When in Doubt, Zoom Out: Proof the Vegan Movement Is Working

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast. This is episode 71. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hello.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:07

Hi, everybody. So this week, we're going to talk about is any of this actually working? Maybe go through some proof that the vegan movement is actually making a difference in what you can like see, buy, eat, and you know, point to and say, hey, we're actually doing some good stuff here.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:21

It's a positivity podcast.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:26

But first up new news new news so the first piece of news we have is actually that the cleveland guardians are the american league central champions yeah so we're guardians fans over here just have a lie yeah sorry chicagoans unfortunate that we it had to be against chicago in this case since we live here

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:48

Dude they were making some pretty mean anti-Chicago jokes on their social media that I did.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:52

Like. Yeah. I think I like the White Sox more than I like the Cubs, so that's saying something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:59

I don't like either, especially since 2016. They stole our World Series.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05

I've got a little bit of a soft spot for the White Sox because back when I collected baseball cards, I was a big Frank Thomas fan, and he played for the White Sox.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12

I don't have a soft spot for any of them, but mostly I hate the Yankees.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18

Yeah, there you go.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18

So, luckily, they're not in at all. Fuck you, Yankees. You can quote me on that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28

Now to get into the vegan-related news. The first one we have is that California has a program called the Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Program, which was recently approved in their state budget. This allows schools, doesn't require them, but allows them to procure plant-based food and milk options as an alternative to animal products. Okay. I think the entire program is something they use to, like, upgrade their kitchen infrastructure, which the chefs at the school say makes it easier for them to be able to cook from scratch and make fresh whole food. It also provides their chefs with training. And also I saw pretty interesting, it is going to enable them to buy some equipment that allows them to move food from, like, local farms and stuff a lot easier. So they're like basically trying to get fresh, locally sourced, whole food ingredients into the food more.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:19

That's pretty cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:20

But the big benefit on the vegan side is that it specifically has language in there to allow the schools to get the plant-based food and plant-based milk alternatives. Whereas maybe with the funding before it was a gray area or not necessarily allowed in some cases.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:33

Sounds like if you live in California, you should be calling and trying to get them to use some of that money towards more plant-based items.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:40

Definitely. Yeah, there's no requirement. But it gives the school the option. So it helps kids that are like lactose intolerant, other allergies, any religious or ethical concerns. Maybe it's like an environmental concern for the student or they're a vegan or they have a religious constraint that they can't eat certain foods, stuff like that. So it covers a lot of bases for people that might want alternatives to animal products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:01

Yeah. I'll say in high school when I was vegetarian, I usually packed my lunch. But sometimes I would buy lunch. And pretty much the only thing I could get were chips.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:10

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:10

In the a la carte, I'd get, like, the Chex mix. That was, like, all I could eat for lunch.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:17

Yeah, that would have been rough. You know, I don't really remember school lunch super well, but I do remember in general it revolved around whatever the meat was. So it'd be pretty hard to do as a vegetarian.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:25

Yeah, even a lot of the pizza options were, like, it's pepperoni pizza or.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:29

I'm sure the mashed potatoes had butter and milk. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:32

It would have been impossible as a vegan. Like, it was already hard when I was a vegetarian in high school, but, like, as a vegan back then, impossible. So, yeah, it's nice to see them adding stuff. I feel like TVP could be really great for, like, a school cafeteria menu. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:47

You should do some kind of education program around using TVP for bulk catering like that. I guess that's considered kind of like catering.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:54

Yeah, I think so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:56

Interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:57

Chili. A TVP chili could go pretty hard. Yeah. TVP Sloppy Joes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:01

We've heard they use TVP in prisons, right? So they just need to get more prison cooks to go to the school system. Maybe. They can bring over the trade secrets.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:08

What is school if not a jail?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:11

Next up, a survey that was conducted by Bryant Research asked over a thousand Brits in the UK if they could tell if a product did or did not contain animal products based on pictures of its packaging.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:22

Some of the packaging included meat-free and plant-based. So it feels like it was a pretty easy question.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:30

One of the products, I think, was literally like, this is not chicken.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:33

Yeah. And still only, what, 94% to 96% of people got it right. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:40

Which is a lot. It is a lot. That's the point of the article. But yeah, there were two people who thought maybe it had animal products.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:44

Okay. Those two people.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:45

Two percent of people. Yeah. Which is actually like 20 people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:48

It was probably people like me who fucking bought Morningstar because it said plant-based all over it. And then, oh, surprise, it has egg whites in it. Right. And so you're like, I don't know. Can I see the other sides of the package, please?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:02

Yeah. So the three options were yes, no, and not sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:05

But, yeah, pretty damning for the people that don't or the people that are trying to get, like, plant-based milk taken off of stuff or plant-based chicken.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:14

Yeah, there's a big push for that in the EU right now for the label legislation to get some of those things off of labels. I don't think it's quite leaked over into the UK yet, but it's looking like it might. So this is trying to preempt that with a little bit of data.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:27

Yeah, if it says not milk, apparently 94 to 96 percent of people understand that's not milk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:34

Right, not dairy milk. Yeah, yeah. And then the last piece of news we have is Mercy for Animals ranked the largest 25 burger chains in the U.S. based on their plant-based option availability.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:46

I thought this one was pretty interesting. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:48

So it really focused on McDonald's, the article did, because McDonald's is the largest fast food business in the world. But they also ranked at the bottom of this list. So it was a scoring system of like one point to 30 points. McDonald's got two points. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:01

Surprise, I got two points. If your fries can't even be consumed by vegans, I feel like you get negative points.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:06

Yeah, if you didn't know, McDonald's fries have a little bit of milk in them. So it's not even a fryer oil issue. It's not a beef tallow thing. They just have milk in them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:13

They're just assholes for the fun of it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:16

They did try the McPlant burger a few years back, which was a Beyond Burger patty. They wanted to pilot it in two totally different places, two totally different markets. So they did San Francisco and Dallas. It didn't do very well in either of them. So McDonald's took that to mean that the people who come to McDonald's don't want that kind of option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:32

Yeah. It's not that they really suck at advertising and marketing their new vegan options. It's that people don't want it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:40

They do actually have plant-based burgers in a lot of the, like, European markets and other places in the world. And they do a lot of marketing with that for, like, special versions of the burger, bundling it with special meals and, like, seasonal stuff and things like that. But, yeah, it comes over here. You know, I don't remember seeing a lot of marketing for it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:55

I don't remember seeing any marketing for it. Here's the thing. is like okay so when i was vegetarian mcdonald's still wasn't even on my list of things like i would probably go get yeah like for a while they had and i don't know if they still have it because i don't keep up with mcdonald's but they had like the shaker salad cup, and they had french fries and i could get a mcflurry yeah as a vegetarian that was like it and then as soon as i went vegan none of those things were an option right so like, It completely does. Like, it's like you said, they sell rocks. I can't eat any of their food. I don't pay attention to them. Yeah. So they should know that when they're marketing that the people that they're trying to hit with these new products, we don't pay attention to you anymore because you don't have food for us.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:35

Yeah. And McDonald's is kind of unique because there are a lot of places where it's like, oh, if I'm on the road, I know I can probably get fries from most of these places that are vegan. But McDonald's is literally like McDonald's does not exist to me because there's nothing on the menu we can get as a vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:50

Right. So it's like, yeah, you might have to put in some effort letting vegans and vegetarians know that you have food options for them. You can't just like throw it on your menu for a month and then be like, nobody came and bought it. Yeah. They don't look at your shit, man. It's the same with like the Taco Bell vegan cheese. They did very little marketing. Oh, yeah. Right. And then they had it on the menu for like three days.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:13

It was literally like three days. It was three days. At least here.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:15

Yeah. It sold out. You couldn't get it anywhere else. And then they never talked about it again.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:20

And it was good.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:20

And it was good. And it lasted for three fucking days.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:23

Also, it sold out. We couldn't have shown you any more demand because it was sold out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:27

Everyone was talking about it. Like, I don't know. It was definitely like proof of success. I don't. But like. Yeah, that shit's frustrating because you're going to have to do more than just put plant-based options on your menu when you're not a plant-based friendly option. Like maybe you should be using your social media to push it harder and maybe you should be working with like vegan and plant-based content creators to push it if you're going to put that shit on your menu. Like you need to let people know and you need to give it more than a month.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:57

Right. Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:58

But some of the other things on the list were interesting too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:01

I think the initial McPlant was like a three-year deal, but I don't know if, yeah, with Beyond, but I don't know if it was actually out for three years in those markets, but it was, it was very limited. Like we couldn't even get it here. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:11

Yeah. Well, yeah, you tried it in two places too. Yeah, right. I mean, which obviously means you're not like pushing the marketing very hard on your socials, right? If you're not pushing it for like the whole US, you wouldn't be talking about the McPlant on your Instagram if you can only get it in two cities. So like, who's going to find out about it?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:28

All right. And then some of the top rated ones here were two that were in the top tier. I never actually even heard of, but there were Bareburger. It's been around since 2009, apparently, and BurgerFi.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:38

Those must be not in our region because I haven't heard of those either. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:43

The tier under that were ones I've heard of. They were Fatburger, White Castle, Red Robin, and Burger King.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:49

Yeah, and you like Red Robin and Burger King for stuff. Yeah. I didn't necessarily know that White Castle had.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:54

I've had the White Castle and Impossible Sliders once or twice. They're pretty okay.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:57

I've never eaten anything from White Castle.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:59

Oh, wow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:59

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've been a vegetarian since I was 12. Yeah, that's true. Or, like, I haven't eaten meat since I was 12. Then, like, the next, which is, like, 10 to 14 points out of 30, was Shake Shack, Wahlburgers, Habit Burger and Grill, Culver's, Freddy's Steakburgers? Yeah. And Smash Burger. The only one I've ever really, I think, heard of is Culver's. And I was surprised that they rated so high because I don't know what you could get there other than French fries.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:26

Yeah, I've looked on the, like, the vegan salad on, like, Veggie or whatever to see what vegan options are sometimes at places. And last time I looked for Culver's, there wasn't anything interesting enough that I went to try it. I remember that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:36

Yeah, they don't even have any vegan ice cream. Because they have a whole ice cream selection.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:40

But not vegan. They definitely don't have a plant-based burger that I know of.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:43

They don't, no. I don't even think you can eat their buns because they have butter on them. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:48

Yeah. And the rest of these aren't around here. I've been to Smashburger back in Kentucky, but I don't think I've seen one around here. So I'm not sure if they have a plant-based patty or not.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:56

And the bottom of the barrel, super duper losers, are Rally's and Checkers, Five Guys, Steak and Shake, Fuck You. They used to have really good French fries, but they started doing beef tallow because they're little bitches. Yeah. Then you got Jack's, A&W, DQ, which was surprising because they do have that vegan dilly bar. Yeah, that's nice. So that did surprise me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:17

I know this was kind of a burger list, but I feel like DQ should get some points for the vegan ice cream.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:20

I'm not saying they need to be like a lot of points. Yeah. But like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:24

Get them out of the bottom buns category. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:27

Then In-N-Out Burger, Whataburger, McDonald's, Carl Jr.'s, and Hardee's, which I hate them anyways for other reasons. Wendy's, Sonic, and Jack in the Box.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:38

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:39

But yeah, I mean, I don't think any of the ones in that group have anything. But I'm just like confused why Culver's is above those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:45

