Deficient Vegans

Veganism and Masculinity

• Muscle Deficient Vegan & Protein Deficient Vegan • Episode 50

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0:00 | 1:23:33

Save a cow, ride a soy boy. We get into the weird history of gendered food marketing, what 40+ studies say about soy and testosterone, and why vegan men keep having to justify their existence. Plus New News and a Myth of the Week on complete proteins.

References:

Real Men Don't Eat (Vegetable) Quiche: Masculinity and
the Justification of Meat Consumption

Chapters
0:08 Veganism and Masculinity
0:44 In the News
5:56 Masculinity Marketing Origins
15:22 Soy Myths Debunked
20:47 Vegan Athletes Shine
23:55 Meat, Manhood, and History
26:31 Who Profits From Alpha Culture
36:24 Healthier Than the Myth
40:22 Who Becomes Vegan
43:33 Hunting and Gender Norms
46:29 Ancient Diets Debunked
48:38 Toys, Femininity, and Boys
51:15 Throw Like a Girl
55:13 Tofu as a Litmus Test
58:21 Men, Meat, and Hierarchy
1:07:56 Complete Protein Myth

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Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast, episode 50. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi! Hi, everybody. So for our 50th episode, we're going to be covering veganism and masculinity. And since I have a lot of opinions on this, I'll be giving you way more than my two cents, more like my 50 cents.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

We're going to party like it's your birthday. Get it? 50-cent reference? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Into club.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Hello, fellow students. Also, we will talk about our myth of the week this week, which is that you don't need to care about complete proteins at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I've heard this one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

What do you think?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

We'll find out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

A Chilean food company, NotCo, was in a legal fight recently with the dairy industry there over their NotMilk product. It's basically a plant-based milk alternative. It's called NotMilk. And the legal fight was over them using the word milk and having a picture of a crossed out cow on the label. The court ruled that they can keep their trademark name, not milk, but they have to remove the word milk and any images portraying the dairy industry from any of their marketing.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

How much more clear can they get? It says it's not milk on the freaking carton.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, I guess it's good. They get to keep that part, but they had some slogans that were like milk without the cows or something like that. And so they can't use that stuff anymore. Although it sounds like they're going to have a little bit of a bonus here because I guess they're going to be the only plant-based milk in Chile that's allowed to use the word milk because it's part of their trademark name. So that's interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

These fights that keep happening in various countries and states are so interesting to me. Yeah. It just seems so stupid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I genuinely don't understand who's looking at these things on the shelf and can't tell what kind of milk it is. Like they say almond milk, oat milk, whatever. Yeah. And quote unquote normal milk, whatever. Doesn't say cow milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I know. Like, can I sue them because I bought normal milk and I thought it was buffalo milk because it didn't say what animal it came from?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

This is very silly. Yeah. Also, back to, like, they're not having the cow picture crossed out. What if people can't read? That's very useful.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

That's a really good point.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That doesn't come from a cow because the cow's crossed out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

That's just good accessibility practices.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right. They hate people that can't read.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Next up, Violife, the vegan cheese company, won four tasty awards. The categories they won in were creamer, cream cheese, butter, and sour cream. Ooh. Yeah. And then they also won Best Staple Cheese in the VegNews Veggie Awards.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

What's staple cheese? You think it's just like the shredded cheeses and stuff?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it was their shredded cheeses.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's what I always use.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I also like all the other things you mentioned except for creamer because I don't drink coffee.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Violife's cream cheese is actually their best-selling product. I didn't realize that.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's kind of surprising. Yeah. I would say that Violife and the Philadelphia cream cheese, vegan cream cheese. Yeah. Those are like my two favorite vegan cream cheeses. They're really similar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, Philadelphia is definitely my favorite. The VegNews Veggie Awards, the winner for cream cheese was actually Kite Hill. Hmm. Which I'm not a big fan of, personally. But Violife did come in second.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Who's voting for Kite Hill?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I don't know. A lot of people on the VegNews site. Hmm. Maybe they had a good marketing campaign. Go vote for us.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, maybe. You know, I used to like the Miyokos one. It was really good to cook with because it wasn't oil-based.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

No.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

But, yeah, you can't really, like, you probably shouldn't make a cheesecake with Violife cream cheese because it's mostly coconut oil and it just melts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I'm a big fan of the flavored cream cheese. It's like the strawberry one. Me too.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Or the chive one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Oh, the chive one's really good. Yeah. Yeah, Philadelphia's strawberry is really good.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Did I ever tell you about the time I tried making a, like, vegan cream cheese wonton crab rangoon type thing?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Oh, yes. Yeah. And they had the oven situation? Yeah. Tell us more about that.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So basically, I used Veo Life cream cheese, not considering the fact that it just completely melts into oil. Yeah. And so, like, I made my little wontons with my little, like, cream cheese and green onion filling and stuff. And I put them in my air fryer. And all of a sudden, like, within five to ten minutes, the house starts smelling really bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And I'm like, I look over and there's literally oil leaking onto the counter out of the air fryer bottom.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Oh, my gosh.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And it like completely messed up my air fryer and I had to like really scrub it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Wow. Were you still able to use it after that? Yeah. Okay. That's good.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So I broke it later during other kitchen experiments, but like that time I could save it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Is that the one you broke with your seitan balls? Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

One of the two that we broke with the seitan balls.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

If you're wondering why I don't have many air fryer recipes, I have PTSD here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Also, the recipe now tells you how not to break your air fryer when you make them. So they're risk-free now.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

It's an expensive mistake.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

The last piece of news we have is that the UK startup Meatly is building what will be Europe's largest cultivated meat plant in London. They're planning to have pet food products launched by 2027. I guess originally, I think the company was called Better Dog Food or something like that. So they're mostly focused on pet food cultivated meat products right now.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I think that's cool because obviously there are a lot of pets that are being fed a lot of animals, right? So... And it seems like what I'm seeing online, there are a lot of people that are saying they'll never eat cultivated meat. They have, like, a real weird aversion to that. So if you can replace the animals that are being fed to other animals. Right. That would cut down animals in general, right? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, my understanding is that cats are obligate carnivores, so they have to eat meat. So a lot of vegans struggle with, like, I have a cat, but I have to keep feeding an animal product. Yeah. So this could solve that problem.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, I think it's a really cool idea.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Be interested to see how it evolves.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. All right. Let's get into the main segment here. We're going to talk about kind of the intersection between veganism and masculinity because that exists for some reason. And specifically how being vegan is often seen as less masculine.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Spoiler alert, you can thank the patriarchy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I think most things fall into that category.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, I know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

The general argument here is usually something like men evolved as hunters, meat delivers cholesterol, B12, zinc, creatine, complete proteins.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Really good for their man brains and stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, man brains are important. And then also plant estrogens feminize the body is one of the arguments.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I actually have a funny story here. Okay. I just got a comment on one of my videos that said that basically my video was about how people keep saying that TVP is prison food. Right. So like then I have this lady that was like, I was in prison and actually we sued the prison because the TVP made the men lactate.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I'll take things that never happened for a thousand Alex or Ken Jennings.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And yeah, the last argument they typically use is something really vague, like modern men are softer than their grandfathers or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Maybe that's a good thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So you probably heard the term soy boy when talking about vegan or vegetarian men before. So in a little bit, we'll talk about kind of where that came from. But that helps set the frame for like this general idea. Right. And, you know, now a lot of us have also reclaimed that and proud soy boys. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Save a cow. Ride a soy boy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

There you go. And the real question in all of these conversations isn't even really, is veganism healthy or can vegans build muscle? Like, those are different conversations that we've also approached. But it's really like, why is veganism ever framed as a masculinity question?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, why is there like a gender assigned to food?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, like, where did that come from? Yeah. So, like with most modern cultural ideas, it's the answer is marketing. So, it was like a long history of framing specific foods and products as masculine to try to sell to men. One of the earliest examples of this is actually a really interesting one from 1954, the Marlboro Man. So, originally, Marlboro cigarettes were launched to be a woman's product, basically filtered cigarettes. And after a while, the health implications of cigarettes started coming out. So they wanted to try to sell filtered cigarettes to other people because they were, I guess, slightly more healthy. Quote unquote healthier. Right. But they had a real problem because this was seen as like a woman's cigarette. So they launched the Marlboro Man campaign to try to sell filtered cigarettes to men. And, you know, it worked. Basically, they created their campaign around the cowboy and all the cowboy imagery and all that stuff, like a rugged blue collar man to convince men that, like, it was OK to use filtered cigarettes that were previously a woman's thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's crazy that that worked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it worked like gangbusters because their sales tripled. They went from being like less than one percent of the cigarette share to number four overall for cigarettes. Wow. So this is like one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Just because they put a cowboy there. Yeah. And they were like, no, no, it's not a more safe cigarette. You're still dangerous. You're still a rugged cowboy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And a lot of their competitors at the time were leaning into like, this is how we're making ours a little healthier or like the technology of the filters and all that stuff. And Marlboro was just like, we're going to go a totally different direction. We're going to put a cowboy man on the screen. And it worked.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I think that we need a vegan food creator to dress up like a cowboy when they cook.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

