed Juliana for the book, Juliana's Animal Sanctuary in Columbia, 10,000 feet
elevation and they provide education programs there for their local country and get people
to understand the relationship that humans can have with animals that are traditionally
considered farmed animals and see them as individuals and see them as those who have
their own needs and wants and interests and their own family dynamics and their own desire
to live a life free of fear, pain and suffering.
They do some really good work at Food for Life Global.
And in fact, I didn't even mention this and I should probably mention it more, but I just
didn't.
But even every single copy of the Impactful Vegan that is sold, I'm donating a meal to
a hungry child.
That's part of the altruistic approach.
And I'm also, as you've read in the conclusion, I'm also contributing to about five other
organizations.
So it's not that I'm only giving 50 cents per book sold to feed a hungry kid in Africa
or in the developing world.
I'm actually contributing to many of the world's leading animal charity organizations because
as we stated from the beginning, it's our contributions that are so much more impactful.
What I want, Ryan, ultimately, as we wrap up here is I would like every reader to find
an organization or two to contribute something to so that we can have this incredible impact
that rather than sparing 100 to 365 animal lives per year by living a kind of quiet personal
vegan life that we can donate 1%, 2%, 5%, 10% of our annual income to the most impactful
animal organizations in the world.
And you choose, I have a whole list.
There's a list of dozens of them in the book.
You pick.
And that way, as an individual, we can all spare five to 10,000 animal lives or more
rather than just 100 or 200.
And that's a way where we talk about cohesion collectively making a really big statement.
Imagine let's just say this book sells tens of thousands of copies and it should.
My other books have.
They all have.
So it should.
I realize it's a different topic than vegan fitness, which all my other books were, but
this book very likely will sell tens of thousands of copies.
Now imagine if even just a fraction of readers decide that we're going to get together collectively
pool our resources.
And by the way, you have far more resources than you know.
I mean, I talked about that in the book too.
The network that you have, the people that you know who have additional resources beyond
what you have is actually incredible whether you know it or not.
But if we can pool our resources together and say, okay, this is the future that we
believe in and we're going to vote for and we are going to invest in and we put our collective
funds into the most powerful animal charity organizations and we're able to raise maybe
millions of dollars and spare just tens or hundreds of millions of animal lives, just
an incredible amount.
We will make an impact.
We'll make a statement.
But also I really believe because there's a lot of strategy in this book about how to
support plant-based food products because ultimately that's what we've got to change.
That's what we've got to change what's available in grocery stores and in restaurants worldwide.
If we can do that, we're going to see a lot more from Burger King and McDonald's and Subway
and Starbucks and KFC and Pizza Hut and Domino's and Dunkin' Donuts and Tim Hortons and all
these companies.
We're going to see them feeling the pressure to add more plant-based products to their
menu.
We've already seen that in the big boom that we saw right before COVID where everybody
was putting Beyond Meat on their menu and everybody was putting oat milk on their menu.
We can do it again if we all work together.
And that's what I'm really hopeful with this book is that there is some cohesion.
There is some sort of direct line that shows you how to best use your time and resources
and energy and how to share that with others.
Ultimately, that's what I want people to do, to learn from this book, apply the strategies
and then share them with others.
And that's precisely what I have done as an individual myself where I went from being
fairly impactful and fairly effective to being very, very impactful and very effective simply
by changing my perspectives, changing my contributions and being aware of the global economy, the
global impact and the bigger picture and really enthusiastically voting for the future that
I want to see by incorporating all these different strategies.
And some of them, I have to say, are incredibly rewarding.
I don't think we should be ever driven by the personal fulfillment we get from doing
good.
We shouldn't be the opposite of being altruistic.
We should want to help the world because the world needs help.
We should want to help animals because they are in need of help, help our fellow humans
because they are in need of help, not because we should get anything in return, even this
feel good warm glow feeling.
But the fact that that's there, the fact that we do enrich our own lives by helping others,
I think is a powerful motivator for a lot of people.
Well, Robert, there are a few questions I wanted to get to.
If I could ask them and have your quick answer to so I can ask all of them.
You mentioned how there are different reasons why people get to veganism and become vegan.
And I think there is a clear sense and also backed up by studies.
I'm thinking right now of one study from Thunalytics that if you are vegan for health reasons or
the environment, you're not going to stay vegan for very long.
You need something more like a greater motivation, a greater why in order to sustain your veganism
for the coming years.
And I was wondering, do you see a hierarchy of why in terms of how to get to the vegan
lifestyle?
