How much water is in a cheeseburger?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans podcast, episode 60. I'm the muscle-deficient vegan here with the protein-deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi. Hi, everybody. So this week, we're going to talk about water usage in the animal agriculture industry. And then we'll also have a short bite-sized coaching segment. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:15

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:16

So the first piece of news we have this week is that UK prisons are now required to take imprisoned vegans' ethical beliefs into account when planning menus. Many prisons did already previously offer plant-based options, But the updated data policy recognizes people's ethical beliefs as protected human rights under the Equality Act. I don't know if that extends like just vegan ethical beliefs or if it was more broad for any ethical beliefs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:39

Yeah, I'm not sure. All the articles I read were specifically vegan focused.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:43

But as part of this, the vegan society must now be consulted about prison food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:46

I think that's pretty cool. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:48

At least they have a source that's familiar with what is appropriate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:51

Right. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:53

A vegan rights consultant at the Vegan Society named Dr. Jeanette Rowley said, quote, the long-awaited revised prison food rules offer stronger support for imprisoned vegans than ever before. Legal protections are now stated clearly, and for the first time, there's a guaranteed vegan option on the main menu, along with stronger guidance on nutritional needs and supplementation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11

That's pretty cool. That is cool. Because I'm sure, I mean, I haven't met in the UK prison system, but I'm sure before it was like, even the vegan options probably weren't very adequate, you know, your piece of bread.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21

Yeah. And the goal of prison is supposed to be rehabilitation. So ideally, most people would get back out of prison. So you want to make sure that they're still healthy and their ethical beliefs are respected.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:31

Yeah. I also think it's interesting because, you know, a lot of vegan activists get arrested. Yeah. And I imagine that must be a stressor for them to think I might get arrested doing my vegan activism and now I might end up in prison where I can't eat vegan food.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:46

Yeah. I've never considered that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:47

Yeah. So I think pretty cool that this is now covered. Hopefully it rolls out to all countries.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:52

Yeah. Next up, the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:56

Hey, guys, sometimes we have to cover when Bezos stuff does things that are good for veganism.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:02

I mean, he has a Center for Sustainable Protein for some reason, so it's hard not to talk about him.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:05

We're not shilling for Bezos. We're not pro-Bezos. This is just news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:09

Anyway, this center and the Imperial College London have launched a future food accelerator that will help startups reach commercial scale and navigate the food tech valley of death.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:20

Yeah, and since I've watched many, many, many seasons, entire seasons of Shark Tank, I know that this means when they go from small to big. Yeah. Because apparently that's kind of hard to do. It is hard to do. You've got to put a lot of money into it, and you've got to increase operations, find places to have your food displayed at stores. It's like a lot. Yeah. And a lot of companies, I think, they kind of go bankrupt before they... have success.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:45

Well yeah especially for food brands they have to come in and compete with all the giant conglomerates and all the stuff that's been on shelves for 50 years and it's

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:52

Rough that's why a lot of the sharks won't even invest in food brands unless they're like really solid yeah definitely does anyone else only watch shark tank when they're at a hotel.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:01

Let us know

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:02

Yeah this is like all i watch when i'm in a hotel it's definitely.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:05

The best thing to watch when you're in a hotel

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:06

Yeah it's just like because.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:08

They only have like eight or nine channels and shark tank's always on

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:10

And i always know when i go to a hotel like that's going to be an option you're gonna have a marathon of shark tank and i am gonna watch all of them and i'm probably gonna buy at least five things.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:20

Yeah we have a scrub daddy downstairs

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:22

We more than that no the best thing i've ever bought on shark tank is that fucking hiccup straw.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:29

Yeah yeah oh the

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:30

Hiccup straw every single time i get the hiccups and i use that thing gone gone in seconds best thing i've ever bought in my life we're.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:38

Not affiliated but that thing works

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:39

But we should be hit us up hick a straw or whatever your name is we should get the name right first that thing fucking works though for real yeah definitely.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:48

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:49

Sorry, I really derailed us here. So the 12-month program was built around industry challenges that were identified by Cargill, Danone, Cary, and Mars. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:59

So Cargill owns or has a major interest in several plant-based brands, including Puris.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:04

Yeah. If you haven't used Puris, they actually make textured pea protein and they make a soy-free alternative at Edamame Puffs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:11

Yeah. Their products, I don't know about their brand specifically, but that type of product is getting a lot more popular because some of the soy products are getting popular. but some people have soy allergies.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:18

Exactly. So. Pretty handy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:20

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:21

And then you've probably heard of Danan, Danan, Danone, Danone. We've talked about them a few times and probably butchered their names more than that. But they own brands like Silk, So Delicious, Follow Your Heart, Vega, and a few other plant-based brands. So I'm guessing if they were talking to these companies who have, you know, plant-based products, they probably got some pretty good information of what it's like to upscale those. Yeah, for sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:45

Yeah, I mean, most of the things you just mentioned are in pretty much every grocery store.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:48

Yeah, pretty popular stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:51

That's so delicious. It has those good coconut ice creams.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:53

Oh, those are super good. They're so delicious. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:06

So, as part of this program, future food startups will be able to access up to $134,000 in equity-free funding and as much as $2.7 million in potential future investments from Oyster Bay Venture and Food Labs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:18

Yeah, the equity-free piece is pretty cool based on my super great knowledge from watching Shark Tank.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:24

Yeah, basically means you don't have to give the investor a piece of your company.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:26

Right, which is huge. Yeah. I mean, $134,000, I'm not sure how much that is for like a startup company, but any amount that doesn't have that kind of attachment.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:37

Yeah, definitely. And the last piece of news we have is that a researcher at the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture did a recent study to find out how terminology, product trust, and familiarity impact people's willingness to eat lab-grown meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:50

I'm going to guess. They don't like it when you say lab-grown meat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:53

Lab-grown meat doesn't sound appealing to you?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:55

It sounds like something that should have been in WALL-E.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:58

WALL-E.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:59

WALL-E.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:00

Yeah, lab-grown meat doesn't sound great. And their study did agree with that. So the study showed that people are more receptive to terms like cultivated, cultured, and cellular rather than lab-grown.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:09

Probably because they don't know what those mean.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:12

Well, that is basically describing how all of marketing has worked since the beginning of time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:17

That's true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:17

Oh, it's cultured meat. I'm a cultured person. I'm going to buy the meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:21

See, marketing doesn't work that way on me. But if you put like really popping colors and sparkles, I'll buy that shit. I will buy it right now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:29

Different type of marketing. Yeah. You can still be brainwashed. Just not with science.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:34

Yeah, it's not going to be that. It's going to be like cute pictures of animals and sparkles and, you know, pretty colors. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:40

The study also showed that they were more likely to buy from familiar brands than they were new brands. Yeah. Which I think is really interesting because a lot of people in the vegan space kind of have an opinion that you shouldn't always buy vegan products from the bigger brands. You try to only buy them from fully vegan brands. But I think, you know, the bigger brands bringing vegan products into the space helps make all of these products more popular. And they already have that like trusted brand name behind them. Yeah. So, you know, I don't really feel the same way. And I think it is a good thing when big brands release vegan products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:08

Yeah, it is a bit of a catch-22, though. Yeah. My brain initially goes to, like... Kraft having like the plant-based mac and cheese and the, vegan uh cheese slices right yeah it's like other fully vegan companies already had those products on the shelf and so like if Kraft gets big enough that people aren't buying those brands yeah will those brands close, and then at some point can Kraft just be like i don't want to do vegan stuff anymore and then pull that and then there are no options so i feel like it's a balancing act definitely a big risk there yeah i think specifically on the lab-grown meat, though, I, think most vegans I've talked to probably aren't going to eat it anyway. So this is really more getting omnivores on board. And if they would feel more comfortable having it come from a company they're already familiar with and they trust, then yeah, more power to them, right? Yeah, for sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:56

Let's get into the main topic. So water use, water footprint, a lot of that stuff has been coming up a lot recently for various topics. We're going to talk about it for animal agriculture here. So let's get into it. So you've probably heard a lot about how much water AI uses or how much water the meat and dairy industries use comparatively, or maybe you've heard none of this because you exist in a beautiful space off of social media.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:16

If you do, I'm really jealous because I see this shit kind of all the time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:21

