Michael Greger: Nerve Damaged Vegan Is Incapable of Explaining His Beliefs

Watch on YouTube · 2019-11-08 · 13 min

0:00 Hi everybody. I'm going to review the latest Michael Greger interview on London Real.

[video] 0:06 Can I tell you about my experience on Plant Based last year and then I want to get into the book a little bit more. So last year I had someone sitting in that leather chair. His name was John Joseph. He's the lead singer of the hardcore punk band the Cro-Mags. Been Plant Based for 30 some years because he was a Hare Krishna monk back in the day. And he's also done 10 of these Ironman races which are these really long distance, you know, 12, 13 hour races where you swim.

0:31 He looks so weird.

[video] 0:32 He got in the chair and he was looking at me funny and he said, Brian, I want to challenge you to do a half iron man. I said, okay, maybe. And then he said, but you're doing on a plant-based diet. And I was like, what are you doing, John? There's a scene in the movie where he walks in to my Airbnb in New York and I'm cooking eggs and bacon and he throws it in the trash and he takes me across the street and I'm drinking smoothies. You're going to be a better performance. And I'm 47 years old at the same time. And I'm and i i didn't believe i'm genuinely surprised i would have thought early 60s at least which again really kind of addressed this whole i gotta eat as men so i started eating plants i told my wife she freaked out she's originally from bulgaria where you know she didn't know anything about plant-based diets but she adopted and adapted and all of a sudden she's making black bean quinoa nachos with vegan cheese and we're rocking and rolling and um i had to first i first wasn't eating enough

1:24 That's a good point. Nobody knows about vegan diets. That's why your wife also didn't know because it's a man-made diet.

[video] 1:31 So I was a little bit calorie deficit. But once I figured that out, I had a great experience. I ran the race and I felt so good that I kept it up for the whole year. And towards the end of the year, I just asked myself this, Michael. I said, am I doing this because I'm dogmatic or am I doing this because this feels like the best nutrition? And I have a history of doing things because I'm dogmatic or doing things until they kill me. What is that? Totally nerve damaged. Look at the way he sits. He can't wait to talk. The blabbering is about to start.

[video] 2:16 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, if there was one thing, if you were going to obsessively commit to one thing in your life, rather than alcoholism, I mean, a healthy diet. So, I mean, the number one cause of death. I think I have a healthy diet. I'm just not 100% plant-based. Right, right. Okay. So, but you can eat a healthier diet. Your voice sounds like it's made out of soy. And we can all eat a healthier diet, right? It's a zero-sum game. Every time we put something in our mouth, there's an opportunity cost. There's a lost opportunity to put something even healthier in your mouth. And this goes for anything, right? You eat a banana, you just had a lost opportunity to eat blueberries, which are healthier than a banana, right?

2:59 How are blueberries healthier than bananas? Both are simply sugar and fiber. What, the antioxidants? I don't know if you're lying or you're ignorant. I kind of doubt it at this point because you should understand that the antioxidants in plants are to protect the plants. They're not only useless for humans, they're actually harmful.

[video] 3:20 What? What? The way you can see if a food is healthy is, for one thing, if you can survive by only eating that

3:47 You can only eat grass-fed beef and be the healthiest you could possibly be because it has every nutrient. It's perfectly digestible. Chickpeas, you can't even eat raw. They are full of anti-nutrients and toxins and don't have over 50 nutrients. Idiot.

[video] 4:04 Everything we eat could always, we should just all try to nudge everything up. And if eating a little bit of animal protein is going to keep you eating all the other wonderful food in your diet, how many whole plant foods are you eating? That, if there's one question, and so it's no, it's not how much meat are you eating? Right. How many whole plant foods? Now, if you eat meat, you're kind of displacing, right? There's a certain number of calories and satiety that goes along with that. And so you may end up at the end of the day eating less. But in terms of health, it's how many whole plant foods you're eating, full stop. And the primary reason these other foods aren't good is because they may undercut your whole plant food consumption in addition to whatever else they have bad in them. So yes, some have saturated fat or trans fats or too much sodium or, you know, cholesterol. But, you know, but part of the reason that... How does he mix all of this together?

4:57 Trans fat, saturated fat? What is bad about saturated animal fat? All of your cells are made out of it. No explanation. Sodium? You would die without it. Cholesterol? Again, all of your cells. What's unhealthy about it in any way at all?

[video] 5:14 They're unhealthful comparatively is because it's that bite for bite. It's that substituting one for another. And so if you're going to eat meat, make it the best meat. Now, if I go out and shoot an elk and eat some wild elk, and that's a whole other thing that you get mad at me about, but are you definitely, definitively saying that that is going to hurt me, having that meat, as opposed to having a whole food piece? Dr. That's absolutely the healthiest. Elk and moose, 2% fat by weight. 2% fat. When you go to the store and it says extra lean, that's like 28% fat. That's the extra lean, right? 2%. So that's actually what chicken used to be in 1896.

5:57 Why does he lie? Everybody knows that that's not true. The meat in supermarkets in general...