There you go.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Flip an eggplant on the grill in their cowboy

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Hat are you volunteering no.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I can't be a cowboy

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

We'll have to let some feelers out see who's down for that um and then you know this led to other marketing campaigns kind of leaning into this type of thing in the future in 1973 hungry man dinners you've probably heard of hungry man this is a really popular one uh the box literally said eat like a man in capital letters and they had a lot of pro athletes as spokesmen um their foods in there eating like a man is apparently salisbury steak fried chicken meatloaf things like that this.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Is funny to me because uh i think basically the opposite of that in the frozen food space is like lean cuisines which are mostly marketed to women where it's like all you need is 350 calories a meal girl you gotta keep

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Thin or weight watchers yeah meals or whatever they have meals right yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah but men are like you need to eat because you got strong man things to

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Do yeah yeah exactly it's always very vain it's just like eat this and you'll be a man and you're like okay yeah i want to be that sounds pretty good you've.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Got like really cool man shit to do like watching dinner while eating this hungry man meal and you need calories

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Next in 2006 burger king had their eat like a man man commercials uh their commercials talked about not eating chick food, and instead you should eat the Texas Double Whopper.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

You know, honestly, those weren't as bad as the Carl's Jr.'s ones, which were like... Oh, let's just exploit women's bodies to try to convince men to eat meat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. Yeah. I don't really understand the logic there, but I guess it works. I don't know.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Somehow it works. You guys should think about why that works.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And then we had two big things in 2011. One was really interesting. It only lived for a couple of years, but Dr. Pepper 10 was a thing for a while. I don't even remember that. I think it was out for like six years. And it was Dr. Pepper. There was 10 calories. So it was basically Diet Dr. Pepper, right? But diet drinks are for girls. So Dr. Pepper 10 was marketed as it's not for women. And it was like a gunmetal gray can. And they had a man-only Facebook page.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And a bunch of typical macho man advertising. But it was to get men to buy a low-calorie soft drink without saying, like, you're on a diet or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Ridiculous.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Also fairly effective, but it wasn't around very long.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

They should have just said, if you drink Dr. Pepper 10, you can go eat more Hunger Man dinner and Burger King Whoppers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

While you smoke your Marlboro cigarettes.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

In cowboy boots.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

2011 also had the man crates come out. Yeah. This is another example of man marketing. So like the little box of beef jerky or bacon comes with a crowbar. You have to pry it open. Right. Yeah. So there's just a lot of marketing around like.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's stuff men do. That's how you wrap presents as a man.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And so that leads us to 2017, where the term soy boy, while it was already kind of around in like in real life a little bit and areas, it really jumped on the scene online and turned into a meme where it was basically like a dismissive term for men who lack masculine characteristics. Right. And just in general, it encompasses everything. Yeah. But it's, you know, really heavily used to describe vegan vegetarian men now. So, fun fact, one of the earliest documented uses of the term soy boy was actually in Kurt Cobain's diaries that they found after he died. Hmm.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Wouldn't have expected that from you, Kurt.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. It didn't seem super derogatory. Yeah, yeah. It was kind of a weird picture.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Also, you probably didn't think anyone was going to be, like, going through his diary. Honestly, if I died and people went through, I don't keep a diary, but if they went through my diary, I'd be kind of pissed. Yeah. Like, you're commercializing my diary?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's fucked up. How do you even get permission to do that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, I don't know. I think they're in some museum or something now, which would be a nightmare.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Everyone reading your personal thoughts and stuff,

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

You.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right. How do I make sure that doesn't happen? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And apparently Katy Perry also used it in a really terrible music video from 2008.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

We suffered through this music video to give you this information.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

It was like the cringiest movie music. I don't even use the word cringe, but that was cringy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it was pretty awful.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, and she was saying stuff like, what is it, like, you don't eat meat and you're gay, basically.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, that was actually the hook, I think.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it was really stupid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So anyway uh yeah thanks Katy Perry right so that was in 2008 it kind of that was the first online use of it that they that's been seen and then later on in like 2017 it came up on the 4chan forums and then some uh like political you know influencer guy caught on to it and then it just kind of took off and it's been in mainstream use since then so the theme of all this is that the implication is i guess if you're not helping your cardiologist retire early you're not a real man yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's the best thing you can do as a man

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah it's just it's this general idea of like if you care about your health that's not manly yeah and um you know if you care about like what people think that's not manly a lot of that kind of which.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Is funny because obviously you care about what people think if you're letting these commercials like convince you oh yeah that eating a whopper is going to turn you into a man

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right yeah exactly i don't know i.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Think the also the implication is like So if you eat in any way that it's perceived women eat, then basically you're a loser and not a man.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Men are apparently terrified to not be thought of as manly. Yeah. So marketing is highly effective. Just a couple of the scientific things that refute a couple of the things that people typically argue about. First of all, soy and testosterone. So there's a really common refrain online that soy will make you, basically will feminize men, which typically means lower testosterone, increase estrogen.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Make you lactate.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Well, that would be...

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Impressive.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Very impressive.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

If a man is lactating, they should be making some money off that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Man milk. You could sell man milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So there have been over 40 controlled studies that show pretty definitively that soy and isoflavones, which are the things from the phytoestrogens in soy that people are concerned about, do not lower testosterone in men. It doesn't happen. It has no difference. Estrogen's a little more nuanced. But basically, if you look at a group of average studies, it shows no difference in estrogen. There was one analysis that was like a dose response analysis, which basically looked at like how much soy or how much isoflavone intake will it take to move estrogen levels basically in men. So they saw that there was a really small estrogen bump of like 6.5 picograms per milliliter at around 72 milligrams a day of isoflavones, which is like two to three servings of tofu. So, 6.5 picograms or whatever, a typical reading for a man is like 10 to 40. So, that's not really a big jump in the range. You're still well within normal range. It doesn't do anything to your testosterone. It doesn't do anything for your performance. You won't even notice it. And then there's the aspect that estrogen is actually kind of cardioprotective. So, even if it did cause slightly elevated estrogen, that would probably be a net benefit. And it definitely wouldn't make you more feminine.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it's not going to make you feminine,

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Though. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Also, doesn't Say Grace have the isoflavones removed?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Say Grace specifically, which is like the concentrated soy protein product. Yeah. They basically have a process that strips out all the isoflavones. So normally you would think like the more concentrated the soy product is, the more this might theoretically be a problem. But that's like the most concentrated high protein soy product on the market. and they just completely strip them out so they don't have to have this argument with people basically. And that's actually what their website says. We don't want to have the argument so we're taking it out.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Say grace is for the manliest of men. Oh yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So the cherry-picked counter-evidence that basically is the entire reason this argument comes up over and over is because one case study from a while back, Where a 60-year-old man was drinking three quarts of soy milk every day.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's a lot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And had basically gynecomastia, which is where you have extra fatty breast tissue.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Isn't that almost a gallon? That's like 75% of a gallon, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it's highly, it's a high volume. And the study was actually called an unusual case of gynecomastia associated with soy product consumption.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And then we're going to base everything off of that. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

It doesn't happen. It's not been recreated ever. This one guy had this happen, and he did. He stopped drinking the soy milk, and it started to recede or whatever. But this was basically an unusual case. This is not what actually happens when most people have this. I mean, also, most people obviously aren't drinking three quarts of soy milk a day. But I think even if most people did do that, they would not necessarily run into this issue. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

He was an outlier. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

We're talking about one guy and one study versus over 30 controlled trials over the history of researching.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

With more than one guy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. And because of that guy, this has been researched several times and it's not a thing that comes up. I mean, just in the science itself, this is a complete non-issue, but it keeps coming up over and over. And, you know, I mentioned that the isoflavones come from phytoestrogens, which is basically plant estrogen, which is not the same as human estrogen. It's a much weaker form. So a lot of people hear phytoestrogens are in plants and they're like, oh, I'm eating estrogen, which will increase my estrogen or something, which is a totally different thing. It just happens to have the same word in it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I also think it's funny how I feel like most people that are freaking out about this don't even understand. What estrogen is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

No, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Or like how that impacts your body.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

No, they just know estrogen means woman.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Estrogen girl. Man testosterone. Estrogen bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