But we're going to hopefully answer any questions you might have with facts and references that will, as always, be in the show notes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:27

So before we can really dig into the details of like how much water is used, how does that compare to AI, yada, yada, yada, I think we need to set the stage for it and define what terms mean so that we can use them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:39

Yes. What does water mean?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:41

So water is actually dihydrogen monoxide.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:46

That sounds scary.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:46

Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, H2O. It is the single leading cause of death.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:55

That's one of those scary ingredients they put in our food,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:57

Right? Yeah. This one kid in my chemE, my chemical engineering class, he did a presentation on the hazards of dihydrogen monoxide, so I've always thought it was just really funny.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:09

Fucking chemical engineers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:11

We got jokes. So yeah, on to like the boring part where we define terms, I guess. So water withdraw. That would be when water is removed from a river, a lake, or an aquifer. Some of that water might be returned later. But an example of this would be like water used for cooling machinery in various industries, whether that's factories, power plants, paper mills, wherever. They'll take the water directly from the sources like lakes, rivers, or ground wells. Then they use the water in their processes to cool down, like, other streams or other things that are hot in the process. And then the water, which is typically now significantly warmer than when they yanked it out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:54

Because it just cooled down a bunch of stuff and the heat has to go somewhere.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:57

It's called heat transfer, kids. Yeah. Now the water is warm. It eventually gets discharged back to the original source. But some of it might be lost to evaporation because they go through things like cooling towers. Yeah. Or places that basically use evaporation to the air to cool off the stream as a whole.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:15

With the heat transfer, the water that is warmer sometimes goes back into the original source. And releasing back warmer water is not great for the environment because even a slight temperature increase of a couple of degrees can cause disruptions to the local ecosystem. Warmer water can cause more algae to bloom, which eventually die and decompose, which consumes oxygen in the water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:35

Kind of like we talked about in our pig poop podcast.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:39

Right. Pig poop podcast. And most of the stuff that lives in the water needs the oxygen in the water to live.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:44

And if the water as a whole is kept just warmer than it naturally would be, the aquatic life kind of. um, adjusts for that. And then if the plant or facility is shut down and then all of a sudden the water is colder, it can actually shock the fish and potentially kill them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:02

That's really interesting. So they bring up the temperature of the water because they're doing the heat exchange, the fish and stuff get used to it. And then the plant goes through a shutdown, the water cools back down to like what would normally be normal, but now the fish aren't used to that anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:12

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:13

Well, that's really interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:14

I've worked at a couple of places and I just, and I've been very involved in turnaround planning and I don't remember this conversation ever coming up now that I'm like thinking through. I don't remember anyone ever talking about this. So I don't know that this is widely known information in the industry. Maybe it is. Maybe I just wasn't in those meetings, but like, I don't really remember this conversation.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:31

Well, that problem is downstream.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:33

So. Oh, okay. Not our problem. Yeah. And then changes in the temperature in general can confuse like breeding cues, which are often based on seasonal temperatures.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:43

Yeah. That's interesting. Like, so maybe the fish think it's turning into winter. I don't know when they breed, but yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:48

Or like summer, Like they think it's summer because the water gets warmer. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:52

Yeah. Makes sense. How else would they know? They don't have calendars.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:55

I know. They just, they just don't. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:58

To address this issue, most modern facilities use either cooling towers or cooling ponds, which allows the heat from the water to be transferred to the air through evaporation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:06

Yeah. They're kind of cool if you've never seen one. I've never seen one. Yeah. They're really tall, sometimes like 100 feet tall, and they have fans. Yeah. And so basically the water is dropped from the top down to the bottom. Hmm. And I don't know if you've ever driven by a place that just has like big clouds over it. Oh, yeah. Oftentimes that's like a cooling tower. Oh, that's pretty cool. Because we had one at the ethanol plant and my mom was like, you guys make clouds there. And then I was like, yeah, I work at the cloud factory.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:35

So is it a tower just so the water can be spread out as it's falling to cool down?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:39

Yeah, you just use gravity basically.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:40

Yeah, might as well. So that was water withdrawal. You're basically pulling it from the source. The next term we're going to talk about is water consumption. So this is water that has been withdrawn that is then evaporated. So you're consuming the water because you're not putting it back. It's just being evaporated into the air.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:55

Yeah, or incorporate it into a product or in any way that would be like unavailable for immediate reuse of that water.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:03

So not necessarily evaporation, but just some kind of process that the water doesn't go back to the source.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:08

Right. A common industry of this would be the beverage manufacturing process.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:13

That makes sense.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:13

Because they're like adding the water to their product.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:15

The water goes into the cans. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:18

It doesn't go back in the pond.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:20

Not for a long time. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:22

Or like hydraulic fracturing or also known as fracking or like the concrete industry because they're mixing water with a... Concrete? Yeah. What is concrete in powder form called?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:35

It's concrete.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:35

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:36

As far as I know. Cement.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:37

Cement? I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:40

I've used it before, but I don't know the details.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:42

Yeah. But basically, they'll pull the water out from local lakes, rivers, et cetera, use it in their final product, or evaporate so much of it that they're not getting any back anyways. So then very little of the water they pulled is added back to where they pulled it from.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:55

The next term is green water. This is rainwater stored in soil and consumed by plants like crops. So there's kind of a three-color coded system for water. Greenwater is the first one.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:06

Yeah, for the footprint of the water. So later we're going to talk about water footprint, and that's how much water... is used in whatever application, right? And then it's like...

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:16

To measure the impact of the thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:18

Yeah. So there's three different colors. There's green water, blue water, and gray water. So then like you said, green water is mostly rain water and it usually has to do with crops.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:25

Next is blue water, which is surface water or groundwater that gets consumed through irrigation, drinking, cooling, processing. Also includes the industry, as you mentioned earlier. Some crops, if they use irrigation from local waterways instead of just being irrigated by rain water. So blue water is like most of the water you use would be blue water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:45

Yeah. Then we have the gray water footprint. You may have heard of gray water as like, what, poop water?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:53

Well, it's actually not from the toilet. Oh, okay. But it is all the wastewater from your house that comes out of like the sinks and shower and stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:59

I know this from the movie It. Yeah. Because they were like in the tunnels and stuff and there was gray water. It was a whole conversation piece. Yeah. This is different than that. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:07

This is the gray water footprint.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:09

So the gray water footprint is not technically water that's withdrawn. It's actually the theoretical amount of water needed to dilute any pollution from various industries. And so I think the best example would be from our podcast two weeks ago talking about pig manure. It's basically like if pig manure enters nearby waterways, how much water is needed to dilute that to the point where it's drinkable or can pass water tests?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:38

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:39

So like think Captain Planet. What is dilution is the solution to our pollution?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:44

Oh, wow. Does he say that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:45

I think that's a Captain Planet quote. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:47

I believe it. That's pretty cool. He was so far ahead of his time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:51

He really was. We should go back and watch that show. I don't really remember much about it, but it was solid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:56

It was solid. We need to bring that back.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:58

I know. It could be the answer to our problems. I wonder if he ever had an animal ag episode. Probably not. Oh, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:04

I wonder. What were the episodes about?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:06

I don't know. We're going to have to go do a rewatch. of Captain Planet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:11

Note from the editor here, we looked at this Captain Planet thing, and it turns out Captain Planet really hates that idea. And she must have heard this from one of her old-time bosses at the engineering facilities. All right, so now let's talk about the global numbers involved in all of this. Now that we're all experts on the different types of water use, globally, agriculture accounts for about 69% of water withdrawals, compared to about 19% for industry and 12% for municipal uses, which is like city uses, like your house or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:41

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:42

So 69% of pulling water from the source comes from agriculture globally. The agriculture figure includes both food crops and animal feed crops. It's not exclusively livestock.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:52

So the most comprehensive global livestock water footprint assessment estimated that animal production had a total footprint of approximately 2,422 cubic kilometers per year.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:04

Yeah, which is approximately 640 trillion U.S. gallons.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:09

Wow. I don't think I've ever seen trillion and gallons together.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:14

At least like one ocean. Yeah. So animal production had about 29% of the global total agricultural water footprint.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:23

And of that livestock footprint, 87.2% was green water, which is like rainwater. 6.2% was blue water. So water pulled from sources like lakes, wells, and rivers. and 6.6% was gray water, which reminder on that, that's the amount of water needed to dilute the pollution water that's coming from livestock. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:44

