What I didn't know as an ethical vegetarian

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans podcast, episode 63 on the Muscle Deficient Vegan here with the Protein Deficient Vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi. Hi, everybody. We are back with a new episode this week after taking a week or so off. So this week, we're going to talk about some of the things ethical vegetarians might not know. And then we'll also have a small bite-sized coaching segment to briefly talk about when to take your protein around workouts.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:20

I think this is going to be a good episode because I was an ethical vegetarian.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:23

Oh, yeah. You have a lot of background for this topic. And it's a topic that actually comes up quite a bit, so I'm excited to talk about it. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:29

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:31

So the first piece of news we have is about growing heme-rich animal-equivalent proteins with tobacco and lettuce.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:37

Without the carcinogens of tobacco or?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:40

So maybe use the lettuce. I don't know. We'll keep an eye on that as this expands.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:45

It's still interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:46

It is interesting. So researchers at Imperial College London have found a way to engineer lettuce and tobacco to make myoglobin, which is a protein that is typically only found in animal meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:55

Interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:56

And it is specifically a protein that carries heme-rich iron and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02

Things that taste like blood.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03

Right. Metallic taste, umami taste is kind of what they're talking about. Now, the research isn't technically specifically for making a food product. It's just to find a way to make the myoglobin. But the idea is that that process will end up being part of some food products later on, which could help with like taste and texture for people who do like miss that meat taste or want to transition from a meat-centric diet. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26

I'll stick with my seitan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29

Yeah. One of the benefits, though, is that it could allow for heme iron in vegan food sources, which is kind of one of the points of contention that comes up a lot when you talk about vegan nutrition. Yeah. Because plants only have non-heme iron, which the body can use, and it turns it into the same kind of things that iron turns into. It's just not quite as efficient, so you need more. And, like, if you're already anemic, being a vegan can make that kind of worse if you're not really careful with it. So it could be nice, especially for anemics or people who are prone to low iron levels to have an actual heme iron source.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:01

Yeah. If they put that in a pill, I will take that instead. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:06

You could also just use the little iron fish in your food in the pan. I don't know if that has a lot of evidence behind it if it actually works, but I see that a lot. You cook your food with a little iron fish and shards come off and you eat it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:18

Yeah. I haven't tried that yet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:22

I think a common way to use it is like soak it in soups and stuff. So you probably had a lot of that,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:26

Right? No, I don't eat soup.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:29

Anyway, yeah, looking forward to seeing how this develops and if it ends up in some food, if it actually works out. We'll try to keep an eye on that. Next up is a company called Vegan Cuts. You might have heard of them. It's one of those subscription box services where you sign up and they ship you something like every month. And this one is like fully vegan products typically. They recently released a protein-centered box. So you sign up for it and they ship you a lot of vegan proteins every month.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:55

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:56

So what do we think about this box? You looked into it a little bit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:59

I have like so many thoughts on this. Okay. So first off, you're probably like, well, what do you get? Yeah. Well, they're calling it the 600 grams of protein box or something or protein 600 box. I don't know. Anyways, it's 600 grams of protein.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:13

Okay. That sounds pretty good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:14

Okay. So it has like earth chimp protein powder. Okay. It has some kind of vegan jerky, protein bars, and some other snacks. Okay. Now, knowing what you know about the cost of vegan protein foods.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:27

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:27

What would you think 600 grams of those proteins would be? Like, what would you pay for that?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:32

So I'm thinking maybe in terms of protein powder or something, maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of like $50 to $75 at the high end.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:40

Wow. That's what I thought too. Do you want to know how much it is?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:43

How much is it?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:44

Okay. The regular price, $170.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:47

$170?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:49

$170.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:52

Wow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:52

And the sale price is still $119.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:56

$170 for a monthly box of some vegan protein food? That sounds ridiculous.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:01

It sounds stupid as fuck. Okay. So like on sale, this is the sale price, which is highly discounted. You're getting about five grams of protein per dollar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:12

Wow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:13

The non-sale price leaves you with around three and a half grams of protein per dollar. Wow. They're, they're pillaging you folks. You couldn't convince me to buy this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:24

Yeah, I don't know why you would. I mean, the only benefit might be like if you're really trying to find new protein snack options you like. But, I mean, for $170, you could just kind of go on Amazon and randomly pick things you've never tried before.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:37

I know. And, like, the thing that I thought was funny is it's, like, EarthChimp. Like, I actually like EarthChimp protein powder, but they have two flavors. Yeah. They have two whole flavors. They have chocolate and they have vanilla. Right. So it's not like you're getting a variety of, like. Exotic. Yeah. Like, these aren't, like, interesting flavors. You're getting chocolate or vanilla. It's boring. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:58

It's boring and 300% more expensive. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:00

No. Like, okay. So if you're willing to spend $170 on protein products every month, I have options for you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:09

Yeah, you can get so much.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:10

So first off, go buy a whole container of protein powder. That'll only set you back like $40.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:17

Yeah, two pounds of most protein powders is like $40.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:20

Yeah. Then you're left with like $130. Then go buy a 12-pack variety pack of your favorite protein bar brand. So that's maybe going to set you back like $25, $30. So let's say it's $30. You're left with $100. Go buy anything else that's interesting. Yeah. Because, like, okay. And then the other problem with a box like this, right? You don't get to choose what you're getting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:46

Oh, I know. This is always my least favorite thing about any of these boxes. I've tried, like, other boxes like this over time. Not even food. Just, like, stuff. And it's, like, 80% of the stuff in the box I don't want.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:55

Oh, I know. I used to be really bad about it. They had this. This wasn't a vegan box, but it didn't really have food. But it was called, like, the FabFitFun box. And it was, like, $50. And it was, like, a quarterly subscription. I don't know if it still exists. I haven't bought it for like 10 years. Yeah. But like it would have like a random exercise type thing and like some homeware stuff and like maybe some jewelry. Yeah. But and honestly, the price was really good. It was like $50, but like the like the actual retail price of the box was like $300. Yeah. So I kept getting it because I was like, oh, it's such a deal. But then I ended up giving almost all of it to my mom because I never liked any of the jewelry. I never liked any of the shit. Yeah. It's like, here you go. But it was a deal. This is not a deal. Yeah. They're actually like, I think the price is like higher than it would be if you went and bought all this shit individually. Yeah. And you also might just not like any of it. Yeah. Don't do it. All right. That's my opinion. Don't fucking do it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:51

I think these only make sense if you like combine all the stuff and you're saving like $100. Not if you combine all the stuff and you're paying $150 extra.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:59

And you also don't get to choose what's in the box.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:01

Yeah, it's crazy. What's in the box? Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:05

All right. Not $170 worth of product. That's what's not in the box.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:08

Yeah, so maybe skip on that one.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:09

I would skip. All right. But if you need vegan protein recommendations, hit me up. There you go.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:14

The last piece of news we have is about Chobani, the yogurt company, I guess.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:19

Well, they make milk, too. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:21

Yeah, so they have officially discontinued their oat milk beverage line, which includes its original vanilla and zero sugar varieties, according to Big Box Vegan. So Chobani cited a lack of demand and that they also said that any remaining cartons on store shelves are a leftover inventory that won't be restocked. So if you did happen to like these, if you find a store that has some, that's the last you're going to get. So you should go get it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:44

That's sad. Yeah. Well, RIP Chobani oat milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:50

I need somebody to make a really good like small, like a personal size. I don't know. Well, like a chocolate milk, like an oat milk, chocolate milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:58

That would be good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:59

Yeah. I have not seen, I know there are a couple of companies I think that make that, but I don't see them in stores really.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:05

I think they also had a seasonal oat eggnog.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:10

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:11

And it sounds like it's still up in the air if that's coming back this holiday season or not.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:15

I could see them keeping a seasonal thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:16

I hope so. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:18

I mean, it's not like Chobani is coming out of stores. All they have to do is like throw their new product up or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:22

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:23

Interesting. All right. Let's get into the main topic, which is talking about what ethical vegetarians might be missing out on as far as information.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:31

Okay, so for me, what I've seen in spaces like Reddit or really social media, there's like a really common occurrence of talking shit about vegetarians in vegan spaces. And like I've even seen some vegans go so far as to say that vegetarians are just as bad as omnivores. Yeah. Have you seen this?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:51

I have seen that. And I've seen like when vegetarians come into like the vegan subreddit, for example, Sometimes they'll ask questions and they will get pretty harassed for not really a good reason.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:01

As someone who was a vegetarian, I personally look at vegetarians as like pre-vegans. Like maybe they just are missing some information. I'm not saying all of them. Yeah. But like, we don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:12