If soy were doing what the meme says, basically half the Asian continent would be growing breast tissue out of nowhere. They're obviously not. And the average Japanese adult eats like 25 to 50 milligrams of flavone every day, which is well above Western intake levels for most people. Not for vegans, probably. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Also, if soy just gave you big boobs, then, I mean, definitely like magazines like Cosmopolitan would have picked up on this and be telling women to eat soy all day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Because they tell us a lot of random tips to get met. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And there are also, you know, different situations where people might be on like hormone replacements and they're taking estrogen injections or taking estrogen. Yeah. And soy milk's a lot cheaper. So they'd probably just go that route if this was reliable enough. That's true. Yeah, I mean, a lot of reasons where this is like obviously not the case. And then, you know, another one is the complete protein we talked about. We briefly mentioned we're going to talk about that a little bit of the myth of the week. So I'm going to save that for there. But there are also, you know, a ton of high performing vegan athletes out there that really dispel this like performance issue with soy or, you know, the vegan diet in general. And there's a great website I linked people do all the time called greatveganathletes.com. where it's got people from all kinds of different sports that like are elite levels in their sports. So I've got a couple here that I wanted to mention to just highlight. So Patrick Baboumian, he's been vegan since 2011. He's basically a strongman competitor. He holds the Guinness verified yoke walk record, which is where you carry a big thing like up on your traps on the top of your shoulders and you walk with it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

He was doing that in Game Changers, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, he was in Game Changers. He did that in Game Changers. He carried 1,224 pounds over 10 meters weight. And he set that at the Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival in 2013. Cool. And then he broke his own record with 500 and so that was 555 kilograms. He broke his own record with 560 kilograms again in 2015 and he's still vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That's awesome.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. There's also Lewis Hamilton who people probably have heard of. A lot of people have heard of. He is a seven time Formula One world champion. So that's racing in cars.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I don't watch racing so I didn't know what that was.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

He's been vegan since 2017. He's still vegan, and he talks quite a bit about it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

He can drive the car real good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it's hard. It's like over 100 degrees in the car. They have to do neck exercises because of the G-force on them when they're driving at high speeds. And, you know, they've got to control the car. There's no power steering. It's actually pretty physically taxing. There's also Novak Djokovic. He's 24-time Grand Slam champion in tennis. He's been plant-based since 2010. And he doesn't use the word vegan, but it looks like he does follow a vegan diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I think there are a couple other tennis players. Is one of the Williams sisters?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, one of the Williams sisters was kind of famously vegan. Is she still vegan? I don't think so. Mm. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Womp womp.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. There's also Carl Lewis, nine-time Olympic gold medalist across four games. He went vegan in 1990 and then credited his 1991 World Championship season at the peak of his career to the dietary chain specifically. That's so cool. The quote from him was, my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, Carl.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Uh, and then the last one I have is Scott Jurek. Uh, I think he was also in Game Changers if I remember right. Ultra Marathon Legend, seven time consecutive Western States 100 champion. He's been vegan since 1999. He wrote a book about it. He's like famously vegan. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of people obviously at the literal top of whatever they're doing on a vegan diet. So I think that would dispel any, you know, conversation about you can't be a highly performant athlete on a vegan diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And look how manly they are.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So manly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, Patrick Baboumian looks like some kind of mix between. He's like a combination of the Hulk and Wolverine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's huge. All right. Yeah, pretty much. So this vegans are weak meme just keeps running into all these vegans who are definitely not weak. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to hold up. Yeah. And then the entire kind of framing of masculinity is based on a lot of bullshit in general, right? So modern American meat consumption is unusual historically, like the amount of meat we eat now. If we go all the way back to like hunter versus gatherers in the caves, most of the food was gathered. Yeah. Like you had meat every once in a while. If you happen to see an animal come across or you happen to have a good day on the hunt or whatever. But most of the stuff you're eating day to day was the gathered food.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right, because it was reliable. It was like a reliable source of calories. You knew how much you could have each day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. Also, going forward in time to more modern times, the U.S. per capita meat availability has nearly doubled since 1909 based on the USDA Economic Research Service data.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I think we can probably thank factory farming for that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Oh, yeah. So your great grandfather probably ate about 75% as much meat as you do. And so that's pretty unfortunate data for people who think meat consumption is closely tied to testosterone, which you also see a lot. People eat steak to raise your testosterone or whatever. And something going back to the soy boy thing. Yeah, yeah. Because our ancestors had higher testosterone levels. That part is true. But they had much lower meat consumption. And so our lower testosterone levels now are linked in studies more to things like obesity, not getting as much sleep, stress, and environmental issues, things like that. So the whole, like, ancestral masculine diet framing is just comparing to some imaginary past. It's not something that actually existed in the way that people like to spout it off.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, I feel like they're looking at old-timey movies and taking that at face value of, like, that's how people live, the cowboy movies and stuff. Yeah. Like, that's... Probably not real. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And I mean, I'm not saying they weren't eating steak. And actually, a lot of the increased meat consumption or even meat availability both over the last hundred years or so is mostly from the increase in chicken. So, like, back then they were eating more meat than they were chicken, but they were eating less total meat. So, there probably were steaks, but you weren't eating steak every night.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I thought cowboys were, like, notorious for eating beans. Why do I think this?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, there's always, like, the scene in Westerns where they're sitting on the fire with their pried open can of beans. They open with their knife or whatever. I mean, that's probably most of what people ate, beans and bread and whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So we just need like a bean-eating vegan cowboy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Meat doesn't travel very well.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

No.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Not on a horse anyway. Not a lot of horse-mounted refrigerators back in the Old West. Yeah. So who benefits from some of this gender-coded food stuff?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Capitalism.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. But specifically, the meat industry does a lot, obviously. The supplement industry and then all of these bullshit alpha branded products like you're.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Oh my God, the manosphere shit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, alpha man. You've got to be an alpha. I think now there's like sigma and vegans or betas. I don't fucking know. But I think if you're out there calling people alphas and betas, you're probably not whatever you think an alpha is. That's what I think. There's an entire influencer economy out there that monetizes this male insecurity. Like you just kind of mentioned the manosphere. Yeah. Like that is basically entirely built around making you feel like you're less of a man, whatever that means to you. It's not even what it means to you. It's what they tell you it means.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Unless you do what they tell you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. You're only a man if you pay me $29.99. I don't fucking know. So anybody telling you that food is gendered specifically is either selling you something or they're just repeating something somebody else sold to them. I guess it's not, I don't know how to put it any more plainly. Like, if you think you're not a man because you eat beans instead of steak, you're just, like, so far fucking— You're very lost. You're very lost. Yeah, and, I mean, most of this stuff is just men performing for other men, right? So they've got the influencers who are trying to push them stuff, and then they have these communities where they're all just talking to each other about how manly they want to be. I don't know. This sounds like— Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I know. I think it's funny because a lot of the stuff I see, it's like these are straight men, right, that want to date women.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Who refuse to listen to women, treat women like objects.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right? And then just listen to what these, like, influencer douchebags say.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

On how to get women. And... I'm going to let you know it's not going to work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

But it's like the same thing. Like if they don't know how to get women, but they're trying to sell you how to get women. Why do you think they know what manly is?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

It's giving male loneliness epidemic that we created in the manosphere. Yeah. You know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I mean, they profit off of keeping that going.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Um and you know the the people that mock a guy for ordering the veggie option is the other guys at the table when they order i've experienced that you know with my friends even even a long time ago it's like you know we'd be out getting chicken wings or something and i get something that's not chicken wings i get a salad or whatever it's like holy shit i've got to deal with 30 minutes of you know just getting razzed now because i ordered a salad and you're not allowed to do that with a group of men or whatever i will.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Let you know that that is not just a male experience like me i've been a vegetarian i was like haven't eaten meat since i was 12 right yeah and so like going on dates with people or like being in groups of people you get like shit on for ordering salads in

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

General yeah that makes sense yeah it's.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Like she eats his salads

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah you.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Know like get that girl a steak like like it's not just a man thing right

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

But does Does that happen when you're with a group of women?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

No.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Exactly. I know.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

It's because men hate women and like ordering a salad is seen as a female thing. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Or like you hear like men that are like, I just want to date a girl who eats steak and drinks beer. Yeah. And it's like, are you sure you don't want to date a man?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I don't know. Not to say there aren't women that do that, but, like, it's just weird.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, definitely. I think it's just, you know, this whole thing is just a big circle jerk of insecure guys trying to impress each other. And I don't exactly know what the end goal is, but it doesn't seem to be going very well. And, you know, psychologically, there was a study, I'll put it in the show notes, but, you know, when men's masculinity gets challenged or they feel like they're in a lower status. than the other men around them, they'll compensate for that by like taking more risk to try to prove themselves. And that even extends to including things like just eating more unhealthy foods. So basically, you feel like you're not as manly as somebody else that you're around or you look up to, I guess. And so if you're already not feeling manly, you can't order a salad. You're going to feel less manly. So you've got to go order like the fried chicken or whatever to try to make yourself either feel or try to convince somebody else that you are actually manly. And, you know, I hope all this sounds ridiculous because it's really ridiculous.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Is this why, like, men will pick fights at bars and shit?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, it's the same kind of thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Same thing?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Yeah, men will pick fights with basically people who they feel like they are lower status than to try to compensate for that.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Oh, my God. It's just like werewolves in the supernatural shows we watch.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I'm the alpha. I'm going to fight you to claim the throne as Alpha.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Exactly.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Okay. That, you know, having the werewolf context really helps.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. Yeah. And so the self-styled like alpha influencer economy like monetizes the loop. You don't feel manly. You keep trying to do stuff to feel manly, whatever the hell that means to you. You still don't feel manly. So you try to do some more stuff. And for some reason, those things you're trying all make them money. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Weird.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