So overwhelmingly rainwater.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:46

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:47

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:47

Although I feel like the almost 7% gray water is like wowsers, right? I don't know. Seems like a big number.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:55

And the fact that it's overwhelmingly rainwater for agriculture is also why it's such a big deal when there's a drought because they're not used to using like municipal sources for the irrigation in a lot of cases.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:06

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:07

So, I've got some more numbers. These aren't exact numbers since this study was done a while ago back in 2012, but it does give you a general idea.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:14

Yeah, and I think that the study was done in 2012, but the data's even older. Yeah. But this is the most recent information.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:20

And we do have a link in the show notes if you want to see it. But approximately 98% of the livestock's total water footprint came from producing feed.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:28

For the animals.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:29

For the animals, correct. direct animal drinking water was actually only around 1.1%.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:35

And service water, such as the water used for cleaning representative, about 0.8%. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:40

And then like feed mixing water, really negligible, 0.03%. So almost all of it is from having to grow the crops that they feed to the animals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:50

Yeah. In the same study, it was found that beef cattle are 33% of the livestock footprint. Dairy cattle are 19%. Pigs are 19%. Broiler chickens, which would be chickens that are sold for meat, are 11%. Layer chickens, those are the ones that make eggs, are 7%. Horses are 7%. Sheep are 3%. And goats were 1%.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:15

For some everyday comparisons that make this a little easier to visualize, maybe, are comparing it to how many showers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:21

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:22

Like you take a shower in the morning or whatever. Like a person taking a shower.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:26

Yeah, when do you take your shower?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:27

I was trying to say not rain shower. A rain shower?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:31

Anyway. The only person to do that was my cousin at a funeral. What? Yeah. So one of my little cousins at my grandma's funeral, it was raining outside. And I don't know, does your family ever do like wakes like after the funeral, like people get drunk and stuff? Oh, no. Oh.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:51

I thought you just meant.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:51

Yeah, no, it must be a Catholic thing. So anyways, it was raining and she just was like, yeah, this seems like a good time for a shower. And so she went inside the house we were at and took out the shampoo and the body wash and just started like washing her hair in the rain. But then the rain stopped and then she had a hair full of shampoo. And then my aunt had to go get the hose and like spray it out in the front yard.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:18

I hate it when the water turns off in the middle of the shower.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:20

At a funeral, yeah. All right, well. Yeah. So, anyways, some people take shower, rain shower showers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:26

I hope somebody does something that memorable at my funeral. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:30

Really does kind of lighten the mood, I guess.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:33

So, an average shower is assumed to use approximately 17.2 gallons of water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:38

Yeah. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:38

So, to do some comparisons, one for beef, to make a quarter pound patty of beef, uses about 462 gallons of water, which is 27 showers for one quarter pound patty of beef.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:49

Yeah. So for four ounces of pork, which is also a quarter of a pound, that's approximately 179 gallons of water or 10 showers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:57

Cheese, a slice of cheese is about two showers, 2.2 showers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:01

Yeah, or 38 gallons. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:03

Quarter pound of chicken is seven and a half showers or 130 gallons.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:07

One large egg is about 43 gallons or two and a half showers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:12

Or one egg.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:13

Which is like, what, 70 calories? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:16

A cup of milk is 3.8 showers, which is more than an egg. I found that interesting. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:20

And that's about 66 gallons.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:22

Yeah. And then butter, about one shower, 21 gallons.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:27

For a tablespoon of butter. Yeah. So for a quarter pounder with cheese, like they sell, you know, at all burger places, right? So that's literally just counting the quarter pound burger patty and one slice of cheese, nothing else. We're not talking about the bun, the toppings, whatever. Just the meat and the cheese. You're looking at about 500 gallons.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:50

29 showers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:51

For just one burger and cheese.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:55

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:55

That's crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:56

That's a lot of water usage.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:57

It is. So because we're transparent, let's talk about some plant-based comparisons.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:03

Yeah. So tofu, four ounces, uses 76 gallons, which is like four and a half showers for four ounces of tofu.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:10

For vital wheat gluten, which is like 30 grams of the dry powder, we're looking at about 33 gallons or 1.9 showers. Now, this is like if you're making your own vital wheat gluten, seitan, whatever you're going to use it in. A store-bought seitan option would probably be higher because of production and whatnot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:26

A cup of soy milk is about one shower, 19 gallons. And, you know, comparing that back to the cup of dairy milk, it was almost four showers, 3.8. Yeah. So it's three and a half times less than a cup of milk, a dairy milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:41

For a half of a cup of cooked beans, you're looking at 47 gallons or 2.7 showers. For a half of a cup of cooked lentils, you're looking at 54 gallons or 3.2 showers. And kind of the crazy outlier here is almonds. So for one ounce of almonds.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:57

One ounce.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:58

Yeah, which is like, I don't know, what, 16 almonds or something? Yeah, maybe. You're looking at 121 gallons of water or seven showers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:07

Yeah, that's a lot of water for some almonds.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:09

And we'll include the water footprint resources that covers significantly more than what we talked about here, if you want to go check that out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:17

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:18

And while plant-based foods are not low water footprint, they're almost always lower than the animal products, with the exception of foods like almonds, obviously. Yeah. And then, you know, we're comparing a quarter of a pound of plant-based protein to a quarter of a pound of animal-based protein. And while these aren't going to be, like, exactly nutritionally identical, they are showing, like, I would say a pretty striking difference. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:43

Yeah, a quarter pound of beef was, like, 460 gallons. A quarter pound of chicken was down to 130 gallons because cows are way more inefficient with water. And then a quarter pound of tofu is only 76 gallons.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:53

Yeah. And like you were saying, a cup of dairy milk, 66 gallons versus a cup of soy milk, 19 gallons. Now, if you're doing almond milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:01

Yeah, you're probably back up there. Yeah. Probably above dairy milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:03

I don't know. I just think this is kind of funny in terms of like how many times have we been told, I guess, from like just environmental education. It's like turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth. Take quick showers. Don't just stand in the freaking shower. You know, install low flow toilets. Install low flow shower heads. That's happening in like new construction is almost always what's being chosen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:25

I mean, I guess it's good to be the default.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:26

Yeah, absolutely. But I just think it's interesting that this like never comes up. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:31

Ever. Yeah, it is really interesting. Now, we'll say the one we'll cover later that you should do is stop watering your damn lawn.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:37

Those numbers are crazy. I can't wait till we talk about that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:40

So now, this episode is mostly about animal agriculture. But, you know, when we talk about water usage these days, AI comes up in like every conversation. So we just wanted to briefly mention some AI water usage information.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:50

Yeah. So AI water usage is kind of split up into two main parts. There's on-site cooling, and then there's indirect water usage from the power plants that are needed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:59

And on-site cooling is the cooling at the data center itself. Yeah. So in 2023, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab did a big study on this, and we'll link to it in the show notes. But part of it was that they estimated U.S. data centers used about 228 billion gallons of water. But only 17 billion of that was for the on-site cooling, and 211 billion was tied to generate electricity, so cooling at the power plants.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:23

Yeah. And this study was from 2023, so that has probably increased.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:27

At this point. Yeah, AI has increased since 2023.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:29

But we don't, there aren't like published numbers on with a similar information for now. Yeah, right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:36

So for on-site cooling at the data centers, again, that can be a couple of different types. It can be closed loop, which is kind of like the radiator in your car. The water just keeps running back through and getting cooled. It could be open loop, which is also called once through water. So the water comes through, cools stuff off, and then the hot water goes back off into the water source or whatever. Kind of like we talked about earlier. Or it can be evaporative, which is like you were talking about with the evaporation towers, cooling towers, things like that. Water comes in, cools things off, and then just gets evaporated back up into the air.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:06

And then some of it does get returned to the original source. Yeah. But water mostly comes from city drinking water sources, which I think is the main reason this keeps coming up as, you know, it should come up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:17

Yeah. So when you cool a data center, no matter, well, unless you're closed loop, when you cool a data center, you're going to be pulling water from the city basically. Yeah. Which is the same as the drinking water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:27