Yeah. I mean, they're definitely still doing like a significant reduction in animal harm. And they're only a couple of food choices away from a vegan diet. So I don't know why we wouldn't just choose to, like, nurture that already existing thought process and try to, like, get them over the finish line.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:28

Exactly. So before you come at us and say there's no such thing as an ethical vegetarian, I personally thought I was an ethical vegetarian for most of my life. Yeah. And so this is basically why we thought it might be good to have a podcast episode that covers some of the things that, like, ethical vegetarians may not know. Right. Something that could, like, flip the switch into saying, oh... okay, maybe a vegetarian doesn't go as far as I want to go to reduce my harm. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:58

And I feel like if you do have all the information, ethical vegetarians will probably be like, oh, well, I guess I have to go all the way and be vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:06

Exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:07

So I know you were a vegetarian for a long time before becoming vegan, like since you were a kid,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:13

Right? Yeah, yeah. So if you don't want to hear my personal story, you can feel free to skip this part. But I just want to share my personal experience. So you can understand why I'm using the word ethical in front of vegetarian. Yeah. So I stopped eating meat when I was 12. I had a history teacher in seventh grade that just like casually mentioned that he was in the Peace Corps. And he was talking about how he was in the Peace Corps in Nepal and he was vegetarian those years. Yeah. He wasn't he wasn't currently a vegetarian. He was just saying, like, I did a vegetarian stint two years ago. So, like, I went home and I was just like, what the fuck is a vegetarian? You can do that. You can like not eat animals like that's crazy. And there had been like several things before that that kind of like had me thinking differently about eating animals in general. Like, I remember seeing my uncle had like a dead deer hanging up. And so I had this I would never I didn't want to eat deer meat like that. it's like Bambi right yeah I don't know but there were like other things like there were certain foods that like really grossed me out things that were like closer to an animal product than like a process product so like steak was more disgusting to me than like ground beef right because it's more like visual like you're like that's literally a cow, um so yeah I went home and I wrote my parents a probably pretty embarrassing note where I was like hey I'm not going to be eating animals anymore. And then I think I said something about like cows have brothers and moms and sisters and aunts and uncles and friends. And like, I'm not going to eat those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:46

I hope they find this note in a drawer one day so we can frame it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:51

They were, I can't really remember their response because I was like so focused on my own like revelation. Right. But they were probably like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. A 12 year old. And so, yeah, basically from that point on, I like just didn't eat animals um i was young and i thought, if i didn't want animals to die for me then i was just gonna stop eating meat yeah and then i spent the rest of my life never running into vegetarians or vegans, like i met a few ex-vegetarians in college but they were like, um they had grown up in so i had one friend that grew up in india and so he was vegetarian when he was in india and then he moved to the u.s and then he wasn't a vegetarian anymore yeah so like that was the closest to like a vegetarian friend i ever.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:38

Had yeah it's just not that common like you are one of the two people who i had actually known were vegetarian i probably come across more than i've mentioned it but like there was one lady at work one time who i knew was a vegetarian and you those are the only two in my whole life yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:51

No it's hard to like just randomly meet people. And, you know, I was like in engineering school and then I was like working at refineries and stuff, mostly around men and like a higher percentage of women are vegetarians are vegan. So I just happened to never have run across any. So because of this, I actually never really thought about like the meat or dairy industry much at all. I just knew that I didn't want to cause harm to animals. So I didn't eat meat. And I will say like once you've done this for like a decade or so, you don't really think about it. Like, especially if you're not part of a community. Yeah. It's just kind of like, I don't eat meat. I don't ever really think about it unless it comes time to mealtime. I just tell people I'm a vegetarian and I move on with my day. Yeah. I kind of really look further than that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:34

I think there are a lot of vegans like that too who are just like, they're vegan but they don't really get involved with community or talk about it or stuff like that. It makes sense.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:40

Yeah. And what I will say is, I had met, like, some previous vegetarians or whatever, but I had never met a real vegan ever. So my only, like, opinion of vegans was, like, basically the propaganda that's pushed, right? Like, that they're crazy. And honestly, I actually thought that they cut out, like, dairy and eggs for their health reasons. Right. For some reason, I thought vegetarians were, like, ethical vegetarians and then vegans were, like, health-focused.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:10

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:11

And I don't know why I thought that, but that was like what I thought.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:13

Yeah, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:14

You know, so, yeah, I firmly believe that up until I became vegan, that all vegans were health focused.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:22

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:22

Sounds stupid now, but yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:23

I think I would have thought that, too, because the stuff I had read about veganism was mostly around like the whole food plant based diet. Yeah. Which is pretty exclusively health focused. So I think I had that association in my mind as well. It was like, OK, vegan is kind of like the whole food plant based thing. It's mostly for health.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:39

And then during my first job out of college, I worked at an ethanol plant and there were a few guys that worked there that were either like part time farmers or had previously worked on a farm or like were raised on a farm. And I even remember asking them like a lot, like way back, right? Like 10 years ago, you know, asking them about like cows and like, do cows need to be milked or like, what's the deal with cows and milking basically? And then I remember them telling me that like cows are in pain if they don't get milked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:06

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:07

So I took that as like another sign. Like I'm hearing it straight from a farmer's mouth telling me that cows feel pain if they're not milked. So like... I didn't see, I didn't think there was like an ethical reason to not eat milk or dairy products, you know? Yeah. So I will say after having that conversation, it stopped my curiosity for a while. Like I didn't really think much of it. I talked to a farmer. Right. Done. Checked off the box. Checked it off. And then almost six years ago now, I started randomly like just wondering about the dairy industry again. And I think I was actually, it was more of like, man, I love cheese. I was like addicted to cheese. It was like every snack that I was obsessed with was like cheese based. And so I think I really wanted to just like quit my cheese addiction for like health reasons, not really like an ethical reason. But I decided I was going to read the book Eating Animals a couple of days before the new year. And then I was going to try the January. And I stupidly thought eating animals was just going to be about like it reinforcing why I was vegetarian. Right. I actually didn't think there was going to be anything about the dairy industry at all.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:14

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot in there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:17

There's a lot about the dairy industry and the egg industry. And I read that book and I read it in like two days. My mind changed overnight. Yeah. I was just like trying to satisfy my curiosity of like, am I missing something? But I was going to try veganuary anyway. Yeah. But in my mind, I was going to try it for like... maybe a couple months or something. But after reading that book, I was like, oh, no, like, this is it. Like, I am a vegan now. Yeah. Like overnight. So I chased the book Eating Animals with Cowspiracy documentary for like good measure. And then a couple other documentaries. Yeah. And I'm like, my cheese addiction was strong. I was like, I'm gonna have to brainwash myself out of wanting to eat cheese. Yeah. And people say that like cheese addictions are real. And like, if you're super into cheese, and then you go vegan, like maybe just don't eat cheese. or vegan cheese for like a month yeah i went straight to vegan cheese it was fine. But like there were things i had honestly never even thought about because i was like living in my own cognitive dissonance that, not eating meat was doing everything i needed to do to like not harm animals right and i believe like all the lies and propaganda and, That the meat and dairy industry is pushed so hard. And it was kind of interesting when I read eating animals because I actually hadn't known any of the welfare concerns around the meat industry either. Basically, like, I went into vegetarianism from the perspective of, like, I don't want to kill animals. I don't want animals to die for me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:47

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:48

Never thought about the welfare issues. Yeah. For me, it was like, okay, I wouldn't eat a cow. I also wouldn't eat, like, a deer that was killed in the woods.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:56

Yeah. It's just a lot more simple version. You didn't even need all the other information.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:00

I didn't even need the other information. It was just like, I don't want animals dying for me. Yeah. So like reading eating animals really opened my eyes. The factory farming is horrific and I had no idea. Like I was vegetarian that didn't see, I didn't see through any of the meat propaganda either. Right. You know what I mean? Like I had never really looked into it because it was like, well, I'm not eating it. Why do I need to know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:20

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:21

You know what I mean? So like reading that book and watching some of the documentaries, it was like, wow. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think part of that is, like, I made the decision to not eat animals so young that, like, I didn't know any of that. Like, I made the decision to not eat animals from, like, a child's perspective of, like, I just don't want animals to die for me. Yeah. Not from, like, having information. Right. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So, yeah. The whole thing was, like, pretty shocking, to be honest. Mm-hmm. It made me a lot more aggressive when I said I was vegan. Yeah. Because I was kind of like a wishy, not a wishy-washy vegetarian, but like I didn't really put my foot down when people would like, oh, why are you vegetarian? I never wanted to have awkward conversations about it. So like sometimes if I knew someone was going to get weird with me, I would even be like, I just don't like the way meat tastes. That was never the reason for me. It never was. It's just like I'm living in Memphis and there are a bunch of good old boys asking me why I don't eat animals. Yeah, yeah. Right? Like, and I just don't want to have awkward conversations. But after reading that book, it's like, I don't really shy away from that kind of shit anymore because I know the stakes now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:29