Yeah, I'm not sure. We'll have to go look and see if they listed out all the different options at all the different places. I didn't see that in the articles I was looking at, but maybe it's hidden in some details somewhere.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:54

I think the big takeaway here is all of these can do a lot better and it wouldn't even be that hard. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:59

Red Robin has a great Impossible Burger.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:00

Yeah, and you love their fries. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:03

Who doesn't? Who doesn't like steak fries?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:05

Me. I like the shoestring fries from Steak and Shake, but I can't have them anymore.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:09

That's my least favorite kind of fry.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:11

Dude.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:11

Unless it's covered in like vegan cheese.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:13

I know. So basically we would order some Steak and Shake fries and then we would make homemade vegan cheese sauce and we'd have cheese fries and it was great. And they stole that from me. They stole my happiness.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:23

It'd be nice to see some of these burger places step up, especially some of the bigger ones like McDonald's. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:27

And if they did, then we can talk about it on the next episode we do on, hey, look at the changes the positivity episode which is what this one is if you forgot because we were kind of bitching this is the positivity episode.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:41

So yeah let's get into the main segment and talk about what progress actually looks like in the vegan space Um, so I think, you know, when you look on social media and you're involved in conversations online, it can pretty, be pretty easy to judge like the whole vegan movement based off of like comments you see on a post or like general argument stuff or like you see a lot of the debate content and things like that. And it makes it look like a battleground more than like a lot of clear signs of progress. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:10

Or like we just talked about, like the McPlant existing and then them pulling it away.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:14

Yeah. Stuff going away. Also a pretty big one. Um, so, I mean, those things are really happening out there, but they're just kind of a small part of the veganism progress as a whole. Yeah. So we're going to go through a couple of different things, but there are a few different ways that you can see progress. And I think, you know, the five of those that we have are access. So something gets like easier to find or easier to make. It's on the shelf at the grocery store. It's at the local McDonald's or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:43

Think vegan cheese. Yeah. Vegan cheese has come a long way in 20 years.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:47

Yeah. A long way. It's huge. You can get like gourmet cheeses now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:51

At the grocery store. Yeah. Unheard of 20 years ago. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:55

Um, another way you can see progress is through behavior. So you like know people that go vegan, um, or somebody who's not vegan, maybe buys the vegan option. A lot of people who aren't vegan will now buy oat milk and stuff like that on a regular basis.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:09

My parents buy non-dairy ice cream. That's a big one because they're very not vegan. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:13

Um, another big one. And we, we hinted at this a little bit last week, I think, or maybe one of the previous podcast episodes. We're going to talk about a little more today, but it's like institutional adoption. So places like hospitals, schools, even prisons that can kind of help a lot of people at the same time just by the choices they make. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:31

Well, kind of like we were talking about with the California bill and the new news. It's like, yeah, now the schools can actually use some of that funding to go towards plant-based options where they couldn't before. That's a big deal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:41

Exactly. Also, another big one is law. So, policy that's made to maybe prevent certain types of animal exploitation, improve animal welfare, improve the accessibility of plant-based options. Like, some of the institutional stuff comes from policy stuff, like we just talked about, that funding bill.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:00

The new news we covered a couple of weeks ago talking about how you don't have to use animal testing to prove out a product.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:07

Yeah, that one for sure. And also the one that required them to offer the plant-based milk option that just got passed in the U.S. recently. So things like that. And then the last one is kind of cultural wins. So people just being more empathetic towards animals in general and, you know, understanding that they're smarter than you think, more self-aware than you think, things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:29

I think a really good example of this one is SeaWorld. Yeah. SeaWorld was huge 30 years ago, and it's kind of like a dying thing. And whenever you see something come up about SeaWorld, people are in the comments being like, This is awful. Why are we still doing this? Because there were documentaries about this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:46

Also, one that comes to mind kind of like that is like riding elephants at the zoo. Like I did that when I was a kid and now you don't see that anymore. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:53

I actually rode Shamu as a kid.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:54

Yeah, that's pretty insane.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:55

Because there was a SeaWorld in Ohio and I was like one of the little three-year-old kids that they put on top of Shamu. Yeah. In the, like, I was sitting on top of a massive orca as, like, a three-year-old child inside of, like, the tank at SeaWorld. Like, I could have gotten murdered by the killer whale. Killer is in the name. And my parents were like, yeah, sign our kid up for that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:21

Photo op.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:22

And they didn't have a camera that day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:24

It's like the equivalent of people who fall off the cliff trying to get a selfie these days.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:27

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:29

But, hey, at least that's a cool memory. Yeah. You know, you always have that one.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:33

But now, like, SeaWorld wouldn't go to it, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:36

Yeah, stuff like that changes over time for sure. And I think those are signs of progress. Yeah. Now to go through some of the ways that are more tangible that you can see progress. One of the big ones is that it's a lot more normalized to see vegan and even vegetarian options in the grocery store.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:51

It is. I remember when I first went vegetarian as a kid, there was, like, one tiny, tiny, like, shelf... In the freezer section that contained any, like, all of the stuff. And that was pretty much it. It was, like, literally one shelf. And it was, like, you had Morningstar chicken nuggets, Morningstar corn dogs. Yeah. And then I think there were these very odd plasticky hot dog situations. And then that was, like, it. And one brand of, like, nasty vegan cheese slices. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:24

Yeah. Now most of the grocery stores around here, like, if you go to Jewel or Meijer or whatever, Like, they have almost a whole freezer row dedicated and it has, like, a sign. It's, like, plant-based meals, plant-based options, non-dairy options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:36

And they're integrated into the dairy aisle. Like, you have a whole, like, shelf situation or, like, multiple shelves of, like, non-dairy milk. And, like, non-dairy cheeses are right next to the dairy cheeses and they take up a lot of room. This is new as of, like, I would say 10 years ago even.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:51

Yeah, the cheese one for sure. I definitely don't remember seeing all these non-dairy cheeses next to the cheese until pretty recently.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:58

Or dairy, like non-dairy ice cream. That takes up a huge section of the ice cream aisle. I mean, there's always like 10-ish flavors of Ben and Jerry's when we go, and then even more non-dairy ice cream brands too. So I think you can really, really tell the difference in the dairy space.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:15

Yeah, definitely. So for some numbers behind this, the Good Food Institute had a survey from 2025 for U.S. store sales. They said 60% of U.S. households bought plant-based foods and 78% of those were bought more than once, which is a good sign of like return traffic.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:32

Yeah, no, that's amazing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:34

Um, 38% of households bought plant-based milk and apparently plant-based milk is 13% of all milk sales by dollar value. And I think it's 12% of all milk sales by like unit value. So like cartons of milk basically.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:47

Yeah. No wonder they're scared. I think like this isn't really a positive thing, but I think where you can see that like even the dairy companies are starting to get nervous is they're trying to pass this legislation that's like, you can't use the word milk. You can't use the word cheese even if you put plant-based or not in front of it they get kind of up in arms about it because obviously we're making a dent in their sales.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:08

What's funny to me is i think they're going to go through all this trouble to like change all these labels or whatever and i don't know that it's actually going to make much of a difference i don't think so either people are going to know like oh i don't want the dairy thing i just want this other thing i don't care what it's called and it's

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:20

Going to be in the same spot it's going to look exactly the same in the store and they're just wasting money.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:26

Yeah another interesting point so for those numbers i was just talking about, most of those people aren't actually vegans. So 91% of households that bought plant-based milk also buy dairy milk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:35

Because of the lactose intolerance, I think, probably.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:37

Lactose intolerance. And then it was saying some people will use like different things for their like coffee creamer than they want for baking or something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:44

I have heard people say that they prefer oat milk to milk in their coffee. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:48

And then, and also 96% of the people that bought plant-based meat also bought animal meat. So they're just like trying plant-based options or maybe they have one person in the house that eats their meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:57

Yeah, they could have a kid. I think this could eventually be really huge for kids that want to go vegan or vegetarian in their households because that, like back when I did it, it was really, really hard for my family to support it just because there weren't many options and they didn't know like how to even... feed me basically, but now it's like so much easier, you know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:17

Yeah. So things that like tofu, tempeh, and seitan, some of the meat alternatives, they had a pretty strong growth in like 2024. It leveled off a little bit in 2025, but I think we talked about a couple of weeks ago how even though the plant-based, you know, quote unquote meat alternatives were going down or even, there was an increase in like some of the plant-based staples like beans and rice and oats and stuff like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:42

Yeah, and I know I'm on social media a lot, but I see content creators are just people that post food they make, and a lot of them aren't even vegan, and they're making tofu and stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:51

Yeah, I mean, try to branch out, try to save some money in a lot of cases because the beef prices and stuff are a little crazy right now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:57

Yeah, I've had a lot of people on some of my TVP videos tell me that their family isn't even vegan, but maybe they'll cut the ground beef with TVP and stuff in their home just to save money.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:07

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:08

I wish you'd just eat TVP, but I'm happy that you're doing something. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:12

Also, the price gap in the grocery store is starting to close. You know, there was for a long time, and there still isn't a lot of cases of packaged foods and stuff, but for a long time, the vegan or plant-based option had been more of a premium, too. But apparently, there's a store called Lidl, I think it is, L-I-D-L. And in Germany, they aligned their prices in 2023 for their vegan options to cost the same as the animal product options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:38

That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of feel like maybe that's just like a country by country thing, but I feel like there are government subsidies. If the governments wanted to do that, make plant-based options more enticing, they could definitely be giving them more subsidies to make the prices to a better point.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:56

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:57

And it'd be interesting to see what people would choose if the cost was identical.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:01

Yeah, well, so in Lidl, they actually did a follow-up six months later after they equalized those prices. And the vegan unit sales went up more than 30% after the price change.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:11

That's crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:12

Yeah, so people, I mean.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:13

People want that stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:14

People want it. It's just a price is a big component. And I get that. You're looking at the butter and the vegan butter right next to each other. And the vegan butter is twice as expensive. You're like, okay, like, I understand I want to try that and maybe I want to do that. But, like, that's a big difference.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:26

Yeah, same with, like, the cheese options. The cheeses are always a lot more expensive. and a lot of the process like meat alternatives are kind of pricey. Yeah. Like, yeah, if we could use some government subsidies or something or even just like get these companies popular enough that... the cost goes down because they're producing so much, that could be beneficial.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:45

Yeah. And one of the big reasons that this helps to have these options more normalized in the grocery store and to get the prices more in line with like the animal products is that it helps a lot with access to the food. And access can help with people trying to transition to eating less meat or becoming fully vegan, fully vegetarian, things like that. I mean, convenience is a big part of it. And if you can go into the store and just pick up convenience options that are vegan, you're going to be a lot more likely to be able to successfully stick to a vegan diet.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:13

Yeah. I've had several people tell me, you know, I'm vegan when I'm home, but I'm not vegan when I go out to eat because I just live somewhere where there are no vegan options. And I think the access thing could come in clutch there too, because it's like now some of the restaurants have vegan options. You can be vegan all the time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:30

