What if you can't go vegan yet?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans podcast, episode 70. I'm the muscle-deficient vegan here with the protein-deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:05

Hello.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hi, everybody. So this week, we're going to talk about what can you do if you can't go vegan yet. Maybe you do care about the animals, you have strong ethical beliefs, but you have some kind of constraint that's keeping you from doing 100% vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:19

Yeah, it happens. We've got some ideas on things you can do if you can't go all the way yet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:23

Yeah. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:25

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:27

So Those Vegan Cowboys.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:29

Which we've talked about before.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:31

Yeah, we have. A Dutch startup. They got funding. I think we actually talked about them for this kind of product. Not this product, but for this technology. Yeah. So they got funding to create supplements now with their precision fermented casein protein. So casein protein is like a slower digesting protein. People typically associate it with like cottage cheese. And sometimes they'll try to like eat casein protein right before they go to bed. so that they make sure you have slow digesting protein overnight to keep your muscles from breaking down quite as much is the idea.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:59

Is that legit?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01

It's like very minor, if anything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04

Yeah, and if you don't know what precision fermentation is, it's basically like, I think, genetically the same, except that you don't use cows for it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11

They're actually already working with a bunch of companies to make like cheeses and chocolates, which I think is what we talked about before. But now they're moving into sports nutrition, which is effectively supplementation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20

Very cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21

Yeah. Next up is the VegNews 2026 Restaurant Awards just came out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26

I always find this really interesting, but I always look at it like I take it with a grain of salt, right? Because... people are voting on stuff that they've probably never eaten at like they've eaten at one of those places yeah and and because of all this like obviously like larger cities are going to have an advantage because more people have eaten at those restaurants than like smaller towns

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:46

So yeah definitely i know when i fill out the survey i'm mostly just voting for the chicago places i've tried.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:50

Yeah so yeah like even if you haven't tried the other ones yeah yeah i do skip if i've never tried

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:55

Anything yeah yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:57

But um i don't know i think it's interesting from the perspective of like they at least have to be pretty decent or they wouldn't vote at all

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:04

Yeah no doubt i won't go through all of them we are going to have the link in the show notes you can go look at all the i think they do like the top three and then the editor's choice for a bunch of different categories, um but a couple i wanted to highlight are best fast food um so Plant Power Fast Food in California and Nevada took first place here.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:22

Which i've never seen that one

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:23

Yeah we don't.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:24

Live in california or nevada so that makes sense

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:27

Yeah so if you're ever out that way give it a shot if you haven't tried. It seems to be pretty good. The best vegan pizzeria we're mentioning because we're honorary Ninja Turtles.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:36

Honorary. I'm a true Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:41

But the top spot in this was Boxcar Pizza in Portland, Oregon.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:44

Okay. I've never been there because I don't live in Portland and I've never been to Oregon. But I've seen people post pictures of Boxcar Pizza in Oregon on Reddit, and it looks phenomenal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:57

Yeah. So if you're out in Portland, look up Boxcar Pizza if you're into pizza.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:00

Or send us pictures of your Boxcar Pizza because I like looking at pizza pictures.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:05

Or freeze your Boxcar Pizza and send us pizza. And then the last one we are going to talk about is the best vegan Asian restaurant. The top spot here was a place called Spicy Moon in New York. Also haven't tried this, but third place was our favorite vegan restaurant, which is Alice & Friends in Chicago.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:23

Which I also haven't eaten at the one in New York, but obviously Alice & Friends is better.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:28

Yeah. I mean, definitely. If more people had tried Alice & Friends, I think Alice & Friends would win this. I've never had Spicy Moon, but it's got to be slightly worse than Alice & Friends.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:36

It has to be because does Spicy Moon have Grace's teriyaki? Probably not.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:40

I don't think so. And then the last piece of news, also VegNews, they released their 10 best cities for vegans and vegetarians.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:46

And this was based on affordable restaurants, fresh produce, and like accessible plant-based food options. Okay. Starting at number 10, we have Tampa, Florida. Number nine, Madison, Wisconsin. Number eight, San Diego, California. Seven was Orlando, Florida. Sixth was Seattle, Washington. Fifth was Oakland, California. Fourth, San Francisco, California. Third, Austin, Texas. Second, Los Angeles, California. And number one was Portland, Oregon.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:13

It's probably because of Boxcar Pizza.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:14

It probably is. Got a lot of Californias going on here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:17

A lot of Californias, yeah. We've been to Austin. We did Chef Kenny's.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:20

You've been to Austin.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:21

Oh, wait. Where'd we go?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:22

We went to Houston.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:23

Oh, right. Okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:24

You went to Austin for work, and you had a few things. Don't they have a Rebel Cheese in Austin?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:28

Yeah, that's where I went to, the actual Rebel Cheese store.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:31

But you sent me pictures of all the delicious food you had in Austin. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:34

It was pretty good. I can't remember any of the restaurants, but I think I just went to little ones that were close to the hotel. But there were a lot of options on HappyCow. I know that. I just couldn't get to most of them with the time I had.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:44

Yeah, you were only there for a few days. Yeah. I mean, I see people talk about California food all the time. It looks really good. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:51

Now, I will say this list was vegans and vegetarians, so I have a hunch that's how Madison, Wisconsin ended up on the list because that's probably like vegetarian Mecca with all the cheese.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:00

I mean, they got a lot of cheese curds there. I have been to Madison, Wisconsin for training a couple times back when I was vegetarian and I was in heaven as a vegetarian.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:09

I will say Milwaukee has a lot of good vegan options, so maybe Madison does too. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:13

We actually plan trips to Milwaukee to have a vegan week.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:18

Yeah. All right. So let's get into the main segment. So if you decided that you care about the animals and you don't want to harm them anymore, but you can't really change your diet for some reason, what would you do?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:30

Yeah, that one's tricky. I think for me, I would do the very most I could with my diet, obviously. But then if I had money to donate, I would probably donate to places and I would eliminate any other animal products I could like leather, etc.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:45

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:46

Buy cruelty-free and vegan cosmetics, that kind of thing. I don't know. What would you do?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:50

Yeah, I think I would do, I mean, I guess as much as possible as I do now as a vegan and just make, you know, those small exceptions until I didn't have to anymore, hopefully at some point. I do want to make sure this episode is mostly focused on the animals. You know, that's the focus here. So 80 billion land animals were slaughtered for food as of 2022. That doesn't count male chicks that were killed in the egg industry or fish, actually.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:17

Yeah. Well, yeah. And if you count fish, that number gets exponentially higher. Huge. But it's really hard to count the number of fish. So we don't have a good solid number for that. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:26

And so, yeah. And the purpose of veganism is elimination of harm and exploitation for the animals. So when we talk about veganism, those conversations almost always turn into conversations about food because that's what you interact with multiple times a day, every day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:37

Yeah. I mean, it is the main component. It is where you do the most work as far as eliminating animal products, right? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:44

And the other things animals are used in, though, are like clothing, cosmetics, cleaning products, education, research. Research is a big one that comes up in the news all the time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:53

Yeah. Entertainment, like zoos.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:55

The definition from the Vegan Society is veganism seeks to exclude animal exploitation as far as is possible and is practicable for food, clothing, or any other purpose. So there are two things that maybe people don't think about quite as much. And that's what we just mentioned. Like it covers more than just food because food is the major conversation but sometimes people will like say they're vegan they're eating mostly vegan but then they're still using leather i've seen a couple celebrities get kind of caught in that trap they'll say they're vegan but they're using leather and they get called out, so there are a lot of people like that and then also a big part of the the Vegan Society's definition anyway that gets left out a lot i think is uh, that veganism promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives, um so i think that's interesting because i see a lot of people actually pushing back on some of like the precision fermentation stuff and even like fake meats and stuff like that. You know, per like the Vegan Society, that is something that we should be like actively supporting because it does reduce or possibly eliminate down the road, you know, the actual using animals directly for food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:56

Right. And it's like, yes, you can reach some people based on the ethical arguments. There are some people you're never going to be able to convince to go vegan for the animals. So making like alternatives more readily available, cost effective, you know, that makes it a lot easier for people to, and it gives them reasons to go to a plant-based diet, even if they don't believe in veganism as a whole. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:17

And something else I'll file under this is something we've talked about a couple of times, but that's like the, some of the bigger brands that also sell non-vegan products. I think when they create vegan products, I think supporting those products also falls under this because we're promoting the use of products that don't come from animals. Yeah. So one thing I want to point out is that the language and the veganism definition of possible and practicable, that's not a loophole. That's not something you should try to take advantage of and be like, oh, it's not possible for me to not eat cheese today or something like that. It's just an admission that we live in a non-vegan world and we're going to come across things from time to time. And we'll talk about some of those things where we might not really have a choice.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:56

Right. And it would be silly to assume you could eliminate literally everything in an omnivore world. So that said, we're not saying that eating animal products by choice is vegan and we wouldn't call it that, you know, like I can't eat vegan and I would rather not eat it are different things. You know what I mean? So like effort, cost, missing a favorite food or just keeping the peace at a family dinner that that doesn't constitute as like as far as possible and practicable. Right. Like you could still do it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:25

That's just you kind of saying, oh, that's a little too hard, which is not the same thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:29

Like I don't want to do confrontation today. Like, an example of where you maybe can't eat a vegan diet would be if you're living in a non-vegan household and you have a parent who controls all the groceries and... you just can't eat a vegan diet or maybe you're taking medication that's not vegan yeah or you have some allergy situation that would make it impossible for you to be vegan