You're watching their videos, you're buying their guides or their courses or like don't even get me started on the pickup artist bullshit.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Oh, my God.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

They basically keep guys anxious about other guys' opinions so they can just sell them their protein powder, their supplement stack, their manly lifestyle thing, whatever it is. Specifically, one that stands out here is the testosterone booster stuff. So the global testosterone booster supplement industry is approaching $4 billion. What? And I've got news for you. Testosterone boosting supplements flat out don't work. It's insane. There are a couple of things like.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Should we start selling a vegan one?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

No, I don't think so. I mean, they're just like, there are some in a study, it's like they show a very minor increase or whatever, but like basically none of them do anything measurable. Like if you increase your testosterone up 10 points, that's not going to change anything. Maybe it actually happens. But there's an entire industry around selling things that say that they boost your testosterone.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And you buy it because it says like Manergy or something on it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. And then, you know, there's a lot of guys who are on TRT now, which I think is interesting because we're so worried about estrogen, but getting on TRT is one of the most reliable ways to increase your estrogen. Like, that's a side effect. Oh, interesting. So, anything you're doing to try to boost your testosterone could also potentially boost your estrogen, which you're apparently worried about in soy, but you're not worried about from trying to directly increase your testosterone.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Well, yeah. I mean, it's cooler to shove needles in than it is to eat soy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. So, I mean, I think making you feel anxious about not being a man is their entire business model. So I recommend if you find yourself caught up in this loop and you're often worried about how manly you are, you probably just need to step away from that particular portion of the Internet for a while.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I don't really have much of an opinion on this. But what I will say is, like, I don't know. I just kind of like it. I feel like the manliest man, I don't really know what the term manly means, but, like, most confident type of guy I've seen is the one that, like, just doesn't give a shit about, like, what other people, including men, think. Yeah. You know, they just kind of do their own thing. They do the things they enjoy. They listen to the music they like. They watch the shows they like. You know, they have the activities that they enjoy. They eat whatever the hell they want.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Jam out to some Taylor Swift.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Yes. Men that will listen to Taylor Swift. That's hot guy shit. I'm sorry.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Do what you like right so if you're defining your like masculinity or your strength as how well you're conforming to your peer group's diet or opinion you're a little bitch right, but you're you're in that case you're defining your strength as how susceptible you are to peer pressure is that how you want to measure yourself and how you want to define yourself are you.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Wait is this whole podcast like a don't do drugs campaign

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Well yeah i guess if the drug is like letting yourself be told what manly is it is being a vegan guy or a vegetarian guy or whatever else goes against kind of this masculine stuff is it does have a real social cost like you get mocked you get policed that stuff really does happen but like that cost you're paying is is based on the fact that you're exerting your willpower. Like that's the price you pay to feel like you're in control and you have freedom and you can do what you want. The price you pay is people are going to mock you or people are going to police you and they can have their own opinions. Um, but you know, that's just the way it has to be. Like if you're a weaker person, you can take the easy road where nobody's ever going to give you like any shit about the choices you make. And that's fine. But But, you know, I don't know that you'd be very happy living like that long term.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. You've got to live authentically to be happy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Also, just get away from those people. Like, if you're around a bunch of toxic people making fun of you for, like, eating a salad, get new friends. Like, what the fuck is that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. You need friends that don't want you to just be, like, a carbon copy of everybody else.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Who wants that? Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I mean, I think, you know, we need to go back to—we had the punk rock documentary a while back. We need to go back to, like, independence and— Nonconformity. Nonconformity.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, do what you want to do. Don't do what people tell you to like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I think that's a really important thing to do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Whatever the hell you want.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

We're very homogenized in modern American culture right now, it seems like.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Which is sad. I like personality. Yeah. I like people who are different.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And so the next point I wanted to bring up is that a lot of the health issues and the things you're, you know, putting at stake here are male-centric in general when it comes to, like, your diet, specifically. Exactly. Some of the more male-focused health concerns are things like cardiovascular disease. It's the number one killer of men in the U.S. Obviously, this also kills women. But men develop cardiovascular disease on average seven to ten years earlier than women do. That's interesting. And about one in four men die of cardiovascular disease. So, meat-heavy dietary patterns are very strongly associated with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes across, you know, many, many major studies. There was a study from EPIC-Oxford that found 22% lower heart disease risk in vegetarians versus meat eaters.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Wow, that's a big difference.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. You know, a lot of that comes from meat eaters mostly eat meat that's high in saturated fat and things like that. So there are arguments that like maybe if you just eat lean meats or whatever, but that's just, that's not what most people eat. So that's not really even the conversation. Also, erectile dysfunction, largely a vascular disease. The same dysfunctions that drive heart disease also impair blood flow to the parts you care about.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

The penile blood flow?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

The penile blood flow. So, in a study, men that were 60 to 69 years old with the highest adherence to a healthy plant-based diet had an 18% lower risk of erectile dysfunction versus the lowest adherence group.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Wow. Pretty big difference. This is funny because there's that part in Game Changers where they're like measuring erections and... penis circumferences and stuff while they're sleeping that was like the first piece of vegan propaganda i sent you when we started dating

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I've got to be honest early on it was one of the more effective ones weren't.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

You like in the car with your friend yeah and you're like playing it

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah and.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

They're like what the hell are you watching yes

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah yeah i don't think he's vegan yet but i gotta keep working on it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah just keep selling the penis thing um yeah so if you're a girl dating a non-vegan guy i would say that's the clip to send them

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah especially if you know they're going through some stuff yeah um also the manly diet is kind of putting men in the cardiac unit at 55 years old putting them on erectile dysfunction medications 10 years earlier than that um and the vegan and even mediterranean style diets show up consistently on like better endothelial function better blood vessel function um in the studies and stuff including you know Well, again, that part, you really care about getting the blood flow, too. But you won't ask your doctor about it if something goes wrong. So, if you don't want to go to the doctor for that, eat more plants. See how that goes.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Plus, don't you want to be able to get it up whenever you want? Yeah. I think you have to, like, take it. I mean, I've never taken it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

What are you talking about? The medicine?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

The medicine. Don't you have to, like, take it in advance of activities?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I guess, yeah. That's what they say on TV. Yeah. You have to pre-plan.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, oh, and if it stays erect for more than six hours, you need to go to, like, the ER. something which would be crazy

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah that'd be pretty crazy yeah you're talking about these health things we're talking about masculinity so if provider and protector are part of how you think about masculinity the most basic version of that is staying alive long enough to be able to do it yeah so the the manly diet that's being sold to you by all the guys who are trying to sell you something is actively making sure you don't stay alive as long as you possibly could yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And i And to just pounce on what you're saying about Protector... Is like animals are innocent and they can't speak up for themselves. So if you're like this big manly protector, like why aren't you using your voice to like protect the animals?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, definitely. Also, if you're interested in more ways, plants can help you not die. Dr. Greger wrote the book How Not to Die. That's just exactly about this. And it's a great book. Yeah, go check that out. So now we wanted to shift into talking a little bit about kind of gender norms in general around veganism and this whole masculinity thing. So some statistics here, 65 to 80% of vegans are women.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

What? Go women.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. Which I think is a big part of why like veganism is seen as a woman thing because it's mostly women, kind of like the cigarettes were from Marlboro. A U.S. study. So that was globally. A U.S. study found that 75% of U.S. vegans are women.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I feel like that tracks based on my own personal experiences of like I really haven't met like a guy in the wild that's like, oh, yeah, I'm vegan or like I limit my plant foods or whatever.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I met, I think one, he was definitely vegetarian, maybe vegan in the wild.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Really? Yeah. No, no, not only the thing you got, I have met a few vegetarian men. They're usually Indian.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. I probably know.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Which is, you know, like more a common diet in India. But like, I'm thinking like American men that are like vegan for the animals. I have like not really met any of those in the wild.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. The age range is typically 18 to 34 for a vegan. That's the main range there.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That makes sense. because like you're moved out like you're able to like start cooking yeah also i feel like um just like veganism in general i think is more appealing to a younger generation because it kind of goes against the mainstream and