And some of those in some cities are already running in the negative and we're still building, these AI data centers in places where the water's already being pulled faster than it's being replenished. So that's where some of this problem starts coming up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:41

And the reason that happens is for cases where we use evaporation for cooling, the water goes back up into the atmosphere. And I know we all learned about the water cycle in school, where it's like water never really goes away. But the problem is when water evaporates, it does leave the area. It doesn't go back into your aquifer. It probably doesn't even stay in your town. It can go like hundreds of miles away. It can get, like, rain back out over the Atlantic Ocean. Like, it just leaves the area where it came from.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:04

Yeah. Think of the terrarium. The Earth is one big terrarium. Your town is not a terrarium. So, like, you evaporate shit into the sky, it isn't going to rain down on your town.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:14

And that's for the on-site cooling. For the power plant cooling, almost all of that water comes from surface water sources, like lakes, rivers, and seas. So it does not pull from the city water sources.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:25

But it still has its other issues with, like, aquatic life and whatnot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:30

Yeah. So most of that water is returned to the source, but it does have issues like we were talking about earlier with the heated water going back into the cool water. That's actually called thermal pollution. It can also cause like lower river levels during heat waves where there's peak usage because it's using the water from those water sources. But then the problem is you go into peak usage, everybody needs more power, but now there's not enough water left in the river to cool the power plant. Right. So they end up having, in some cases, to shut down the power plant right when the power is needed most because they're in the middle of a heat wave. So it can cause pretty big issues like that from time to time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:05

Yeah. And even with these concerns, as of 2023, the combined on-site and electricity water usage for U.S. data centers is still about 10 times less than the U.S. beef and meat production. Of course, both of these data sets are old. This one's like three years old, which for AI data could be pretty outdated. And the animal ag stuff is like a little bit over a decade old as far as the data. But these are still the most recent comparisons that we have.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:33

Yeah. And also just kind of a fun fact, as of 2023, the total AI water usage for the power plants and the on-site cooling centers is about half the water used for golf courses.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:42

That's kind of crazy. Fuck golf courses. You should be disc golfing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:50

Yeah. So like you were just kind of implying, AI expansion and new data center builds are expected to continue. It's hard to predict how much that water usage is going to grow over time. But by most predictions, it could double or even triple over the next five years. And then beyond that, who knows, really? It depends on a lot of things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:05

Which makes sense why people are concerned. Yeah. So it's also an issue because there are both power usage concerns and water usage concerns, but making more stable, consistent, reliable power also takes more water. Right. So U.S. solar and wind infrastructure requires virtually no water, but isn't built out to support data center demand yet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:28

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:28

So we're either going to need like some technology supercharge on these like more greener energy sources or, yeah, I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:38

More efficient chips, more efficient computers or stop building data centers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:42

Something needs to give. Don't know what that is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:44

Yeah, we'll see. Some of the other large water consumption in the United States is residential lawn care, the largest by far. It really dwarfs any of these other individual ones.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:55

It was crazy, like right up there with animal ag.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:57

Yeah. So this is just like watering your lawn, basically. Yeah. It's like a huge source of water usage.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:02

So, you know, this is not the first time I brought up that you should let me turn our lawn into clover. We don't water our yard. Every time I bring it up, he won't let me do it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:10

We don't water our yard.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:11

I know, but it'd be so cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:12

It would be cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:13

Like the clover lawns I've seen on TikTok are a dream. They're a dream.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:18

Next up is...

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:19

If you have a clover yard, let me know. Tell me how great it is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:24

Another large source of water consumption in the U.S. is just residential showers and toilets. Actually, a pretty big contribution.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:30

So we talked shit about that before, but like, yeah, you should care about that. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:34

Well, and this is in 2023 after we've already switched over to a bunch of this low flow efficiency stuff by default. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:39

Yeah, it was probably way worse.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:40

Yeah, it probably was way worse.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:42

Yeah, weren't there like commercials where it was like, telling you to turn off your water while you brush your teeth to save the polar bears or something to that effect.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:49

Yeah and then another one is residential laundry so you're talking about the high efficiency washers those have been standard for i don't know at least a while yeah like that but yeah that probably was a much bigger issue before so uh and then yeah animal agriculture another big consumer and kind of right behind animal agriculture is corn agriculture yeah so yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:06

Which kind of does get lumped in with animal ag because like animals are consuming a lot of corn yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:10

If you combine animal ag with like the corn irrigation uh it is the highest by far but they split them out in the study so

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:18

Which we'll have linked um yeah so we didn't want to belabor too long into the ai stuff just because we mostly directed our research to the animal agriculture water usage but we did want to point it out because it is a concern comes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:31

Up with every water conversation at this point

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:33

So it feels wrong to not put it in here and we wanted to like Like, in case you didn't know why people are concerned, now you do. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:41

Yeah, especially in, like, there are towns, I saw some specifically in Texas, where the aquifer is already, like, under a lot of pressure, and they want to build new data centers, which is going to pull more water from the aquifer. Like, that could be a real problem.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:52

Which really feels like legislation should be getting involved. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:55

There are a lot of bills all around the country being put in for, like, you need special permits. You need to not build in these cases. You need to help us, you know, build up the infrastructure that's going to be needed to support your data center. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think those things should definitely be required as a bare minimum.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:08

Yeah. You got to put the brakes on some of this stuff, figure out the best places to put things if we do need to expand and make sure they don't impact people. Because first thing is like drinking water, right? Like that comes first is keeping people alive before we expand anything.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:22

Yeah, definitely. Especially something that's arguably a luxury or maybe even not needed at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:27

Yeah, exactly. All right. Back into animal ag. So let's get into the five major animal product categories and why they use so much fucking water.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:37

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:38

Okay. So the top five are beef, dairy, pigs, chicken, and eggs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:42

Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:43

Starting out with beef, this is the largest water footprint.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:46

That makes sense.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:47

Yeah, because like we said, four ounce patty or a quarter pound patty of beef is 462 gallons of water approximately. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:55

And beef cattle specifically, so this is not including dairy cows, beef cattle account for approximately 33% of the total livestock footprint for water usage.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:04

That's pretty big. That's substantial.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:06

It is substantial because the livestock footprint is itself one of the biggest sources.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:11

Right. So why is it so high?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:14

The cows live longer before slaughter. So an average cow's lifespan is 18 to 22 months compared to like six months for a pig, a little over a month, maybe two months for a chicken.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:25

Still way shorter than we'd like cows to live.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:27

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:27

But it is a lot longer than the other ones.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:30

Yeah. So they have to, you know, feed a cow for about two years on average.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:34

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:35

And, you know, again, most of the water is not from like the cow drinking water. Most of the water that is contributed here is from the food we feed to the cow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:41

Right. So cows have larger bodies, which means that in general, they require a larger amount of calories just to maintain their metabolism, keep up their bones, their organs, etc. So that doesn't even include like the additional amount of calories they need to put on weight.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:57

Also, feed conversion. So multiple units of feed are required to produce one unit of edible beef. So it's just a really inefficient process. You know, this is kind of what we talked about before. Like, would you rather have all the food a cow's ever eaten or the calories that a cow can produce as food?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:12

Yeah. So there is a really interesting chart on the energy efficiency of meat and dairy production that we'll link in the show notes. But beef is 1.9% efficient. And that means out of 100 calories that you give to a cow, only 1.9 of those calories would be efficiently converted towards an animal product that consumers could buy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:33

Surely that decimal is in the wrong place, right? You mean 19%.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:36

No, it was 1.9%. Isn't that crazy?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:39

It makes me wonder a little bit like how this started, I guess, because originally, like you weren't intentionally feeding a cow. Right. They were just eating. Yeah, they were eating. So you weren't thinking of it as like, oh, I could eat that grass or the cow could eat that grass. Right. We don't do it that way anymore. We grow crops to feed to the cow. We could just grow crops to feed us.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:57

Right. Or, you know, I think we touched on this a couple of episodes ago in our new news, but technology has come around that's making like things like alfalfa, which weren't... like digestible by humans previously they're turning that into like usable protein and carb sources for humans which.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:17

Is going to be way more efficient than feeding it to an animal

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:20

First right so like if you're like oh well you don't really get all those crops back because cows are eating crops and like they're just eating field rubbage or whatever yeah roughage roughage yeah well now we have technology that can turn that into human food so yeah, we could get a lot of that back so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:39