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:52

That one comes up a lot i've got like i know that's it's pretty rare in general but these people are online a lot but uh you know like a combination of allergies that makes it extremely difficult to eat a vegan diet not impossible but extremely difficult especially to get, especially to get all the nutrients you need yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:09

This is where i do think like precision fermentation and stuff will come in really handy for some of those edge cases.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:15

Yeah, definitely. I don't think we're talking in terms of mostly vegan or flexible vegan or any of that stuff. That's just not vegan. So I just want to make it really clear that we're not promoting loopholes to be able to say you're vegan when you're not vegan. We're just talking about actual constraints of things that are not really in your control. So I think the most straightforward example here is medicine. Like there are a lot of medications that had animal testing or maybe even the medication itself has some animal components in it. But most of the time, if you're on a medication, it's because you need it to be healthy or survive, which is different than food. Like a medication is treating a specific disease or disorder or something like that in most cases.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:56

Yeah. And if you're on a medication that... has some kind of an animal product in it or it was tested on animals, you would still be considered vegan if you followed all the rest of the stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:04

Right. And again, the Vegan Society has advice specifically for that. And they even say, never stop a prescribed medication without talking to your doctor. Yeah. And also, I know I mentioned the Vegan Society a lot. That's just because that was kind of where the original definition came from. I'm not saying you can't challenge what they think and they're not like the church or something, but they just have a lot of information about like what veganism is. So it's an easy reference point. If you are on medicine, though, there are some cases where maybe you can ask your doctor if a vegan version of the medication does exist. But if it doesn't, I wouldn't sweat it too much. So first, since it is kind of the most popular thing to talk about for veganism, let's talk about the food side of things. One scenario where, and this is probably the most popular one I see for people who are having, for people who really feel like strongly connected to being an ethical vegan, but they can't do it, is because they're in a situation where like somebody else controls the food in the house. They're the one doing all the cooking or they buy all the groceries or whatever. So living with the parents is typically the most common one for this, especially if your parents are kind of adversarial about you being a vegan in the first place. That can make it even more difficult.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:08

Yeah. And I mean, I think we had an episode talking about if your kid wants to go vegan, blah, blah, blah. But there are a lot of parents that have concerns about kids going vegan. So it's not unusual that parents would have... you know, some reservations.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:25

So since this episode is about, like, if you are in some of these situations, what can you do? Some of the options you might have here are maybe you, like, ask for one replacement at a time and not ask to switch all the food in the house to vegan overnight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:39

Yeah. So, like, maybe you swap out the milk and you ask for soy milk or oat milk or something. Or butter's an easy one. Yeah. Like, switch from just butter to vegan butter. I mean, a lot of households already use margarine, which sometimes is already vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:55

Or I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, which their main product, I think, is accidentally vegan. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or maybe if you're doing like chili, you can just do beans and skip like the ground beef. I know a lot of regions don't use beef in the chili. Some don't use beans in the chili. So maybe you can persuade them towards vegan kind of versions of stuff that is on the fence anyway, like chili, spaghetti, things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:16

Yeah, or like if you're having a taco Tuesday night or something and everyone else is eating ground beef, maybe you say, I would rather have beans.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:24

And maybe, you know, you even offer to cook the family dinner once a week. So you make it Taco Tuesday and it's a vegan Taco Tuesday.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:30

Yeah, I do think that would go a long way because I think most parents would be really happy if their kids said they would cook. Yeah. Some of the hang up on this one is like you have to convince the whole family to eat a vegan meal, which can be pretty hard.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:43

Right. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:44

But, you know, you could offer to cook your meal. Right. So, like, if your parents don't want to cook a secondary meal or, like, a secondary protein source or something, and they're hung up on, like, additional time for cooking, then you could offer to cook your meal separately or something. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:00

Maybe find a way to cook yours in the oven so it doesn't take up the stovetop or something. You know, I'm sure you'd be creative there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:06

I mean, when I went vegetarian as a kid, I lived off veggie chicken nuggets. Because I could still eat, like, most of the side dishes, but I couldn't eat the mains. The mains were always revolving around meat. So it was just like slap four veggie chicken nuggets in the oven and that was dinner.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:22

Also, if you're still in school, you can have your parents potentially request that you get a non-dairy milk option at the school. I think this is becoming a thing in more and more places, especially since the law that Switch4Good just helped get passed recently. So as far as I know, at some point here pretty soon, there should be an option at all the schools in the U.S. So I would definitely check into that for your school.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:45

And if you're like the first one to ask for it and then they start stocking non-dairy milk, maybe more people buy that too. Like it might not just be like you buying that. You could maybe 10 other people at school now are buying non-dairy milk. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:59

Yeah. And also, if you are a kid in this situation listening to this, we actually had a whole episode called So Your Kid Wants to Go Vegan, I think back in December. So if you can get your parents to maybe listen to a podcast episode, that might be a good one to help you out. If they're not too combative about this vegan thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:14

Yeah, and I do want to say, like, I think any vegan of sound mind would agree that if you are living in a home where... the person who controls the groceries will not let you go vegan i don't think any vegan in their right mind would say hey you need to do it anyways

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:29

I mean, what do you do?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:30

Your health and safety comes first right like you need to make sure that you're still getting all your nutrients and that you're going to be like alive also if you're in a situation where you might have like angry parents like you're it might not be safe to keep bringing something like that up depending on your household situation so you know you need to be healthy and alive so that whenever it's time to move out, you can be a healthy vegan and make all the choices that you want to make on your own. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:57

And I think most people know, like, what kind of stuff they can approach their own parents with. And so, I mean, if you think your parents will be fine with it, obviously advocate for yourself and do whatever you can. But if it starts to get to a point where it's causing problems or they're just saying flat out no, and even if they're not mean about it, if they're saying, no, that's not going to work for us, then you probably don't have options. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:16

And know that you're not being judged by vegans, right? Like you're doing what you can do. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:21

Um, another food related thing that comes up a lot is like family gatherings and holidays. So we've had actually a couple of whole episodes about this in the past. You actually like every, um, every holiday time of year, which is about this time of year, you start doing like sides giving and a bunch of like holiday potluck sides and stuff like that to try to combat some of this. Cause it is a thing that comes up a lot. I mean, so this is another one where it doesn't fall under that, you know, as far as possible and practicable thing to eat a non-vegan dish at your family dinner, just to keep the peace. Right. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:51

So you like if there are other options. Yeah. Or you can bring your own.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:55

Right. Because in that case, you're still making the choice. I mean, I know you don't want to like this is a little different than arguing with your parents at home because that's you can't get out of that. Yeah. But this is like you're going out to the family gathering and it's a little different. You can just choose what to eat. Most people are picking what they're eating at those kind of gatherings anyway. So, I mean, what makes it hard in this situation is more of the social pressure rather than you don't have options available.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:17

I think the best thing you can do in this situation is like talk to whoever is cooking ahead of time and make sure there's going to be vegan options. I would definitely never assume there's going to be a vegan option just because.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:27

I guess that's true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:28

I'm thinking through all the sides I've ever had at Thanksgiving and I actually can't think of anything that is like naturally vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:34

I guess I was just thinking salad, to be honest, which is not what you want to have for Thanksgiving.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:38

Also, do they have vegan dressing?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:40

That's a good point.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:41

I mean, most things aren't going to be vegan, so you definitely need to plan ahead of time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:45

I think we always had like the vegetable tray. You have carrots, little baby carrots. I went to Thanksgiving and I had 12 baby carrots.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:53

I mean, yeah, sometimes that's the thing, right? Yeah. But I do think there is a difference between living under someone's roof where you don't control the grocery choices. Yeah. Versus, like, you have now moved out, you have your own space, and you're traveling or going to someone's house for the holidays. and now you need to either coordinate or maybe you skip that and say, well, when you have vegan options, I'll come. Or you bring your own vegan options, which I think is normally what we do, just to make sure that we have something and then it's like less... work on someone else to make you know to to make multiple things yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:29

Or worst case scenario you just eat before you go or eat after it's over on your own you know but yeah that's the choice that most people make you can't, you can't like be a vegan and then just go every time there's a family gathering eating and all the everything i will.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:42

Say the social part's hard like having those initial confrontations or like conversations where you say i'm not eating this thing that you've been making me for the last 20 years, that's that shit's hard and it's not fun. It's not a good time, but it also isn't like a free pass to not eat vegan stuff. You know, I think it is definitely different than like the other scenarios we're talking about. If you're enjoying this podcast, or if you just hate it and want to be up to date on our episodes, you should like and subscribe. And maybe leave a comment.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:12

I like that. Another one you might think about for food is like your health care stuff. So maybe allergies or some kind of intolerance or any other kind of condition that limits what you can eat. So there are things like IBS and Crohn's and that MCAS. There's a lot of stuff out there that kind of has you on some kind of restrictive diet. And you have to dance around what things you can eat, what things you can't eat. A lot of things that come up for these conditions are like soy, gluten.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:44

Legumes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:44

Legumes, yeah. Stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:48

Or just limiting your fiber, which can be challenging on a vegan diet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:52

So, I mean, there are definitely going to be constraints. So I think just work with your doctor. They'll probably refer you to a registered dietitian. I would say always follow the advice of your doctors for one. Sometimes you'll get a doctor that says, hey, you shouldn't be vegan. Maybe you get a second opinion. Yeah. But, you know, there are going to be some cases where maybe you just won't be able to go entirely vegan. But I mean, and that that is what it is. And if you still feel strongly about the ethics, you know, kind of the point of the episode is maybe you you can't do it entirely in the food because the dietician says, hey, this just isn't going to work with your medical conditions. You can still do it in all the other aspects of your life.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:29