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Then a bonus fact 73 percent of vegans are apparently atheist or agnostic.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I thought this one was really interesting but i kind of feel like it makes sense because veganism goes against mainstream culture yeah right like and i kind of feel like Going against mainstream culture in any way the first time is kind of hard. Sure. You know, because, like, you're going to catch flack and, like, you're not fitting into that, like, perfectly curated box that society wants to put you in. Yeah. Right? So, but, like, once you step out of that box, I feel like you're more likely to, like, look for not necessarily other ways to become not, like, normal. But like you're more open to just ideas in general and you're more willing to do like what feels good for you or like think on your own.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I mean, once you take one leg out from under the table, it gets pretty wobbly. Yeah. So. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I will say it's funny because the average vegan in these statistics is me. Yeah. That's true. I think I also read something about it is like way less likely that you would be a vegan if you live in rural areas versus like urban or suburban areas. Yeah. Which I think also makes sense just like not just from like a grocery store perspective, but also like being around different people and like having more diversity that you're exposed to and hearing different ideas.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I think a big part of it, just personally, because, you know, I grew up in a rural area, and I think it's probably hard to feel strongly against the farming industry when you're constantly interacting with farmers.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, that's true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So there's a little bit of that.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I also read that it was, like, majority liberal left-leaning, and then also there's a higher percentage that are, like, college graduates.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So just, like, some more random statistics. Yeah. On the average vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Pretty much all the things that, like, expose you to more ideas than your tiny circle. Yeah. Well, make you more likely to be a little more counterculture. Yeah. Makes sense. There's also, so we were talking gender norms, hunting specifically, since that kind of relates to food. 70% of the children that are taken hunting are males, which makes sense. Adult hunters are typically like 89% male. It's a highly male-dominated thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I also feel like hunting at a young age kind of desensitizes children to like animal suffering and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And then, like, oftentimes, like, hunting or fishing is seen as, like, a father-son bonding activity. And so, like, I think a lot of times, like, even if a child would have hesitations on wanting to participate, they're kind of going to go along with whatever their parent wants them to do to make them happy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I don't know. Did your parents take you anywhere as a kid?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

My grandfather took me fishing a lot, and it was, like, a bonding thing. I went fishing with my dad a few times, like, in the family. Like, we all kind of went a few times. But it was like a thing I used to do with my grandfather on his boat quite a bit.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Do you remember ever as a kid thinking like... I don't want to do this? Like, when you first started going, do you, like, remember having that feeling at all?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Not because of the fish or anything. It was, like, wow, I'm just, like, on a boat for a while. It took me a while to, like, come around to it. But then it was just, like, I got to hang out with my grandpa. But, yeah, no, I never really had those thoughts. But, like, you know, I grew up and my grandpa had, like, heads on the wall from deer and stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, you're kind of already desensitized.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, I mean.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I remember like my dad used to take me fishing and I like really vehemently remember having a big hang up around like the worms like killing worms like I really like did not want to do that and I also was like completely against us like taking fish home yeah like I just remember like kind of like throwing a fit about that kind of stuff but but also like when you know how it rains and like the worms all come out to play on the concrete and then like the sun comes out and they all like they die yeah yeah I used to have like mass funerals for worms when i was like four or five years old like i'd have like i'd like dig a hole and like bury them in mass and do a ceremony so like that checks out yeah it's kind of like i kind of feel like you know if you're a parent your kid's doing that maybe don't take them fishing i feel like

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

You're like a real life snow white so we talked a little bit earlier about the hunter gatherer situation and how most of the food was gathered we're talking back in those days the estimates are like 50 to 80 percent of the total diet was comprised of plant foods um and so we're talking about the hunter gathering thing but some of the more interesting data indicates that women actually did hunt pretty.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Often yeah which

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I mean it kind of makes sense because you know there are a lot of things about hunting that doesn't necessarily need a man and also like, Whoever is able-bodied in a starving village is going to find food one way or the other.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And like what I was reading is a lot of the women were responsible specifically for like, like fishing, hunting, that kind of thing. Sure, yeah. So, yeah, I just think it's interesting that some, a lot of this kind of comes back to like, oh, men are manly because like we hunted back in the cavemen days. Yeah. But, like, now it's kind of, like, coming to light that most of the food that they were eating wasn't even, A, it wasn't even meat. And then, like, B, women were also hunting. So, like, the whole crux of this being, like, the argument we're resting masculinity on is kind of weird.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Also, like, there are so many arguments in fitness and nutrition that go back to, like, ancestral stuff or caveman stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, or evolution. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And for me, it's like, why do we care how they used to do it in the cave? Like, it's interesting historically, obviously, but why would we try to recreate the way they did that then in our modern life? Like, we have totally different options. Like, they were doing that because it was their only choice to survive.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, food scarcity.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

We don't have to do that stuff anymore, luckily. I mean, obviously, that's great. But so why would we try to, like, live the way they lived? Like, also, they didn't live very long. Yeah, that's true. Most of the time, like, we're like, oh, they eat meat. Even if they eat meat all the time, like, the life expectancy was, like, 30 years old. They didn't even live long enough to run into cardiovascular disease and things like that. It was a non-issue. Yeah. So, I mean, there's just, there's a lot of reasons why. Like, I think it's really interesting historically. Historically, it's nice to, like, you know, think about how we came up as a species and stuff, but I don't know why you would say, I should do this today because humans did this thousands of years ago.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, I also think it's weird because... Basically, I was looking at statistics. Most people don't even hunt anymore. So, like, most of the people that you're hearing these arguments from, they're like, oh, you know, we hunted and meat is manly and meat is what humans need to eat. It's like, you're not even hunting. You're going to the grocery store or going to Burger King.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. And hunting, I just, you know, I grew up around a lot of hunters. So, I'll keep it pretty simple. But, like, hunting now is not the same as hunting with a spear thousands of years ago.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Yeah. Like, you're not that manly. Like, the precision of hunting stuff nowadays, it's just, like, not that impressive, to be honest.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, and then some of the other things that, like, boys grew up with instead of girls, like BB guns versus Barbies. Yeah. Again, the guns, the hunting, the masculinity.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Or, like, girls get a bunch of stuffed animals that are, like, cutesy and, like, animal-focused, and then boys are, like, I'm playing with army guys and, like, action figure heroes. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Other girls get the, like, the kitchen toys. Yeah, yeah. And I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that. Like, we've got family members we've gotten that kind of stuff for. Right. It's just interesting how, like, that is split from such a young age.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

My dad actually, he used to be a carpenter, and he actually, like, made me my own little, like, mini kitchen out of wood and stuff. So, like, that was, like, one of my toys that I had growing up that my dad made me. Yeah. But, yeah, my brother didn't get one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, we have a niece we got a kitchen set thing for. She loves it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

But she said she liked it. that stuff so like you know what i mean exactly yeah i probably wouldn't go out of my way to like gender norm gifts unless like they asked yeah exactly yeah so

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Girls are kind of taught early in society that they should nurture and care for things and then people give them shit when they're adults because they care about.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Things yeah i know it's like oh here's this baby doll it looks just like a real baby yeah make sure it stays alive you need to feed it and change its diaper and all this stuff and you're like two three years old yeah doing this and like learning how to care for things or like, um, yeah. Or like you just have like stuffed animals that are like, so animal like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And you're learning how to love and care for those things. And then it's like, well, why do you care for things that's so girly?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And then a lot of those girly things are later used as like an insult towards men or boys. So it's basically you're just kind of mocking women by telling men they do things like girls.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Like, you know, boys don't paint their nails. Boys don't wear pink.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

The most annoying ones to me are like you throw like a girl or like you run like a girl.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

You're a little biased here since you threw a ball in high school for a sport.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yes, it has always pissed me off because it's just like, and I will say the one that pisses me off the most is like a dad of that has both gendered children. Yeah. And they're like telling their son within listening distance of their daughter that he throws like a girl.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Like that's not as insulting as you think towards your son. You're telling girls that girls aren't strong, that they can't be athletic. Right. You know, like, you're insulting girls and women, not really boys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

It's just basically implying that, like, the worst thing you can do as a boy or the worst thing that you can do in general is to be a girl. Yeah. You know, which is, like, I don't know, pretty fucked up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

It is fucked up.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Did you ever see that Dove ad?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I've heard of it, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Okay, so basically there's this Dove ad, right? And it has... basically like a handful of adult women and then a handful of like young girls and they like take each woman in and they're like show me how to throw like a girl and then they demonstrate how to throw like a girl and they're like show me how to run like a girl and then they demonstrate how to run like a girl but what's interesting is the adult women yeah are all like even though maybe they've played sports growing up they like over exaggerate like this really quote-unquote girly way to run where they're like uncoordinated or yeah uncoordinated like silly like flapping their hands or like they do the throw and it's like really like lame and it's like what is that you know but then they ask the little girls who haven't like they haven't heard all these things yet right so when they're told to throw like a girl they throw like as hard as they can right yeah and when they're told to run like a girl they run as fast as they can and then basically the punchline is like when did we learn as women that like being a girl is stupid or something you know but like this is when like when you're a kid it's really sad yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

It's interesting also you know this also extends to compassion like compassion is seen as very not masculine yeah you can't be compassionate about things god forbid this one's interesting because you would think compassion is just like a basic thing that all humans would have but it definitely seems like compassion to seem like a feminine.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Trait yeah or like empathy yeah like men can't have empathy right