Right. Yeah. Also, you know, we've talked about some of the faunalytics surveys in the past for like why people stopped being vegan and being unsatisfied with the food was the top reason there. So if we get these better food options in the store and they're reasonably priced and then like little showed 30% more people might try it if it's reasonably priced, then they'll find foods that they do like and that will make it easier to stick to like a diet like that. So I'm trying to think of like the products that made it easier for me to be vegan. Yeah. I think the ones I like and that make it easier for me are like some of the meat alternatives, I guess. Like I don't really eat them a lot, but there are some times where it's like, okay, I like, I just fall back to the things I know how to make and I don't have a lot of time or something. So I'll do like the, uh, the vegan, you know, chicken is a lot of the one I normally do. Just like throw it in a pan and fry it up for a couple of minutes or whatever. Um, and then the vegan burger patties, obviously like if I just need something easy, just make a burger. So some of that stuff, I'm glad that it's in the grocery store because it definitely makes it easier for me and it saves a lot of time. So do you have anything that makes it easier for you that is relatively new to the grocery store?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:35

I would say, okay. I'm thinking of which if some product went away tomorrow, which would be the worst on me and it would be vegan cheese. And I know a lot of people don't like vegan cheese, but like I don't use it for a ton of stuff. But as someone who used to just love cheese, I do need that. And I need like some decent options, you know, so like now that that's way more accessible and there are way more options that has made being vegan exponentially easier than I think it would be if those didn't exist for me personally. Or like a good shaker Parmesan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:07

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:08

You know, because sometimes we'll order pizza, like a cheeseless pizza, like from a place that has vegan crust, but they don't offer vegan cheese. And we'll just like shake some vegan parm on it. And it's awesome.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:19

Yeah. So I think it just makes it a lot more convenient and more convenient makes it easier to stick to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:24

Yeah. If you're enjoying this podcast, we'd love it if you would rate, review, and maybe leave a comment and subscribe.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:31

Thank you. Another element of the price difference, you know, one was in the grocery store, but another one is like out when you're going out to eat. There's been like the vegan tax for a long time. So that has gotten a lot better over the last few years. This is also relatively recent. But this is something else that like when you walk into a store and you're like, oh, well, it's like an extra $2 for me to get the oat milk option or something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:53

Or like to get vegan cheese on this pizza is an extra $4 for a large pizza. That's like crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:58

Yeah, I still see that one a lot of places. I think the milks have gotten better. We're still getting there on the cheese up charges. But there are some places who don't charge it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:05

Yeah. But, you know, I think one of the big ones that we can call a win for veganism is that Starbucks actually dropped the extra charge for non-dairy milk in the U.S. and Canada-operated stores in 2024.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:18

Yeah. Just like a year and a half ago. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:19

Wasn't the guy from Babe pushing that pretty hard?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:22

I think so, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:23

I think this was kind of like his baby. Like, he was, like, pushing this real hard that he wanted them to drop that surcharge. And good. Because there are people that aren't vegan that might want oat milk or whatever.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:34

You know? You think he ended that with, like, that'll do, Starbucks.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:40

That'll do. That'll do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:43

But, yeah, they said in the same release where they talked about they were going to remove the surcharge, they said that non-dairy milk was actually the customer's second most requested customization, only second to adding an extra espresso shot. Yeah. So, like, out of all the customizations you can make to a Starbucks menu item, adding a non-dairy milk was the second most popular. One interesting note, and it's something that you kind of notice as a pattern in the vegan space, while the U.S. and Canada dropped this in 2024, the U.K. stores had already dropped it back in 2022.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:12

Because, of course, they did.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:14

A lot of this vegan stuff, it seems like there's a lot more general interest and demand for equivalent vegan and plant-based options in the U.K.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:23

All around. I agree. The U.K. seems great. I'm a little bit jealous.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:29

And then after Starbucks did it in 2024, some of the other companies followed up in 2025 and did the same thing. So Dutch Bros, Dunkin', Peets, they all do the same thing. No more upcharge for the non-dairy versions.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:42

That's awesome.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:43

And then also in U.S. food service in general, the sales of plant-based milk from the distributors rose 16% in dollars in 2025. So they're getting a lot more orders for plant-based milk to use at stores, not just coffee shops, but like all food service locations.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:58

Yeah. And that's the thing, right? It's like Starbucks dropping an extra charge for non-dairy milk doesn't seem like much, but it's such a huge win. Not just like because vegans are going to pay that extra charge, right? No matter what, like if they want to go to Starbucks and they want something, they're going to pay the extra like 25 cents to get it with oat milk. but non-vegans might not especially if they don't have a dairy intolerance but like if you make it free, People will choose it. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:24

Yeah. I mean, having the upcharge makes it look like it's some kind of special request and you're different or something like that. So there's a mental component to it. Whereas if it's the same price, it's just the same thing, just with that thing you prefer. It's like getting chocolate instead of caramel or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:37

Yeah. And I think it makes a big difference because like think of how many Starbucks stores there are.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:41

Oh, I know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:42

And that three other companies and all of their stores also did the same thing. Like that's that is huge. That does save lives of animals, right? Yeah. Like, it sounds like something that doesn't really add up to much, but it actually does.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:54

I mean, if all these places are dropping their surcharges and then it sounds like, you know, that is increasing the amount of plant-based milk they're having to buy from their distributors, then the, you know, it's got to come from somewhere. So, using more plant-based milk means you're using less dairy milk. So, it's definitely making an impact.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:12

And I think there's some other intangible things like, okay, now I'm getting oat milk in my Starbucks. Like, what might I try at the grocery store next? Like maybe I'm going to try oat milk like ice cream or something like that. You know what I mean? I think it just puts your head in a different space of like, oh, this is pretty good. Yeah. What else could I try?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:30

Especially if it's free because there might be people who really have no interest in like switching to a plant-based milk. And they just go in there and like, oh, I can just try this. I don't have to pay extra to try this. And they're like, oh, this doesn't taste any different at all. Maybe there's a lot of things I don't need dairy in. So, yeah, I agree with that 100%. It's definitely good that companies are working to make the plant-based option like an equivalent option. And so that reduces a lot of the friction when somebody tries to go out and find something vegan that they can eat. So I think something else that maybe newer vegans have that makes their life a lot easier than it might have been a few years ago is something like the Happy Cow app.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:07

Oh, yeah. Happy Cow app's a game changer. Yeah. I just, we have this. It's kind of funny because we discovered the Happy Cow app while we were in Gatlinburg. And the first half of the trip, we didn't know about the Happy Cow app. And it was so depressing. Like, we couldn't eat anything. We didn't know what to eat. We were cooking.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:27

On vacation, you're just, like, cooking three meals a day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:29

Yeah, we were, like, cooking three meals a day. We didn't know we couldn't eat anything because we were, like, Googling it and we couldn't find anything. Right? Yeah. And then you were Googling and you just randomly stumbled upon the Happy Cow app. and we download it and we find Cinnaholic, a fully vegan cinnamon bun place in the middle of fucking Gatlinburg.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:46

Which was the first fully vegan place we ever went to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:49

Yeah, it was like life-changing. It was like watching the world through like a whole, like it was like I didn't have glasses on and then I put my glasses on. Yeah. It was life-changing, for real, for real.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:02

I will say this was like, that was really early into me being a vegan and just that experience to me was like, Oh, well, this is like a thing. You can do this. This place is full of vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:12

I will say like that first half of the, before we found it, I was feeling so defeated. I was like, is this what it's going to be like anytime we travel? Because it did suck. Like nobody wants to be like cooking for three to four hours of their day. Yeah. inside of their airbnb or whatever when they're on vacation like you want to be able to go explore stuff yeah and you want to be able to go do stuff and know you're going to be able to find food choices right but the first half of that i was like man this actually genuinely fucking sucks.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:41

Yeah and then you know there was also a pizza place who had a vegan option we never would have found that without no

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:46

We wouldn't have because i wouldn't have.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:47

Looked at pizza it's one pizza place with one option like how would you how do you even go about finding

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:52

That right Like, it's so hard. But I think also social media helps. Like, if you can find a vegan account that, like, runs a social media account that covers a certain city or something, like, they're going to unlock all the secrets for you. Yeah. But that kind of stuff didn't exist even, like, 10 years ago. You wouldn't have been able to. It's like you're living life on easy mode. If you can find these, like, people to follow and Happy Cow to download, it's just wow. Yeah. I mean, it was, like, night and day for us. Yeah. When we figured out the Happy Cow.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:20

Yeah, it was huge.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:21

That's why it's like I always, always, always am like, you need to download Happy Cow. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:27

Well, a lot of the restaurants will have a little sticker that's like, we're on Happy Cow. Rate us in reviews.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:31

It was so funny because we walked in there. And before we had gotten in there, we were like, we probably spent 30 minutes reading the menu and just being like, what's happening? Because we had just spent five days living a miserable life.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:44

I don't know if it was miserable, but food-wise.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:45

It wasn't good, man. It was really hard. I was constantly cooking. Yeah. Right? like on vacation like we couldn't even leave the airbnb for long because it's like oh we had to go back for lunch and cook no that's true yeah but we were like scouring this like menu right and we're like okay i think it's all vegan but like i don't know like i feel it doesn't make sense i'm like concerned yeah so we walked up to the counter and i would like look this girl dead in the eye and i'm like what do you have that's vegan do you know what vegan is and she's like yeah it's all vegan and i was like we're gonna need a few more minutes, because that was the first time we'd ever been anywhere that we could actually just order off the menu yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:23

Just whatever whatever you want

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:24

Whatever you want you don't have to like think i can't tell you how nice that is like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:29

And they don't really advertise that they're vegan, by the way. There's a lot of people eating a Cinnaholic that don't know it's vegan. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:34

No, it was just like, it was honestly like life-changing for real. But like Happy Cow also has people leave comments. Maybe it's not even a fully vegan place, but it's like you can make some stuff vegan and they'll put details in their reviews that say, here's how to order a vegan dish that's actually really good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:50

Here's the handshake to ask for the super secret vegan menu in some places.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:54

It unlocks all the secrets of the world, man.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:58

Yeah. So that definitely makes it easier for new vegans. And it would have been much harder even five years ago, I think. The thing about Happy Cow, though, is it gets better as far as places defined every year because more people learn about it and start putting in places that you didn't know about. So it's like we'd been living here for several years. And all of a sudden, a place that had been here for several years popped up on Happy Cow because nobody even knew it was here.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:16

Yeah. Somebody put in Happy Cow. We check Happy Cow like once a month to see if there's any new places that pop up nearby.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 34:21

Yeah. I definitely recommend that. So as far as, you know, vegans in general, another measure of progress could be like, how many vegans are there, right? So this actually hasn't changed a ton over time, at least as far as percentages. So this is interesting. There have been Gallup polls over time that ask basically, are you vegan? Are you vegetarian? Those are the two responses that we care about. So in 2018, 5% vegetarian, 3% vegan. 2023, 4% vegetarian, 1% vegan. 2026, 5% vegetarian, 2% vegan. So pretty flat over time percentage-wise, but population's gone up quite a bit since then. So it's actually a lot more vegans and vegetarians.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:01

It is. And then I will say like 2018 was like the boom of... And like all of those plant-based eating documentaries that were health-focused, you know, like you had like the Game Changers and I think, you know, the book How Not to Die came out around there. And you had like What the Health, all of those that were very focused on just like how you can be healthy on a plant-based diet and stuff. But I think that is when the terms vegan and plant-based got conflated. So I could see why it's 3% in 2018, but maybe it drops down because people understand the terms a little bit better. Right, yeah. And you wouldn't identify as vegan if you were, like, partially plant-based, and maybe you would have in 2018.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:39