Yeah, and maybe this is a place where precision fermentation could help out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:33

Yeah, I think this is really going to be big over the next, you know, 10 years or so. I think it's going to help a lot of people that want to go vegan and feel really strongly about it, but have some of these things kind of make it over that hump. Because they're going to be able to get the bio-identical nutrition without harming animals. So now that we've covered some of the reasons and limitations that you might have for not being able to go fully vegan, let's really dig into some of the other things you can still do even if you have some of those limitations.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:02

Yeah so i think you know aside from what you eat it also comes down to like what do you wear and you know household products and stuff like that yeah so i would say that if for whatever reason you can't be fully vegan something you could do is anything you buy with your own money or or things that you ask for for like birthday or christmas gifts or really anything like that Make sure it's vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:25

Yeah, that's an easy one. Um, also when you're buying new things, you can buy obviously things that aren't derived from animals, alternatives, like leather alternatives, suede alternatives. Uh, we've talked about a couple of these things in prior episodes. There's alternatives for all the animal products, but also you don't necessarily have to go with like animal alternatives. You can just go with like fabrics or canvas or something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:46

You can also keep it in mind for bigger purchases, like cars, trying to make sure that you have non-leather interior. Furniture is a big one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:55

Yeah. Like leather upholstery, things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:57

Yeah. Yeah, avoid leather and suede. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:59

And same with a wallet. You just get like a canvas wallet or a metal wallet or something like that. So there are a lot of easy ways to avoid leather or animal products. And for the things that you wear and things that you keep at home, there's almost never going to be a constraint that keeps you from being able to do those things. Yeah. It's not like some of the other stuff we've talked about. You're not going to have a medical condition that makes you need a leather couch.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:20

I will say, you know, if you're shopping for like a used vehicle, you might have something that the only thing that works on your budget is something with leather seats. And like, I mean, it's a used car. What are you going to do?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:30

Yeah, I guess that's true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:31

But I think as far as you possibly can, I would make sure you're trying to buy things that are vegan. And when you're asking for gifts or even when you're giving gifts, I think it's important to make sure that you're giving vegan gifts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:45

Yeah, that actually makes it tricky. So it was a little bit of a tangent, but that makes it a little tricky to shop for gifts sometimes. Like I noticed when I'm like shopping for Christmas gifts, I'm like, oh, well, we've got people that really like this thing, but I can't buy this thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:58

Yeah, I've had to be like, well, sorry, dad, I cannot get you those sandals because those are leather. And then I feel like kind of a dick, but I mean, it is what it is. Like, I'm just not going to buy it. Sorry.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:08

Yeah. So even if it's not possible to change your diet right now, you can definitely get a canvas wallet instead of a leather wallet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:14

Yeah. And similarly, with like personal care products or cleaning products, household products, you know, make sure you're getting cosmetics, skincare, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, that kind of stuff that is... cruelty-free and vegan. So there are two separate questions. The first one is ingredients, and that's where the vegan trademark comes in. So vegan means like it not only doesn't contain animal products, but it also isn't tested on animals. If you see the bunny, that means cruelty-free. That just means that it doesn't test on animals, but it could mean that there are animal products in it, which is very confusing. So you either want to look for the vegan label or you want to check the ingredients and make sure you have a cruelty-free label. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:01

It's a lot of nuance in there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:03

And if you're wondering about things, I would say check out the subreddit Vegan Beauty. It's a good one to ask questions in. A lot of good information in there. But you don't have to throw everything all out at once. You could just start replacing things as they run out with vegan options. The same goes with cleaning products and toilet paper actually isn't always vegan which is crazy that was one i didn't realize until i was like already like a couple months into veganism yeah i was just randomly looking up like what other things aren't vegan that i haven't realized yet and toilet paper came up and i was like what the fuck

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:39

Yeah the toilet paper one's interesting because it's it's basically impossible to find out if your toilet paper uses gelatin or whatever but there are a couple brands that are like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:50

We buy Who Gives a Crap. You can buy it in a 52-pack, which is what we do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:55

The price is about the same as, like, buying it at the store because we get giant boxes of it. Yeah. So it's not really, like, a luxury item. It's just you get one. It's actually more convenient because we almost never have to remember to buy toilet paper.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:07

Yeah, yeah. You don't have to worry about, like, another pandemic hitting and not having toilet paper. But the cool thing is on their FAQ, they specifically say that all of their stuff is vegan, including—they were even saying, like, the ink on their boxes is vegan. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's pretty cool. They're pretty serious about that it's fully vegan, so I like it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:25

Yeah, and the big one I feel pretty strongly about is supporting those animal alternatives, like we mentioned briefly in the beginning here. There are a lot of things going on right now with precision fermentation, lab-grown meat, and just vegan alternatives coming down from the big brands that also have non-vegan products. I think we should do our best to support all of those things as they come out, and try not to push back on them too much because those help people that might otherwise not be able to go vegan, you know, make the transition into veganism, but also just gives us more products and we can have more options on the market.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:58

Yeah, I think it especially helps people that are just becoming vegan because it can be a little challenging figuring out what to eat. So having options that you're kind of used to. I mean, I think definitely when I went vegan, I was relying pretty heavily on like meat alternatives, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:12

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:13

Like Morningstar, Gardein, Beyond, that kind of stuff, just because it was easy. And it's like, okay, I can just switch to that. I don't have to learn how to cook anything yet. Right. You know, and I think supporting, you know, I know a lot of people are like, I don't want to support Beyond or I don't want to support this. It's like so expensive. And I get that, but it is important to have these kinds of products on the market so that it helps people transition. You know, I'm not saying like you should be required to buy a certain amount of these every week, But I will say, like, especially if you can't go fully vegan yet, if there's something that you could swap with like precision fermentation, this or that. Like, for instance, they have a precision fermentation egg white powder on the market right now. And I've been recommending that to people who say, oh, hey, I have like a soy allergy, a gluten allergy, and I can't eat any legumes. And it's like, wow, that really doesn't like leave you with a whole lot of protein options. But have you looked at the vegan egg white protein powder? Because I think that could fill in a gap there and it's animal free.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:12

Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I will say this is a gray area. There are some vegans who don't feel like some of this precision fermentation stuff is vegan. I think they need to get on board.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:22

I think if they did a little more research, I think they'd feel differently because, I mean, it is vegan. And I also think, I don't know, it could be because I'm an engineer, but I tend to take the really far out view of a whole situation, which is like, yeah, the ultimate goal of veganism is elimination of animal exploitation and use. But at the same time, it takes a long time to get there. And reductions are good. Like, you're going to have to take baby steps to get to where you ultimately want to be. So, like, any reduction is, like, a good thing. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. It was kind of funny because I know a lot of vegans also push back on, like... the idea of mixing in like tvp with ground beef and selling it i can't remember what what is that called the half and half stuff yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:07

Well there's the one product called 50CUT i think it does mushrooms and ground beef yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:11

Yeah like some kind of a vegan protein source and a ground beef split yeah but like i know a lot of vegans are like well that's stupid and that doesn't do anything and who's gonna buy that but like you're not thinking big enough because like hospitals adopted universities schools prisons yeah like and you know there are numbers that support that this actually does make a difference i was looking at some article i can't remember i think it said they did this with something with chickens and save like 400 000 chickens yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:39

I mean i know the goal is like okay yes it would be great if we killed zero chickens but would you rather kill 400 000 chickens or would you rather kill 200.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:46

000 chickens yeah exactly like because

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:48

That's i mean The reality is we have to get to zero. Like we can't go from 400,000 or whatever. That's a made up number to zero overnight. Yeah. Like it's a process and let's make progress towards the zero.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:00

Yeah, I totally agree. I think once you start thinking like that, things you get a, you get a lot less depressed because you can see that things are progressing. Yeah. But I also think you become, I don't know, I would say like a better ally to the animals because you're encouraging people to do more than just being black or white on it. Yeah. That's just my opinion.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:20

Yeah. And there are a lot of people just like from the people perspective. They're going to be a lot more willing to try something that's still, like, half animal product than they are to try something that's entirely plant-based right off the bat. Yeah. But if you get them to try something like 50CUT and they're like, okay, this doesn't actually taste much different, maybe I don't even need the beef half of it. So they'll be a lot more likely to go to a plant-based diet if they've tried something that's, like, half and half and they enjoyed it than if they try to go straight from, like, a hamburger to an Impossible patty and they hate it. Yeah. There's definitely a lot of nuance here.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:54

Yeah, and I mean, I think the other thing is, like, even if you can never get them to go all the way vegan, if you can get them to commit to eating half as much animal products throughout their lifetime, that's a pretty big deal. That's a half of a vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:06

Huge reduction, yeah. One thing to know about this, and I've had experience with this, is that the milk, the animal-free milk protein stuff specifically, can still trigger milk allergies. So that's something to keep an eye on.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:17

Yeah, he got pretty sick off of that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:19

Yeah, Perfect Day, which makes a protein powder, which actually is a product I tried, says that people with a milk allergy should still avoid it just as they would cow's milk. And I never had problems with milk before I went vegan, at least not really obvious ones. But now that I'm vegan, I tried this basically animal-free milk protein stuff, and it made me throw up multiple times.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:39

Yeah, not just once, because you tried it again.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:41

So I'm assuming that if I ever had real dairy, I'd be in serious pain.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:44

