TBH I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I am putting together a brand new program -Strength Foundations for Women - that launches in less than a month, but I am so dialed up that I couldn’t sleep last night.
So, to the back burner for today SFW…it’s revolution time.
I heard from another human I love and care for that they stopped eating meat after watching the Netflix movie, You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment
I know my pocket of the internet is tiny, but dang it I care about yall and I want your lives to be vibrant and supported, I can’t go one more day without sharing the information that needs to be shared
Here’s the deal: your body, your rules.
But would you be choosing your rules if you knew the information you are basing them on is biased?
The Women’s Fitness and Health Revolution Podcast, I created, was inspired by issues exactly like this.
The revolution here?
Stop letting Big Corporations sabotage your health by SELLING YOU THEIR AGENDAS.
Nutrition is not my main lane. But your HEALTH. And your ability to ACCURATLY make choices that are truly good for you and your longevity? 100,000% are my lane.
Food, Medicine, Movement. These should have our health and wellness at the crux of all they do, but we are a capitalist nation, whose pockets are lined with Corporations like Big Ag & Big Pharma & Big Food. And they don’t care about your wellness, they care about your money.
I feel like in general, we have gotten savvier as consumers, but it is clear in the way our country hasn’t reverted back to regenerative farming, still relies on processed foods as mealtime staples, and uses endocrine disruptors in everything from hand soap to candles to cleaning products, that we have a loooong way to go to understanding that our health doesn’t come first.
So many of us don’t have the information we need that actually supports our health and wellness, and the information that is shoved in our faces and dosed into mainstream culture is more often than not funded and comes with a hidden agenda, tied up in a poppy “we’re doing this for your own good” BS bow.
Before you write me off as a conspiracy theorist. Let’s talk stone-cold facts.
When this movie first came out I remember standing in my kitchen joking about it with my sister - the study length was way too short for the science to be accurate and it was so blatantly AND transparently paid for, that at the time I thought it would be impossible for anyone to take it as viable information.
I. Was. Wrong.
This documentary reminded me in a big way…
We still have a LONG way to go in learning how to be informed consumers. On learning how to follow the money on where research comes from, and we rely far too heavily on information just because it is popular.
Literally, all it took was a single Google search to uncover that this “clinical trial” was conducted by Stanford University School of Medicine by an initiative that was funded by the Vogt Foundation (real quick - isn’t that the super villain corporation in The Boys?) and their asset BEYOND MEAT (one of the most highly processed, meat alternative choices on the market).
And yet, over the past month, I’ve seen and talked to so many people who chose to cut meat after watching it.
I have no problem with a person coming to terms on their own that they want to go veg but the fact that so many people who need high levels of protein (hello adults post-30s) especially post-menopausal women have gone Vegan because Netflix told them to
I had to say something.
This is NOT YOUR FAULT!
It shouldn’t be crazy to think we can trust what we are told.
At its base it’s the cause of a much deeper problem - the one at the basis of diet culture and our society in general that needs to change. And is so insidious.
But a good rule of thumb to follow is this:
We live in a capitalist society and it’s 2024 y’all.
If something about food (or fitness for that matter) pops off in the gen pop it isn’t because there is some new information that shot it to the forefront - we have to ask ourselves why it suddenly got SO big?
Have you heard of Dr Stacey Sims? Dr. Gabrielle Lyon? These are scientists and researchers who are studying actual cutting-edge health and science in terms of weight loss, muscle gain, and longevity. With a special emphasis on women’s bodies.
The general consensus? it’s focused on how desperately we -especially women NEED protein - ideally regeneratively farmed, leucine-rich, protein. Especially as we age
These doctors are well revered and sought after by experts in their community.
But THEY aren’t household names. You don’t see that science blasted everywhere. Even tho it has had proven effects time and again over years of clinical trials to lower obesity, prevent Alzheimer's and so much more.
Why?
Because the research is privately funded and as of right now…there isn’t money to be made off of its promotion.
The healthier we get and the more dialed in our nutrition gets as individuals, the less money Big Ag, Big Pharma, and Big Med stand to gain.
In fact, there are studies and research papers galore that actually show these industries lobbying against and hiring scientists, professors, and internet trolls alike to come down hard on research that gets in the way of their agenda. More on this in a minute.
You are more than welcome to do whatever you want with your body! I love autonomy!
But tough love moment? Please start to question things instead of blindly following.
Who funded this research?
What did they stand to gain?
And then question the research!
Let’s jump back to the topic at hand.
You are What You Eat.
Some of the biggest holes in this study were:
A small sample size. 44 people - 22 per nutrition plan - is not an accurate measure of the 8 billion people on this planet. Remember nutrition is not a one size fits all protocol. The size gets even smaller when we consider, studies prove that research that relies on humans tracking their food is more often than not inaccurate.
8 weeks is not enough time for reliable follow-up on biomarkers, certainly not as it pertains to health in the long run. Something could feel fabulous for 8 weeks, or 8 months, but if it leaves you sick in 8 years, what’s the point?And please let me be clear.
There is no question, eating a nutrition plan higher in plants is amazing for you. Anyone is going to benefit from adding more plants - especially if they were following a standard American diet before.
I’m not anti-plant diet. I LOVE me some micronutrients. I am anti-well-rounded information. And Anti-propaganda at the expense of your health.
Another big issue with this study and its 10 minutes of results was that B- Vitamin Levels were trending slightly lower in the Vegan diet. With a longer trial, more than likely they would continue diminishing. Plus, those recorded markers could easily have been residual from when the vegans were still eating meat. 8 weeks isn’t enough time for an accurate follow-up on biomarkers!