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:29

So, yeah. But it also, like, opened my eyes to the dairy and egg industry.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:34

There's a lot of, the book is great. We just covered it in our book club in the Deficient Vegans Discord. But there's a lot in there about a bunch of different facets of animal agriculture. So, like, the dairy, the meat, the, like, you were just talking about the eggs. There are a lot of different things going on, and they all have their own kind of really fucked up process and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:56

And honestly, I guess, like, as someone who thought they were doing the most they could, I just felt, like, stupid for not knowing that kind of stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:03

And I think if you didn't know those things, there are probably a lot of other people who don't know those things as vegetarians, you know?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:09

Yeah. And if they don't know, then they can't change. But if they did know, they might change. So, sorry for, like, the long, drawn-out personal story. I just wanted to explain, like, why we're doing this episode, and, hopefully it'll help change the minds of some, like, well-intentioned vegetarians that maybe just don't know, like, the full grasp of what's happening in the dairy and egg industries. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:31

And just to reinforce, like, people are vegetarian for what they believe to be ethical reasons and consider themselves ethical vegetarians. Like, it is a real thing. Yeah. Just maybe it's, you know, a little bit of missing knowledge or something like that, but those people do exist.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:44

Yeah. So, you know, I would say if you're already vegan and you're listening to this and you're like, I don't really know what I'm going to get out of this. I guess what I would say is hopefully what you get out of it is to be a little kinder to vegetarians you run across because they might just be completely ignorant to all this information because I was. Right. And I genuinely thought I was doing a good job. And I just had never run into a vegan. Like, I just think my life would have been way different had I met a vegan in college or something that, like, gave me this information. And it's just not something that you run into unless you're looking for it most of the time. So...

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:18

And you probably wouldn't have received the information very well if you went online and talked to a vegan community or you talked to a vegan and they were just an asshole to you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:26

I mean, yeah, it's just beating someone over the head and telling them they're a piece of shit is not great for winning them to your side.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:35

We need to reread How to Win Friends and Influence People. I don't think that's in there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:42

Yeah, I just think it turns people off.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:45

So before we get into what specifically is being missed, potentially by vegetarians, let's talk about why the information is being missed.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:52

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:53

So for things like meat, especially products like steak, pork chops, things like that, where there is minimal processing, it's really easy to identify that that was like an animal's body. It's literally a slab of animal muscle, basically. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:05

I think that's why, even as a kid, that kind of stuff really grossed me out. Like, I remember being, like, really disgusted by specifically steak and pork chops.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:13

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:14

Because it's just right there. Yeah. And I have met people that aren't vegan or vegetarian and they just have very weird hangups on like I knew someone at work that she had a weird hangup on like chicken. She just didn't like like she said sometimes she would be eating and it wouldn't be too obvious for her that it was chicken. And it would just gross her out. And I'm just kind of like, okay, well, sounds like you should look into veganism.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:39

That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, with something like that, it's kind of hard to hide the source of the food, right? Like, it's obvious that it's meat. It's obvious it comes from an animal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:49

It's obvious they had to die for it to exist on your plate.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:51

Yeah, exactly. But with things that aren't meat, like, or aren't even, like, minimally processed meat, like dairy, eggs, honey, maybe even, like, you were saying, ground beef sometimes. Yeah. A little bit detached. It's a lot easier to kind of ignore what happens to the animal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:06

Right. And I think it's like, OK, so if it's a steak, you can't really be tricked into thinking like, oh, well, the cow's fine because the cow's dead in front of me. But like if you see a glass of milk and you're under like the falsities of the propaganda, right? It's like maybe you look at the carton and you see like the nice little carton label and you just think, oh, it's just like a nice little cow that was frolicking in the field, like just had a little bit of leftover milk for me to drink. Right. Like you can almost buy into that because that's what they show you in commercials.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:38

Right. Yeah. What you don't see is that the cow has to be basically constantly kept pregnant to keep producing milk. Like they end up getting the cow pregnant about once a year in most dairy operations to have the cow effectively continuously producing milk other than like the two month kind of rest period every year.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:58

Yeah. And I would say, like, when you see an egg, maybe you're thinking of, like, your weirdo neighbor that has a couple of chickens that regularly cross the street and shit in your driveway. We had that. Like, in our house, there was, like, the guy across the street who had chickens and geese. And we would just, like, sometimes we'd wake up in the morning and there was just, like, bird shit, like, all over our driveway. Oh, that's nice. And it's like, I guess, why did the chicken cross the road to shit on our driveway? But, like, you don't think about how 99% of all chickens are kept, right? Yeah. And you also don't think about the fact that male chickens born to laying hens are killed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:36

You also see, like, commercials of cows being happy and in the grass and just assume that that's how they live all the time because they aren't dying for your cheese.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:44

Yeah. It's a lot easier for your brain to assume what they want you to assume. Right. when you're not eating a corpse. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the big piece.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:55

Yeah. And I think, you know, the dairy and egg industries spend a lot of money to make you feel like the products are just a natural part of life and that as a vegetarian, you're consuming something that would just naturally be there anyway. And it's almost like a byproduct.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:08

I always thought of it as a byproduct.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:10

Yeah. And those things are created while the animal is alive, but that doesn't mean that it's like a happy animal,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:17

Right? Right. where I think they get you is like where you have meat which is, basically proof of death you have eggs and dairy and cheese and that's almost proof of life in a way, yeah you know like they had to be alive to make this and I think that's like, why it's so insidious.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:37

Yeah it's interesting the the industries also like to use unfamiliar words so if you're solely looking at information provided by them you might not fully understand what those things mean um they like soften the language tone it down so it sounds you know nicer basically yeah yeah more palatable uh some of those are what they say breeding really typically means artificial insemination yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:58

Or the one that really rubs me the wrong way is culling, which literally just means like mostly slaughtering or killing. I mean, I guess it could mean removing from flock or herd, but almost all the times it means killing. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:13

There's also a spent hen, which is a hen whose egg production is no longer profitable, so they got to go.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:20

To slaughter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:22

And then also depopulation, which is killing an entire flock or a group of livestock. Typically that's done for disease control.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:30

Yeah, but I mean, breeding, culling, spent hen, depopulation, if you didn't know what those meant, it just doesn't seem as bad as what they mean.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:37

Yeah, I think it's especially easy to never learn these things if you went vegetarian solely because you didn't want animals to die for you, period.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:44

Yeah, which is kind of what I was saying is like, for me, I didn't need to hear how they were treated because that part never mattered to me. You know what I mean? Like, even if they were treated nice, I was never going to eat the animal. So it was almost like it feels like selfish to not look into that information. But for me, it was like I was already very, very sensitive to like animal harm in general. Right. Because that's why I went vegetarian. So it's like, why would I go like traumatize myself learning like how they were treated? I can just it doesn't because the conditions don't matter to a lot of vegetarians. It doesn't matter if they have the most fulfilling life, die a natural death. They're not going to eat them. So, yeah, you just might not look into it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:23

And then, you know, there are also a lot of vegetarians who are vegetarian because of religious reasons, and dairy is an important part of their culture. I think India is the one that comes up mostly for this.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:32

Yeah. Yeah, in India, they're actually sacred.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:35

Yeah. And that's, you know, maybe a little different than a lack of information, but they might still consider themselves an ethical vegetarian because they're doing it for religious reasons, which to that person is pretty deeply tied to their ethics.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:48

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:49

So let's get into the main two things that might change your mind if you are an ethical vegetarian or if you know an ethical vegetarian or somebody who's maybe even just a vegetarian in general. You can share this information with them and maybe they think a little more closely about becoming a vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:04

And I will say there are more reasons than this to be to go from vegetarian to vegan. Yeah. But like. From a personal perspective, these are the two that completely changed my way of thinking.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:15

Okay. The first one is milk production.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:19

Yeah. So somehow I was completely oblivious to the fact that the cow would need to be pregnant and have already given birth to produce milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:26

You know what's crazy is I've never really thought about this either. I know. And I mean, I guess because, and I even had some conversations online about this recently, but people tend to think, and it's what I thought, that like a cow gets pregnant at some point And then you just milk it as long as you want. And it doesn't matter if you're pregnant again. That's not how it works. And I don't know why I thought that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:45

I never even thought the cow needed. This sounds so stupid. This is, like, honestly embarrassing as a woman. But, like, it never even really occurred to me the cow would need to get pregnant. It was just, like, cows make milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:58

Yeah, this is what cows do.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:59

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:59

And I thought that in some ways as well. Like, I never really considered that they were pregnant. But I definitely didn't think they were becoming, like, intentionally impregnated.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:07