Yep, definitely. And I will say the numbers are, maybe this is expected, but the numbers are higher for younger people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:45

Yeah, that makes sense.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:46

So, looking at the tables from the Gallup 2026 survey, for vegetarian, 8% of 18 to 34-year-olds were vegetarian. Only 3% of people 55 and older. So, 8% is pretty high.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:58

It is pretty high. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:00

6% of 18 to 34-year-olds were vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:03

This matches the demographics i have on my social medias too so yeah, but what i will say is like if you look at that data and you were like well yeah but younger people have already leaned towards vegan and vegetarian yes yeah that's true and maybe a lot of them eventually move away from it but what's different is that nowadays it is so much easier to stick to it so i think like what you'll see over the next 20 30 years is that the people in the 18 to 34 year olds they're now vegan, in the 35 to 55-year-olds.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:33

They're going to have Happy Cow for the rest of their life. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:36

And vegan cheese, guys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:38

It's only, I mean, as far as options, I would imagine it's only going to get better.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:42

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:42

And then, you know, this is a U.S. number. Places like Germany and Great Britain are a much higher prevalence of these things. Like 20% of 14 to 29-year-olds in Germany are vegan or vegetarian. And then in Great Britain, adults 16 to 64, twice as likely to be vegans as those 65 and over.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:58

And like, I mean, fair enough. You're 65. Maybe you don't want to learn to do a whole new thing. Yeah. But like if you are 65 and older and you want to learn how to be vegan, I think that's really freaking cool. I think we're talking about Veganuary a little later on. But I want to point out that I do think it's interesting that like the UK, like Great Britain or whatever, is always like way ahead of the U.S. in this. And I just wonder if it's like their Veganuary campaign is so prevalent there that they've had such a massive impact that you can already see it in the numbers. And that campaign's only been around like a decade.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:27

Yeah, could be. Something else to note, though, is that while the people calling themselves vegan or vegetarian stays relatively flat year over year, the actual people eating like less meat on their plate and stuff has actually increased quite a bit. In the UK, meat eating fell from about 103 grams to 86 grams per person per day from 2008 to 2018, which is like 17%.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:51

That's crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:52

17% day-to-day reduction in meat eating. And that was mostly from red meat, processed meat. White meat actually went up a little bit. But the total amount of meat is still down 17%.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:02

I could totally see that because I remember, you know, being vegetarian as a kid. Nobody was eating like vegetarian options or anything. And now as an adult, even my non-vegan, non-vegetarian friends are eating tofu. Yeah. And like doing meatless Mondays and stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:17

Yeah. And also, you know, again, Germany, kind of the same people eating meat or sausage every day, fell from like 34% in 2015 down to 20% in 2023. So another pretty big shift, like 40% less.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:29

Yeah, that's huge.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:30

Yeah. So I think, you know, even if people, like you said, people maybe understand more now, like what is the difference between vegan and plant-based or vegetarian and plant-based. So they're not saying I'm a vegan necessarily any more than they were before, maybe a little less than they were before, but they are still, people are eating less meat in general.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:48

Yeah. Yeah. And it's really hard to quantify with a lot of these surveys because you can only get so many people to answer this to. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 38:56

But you just mentioned Veganuary. That's another way we can measure progress because basically Veganuary has millions of people trying a plant based diet every year.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:03

Yeah. What I will say is, OK, there are a lot of different organizations that are trying to make vegans every day. Right. Like you have on the street activism, you have something like Veganuary that's like a month long campaign in January and you have various other ones. right like activist organizations and stuff what i like about veganuary is they capture emails and they send surveys to follow up to see did this actually stick a lot of the other things don't do that so it's like you get of this on the street pledge of like yeah i'm going vegan and then it's like but did you follow up to find out if they stayed vegan six months later right or a year later maybe they did and that's awesome but like i guess what i like about veganuary is it's like they get your email they start sending you a campaign with like ways to do the vegan thing And then they follow up. I think even a year later, they sometimes send out surveys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:50

Yeah. They have really good data on the follow-up and what their impact actually is in reality. And people that fell off, they try to support them to maybe try it again, things like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:01

Honestly, I wish all organizations would do this just... Not even from, like, I don't want you to have to prove yourself that you're doing a good job, but I think the data is important for, like, everybody to learn from. Yeah. So, like, I just wish more organizations would pull this kind of data.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:17

I think it's really the only way to validate your impact is to follow up after the fact and see, did this person actually do what they committed to doing?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:24

Yeah. And then we can learn, like, okay, so then what did you do to get them to get there? And that's valuable for anyone trying to turn people vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:31

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So we talked about Veganuary numbers a lot in the past. I'll just go over some briefly here. Veganuary estimates that roughly 30 million people tried vegan in 2026. Wow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:43

30 million people?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:45

And they had campaigns in 20 countries officially. And they also have unofficial vegan, like just people saying, do this for Veganuary. Yeah, yeah. They had official campaigns in 20 countries.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:52

That's crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:53

And that is, so that 30 million this year was up from an estimated 25.8 million in 2025. So they added like 5 million people. Yeah. That was big.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:01

Yeah. And there's something really cool, especially where it started, which is the UK, but they get businesses, local businesses involved that have like the January things that come out in January and like restaurants are getting involved. It's actually really cool what they do in the UK. I wish we could kind of figure out how to make that work in the US, but the US is so big. I think it makes it a little more challenging.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:22

Yeah, for sure. And I think their approach of it being a challenge, like a month-long challenge thing, really works for a couple of reasons. One is, like, it gives people a socially recognizable reason to try vegan food. So now if you're like, oh, I'm getting the vegan thing, people will be like, oh, why would you do that? And you're like, oh, it's Veganuary. I'm just trying this Veganuary thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:42

Yeah, you should do it too. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:43

So that really helps, like, the social stigma a little bit. Because you can just say, like, oh, I'm doing this thing. Right. It has 30 million people doing it. It's cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:50

I'm cool. You have an excuse. It's trendy. Right. Gives you a shield. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:55

Um it also makes like experimenting with the food a lot less intimidating like so when you sign up for january you get 31 daily emails that's like their main campaign there's just like an email drip campaign every day for the month of january so it's got like recipes meal plans advice it's like a starter kit a cookbook so it's like you just go into it with the mindset of like oh in january i'm going to try a bunch of stuff i'm not familiar with and it's okay if like i mess it up or i don't like it because it's like i'm just trying this thing for a month

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:22

Yeah it's like not that hard of a.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:24

Commitment. Right. Yeah. And then, like you said, in the UK specifically, a lot of workplaces join in. There's King's College Hospital serves a bunch of plant-based lunches. Some of their stores do like promoted vegan ranges, vegan products, things like that. So it's like a big to-do where a bunch of companies jump on board and like do a thing to try to promote Veganuary.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:44

You know what I would love to see, I don't know how we make this happen, but I think it works because the UK is like, I don't want to misspeak, but I think it's like the size of like one of our states in the US. So I think what could be interesting is like if you started with like cities, like a Chicago Veganuary, where you like tried to get a bunch of local Chicago restaurants and like Chicago businesses involved and you did it city by city.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:07

Have like regional chapters of the January or something.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:10

Like who does it better? And like maybe make it a competition. You know what I'm saying?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:13

Really cool idea. We should talk to Stu.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:15

We should. How do you do it, Stu? Tell us. Yeah. Help us.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:19

So back on episode 34, we actually interviewed Stu from Veganuary. He gave us a bunch of data. He's a really nice guy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:26

Dare I say that was my favorite podcast we've ever done.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:28

I know. Yeah, it's all downhill from there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:30

We're never going to achieve greatness like we did with Stu.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:34

Maybe if you're interested in Veganuary specifically, you go back and listen to that. He tells us all kinds of cool stuff about their process and their impact and how they track it and measure it. It's really great. A lot of information. episode was entirely carried by him so it's a really good one yeah

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:46

No he's great.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:48

Yeah um but yeah began your in general is like they're you know they are tracking people as a follow-up so but like they don't necessarily track conversion count as like their main figure they just count how many people did we get to try vganuary

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:02

Right and what he they found is that they actually have a lot of people that try it again yeah and like rejoiners and maybe they do it five years in a and maybe they never make the switch to be fully vegan. But you think about, okay... If this person's only going to do vegan eating in the month of January for the rest of their life, that's still like a, what, almost 10% decrease in their animal food consumption.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 44:27

But also based on some of the studies and stuff we've talked about in some of the more recent episodes, I can't remember exactly which one it was, but when people try something like that, they still tend to eat less meat overall the rest of the time, even if they're not actively involved in the challenge or really thinking about trying to do a vegan diet or something. they just like have this mindset of like oh i i like to eat less meat

Protein Deficient Vegan: 44:49

Yeah i mean if you can get them with good recipes it's like well that was really good i'm just gonna make that again yeah and like why would i add meat to it it was already like perfect the way it was yeah so i really think you can get them with recipes yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:02

And i think you know the january does a great job of the january but i think it's also important for the rest of the community to try to pick up and support people after the january is

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:10

Over yeah absolutely so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:12

You know still sharing information sharing recipes a lot of that stuff that they can do all year round because you know they're 12 months

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:19

Not just one right and i think that's you know where the community aspect comes in and we've talked about this on several episodes but having that community aspect and that feeling of like accountability to a group, i think really helps like cement those ideas and give support when you need it like maybe you fall off the wagon or like you accidentally buy something or, You know, you don't just like throw it all away because of like one mess up, you know, you just get support from your group.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:44

Yeah. And that's, you know, kind of the type of community we're trying to foster and like our subreddit and our discord chat and things like that. So, you know, if you're you're feeling like you want to be part of something like that, we've got some options for you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:55

Yes. If you did Veganuary and you fell off, but you'd like to get back on, we're here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:59

Yeah. So next, we talked a little bit earlier about some of the institutional changes that can kind of change a lot of things at once. But there are some specific examples of that. So the general idea here is that, like, if a company that controls the meals of a lot of people makes a menu change or maybe even, like, mandates a change in some cases, something like that, then that change is, you know, I don't want to say forced upon. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, is much more accessible to the people that are getting their food from that institution. And usually it's not mandatory. So it's not really forced.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:33

Yeah. Like, there would be an option, but, like, what maybe plant-based option is, like, the main option.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:38

One of the institutions that's led the way on this recently is the New York City Health and Hospitals, like, their public hospital system. They started with Meatless Mondays in 2019, and 97% of their patients stuck with the plant-based option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:54

That's awesome. That's amazing. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:56

It said plant-based also became their chef's recommended default lunch for eligible patients in 2022 and the default dinner at all 11 of their hospitals in 2023. They can do other meals at the patient's request, but now getting the non-plant-based option is the special request.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:14

That's actually so cool.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:15

Which I think is kind of how it should be,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:17

Honestly. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:18

Like, I feel like plant-based should always be the default, because especially in, like, a health system. Yeah. Because there are a lot of positive health outcomes associated with eating more plants, more whole foods, more fiber, things like that. So it makes sense, especially in a healthcare setting, to have a plant-based meal be the default. And then, yeah, if you want some meat or some animal products, like, you can make a special request, work with the doctor, see if that works out. They said as of March 2026, over 2.8 million plant-based meals had been served. Wow. 700,000 of those were in 2025 alone. And the really big one for me is 98% satisfaction among the patients in 2025 who ate those meals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:56