Yeah, it is funny because they say that most people have like a slight lactose intolerance issue. Yeah. Because why are we drinking baby milk made for baby cows? Like it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Why would our bodies be set up for that? Yeah. But yeah, I think the further you are away from like consuming it, the less tolerant you get. And then the other thing is like, if you're already vegan, you know, you don't necessarily need to be doing this. This is more advice for like someone who can't fully go vegan, but like maybe you could replace your milk with like a precision fermentation option.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:15

Yeah, definitely. Like, I tried it just as an experiment, but I can't, like, I don't really have a reason to reintroduce the bioidentical protein at this point.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:24

You did try it again.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:25

It's definitely good for a transition. Something else you can do is just generally support vegan businesses every chance you get. Vegan restaurants, bakeries, shops, you can even find, like, vegan artists and stuff online to support. So there are a lot of options to support, especially, like, small independent vegan businesses, but also, you know, bigger vegan businesses like Rebel Cheese, Peaceful Rebel, stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:45

Yeah. And it's like maybe support them by getting gifts for your non-vegan friends to introduce them to stuff. Like even if you can't fully be vegan yet, there are things that you can do to like spread the word by supporting the businesses or, you know, like maybe you're going out to a group dinner and you can suggest a place like a vegan place. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:05

Yeah. Drag your non-vegan friends to vegan restaurants when they come to town. That's what we like to do. Yeah. We took a couple people to Alice & Friends over the years. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:13

Or maybe, you know, people bring in donuts to the office. Maybe you can bring in vegan donuts to the office.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:19

Yeah, exactly. Also, leave honest reviews and recommendations about these places. Honest reviews is a big one for me because there's a HappyCow problem. I think people are just really excited to have vegan places in their town. So some of them maybe get rated a little higher than they deserve.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:35

Which can backfire because if you have like a five-star rating for a place that is not good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:40

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:41

And now you go to it and maybe you take a non-vegan to it and that's the only time they ever tried vegan food and it sucked ass.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:46

Yeah. And this was the best rated place in the town.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:48

Yeah. Then they start thinking all vegan food sucks. So yeah, make sure your reviews are honest. I would say if you don't have anything nice to say, just don't say anything at all. Yeah. But reviews greatly help small vegan businesses. Yeah. And I would say if you're using vegan recipes from food blogs, it is super helpful to have good reviews. helps like it's one of the only ways that like can really help a vegan food blogger make money because it helps direct traffic to their site when they come up in google searches and stuff

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:16

Yeah if you didn't know leaving a review on a recipe site actually really helps it with showing up on google properly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:22

Yeah it's like the nicest thing you can do if you like a vegan recipe leave a review but um yeah i think just like reviews in general like if you can leave restaurant reviews, that's super, super helpful to help a vegan business succeed. And that's not even just on HappyCow. That can also be on Google or like if they have a Facebook page, like anywhere that might help them get seen. Or you can like repost, reshare... the stuff they have going on, their menus, whatever. Help vegan businesses succeed. That's, I think, a big one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:51

Yeah, definitely. You know, at the same time, you can also ask, like, your local stores to stock vegan product.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:57

Yeah, or even just, like, a smaller grocery store in your area. You can be asking for, like, hey, can you start stocking this vegan cheese or this vegan meat product, blah, blah, blah. Or even, like, omnivore restaurants. You can start going there and saying, hey, I'd really appreciate it if you put a vegan option on the menu. Yeah, definitely. That helps because even if, you know, you can't be fully vegan, if you can manage to get a vegan option on an omnivore restaurant, like you don't even know how many animal lives you could potentially save of all the people that might order that eventually.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:26

And I would pitch that as like, hey, if you put some stuff on your menu that's vegan or maybe even vegetarian, like you can get listed on HappyCow. And then people who are looking for vegan places, you're like one of the five places that show up in this whole city.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:38

Yeah, absolutely.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:39

And I think even if you can't necessarily afford to buy something from a vegan restaurant, maybe you can just, like, if they're online, you can, like, repost their stuff, you know, post it to your story, just tell people about it. Like, maybe you have a group chat or, like, you're in a chat room or something like that, or you just, like, talk to people at work. You're like, hey, have you tried this place over here? It's vegan, but it's really good. Like, you don't necessarily always have to be spending money on it. You can just help kind of spread the word.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:04

Right. And I think the work thing is interesting, too, because a lot of workplaces have lunch and learns or just like, I don't know, whatever other lunch activity or like a dinner activity. And you can kind of maybe push around like a place that has vegan options to the top of the list like hey it would be really great if during this lunch and learn you made sure you had vegan options right i know this place that does like a really solid lunch option i think you should buy like 10 of those to make sure people have options i think anytime that you can get um a vegan restaurant like a vegan product in front of a non-vegan is a good thing especially if it's like a good product that they're gonna like and maybe go back to yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:42

Because i mean you know newsflash vegan food is just food so there's a pretty good chance they're gonna like something even if it doesn't have animal products in it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:50

Yeah you know what i think is interesting is i know a couple omnivores that actually went and just they were interested in Rebel Cheese specifically because yeah it looks fucking good it is fucking good but they bought they bought a couple things of it and they're not even vegan they eat regular cheese and she was just like i just wanted to try it and she loved it yeah so i think like they have a lot

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:10

Of cool flavors i haven't seen a lot of other cheese places.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:13

I think that's a good one that even if you have a friend or family member that's not vegan you could get them Rebel Cheese for a gift and I think that they would probably for the most part probably like it unless they have a cashew allergy yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:26

I mean, I know a lot of people, it's pretty easy to get them to switch like full time to like a milk alternative or like a non-dairy ice cream or something like that. Because people will try those and a lot of people actually like oat milk better than dairy milk. Yeah. And a lot of people like oat ice cream better than dairy ice cream. So the oat stuff is really doing a lot of work helping us convince people to go over because most people don't actually like drinking milk. They just have it. So if you can give them another alternative that's like a little better or at least just as neutral to them, then that's a pretty easy swap. I genuinely just think the non-dairy ice creams actually taste better than dairy ice cream.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:00

I think they're better too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:01

I don't know if I'm just like misremembering it, but I feel like they're a much richer and like creamier.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:06

They're very creamy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:07

So yeah. Anyway, I love non-dairy ice cream.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:10

Yeah. I just think, like, this is a big one, I think, that if you can't go vegan yet, getting the vegan word out, getting vegan products, getting vegan restaurants out in front of non-vegans. Yeah. Huge.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:23

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:24

That's a big help.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:25

Even if you have a medical condition, I mean, or whatever, that means you can't do the thing. You can still help other people do the thing. Spread the good word.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:32

Yeah. Similarly, it's like, help the vegan message reach people. So this would go beyond, like, vegan businesses, restaurants, et cetera. This would be more of, I would say, mostly like social media or like podcasts or like a YouTube content creator or somebody who's writing vegan books, making vegan documentaries. But I think sharing accurate and useful content with other people is a huge thing that you could do, even if you can't go vegan yet. I think social media is one of the bigger ways to get the vegan message out right now. Do you think so?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:05

Yeah, definitely. It's huge.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:06

Because it's like there are a lot of different social media types of veganism, right? Like you have like vegan activism, which is like people making debates and trying to convince people with logic, that kind of thing. I think that's important messaging to share. But you also have like vegan recipe stuff, which I think will reach different people, people that are just interested in cooking and maybe they would be interested in trying a vegan recipe. um you also have like accounts that vegan fitness yeah vegan fitness i think that's a good one you have people that are like hey here's how you can eat vegan at these like fast food restaurants and stuff yeah like you have a lot of different vegan accounts and i think pushing if people are making that stuff if you want to spread the vegan message that's one of the easier ways because like the more those accounts get out the more people get the message right yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:50

I also think another cool one is like the precision fermentation stuff because, yes it is like um alternatives to animal products but also it's just like really cool science so people who are just interested in like science and technology might just find that really.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:03

Interesting i think so too so i think if you want to help vegan social media spread their message the best ways you can do that is to share there are just like certain signals that help a video do well so like sharing is one of them yeah bookmarking it is another one leaving a legitimate comment don't just say like yum That doesn't really help. You know what I mean? Like leaving good feedback, good comments, questions, whatever, that can help a video. Liking it, reposting it's helpful. Sharing it to your stories is good. Not saying you need to do all those things, but like if you see a video that really resonates with you and you're like, man, I really hope more people see this. Or like you see a recipe that you're like, ooh, that looks really good. I think like that could convince people to go vegan. Yeah. Those are some of the ways that you can get those videos to do better. You could also like recommend a podcast episode or a creator if it fits the conversation. I've done this at work a few times. Somebody was talking about cholesterol numbers or something, and I was like, oh, well, you know, there's like a little bit of science around, you know, a plant-based diet can help with that. Maybe you should read the book How Not to Die. You know, like, familiarize yourself with documentaries, vegan books, content creators, that kind of stuff, podcasts that you like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:09

There are a lot of good vegan podcasts, don't you think?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:11

But if you familiarize yourself with what's out there, like, you can kind of work some of that stuff into conversations when people are looking. Because, like, different people have different things that will reach them. So, some people are going to be reached by the animals. A lot of people aren't going to be reached by the animals and you're just going to make them uncomfortable and not want to talk to you. Some people can be reached by health stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:28

Yeah, a lot of people are, like, going through some kind of health scare or something like that. And, you know, typically it's their doctor has already told them to maybe eat less meat or, like, try to eat more vegetables or something like that. so they know that you're interested in the vegan thing they come to you or you just know they're going through that yeah they're like i wouldn't like don't try to diagnose them don't be like you had a heart attack you need to be yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:49