Over and over and over again.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:08

But like, oh, udders. All they ever show udders do is making milk. So I thought, oh, cows are just some kind of animal that makes milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:14

And I think they get you because like cartoons, TV, movies, they never show a baby cow in the picture. Yeah. It's always just a human milking the mother cow. Yeah. Right? So like in my brain, I just always thought the cows had milk, which is fucking stupid. I just thought it was like a special cow thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:33

I also thought the same stupid thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:35

I don't know why there's that. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:37

And I feel like there are millions of other people who just think cows produce milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:40

Which is insane. Yeah. So 75% of all cows farmed in the U.S., dairy and beef are included in this number, are factory farmed. So any idea you had of, like, happy dairy cows, like, frolicking through the land and, like, you're purchasing their happy dairy products, that's... I mean, that's a lie, you know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:02

It's funny because this comes up so much in conversations. It's like, oh, what if I'm getting my milk from my own cow or my local farmer? And it's like, I don't like that conversation is almost irrelevant to me because almost nobody. I don't know the percentages. Right. But like very few people are getting their milk that way.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:20

Not all of it. I think here's where that kind of falls apart for me is like if you're going the small farm route, it's like, are you never eating out? Right. Are you never buying processed products from the grocery store?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:31

That have milk in them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:32

Yeah, those are not, quote unquote, ethically sourced dairy. I don't think there is an ethical dairy. Yeah. But if you're counting, if you're someone who's counting small farms as ethical, the stuff you're getting at a restaurant is not that. The stuff you're buying at the grocery store is not that. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:50

I would say probably for most omnivores, like the milk in the carton that you're buying is probably like on the lower end of your total dairy consumption. Oh, yeah. Cheeses and products that have milk and yogurts and stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:03

Yeah. Milks and everything.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:04

All that stuff comes from factory farms. So like the carton of milk you maybe you get from your neighbor with a happy cow. I don't know. Yeah. They still have to impregnate the cow, so there's still, like, some obviously ethical concerns there. But even in that scenario, that, like, bottle of milk you get is a really small percentage of your total dairy intake.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:23

Unless you're making your own butter, cheese, yogurt. Yeah. Yeah. Come on.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:29

And again, maybe there are people out there doing that, but it's an extremely vanishingly small number of people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:34

Yeah. So I think we should cover why even if you're buying from a small farm, it's still maybe not great. So dairy cows are usually around 15 months old when they're determined to be large enough to safely carry a pregnancy. And the majority of all dairy cows are artificially inseminated. Right. Do you know how that works? Would you like me to tell you?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:55

I would like you to tell me how that works.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:56

Okay. First off... I posted this on my Instagram, and I had many, many being like four or five people, but it's enough that it's annoying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:06

Well, you know if five people said it, 100 people thought it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:08

Yeah. There have been several people that think I don't understand how female reproductive systems work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:16

You have one of those, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:17

I do. Okay. So when I tell you that a technician is inserting their hand up a cow's rectum, believe that I have researched this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:27

Rectum is butthole, right? That's not where you make babies from.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:30

That's what they said before Googling. So let me tell you how cows are artificially inseminated. Let's hear it. Okay, so a technician inserts their hand and pretty much their entire forearm up the cow's rectum or butthole to locate and hold the cervix from underneath. Right. Then with their other hand, they're holding a semen gun, which is inserted into the vulva and guided through the cervix and into the body of the uterus.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:01

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:02

Can you even fathom how invasive that is?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:05

Oh, that sounds insane.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:06

Okay. So just like, I'm reading this thinking, wow, that's fucking crazy. So they do artificial insemination for humans, right? You know, like for fertility and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so imagine if when you went in, they shoved, they fisted your asshole.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:24

God.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:27

To find your cervix from underneath and hold it in place. And then they shot a semen gun up your other hole. Like, that's what's happening here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:36

Science.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:37

It's like, it's incredibly invasive. And so, obviously, I dug more into this. And apparently, the reason they do it like this, because you wouldn't normally go that far up into the uterus, right? I was like, holy shit, why are they going all the way to the uterus? But apparently, they do that because semen is really expensive. and it's, like, more effective, efficient, whatever, if they go all the way up because they're cheap assholes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:03

They've got to make sure it hits the target.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:04

Yeah. So let's be, like, as invasive, as brutal, traumatizing as possible so that we don't have to spend a couple more dollars on semen or whatever. I don't know how much semen is. But also, who's jerking off the bull?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:16

That is a job.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:18

That's gross. I'm sorry. If your job is jerking off a bull, that's fucking weird.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:23

That probably falls under the technician.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:25

The technician. Anyways, so, yeah, like, their whole fucking forearm goes up the cow's butt. Yeah. I don't know. I'll just sit with that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:33

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:35

That one gave me pause mostly because it's just like jesus christ like the whole thing is like awful but like that just seems like so extra invasive yeah it's like just so, i don't know dehumanizing i mean i know they're not humans but like it just feels so like wow we just like couldn't have made this worse right yeah anyways, um so then after they're artificially inseminated the cows are pregnant for nine months, right and then after giving birth they're typically artificially inseminate again in 60 to 90 days. I mean, their gestation period is similar to humans. Yeah. This would be like if you got pregnant every year.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:10

Yeah. I mean, that is what it is.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:12

It's just nuts. I think the whole thing is just nuts. Yeah. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:15

And then the other reason, sorry. And the reason they do that is because like technically you can milk a cow for a while, maybe up to two years or something, but the milk production goes down a lot. Right. So they impregnate them every year so that like the flow of the milk is higher so that they make more profit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:31

Yeah. All of this is around like efficiency, Yeah. Money efficiencies. Like, where can we get the most money out of this? Like, and that's, it's the same way with, I think we've talked about in a few other episodes of like, when they decide they're going to slaughter an animal. Yeah. It's like, when do we reach this like point where they're not going to gain weight as quickly for the amount of food? And then like, that's when we kill them. And that's how they do it with this. Like, when is a cow dried up, right? Like, that doesn't mean they can't produce milk. It just means that they're not getting as much money as they'd like. Right. Yeah. So the other thing is that dairy cows have been genetically bred to overproduce milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:09

And that actually is where some of that, like you were talking about the farmers you talked to said that like cows hurt that they don't get milk. Yeah. That is technically true, but it's because they've been bred to overproduce. And, you know, they're in the situation where they're like, they're constantly pregnant, they're having milk. Like if you just didn't get a cow pregnant, it's not going to hurt. Right. Obviously. But if, yeah, if a cow is lactating and they've been bred to overproduce milk, then, yeah, they're kind of like bursting, basically, and they do want to be milk. But that's because of the circumstance that we put them in in the first place.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:41

Right. Like humans are solving the problems humans are creating. Right. That doesn't mean we're good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:46

But at the same time, that allows for that talking point of like, oh, cows need to be milked or they'll be in pain.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:51

Yeah, exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:52

It's like, OK, well, that's really disingenuous.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:54

It's hiding the reason why. Exactly. It's just fucked up. Yeah. So then the other thing is baby cows are almost immediately separated from their mother after they give birth. Because even though the cows are being genetically bred to overproduce milk, they still want to limit how much the baby cow drinks. Right. Because they want to sell more of it to humans. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:16

And just a reminder, humans are not baby cows. We don't need the milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:21

So baby cows are given about half of the milk that they would normally consume in nature for their body weight just so that they can start eating solid food faster, which can lead to distress and like poor health outcomes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:32

Of course it does, because we can't do anything that would make an animal just be happy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:36

We can't do anything. It's just so annoying to me because it's like, you like genetically bred the mother to be able to produce like so much more milk than she would ever need to feed the baby. Why can't you just let the baby be with the mom and drink the milk they need? It's just the whole thing is really sad and frustrating. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:58

So once the babies are born, they are sexed, which will determine their fate afterwards. So female calves will be used in the dairy industry, just like their mothers. Male calves can be used for a number of different things because they can't produce milk like the female calves will eventually be able to do. So their path kind of deviates. What happens to male dairy calves is largely based on where they are born and kind of the economics around raising them and maybe even like what kind of business lines that farm is in, something like that. Some of them are sent to feedlots and sold as meat. Some of them are sold to make veal, and a veal calf is raised to about 16 to 18 weeks of age.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:37

I feel like when we're measuring lifespan in weeks—, You're making me very sad. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:43

And veal calves also kept in confinement, very small crates for like their entire short life. Like they're specifically just bred to be a 18-week-old slaughter, basically. And then some of the calves are killed right after being sexed because it's just not economical for that operation to raise them for meat at all.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:01