Yeah, and I'll try to be brief.
It's hard for me.
I know.
But I actually argue that point a little bit because I make an argument in the book about
habit changing that I don't think you have to have a moral imperative to develop habits
that last for the long haul.
I call it the forks over knives effect where there are many people who, countless people
who are inspired to leave animals off their plates because of forks over knives, even
if they don't subscribe to moral veganism, they may still buy leather shoes and belts
and wallets and wear fur and all that, but they just keep animals off their plate and
they develop habits that have lasted for years and years and years and years.
So what I think is there's two different perspectives.
It's what brought you into veganism and then what compelled you to stay vegan for the long
haul.
And yes, I would agree with that, that phonetic study.
And I do reference it in the book as well, that for people who stay vegan from the long
haul, usually there is some sort of moral or ethical attachment to it.
But we also know that vegan recidivism is very high.
And even people, and I know people, I'm sure we all know them.
People who are former dedicated vegans who leave veganism, even those who worked for
animal rights nonprofits and were very much into it, they still leave.
And so my argument is that veganism is the answer.
It's reducing animal suffering that is the answer.
And so if people come to veganism or let's say a plant-based diet for health and wellness
reasons and they stick with it for decades and decades and decades, even if they don't
call themselves vegan, that is a win for animals.
So is there a hierarchy for why?
Maybe but because our whys change, because our priorities change, because of our desires
change, our perspectives change, I think habit forming is really the key.
And so regardless of what brings us to change new habits, as long as we keep those habits
for as long as possible, I think that's the ultimate solution.
But then do you believe that vegan leaders are as, or non-vegan leaders rather, are as
effective as bringing up the change?
Because I mean, I have an example in mind of someone who started an animal sanctuary
and she has two caretakers who are not non-vegans, who are not vegans.
And she was telling me about their perception of that animal sanctuary and of the animals
in there and how it contrasted with hers and how they were truly sometimes in conflict
with how we treat animals and how we provide them with care.
And there I see the true value of a vegan voice in the animal rights movement.
And also how do we take seriously someone who wants to fight for vegan rights, for animal
rights, rather, and who is not even vegan in their personal life.
And same could be said about the environment.
So do you see value for leaders to be vegan in the animal rights fight?
Yeah, I do.
And I think there comes with that this authentic and genuine approach with someone who walks
their talk and who is consistent with their moral values that they preach.
I think that is important.
But at the same time, I also look at the data and realize that we're trying to impact the
food system right now.
And so we have to identify what's working in that regard.
And sometimes there are non-vegans who are very, very effective at creating change in
that area because they have hundreds of millions of dollars.
I even know personal friends.
I have personal friends who are non-vegan who have hundreds of millions of dollars who
do invest into the vegan movement through the plant-based products they create.
I actually give multiple stories in the book.
In fact, many of the plant-based meat products that many of us know and love are created
by total non-vegans.
Totally non-vegans made those products like Gardein that many of us love.
Yeah, Yves Poppin, Canadian, made that, French Canadian.
Yves Veggie Cuisine, which has been around since 1985, maybe consumed more than any other
plant-based meat in the history of the world.
Non-vegan made that.
Beyond Meat is only successful, nothing against Ethan Brown, but because of all the non-vegans
that invested in there.
All the athletes and rappers and basketball players that poured in tens of millions of
dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars.
But like Shaquille O'Neal, they're not vegan.
But I see a divide between the business world and the non-profit activism world.
Do you think there is a difference?
Because I don't care if the entrepreneur is vegan or not.
I think they can still make that impact you talk about.
But in terms of activism work and the non-profit sector, shouldn't PETA only employ vegans,
for instance?
Yeah, I think when you're talking about, and these are different things, when you're
talking about community organizers and grassroots movements, I think there needs to be a cohesive
voice there.
And there needs to be authentic leadership from the top.
I think that's kind of a given.
But we also have to look at the commercial aspect.
These non-profits are only having a small influence on, let's say, the food system.
They're having some sort of influence, but it's small.
So that's why I spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out how we actually change
that food system, which is where we bring in some of the people from outside the vegan
world who are experts in the food world.
That's why there's former executives from Pepsi or Nestle or Kraft Foods or Tyson that
join or that are hired by some of these plant-based companies, because we have to learn their
language.
We have to learn their industry.
We have to learn their business.
And we have to become almost like a business itself within veganism to move it forward.