That's crazy. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:57

So they have like a serious chef doing a lot of really diverse plant-based meal options. They're not giving you like a salad or beans and rice. They're like legit dishes that look like they belong in some fancy restaurant. They're like their plant-based options.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:10

I love that because, so the last time I was in the hospital is when I had my appendix removed. Yeah. Like I had appendicitis or whatever and I had to stay overnight. And the only thing they, and I was vegetarian at the time, but the only thing they could give me was a yogurt. Oh yeah. Like that was it. That was the only option they had for me. And I don't think there would have been an option if I would have been vegan. Yeah, probably not. It's like, okay, we'll drink some water. Good luck.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:32

Yeah, even when you, like, give blood and stuff, they just, like, want to give you cheese crackers or whatever. I'm like, okay, I'll just pass out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:40

Thanks. It's fine. Can you just keep some Oreos over here? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:46

Also, interestingly, so not only do we get more plant-based meals and really high customer satisfaction, But the city actually reported that they saved 59 cents per tray compared to the trays with the animal products. So it also is cheaper.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:59

Because they're using whole food products, probably. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. Go New York.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:04

Yeah, for sure. Also, their food-related emissions were down 36% by February 2023. Yeah. So, I mean, that's huge. You got better emissions, a lower price, high customer satisfaction, plant-based default. So it sounds like they're doing everything right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:18

Better for literally everyone.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:20

Right. Yeah. And like, this is not something where people had to go necessarily and ask for the vegan option. It's just, it was the default. So everybody got the plant-based option. Most people were fine with it. Well, most people, they had a 98% satisfaction. Yeah. But, you know, a lot of people wouldn't bother special requesting the meat option or whatever. They would just take whatever they got and they seemed to like it. And this, you know, all of this happened just because the administrator or whoever makes the decisions for the hospital decided to change the thing. So, like, all these individual patients didn't necessarily have to make any decisions about, like, we want to try a vegan thing while they're in the hospital stressed out or whatever. It's just like we make the decision for the whole hospital and now suddenly we're dishing out, you know, three million plant-based meals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:01

That's insane impact. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:03

Another big one, University of Cambridge, their catering service took beef and lamb off of their menu in 2016. improved the plant-based dishes and it also helped them cut food waste a little bit. And then it was kind of the same thing. Like they didn't go for like boring plant-based dishes. They actually had their chefs go through specialized cooking classes. And like their cafe managers were trained to like buy certain things from the market to make their food more sustainable. So they like really went all in on the concept of improve the plant-based options, remove some of this meat from the menu and just make it, you know, the standard basically.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:38

Yeah, and I think this part isn't really talked about much, but it's like, A lot of the vegan slash plant-based options you'll see on menus at restaurants fucking suck.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:48

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:49

It's like, here's a big hunk of cauliflower. Good luck. Yeah. And it's like, what if you, and then no one buys it, right? And then they're like, oh, we don't have any vegans in the area. And it's like, what if you actually spent the time creating, good, solid dishes, just like you would with meat options that people actually craved and wanted, and how many people would actually choose the vegan option if it was good in like a solid legitimate option.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:12

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there's some numbers around just changing the menu and how that impacts what people order. So three Cambridge College cafeterias doubled the vegetarian options from one of the four options was vegetarian to two in the four options. And then that raised their vegetarian sales by roughly 41 to 79 percent, depending on the year. But it was like, you know, At the minimum, 40% of their vegetarian sales increased because they added one more vegetarian menu option. And then also in April in 2026, so pretty recently, six English work cafeterias basically swapped one meat dish for a vegetarian one. And that raised the odds of choosing vegetarian by 41% with no significant hit to revenue or food waste. Wow. So just adding another option, it seems like, again, about 40%. If you add one more vegetarian option, 40% more people will pick a vegetarian option. Yeah. So it's not that people won't eat vegetarian food, just they don't like the options are being presented. And also they want to feel like they have options. If they only have one thing, even if it's a good thing, I'm like, I just don't really feel like I have choices.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:16

Yeah, no, I hate that feeling of like you go somewhere and I feel like it happens with like work events or like family things. It's like, hey, we picked this restaurant that has an option. And you're like, oh, really? They have options? And then you look at the menu and there's like one thing that you can order. And it's like, that's not an option. That's one thing I can order. Like, I don't have an option. That's it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:39

Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:40

And it's like, not everyone's going to like the same shit. You know what I mean? Like, would you go to a restaurant that only served ham sandwiches?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:46

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:47

If that was the only thing. And this is what I try to explain to like omnivores I'm talking to when it's like, you're inviting me to places that have one vegan option. It's like, would you go to a restaurant that had one omnivore option and that's all you could eat?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:59

Even if it was something you kind of like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:00

Yeah, you would fucking never go there. You would think I was ridiculous for taking you somewhere that only served waffles with maple syrup and no add-ons. Like, you'd think I was crazy. Or like I took you somewhere where it's like, hey, this place, actually, they only serve lettuce in a bowl with olive oil. That's it, actually. Maybe you might be able to get grape tomatoes if they're in season, but that's it. That's all they have. Sorry. Would you go eat there and pay $15 for it? No. I don't think so. So, like, yeah, having good options, I think, makes a massive difference.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:36

Yeah, it seems to. I mean, that's a pretty big percentage jump just from adding one more option to the menu. So, we talked a lot about food so far, but there are other ways that veganism impacts products outside of food. So, one big one is with cosmetics. By the end of 2025, about 73,000 products in general registered with the vegan trademark, which is like the little vegan stamp you see in the products that lets them know, like, all your ingredients are vegan.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:59

And it's cruelty-free.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:00

Right. It's mostly cosmetics and toiletries, mainly because cosmetics have had a long history of, like, weird animal things. Yeah. But this has actually gotten banned in a lot of places. So this is another big sign of progress. The EU started banning animal testing for cosmetics way back in 2004. And then the last step of their total animal testing ban for cosmetics was in 2013. And then in 2016, the EU added a rule that the ban can cover tests done outside the EU. So you can't test it outside somewhere and then bring it in, something like that. So basically in the EU.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:35

Got rid of the loophole.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:36

There are also some other places, like California has its own law about this. Mexico, Canada, Brazil have different versions of laws banning animal testing from cosmetics. And then Garnier got Leaping Bunny approval for every product worldwide in 2021. And Leaping Bunny was the animal testing one,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:55

Right? Yeah, it's like cruelty-free, but it could contain animal products.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:59

It could contain vegan ingredients.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:00

Which is like confusing, but...

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:02

So cosmetics seems like they've come a long way and it seems like a lot of the world is on board with just no animal testing for cosmetics as the standard rule.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:10

Because why? Yeah, I think it's actually interesting because who mostly uses cosmetics? It's women. Right. And who's more likely to go vegan or care about animals? It's women. So like this totally makes sense, I think.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:21

Yeah, so they're going to push for this more because the women who care about veganism or even animal rights in general or to feel more empathetic are like, I don't want animals tested for my foundation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:31

Yeah, exactly.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:32

Also, in general, for lab testing and things like that, not necessarily specifically for cosmetics, but there's also been a lot of progress, even in the last couple of years, really, on reducing animal testing and prioritizing alternative methods with newer technology and things like that. The FDA in the U.S., the NIH, have newer rules around, like, the funding is different for research that's animal tested. They prefer to give funding for research pipelines that don't involve animal testing or at least have other alternatives involved and are not exclusively animal testing. That's a big one. So to get funding in a lot of places now, you need to have another pathway that is not just animal testing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:15

And I think this will... I think this one's really going to start kicking off, especially since we talked about in new news a few weeks ago. It's like AI is actually maybe going to play a big role in replacing animal testing in general.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:27

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:28

Because they can build models and stuff and you don't need more animals harmed. You could just do that instead.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:34

Yeah, we'll see. It seems like there are a lot of newer technologies that are coming up that will make it hopefully a pretty minimal component to actually have to test on an animal. So we'll see. This is also not necessarily entirely for animal welfare, although that is obviously the part we care about. But the FDA also talks about it being lower research cost if you're not using animal testing, lower drug prices in the end because you didn't have to pay for the animal testing. And then also it's more human relevant if you're not testing on animals. Because I think we mentioned last time we talked about this, that like 80% of the things that passed on animals didn't actually pass on humans anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:10

Yeah, so we're just, like, doing it for no really valid reason at this point.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:14

Right, yeah. It's not super reliable, it's not super accurate, and we have a lot of alternatives now, or at least emerging alternatives. So we're definitely trying to push more towards that future state rather than actually, you know, doing all the same.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:25

Yeah, to just keep doing it wrong for no reason.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:28

Yeah. And then another big one I think has really fallen out of favor over the last probably 20 years is fur in general. This is a pretty clear sign of vegan animal welfare progress.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:39

Fur was, like, pretty prevalent several decades ago. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:44

A lot of the big fashion brands now have implemented like their own fur bans, basically. Also, some places have banned selling fur, like California, no new fur products since January 2023. And also another big one is that U.S. mink farming, which is where a lot of mink came from, fell from 3.74 million pelts in 2014 to only 770,000 in 2024.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:09

That's a really big reduction. Yeah. Were people using that for fur?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:12

Yeah, that was where a lot of the fur came from. I think like mink coats and stuff like that. I never bought fur. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:18

I think it's really gross. I have always found it like so strange that you could watch 101 Dalmatians and then go buy fur.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:26

Like, like synthetic fur. Like I've never had real fur, but it feels like fur if you want fur for some reason.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:32

The synthetic one looks exactly the same. I actually have one I bought from a vegan winter coat brand.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:39

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:40

And it's so warm. Yeah. And it does have like fake fur, but it's like a color that wouldn't, I don't think naturally exists. So I don't think anyone's thinking it's real.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:49

Right. Plus I think people just in general assume it's not real these days. That's how normalized it is to not have fur anymore. It's like you see fur and you're like, oh, that's probably fake.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:58

But if you found out it wasn't, you'd probably be horrified, right? Like, and most people would.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:02

And then like two dozen countries have banned fur farming in general. So fur is definitely on the sharp decline tonight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:11

Which is great. Yeah. I don't know how we get leather up there with it, you know, like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:14

Yeah, it's interesting to me that leather is so much more accepted than fur.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:18

I think fur reminds people of their, like, fuzzy pets that they have at home, maybe. I don't know. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:23

So moving on from some of those things, let's also talk about veganism progress in the media in general.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:29

Yeah. It's really changed over the last, like, several decades. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:33

So one example when I was doing research here that I thought was pretty fun was back in 1995, there was an episode of The Simpsons called Lisa the Vegetarian. And this had Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney guest star on the episode. Yeah. But they included a condition for their guest starring that if they did it, Lisa had to stay vegetarian for the rest of the Simpsons series. So Lisa has been vegetarian since 1995 because of Paul and Linda McCartney.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:58

That's awesome. Like, think about how many people that's, like, impacted, though, for real. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:05

Pretty popular show. You've heard of it, right?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:07

Yeah, I've heard of the Simpsons.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:10

But yeah, no, it's interesting. I never realized that, though.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:12

No, I didn't know that either.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:13

I knew she was vegetarian, but I never even.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:14

Yeah, I always knew she was vegetarian. I mean, it makes sense with her character. Yeah. Like, she's a very progressive character and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I feel like she's a great example of a vegetarian, you know? So we've had.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:23