Just as a reminder, the natural lifespan of a dairy cow would be about 25 years. Yeah. So like the veal calf is 16 to 18 weeks of age and the female dairy cows usually live to around three to seven years.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:16

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:17

Depending on, you know, when they become an uneconomical.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:21

Right. And, you know, we say they only live around three to seven years. That's because they're culled or killed. Right. Yes. Because they would live potentially up to 25 years.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:29

Yeah. Yeah. So at the end, when dairy cows are no longer able to produce as much milk as the farmers would like, They do slaughter them and they sell off the meat for either ground beef or pet food. So that's why if you are consuming dairy, you are participating in this. You are giving your money to fund this. You don't get to participate in the eating of cheese and not also be responsible for the creation of veal and cows dying.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:57

Right. Or even if they aren't dying, they aren't slaughtered. They're, you know, in terrible conditions. They still live a fraction of their natural lifespan. So, I mean, either way, it's a bad deal for the animal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:09

It's incredibly unethical.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:12

So the second major topic that, you know, might make you think differently as a vegetarian is egg production. Since dairy and eggs are kind of the two things that vegetarians still keep around, those are the ones we're kind of talking about.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:26

Yeah. So the chickens of yesteryear, like red jungle fowl, only produce about 12 eggs per year. That's important because chickens of today have been genetically bred to produce 250 to 300 eggs per year. That's insane. That is insane. Yeah. Okay. So did you know there were two types of chickens?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:49

I read that in eating animals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:50

But did you know before?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:52

Oh, no, I never knew that before.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:53

I didn't either. so like as a vegetarian i think well i guess basically what i thought was happening, is that boy and girl chickens were both being raised right and then, like they both had some i didn't know really what the lifespan was but like before they were killed for meat i just assumed the egg laying was a byproduct of them being alive okay yeah is that what you thought Um.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:21

I guess I, I guess I never really thought about it much. Um, yeah, I guess I would have thought that the chickens that laid the eggs were the same chickens that ended up as meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:29

Yeah. I mean, I guess that's basically what I thought. So in my mind, it was like. eating eggs isn't causing more chickens to die because like basically the chickens that were going to die anyways are just laying eggs and it was like pretty inconsequential to the whole thing yeah it was how i guess i had thought of it if i'm trying to think back to right my pre-vegan brain yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:51

It makes sense i mean now knowing everything i know about how like factory farming works it definitely makes sense that there are like optimized breeds for the different things but No, I never considered that before I was a vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:03

Yeah. And I think this is how they hide a lot of stuff, right? I think this is kind of another thing where it's like the cartoons just always showed that like chickens are laying eggs or like I also think, you know, you and I both like Survivor. And I think the only show I ever watched where there's ever a chicken in question, like a real chicken in question is Survivor. Because it's like something that happens, not every season, but some seasons they'll win a chicken for the tribe. Right. That wins a challenge or something. And then it's like it comes down to they give you food for the chicken and the intent is you would feed the chicken and you would get eggs. Right. But like then some crazy asshole on the tribe is like, no, let's kill the chicken and eat it. Right. So like, I guess in my mind, that also kind of reinforced it where it's like it's the question of like chicken or egg.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:50

Mm hmm.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:51

Yeah. You know what I mean? The age old question. The age old question of chicken or egg. No, but like, I guess I just thought the eggs were like just a byproduct of the meat industry. So I think that was something that was really eye opening for me when I read Eating Animals because they introduced the concepts of layers and broilers, which I had no idea. They were like two types of chickens that are in entirely different paths. Right. Yeah. And like they don't get switched. It's just like layers stay in the laying egg space and the broilers stay for the meat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:23

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:24

And so like you can't cross. You know what I mean? It's just not efficient anymore. You would never pull a female broiler chicken and use her for the egg industry. Right. Just like you would never.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:34

Because they wouldn't lay that many eggs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:35

They wouldn't lay. Yeah, exactly. And you would never pull a layer chicken over to the meat industry because they just. They don't get very big. Exactly. Yeah. I just thought this part was kind of crazy. This was like a real big what the fuck moment for me when I was reading the book.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:47

As you can imagine, a 20 to 30 time increase in a chicken's egg production comes with some consequences.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:53

Yeah. And something maybe you hadn't thought of. So something that I didn't know is that eggs have a lot of calcium, the shell at least, right? Yeah. And so that calcium has to come from somewhere. It's obviously going to come from the chicken. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:06

I never really considered that like they have to basically 3D print an egg out of calcium.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:11

So, every time a chicken lays an egg, they have to mobilize two grams of calcium to form the egg shell. That's like a lot, right? It's kind of a lot, yeah. So, and then if you're doing this every day, that becomes a lot. Yeah. So that's the equivalent of 10% of the total calcium in the chicken's entire skeleton that must be replenished daily.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:35

Daily.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:36

Daily. Yeah. So this can cause them to develop a severe form of osteoporosis with a high incidence of bone fractures. You may have heard of like, well, why can't I eat my backyard chicken's eggs? Maybe you have a rescue chicken that was rescued from factory farms. Well, if they're producing eggs daily and they're not, like, reabsorbing that calcium, that's a problem.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:01

Because, yeah, chickens will sometimes eat the shell of the eggs to get some of that calcium back.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:06

Right, exactly. So I think that's why, if you've ever been on, like, Debate a Vegan subreddit or Ask a Vegan a Question, I can't remember what the... I think it's Ask a Vegan. Ask a Vegan. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes people come in and be like, well, why can't I eat my own backyard chicken eggs? It's a rescue. This is why. Like, you should let the chicken probably eat their own egg back, to replenish their calcium.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:27

So eggshell calcium comes primarily from the diet through, like, a normal intestinal absorption. But approximately 25 to 40 percent of the calcium comes from the bones through reabsorption.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:38

Which is crazy. Yeah. I read that 80, at least 85 percent of caged chickens have bone fractures at least once during their lifetime.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:47

Yeah, it's a very high prevalence of some kind of bone fracture.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:50

And like just a reminder of what are laying chickens doing. They're not like jumping on trampolines. They're just like standing. Like the fact that they're having fractures at all is kind of nuts because they're not doing anything. Yeah. That would be like you just standing at your desk and somehow ending up with a broken leg. Yeah. Your bones have to be very weak for something like that to happen, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:11

So some of the characteristics of osteoporosis in a chicken and its effects on egg production and health include reduced egg production and shell quality. So maybe the eggs like don't come out whole, basically. Increased bone loss, degradation of bone microstructure, which is how they end up breaking. Bone fragility and fracture rates, which we just talked about. And then, you know, osteoporosis leading to potentially paralysis or even death that could get so bad.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:36

Yeah, so even in the circumstance where, like, a layer chicken gets to just live to old age it's not a good life yeah you know and i was also reading that um especially in factory farming which is i think 99 of all chickens globally, or at least in the u.s they do a lot of weird stuff with lighting to make them think it's they're having like two days in one day so that they lay more yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:01

The weird day night cycle

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:02

Manipulation yeah which can cause them to be like aggressive and have a whole bunch of like mental health issues. Yeah. They're not living good lives, you know? And then some other issues that can come from excessively laying eggs. Large eggs can be difficult to pass, which can be painful. It can cause tears in the reproductive tract or lead to egg binding.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:24

And egg binding is where an egg basically gets stuck in the reproductive tract, and if they don't get it out, they can die. Yeah. Or it can cause serious issues, but they can die.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:33

Yeah, and sometimes when a hen attempts to lay a too large egg or is new to laying, the internal parts of the reproductive tract can be pushed outside of the body. Wow. Yeah, pretty horrible.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:46

Also, the pelvic muscles associated with frequent laying or passing large eggs can get loose, allowing fecal material to enter the reproductive tract and cause bacterial infection called salpingitis.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:57

Yeah. Up to 35% of hens develop ovarian cancer by the time they're two and a half years old.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:04

That's actually nuts.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:06

It's really sad because in nature, hens can live up to six to 10 years. Yeah. So they're developing ovarian cancer before they're like even a third of the way, like through their lifespan naturally.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:17

But they typically will only live in these factory farms for 18 to 24 months because they're slaughtered when their egg production is too low and sold for like lower value meat products. Like soups, canned chicken, or again, pet food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:31

Yeah. Since layer chickens aren't economical to raise for meat in most of the world, all male layer chickens are killed within hours of being sexed. Yeah. Which means like finding out if they're male or female. We've been using this word, but that's just what that means.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:46

That's the industry term. Yeah. Yeah. So some countries have recently passed bans on chick culling, which is like when the egg hatches, they sex the chick and they determine it's a male and then they kill it. So that's chick culling. Germany and France banned that in 2022. Italy has a ban that phases in by the end of 2026 this year. But even in those cases, the way they're doing it there is that the eggs are destroyed pre-hatch once they're determined to be male by a process called in-ovo sexing, which is like just a procedure to determine what sex the chick is inside the egg. And I think some ways to do it are like feather colors or some other things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:28