So the grassroots community organizers are always going to be important, and they're
going to be the foundation of the movement.
And yeah, there needs to be some sort of consistency there.
That's why I told you I had such a struggle with the reducitarian movement, because even
their leader still eats animals, even though he's committed to reducing factory farming.
And I struggle with that.
And maybe that's going to influence their effectiveness, ultimately.
Maybe I had a hard time taking them seriously.
I had a hard time even wanting to support them, whereas I had no problem supporting
the very authentic animal organizations like Farm Sanctuary or the Humane League or Mercy
for Animals or some of these other ones.
It's very easy to get behind those.
And so I do think that's important.
But I think that only tends to reach those of us within the vegan community.
And what I'm trying to do as much as possible is reach the other 99% and hear what their
needs are, what their wants are, and try to work outside of the vegan world in order to
create that kind of massive change.
And so it's a delicate balance.
And I'm the first to honor and appreciate those who are authentically vegan.
In fact, I struggle with someone like Peter Singer, who is the father of the animal rights
movement and one of the top living philosophers in the world.
But his own behavior is inconsistent with moral veganism.
And if you're not familiar with that, if a meal is brought to him that has dairy, cheese
on it, eggs, whatever, by accident, they brought him the wrong dish at a restaurant, he'll
still eat it.
He'll still eat the animal products.
He talks about this publicly.
He writes about it.
He talks about it in interviews like this.
He will still eat it because he's more concerned about food waste and doesn't want it to go
to waste.
And he trusts that those who are in his company having dinner with him will understand that
he's typically very authentic in his moral behavior.
But in this instance, he'd rather just eat the cheese burrito, just eat the sour cream,
cheese, have the milk products on there rather than having it go to waste.
I don't know exactly his stance on meat.
Like if they accidentally bring chicken in his burrito, he'll eat that.
But that would be consistent with his other behavior of eating cheese and eggs, which
are clear examples he's already verbally given in multiple interviews that I've seen.
So I struggle with that as well, because I am somewhat of a vegan purist myself, never
strain from the moral tenants that I subscribe to and have for 30 years.
But I also understand that perfectionism is one of our enemies as well.
I'm not saying make compromises.
I'm not saying do what Peter Singer does.
But what I'm saying is the understanding of others who are maybe new to veganism, who
make some mistakes, who slip up from time to time and be still encouraging and welcoming
rather than saying, you know what, you're not part of the club.
And there's other aspects I give examples in the book where perfectionism can really
turn people away.
If you're just not willing to sit in a car with leather seats, even though it's a rental,
it's not something you paid for, or you're unwilling to make some of these compromises
or sacrifices like to go to a restaurant that serves animals on the menu.
You only want to go at 100% vegan restaurants or eat at your home.
Yet the same individuals will go shop for vegan foods at a grocery store that has dead
animals all throughout the grocery store.
So perfectionism is something we have to be a little bit cognizant of and make sure it
doesn't push people away.
But authentic leaders I think are important, but also maybe questioning leaders in the
first place.
Like, I mean, do we need to have leaders or can we have our own ideas about the things
that we learn from studies and research and data?
What is truly effective at reducing animal suffering?
And do we have to look to a certain leader for their approval?
I'm not so sure.
Well I really wanted to have your take on that question.
Another question and the last one, I promise.
It's okay.
I know I'm long-winded.
I have a lot to...
I wrote a thousand pages on the subject.
It's hard to...
Well, I hope that you publish all that was deleted from the first versions of the book,
at least as an article or even a blog post, because I'm really curious about all of the
things that were removed from the book.
So I'm looking forward to reading all of that too.
But yeah, coming back to the question I wanted to ask you, and this one is related to social
media.
I've done a whole episode expressing my critical views of social media.
I truly believe that they are harming the vegan movement.
You were talking about how it was efficient and impactful to make positive social media
posts.
But the thing is, I don't think that the social media platforms want you to make positive
social media posts.
I think they are made like a casino to have these crazed behaviors, to instill these crazed
behaviors in you and push you into conflict, push you into addiction, push you into the
worst version of yourself.
So I think it's a tall order asking people to make positive social media posts.
It takes maybe going against all the psychologists and engineers that have been creating the
algorithms on social media that are designed to make you, again, the worst version of yourself.
So what is your take on social media?
Do you find that there is truly a negative aspect to them?
By the way, I'm not even touching on the whole dimension of the vegan community, the personality
cults, the nonsense science, all of that gibberish, which makes a big part of the social media
presence of vegans and which is dangerous, actually dangerous in terms of nutrition for
the vegan community and for people at large.