30 years of a mainstream vegetarian in, like, animated series.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:28

And a liked character.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:29

Yeah. Also, so Netflix recently had the You Are What You Eat twin experiment episode that came out. This was in 2024. Um, it was the number three English language TV show worldwide for its first week and got 18.8 million views in six months. So that was the one where they took twins and one of them followed like a plant-based diet and one of them followed a normal diet and they compared a bunch of stuff. Yeah. It was a really cool show.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:53

I really liked it too. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:00:55

But yeah, that was like a very popular show even by Netflix standards. So another win in the media for seeing people, you know, try the vegan thing and notice that, oh, it is a healthy alternative. And then also there were some movies that actually had a pretty interesting real world impact potentially. So there was a movie Sharkwater in 2006. And then later on in 2017, a Senate bill in Canada went to ban shark fin imports and referenced the movie Sharkwater and the filmmaker Rob Stewart as its inspiration.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:27

That's so cool i didn't even know people were eating shark fin until okay we went to houston for my work right and then, we went to chef kenny which they used to have a chef kenny's in houston but i guess now it's only in vegas yeah but they mostly have sushi but they had, so we were with one of my friends from work and they had vegan shark fin soup right on the menu and it was like 60 fucking dollars it was.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:51

Priced like there was a shark fin

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:52

In there it was crazy priced and then my friend from work was like she wanted to order it but so she or she's like asking the waitress and she's like so what's in the shark fin soup like why is it so expensive and she's like it's vegan shark fin and she's like yeah no i know it's not real shark fin but like what is it and she's like it's vegan shark fin yeah and we got it and it, It was just kind of soup. Yeah. I don't know. It wasn't that special.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:18

I guess she wasn't vegan, but it was a vegan place.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:20

Yeah, yeah. But they wouldn't tell us what do you make your vegan shark fin with. But it was hilarious because my friend asked her like five times. She's like, yeah, but what is the vegan shark fin?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:32

What's in here that makes this $60? It looks like brown water.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:36

And it was brown water. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:39

The sushi was amazing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:40

The sushi was so good. But if you can go to Chef Kenny's, you absolutely should go to Chef Kenny's.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:45

But yeah, so in 2019 in Canada, they actually announced a ban of the importing and exporting of detached shark fins.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:52

See, I think it's so interesting how like a movie like that can make a real tangible difference in a government.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:58

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:59

You know, similar to Blackfish, which came out in, I think, 2013. But like SeaWorld actually announced they would stop breeding orcas like three years after it came out. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:11

And they were not so nice as to say we did this because of Blackfish. But I mean,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:15

I think it was less to do with Blackfish and more to do with all the people that were really mad after watching Blackfish. Yeah. Which, holy shit, as somebody who sat on Shamu in the water and could have drowned and gotten murdered by Shamu after watching Blackfish. I was like, parents, I feel like this wasn't a good parental decision.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:36

At least you weren't in the movie.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:38

Could have been. I was like, there was a serial killer whale right in the movie. Yeah, they get murdery in confinement. And I, a three year old, I wouldn't have survived. I couldn't have defended myself against a thousand pound orca. Yeah. Yeah, Blackfish was a really great movie.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:00

Yeah, so there have been some influential movies over time. I feel like, I don't know if this had any actual impact, but I feel like Free Willy probably had some impact.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:09

See, okay, I actually, yeah, I think it did.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:12

I feel like I remember something happening with the.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:14

Well, yeah, he frees Willy, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:16

No, no, I mean like in the real world after Free Willy, but I don't remember the future.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:19

I don't remember what year that came out because I think for me, I saw that as a kid and it only made me more interested in Killer Whales. because I was like, wow, they're so fascinating, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:28

Plus, you know, you had the mental bond with one of riding it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:31

Yeah, I sat on Shamu, guys. But I will say, like, for me, even as a vegetarian, like, I always had this, like, really nice, like, nostalgic thought of SeaWorld because I used to go there all the time as a kid, right? Like, it was just a nostalgic memory of, like, oh, man, like, SeaWorld's magical, right? But, like, after I watched Blackfish, I was just like, oh, this is, like, so sad. It, like, destroyed all my good memories. And I could have died.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:00

The truth shall set you free. Veganuary, again, we talked about that before, but something else they track is media mentions of Veganuary. So they said there were more than 12,280 media mentions of the Veganuary campaign in 2025.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:15

And at least 280 of those were mine. It's probably true. No, yeah, I talk about Veganuary a lot. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:21

So, I mean, having these things show up in the media and just being seen doesn't necessarily mean it's changing minds. But, you know, there are some pretty tangible examples there of policy that were put in potentially as a result of some of these things in the media. And it definitely impacts, like, some people will see it and reach out to their congressmen and like, hey, I didn't know this was going on. Especially documentaries are big about this. Like, I care a lot about this. Like, please support this bill, whatever. I mean, they don't listen all the time, obviously. But, I mean, the more and more people they hear from, the more they start to think maybe they won't get reelected.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:56

Yeah. And then I think the other thing is just like, even if the media is not specifically talking about Veganuary or the vegan movement or whatever, just like showing a vegan character can make a fundamental difference in just normalizing that in real life. It's like the more you see like a vegan character and it has to be a good character. Like they can't like intentionally make it like annoying a villain, like someone that you wouldn't like. Right. Like, if it's a good character and, like, you start liking the character, it makes it more so that, like, it's normal. Or, like, maybe I hear about veganism and I'm not immediately turned off because, like, oh, this character I liked was vegan.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:30

I'll tell you the trope I'm really tired of is they introduce a vegan character that has some kind of event that happens in the movie or the show that they suddenly start eating fish or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:41

Okay. Then you should read the book Holly. Oh, yeah? And, okay, spoiler in three, two, one. So in the book, Holly, from Stephen King. There is a vegan, and I'm not going to tell you any context of the vegan, but what I will say is this is, in my opinion, one of the best representations of a vegan I've ever seen. Like, she was strong. A strong vegan, like, set in her morals and, like, smart and, like, funny to the end and was willing to die for the cause. And that's all I'll say. Like, she refused to eat meat even though she was going to die.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:14

Spoiler over.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:15

Spoiler over. But you should read the book Holly because it was really good. And I liked that he had a vegan in there, but I will also like anything from Stephen King. So thanks for not letting me down, Stephen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:26

Speaking of which, the new Carrie TV show was great.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:27

Oh my God, it was so good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:30

Another way we can gauge progress is how people see animals. So this one's important because this is where they start making the connection between like how they view and feel about animals and maybe they don't want animals on their plate. Yeah. So every May, Gallup asked Americans what they think is morally acceptable. They asked about medical testing. In 2001, 65% of people that they polled said medical testing was acceptable, and only 26% said that they were wrong. As of 2026, which is, you know, 25 years later, it was down to only 45% saying it was acceptable and 48% it was wrong.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:04

That's drastic. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:05

And this is the first year that wrong came out ahead of acceptable.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:10

That's crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:12

And it was also a record low for people who thought it was acceptable. So it's definitely the progress in the right direction on medical testing on animals.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:19

I love that. They should ask them how they feel about eating animals. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:23

I will say something interesting for wearing fur, it didn't really change much over time as far as acceptable and unacceptable, even though like the industry, like the fashion industry and the laws and stuff have definitely reduced fur. But it seems like the people they are polling don't really find fur to be less acceptable over the same period of time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:42

I wonder if it's how they're asking, though, because I think if you said, do you think it's morally acceptable to raise animals now for fur? Right. Or just wear fur in general, like fur, wearing fur could just be like my grandmother passed down a fur coat. And I personally think it's morally acceptable to wear it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:58

Yeah. The question is just wearing, is wearing fur acceptable?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:01

I bet if it was phrased the other way, that's where you'd see the change. Because I think a lot of fur that is currently owned and worn is like secondhand and like, quote unquote, like an heirloom or whatever, a family thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:11

That wouldn't surprise me. Also, Faunalytics had a thing they called the Animal Tracker. It went from 2008 to 2019. They don't do it anymore. But every year they survey like about 1,000 to 1,500 adults. So one of the questions they had was, using animals for food is necessary for human survival. In 2008, 70% of people agreed with that, and it was down to 63% in 2019, and it was lower every time they asked until they stopped doing this particular survey. Another question they had asked was, some animals are capable of thinking and feeling emotions. That went up from 71% to 78% over the time they were running the survey. And, yeah, so we've talked about Faunalytics. They're an animal advocacy research group, and unfortunately, they don't do this one anymore, which is unfortunate because I think those are actually pretty cool questions to see trend over time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:58

Yeah, I think so, too. I think what it does prove is like, and I think we've talked about this before, but like getting people to go vegetarian, vegan, plant-based or whatever, it's a long game. Like you might have to have like, I don't know, hundreds of aha moments throughout your life or like seeds planted before you actually flip the switch and fully get there. And what I will also say is like, I think it's not even just like getting there mentally and knowing it's wrong. It's also having all the stuff set up like societally where it's like I can go to the grocery store and easily do this. The knowing that it's wrong has to be aligned with it being something that you can actually do every day without it adding time, extreme expense or like. other barriers right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10:39

Yeah and i'm curious to see like i really think about you know a long-term like significant vegan progress on like a hundred year timeline or something like that but i do think it'll be interesting to see over the next 20 years how things go with like the um the cultivated meat the lab-grown alternatives all the things with like capturing air and making it into protein and like all that stuff i don't know there will be and there already is some pushback on those things. So like they don't want to eat meat grown in a lab, blah, blah, blah. But I think, you know, giving people more options, making those things more accessible, I would kind of expect that to accelerate a little bit, at least some of these, I don't think it's going to be a drastic thing because again, there's going to be so much pushback. But I would think it would accelerate a little bit, like how many people try the plant-based diet or stop eating meat or like over the next 20 years would be interesting.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:11:28

Yeah. And I think something like if you're having trouble seeing progress i would recommend you, go further out oh yeah you know what i mean like instead of looking year by year because a lot of people look year by year and they're like oh well beyond, stock is going down and this is horrible and everything's awful right or like their butters like disappearing from the shelves and stuff and it's like i would, tell you to go look back to the early 2000s, Or, like, even 1970. Like, I think we should be looking at it as, like, a decade-by-decade improvement as opposed to, like, a year-by-year. Because I think it's really hard to see. This is just, like, a slow change of, like, shifting. I mean, cultural norms. That's so hard. And, like, not just cultural norms. There are cultural norms that benefit everyone in society. Like, it's just easier to, like, eat meat. It's easier to just do it the way everyone else is doing it. It takes a lot to get someone to make that change. And I don't think you can look at it on a year to year. You're going to be depressed. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:12:29

There's a saying for this kind of thing, which is when in doubt, zoom out.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:12:32

I like that. I think that's true, though. Yeah. Because I guess like for me, you know, having been a vegetarian since 2000. Yeah. I went vegetarian in 2000 and like I wasn't vegan, but I was looking in the aisle where there would be vegan stuff. Right. And in the stuff I was eating was vegan, like the chicken nuggets and like the hot dogs and stuff. Those were vegan. Yeah. But what I will say is, like, there was one cheese that I remember seeing as, like, a vegetarian, there was one vegan cheese. Now it's just, like, it's just so much different. And just people know what it is more. Yeah. You know?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:05