So about 6.5 to 7 billion male chicks are killed globally each year. six and a half to seven billion every year yeah i just think that number is pretty alarming yeah that's.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:43

A lot i mean that just shows like the scale of how they're not even really considered to be living things it's just a commodity

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:51

Yeah because they're not even being used for anything either is like the other thing is like they're just being killed yeah you know so um there's basically, two methods used for killing day-old chicks in the egg industry the first is mechanical destruction, known as maceration, but it's basically a blender essentially or a grinder. The chicks are instantaneously killed either using rapidly rotating blades or instantaneously crushed using interlocking rollers which is really, really sad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:24

Yeah, and then the other option is gas killing with carbon dioxide or argon gas typically.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:29

You know, I actually had my physics teacher in high school, I don't think he was vegetarian. I think he was, like, a reduceitarian, but there wasn't a word for that then. But either way, he was a chemical engineer. Yeah. The first chemical engineer I'd ever met in real life, you know? Yeah. Anyways, I had him for physics in high school, and he had worked at some kind of a lab where they were testing on mice. And this is also how they will kill, like, test mice. Yeah. Like, throw them in a blender or whatever. but that was like so shocking and upsetting to him that he quit that job and became a high school teacher yeah even with a chemical engineering degree.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:10

I had a similar one of the guys i worked with um was of a biologist and he like was in biology but he literally said he got tired of having to put chicks in a blender and decided to get into it so yeah yeah i mean it's uh definitely a mental toll even for the humans who have to do this kind of thing yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:27

I remember my teacher shout out Mr. Giles helped me get out of pig dissections and stuff for my biology class because he was like, very kind to me i was like the only vegetarian in my entire high school and i remember going to him and being because he had told the story in class or whatever and like how he had left or whatever and i was like please, is there any way like you can help me not have to dissect this pig like i don't want to do that no and he talked to the biology teacher and got me out of it but.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:55

I think i saw a story just last week on that by the way um i think it was from pita maybe but somebody's developed a like fully synthetic

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:02

Oh yeah dissection thing yeah i saw that too Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. That was traumatizing because I had to, I was in some kind of like a advanced class in middle school and we had to go watch on, we had to do like fetal pig dissection day in eighth grade. And it was like very, very, very traumatic for me. Yeah. So when they were like, oh, you're going to have to do this in high school too. I was like, nah, I'm literally not doing that. Yeah. And yeah, he got me out of all my dissections. Yeah. Because like at the time they didn't have anything like that. Yeah. It was a pretty big deal to get, get me out of it. So anyways, yeah, he had seen too much. Either one of these, it's like, why are we throwing little baby chickens into a blender? I don't, I just think like, to me, right? Like, if you had told me this when I was vegetarian. Yeah. That like, because I'm eating eggs, because I want eggs in the morning, little baby chickens are being torn and tossed into a blender. That would have stopped me right there. Yeah. Like, that's all I would have had to have heard. You know, I just had never heard this. Yeah. It's just upsetting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:04

Yeah. I mean, it's just like an information gap. Like, it's not something that ever gets really talked about. You have to kind of go look into this kind of thing if you don't work in this industry. Yeah. And then, you know, it's just like you never even would consider that this was being done.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:17

Yeah. I actually posted about this last week, and I had some lady on Facebook call me a fucking moron and said she was a vet and a farmer or something. And she was like, this isn't true. This doesn't exist. And I'm like...

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:32

This doesn't exist, but three countries just passed rules banning it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:35

Yeah. I was like, I mean, I assume she never got back to me. But I'm like assuming you worked on a small farm. If you're listening. I'm just kidding. She's not listening. But like I assume she worked on a small farm or something or it only worked in small farm spaces. And it's like, yeah, well, maybe they don't do this on the small farm. Or maybe they only get female chicks on the small farm and you're never dealing with like the reproduction pieces of it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:58

Right. And if you're not driven by like a huge like profit drive, maybe you don't care if you have a bunch of male chicks running around the farm. I don't know. So you don't need to do that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:09

Yeah. Or maybe you're only buying the female chicks. Yeah. So you never know what happens to the male chicks. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:14

Yeah. There's a lot of arguments that revolve around like this idealized small farm thing. And I know there are small farms. It's just that's that's not what we're talking about. And it's not how almost anybody gets their food, their milk, their eggs, whatever. I know eggs are food, but you know what I mean.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:31

Yeah, yeah. I just thought it was shocking that I had somebody like basically weaponize her farm experience. And it's like, I can send you many, many, many articles on this. This is like a real thing. There are 6.5 billion male chickens destroyed every year. I would say like, if you're consuming eggs and you don't want to be paying for this to happen... You should stop consuming eggs. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:53

So some questions to ask, maybe even if you shop locally and somehow manage to avoid factory farms altogether, which again is extremely hard to do, you should still be asking some of these questions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:05

Yeah. Like, how is milk production initiated and maintained? Meaning, how are your cows getting pregnant? How often are you impregnating your cows? Are the cows separated from their calves after giving birth?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:18

What happens to the male calves?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:20

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:21

What happens to surplus female calves?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:23

Is pain relief used for debudding and castration?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:26

What happens when one of your cows' production or fertility declines? And then, you know, on the chicken side, where do spent hens and unwanted roosters go?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:36

Yeah. It's like even if the cows or chickens are having a good, quote unquote, good life, what happens when they become unproductive and unprofitable? Do you let them die of old age on your farm? If you don't do that, you consuming dairy or eggs from a small farm is contributing to those animals dying. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:55

Way earlier than they were supposed to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:57

Oh, yeah. Way, way faster. And there's no way around that. And then, you know, a question that comes up all the time, and we kind of covered this a little bit, but why aren't backyard eggs ethical? And this one comes up in vegan spaces almost constantly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:10

Yeah. And, you know, logically, if you think about it, it's like, OK, well, if I have a backyard chicken, I'm not doing any of this crazy shit to this chicken that you're talking about. So what's the problem?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:19

Yeah. And so I think if you have a backyard chicken or if someone you know of is a backyard chicken and you're buying eggs from their backyard chicken. So some of the things you could ask is, were the hens purchased from a hatchery that also produces unwanted males? And I think that answer is always going to be yes, because it's like, just like humans, there's like a 50% chance it's a boy and it's a 50% chance it's a girl. So what happens to their brothers?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:44

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:45

What happens to these backyard chickens when they stop laying eggs? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:49

You just have a pet chicken now?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:50

Do you? Do you have an unproductive pet chicken that you're feeding? Yeah. I think most of these places, that's probably not the case. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:58

Will they receive veterinary care throughout their lives? Like you're actually paying a vet to take care of this chicken like you would maybe a dog or a cat? Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:05

Because it's not even just like once they become unproductive with egg laying, are you letting them live? It's also like, are you keeping them healthy? Right. You know? Are they being kept as family members or primarily as production units? Is their worth and value depending on how many eggs they produce?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:24

And then could the eggs potentially be fed back to the hens when they need additional protein or calcium? Like if a vet tells you that they need that, are you willing to just let the chickens eat those eggs back?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:35

Right. Which, and I think that's the big one because it's like, okay, like let's say that you have rescued a hen from a factory farm. And it's like, yeah, well, they're going to produce like these crazy number of eggs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:47

Right. Because it's bred for that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:48

Because it's bred for that. Are you willing to let that hen eat the eggs back when it wants to? Right. Or are you keeping the chicken because of what it can do for you? You know what I mean? Like, I just think like when you have a dog, you're not keeping a dog or a cat for like, what can it do for me personally? Right. Other than like emotional support. Right. But like, it's not producing. They're not producing anything for you. Yeah. You're not getting any kind of, like, gratification for, like, keeping them fed. I guess the real question is, are you keeping the chicken because you want the eggs or because you want a chicken? Right. So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:22

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:24

Those are my thoughts on the ethicalness of eggs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:27

What comes first in your mind, the chicken or the egg? Yeah. So just to kind of recap some of the questions slash arguments you might hear that we've talked about here. So the first one is like nobody dies for milk. Right. So dairy cows are slaughtered when they leave production and the production drops. And calves created by the dairy system may enter veal or beef production, which obviously they are slaughtered for that as well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:51

Yeah. So somebody does die for milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:53

And not to mention, the dairy cow itself's lifespan is significantly artificially shortened. So even if they aren't producing calves that are killed, the dairy cow itself will be killed way before its natural lifespan. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:06

And the killing is a byproduct of your demand for dairy production, not the other way around. The other one is the calf doesn't need all that milk. Well, that is semi-true because modern day dairy cows have been bred to produce an extremely high volume of milk. That doesn't mean that the calf doesn't need anything.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:27