So talking a little bit about where the water footprint is coming from, one part of that is the pasture and forage. So much of the green water footprint comes from these.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:48

Right. So like we just said, alfalfa, stuff like that. Eventually, most factory farm cows do get moved to concentrated animal feeding operations, CAFOs. So also known as like grain finishing, which can introduce blue and gray water through irrigated corn, soy and other crops. and then obviously like manure pollutants.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:11

Yeah, yeah. The pollution footprint is a big one. Fertilizer that's used on the feed crops and the nutrients from cow manure contribute to the gray water footprint component. So just having to, you know, dilute out the pollutants and all the water sources basically. And then there is some nuance here as with pretty much everything. Some cattle do graze mostly on rain-fed land that is unsuitable for crops. So that can reduce some of the blue water footprint, But rain-fed doesn't automatically mean impact-free, and we'll talk about that a little bit more, too. But land occupation, watershed conditions, drought, soil health, and manure management still matter.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:46

Yeah. And now moving on to number two, which is dairy. Milk looks lower compared to the meat numbers, but that's because it contains a lot of water on its own. But when you concentrate it down, those numbers get pretty high. Yeah. So, one cup of milk, 66 gallons. One ounce of cheese, 38 gallons. And just one tablespoon of butter is 21 gallons.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:08

That's pretty crazy. A tablespoon of butter,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:09

21 gallons. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:11

And that's because the butter doesn't have a lot of water in it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:13

Right. It's because the process of making cheese and butter requires water to remove and it concentrates the water footprint as well.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:19

Yeah. So, we were talking about beef cattle. Now we're talking about dairy cattle. So, dairy cattle represent around 19% of livestock's total footprint.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:27

Pretty significant. Yeah. So if you're wondering why it uses so much, obviously some very similar reasons to the beef cows as far as like they're large. That means they need a lot of calories. They also live longer than some of the other animals.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:41

They also have to be fed through their entire lives, not just when they're producing milk, obviously.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:45

Makes sense.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:47

You can't turn them off and on like a switch. Nope.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:49

They're real animals.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:51

Their feed includes forage like alfalfa, but also has concentrated feeds that require quite a bit of water to produce.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:57

Yeah. Cows drink water directly as well. This statistic kind of blew my mind, but okay. How many gallons per day do you think a lactating cow drinks?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:08

Yeah. So I would think about it in terms of like five gallon buckets, five gallon buckets. Like if I had a bunch of five gallon buckets, how many of those do I think a cow would drink in a day? I think Maybe four of those buckets in a day, so, like, 20 gallons of water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:24

That's crazy. I actually would have thought it was lower.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:26

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:27

But you're pretty close. It's about 30 to 50 gallons of water per day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:32

50 gallons is a lot. It's 10 five-gallon buckets of water a day per cow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:37

Yeah. I just think that's crazy because, like, I probably drink, like, close to a gallon of water a day when it's, like, really hot out. Yeah. Like, 50 gallons? Like a cow is not like, I don't think, 50 times bigger than me. Right. I don't know how much cow weighs. I don't know. That number just seems nuts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:56

Yeah. And again, like the drinking water is, you know, it's a portion of the usage, but it's not really a big portion.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:02

Yeah, it's pretty small.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:03

But still, that's a lot of water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:04

That's a lot of water. I just thought it was interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:06

Yeah. There's also a decent amount of equipment that must be washed, like the holding areas, milking equipment, the floors, et cetera. So we're using some water for that. I think we said that that was somewhere around like 1% for some of that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:17

And then milk is cooled and processed, which can also use more water. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:21

And from a chart that we referenced earlier, milk is 24% efficient.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:25

Not very good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:25

Better than 1.9.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:27

Yeah. Well, you know what's better than 24? 100.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:29

Yeah, for sure. If you're looking for a milk alternative, soy milk is significantly less. Almond milk, not a great choice if you're trying to reduce your water footprint.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:37

Yeah. And I guess most nut milks aren't a great choice. Like nuts in general use a lot of water. So yeah, I think soy or oat would probably be your better option if you're trying to reduce your water footprint.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:48

Which I think are the better milks anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:50

They're my favorite.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:51

Next up is pork. So pigs represent 19% of livestock's global footprint.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:56

Yeah. So to recap or to remind you, a quarter pound or four ounces of pork, pig meat i feel bad calling it pork because i don't view it as.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:05

Pork i know i saw i saw a video a while back it was like why do some animals will use their name and some animals will make a fancy name yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:12

I think it should disassociate you from it but.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:14

We call chicken chicken

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:15

Yeah it pork is a very weird word to me and so is beef but anyways yeah one quarter pound is about 179 gallons yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:24

Um so why is that uh pigs rely heavily on corn and soy feed which both require a lot of water Also, water irrigation is typically required to grow those crops particularly, so it's a lot less rainwater contribution for those.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:36

Yeah. Less green water, more blue water. Pigs also live to about six months before they're slaughtered. And then there's a lot of fertilizer and pesticide use to grow the crops that they're consuming.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:48

Pigs also, you know, they have their drinking water. You have to wash the barns, manure storage.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:53

And like fertilizer land application that's going into waterways.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:58

And then also the water that's used in like processing and the slaughterhouse. So all in on the chart, it shows that pork is about 8.6% efficient.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:07

Which is pretty bad. Number four is chickens. These are broiler chickens is what they're called.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:14

So the chickens that are used for meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:16

Yeah. This represents about 11% of livestock's total footprint. So four ounces would be about 130 gallons of water. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:25

So why is chicken lower than beef?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:27

Chickens grow a lot faster than pigs or cows. Yeah. So the poultry from the chart is 13% efficient.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:37

Yeah. So still not very efficient, even though they have much shorter lifespans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:40

Right. But still almost double what pork is on the efficiency. Yeah, yeah. And obviously significantly better than cows. A greater portion of their overall body weight becomes sellable meat, which is another reason why it's lower than beef. And they also live for way less time. I mean, I think on average, that's about 39 to 42 days. Yeah. Very, very short lifespans.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:04

Yeah. Artificially shortened lifespans, obviously.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:08

In the wild, they would live much longer. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:11

There is still a substantial water footprint, though, because chickens rely a lot on crop feed. Corn and soy production requires land, fertilizer, sometimes irrigation, like we were talking about with the corn specifically. And an extremely large number of chickens are raised.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:24

Okay, so we looked at these numbers last night, and I actually had to have you double check it because it was a lot, right? The chart was in billions, but it was showing chickens like at the bottom of the chart on the line. And then there was like an asterisk by it and it was like every one unit is actually a thousand units when it comes to, I think it was chicken and turkeys maybe. But I think we've said this on our podcast a few times. Globally, 80 billion land animals are slaughtered a year. Right. For chickens, they make up 78.5 billion. Right. So, yeah, I mean, that number is just insane.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:06

Yeah. Chickens are like almost all of the actual animals that are slaughtered for meat. I mean, obviously, there are still billions of others, but chickens are just like the vast, overwhelming majority.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:17

Yeah, the number was crazy. Like, they actually had to make the chart different and add an asterisk to it to even be able to show them together because it would be so far off the chart that you wouldn't be able to see any clarity on the other animals. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:29

You know, this is kind of an aside, but, you know, one of the charities I like is the Humane League. Yeah. And, you know, I looked into them for a while, and they basically, like, exclusively focus on chicken welfare because they want to do, like, number of animals saved and made better. And for a while, I didn't really understand that until I started to understand, like, how many chickens we're talking about in the system.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:51

Yeah. I mean, it's just tens of times more than the other animals. Yeah. I like the Humane League, too. I think, side note, if you're looking for, like, a good animal charity to donate to that you know is going to, like, spend their money wisely, Humane League's a pretty good one. Yeah. That's who we donate to mostly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:06

Yep. Yeah. So lots of chickens, unfortunately.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:11

Yeah. So moving on to eggs. These are from layer chickens. 7% of livestock's total footprint. One egg is about 43 gallons of water, which seems a lot like a lot for one egg.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:25

It does seem like a lot for one egg.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:26

So what goes into the water number?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:29

So a laying hen must be hatched, obviously, and then be raised before they can start producing their own eggs. Yeah. So they have to grow up, right? Same thing that goes into broiler chickens, effectively. And then there's also egg washing, egg grading, refrigeration, and packaging, which all use a little bit of water in their process as well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:48