Don't be a predator right like this is like if they're asking for help or like you're having a conversation like don't go out of your way to be like fucking

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:57

Weird right yeah yeah but if you know it's like oh they talk to you it's like oh doc said i gotta eat more salad or something like that yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:04

Share some recipes maybe or exactly or Or like, hey, there's this book I read. It had some interesting stuff. Like How Not to Die, I think it's a really good one to share with people. Yeah. But yeah, I think the more you learn, the more information around veganism that you consume, the easier it is to just recommend stuff for people to read or watch or listen to.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:21

Yeah. As you do this, I would say like it is important to try to not share misinformation because that just hurts us. Like there's a lot of stuff out there where some vegans try to like defend veganism a little too hard by sharing things that aren't technically accurate to make it look better.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:36

Yeah, my brain goes to the complete protein thing or like amino acids are all you need to worry about and not protein or protein's a lie. Yeah, I mean, I would definitely fact check stuff before you share it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:49

I would try to make sure that you know something is accurate before you share it. If it's like a factual claim, if it's like a recipe, that's a different thing. But if they're making like a scientific claim or something like that, just do a quick Google maybe before you reshare something that's not technically correct.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:03

Yeah. Uh, similarly, if you're going to share stuff, make sure you're like crediting the original creator, sharing it through like the normal channels of social media. I had somebody that screenshotted my shit and then took my entire caption. That's pretty weird. And posted on their fucking account and then basically said I should be thanking them for that. And I'm like, you stole my words and my work. Why would I thank you for that? Like, that's just like really odd behavior.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:28

Yeah, there's like built in ways to do that. Yeah. That still attribute it back to the creator.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:32

Yeah, I just think that's, you know, the better way to do that. It is important.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:37

Yeah. Because it lets them... Obviously, you don't want to steal things, but also it lets them know that that message is resonating so they can share more stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:45

Yeah, and it lets anyone who sees that know where they can go for similar content, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:50

Yeah, that's a big one, yeah. It's like, oh, this was a really good piece of information. I have no idea who to follow to get more of this information.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:56

Because it's stolen. And then I think another way that you can just help the vegan cause, even if you can't go vegan, is having conversations with people, being helpful, supportive. sharing information when they have questions like help onboarding new vegans i think is really helpful especially i think when you're just starting out vegan especially if you don't have anyone in your immediate circle that is also vegan or vegetarian it can be really overwhelming and you can feel very out of place and i think that newer vegans are more likely to need like a place like a home to go to to like ask questions and share struggles i think being that supportive system is really crucial to helping people stay vegan so even if you can't fully commit to veganism if you can be a support system to people to help them stay vegan that's i think pretty helpful especially

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:46

If you know maybe if you happen to know a vegan who is not a part of any community or something maybe just send them a message every once in a while send them like a cool recipe so i'll just try to like keep in.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:54

Touch yeah like that or like just support them like at work yeah like even if you can't go vegan and you know there is a vegan in your office space advocating for them is huge because I will say as a vegan who worked with no other vegans, it can get exhausting having to constantly be like... okay, you want me to go to this work dinner? What's going to be there? And it's like, no one thought of it. And you're like, wow, like four people in my department had their hands in this and no one thought to ask if there was a vegan option when I've been in this department for five years and everyone knows I'm a vegan. Like that's really disheartening. And it feels so good when you have someone that's like making sure that you're taken care of without you having to advocate for yourself. So I think, I think that's huge. That makes people feel welcome and cared for yeah definitely i think that's i think that's a big one like helping other vegans if you can't fully go vegan being a good ally and advocate is huge like you could also invite someone over to dinner and cook them a vegan meal like that's kind of cool

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:53

Yeah plus you get to show them good vegan food.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:56

Or like um another way and this is more on the lines of like helping if you can't go vegan but you're looking for ways to help veganism like this is more along the lines of like helping a vegan, stay vegan. Right. And I think community helps with that. checking in with somebody if they seem like a little down because vegans get down pretty often because it's like a lot to be vegan and know all the things and watch all your friends and family eat animal products. It can take a big toll on you. So like just having support, having someone there that gets it that you can talk to, that's pretty big.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:24

I will say, I think this is a nice thing about our Discord, not to have like a plug here or anything, but we have like a struggle channel in the Discord and people come in and share like stuff they're dealing with all the time. They get a little bit of support. Man, I think, you know, it seems like it makes people feel better if i'm having a struggle it makes me feel better yeah it's just nice to have a space where you can kind of, because there's just not a lot of vegans in real life i know so it's nice to be able to be in a room with like uh you know some other vegans who are saying man i went to like family holiday didn't have any vegan options i had to do this and i'm like oh man that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:53

Sucks yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:55

Like maybe and also maybe here's some ideas for how that doesn't happen again so it's really cool to have a.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:59

Community i think so too i also think it's it's like an omnivore would find what I'm about to say like really odd but for me i kind of legitimately fucking hate going to grocery stores because i know i'm gonna have to walk through like most likely a meat aisle or something you know and it it is like so upsetting to me to like have to walk past like a bunch of dead animals like when i'm just trying to get like vegetables and shit like i fucking hate that shit and i think that omnivores would not understand the struggle but i know i could put that in our struggle channel and people would be like yes it is like really upsetting especially

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:32

With you having been vegetarian so long you're just like very averse to meat products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:38

Yeah I know it's I don't like it it makes me very uncomfortable but yeah I just think like having a supportive friend that that gets it you know like And I think you can still be that supportive friend, even if you can't fully go vegan yourself yet, because you can still be someone that they can come to and talk to and you can relate to them. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:54

I'd say also if you're in charge of any events that involve food, just make like good vegan options. Maybe make all the food vegan if you can get away with it. Anything like a wedding, a birthday, a game night, even like you have people over to play Dungeons and Dragons or something. Yeah, yeah. Only vegan food tonight, people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:09

Yeah. I think this one's big, even if no one else there is going to be vegan. Like, I think where you can optimize what you're doing for the vegan movement is where you're involving other people. Start replacing their meals with vegan food. You know, like, you might not be able to go fully vegan, but, like, if you can have a group of 10 people over and you feed them vegan food for the night, that's 10 meals that would have probably contained animal products, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:33

Yeah, and I know, like, some people will get up in arms over that, like you're poisoning them or something. But all you're doing is removing the animal. You're not adding weird things. You're just removing animal products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:42

I just feel like, okay, this is my thing. And I don't know. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of maintaining friendships with people that are open-minded. You know, like I don't really have any... My pre-existing friend group before I went vegan is not vegan. I don't really have like... Like people I've met from work aren't vegan, that kind of thing. But what I will say is that the people that I am friends with, they are willing to eat vegan food and not bitch about it. Like they're willing to go to restaurants with me that have vegan food. And honestly, I just don't think I would want to have a friend that was like... such a dick about that where they were like, this isn't real food. Like, I don't, I just don't know what I'd have in common with a person like that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not saying you can't have friends like that. I'm not judging if you have friends like that. Just for me personally, I'm pretty introverted, so I don't have a whole lot of friends.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:27

I will say, I think some of that is they don't know what vegan food means.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:30

Then we need to teach them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:31

Exactly. Yeah. Because I think if you explain to them, like, oh, I mean, a lot of the food you eat is vegan food. All I'm saying is, like, you don't get the steak.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:37

Yeah, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:39

You know, so, but yeah, no, I agree. If somebody, if you're like, somebody understood and they were still like, not for me, then, you know, that's.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:44

Yeah, like for one meal, like just once. Like, I don't know.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:48

I will die. I don't have a steak with this meal today.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:50

Yeah, I don't know. Find some better friends, really.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:55

Also, another topic that doesn't get talked about very much is food access. So maybe if there are like food pantries or community fridges or something like that near you, you could donate vegan options. Because there are probably people who are utilizing those services who are ethical vegans or vegetarians, something like that, that would like to be able to have access to the options that fit their beliefs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:18

And even if they aren't vegan, you could maybe be replacing some animal product-based stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:24

Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:25

I mean, yeah. And I think a lot of, there are a lot of shelf-stable vegan products that work really well with this kind of thing. Yeah. You know, you have like pre-made chilies, canned beans are always good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:39

I will say, like, if you're going to donate to something like this, talk to them first. Ask what they actually need. Yeah. And then if they have any, like, food safety rules or anything like that, you need to abide by those. So don't give them a bunch of food. They're just going to have to throw away immediately. Right. Like, actually work with them first.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:53

But I will say another way that you could spread veganism, even if you can't go vegan, is you could pick, like, a soup kitchen night where you pick a day to do the soup kitchen. And you could pick a vegan option, like chili or something like that, or spaghetti with TVP.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:07

Yeah, that'd be really cool. So I think just in general, try to be as visible as possible with your veganism, especially in situations where it kind of is, relevant to what's going on. If you could like bring vegan food to a potluck, mention a vegan restaurant that you liked. I do this all the damn time. I tell people about Alice & Friends like twice a week probably.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:24

As you should. People need to know. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:26

And you don't have to turn everything into a debate. You can just like, oh, hey, I brought this vegan dish. Or, hey, you should check out this vegan place. You don't need to have a whole thing with them. Yeah. You just kind of mention stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:35