Because again, the platforms don't have quality standards in place.
They will echo and add scale to posts that are popular, people that are popular, not
people that are experts or have something of quality to contribute.
So what is your take on social media?
Do you think they are ultimately a force for good for veganism?
Yeah, that is a tough question and a tough one to give a brief answer, but I'll try.
I was smiling and nodding a lot because you may not know this about me, but I have a tremendous
love, hate relationship with social media where I've deleted the apps for sometimes
an entire year at a time.
No Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter, nothing.
I can't even get it on my phone.
I delete it completely.
And I'll tell you, those were the most productive years of my life.
I freed up on average about six hours a day.
I didn't know I had.
I wrote three or four books during that time where I still haven't been on Twitter in two
years.
I deleted the app and just never put it back.
I have put on Instagram back.
I've put on Facebook, put those back.
And that's all I use and YouTube to watch some mostly conversations and podcasts.
So how do I even begin?
Again I look at the data and the evidence and according to one particular phonolithic
study of thousands of participants who were omnivores, they claim that social media, positive
social media posts about veganism not only changed their ideas about veganism in a positive
way, but also changed their behavior and made them either become vegan or consume fewer
animals.
So that tells me there's some good stuff out there.
To your point, and this is something I've struggled with from the beginning, something
that I don't even think people were talking about 20 years ago.
And it wasn't a jealousy thing, but I think you and I have the same mindset that I always
thought it was strange when everyone had essentially an equal voice.
If you're not an expert in that domain, why should your voice matter as much as someone
else's?
You know, when we grew up, I know I'm like I'm much older than you.
Like you said, I've been vegan longer than you've been alive.
But there were only a few platforms where you got your information from and it was at
least we assume it was trusted and maybe that was a whole manipulation.
Maybe that wasn't, maybe that was a whole conspiracy, who knows.
But we had what we thought were real journalists providing real information.
That's where you got it from and you could go to domain experts like world renowned experts
would be whether they're scientists or nutrition experts or whatever the topic is, they would
be the ones that would be giving the answers about public health, about climate, about
the economy, about global poverty, whatever it was.
But then, and I've been a part of this from the beginning, you know, I was one of the
early members of MySpace.
I was one of the early members of YouTube when you could only upload a video for less
than 10 minutes.
You couldn't, you weren't allowed to upload a video more than 10 minutes.
It wasn't allowed.
And you had to do an SD card from your camera and you couldn't do it from your phone.
You had to put this SD card into your laptop and upload a 10 minute video or less.
I was part of all of that and I watched it grow.
And I watched this, if you want to call it this misinformation or this obsession with
self and this ego and the loudest person in the room, whether they had any knowledge or
not, their voice rose to the top because they were the loudest.
And also I've been listening to countless hours of psychology podcasts for years now.
That's actually been a part of this whole book writing process.
I've committed myself to listening to, you know, hundreds of hours of psychology interviews
with incredible university professors and psychologists and world renowned experts on
some very, very popular podcast platforms.
And now with the American elections coming up and a lot of topics have been around that
where they've made some statements recently, some again, like legitimate experts on this
subject from Harvard and Penn State and the biggest universities in the world have talked
about the reason why some of these voices are the loudest are because these are individuals
who are obsessed on the topic at hand.
Let's say politics.
I may not think about American politics more than two minutes in a day, but my neighbor
might spend 12 to 18 hours obsessed with it, just cannot cannot get enough of it.
Who do you think is going to be louder on the Internet about politics?
I don't think about it.
It never enters my mind.
Yet my neighbor for 18 hours, every waking moment of his or her day is concerned about
these political issues.
The same is true for veganism, for carnivore diet, for whatever.
Those who are just most absolutely obsessed about it.
This this this dominates their whole life when you when you meet someone for the first time.
That's what they talk about when you get together with your friend after 30 seconds of hi, how
are you?
It goes into that topic when you're at dinner.
Your friend won't stop for two hours straight.
You can't even get a word in because he or she has just too much to share about their
particular diet, philosophy, lifestyle, mentality, worldview.
This is how we engage on social media.
Those of us who maybe have a lot of knowledge in an area also know that we don't need to
overshare or we don't need to say what we don't know.
We don't have to make these projections if science is inconclusive or whatever.
It's that whole academic mindset of being a little bit more reserved.
And then there's people, it's the whole Dunning-Kruger effect.