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:28

And it also doesn't mean that they aren't, like, separating the calf.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:33

Right. It's like we said earlier, like, you're saying the calf doesn't need all that milk, but then they're taking the calf away when it only consumes about half the milk that it would normally. Right. So it's not like the calf's getting... Because when you say the calf doesn't need all that milk, you're making it sound like the calf gets everything it needs and then I take the extra.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:49

But that's not happening.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:50

That's not what's happening.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:51

Yeah. And I think it's also skirting around the point of the fact that we as humans have bred cows to produce excess milk. And that has like health complications and stuff too, right? Like we created the problem where there's excess milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:07

Also, something you might hear is male chicks can just be raised for chicken. Well, the male chicks in this scenario are layer breed male chicks, which are not economical to grow for meat because they won't get nearly as big. So they're considered basically inefficient for conventional meat production, and they're not used for that. And the next one is, oh, but the eggs are unfertilized, which is correct. But the hen was produced by a hatchery system that also hatches or identifies unwanted males. And then the hen herself will eventually be removed from production.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:39

And by removed from production, we do mean slaughtered. Right. The next one is like cage-free eggs solve the problem. um that can reduce the movement restriction of the cages but that doesn't actually give them much space and it still doesn't like negate all of the other issues around having to slaughter the male baby chickens and slaughtering the, the female hen that is laying all these eggs at the end of their uh productive lifespan right yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:10

And again we've talked about before like cage free for chickens does not mean like free roaming chickens.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:15

Yeah, they have like, I think, the space of like a sheet of paper, of notebook paper. There's nothing free about it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:24

The next thing you might hear is like, my farmer loves the animals. Yeah. So, I mean, yes, farmers can feel genuine care and affection for their animals. I'm sure a lot of them do. But the ethical question comes in when you consider what happens when the animal's interests conflict with the farm's economic needs. Like, the farmers aren't raising the animals because they care for them. Right, right. They're raising them to make money because a farm is a profitable business. Yeah. So, yeah, there's an inherent conflict there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:56

Yeah. It's like you can treat the animals well, but you always intended to slaughter them. Right. Or you always intended there to be an end of lifespan. Like, they're always giving you something, you know? It's like that part in Harry Potter. Which part? Where... spoiler alert Dumbledore dies, but there's that part where they go back to uh, the pensive or what is it called I think that is what it's called yeah so the little like water well thing where you see memories and he's looking at Snape's memories and Snape is talking to Dumbledore and Snape is basically like oh, this whole time you've been being nice to Harry Potter you were just like setting him up to be a lamb for slaughter yeah and it's like yeah Dumbledore cared for him but he also cared about like what could Harry do to end Voldemort right yeah, and then there's my favorite line when he says that he still has always cared for Lily and then I sob for five hours and forget the rest of the movies yeah it's.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:57

Just like that

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:58

It's just like that um.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:00

The next thing you might hear is that is but vegan food also causes crop deaths

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:05

Yeah I feel like this one's just so so disingenuous it's just like a not good faith question yeah because like yes we're like living in a capitalistic society there is no food that you can eat that there isn't harm somewhere right right, that doesn't mean we shouldn't reduce it where we can and i don't think veganism claims to be perfect right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:24

Right and again you know we've talked about this before and you you can find this if you research it for about five minutes but vegans technically per person cause fewer crop deaths because a lot of the crop deaths come from growing crops to feed to animals. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I mean, that's a different topic, but, you know, that is another reason why these arguments don't really land.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:43

Yeah, the lower you are in the food system, the less harm you're causing, right? Like, if you're eating at the very top of the food chain with the lion, like, you're causing more deaths overall because you're having to, like, you have that whole gap, right? But, like, if you're eating down here at the bottom with the cow, We're just eating, like, vegetables and shit. Yeah. It's less. And yeah, there's crop deaths. But like that's more around like how are crops being farmed? Right. Not really like a vegan specific thing. Right. If your issue is with crop deaths, you should be vegan and also go chase the crop death thing and try to change the farming practices. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:19

And then the last question is like, so was being vegetarian pointless?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:23

Of course not. It reduced your participation in the meat production. And like it does reflect a real ethical commitment. Yeah. And I would say that a lot of times, like, being vegetarian is the first step to veganism. Yeah. Right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:38

And it's still a significant reduction in animal harm compared to an omnivore diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:42

You should be proud that you are vegetarian, and you should be even more proud if you decide to take that next step. You know, like if you decide that, hey, I've always been an ethical vegetarian. Yeah. And now that I'm learning these things, like vegetarian doesn't go far enough for me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:58

Yeah. Yeah. So I will say, or sorry, if we have caused an ethical crisis in any ethical vegetarians listening that we're not aware of the things we've talked about.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:07

Yeah. And if you need to talk about it, like, let me know. Because I had that. And it feels real bad for like a while.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:14

So what can you do? If you're a vegetarian who just had an aha moment or an existential dread moment, what can you do?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:22

Yeah, I mean, like, the first thing is give up dairy. There's lots of easy dairy replacements. If you're just trying to replace dairy milk, I personally like soy milk. Yeah. But there's also, like— Oat milk is good. Oat milk's good. Almond milk is good. Yeah. Soy milk is the higher protein one, so that's what we usually choose. It's almost like a one-for-one replacement. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:43

I feel like oat milk, because of the flavor, is a little better transition from dairy milk. Yeah. It's more similar. But I ended up liking soy milk better.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:51

I agree with that. Yeah. But like yogurt, if you're like a big yogurt person, lots of good plant-based yogurts. There's not as many good plant-based Greek yogurts, but I mean, you can't have it all. You can make your own shit. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:04

There's also some various versions of vegan cheese. They can be cashew-based, tofu-based. A nutritional yeast can kind of give you, like, a cheesy flavor, and then, like, the commercial vegan cheeses you'll find at the grocery store.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:17

Lots of good—I mean, commercial vegan cheeses have come a long way. Oh, yeah. I really like—if you're looking for vegan cheese recommendations, we'll just give you a few. But I like Violife for, like, melting on top of stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:31

Specifically, like, the shreds. Like, the Violife shreds are really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:35

I feel like they've even gotten better in the last few years. Yeah. Like, you know when I first went vegan, I was like, oh, these cheeses. And maybe that's just because I was used to the taste of real cheese.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:42

It could be, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:43

But I was like, oh, these are, like, sticky and cheesy. But I don't really, the ones we have now, I don't really get a lot of the sticky ones anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:49

I think it's also because of the fact we use it. I won't use it on pizza.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:52

No, that could be, yeah. Anyway, yeah, learning to use the cheeses in the appropriate way is awesome.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:57

But, like, Daiya has gotten pretty decent, too, for, like, a shredded cheese. But then you have, like, some nicer quality cheeses of, like, nuts for cheese, cheese and thank you. Rebel cheese is really good. Peaceful rebel cheese is really good. Some, like, more artisanal cheeses. And then, yeah, if you're just trying to, like, create a cheesy flavor, nutritional yeast is good. you can use umami powder for like that like umami flavor lactic acid can kind of give it that sharpness yeah and then you can use either cashew or tofu as like a base if you're making a sauce or something.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:33

You've got several cheese recipes on your website yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:36

And lots of other people have good ones too i will say cheese was like a hard one for me um and i've heard a lot of people say just take a month off of cheese in general don't even try vegan cheese until you've had a month away from dairy yeah, i didn't do that and i didn't really have a problem with it but i've heard it helps a lot of people so if you're trying vegan cheese right after you just ate a bunch of dairy cheese and it's just not hitting right and it's grossing you out just take a month off come back to it maybe more, maybe splurge on some really high quality vegan cheeses like a rebel cheese just just so that you know it can be done you know there.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:08

Are a lot of good plant-based butters out there um country crock has some new ones like avocado oil based and uh i can never remember what the other one is but there are two options for country crock and there's also things like earth balance has really good butter uh there were some other brands we used before a lot harder to find in stores now so it seems like it's typically like country crock or earth balance these

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:27

Days yeah i think for me butter was like the easiest replacement i mean you can't even really tell the difference my parents actually switched and they're not vegan vegetarian or anything yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:37

Oh i can't believe it's not butter it's actually

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:39

Vegan so yeah, Yeah, and I think if you're just trying to do like a creamy sauce, silken tofu or cashews are good for that. Ice cream, there's a shit ton of dairy-free ice cream that's really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:50

I can't tell the difference on those. I love the dairy-free ice cream. Yeah. I've always liked ice cream.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:54

Yeah, it's a real problem. It's actually a real problem that they're so good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:58

I wish vegan ice cream sucked.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:02