I think anything that you can do in conversation or social settings that makes veganism seem more normalized is really helpful. I will say, like, work settings. Okay, this one's a big one for me because... I don't know what it is, but like I am like a lightning rod for like mockery around not eating meat. I've been getting this since I was like 12. Yeah. But people are so freaking rude about picking on you for it. You know what I mean? Or like, oh, PETA, people eating tasty animals. And then like everybody kind of like laughs along and like nobody ever sticks up for you. And I think like even if you can't be fully vegan, you can like help other people that are vegan or like push back on vegan jokes. You know what I mean? like you don't have to be really hardcore about it but you could just be like i just don't really think that's funny or like what's the joke you know what i mean or like why are you picking on that person i don't know just like any support i just have never had anyone stick up for me and i have like dealt with this shit for over 20 years of like just annoying comments and shit and i don't really remember anyone ever like getting in between me and the person being rude yeah yeah and i just think that would go a really long way yeah you know what i mean even

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:45

If you're not a vegan if you see somebody like you know really pick on anybody about anything but like this and this in particular because it's like an ethical thing you could say hey like what's funny about that you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:54

Know yeah they don't like eating animals like come on yeah i think normalization is super super helpful to just breaking down barriers in general and i think that's something that anyone can do even if you can't fully go vegan you can still like normalize it and and be like i don't know why this is a big deal obviously you can get protein on a vegan diet like i don't know why you're saying this i don't know of course they eat more than salad i don't know like stuff like that you know

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:18

Yeah or the thing where it's like someone's like oh where do you get your protein you just turn around like how much protein did you get today yeah you have any idea.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:24

Yeah exactly i think you know i will say as like a woman it goes a long way if you're being mocked by a man or like talked down to by a man at work to have like another man be like that's fucking stupid why are you treating her like that then like me having to constantly like defend myself against like to a man does that make sense like i just feel like i guess what i will say is like If you are part of a group, right, like if you're a man and you see another man being a douchebag, like censor your own group, right? Like you deal with your own group. Why am I having to like deal with your group of people, man? Yeah. And I feel the same way about omnivores. Like if you're an omnivore that can't fully go vegan yet, but you care, like a freaking deal with your people, man. Right? Like why do I have to school omnivores? Can like I get a nice omnivore to help me the fuck out? Yeah. Why is it always me versus 20 people?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:16

Yeah. Another cool thing, like even if you can't necessarily go vegan yet, you can use some of your maybe skills or like what you do for work or something like that to help kind of get the word out about veganism. This one's really big, actually, especially things you can volunteer for. If you're an accountant, you can do bookkeeping for some nonprofit organization or like a small organization in your town that needs a treasurer or something like that. You can do, like, graphic design, photography, web development, maybe for some, like, small business or vegan advocacy group or something that needs a website. You can do translation. This one's a big one because, you know, veganism is kind of a global thing. Yeah. But if somebody's, like, working out of the U.S., their material maybe only reaches the U.S., so you can help them with translation. So there are a lot of things like that where you can use your skills to volunteer your time for kind of vegan organizations, nonprofits, things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:08

Yeah, and there are websites that you can... look at to find like opportunities and if you follow the vegan subreddit they post opportunities like this and they're a lot usually around web development and stuff yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:20

And this is another one where you want to try to work with somebody first and ask what they actually need before you start.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:25

Doing something yeah don't don't like offer don't go to a vegan restaurant and be like your pictures suck ass you want me to take pictures for you yeah i

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:33

I have this a lot because i'll like Like, sometimes I'll go to a website and I'm like, I really just want to redesign.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:41

But I don't want to be rude. But like, I don't know. Can I? I think about it a lot when I see the AI menus. I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah. Can I just like make you a Canva design? This looks like shit. And we'll share some links of places you can look if you're looking for volunteer opportunities. But, you know, you could also if you're looking for volunteering stuff, you could also go to like sanctuaries.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:04

Yeah, definitely. A lot of those places need help for sure. A lot of work on a sanctuary.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:09

Yeah, for sure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:09

Also, if you're in school, 24 of the states plus Washington, D.C. have laws or policies that let students in K through 12 grades choose an alternative to dissection. So typically you'd have to like dissect a pig basically at some point in middle school. But there are a lot of states now that let you do something alternative with like a synthetic thing. They're like fake.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:33

Pig kits and stuff like that. No, I think this is really, really cool. and I think you know, if you wanted to, if you're in school and like you want to move more into veganism, but maybe you can't change some of the things you can eat at home, this could be a big one. You can even ask like your fellow students if they maybe want to do an alternative to the dissection. Maybe you could replace 10 of the pigs with the alternative. I remember I had to, well, I actually got out of my dissection because I was a vegetarian and I was like really, really upset about it and luckily my physics teacher was a vegetarian and he got me out of it and talked to the biology teacher and was like yeah she's not gonna do this like that would be traumatic for her and i'm not and you're not gonna make her do this and i didn't have to do it but we didn't have synthetic ones back then so i just skipped it i don't know if i got a zero i don't i don't know i graduated valedictorian so it didn't hurt me too bad But, yeah, but it would have been so nice if there was even one other person that was like, yeah, I don't want to do this because I felt like I really stuck out. Like, I felt really weird and, like, I was the only one that felt that way.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:44

What's crazy about that is I feel like there were probably several other people in there that really didn't want to do it. Oh, I'm sure. They just didn't want to say anything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:50

Yeah, exactly. And that's where I think, like, you could ask people and get a group of you together and, like, you know, maybe you could replace, like, 10, 20 baby pigs. Yeah. I just think that's, like, a really cool, easy one. And what I will say is like bringing that up, I think, in school, I think it's so much easier to change people's mind around eating animals and the way we view animals at a younger age than it is older. Yeah. Because you get more and more separated from the reality of it. The older you get, you know, you get more and more desensitized. So I think if you could plant those seeds in like high school, I think that could be pretty huge.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:22

I think I did the pig dissection thing in like sixth grade. So that would have been super early.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:26

Yeah. I mean, if you can get like 10 of your fellow students to be like, yeah, no, this is actually pretty weird. Why are we cutting apart baby pigs when we don't have to use actual pigs? It could lead to decisions later down the line where maybe they just become vegan or vegetarian or something.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:42

Yeah, for sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:43

I would never discount that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:44

Even something as simple as if like the teacher was like, okay, we're doing dissections. If you're a vegan or you have some issues, we have alternatives. Yeah, exactly. Just to get people thinking like, oh, okay, yeah, okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:55

Yeah. And you don't really know what impact that could have down the line, too. If you're the first person in your school to ever be like, I am not dissecting a pig, you need to find another option for me. Then the teacher has to go look into how to get that other option. And maybe it sets that up for the next 50 years. They already have a plan for that and they just offer it automatically. You know what I mean? Like, I just don't think... I think we... underestimate the impact we can make in just small ways of advocating for ourselves.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:23

Especially in a, like a, a very local situation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:27

Yeah. It could, it could be a big change.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:29

Another one, if you are somebody who has, makes like purchasing decisions in your job. So we talked about like ordering office lunch a little bit, but if you're somebody who like does company gifts or you buy uniforms or even book venues for events at your job, you're, you know, choosing things for a lot of people at once. So if you can choose vegan options that still fall within the guidelines of whatever you need for work, then that's a big win right there. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:54

No, I think this is huge because I know at my last job, they would sometimes do like, oh, it's like we're giving away free cookies today to show you how much we care. And I'm like, wow, amazing. Good job. We all worked an extra 20 hours last week. We had a power outage, but we got a fucking cookie with a smiley face. But I didn't because it had dairy in it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:12

Yeah. A cookie you can't eat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:13

Yeah. And they tried. Oh, my God. Okay. Tangent. So this was this is exactly what happened. OK. It was like a big power outage. So we'd all worked a shit ton of hours. And then they're giving out these fucking smiley face cookies is like a thank you for the good job. Well done. And, you know, not overtime pay or anything like that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:31

No, that'd be crazy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:31

That'd be crazy. But like so anyways, this woman tried handing it to me and I was like, is it vegan? And she's like, what is vegan? And I was like, does it have dairy? Yes. And I was like, oh, I can't eat that. I'm vegan. And she goes, I won't tell.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:46

Tell who?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:47

I know. Like, what the fuck? Anyways, that really pissed me off. So, but like the cookies could have been fucking vegan and then vegans could have eaten it. Vegetarians, omnivores, and also people with milk allergies.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:01

Yeah, you won't have to tell when I'm puking all over the floor. Yeah, but I mean, a lot of people do think of it that way. Like, and we're still on your tangent, I think. But, you know, I feel like in a lot of situations, when they're setting up like a group dinner or something, they don't necessarily think about you being vegan. Because they think like, oh, it's okay. You can cheat tonight. It's like, that's not how this works.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:21

See, this is where like, even if you're not vegan, you can help explain that shit. Yeah. Because what I will say is like, as a vegan, it gets freaking exhausting having to constantly explain the same shit over and over again. Yeah. And like advocate for yourself and be like, hey, is there like a vegan option at this dinner you're forcing me to go to? But, like, you could be a friend, an ally, an advocate for vegans and be like, let's make sure there's a vegan option. Let's make sure these cookies are vegan. Let's make sure the gift you're giving to your employees is something all the employees can have, even if they're vegan or vegetarian. Right. I think that's just huge. And that's really helpful. And once again, it normalizes it. And I think that's a really big part in what you can do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:04

Yeah. If you happen to work in research, this one's kind of interesting because there was the FDA Modernization Act from December of 2022 that lets drug developers use alternatives like cell things and computer models. So you don't necessarily have to use animals anymore. It didn't ban animal testing, but it made other methods acceptable. So if you're somebody in science, if you work in science, medicine or teaching, maybe you might have a say in what methods get used and maybe you can orient those orient those more towards the non-animal options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:41