[video] 6:05 everywhere even in butcheries usually is incredibly lean there's pretty much no fat because of the governmental guidelines six two percent now it's 23 10 times more fat and i mean but um but yeah so so wildcat game without lead ammunition that's critically important if you shoot that up with lead ammunition the it's a bad thing compared to conventional store-bought meat it's a significantly lower bunk bump in postprandial inflammation after eating um significantly less inflammation in their blood um within uh four hours after eating the kangaroo meat compared to conventionally bought meat now you could argue why eat anything inflammatory pro-inflammatory at all if you instead ate plant foods you actually would have an anti-inflammatory reaction okay

6:50 Wow, there's nothing anti-inflammatory about plant foods. Pretty much everybody, even from experience, knows that plant foods are inflammatory. They destroy the gut for one thing. Also, the meat that you buy from a supermarket comes from animals that we're not taking care of, whereas wild meat comes from natural animals. It's as good as it will get. The thing is that they taste cooked meat. And of course, especially when it has a brown, black crust, it will be inflammatory. Raw natural meat is in no way inflammatory. All plant foods are, cooked or raw.

[video] 7:25 But if you're gonna eat meat, that's absolutely, the least harmful meat is the wild caught meat. Okay, fair enough. I just, I'm just not sure. I mean, look, I trust you as a doctor. You know what you're talking about. But also, in the past, doctors have told us to smoke Lucky Strikes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. To drink skim milk. No, no, no, no. So I'm just trying to like listen to my body and I'm trying to make a decision. Don't trust me, don't trust, no, no. We trust the science. You're 100% certain in your mind. No, well, so, I mean, so there's studies been done. So, you know, I talk about in the intro, how not to die. This study, that's the question. Well, like how much is too much, right? That's an unanswered research question. We don't know. There certainly is an amount that, it's like there's no signs in the world that says being a social smoker, picking up a few cigarettes at a party once or twice a year is going to hurt you. I mean, there's no signs that shows those social smokers have any higher disease rates than people who don't smoke at all. Now we can show smoking a half pack a day, absolutely. Devastating.

[video] 8:22 But there's some level at which your body should be able to just repair any DNA damage and get rid of all that tar. And so it's like, okay, well, what is that level? And so I'm always interested in looking for those particular studies. Probably the best study to come to that was the study looking at Buddhist monks and And someone was eating meat, one serving of meat every three days. I'm like, there's not going to be any difference. If you would have asked me, I would have predicted that you're not going to see any kind of end result, maybe some risk factor stuff. You're not going to see actual, you know, kind of, you know, end points like, you know, disease risk. Okay. With that time, I bet your body can bounce back from that. Before you saw the movie Game Changers? Because you're eating one burrito in Game Changers and you got your bloods messed up and you can't get an erection. Well, okay. So now, all right. But. All right. But you didn't think necessarily? I was skeptical that they would be able to see.

[video] 9:15 And they found remarkable, I forget the, I think it was like twice the diabetes rates in people eating just a few servings a week. That was really surprising. And so, okay, so that may be too much, but is one serving a week bad? We just don't know. Does that mean it's necessarily good evidence? No. It's just, this is the best evidence we have so far. And if it weren't so important, then who cares, right? But when it's literally the number one cause, so dietary risk, according to the Global Bird Disease Study, in the UK, the number one killer of Brits is their diet. Smoking is now number two. And think of all the resources, the regulations that go into getting people to quit smoking, right? No, but that's killer number two. Why isn't that?

10:02 Essentially, he's admitting that he has no proof that meat is bad for you. He's talking about one study, but he doesn't say how it increased their chance of diabetes. I've never heard of it. He also said that the Brits are dying because of their diet. It has been plant-based for ages. Toast, lots of bread, beans. When they do eat meat, then it's sausage, which nowadays is not even made out of meat for the most part. What is he talking about? When they do eat fish, then it has a crust of wheat around it. Come on.

[video] 10:38 That same amount of resources being poured into getting people to improve their diet. And there is some, certainly sodium levels have dropped. The best population level experiment in the world was, you know, this public-private partnership with the UK government. Went to these, you know, went to the restaurant industry. I don't know for sure what he's talking about, but if he's talking about salt, which is a rock, it has nothing to do with sodium, then he's way dumber than I thought. Because that, of course, is unhealthy.

[video] 11:22 Nothing compared to what really could be done. So number one killer is the British diet, just like number one killer in America.

11:29 Land-based.

[video] 11:30 But it's such a personal thing. The food pyramid. The government starts to regulate that. It's a different thing if you look at cigarettes, because most people would admit that a cigarette is probably harmful to you. Now, but not before. And the science was clear at the time when people were saying, ah, smoking in moderation is fine. Right. when that's not what the science shows. They brought the population levels, sodium levels down, stroke rates came down, and look, you want to pour the whole salt shaker on it? That's up to you. It's easier to add salt to food than to remove salt from food, right? So then that puts the power in the consumer. So it seems a little Big Brother.

12:08 It's funny that he's talking about salting food at all, because that's what vegans do, seeing as they lack sodium in the plants. It's too high in potassium in some cases, which causes an imbalance. And of course, there's no zinc also and lots of problems mineral-wise.

[video] 12:24 That they're getting all the restaurant chains to decrease their salt. But no, that's in fact empowering consumers to determine the levels of salt that they want to do. They can always add more. They can't take out less. Yeah.

12:38 Alright, as usual, he has no proof for anything he's saying. He likes to talk about studies, but to this day, there hasn't been one study out there that has in any way at all proven that a vegan diet is healthy in any way at all. There's no scientific proof whatsoever when it comes to veganism. There are quite a few studies out there that vegans are deficient in nutrients, which I will link in the description. A lot of you have probably seen it already. Plants don't have over 15 nutrients. This is why it's malnutrition. Clearly he's not doing very well himself. Nobody has to point that out. He's living in denial. Thanks for watching.