And B Vitamins aren’t the only nutrients we rely on from animal protein over plants. Others include iron, zinc, iodine, Essential fatty acids, and amino acids to name a few.
Deficiencies that are marked only in longer studies.
And the last big hole I’ll talk about here is the gauge for weight loss.
There were 2 major issues with the findings that our Vegans lost more weight.
1st, on average the Vegans were clocking 200 calories less than the omnivores daily. We are not controlling for all variables if energy intake is different!
2ndly, and I am gonna throw it to Dr. Stacy Sims on this one:
“There is also statistical evidence to show that the vegan group lost more weight than the omnivorous group. BUT what is not shown in the journal article, and should be, is that the weight loss was primarily lean mass, with a higher percentage of lean mass loss from the vegan group (as shown by DEXA results)!”
Even in my first-year nutrition program, the very first thing we learn about working with weight loss clients is the importance of regulating their protein intake because 25% of weight loss early on can come from MUSCLE LOSS.
Which is the OPPOSITE of health. I’ve said it a million times over, the amount of our Lean Muscle Mass is directly correlated to our health.
As Dr. Gabrielle Lyon states in her book Forever Strong, “decreased muscle responsiveness makes it harder to get back to a state of balance that can help protect against Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension, among other conditions.”
Losing muscle mass isn’t just a shrug-your-shoulders issue. It's a make or break for your health.
And it becomes even more important as we age.
Protein and resistance training are the ways to build and maintain lean muscle mass.
And if you are vegetarian, you better be working with a nutritionist - at least at first -to figure out how to get enough of all 9 of your essential amino acids without clocking too many Omega 6s. Plan on it being combinations of a LOT more food than it would to eat animal protein.
And in terms of protein powder supplementation, please be careful because ⅔ of soy-based products are found to have glyphosate residuals from pesticides. I would venture an educated guess that the percentage is even higher in supplements.
I highly recommend Organifii protein for its sourcing and the protease enzyme it includes to help digest and utilize the protein.
Again. I am not here to shame you for deciding to go vegetarian, but I want you to make an informed decision that goes beyond Beyond Meat hoping you’ll walk down the freezer aisle and load up on their GMO corn and soy-based products.
And also have information to accurately plan to get enough amino acid-rich protein to help maintain lean muscle mass.
Which you can totally do, but it takes some initial work.
I am truly sorry that we live in a day and age and society where if a fitness program or diet goes viral we have to question it.
In a perfect world, the bottom line and impetus for these things would be our health, but unfortunately, it is money.
Vani Hari, a food activist who cut her teeth with a laundry list of accomplishments like blowing the lid off of Subway using an ingredient in their bread that was made to make yoga mats cushier, and passing regulations that Starbucks needed to take caramel coloring (a petroleum-based product) out of their PSL wrote an incredible book called Feeding You Lies (a must read).
In it, she uncovers the various ways Big Ag and Big Food have been paying scientists and media sources for generations to keep us hooked on products that have little to no nutritional value and more often than not detrimental consequences.
One, I think many can remember (cuz it still informs folks about nutrition today) was the low-fat trend.
In her book, Feeding You Lies, she writes, “In order to fully understand the dangers of sugar., you first need to understand the sugar lie. And that lie begins with a 1967 article written by three Harvard scientists and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
Sound familiar yet? A collegiate study published in a prestigious paper?
“If people wanted to avoid heart attack, the Harvard scientists said, they should avoid as much fat as possible… furthermore they should replace these fats with more carbohydrates.”
This fallacy is still reflected in our food pyramid today, TBH.
“But this influential study [the one that started the low fat craze] was a lie, bought and paid for by Big Sugar. According to documents discovered by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), these Harvard scientists pocked the equivalent of $50,000 (in today’s dollars) from a sugar industry trade association.”
She goes on to add “But the sugar industry didn’t just pay for the science that supported their toxic product - they also attacked those critics who pointed out that eating lots of sugar was terrible for the body - especially the heart.”
Corporations funding university studies and hijacking the popular narrative is no new hijynx. It’s been happening since their inception and they’ve only gotten more sophisticated.
The Vogt Company’s last documentary, The Game Changers came under the same criticism when it came out in 2018. Skewed data and questionable plant-based funding, and yet here we are again, mesmerized by their storytelling and following without question.
The truth is.
There are no easy fixes in nutrition, and sooo much of it has to be dialed in on an individual case-by-case basis.
If you’re saying kinsey I feel better!
That’s great! I love this for you.
Like I said. Plants are VERY important to eat for many other reasons and a lot of us don’t get nearly enough - or any. Especially in the standard American diet, so it makes sense we feel better initially.
But please pay attention down the road to how you are feeling and your biomarkers my friends.
And the biggest takeaway of all:
It has got to be time to stop taking fads at face value.
Low fat led to an Alzheimer’s epidemic, and meal replacement weight loss companies like Slim Fast and Jenny Craig led to higher fasting insulin levels among other issues.
These things don’t work. We see it over and over and yet we forget so quickly.
I know it is a privilege to have the information to know to question things and the time to do it. This is why I felt obligated to take the time to do this today, so we can stop falling prey to this propaganda.
Your health is wayyyy too important to make decisions based off of movies and news articles.
Let’s change the way we approach our health.
As Vani Hari says, it’s time to be a Food Detective.
And please don’t let this be the last thing you hear about it.
I encourage you to do more research and get to the bottom of where you are getting your information. Over time, you will start to pull together resources you can trust and go to with your questions and fact checks.
You and your body are so worth it.
A. Roo.