Yeah, I think this is a really good one. And it could probably be pretty easy for you to get that move, too, if you were in those spaces. Well, I mean, I don't know how easy. I'm not in those spaces.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:50

I guess it depends on the research and.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:51

How high up in the company you are or whatever. But yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:54

But, I mean, I would definitely advocate for it and say, hey, is this possible? Is this something we can do? Maybe the answer is no, but you tried.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:00

Yeah. And that being said, I mean, tangentially related, I guess. But if there are cosmetics that you like, you could be sending them emails and being like, how can we start making these cruelty free? You know what I mean? Like, similar to, like, asking omnivore restaurants for vegan options. It's like, hey, I really like your products, but I can't buy them anymore because you test on animals. Like, what are we doing?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:22

Yep.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:22

Same with like just signing petitions and stuff, going through and signing petitions. I don't know how well petitions work, but like you could sign and share them. Yeah. And I guess if you're like organizing outings for work or even just organizing like entertainment slash outings for family and friends, you could make sure those are like animal free activities. So don't pick zoos or aquariums. Circus. Are circuses even a thing anymore?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:44

Some places I think they are, yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, circuses are a thing. I think some circuses still use animals. Not many though. That's my understanding anyway. I haven't been to a circus since I was a child.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:55

Or you could do animal activities that involve like animal shelters, like walking dogs, if you really want to go interact with animals.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:02

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:02

Interact with ones that like aren't in cages for entertainment. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:06

And then the big one, like kind of the most common one, I think, is you can donate in a couple of different ways your money. So everything we mentioned before this really costs very little or nothing. But if you would prefer to just, you know, donate money, if you have money to donate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:22

Or in addition to the other stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:24

Or in addition to the other stuff. There are a lot of options here, especially in the vegan space.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:29

Now, we're not at all advocating for you don't need to go vegan because you can donate your way out of that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:35

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:35

You know, this is like if for some reason you like legitimately cannot go vegan under whatever set of circumstances, like another thing you could do is donate money.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:45

And if you don't donate money, that's fine, too. Nobody should feel like they have to donate things to be a good vegan. Yeah, absolutely. There are lots of stuff you can do for free. Yeah, I would say, you know, the number one question when you're donating to an organization is like, what does my donation help accomplish? And how confident am I that the organization is effectively doing that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:05

Yeah. So I think it is important to, especially if you want your money to go as far as it can, donate to effective charities that have a proven track record.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:12

Yeah. A couple of different types of work are like direct rescue and lifetime care for animals, corporate and policy campaigns to help push like animal alternatives and different things, vegan outreach and food access programs, kind of like the ones we talked about earlier. And then just generally research and development of those animal free alternatives, like the precision fermentation and cell studies and things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:35

And yeah, so I think there are basically two types of things here where it's like either I want to spend my money helping individual animals that I can go and like visit and that would be like animal rescue shelter type things. Sanctuary. Yeah. Or the second one, which is what I personally prefer, which is like more systematic wide policy changes, things that will help more animals in the long run.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:58

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:01

Which I think is like basically effective altruism, which I guess is now like controversial in the vegan space, I guess. But I actually think effective altruism makes a lot of sense when you have like a limited amount of funds. Like you want your money to do the best it can, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:15

Yeah. So maybe if you're thinking about donating to an organization, you can kind of go through a checklist of things to ask them. Like, what does the organization actually do? What evidence supports the approach that they have? Like, how do we know this actually helps animals? Does it publish its results and financials?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:33

I would hope it does, yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:35

What would the extra money be used for? And then does the work they do fit your personal values, like animal abolition, welfare reform, which is a touchy thing, or maybe both?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:46

Yeah, I know welfare reform is, like, touchy, but I actually, I don't know. I kind of believe in that in general, just because I don't think you can go fully non-vegan to vegan overnight.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:55

Yeah, I think it's like we were talking about earlier, like we we have to get from where we are now to zero. And in the middle of that, there's still some stuff we can work on.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:02

Yeah. I guess the way I think about it is like, yes, the ultimate like future plan far in the future is no animals are ever exploited. Right. But like if so, that's going to take a long time to get there. Right. And I think the way that like welfare reform works is it's like the animals that have to be in the system between now and when we get to the ultimate goal. Yeah. Do I want them to suffer? Right. Or do I want them to suffer the least amount of possible all along that journey? Yeah. Which is like, obviously, I would like want to reduce that as much as I can until we get to the end goal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:36

Yeah. And if you're not familiar with welfare reform in this context, it means like campaigns that make the conditions less cruel for the animals that are still being farmed. And it's not really about ending the farming necessarily.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:47

Right. I think a really great example, and we have an episode on the pig's perspective of factory farming, but one of the examples is that pigs that have just given birth are in these very, very tight crates where they can't move, and it's... And they can't also can't interact with their baby piglets. So it is one of the worst conditions in factory farming is like the mother that has just given birth. And there is some like welfare reform that's going on right now is to get either pigs larger spaces or out of those cages. And I think that is huge for just like the betterment of pigs in those conditions. Like there's it's going to be faster to do that than to get rid of pig farming altogether.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:32

Yeah, I mean, we can do both, right? So, like, obviously, we want the farming to end. Right. But in the meantime, why not do some of these smaller things that are much easier to accomplish?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:42

Yeah, and the thing I've seen, basically the counter argument, is that once we get pigs out of the cages, people will stop caring. And I just don't think that's true. I don't think that's how that works. Yeah. I think that, kind of like you said, the two paths are, like, completely different forms of advocacy, right? Like one is like reducing harm and one is like ending it entirely. And you do those two different ways. And so both of those can go at the same time in parallel. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's not one needs to come first before the other. Like you can work on both of those at the same time and they fulfill different purposes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:15

Yeah. Also, I think a minor direct benefit too, because every win you have for like welfare reform also costs the operation a little bit more money. Exactly. Makes the farming a little less economically viable. So you're, and then that like raises prices and demand will eventually go down for some of the animal products. So it does like directly affect things, even if it is a more minor kind of impact. And also it, you know, It obviously doesn't solve farming, but it improves the conditions for the animals a little bit.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:46

Right. And the other thing is it gets in the media, which means that people have to learn about the conditions at least a little bit, which is a good thing. Because, I mean, one of the major problems that we have is just informing people and educating people on it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:00

You know, there are a lot of charities out there or a lot of organizations and charities out there that you can look at. One I really like and the one I typically donate to is called the Humane League. They focus mostly on chickens. Because, you know, there are more chickens being farmed than anything else. So to impact that or to try to save the highest number of lives, they focus on the chicken industry.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:21

And if you're interested in this or really any of this, The Impactful Vegan does a really good job talking about some of this stuff. And especially, like, digging into, like, where you can make the most impact with your dollar. So I would highly recommend that book, The Impactful Vegan by Robert Cheeke. It kind of touches on a lot of this information. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:39

If you prefer something more local, maybe look up an animal sanctuary close to you and go check it out and then see if it is an operation you feel comfortable with and work with them, volunteer with them, donate to them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:49

Whatever you want to do. I would say if you're going to work with an animal sanctuary, though, like, yes, the benefit is that they have saved animals, but the main benefit of the animal sanctuary should be spreading information. Like, that's how you know it's an effective animal sanctuary. They should be spreading information to the public, having people visit and having minds changed, explaining like, hey, you know, we saved this cow from XYZ. And like, this is the story of Betsy the cow. And like, this is why you should care about animals and factory farming. like the Like, obviously, an animal sanctuary is to save animals. But, like, in my mind, the most important thing they can do is spread awareness and educate people. If they're not doing that, you shouldn't be donating to them. That's just my personal opinion.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:33

Yeah. And there are a lot of good animal sanctuaries that are really also great advocacy organizations. Absolutely. I think they should be.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:40

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:40

So, yeah, in the same vein, this kind of comes up a lot. Does taking or going for some of these smaller steps kind of water down veganism? kind of like you mentioned earlier like do we get one small change pushed through and then feel like okay well that's good enough we don't really need to do much more.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:10:57

Yeah which is why i see people saying like you need to go from like basically you have to do the whole transition like we can't advocate for like animal welfare because we need to advocate for no animals at all right or like we can't advocate for like small steps in veganism we need to advocate for like you're fully vegan because for some reason people think if you get to like anywhere between zero and 180 degrees you're gonna just stop there yeah because you're being welcomed in and that would make people stop and i just don't i personally don't think that's true yeah do you know what i mean i think if you get welcomed into the community you're gonna see more and more conversations and you're gonna figure out more and more stuff

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:11:39

And maybe even if it's sure at the beginning if you're like okay i'm in it's cool but i think like you said as you get exposed to more and more of that stuff then you're gonna start to like think about it more and more i think it'd be hard to like be in the community and just stop thinking about it that doesn't make.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11:51

Sense i also think that you're gonna get exposed to more stuff that like lowers any barriers you have on like people that physically can't go vegan yet i'm talking about like maybe people that are like slow transitioning or something yeah and they want to be able to be in a vegan space where they can ask questions and like maybe some vegans are saying like no we won't accept them right but i don't know for me it's like if you are being genuine and And, like, I can sniff out a troll, man. But, like, if you're being genuine, you're genuinely curious, you actually want that support, I think that we should be welcoming. I think we should give support. I think even if the transition is long, if the ultimate goal is to get there and they just want to learn and they want information and help and recipes and stuff, like, I don't know why we wouldn't welcome them. Because, like, what is the alternative then? Like, we're mean to them. We say you don't belong here. And then they just stop. Like, that doesn't seem good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:39