Those of us who have limited knowledge but are highly passionate about it tend to be
the loudest and tend to in many ways gain a massive following, a big audience, even
make a career out of it.
We see this in American politics.
I'm sure it's in Canada, too.
We see this all the time.
And we're seeing it in the world of veganism, whether it's what Joe Rogan says and how that's
then shared by everyone else or a major podcaster, what they share or what a major influential
person shares.
And then this whole sound bite or talking point or misinformation point.
I have at times absolutely hated social media.
And there's also something I don't like about myself with social media.
And it's hard to say it sometimes because we have to challenge our own ego.
That I get interested in the feeling that I get that feeds my ego when I have posts
that go viral or that get viewed by lots of people or that make me feel good.
I mean, I do these silly flexing photos all the time because I want to be given praise
or reinforced that I'm doing a good job or that I do look good.
I'm looking for validation.
I'm seeking significance.
I'm seeking importance.
Yet I know how obnoxious I am by posting like, yeah, vegan for 29 years and here, look at
me over and over and over.
But that's because I have the same insecurities that many others have.
I want validation that I'm doing a good job or that I do look good or that my hard work
is paying off or whatever the case is.
And that then makes me addicted to it.
I've been full on addicted.
There's only a few things I've been, I think, truly addicted to in my life.
Caffeine being one of them, but I'm over that now.
It took me a long time to get over that.
Social media is one, the internet, but largely social media.
I've been so addicted that when I'm driving a car and I'm at a red light, I quickly check
to see what I can post.
When I'm in a grocery store and I'm stuck in line even for only two minutes, I check
whatever I can.
Anytime there's idle time waiting, I'm checking at dinner, waiting for food, I'm checking.
When I'm having a conversation with family or friends, I'm checking under the table.
I'm posting late at night before bed.
The first thing when I wake up, the first thing I check is taking complete control over
my life in many ways.
And I always justified it that, oh, I'm doing this to promote veganism.
I'm doing this to spread the good word.
But I'll tell you, I was far more productive when I got off it because I was creating truly
impactful work, writing bestselling books, writing articles for popular websites, having
more time to invest into training and nutrition and building my body and being a walking billboard
for veganism in a physical sense.
I was a better friend.
I was a better partner.
I spent more time with my pets.
I read more.
I learned more.
I had less stress, less anxiety.
I was just, I hate to use the term, like a better person, not using social media.
So ultimately, is it good or is it bad?
The data suggests it can be very good.
But I think it comes down to the user and how you decide to use it.
If you're someone who posts lots of negative stuff or who brings out, as you said, the
worst in ourselves, then it's probably negative.
If you're someone who really tries to find the best and really promote the most encouraging
stuff and spread the word about new vegan films and new vegan foods and new restaurants
that are opening and record sales and plant-based products and positive stuff that then can
catch attention of those who are on the outside looking in, I think it can be a good thing.
But I think it comes down to us as individuals knowing ourselves and knowing our limitations.
And I mean, Ryan, there was a point that I wasn't even, I was considering not doing all
these interviews about my book and all the obsessive marketing that has to go on Instagram
and Facebook and YouTube and TikTok and everything.
I just didn't want to do it because I know the information, the merit of the book itself.
And I know this is going to be in every bookstore in North America.
And it's endorsed by Rich Roll and Carly Bodrum and Tabitha Brown and Dan Bootner.
And I mean, that should be enough that it's going to already have a successful track record
for writing books.
Why do I have to spam the internet all the time?
But it's what I've been told to do by society.
I've been told to do it by my book publisher.
I've been told to do it by fellow authors and colleagues.
I've been told to do it by myself and my past track record.
But do I want to do it?
Not necessarily.
And I don't want to be talking to you right now.
But what I'm saying is, I don't want to get addicted to something that has been proven,
as you stated, to have an overall negative implication on the quality of our lives.
And what's more responsible?
To use these platforms, to try to do good, or to not use them or limit use of these platforms
and truly do good.
Like I already told you, one of the best things you can do is write articles and share legitimate
articles that are in newspapers and magazines and popular websites with scientific citations
and research-backed stuff.
That is just as impactful as social media for animals.
So we're writing books.
And so our challenges like Veganuary and getting people, or the Vegan and Strong method, getting
people to adopt these habits, those are all just as effective.
But social media does something special.
It impacts our ego.
It makes us feel good or feel bad.
But it brings out, like you said, that casino type of emotion.
Dopamine hits.
It makes me feel something that an article, write an article, maybe just doesn't do.