Even if they don't necessarily know vegan or vegetarian, they know about the oat milk. They know about almond milk. They know about non-dairy cheese. They know about Impossible and Beyond Burgers.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:14

It's so much more normalized than it was 20, 25 years ago. I mean, it's, like, just being able to eat out. I mean.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:22

Yeah. And I also wouldn't get too hung up on, like, I mean, it sucks, but I wouldn't get too hung up on individual products and stuff failing. Like, if Impossible fails or Beyond fails, that, I mean, stuff will rise to fill the gap, especially with the cultivated meat.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:34

Things are going to oscillate, right? Like, that's just normal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:13:36

But, yeah, if we look out over the last 20 years, a lot of these numbers we've talked about here, almost everything we care about is trending in the right direction by, like, 10 to 20 percentage points,

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:13:47

Which is huge. And just think about, like, vegetarian restaurants are popping up. Vegan restaurants are popping up. I was like shocked because I went to college in Louisville right but then I moved away and then we started dating again and you were living in Louisville and I was shocked when like I was visiting you and there were full-ass vegan restaurants and like they're.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:05

Like I never even knew they were there

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:06

By the way I know but like when I was there as a vegetarian like it was hard like it was hard in college to get vegetarian food yeah you know what I mean but like yeah going back a decade later it's just completely different town but like you look at all towns are probably like that. Yeah. I wouldn't know because I don't really stay anywhere for longer than five years, but it seems like they change. Yeah. I think another thing that I've been hearing is a little controversial at this point is like effective altruism, but it's basically where we donate money or we like use our resources to push for like, let's say law changes or just like, like for instance, I think one of the probably most well-known one is like pushing for cage-free eggs.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:14:48

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:14:48

So... It's not pushing for don't eat eggs. It's saying like instead of keeping animals in cages, like let them be free. And I'm not saying those conditions are that much better, but they aren't in cages. Like it's a lot of things in like very small steps that like as a vegan, that might piss you off, right? You might be saying, okay, I don't really understand how this is all that much more helpful. But like the small steps get you to the end.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:15:16

I think it also triggers something in people where you're like, okay, we just passed a law for cage-free requirements or whatever. And you're like, oh, what does that mean? Why weren't they cage-free before? Like what's happening with chickens on farms? And then they start looking into it and then they change things. And also we've talked about like a cage-free regulation or something like that also makes it kind of more expensive for a farm to run chickens. and they have to do it differently and the economics change, which also will increase the price of the eggs and stuff like that. So then the plant alternatives start to look a little better. So, I mean, there's a lot of nuance to something like this. And I think anything that is progress should be embraced. And then also, you know, again, you're not really getting the animal out or not farming the animal. But any kind of welfare reform that can make it a little more enjoyable for the animal is good for the animal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:09

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:10

To a certain degree. So there are a lot of elements to it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:12

Yeah. And once you start looking out on like instead of a year by year look and go out by like a decade by decade or even century by century, because that is realistic. Like, I'm sorry if you think this is happening, but like the world isn't going vegan by 2100.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:27

I mean, we've been farming for thousands and thousands of years.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:29

It's just not. I'm not saying it could never happen, but I think the odds of it are very, very, very small. Right. So like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:16:37

Short of something like in Tender Is the Flesh.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:16:39

Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, so I'm saying, like, even in the next 80 years, the world's not going vegan. So, like, what can you do? Like, what can we do? law-wise to like help improve the animal conditions in those next 80 years or like the next hundreds of years until we get to the end result that we want to get to. Like if there are things that we can do to like alleviate suffering, make conditions better, do things for, what is it, like 80 billion land animals per year that are currently suffering in animal agriculture. If there's things that we can do to make their lives better, That's a worthwhile thing to do. Yeah. You know, and so when we see laws like this being pushed, we should be happy about that instead of being like, that's bullshit, that's stupid, that's meaningless. No. It's not, though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:17:24

Yeah. As far as like cages specifically in the U.S. for egg laying hens, cage free hens went from like 12 percent of the total flock in 2015 to 46 percent of the total flock in 2026. so 10 years 35% more of the egg laying chickens were not in a cage and we've also talked about how cage free is not like a ton better than being in a cage and the building is one big cage and stuff like that but it I mean it is slightly better than being in a cage and we're talking about billions of chickens

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:17:54

Right and then the other thing is like, It's like you go from cage to not cage. Then it's like, what else can I do for this chicken? Right. Can I start requiring more square footage? Can I start requiring cleaner spaces and access to the outdoors? Like what other regulations can I start adding on that, like you said, increase the cost of the final product, whatever. It makes it less likely that people are going to buy it, but also improves the chicken's lives if they have to be in the system in the first place. Yeah. Which, like, we're so far away from them not being in the system that we should be, we should be, and the thing is, it's like, you don't work on one and only one thing. Like, these aren't paths that are in series. These are parallel things that we should be working on. We should be turning people vegan, but we should also be improving animal welfare conditions while we're waiting for the world to go vegan. And these should be parallel things that we are all focused on.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:47

Yeah. I mean, you can do, you can focus on multiple things. And the animals are in the farm right now. So, I mean, if we can give them better welfare until we eventually maybe don't have them farmed anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:18:57

Yeah, that's a good thing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:18:58

Why wouldn't you let some people focus on that?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:01

Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:01

And then some things have basically ended in general that aren't necessarily related to farming. So, like New Zealand closed commercial greyhound racing entirely from just like, I think, last month, two months ago, August 2026. So, that's not allowed anymore.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:17

Yeah, that's awesome.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:19

Right. Because that's just another form of animal exploitation. There were a couple around bullfighting. So, Colombia banned bullfighting in 2024. Also, Mexico City, they kept bullfighting, but they did ban killing the bull and using sharp objects.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:34

Okay. Well, we can push for a ban. Yeah. But that does sound like an improvement, I guess.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:19:41

Obviously, our goal would be not to have the bull bullfighting. But if we can not have that, but we can have they don't kill the bull.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:19:48

It is really, really hard to, like, think positively about these things when it's like, oh, well, they can still fight with the bulls, but they can't kill them with sharp objects. Like, why are we celebrating that? Right. For me, I am trying to now, because I get really down and depressed about this stuff, obviously, I think most people in the vegan space probably do, reading this stuff, it's like... How am I celebrating this thing that's not like really good? But I've started thinking about like this. Okay. It's like, okay, here are the two options. Someone's going to cut my finger off or someone's going to cut my whole hand off.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:20

Yeah. And, you know, in this scenario, and it is the reality in a lot of these real life scenarios, there is no third option of you don't get injured.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:28

Right. So it's like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:29

You don't get to pick that option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:30

Right. So hand or finger. I think I'm going to let you take my finger. Yeah. And then I get to keep the rest of my hand. Right. Like, but that sucks. But like, it's not my whole hand. Right. But like you said, there's not the third option of like, well, you get to keep your hand and your finger. Sorry, that's not on the table yet. Maybe in 300 years. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:45

And we are still pushing for the scenario where nobody gets anything chopped off.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:20:49

Another cool thing that happened is in 2019, Canada banned keeping whales and dolphins in captivity and breeding them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:20:57

That's a good one, too, because how do you keep a whale in captivity?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:00

They're so big. I just feel like there's no, like, humane space that you could keep them that would be big enough. But Germany actually banned killing male chicks in its hatchery. So now they do like the equivalent of an abortion, basically, if it's a male.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:21:14

Yeah, basically. This is that embryo testing we talked about where they pre-sex the egg before it actually hatches.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:21:19

But that is like a lot of chicks that will be spared from getting blended or, gassed. Yeah. That's a good step. You know, like it's not ideal, but it's a good step. Yeah. you know and i think a lot of the things that we mentioned it's like things that are a little bit more tangible to the normal person of like oh i can relate to like a whale or a dolphin or like i see those as like animals with value and i don't know why that is i think it's because we all got necklaces with like, dolphins and shit when we were kids or it could have been with like you said movies like free willie or it could have been going to sea world and being like seeing these things up close and how majestic and beautiful they are and getting to see them and i will say Like SeaWorld, awful, right? But what I will say is, at least for me and as a kid, when I saw these animals up close to SeaWorld, I was like, wow. majestic, beautiful, like awe-inspiring, amazing. Like, wow, these animals should be like protected and saved, you know? But you never see that with like, there's not a space that you can go and see cows in that light. Do you know what I mean? So I think it does, it takes a while to get there to where people feel that way about like cows and chickens and like just normal fish, you know? Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:22:33

Yeah. Petting zoos are probably the closest thing and those are just on the farm anyways.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:22:36

I do think like social media helps with some of that too. Like people that have pigs, adorable pigs that they're like scratching their belly and stuff. It's like that, it humanizes you to that animal. And I think that kind of stuff, we'll see that in decades from now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:22:50

And also, I think a lot of these laws and steps do kind of the same thing, because every time we pass, even if it's a very minor win, every time something like this gets passed, it makes you acknowledge, oh, hey, we were doing something kind of fucked up to an animal. Yeah. Like, what other fucked up things are we doing?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:23:03

Exactly. I think that's so true. And it is kind of like anytime you see any of these laws passed, like, it does make people question, like, I didn't even, maybe you didn't even know they were doing that. Yeah, I think we covered a lot of things that it's like these are definitely areas where you can see improvements in the vegan space or like that veganism is taking hold. But like they're not huge, right? And it's probably not one of those things that's ever going to be just huge, obvious impacts. Like it's never you're never going to see it month to month or year to year. But if you zoom out, I think you see it a lot more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:23:36

Yeah. And I think it's also important to understand that these things don't necessarily all happen because of vegan advocacy. And a lot of these things people care about for their own reasons. They care about it for health or maybe they do care about animal welfare or they care about the environment or they just care about like food quality or whatever. Like a lot of those things combine to get a lot of these rules changed. So I think it's important to try to cover as many angles as possible.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:24:02

I think so, too. And I think a good way to look at that, right, is like, okay, so... I would I would say like the political spectrum, like think about like presidents in the U.S., right? Like there's basically a two party system. You're not going to agree with everything every single candidate says. And even when you pick one, you probably won't agree with all their talking points. Yeah. And maybe there's just like one thing that you're really like ride or die with them on. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:24:27

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:24:28

But it's like but there's a lot of people that will go to that person for a different thing. You know, like for me, it's always been social stuff. Like, I'm always going to vote Democrat because of my social, I'm very, very liberal socially, right? Yeah. But it's like the Democratic candidate is going to pick up people from other things, but we're all working towards the same goal of getting that person elected. Yeah. And I think it's, like, the same thing, like, you're talking about where it's, like, obviously, for me, the ending animal exploitation is coming because I care about animals. But, like, you said, like, somebody might reduce how many, like... they might go plant-based for their health. And that's still, that person's on my team, right? Because we're working towards the same goal, even if they don't realize that's the goal they're working towards. Or someone that's going plant-based for the environment to reduce their carbon footprint or whatever. They should be on my team. I should be supporting them. I should be giving them help to stay plant-based. We should all be working with anyone who wants to be plant-based or reduce their animal product intake just because they're on our team. like they're going to help us get to the goal.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:25:33

Yeah, definitely. So kind of closing up the main segment, we've got a short list of things maybe you can do to try to keep the progress moving forward on some of these goals and initiatives. So one is when you go somewhere, ask for a specific vegan product or meal by name if you can.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:25:48