So let's talk about how animal agriculture actually impacts water and ecosystems. So this section isn't just animal ag. It's about agriculture as a whole, which could include growing crops, growing food for humans, and for animals. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:04

And they're hard to tease apart because we have to grow crops to feed the animals. So it's all very intertwined.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:09

Right. So the animal ag piece is still important, though, because it does exacerbate the issue because instead of like humans directly eating the crops, we're adding in this inefficient middleman, which requires more land, more water and more resources like we talked about. I mean, cows are 1.9 percent efficient.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:25

Some examples of these effects to the water and ecosystems don't look like the entire world suddenly being out of water, but they can appear in a lot of different ways.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:34

Before we get too deep into what would happen to aquifers, if you didn't know what an aquifer is, it's actually a layer of permeable sand, gravel, and other geological material that naturally contains water within the pores and cracks. Over many, many, many thousands and thousands of years, water has entered through snow, melting, rain, things that soak into the soil, leakage from lakes and rivers, and it can take hundreds of years to completely fill up an aquifer. Right. And aquifers are actually where like most cities are getting their water from. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:07

An aquifer gets depleted when you're taking out more than you're getting back. Kind of like the one we were talking about in Texas, it's under pressure, it's in a negative growth. So that happens on occasion.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:18

One example of how an aquifer can get depleted is with irrigation pumping. So the pump removes the water surrounding the well. Then the water table starts falling locally, which forms like a physical depression around it. Nearby groundwater moves towards the well because it's sloped. continued pumping expands and deepens the affected area. And then neighboring irrigation and household wells may have to reach further and further down, meaning that they might have to get bigger pumps, which could be more expensive. If pumping continues faster than the recharge of the aquifer, then the regional water tables can start to decline, which is where things get really bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:58

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:59

Because then everyone might have to get, better pumps to reach further down because it requires more energy to lift water deeper in the ground. That makes sense, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:08

Yeah, I was reading one of the stories when we were looking through all this stuff, and I don't remember all the details, but there was one area where the water table had lowered, and so a bunch of the homes in the area that used well water were basically not able to use their wells anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:19

Right. That's exactly what it is. Aside from individual homeowners, which are also impacted, farmers may need to spend more money to deepen their wells. And then fields might become uneconomic because just the amount of money and overhead that would cost to like get the water is just too much to even be profitable at that point. Another thing that might happen is that when you're pumping that low, you might start pumping up poor quality or like saltier water from the deeper layers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:47

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:48

Which obviously not good for crop yield.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:51

Yeah. You don't really want saltwater.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:52

Yeah. And then streams connected to the aquifer can actually lose flow as well. Groundwater pumping can reduce spring and river flow and then dry out wetlands, which is bad for the ecosystems and the wetlands.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:07

Just based off the name, it doesn't sound like something that should be dried out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:09

It should not be a dry land. And then some aquifers contain layers of fine clay and silt, and the water pressure is actually helping those layers expand. So when you deplete that, the sediments start to depress. And that's when you start having ground surface sinking.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:24

No, that's not good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:25

No, like you can end up with like sinkholes. There can be damage to canals, roads, pipelines, buildings, and it creates a greater risk for flood. So these are like tangible... issues for the land yeah not even talking about drinking water.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:43

I didn't realize before we started looking into this like how complex like managing the levels of water in the earth were before like i never even considered that i thought it was all just like big tanks of like water we did it that way but there's a lot to do with like making sure the water in the ground is where it's supposed to be.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:03

Yeah, I hadn't looked into this too much either. I have worked in places where we do a lot of water treatment, so I've looked into water from the standpoint of wanting it to be clean and usable, but yeah, I've never thought of it in terms of... How to make sure it's plentiful enough for all of us to not have water. So, yeah, like we said earlier, the irrigation water, once you get down too far, can contain salts. The salts don't evaporate. They stay behind in the crop fields. And then, yeah, so over time, without sufficient draining or periodic flushing, which you're probably not doing if you're low on water. Right. The salt starts building up. Yeah. So then the plants have issues absorbing the water because of the salt and the yields start to get worse. And eventually the land just might become unusable. What I was reading is that farmers might move towards a lower water crop that could require rainwater or something. So they're taking land that was great for crop growing. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:59

They were growing a lot of corn.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:00

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:00

Now they can't grow corn anymore,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:01

Maybe. Yeah. So maybe they're growing like grass or something. I don't know. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But like a lesser good crop with it's probably like you're getting less money from it. Right. Or they might decide, this is just uneconomical for me. I'm just closing this piece of land off and I'm going to go find some more land. And now you're going to move that problem somewhere else.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:20

Also, to keep the crop yields up, more fertilizer can be needed. The plants don't absorb it all. So the remainder might run off into streams, promote the algae blooms, which you talked about before, kind of pulls the oxygen out of the water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:31

Yeah. So the algae will bloom in large quantities and then eventually that algae will die. And when the algae dies, it decomposes, which pulls oxygen out of the water, making it hard for fish to find oxygen. And it can actually create like hypoxic dead zones. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:45

And all this can also increase the cost of treating drinking water because they have to dump more stuff into it. Like here, just locally, we had, you know, some stuff when the wildfire smoke came through. I don't know if it was related, but we had some odors in the water and they had to dump in a bunch of activated charcoal. So sometimes like things happen and you have to just inject more cost into the water treatment situation. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:02

And then you might even have like water treatment facilities that have to get enhancements or spend money on additional projects and treatment stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:11

Yeah. And aside from like crop water runoff issues, you also have manure issues where the animal agriculture is taking place.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:18

Yeah. Which, if you want to get into that really in-depth, you should go check out our pink pig poop episode. I think it was episode 58.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:28

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:29

Check that out. We talk about that a lot. But if you didn't know, manure contains nitrogen, phosphorus, organic material, ammonia, pathogens, metals, antibiotic residue, and hormones.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:41

Why does it sound like an Animaniacs song?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:43

I don't know. Probably because I watched a lot of Animaniacs. Do you want to hear something funny? Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I go off on a lot of tangents. This is how my brain works. So I took AP US History in high school and our teacher got sick. And so we got a substitute teacher. And for some reason, we just watched the Animaniacs every day. Every day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:04

The best class ever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:06

Well, there was this, I don't know what it was. We had VCRs. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:11

I saw a debate the other day that people weren't sure if we called them VCRs or VHS players back in the day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:16

I think we called them VHS tapes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:17

You ever heard anybody call it a VHS tape?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:18

No, they just are VHS tapes. Yeah, exactly. Okay, carry on. But yeah, it was like a VHS tape of Animaniacs, like, top hits, right? And the reason it ended up in our history class is because the first song was, like, the President's of the United States song. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever heard that one. I've heard it. George Washington is the first we see. He once chopped down a cherry tree. President number two would be John Adams. And then number three, Tom Jefferson, to do it up to eight. A declaration late at night that him and his wife have a great effect and made him sleep on the couch all night. Yeah. James Madison never had a son to leave off the War of 1812. James Monroe's colossal nose was bigger than Pinocchio's. Anyway.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:53

You know it much better than I do. You remember it very well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:56

I did watch it like 70 times that year. It came in handy one time in academic team.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:02

I think they should have played the map episode a little more for you. The capitals of the states.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:06

I know. Yeah, I don't think they had one in that tape. But anyways... Yeah, I watched a lot of Animaniacs. Continuing on.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:17

So manure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:23

If this makes you tap out, you were never a real one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:30

Yeah, so manure can enter a river or lake through runoff from field application, which is where the manure was sprayed on the crops and then it all gets rinsed off. And then it can also cause, in addition to those algae blooms we talked about, it can also cause those hypoxic dead zones where it's pulled so much oxygen out of the water that that piece of water is effectively like unusable for life.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:49

And then all the fishes die, all the other aquatic life dies, but then also basically anyone that interacts with that. So like birds, insects that would interact with the aquatic life, they also die. Yeah. All very bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:04

Yeah. And flooding makes all those issues worse, basically.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:07

Right. And specifically in pig farms, mostly North Carolina, there is a lot of flooding.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:12