And so how do we overcome that, that ego-driven sense of validation that I need to be important?
And if I'm not on it, do I even exist?
Because everyone forgot about me.
That's what I think is the fear.
But I'll tell you, I haven't been on Twitter for two years.
I plan to go back, I think maybe next month, just to help promote the books.
I've got a decent following there.
But no one's going to remember that I was gone for two years.
I'm going to show up in the newsfeed.
They're going to click on the links or just as they always did.
They won't even remember that I was gone.
And I know that because I've done it before.
I was off of Facebook for six or 12 months.
And that's where your real community is, Facebook.
That's where your friends and family and schoolmates and relatives are.
People didn't even notice that I was gone because they're too busy, focus on their own
page, their own newsfeed, their own posts, their own likes, their own validations.
Yet I was behind the scenes doing my work, creating great work.
And lastly, I'll say from a human perspective, when I was off of social media, completely
no apps on my phone, I would go out to dinner with groups of people.
They would all be doing this.
And I was sitting there by myself just waiting for food to come.
My phone was in the car.
But everybody was more stimulated by what was in the palm of their hand than what was
right in front of them.
That the human connection was getting lost there.
And I translated that to my workouts as well.
I was someone who would be doing a set and get a funny idea for a tweet.
And I would stop the exercise to go make posts.
And I found myself sometimes sitting on exercise equipment for 20 minutes while I was checking
comments and responses and email.
I wasn't even working out.
And as soon as I stopped and haven't taken my phone to the gym for like three years,
I look around me.
Everybody is doing this and nobody's exercising.
And that was a shift for me to tell me that there's a problem with addiction in social
media and having it in the palm of our hand.
And I'm trying.
It's a practice.
I'm not perfect.
But I am trying to let go of that and try to be more present and hope that the merit,
the quality of my work is good enough and that word will spread without me having to
spam everybody that they need to go check it out, but that people will like it.
Their lives might be changed by it.
They'll feel empowered to spare so many animal lives.
And they'll want to share that with others and have this strong collective voice together.
And that's what I'm hoping.
I'm so happy to hear you say that all of it.
I have no social media presence in terms of personal life.
And I had to go on social media for this podcast and it was hell.
And I looked at the vegan community online and I thought, what is this?
What is this craze?
And then I felt so lonely for expressing my views on.
So I hope activists and animal rights organizations hear what you just said right now and think
before investing hundreds of thousands of dollars or who knows how much time and money
on social media, is it the right way to go?
Are we maybe inculcating a price?
Is maybe a price tag on our presence on social media and maybe the price is too high to pay
for us as a movement.
I'm not about disappearing from social media as a movement, but maybe limiting its importance
and to reach and time we put on those platforms.
I think that is important.
And yeah, Robert, you're a vegan cent.
Truly, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you.
I know your time is limited.
So let's cut this short now.
But before that, did you have anything more to say to add to the conversation before I
stop the recording?
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for taking the time.
And I know I've been doing interviews for a lot of years.
I know I always go longer than planned.
So I want to thank you for your patience as I tried to articulate so many important aspects
that are just foundational to being effective for animals in this conversation that went
far longer than expected.
So I want to thank you for your understanding and for your support and for your grace and
for your patience during this very important conversation.
And I also want to say, truly, and I'm staring right into the camera to tell everyone listening,
everyone watching, and to tell you this is the best work that I've ever done.
I've written bestselling books.
I've written books that are translated into nine languages worldwide.
Nothing I've ever done is better than The Impactful Vegan.
It may take me a lot of hours to explain the many components of the book, but I truly believe
and I'm reading the book right now, again, as I'm doing this podcast circuit, I could
barely even put it down at midnight last night.
I just wanted to keep reading because it is just a very, very good book and there's so
much to be learned and applied.
I truly hope that anyone and everyone listening will go get The Impactful Vegan.
You don't have to buy it.
You can get it at a library.
Whenever it's out on June 25th, 2024, find a way to get access to it, read it, apply
it, put the principles and strategies to use because they really will make an impact for
animals and that's what I've dedicated my entire adult life to doing and this is my best
work yet.
I just hope that people really, really enjoy it and take it to heart.
And it's a wonderful book.
So go get the book listeners, link in the description below.
Thank you again, Robert.
Thank you, Ryan.
Appreciate the opportunity today.
Thank you everyone for listening.
I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans you know.
Let's encourage more people to take action.
Again, thank you so much for caring and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.