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And so that extends to stuff like women shouldn't be bosses or presidents or whatever because they're not tough enough to do what needs to be done or they're too emotional.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I've definitely heard this shit in the workplace yeah of just like questioning female bosses for like being too nice or like not being tough enough to like like manage a project or run a turnaround like you can't have a woman do that they'll get too emotional and they won't they won't be able to fire someone they won't be able to do what needs to be done right and it's not said in a kind way it's said is like you're not enough right you know yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

We need a man.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah we need a man to do this yeah women are too soft yeah And then, like, I don't know, you know, I haven't eaten meat since I was 12, so I've had these conversations a lot. But I've had a lot of conversations with people when I tell them I don't eat meat. Like, I'm not going out of my way to say this, but, like, maybe at a lunch or something. Yeah. And they're just like, oh, you're so soft-hearted or, like, you're such a little tree hugger. And it's said in, like, such a condescending way that it's like, you know, they say it like a compliment. But it's like a veiled, like, diss, you know? Yeah, yeah. Because, like, the guys that have said this to me, if I said the same thing to them, if I was like, oh, Paul, you're so kind-hearted, he'd be pissed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Oh, the guys at the refinery don't like being called soft-hearted?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

No.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Surprising.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So it's, like, it's actually, like, not a compliment if you yourself wouldn't want to be called it, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think any men who empathize with anything or show compassion are seen to be feminine.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Or even, like, gay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Like, it's crazy. Yeah. Because I just see those as like, you're a good person.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

You know how to think about other people's feelings and you care about others. Right. That's just, that should just be the basic requirement of a good human. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. So like, you know, hold up all these stereotypes and it doesn't help men out, but it also hurts women because telling them that you're telling them that being feminine is like the worst thing you can be. And we're being, we're harming men by, who are compassionate by telling them that it's wrong and stupid. Yeah. And so it's kind of hurt society as a whole because you're holding up these gender norms. You got half the population who feels like they're not allowed to care about anything. Yeah. And the other half of the population who's, you know, worried they're going to get, you know, judged or picked on if they care about something. Yeah. So who's left to care about things?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, no, it's just the patriarchy and upholding this kind of stuff is just like not good for anybody. It doesn't help anybody.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. You were telling me about a litmus test they're doing online where you can gauge a guy's potential or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Based off of whether or not he will eat tofu.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yes. Okay. This has been going pretty viral on TikTok. I've seen like a lot of videos around this. And I think it's really similar to the one they were using before this, which is like, Like, ask a guy how he feels about Taylor Swift because she's like the biggest female pop artist. And like oftentimes like red flag guys will just be like, oh, she only sings about breakups and and then discredit her worth as a person. So this is like kind of similar. Yeah. So it's basically like ask a guy if he'll eat tofu. And like his response to that kind of tells you everything. If it's if it's like a strong no, you're like, oh, toxic masculinity.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Pass. This makes complete sense to me based off of being around guys my whole life.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I mean, I just remember when I brought up tofu to you, you had like no judgment on it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

You're like, yeah, it's food. So, of course, I'll try that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I mean, I like I tried it once and it wasn't good. So my only take was really like, I don't think I like that, but I'll try it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Like, but then you try it again and again, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. But it was never like, oh, I can't eat that. That's like girly, stupid food, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And there are definitely guys who feel that way. Like, you know, I've had some conversations with people since gone vegan and you bring up tofu and it's like, I don't know, man. It's like I said, I'm chopping off my dick or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I can't eat that. I have a penis. Right. Yeah. It's interesting. And I think like, okay, so I think, you know, the main thing with this tofu is... like situation is that it kind of like shows you if you're like flexible or if you are like have fragile masculinity yeah you know because like a guy that's willing to eat tofu kind of proves that they aren't controlled by how society views them and by how other men view them they just kind of like do what they want yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Also helpful to see you're like open to new experiences open to different cultures kind of shows empathy and interest and also shows like how like how far you are outside of i guess like an echo chamber yeah if you're willing to try a bunch of different things you're probably not in some weird like he-man woman hating club or something like.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That that's a great point yeah i think the other one that i i kind of think is interesting going through life as someone who doesn't eat animals is like i think it really goes to show like how respectful you are and open you are to like other people's opinions and lifestyles um because like i've had a lot, and I mean a lot of people, including my dad, make jokes about, like, hiding meat in my food.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Which is, like, I think... It's really shitty in a way. And I feel like if you're making that joke, it kind of shows that you're unwilling to have empathy for someone who doesn't eat meat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

You know what I mean? Because it's like, that's a hard moral boundary for me. Like, I don't eat animals for ethical reasons. So just be like, just having someone that's like respectful and understanding of like my personal belief system. Yeah. I think is, I think is a manly thing. And it's also being a good person.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, definitely. So there was an interesting study about a lot of this stuff, actually, back in 2012. It was called Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, and it was like vegetable quiche was in parentheses. So real men don't eat vegetable quiche. And it was all about, like, men versus women and thinking about different foods and eating animals and stuff like that. So there are a couple of interesting insights from there, and I'll link the study in the show notes. But one of the big takeaways was that men and women really approach the idea of eating animals totally differently. So women were more willing to believe that animals did suffer, but they kind of disassociate from it and they prefer not to think about it. And that's kind of how they deal with eating the meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I thought that was pretty interesting. And I think if you're someone who's interacting with people that aren't yet vegan, pre-vegans, if you will, like this is an interesting point because it kind of can inform how you might interact with those people or like things that you might say to get them to flip the switch kind of thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I also, as a woman in society that hates us, I think this kind of makes sense to me because like, um, you know, like just women medicine, like medicine around women is health and healthcare around women is, is very, very bad, particularly in the U S I don't live anywhere else, so I can't speak for that. Yeah. Um, but it's like. I'll just give an example of, like, you're having really bad periods, right? Like, you're having, like, debilitating pain. Like, you can't get up five days of the month. And, like, it's horrible. And then you'll just have a doctor be like, yeah, I don't really believe you. But here's some Midol. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And, like, they don't want to go any further and figure out, like, what's wrong with you and stuff. And so I feel like, as a woman, like, it's very easy for me to recognize that, like, animals are suffering.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And even if we're not willing to acknowledge that as a society, because like as a society, we also don't acknowledge that like women suffer in like health care, like health care is very behind. So like that kind of made that part made sense to me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And now men, on the other hand, when they were talking about like how they thought about eating meat, they were more likely to really lean into like pro meat idealism. Like they would basically deny that animals suffered at all. They were more willing to believe that animals were just like beneath humans. Yeah. They were fated to be eaten by humans. Like, that's just how it's supposed to be. They're even more likely to provide religious and health justifications. Yeah. Like, the women didn't really get into that.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I actually think that makes so much sense, especially when we think back to the statistic about, like, 70-ish percent of vegans being, like, atheist, agnostic, or, like, they just don't have religious opinions. Yeah. Because I see the religious opinion around eating meat a lot. Oh, yeah. On social media. Like, that seems to be one of the things people are saying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Well, there are a lot of religions where it's like they have ceremonies and rituals and, like, really strong practices around eating meat specifically.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So I thought that one was kind of interesting because, like, if you're not religious, obviously, you're not going to have those thoughts. But I also thought it was kind of interesting, the hierarchy piece, I found kind of interesting as a woman. Because, like, a lot of society, at least in the U.S., revolves around the idea that women are, like, somehow beneath men.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I don't think that's specific to the U.S.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, there probably isn't, but, like, I feel awkward speaking about other countries I haven't personally experienced.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

That's fair.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

But, like. You know, it's like male opinions matter more and men should automatically be in positions of power over women, like whether in the workplace or like at home. Here's a great example. Before you had officially moved in and I owned our house all by myself. My name is the only one on the deed. I bought our house. This motherfucking man comes up to the house trying to sell some bullshit and was like, who's the king of the castle?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

King of the castle.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Oh, man, that really pissed me off. But like, that's true. Just like in general, like if you had like when I was like living alone, like I'd have like like an electrician or something come over and it's like, well, where's your husband? Can I speak to him? Or like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, well, we've had, you know, issues with our gas and stuff and the gas guys will come out and they basically you're a fucking refinery engineer and they'll barely even talk to you and they want to tell me a bunch of stuff I don't understand.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I know. And like, I'll try talking to them and they won't even make eye contact with me. they're like locked in talking to you yeah but like that's just like how it is in society like if you're a woman like you get talked down to and like you know like men are just automatically seen as like smarter more capable stronger whatever so like this doesn't surprise me at all that men also think they're above animals yeah you know yeah that makes total sense to me yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So you know that's a lot of pretty depressing information so uh what can we do the study actually did have some kind of, I guess, suggested approaches to trying to get men to come around to eating less meat, more plants. One of them was that men are more likely to listen to women they're close to, like a significant other or a parent. So it recommended enlisting women as change agents to help men. And I think this is probably how most of the men that are vegan ended up there, to be honest. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

It's like they had a girlfriend or a wife or a partner, maybe their mom raise them in a more like vegan vegetarian kind of way.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And it has to be somebody who already has influence on them.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yes. Basically it was saying like obviously like men just in general aren't going to listen to like a random woman