There's also drinking water contamination. So pollutants can enter drinking water through like the poop lagoon leakage that we talked about. Manure spills. If they spray like too much of the manure on the fields, they can run off into the drinking water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:25

Which they definitely do. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:28

And then also run off after rain or like snow melting can be a big one. um leaching through the soil in general and then like the rural households we were talking about that use wells they're typically the most impacted because the water goes like straight into the water they pull from

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:42

Basically right and they're not getting city water that's already treated yeah so they're super fucked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:46

Oh wow i never realized i never thought about well

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:48

Water not yeah no it's not good so then there's the whole piece of environmental justice and we did it a lot more justice on our pig poop uh episode 58 if you want to check that out um but yeah who gets fucked the most here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:00

Yeah. So as we talked about on that episode, the factory farms are more likely to exist in low-income and minority communities. Rural land may be a lot cheaper, so it's typically out there as well. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:12

Communities usually have less political representation, and then residents have fewer financial resources to take legal action of their own.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:20

Yeah. And property values may make it harder to relocate elsewhere because it can be hard to sell your land.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:25

Right. And you probably don't have the income to be like, okay, I can take a huge loss on it and also pick up a house somewhere else.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:33

And pollution is also generated for products that are consumed far outside of the location where the pollution itself exists.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:39

Right. So like North Carolina has taken this big hit on all the pollution and the shitty drinking water and all of these human health hazards. And they're I mean, I can't remember which documentary it was, but they were interviewing people that live next to the pig farms. And they were like, I won't even fucking touch pig products because they're just like so disgusted by like what they've had to witness living so close to them. So, like, a lot of these people aren't even consuming these products.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:05

Yeah, so they're taking all this, you know, negative repercussions for things that they're not even using, don't benefit their community at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:11

Exactly. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:13

So, if you're listening to this and you're wondering what you can do to help, you know, reduce your water consumption overall for the things you consume or just help with the issue of, like, water risk in general, we have some ideas for you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:26

Yeah. So I think the best place to start is to replace any meat and dairy products you're using with plant-based options. Now, maybe you're not ready to go full vegan, but I would start with beef, dairy, and pork first. If you need help going vegan, moving towards plant-based eating, you feel free to send us messages. We're happy to answer any questions or offer any support. We also have a vegan Discord, which is another great place to ask questions, just get general support.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:58

Yeah, learn new alternatives, new recipes. Also, we have a protein-deficient vegan recipe site and the show notes if you want some high-protein recipes. But yeah, I mean, that's a great place to come in and look at alternative options and see what you can do to eat less meat or whatever you're trying to do. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:14

And there are no stupid questions. We're here to support whatever you might need if you do decide to make the vegan journey.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:19

Some of the options you can use if you're trying to reduce your animal consumption are beans, lentils, tofu, peas, tempeh, TVP, and seitan. Those are mainly like sources that you think of as protein, beans a little less so, but beans are great for a lot of things. And then pea is a good one to lean on if you have like a soy allergy or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:38

Or a gluten allergy or a soy and gluten allergy. Yeah, there you go. The EPA estimates that over one-third of all food produced in the U.S. is never eaten. So another big thing you can do is reduce your food waste in general.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:50

That's a big number.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:51

It's a huge number. So we'll actually link that article in the show notes. But a big thing you can do is freeze your leftovers, plan your meals before shopping so you don't overbuy things that you're not going to use.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:05

And if you do end up with some food waste, try to compost it. This is not really anything to do with water usage, but at least it doesn't end up in a landfill.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:13

Ask local schools, hospitals, restaurants, and workplaces to offer plant-based options. I've been seeing several people, I think people in our Discord were talking about how they've been going to restaurants that maybe don't have a vegan option. and like requesting that they offer a vegan option or even going to places and being like, thank you for the vegan option. And I think that's super cool and a really great idea. And we should probably do that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:34

Yeah. I know we'll often go up to a place that has no obvious vegan option and ask just so we kind of plant the idea in their mind.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:42

You could have had our money.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:46

Yeah. You can also support environmental justice organizations that are led by affected residents. So maybe people that live near some of the farms that are having pollution or some of the water issues, these people tend to form like organizations around that kind of thing. That's going to be very local. You'll have to find, you know, which ones are maybe affected by you or if you're affected, you probably already are aware of this. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:09

Ask elected officials to include water scarcity and cumulative community exposure in permitting decisions. And I think this goes outside of animal ag and probably touches on, like, the AI stuff that we spoke about earlier. Just, like, making sure, like, if this is something you're worried about, dig into it. Figure out what's going on in your town.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:25

I think the AI conversation is bringing a lot more awareness to, like, this water conservation idea in general. So a lot of these bills that they're passing to help with AI will probably inadvertently help with all these other things a little bit, at least.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:39

Yeah. And I will say, like, if you see somebody shit talking AI for its water usage, I don't necessarily think we have to discount those concerns that people are having about AI water usage to prove our own point. I think we can say, hey, if you're concerned about this, you might also want to look at animal ag and like the reductions that you can personally make if you switch over to a plant based diet. Yeah. Because I think what I'm noticing online anyway is, like, when you attack somebody who has concerns about the AI water usage and you're like... So basically, basically what I've seen is shut the fuck up. You're not a vegan, which I just don't think is like, I mean, do whatever you want, but it doesn't seem super effective based on the back and forths that I've seen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:21

I've never seen one of those conversations go well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:23

No. And I think maybe they'd be willing to listen if you said, oh, like, have you looked at animal ag? Like it uses a lot of water, too. Maybe you should care about that, too. We can care about both.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:32

You should also be thoughtful about plant based foods. Like don't necessarily switch to almond milk. Don't try to eat your weight in nuts every day. Nuts are pretty water heavy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:40

They're pretty water heavy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:41

They're very healthy, but they're water heavy. So, you know, a balance.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:44

Yeah. I was looking through like some of the more heavy water usage for plant-based foods. And it was mostly like nuts and it said spices, but I think the spices was mostly because they're dried. You know, and you're using them in small quantities. So I don't necessarily think you have to worry about that so much. But yeah, definitely nuts kept coming up over and over again.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:04

On the bright side, most people can't get away with eating a lot of nuts because of the calories. Yeah, it's true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:08

You're probably not eating your weight in nuts every day anyways.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:10

Yeah. So I saw an interesting quote from one of the studies we were looking at. It said, quote, replacing all meat by an equivalent amount of crop products, such as pulses and nuts, will result in a 30% reduction of the food-related water footprint of the average American citizen.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:26

That's huge. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:28

So just switching from meat, 30% for your personal food-related water footprint.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:33

Right. Yeah. Maybe that's maybe that's the quote that you give when you're trying to argue with someone concerned about AI. Right. Just give them that quote. Give them the link.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:43

Um, aside from foods, a couple of things you can do are limit your lawn watering. Again, this one was huge, gigantic.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:49

It was massive.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:50

Made me convinced that you should probably never, ever do it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:52

Made you convinced that we should do a clover lawn? I'm getting close, guys. He's really starting to break. I can feel it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:00

You can also buy high efficiency appliances like the washing machine or the dishwasher. They use a lot less water. Also like your, um, high efficiency shower heads, things like that. A lot of these things are default now. It's hard to even find ones that aren't.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:12

Yeah, low flow toilets. That kind of thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:13

Yeah, I hate those. I hate low-flow toilets, but you should use them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:17

Yeah, I think there's like a King of the Hill episode or something about it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:21

Oh, I think there might be. Speaking of toilets, though, there is a toilet rule that you might have heard from your grandparents back in the day. Or your dad. Or your dad, yeah. Which is, when it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:36

I mean, grandpas were conservationists. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:40

Yeah. So, you know, you have to make a personal decision on how strongly you feel about that. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:45

Pee outside. If I was a man, I'd pee outside all the time. Yeah. I'm not going to lie.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:50

Like every time you had to go to the bathroom?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:52

Maybe. It looks kind of freeing. Is it not as, like, cool as it looks?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:55

Well, you know, when we pee in the sink, we don't have to flush. So that's the trick.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:58

You pee in my sink?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:00

Well, I was just saying, hypothetically, if I was to pee in the sink, you would never know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:07

You don't have to. I was asking you if it was freeing to pee outside You didn't answer Oh yeah, definitely It is? Yeah Do you feel the wind on your member?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:18