Yeah, or if you notice a restaurant in your area that doesn't have a vegan option, maybe you keep asking for one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:25:54

Yeah, we go to a lot of little markets and stuff where we already know they don't have a vegan option. We just go up and ask anyway to put it in their brain. Maybe they'll think about it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26:01

Or we'll, like, call the pizza place that we know doesn't have a vegan cheese. And we're like, do you have vegan cheese?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26:05

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Maybe they never even thought about it, honestly. Especially small businesses, like, at fairs and stuff. Like, a little one-owner booth or something. Maybe they were never even considered having a vegan option.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26:15

Yeah. We go up to Boots a lot. And we're like, do you have anything vegan? And sometimes we'll be shocked because they actually do. Yeah. Yeah. I would highly recommend you do that. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26:23

Number two we had is keep buying the options that you want to stay around.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26:27

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26:27

So try to support the thing that you like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:26:30

I think this one's important, especially like you see things yeeting themselves off the shelf every day or like companies closing and stuff. So I think... You know, we mostly cook, like, whole food-type plant-based stuff, right? But, like, we do make sure that we are supporting, like, the specific products that I definitely want to see next year. Yeah. And I would be devastated if they weren't there. We definitely try to make sure we're buying some of those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:26:55

Yeah, absolutely. All the fall things, especially. Yeah. Anything that's pumpkin and vegan in the house.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:27:00

Yeah, we're getting five of those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:27:03

You can also share one reliable recipe, a recipe you know is good, with somebody who's kind of curious about veganism.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:27:09

Yeah, this is key. Make sure it's good by everyone's standards.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:27:13

No black bean brownies. Don't share those.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:27:16

Well, I do think that's fair. I am now a convert to black bean brownies. But what I will say is if somebody asks you for a vegan brownie recipe, give them the best vegan brownie recipe. Exactly. That's not like, I think this is like actually kind of a problem, right? Because some people will be like, I want a vegan whatever. And you're immediately like, oh, let me recommend you the most healthy vegan thing ever that uses like odd ingredients and stuff. No, just give them like the best thing they've ever eaten.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:27:43

Or when they want a burger and you give them like the ancient grain patty or like a portobello cap. Like, come on, man. I'm not saying those things aren't good, but that's not the thing to give somebody who's not on board.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:27:54

Yeah, I feel like you want to trap them with like the most tasty thing we can offer them. Yeah. I think that's so true, though.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:00

Yeah, for sure. Maybe help a newer vegan solve one practical problem.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:05

Yeah, this one's, I think, important. I think that's where Happy Cow can come in.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:09

That's always my go-to. You're a new vegan? Download Happy Cow right now. I'm not walking away until you download Happy Cow.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:15

Let's get out your phone. Don't be creepy about it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:19

Give me your phone.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:20

Give me your phone. Let me get your social number.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:24

I'm not putting my number in here. I'm putting Happy Cow on your phone.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:26

You need Happy Cow was the other one. Yeah, I think just giving somebody a place to go. if they need to vent. I think that's like a practical problem we all run into is just like, man, this is kind of depressing to do on my own.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:28:38

Yeah. Maybe you could think a place that made a change towards veganism. Like the pizza place started carrying vegan cheese. You go in and say, I want to talk to the owner. Thank you so much.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:28:47

And we do that too. Because when we run into like, I'm mostly thinking because we do like a fall trip. Yeah. And then we end up inevitably being at like random tables of food and there's like never options or like the Christmas market. Right, right. And when they have something, we're like, you don't know how much this means to me because no one else has anything. Yeah. We've said that multiple times of like, you are the only vendor here that carries a vegan option and thank you so much.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29:11

You're the only one here I can give money to. And that will go through their head.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:29:15

Right. And then I would say even go a step further, put a review in Happy Cow. Yeah, for sure. Tell people it exists. And I would even go so far as to say like, if you are, if you have like a local community place on Reddit, you can put it or something and be like, hey, I don't know if you're You know this, but like they have vegan options at this place and it's really good. Is there actually a lot of like local little communities on Reddit that you could do it or like find a local discord or a lot of communities on Facebook for different locations and cities? But yeah, give them shout outs so that other people can go support them. You want to like do positive reinforcement with places that are making an effort.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:29:53

Yeah, I think if you do some of those things, that would be a way you can contribute to making sure we keep the progress bar moving forward. All right, so let's get into the next segment, which is bite-sized coaching. If you guys don't know, I'm a personal trainer. So I tried to do a brief segment here on every episode where I talk about something related to fitness or nutrition. Maybe a question you might have or you haven't even thought of yet that might help you out. So you get to read the question.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:30:15

Yes, I do. Okay, today's question is, how should I handle warming up? I know the answer to this because when I get really cold, I go take a warm shower.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:30:25

And then you're still really cold 30 minutes later.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:30:27

That's true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:30:28

Yeah, so this is in context of lifting weights is the way I'm going to answer this. So I would say, so first of all, there are a lot of very complex and complicated warm-up routines that feel a lot more like a workout and you're already kind of tired by the time you get in a workout.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:30:40

Yeah, absolutely.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:30:41

So you don't want to do that necessarily. So you can do a short general warm-up at the beginning of the workout. I like to do like five minutes on the elliptical. If you hate cardio, the other option is just some like dynamic things where you like do some arm swings, do some leg swings, something like that. Just for a couple minutes. It doesn't need to be anything crazy. You just want to literally like get your body a little warm.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:30:59

But like key is dynamic stretching.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:31:01

Not static stretching. Don't do any static stretching, like hold stretching, anything like that. It's not harmful, but one, it's not necessary. And two, it can technically, it could impede the performance on your lifts a little bit because your muscles are not quite as tight. Some minor stuff like that. But mainly you just don't need to do it and it takes a lot of time.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:31:19

And it doesn't really warm you up, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:31:20

Right. Yeah, it doesn't really warm you up. You want to get moving around. I will say if you have some kind of injury, like if you have a shoulder thing, you might spend a couple extra minutes doing like some kind of shoulder movement, maybe a couple extra arm swings, something like that. But in general, you just need a couple minutes of like actually getting your body warm. And then when you go to do your actual lifts, do a couple of warm-up sets with really lightweight of the actual lift you're doing before you do what's called the work set or the weight you're actually trying to lift for the week. I like to, if it's something on a barbell, I like to start the first set with an empty bar just to like get in there and start moving around. Um, beyond that, the warmup scheme that I like is like five reps at 40% of the weight you're going to do, the working weight, five reps at 60%, and then three reps at 80%.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32:02

That sounds like a lot, Bob.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32:03

It's not really a lot because it's really lightweight.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32:06

Do you do it really fast?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32:08

Yeah, I don't, I mean, you don't really do it like fast. Do it in normal, do your normal form.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32:11

Dang, that sounds like a lot of extra time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32:14

It's really not a lot of extra time. It is much faster than the other one because you won't really need to rest much in between. Okay. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32:19

Okay, you've sold me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32:20

Yeah, yeah. You've like maybe 10 seconds. Enough to move the weight around and then...

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32:23

His name's not Bob.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32:24

No, it's not Bob. Then if you're going to do the same muscle group, like let's say you just did... rows and then you're going to do bicep curls you probably don't need to do the full warm-up again because your biceps are already warmed up but what i do like to do is what there's a former mr olympia bodybuilding champion called jay cutler he calls them feel sets i like that a lot which basically just you use a lightweight you do a set or two to make sure it feels right like make sure you don't have any weird muscle things going on make sure you

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:32:51

Haven't fucked your back up and you didn't know all the.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:32:53

Way yeah you didn't mess your back up your uh make sure your clips are on your bar Your dumbbells aren't broken. I don't know. Whatever. Just make sure everything is like working right for that exercise you're about to do.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:03

With the equipment and your body. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:06

And then just do your working weight from there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:07

That one makes a lot of sense to me because sometimes you maybe like pulled something in your back, but you don't know until you're going to do some movement you wouldn't normally do in your daily life. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:16

Or sometimes your adjustable bench is precariously placed between two settings and you fall back on your first rep. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:23

With a full bar of weight would kind of suck. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:25

So anyway, feel sets are nice. I would say just make sure you're doing a couple of warm-up reps. Anything with a barbell, maybe just do a couple with the empty bar. Unless you're doing deadlifts, you can't do those with an empty bar. Or you have like a 400-pound squat, maybe just go ahead and start with one 30-foot.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:38

You can do deadlifts with an empty bar.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:41

No, the right form because it doesn't stop the bar where it's supposed to stop. Okay. But we do have really giant 10-pound plates for deadlifts.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:49

That look like...

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:50

Pizza.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:50

Or donuts. They look like donuts.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:52

Yeah, we got the donuts. They had a pizza.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:33:53

They look like pink sprinkled donuts. Like the Simpsons. They're really cute.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:33:56

Yeah, so those are good for warm-ups on deadlift. In general, I would just say just do a couple sets of the thing you're going to do to warm up.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:04

We have a very exciting update this week, and it's that our new book club on Tender Is the Flesh.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:10

Tender Is the Flesh.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:12

Tender Is the Flesh. It's starting on Monday.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:15

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:16

October 12th. I think I got it wrong last time. It's October 12th. It's a Monday. It should be the day this podcast comes out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:24

Yeah. That is exciting. So this book is like dark, kind of horror-ish themed.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:31

Yeah. The premise is a virus happens and now none of the animals can be eaten and they can also like kill you. Yeah. So now we're eating humans.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:42

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:34:43

That's the solution. That's what the book's about. Yeah. I saw a few people saying that this requires a lot of trigger warnings and there are some trigger warnings, sure. But I actually didn't think it was that bad personally, but I do read a lot of horror.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:34:55

So, yeah, I'm not all the way through it yet, but I haven't seen anything yet that would be any different from any other like watching a horror movie or a horror book. So I'm not sure.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:35:05

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:35:06

Different people are sensitive to different things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:35:08

Yeah, if you're sensitive to horror books in general, maybe you won't like this. But if you like them, I think that this could be the book club for you and you should join. So we're going to spread it out over a month. So we split it up into four sections. It's about 50 pages per section. So a little under, what, like seven-ish pages a day. Very, I would say, pretty low commitment for the book club.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:35:30

Yeah, definitely. And you can even, if you fall behind, you can go back to the other threads, catch back up at your leisure, stuff like that. Yeah, so we've got the Deficient Vegans Discord, which is where the book club happens down in the show notes if you'd like to join. I think we just passed 600 people in the Discord.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:35:46

Yeah, it's a lot of people. We're also collecting a lot of people on our Reddit, which is the Deficient Vegans subreddit. But I think we're almost at 5,000, which is crazy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:35:55

Yeah. That's also down in the show notes. It's been going pretty well in there, too. Again, heavily moderated. Don't be a dick.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:36:01

Yeah. No douchebags allowed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:36:03

Cool. All right. We appreciate you guys listening. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, if you can follow and leave us a review, that helps us out a lot. If you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can leave us a comment. We love reading those. We've gotten a couple of very nice comments lately, and we really appreciate that. And then, yeah, you can also find down in the show notes our websites if you're looking for recipes or like a fitness and nutrition blog, personal training. Also, you can follow us on social media there. So I think that's it. Do you want to say bye?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:36:30

Bye, guys.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:36:31

Bye, everybody.