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Like definitely not about this right especially.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Like if you don't even pay attention to the podcast like the main thing is like men listen to other men about what men should do yeah so like if you're just a random woman you're not like super super close with this man they're not going to listen to you so good luck with

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

That yeah definitely and um you can also kind of start trying to deprogram some of the the gender norm stuff in general um like call call out like the insults and the toxicity and stuff and you know kind of a lot of what i'm trying to do yeah yeah podcast specifically but you know uh just getting people out of that zone where you know they're they're making these jokes they don't even really know why they're making the jokes but they're just making other people feel bad because they feel like that's what they're supposed to do like you see a guy eating a salad and you're like oh i'm supposed to make fun of that guy because i'm a man and like we're men and we make fun of We can just get away from that. That would help everybody out.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I think even if you're not vegan or vegetarian or ever planning on doing those things, you can be a good supportive man and ally to other men who are by just simply not laughing at the joke.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right? Just don't laugh at the joke. I mean, I just... I, you know, I'm in my spiteful, vengeful vegan era, but like back when I was like, um, a floor mat vegetarian, like I would just like placate people by being like, ha ha, you know, like act like I haven't heard the same stupid ass joke 50 times. And now I just don't. I don't laugh at it. I don't like I'm just like, wow, I haven't heard that one before. But like also, I think something really interesting that I read that I think works pretty well, especially around sexist jokes or like just jokes that are like picking on minorities, that kind of thing. um like punch down jokes basically is like when they're said you make the person explain why it's funny yeah and you just like stand on business and you're like no tell me why do you think that's funny and i think it takes a lot of power out of the jokes and makes them feel kind of silly and they're probably not going to say it as much anymore yeah 100 nobody wants to explain why they were being a dickhead yeah why their dick bag joke is a dick bag joke yeah I don't know. What do you think about that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

No, I 100% agree. Like, I think I think a lot of people just have like an instinctual reaction to like to make the joke or make the punch down or whatever. And I think if you call them out on that, then next time that comes up, their brain will be like, oh, well, last time that didn't go so well. Then you really not only that, but you think about like, OK, why did I why did I even feel that way? Right. I don't feel that way. So why did I say that?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And then you start backing out of like, why am I saying a bunch of shit I don't actually believe?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right. And I think a lot of it comes back to like class clown energy. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm just like here to entertain and like I'm making jokes I've heard before. And like, you know, I've seen other people laugh when this other guy made this joke. So I'm going to make this joke.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

But yeah, I think once you start like calling it out, it's like, oh, well, I don't want to make jokes that no one's going to laugh at. Now I'm in an uncomfortable conversation.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right, exactly. Yeah, so when somebody says you can't build muscle or be healthy on a vegan diet, you can counter that, help deprogram that. That's basically what we do all day, every day at this point. Help your bros get out of that toxic masculinity cycle. It's like a cult.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And there's a lot of more subtle ways, like just stuff you grew up with. But then there are also guys who are like in it. They're deep in it. They're like in the manosphere, red pill, whatever the hell is going on. They're signed up in some private group chat with a bunch of other guys who can't figure out what they want in life and things like that. Also, you have a pretty good strategy. You just force guys to eat tofu and pie.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I make sure they don't have soy allergies. And then when there's like a work potluck, I bring tofu pie. And nobody knows there's tofu in it. And then when they're like complimenting me and they're like, man, this is like a really good pie. I'm like, you just ate tofu.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And then they have to immediately go become a eunuch because they are worthless to the world.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yes. And they have to go vomit up their tofu pie.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

That's a real tragedy. Yeah. All right. So that's pretty much it for the main topic. Hopefully we said some things that made sense there.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. If you have any opinions, we'd love to hear them because like, obviously, we probably didn't cover everything.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

I have a feeling there are probably going to be opinions. I don't know if we'll hear them, but I guarantee there will be opinions.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I want to hear them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about our myth of the week. Myth of the week this week is that you don't need to care about complete proteins at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Boy, so I've been getting this comment on a lot of my videos and interactions with people. I know you've been arguing about it on Reddit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Every day, pretty much.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

But it's like, for some reason, and I do know the reason, right? But like, there's a certain part of the vegan community that is like insistent on complete proteins as like just an idea is a myth. Yeah. And I think it's because.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Like they don't exist.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Like they don't exist. Like the concept doesn't exist. Yeah. Like all proteins are equal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Complete protein, incomplete protein, that's bullshit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And I kind of feel like this comes from just, like, not wanting to have those conversations with omnivores that are like, well, I want to eat meat because it's a complete protein. And so, like, it's easier to just say, oh, that's a bunch of bullshit. Right. That doesn't exist than to, like, have to provide data and have, like, longer conversations. Yeah. You know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

It's a big overcorrection. You know, we have the one side that's like, vegan's protein is terrible because it's not complete protein. Yeah. So then we have like people on the vegan side who swing all the way back and they're like, well, complete proteins are a hoax. So it doesn't matter. Yeah. It's like, that's also not right. We need to land on like the facts here.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And I'm getting the same thing of like, um, you actually, nobody can be protein deficient. Like that's impossible, which is also, you know, not true. Like it might be like an unlikely scenario, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Sure. Yeah. There's obviously some truth to it or there wouldn't be a stigma around it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So like, let's get into why that's a myth.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So the reality is, as far as complete proteins go, a lot of people can basically largely ignore that. Like, if you're just, if you're not really losing weight, if you don't really go to the gym, you're just eating food.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, in a maintenance or a surplus.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, you can probably not even think about this. And that's not because they don't exist. It's because you're going to get the complete proteins you need anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, with like a few caveats, though, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, so there are several specific groups that should pay attention. And the problem is, like, just this blanket dismissal of they don't matter at all really sets them up for failure. So not everybody, and, you know, a lot of this argument is I think some people shortcut. They know some things about protein. And so they say, like, okay, I know some things about protein, and you don't need to worry about complete proteins. Yeah. So the problem is like not everybody has a level of nutritional knowledge to where they can really apply that or navigate what they need to do with their diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Especially if you're a new vegan and you've been living off of like your standard like meat and dairy protein sources most of your life. Like there is a learning curve. You do need to learn some stuff nutritionally to be successful.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And if you know nothing nutritionally and you start being a vegan, you're like, okay, food is food. I'll eat food. I'm not hungry. Like I'm not losing weight. I'm good. You're just, like, eating your favorite junk foods over and over, whatever. Maybe you're missing a bunch of nutrients. Maybe you're not getting any protein, but you don't know any better. You just don't know at that point.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

I'll tell you what. If I... So now, when I was vegetarian, I didn't really eat, like, tofu. I just, like, rarely would eat tofu. Yeah. A lot of my protein came from, like, Greek yogurt, eggs, whatever.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

If I were to just simply pluck those from my diet... I would have been protein deficient. I can guarantee you that because, like, I was not making up that protein any other way. Like, if I had just, like, pulled out the foods I couldn't eat and not replaced them with different foods, I would have been protein deficient.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Because, I mean, there's, like, very little protein than some of the other stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. I mean, I was just, like, eating bread, you know? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And so, definitionally, complete protein basically means, so there are nine essential amino acids. We've covered this in some of the earlier episodes. Amino acids are what make up protein. The nine being essential means that your body can't make them. You have to get them from food. So a complete protein is when you have those nine in the same or more of kind of a ratio to each other as human muscle, effectively. So there are some things like seitan that has like eight of the nine are pretty much above the threshold. But then you have lysine, which is pretty low. So eight of the nine are fine. Lysine is pretty low. That makes seitan not a complete protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Unless you have tofu in it, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Well, yeah. I'm just saying. But yeah, just like the most basic seitan. Yeah, wheat, actually. Just generally wheat is in this situation. So wheat is low on lysine. So wheat on its own is not a complete protein. That doesn't mean that wheat is worthless because it still has plenty of all the other eight essential amino acids. So really, you would just have to make sure that you had some lysine and some of your other food throughout the day to make sure you were getting enough lysine.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And I think a lot of where this myth is coming from is that people used to say you have to have, like, basically you have to pair proteins at every meal and get like a complete protein profile at every meal you're eating. And that has been debunked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, for most people, I will say if you're like really trying to build muscle, you're a bodybuilder, you're an athlete or something like that, then you're probably going to care about something called the leucine trigger, leucine threshold, which means you want to get two and a half to three grams of leucine in every meal a few times a day to trigger muscle protein synthesis, which is where you grow muscle. In those situations, it is probably optimal for... a couple times a day to make sure you have all the amino acids like a complete protein up to like as a vegan probably like 40 grams at a time so you're getting two to three grams of leucine and you're getting the other amino acids that help build the muscle along with it other than that like specific scenario where you really care about optimizing yeah you don't really need to combine in every meal because so you have wheat for breakfast yeah and then you have something else for lunch like the lysine that you have in lunch is going to get like combined with the, protein that didn't really have much lysine that you had for breakfast. And then your muscle is going to be able to use all nine of those together to do some of what it needs throughout the day. Right. It's just not going to be quite as much muscle. And we're talking about like very little every day, right? But not quite as much muscle as if you had had complete protein for breakfast, complete protein for lunch, complete protein for dinner. But you're not going to run into like an actual protein deficiency. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