And then for like your eggs, now people will immediately tell you tofu scramble. Yeah. And I think tofu scramble is a good egg replacement, especially if you use kala namak, which is like a sulfur black salt that gives it that eggy flavor. But actually, Just Egg, it's expensive, but it tastes almost the same as scrambled eggs for me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:22

Just Egg is like egg. Yeah, no. I feel like in a blind test, nobody would tell the difference.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:27

No, it's very, very, very similar in taste and texture. And they also make the Just Egg patties. They're great. I think that was one of the first things that I started substituting in because I used to eat a lot of eggs. It's just like an easy substitute, especially if you can afford it. Not a big deal. If you're baking, flax is a good one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:45

Yeah, the flax egg. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:47

Or pumpkin puree or applesauce. If you need like an egg white replacement, aquafaba, which is just chickpea water. Or even they make a new vegan egg white protein powder, which is really good. And I think works pretty much almost one for one for like egg whites. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:04

There's also that Bob's Red Mill product that's just called Egg Replacer. Is that any good?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:09

I have used it, and I never like it as much as the flax.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:12

Yeah, the flax is so simple.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:13

Yeah, or pumpkin puree is almost always my go-to, to be honest. Yeah. I think just because I like pumpkin things. And it doesn't add much flavor. It just makes things nice and moist and stuff. It works similar to it. Also, a blended silken tofu is a great egg replacement.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:27

Okay, that's interesting. Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:29

But, yeah, I mean, if you're just looking for, like, an egg replacement, my go-to is Just Egg. Yeah. I think they've made a couple new ones, but I haven't been able to try any of those. We just only seem to have Just Egg in our grocery store.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:43

Yeah, but good enough for me when we do need it, so.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:45

Yeah, and I will say, like, if you're going from vegetarian to vegan, something you might not think about is where you're getting protein. Yeah. Because I didn't realize how heavily I was actually relying on dairy and eggs for my protein until I went to veganism. but it can be kind of a shocker of like what do i eat um so like some of our favorite protein sources are like tofu tvp um, vital wheat gluten or seitan yeah peanut flour is a good one lentils beans red lentil pasta what else nutritional yeast is good like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11:16

Carb control tortillas because like we don't really we don't control our carbs like we don't care about keto or anything but the keto So tortillas are high protein.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11:26

Yeah, and high fiber. Yeah, so lots of good protein sources. Also, like if you're looking for protein sources, I have, we'll link that in the show notes, but I have a database that's sortable by protein percentage and cost. So you can find some good protein options. Then I would say if you're just buying products in general at stores and you haven't bought vegan before, Or be on the lookout for things that say, obviously, milk, whey, casein, caseinate, butter, fat, milk powder, egg, albumin, albumin, mayonnaise, some glazes, gelatin.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:02

Oh, the confectioner's glaze?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:03

Yeah, the confectioner's glaze. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:05

Also, there's some weird ones like carmine, or I think it's pronounced cochineal. And then also shellac, which is like in lemon heads. It's on some candy that makes it shiny.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:15

I think it's bugs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:17

Yeah, ground-up bugs. Yeah. Which is funny. By the way, I just saw a news thing the other day, apparently. Yeah. In some of the political races or whatever, they're calling people bug-eating vegans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:30

Vegans don't eat bugs. What do you mean? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:33

So, anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:33

Also, what the fuck?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:36

Also, what the fuck? So, yeah. In closing, most vegetarians stop eating meat for ethical reasons. But this episode isn't meant to shame or humiliate the vegetarians, obviously, since you were a vegetarian for a long time. Yeah, yeah. You have a special perspective on this and you don't hate on them. But this also would just help to bring them up to speed on the kind of hidden cost of eggs and dairy that are very similar to the cost of the meat industry. Yeah. Especially from an ethical perspective. It's very similar.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:06

They're basically the same. It's, yeah, the dairy industry is just basically the meat industry hiding in cheese coating. Yeah. I don't know. I like it. Not the best sound bite. We'll go with it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:20

Though. I like it. I like it. So once we know that slaughter and suffering is required still for dairy and eggs, we all get to ask ourselves if vegetarianism is far enough for us individually or if veganism aligns with our values a little better. And again, I think if you're like an ethical vegetarian and then you learn these things, you're probably in like a little bit of a crisis situation where you have to figure out what your ethics are.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:45

No, I know. Yeah. Been through it. If you're a vegetarian and you want to go plant-based or vegan and need some extra support or you just have some questions, feel free to message us. Like, I have personally been through this. I still deal with the guilt of not knowing things for a very, very long time. Yeah. We could also join our Discord because we have some newer vegans in our Discord. And we definitely help you through any questions you have or any support you need.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:09

Yeah, we've got the Discord server down in the show notes. I think we're coming up on, like, 300 people in there now. Yeah. I'm very active.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:15

Super nice people. We have, like, the nicest people. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:20

I think it's a great place for a new vegan to come and talk or even a vegetarian that's got more questions, you know, if you don't want to get lambasted on the vegan subreddit. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:29

Yeah. All right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:30

So I think that's it for the main segment. Let's get into the bite-sized coaching real quick. So I'm a personal trainer and I do ask me anything on Reddit once a month or so where I just go in and say, hey, I'm a personal trainer. Ask me anything. And people ask questions about their training or like nutrition or veganism stuff in specific. So I want to share one of those questions with you here. And you get to read the question.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:51

I'm so glad you finally remember. I do get to read the question. Okay, here's the question. When is the best time to consume protein when it comes to a workout? Before? After? And within what time period?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:06

Yeah. So this is not as important as we used to think it is. There's something called the anabolic window, to use a technical term, which originally people thought that it was like a one to two hour window after a workout. where you needed to get in protein. And I thought you need to also get that with carbohydrates to like help the protein uptake. And if you didn't, it was like a wasted workout session almost. Like that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but that's basically the line of thinking. A lot of people still have it, but like scientifically in the studies, we found that that's not as important now. Um, so as long as you have some protein within a few hours, either before or after your workout, I wouldn't worry too much about the timing as long as you're hitting your total daily protein target. And that would ideally be at least 1.6 grams per kilogram of lean body mass, which is somewhere like 0.75 grams per pound.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:15:57

Of lean.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:57

Lean body mass. Or if you're trying to lose weight, you can just use your goal body weight. That's usually way simpler than lean body mass. Typically, you'll automatically get that meal within a couple hours before or after if you're just like eating two to three meals a day. Like, that's just how time works.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:13

What if you're a one-a-dayer?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:14

Yeah, if you're a one-a-dayer, I would probably try to make that one-a-day right after your workout. Yeah. If you're working out fasted first thing in the morning also, I probably would try to get some protein in within an hour or so of the workout. But I would imagine you're probably already doing that. If you're working out first thing in the morning, you're going to be hungry. You're surely eating pretty shortly after your workout.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:35

I would think so. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:36

But it's not the end of the world if you can't. I would just hit the total daily protein target. As long as you're eating again. I would say worst case scenario would be you work out first thing in the morning fasted and then you eat one meal a day at dinner. That's probably not ideal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:52

You're going to be so hungry.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:54

I would adjust that a little bit. But yeah, for the way most people eat, you don't really have to think about it too much. All right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:00

Is that OMAD?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:01

Yeah, OMAD. OMAD one meal a day it's like I would be OMAD yeah some people do intermittent fasting with one meal a day so it's yeah not my kind of thing which is interesting because like intermittent fasting is typically used you know the thing it's most effective for is calorie control but sometimes people who do OMAD still end up eating more calories because they're starving by the time the meal comes through so yeah and they're like okay yeah I'll get a cheeseburger and ice cream and french fries

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:25

One meal a day 120% of their calories before they're satiated yeah I'm sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:30

Yeah anyways Uh, yeah, I think that's it for this week. If you could rate and review the podcast, that would really help us out. Also, if you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can leave us a comment and we'll reply to you. And maybe even if you have a question, we can mention it on the podcast here. Um, and then you can also check out the show notes for ways to see what we're working on or get in touch with us. We have our websites and social media down there. You can reach out or just read our blogs, look up your recipes on the protein deficient vegan site if you need some of those. and then also we'd love it if you would join the Deficient Vegans Discord server you can come in and chat with us and our 300 closest friends seriously though yeah that's a great time we are starting the second book in the book club here pretty soon that's going to be The Impactful Vegan by Robert Cheeke and then we have a bonus fall round

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:16

Yes with a book.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:17

Called Tender is the Flesh

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:19

It was voted on and decided upon.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:21

Yeah so we'll be reading that kind of around Halloween spooky season people

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:25

Are very excited I am very excited I'm looking at the book.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:27

Right now. All right. I think that's it. You want to say bye? Bye, guys. Bye, everybody.