Yeah, I guess so And then you're always looking to see if some little animal's about to jump out of the brush

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:22

Let me ask you this Yeah When you've peed outside Do you get a feel for the wind direction before you give it a go? Like, do you make sure you're not peeing?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:30

The wind erection?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:31

The wind erection. The wind? Wind direction.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:34

Oh, oh, okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:35

To make sure you're not peeing against the wind.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:37

Yeah, definitely. And also, you got to make sure you're not near a electrified fence.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:41

Yeah, well, okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:42

But yeah, you don't want to pee into the wind. Nobody does that. It's like spitting into the wind, but worse.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:47

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:48

So, yeah. Things you have to consider.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:51

But you do that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:52

Well, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:53

Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:54

Yeah. I mean, usually, though, when you're peeing outside, in most cases, you're covered up enough that you're breaking the wind with whatever you're hiding yourself from

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:00

Oh really yeah but not always i've only peed outside a few times it was like when i was like walking around something for a while like like hiking maybe yeah what am i supposed to do yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:11

You have to get one of those

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:12

Funnels yeah yeah i've heard good things about the funnels in our discord yeah yeah i kind of want one it seems like a good time super convenient i want to try it i'm definitely going to get one before snow hits chicago because i want to know if i can write my name in the snow.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:28

You do have really pretty handwriting so

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:30

We just don't know how good it's going to be through a funnel yeah but i have high hopes speaking of peeing outside you know you can pee outside easier on a disc golf course instead of a golf course no.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:43

That's true yeah we talked about golf courses being a huge consumption of water so maybe everybody should just play disc golf instead of golf it's just out in the

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:49

Woods yeah no green it's cheaper you know it is cheaper Yeah. It's funner, I would say. More fun. It's funner. You can buy fun colored discs. You can go walking. It's basically like hiking, but you're also throwing shit. Right. And I will say, I feel like the people that disc golf, they always seem nicer. That's true. Like, less judgment. Like, nobody's like, why aren't you wearing a polo today? Yeah. Because everyone is mostly smoking weed and wearing band t-shirts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:22

Yeah. So, that's pretty much it for the main segment. Those are the things you can do. Disc golf does lead us into our next segment, though.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:28

Really? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:29

Because now we're going to have our bite-sized coaching. So, if you guys don't know, I'm a personal trainer. And I did an Ask Me Anything a couple of times on Reddit, get a lot of questions. So I'll share some of those with you guys here as a little brief coaching segment. So on my most recent Ask Me Anything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:45

No, no. I get to ask the questions. Okay. I feel like you should know this by now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:48

Ask me the question.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:49

Okay. So on your most recent AMA that you put on Reddit, do you remember what your most upvoted question was?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:56

I do.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:56

Okay. It was if you were married to me. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:00

Ew.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:02

Ew, guys. Girls have cooties.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:06

No, I am definitely married to you. um so but anyway yeah so disc golf we actually got engaged on a disc

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:14

Golf course we did yeah we did okay i see how you tied in very good you forgot no i didn't forget you did black out a little bit i did black out of it yeah it was like pretty overwhelming, he made us walk around uh the track around a disc golf course it was like 40 degrees out and also raining yeah and he's like we should really do another lap and i'm just like okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:39

It was vibes

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:40

You know it was vibes yeah also.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:42

You know nerves

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:43

Yeah, But that second trip around the, you know, the walking trail, I did get to pet like three dogs. Oh, I know. So like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:52

It turned out to be the perfect day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:53

Yeah, I was in a really good mood when you asked because I just pet like three strange dogs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:57

I got lucky there. If it would have been two dogs, it would have been on the borderline.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:00

You just don't know. Yeah. Yeah, three dogs is key. So that wasn't the real question, but it was the one that you got the most of those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:05

It was legitimately the top voted question.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:10

So another question that you actually got quite a bit of traction on was asking about if you had any advice for somebody who is struggling with consistency and like mood swings because of periods and now i know that you don't have periods that's true because i live with you and he doesn't yeah but i know you can relate to this because i have horrible periods, so like let's say that someone is having a really bad period which causes them to escape workouts on certain days of their period and maybe they're also struggling with like cravings yeah because period cravings those are like those are real guys, And then they feel so bad that they just don't have the energy to cook. And I know that you've never experienced the joy of a really bad period. That's true. Firsthand. But you have secondhand. And do you have any advice?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:55

Yeah. So I do have some advice. If you have a regular period, then you can try anticipating the schedule and kind of meal prep going into it. So you already have prepared, low friction, high quality options for the week. You can just kind of shuffle down to the fridge, grab something out of there, throw it in the microwave, maybe even eat a cold. depending on what it is. You don't even have to think about it and you have good food. On the workout side, you can kind of plan for lighter workouts or even just commit to yourself that you'll at least go into the gym and do one thing before you decide that you're not feeling it and leave. You might be surprised how often you just finish the workout anyway after you start it with that mindset. And there are definitely going to be days where you're going to get down there, you're going to start moving around, you're like, no, I'm going back home going back to bed

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:41

Yeah sometimes i get so nauseous that doing anything makes me feel like i want to throw up so sounds pretty rough it is pretty rough and.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:49

It sounds a little unpredictable which can be pretty annoying i would

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:51

Imagine yeah i know they they can be very unpredictable how would you deal with cravings if you had a like a ninja creamy you could do like chocolate high protein ice cream.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:00

That's true. I think I would consider that part of the anticipating, though, and throw a bunch of it in the freezer before you get in there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:05

Yeah, or maybe like some high-protein snacks or like treats and stuff, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:09

Yeah, as long as that's something that's going to sound good to you in the moment.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:14

I mean, chocolate almost always sounds good to me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:16

That's a good point, yeah. I think the Ninja Creamy is actually a great idea. You just freeze up a bunch of little ice creams with some protein in it, and then you're eating chocolate ice cream.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:23

Or like Rice Krispie treats. It was like, I don't know, whatever kind of craving you have. Try to figure out what that is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:28

You should make a category on your recipe site just for this.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:31

Period cravings.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:32

Emergency period cravings.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:33

Period cravings and munchie food. There you go. I've never had the munchies because I've never been high. But like I'm guessing what people would like to eat because I feel like I have pretty good taste in snack food.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:43

Yeah, it seems pretty similar, I would imagine.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:45

Yeah. You can make like protein brownies. You can make all kinds of stuff. You can make the protein pizza crust in advance.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:51

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:52

Or I think also having a place, like a local restaurant that you just know has like something you can order.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:59

I think if I was in that situation, I would make probably five of your protein cheesecakes and I'd be good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:04

That's all you do? You just eat protein cheesecakes? Yeah. I don't know. I like, see, I like when we do noodle bowls because I don't really feel like cooking, but like I can still get in a bunch of different vegetables and stuff and it tastes good and it's like low effort. But I feel like, oh, I'm getting in some nutrition and protein and I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:21

You can put broccoli on top of your protein cheesecake.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:24

No, you shouldn't do that. That's a horrible idea. All right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:29

So that's the bite-sized coaching for the week.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:32

Let us know if you did a good job covering periods.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:34

Or if you have any questions that you would like answered here. I don't necessarily have to pull them from the AMA.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:39

That's true. We would love to actually get audience questions. Um, we haven't gotten any so far, but if you would like to submit one, we'll probably pick it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:48

If you're on YouTube or Spotify, you can leave a comment asking a question. If you go to the Deficient Vegans website down in the show notes, you can like use the contact form. There's in the question there, or you can use the little microphone in the corner to record a question for us to answer. Um, also in the show notes are our social medias. You can send us questions there as well. We also have our Deficient Vegans Discord server where we just wrapped up our first book for the Deficient Vegans book club. Yeah. So we finished reading Eating Animals. We are kind of getting feedback on that, getting geared up to vote for the next book.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11:20

So if you want to be a part of that vote, you should join our Discord so that you can also vote for what the next book is going to be. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11:27

And then when you finish that book, you can get a cool button and some stickers to start building up towards your pizza-related prize.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11:33

Not book it. It's not book it. Yeah. But it kind of is.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11:40

All right yeah so if you enjoyed listening to this we'd appreciate it if you left us a rating or review on apple podcast or spotify that helps our show get out there and uh i think that's it you want to say bye bye guys bye everybody