This is more for like optimizing. Right. But you still do need to have all of those like daily.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you do need them all. That's why they're called essential. Anytime you see something in a nutrition called essential, that means your body can't make it. You must get it through food to not run into an actual medical issue.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

But like this is where. I think it kind of drives me insane, right? Because, like, just hand-waving away the, like, oh, well, then it doesn't matter anymore. I think it really leaves out a group of people that, like, maybe their natural eating habits would not have them have all of them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

You know what I mean? Like, I'm thinking about someone who's in a deficit, who's already, like, probably having trouble getting just the protein in general.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

That they need every day with the limited calories, like that person may have issues getting like a complete protein in the quantity they need.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Especially if you're in a pretty big deficit, like you found some of the new GLP-1 drugs. Those will have people in a pretty big deficit and you're probably going to want to concentrate on protein pretty hard.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. Or like if in general you're just not eating much protein anyways, like you're just kind of like on the lower end of like what you really need to eat to not go protein deficient.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, if you're a vegan kind of flirting around the RDA and you're only eating wheat a lot, you might run into some issues potentially. So just try to be a little more well-rounded.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And then I will say like there... I am one of these people, someone who tends to eat the same things over and over again. And I know this is also like true in the like neuro atypical group of people. Like, you know, you might have like some safe foods that like, this is all I want to eat. And I, this is all I want to eat for a month. Right. And I get like that. Like if I didn't have a food blog, I'd be serving you those same three things. Yeah. For meals every day, because that's just like how I am. Like I just like get in like a food thing where it's like, I just only want to eat this, this and this. but like if you're doing that and you're not and soy is not one of those things like you could definitely get in a situation where you're like in a bad way right

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah that's definitely true um also athletes who hire protein targets so it's kind of interesting you're in a situation where you have a relatively high protein target in general you're also kind of circling back around till you probably don't have to care about this because you're probably getting enough to create what's called a muscle full effect basically so a couple times a day and muscle gets all the amino acids it needs for that session of building muscle. Yeah. Whatever. Kind of technical. But basically, if you're getting enough total protein a day, like you have a high target, you're back to not really having to micromanage the complete proteins because you're just getting it incidentally.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And anybody who really heavily relies on a single protein source, and you actually see this a lot with people who have allergies. Like if somebody has a soy allergy and like a nut allergy or something like that, there are a lot of people we see like in Threads conversations and Reddit and talking to them directly and stuff where they have a lot of allergies. and for whatever reason, that means they had to eat a lot of seitan to get their protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, or like pea protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. And so seitan, again, being wheat, pea protein, being pea, neither of those are complete proteins on their own. So if you're getting like 60 to 70% of your protein every day from a single incomplete protein source, you know, you're not really getting as much as you think you are technically. So you might want to make sure that there's something in your diet. Like if you're somebody who eats a lot of seitan every day, find a source of lysine in your diet that you can tolerate that you can have and I would just make sure you're also eating that every day yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And I think, um, so I had a back and forth with someone the other day and they were, and I was basically bringing up like, yeah, some people will eat like the same thing every day. Yeah. You know, and they were like, well, no reasonable person would do this. And it's, and it's like, yeah, you don't have to be unreasonable to have a favorite food or to like not have enough nutrition knowledge to get into this situation, which is why we should stop spreading misinformation and start just providing facts that people can actually live based on.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And people with, you know, who really want to be vegan, who have like the allergies or they have IBD or some kind of other GI thing, like they can end up in like situations where they can only tolerate a few foods. So they're eating basically the same, maybe five to 10 foods every day. Yeah. So they need to make sure that those five to 10 foods cover everything.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right. I just think, you know, in general, we don't have to trick people into being vegan by leaving out crucial and valuable information.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Because the data is on our side, like there are ways to handle this across the board. You know, I think we as a group need to stop spreading misinformation that could be potentially harmful to somebody that doesn't understand this stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. You don't have to resort to, like, dismissing things or saying things aren't important because, like, the reality of things and how things are scientifically, like, all the things still point to veganism as, like, the better choice.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

You can still say, okay, yeah, complete proteins are important. And, yeah, vegan protein sources are slightly lower quality than animal sources. you can still get everything you need using vegan protein sources and you can still be you know an elite level athlete with vegan protein sources so like that's not really a thing we need to hand wave away we just say yeah that's a thing some people might need to deal with it here's how you deal with it boom it's done yeah exactly.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Instead of saying like complete protein sources and incomplete protein sources aren't a thing

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah give.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Useful information on like here's how you can get those on a vegan diet right it's actually not that hard right you know like and instead of saying like nobody can be protein deficient on a vegan diet or otherwise say it's actually you know really easy to get your protein on a vegan diet yeah because we have all that data we have all that information everything is backed you don't need to like make shit

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Up and that makes people feel a lot better when they're trying to transition like when i was starting to look into you know the details of what i would maybe need or be missing when i went vegan and, You know, if I had read initially that it's like, oh, yeah, you don't have to care about protein. I'd be like, that doesn't fucking sound right. Right. I'm a little hesitant now.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And if you Google it, you're going to have like thousands of articles saying it's a real thing. So you look like a delusional crackpot saying that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

But on the flip side, when I come across like when I came across the information, it was like, OK, yeah, here's how complete proteins work. Here's how vegans might need to adjust their protein intake to adjust for not eating animal foods. I was like, OK, well, this is easy. And it makes sense. So this is fine. I'm fine.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. And you felt a lot like more sure in your decision to try it. Like you thought, okay, I'm not going to get sick.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

See, that's the thing I don't like is like when we wave off these concerns and we're just like, yeah, don't worry about that. And don't worry about that. Don't look over here. It's like, that doesn't make anyone feel better. Yeah. That makes me feel like you're lying to me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Well, imagine if you were like in an electronic store and you were trying to buy a TV and you're like, hey, this button on the remote control doesn't work. The sales guy is just like, yeah, don't worry about that.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. You don't need that button. And you're like, I don't even know what the button's for. Are you sure? Why is it on this remote? Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

So compare that to he's like, oh, yeah, that button is a programmable button. It doesn't do anything until you program it to do something. But when you program it, it can do whatever you want. Yeah. Which one of those approaches is going to make you feel better about buying this TV?

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Exactly. Yeah. Yes. Give me all the information.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

We like we as a group of vegans, we need to stop pushing misinformation. It is literally just as bad is what the omnivores are doing to counter vegan arguments. Like, it's just, I don't want to say unethical, but it's a little smarmy, man.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

It's a little smarmy, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

You could put someone in a dangerous spot by telling them things don't matter that do actually matter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, definitely if you're talking, like, because you don't know what people's dietary situation is. So, like, there have been people where I tried to give, you know, some advice, and they're like, oh, that makes sense, but I actually got this and this and this and this, and I can't do that and that and that. Right. So, I'm like, okay, well, if you would have followed that first advice, like, that wouldn't have gone very well. So, like, I'm glad this is a conversation.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it's just and I think um Anyone who is throwing out stuff like this saying like, oh, complete proteins don't matter. And like, you don't have to worry about protein on any diet. Like in the West, you can't be protein deficient. Think about like who is reading your comments, too, because like especially if you have a vegan account and like you have maybe some followers or like you post about vegan content. You might have like vegan curious people who are reading your comment and like taking what you're saying at face value. And they might have situations in which like those things do apply to them. And you might be putting them in a dangerous spot health-wise.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Right. Absolutely.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

So stop lying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

Yeah. So, I mean, there are some people who need to care about complete proteins. Some people who probably don't need to think about it as much. Just, you know, determining which one of those people you are is really all you need to do.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

And go from there. All right. Well, I think that's all we have for this week. Appreciate everybody listening. Hopefully this wasn't too soapboxy for me on this toxic masculinity stuff. This really grinds my gears. So, yeah. Um, if you want to hang out with us in discord, we've got our deficient vegans discord down in the show notes. You can come tell us what you think. And also we have websites and social media down there. You can come reach out or read some of the stuff we have going on. Um, if you're on Apple podcast or Spotify, if you could rate and review, that really helps us out a lot. And then if you are listening on YouTube or Spotify, you can leave us a comment. We really appreciate it.

Protein Deficient Vegan:

And if you want like a synthesized version of some of the topics we're talking about, We started posting like posts on TikTok and Instagram that kind of, it's like a carousel, like a bunch of different slides kind of reviewing what we talked about.

Muscle Deficient Vegan:

That's on the Deficient Vegans account, right? Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, I think that's it. Do you want to say bye? Bye, guys. Bye, everybody.

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Muscle Deficient Vegan

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Protein Deficient Vegan

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