Yeah, well, if you've got somebody in that situation where they're curious, but they haven't done it yet, and they're like, in progress, that typically means they have like, maybe a handful of objections or things they're not quite comfortable with or questions. And if you're in a room with 100 vegans that are not assholes, then you can like, get those objections all knocked out pretty quickly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:00

Yeah, we can work through that shit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:02

Oh, that's not a problem. This is how you do this. This is where you find this. This is how you replace this in your cooking. You're like, oh, okay. Well, like all those things I was unsure about, I just got solved in two days. So I'm on board.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:13

Yeah, exactly. Now, I'm not saying that we just start calling everyone vegan if they're not vegan. No. But what I am saying is like, I do think we, I don't, I just think we should be more supportive, I guess. You know what I mean?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:24

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:25

Yeah. And we can all do better and we can all do more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:28

Even for current vegans, like there's still a lot to learn. There's probably stuff you're doing, like you don't even know that impacts animals in some way. So it's like a continuous learning process.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:38

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:38

And, you know, a lot of companies are sneaking weird stuff into things, maybe not maliciously, just because they don't really care if it's vegan or not. But like things will pop up that you just didn't know about all the time. Yeah. So I think it's definitely possible for somebody to be an ally to veganism even before they're totally vegan. Like they're in the right mind space. they're trying to figure out how to overcome like the things in their life specifically but they're still supportive of veganism.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:04

Yeah and i think that's

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:05

Huge yeah so i think kind of in closing here um three different areas so like purchases the easiest one for you to do if you can't be a vegan yet is to like have, an animal free replacement at least when something needs replacing so when you go to buy something that's like broken or you're buying a new thing just get the animal free thing you get you had leather shoes before go with shoes that don't have any leather something like that yeah, um and then you can do an act of support so share some good vegan work from like online influencer online content creators that you see share something they're doing back a vegan business volunteer some animal organization vegan organization or just donate if you can do that, and then maybe an act of influence where you are pushing for like the vegan option at work or Or you're trying to take people to a vegan restaurant or something like that. Or make it easier for somebody else to get a vegan option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:56

Yeah. Like advocating for vegans. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:59

Definitely. So even if you can't quite control, like, what's on your plate yet or your food yet, there's still a lot of other things in your life that you can control, including, like, your influence to others to help teach them about veganism. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:15:13

And it can make a meaningful difference.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:15

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. All right. So let's get into the next segment, which is our bite-sized coaching. If you guys don't know, I'm a personal trainer, so I like to have a brief segment on the podcast. I talk about something, you know, fitness and nutrition related that I think might be able to help you out. And you get to ask the questions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:15:32

That's right, I do. This is actually something that's been coming up on my recent video, which was on chocolate seitan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:39

I love chocolate seitan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:15:41

Well, so this actually comes up on any time I post anything with vital wheat gluten. Okay. But basically, I'll have multiple people say that basically I should not be eating that because I don't get any of the protein benefit from that at all.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:55

Oh, yeah. The protein from seitan, from wheat. So this is a wheat-specific question, even if they don't know it. That's what they mean. So wheat is not a complete protein, technically, because it is a little short. It's actually a lot short in lysine, which is one of the nine essential amino acids, part of what makes a protein. So for something to be a complete protein, it has to have like the right ratio of all nine essential amino acids. So it does have the right amount of all the other eight out of the nine. It's just short in lysine a little bit. Typically, the only thing you're eating in a meal is not seitan. So if you're eating it alongside something else, just throughout the day, really, it doesn't even have to be in the same meal. something else like beans lentils tofu or chickpeas that are high in lysine, then that um will kind of pool together all the amino acids um in your blood and you'll have like all the amino acid you need so, Yeah, you still get the benefits of something like seitan. If you only ate seitan throughout the day, it would definitely be less, both because the amino acids and wheat in general is a little less digestible. So you don't necessarily get all the protein. But since you're almost always going to be eating wheat with other food, then it's going to complement each other and all work itself out in the end. So, yeah, I mean, it's still got a lot of amino acids. It is a little short in lysine, but you're going to get that from other foods throughout the day anyway.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:17

Plus, like, you're probably not only eating chocolate seitan for the day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:20

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:21

But also the funniest part is my chocolate seitan recipe does actually have tofu in it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:26

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:27

And I'm like, it was really funny.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:28

No, that's a good point. Yeah. Another one I read about, you can do, I don't know if you've tried this. I don't know if it would taste good. I feel like, is this the one we tried and it was bad? I read you can mix chickpea flour into your seitan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:39

Yeah, I don't like chickpea flour.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:41

But is this the one we tried that was a weird taste?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:43

Yeah, it tastes better when it's baked, but it has a real acrid flavor when it's, like, not baked yet.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:48

Yeah. I saw some people do that on mine. I prefer the tofu mixture.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:52

Yeah, tofu's just almost always superior.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:54

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:55

But it is funny because they were like, you should really add tofu into this. And I'm like, it has fucking tofu in it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, if it's, like, tofu combined with wheat, it's obviously complete protein. And also, it doesn't matter. So even if you, I don't know if you exclusively eat wheat, but even if you're eating quite a bit of wheat throughout the day, if you're getting like the 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight in protein throughout the day, then it all kind of washes out anyway. You're eating so much protein that you're getting so many of the amino acids anyway, even if it is short in lysine.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:27

Yeah, yeah. It's like, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is really only like a serious issue if you're only eating wheat as your protein source and also you're very close to like... the minimum amount of protein that you should be eating.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:41

Yeah. If you're like a low protein, somehow wheat is making up like 80% of your protein or more throughout the day, then maybe this is something you have to like be like, well, maybe I should do something. One thing I like to do, I know I'm going to have a lot of seitan or like gluten in the day as like a big chunk of my protein is I'll just use an essential amino acid supplement and that'll make up the difference in the lysine pretty easily. So yeah, it's like nothing you really have to think about too much. But if you're trying to optimize and you're having an exceptionally large amount of wheat for the day or something like that, then you could just do something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:13

I'm just going to have you reply to people in my comments from now on.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:16

I think your solution of just mixing tofu with your seitan is the best.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:20

They'd have to read the recipe before yelling at me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:23

So as far as the protein deficient vegan recipes, what have you been working on lately?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:28

Okay, so I don't know exactly what to call it yet. I guess it's probably just going to be like high-protein sage bread

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:37

Oh yeah the one that you had we had today.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:38

Right yeah i don't really know like so it's it is vital wheat gluten-based yeah um but it's like soft kind of like focaccia bread yeah it's really interesting it's fair it's it's pretty good yeah we were like dipping it in olive oil and like italian seasoning and it was pretty awesome i don't know what to call it yet but i'll probably have that recipe out sometime in the next week or so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:01

Yeah. Yeah, focaccia bread is probably the closest thing I can think of that it reminds me of just because the texture is so interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:07

Yeah, it's like really, really soft like focaccia bread, which is surprising because it's vital wheat gluten-based. Yeah. But it's not chewy at all. It's like very, very soft.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:16

It's almost like melt-in-your-mouth soft. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:19

Big fan of it. I think we were talking about, like, it'd be good for sandwiches if you weren't going to have any, like, tough ingredients, like a soft sandwich, you know, like a pillowy sandwich bread. But I think it would also be good in, like, a soup.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:33

It'd be really good with the tomato soup. I can tell already. Maybe. Maybe even, like, a chili. Maybe good with chili.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:38

Maybe. Oh, it could be good with chili, yeah. Yeah, so should have that out soon. Cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:42

All right. Well, in the Deficient Vegans Discord, we have finished up the book club for The Impactful Vegan. We will be starting the Tender Is the Flesh.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:51

Tender Is the Flesh.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:53

Tender Is the Flesh. The Spooky Bonus Book Club. Pretty soon, when is that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:59

I think it's October 13th, maybe? It's like not this Monday.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:04

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:04

But next Monday. So grab that book because it's in about a week.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:08

Yeah. And you'll be able to find that in the Discord. The Discord is linked in the show notes. You can come hang out with us and our 500 closest friends. Yeah. Yeah. Also, if you are a Reddit user, we have the Deficient Vegan subreddit. It's been getting a lot of posts in there lately. So if you prefer to interact on that platform, we're there too.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:29

I would say, okay, so if you're on Reddit, this is the vibe of our subreddit. Okay.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:33

Tell me.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:34

It is like what you would expect vegan chill and vegan for beginners to be, but without trolls.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:40

Yeah. Heavily moderated.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:42

Heavily moderated, no trolls, no, like, constant recipe spam where people are, like, sending you to links. Yeah. Very chill, very informative, very nice and welcoming, but, like, no spam, no trolls.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:55

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:55

We've blocked a lot of people from our sub already.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:58

You could potentially make the argument that it's over-moderated, but I'd rather have it be over-moderated than under-moderated.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:22:04

Yeah, no, they're, like, very poorly moderated subs on Reddit, and this is not going to be one of them. So, if you would like to go to a place free of trolls, this is your place.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:22:14

Yeah. Also, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, if you could follow and leave us a review, that helps us out a lot. And if you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can also leave us a comment. We appreciate that. If you're looking for recipes, check out the Protein Deficient Vegan website down in the show notes. And I've also got my Muscle Deficient Vegan Fitness blog if you want to read about some fitness and nutrition things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:22:34

Or you need a personal trainer. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:22:35

And we also have links down there to follow us on social media. Cool. All right. Well, I think that's it. You want to say bye?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:22:41

Bye, guys. Bye.