Why Honey Isn't Vegan
Episode 57 revisits why honey is not vegan and replays a previous discussion. We also discuss some new news and have a bite-sized coaching segment about working out with minimal equipment.
New News
- 75% of British shoppers think farmed chickens aren't caged
- Beyond Mycelium steak store launch
- Plant-based milk vs dairy milk growth
- Good Food Institute report
Chapters
0:06 Podcast News and Honey Teaser
0:40 UK Farmed Chicken Misconceptions
2:51 Beyond Meat Steak Debut
4:26 Plant Milks Gain Ground
18:52 Honey Isn’t Vegan
27:17 Beekeeping Exploits Bees
31:05 Honey Hurts Native Pollinators
35:00 Honey Alternatives and Bee Help
37:20 Home Workouts With Minimal Gear
44:10 Book Club and Farewell
How to Get In Touch
- ⭐️ Deficient Vegans Discord ⭐️
Deficient Vegans
Muscle Deficient Vegan - Fitness & Nutrition
Protein Deficient Vegan - Food & Recipes
00:06 - Podcast News and Honey Teaser
00:40 - UK Farmed Chicken Misconceptions
02:51 - Beyond Meat Steak Debut
04:26 - Plant Milks Gain Ground
18:52 - Honey Isn’t Vegan
27:17 - Beekeeping Exploits Bees
31:05 - Honey Hurts Native Pollinators
35:00 - Honey Alternatives and Bee Help
37:20 - Home Workouts With Minimal Gear
44:10 - Book Club and Farewell
Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast, episode 57. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. You want to say hi? Hi. Hi, everybody. So this week, we're going to talk about why honey isn't vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Didn't we already do that?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you're not having deja vu. We did cover this two episodes ago as the secondary topic. Our main segment here this week is a replay of that same segment because we got a lot of discussion going on about this one.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Discussion or constant barrage of trolls?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There was some discussion. And we feel like it deserved a title episode.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I agree with that. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So if you already heard that episode, feel free to skip this one entirely or just skip over the main segment. We also have a bite-sized coaching segment this week about working out at home or with minimal equipment. But first up, new news.
Protein Deficient Vegan:New news!
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So the first piece of news we have here is from Britain. Viva conducted a poll of 2,000 members of the public in the UK, and 74% of those people surveyed believe that farmed chickens in the UK are no longer kept in cages. They believe that because there was apparently a ban in 2012 on certain types of cages for chickens. So the public has just kind of assumed that that meant chickens are not allowed to be kept in cages at all, which is not the case.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or they never even read that and have no idea and are just guessing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I don't know how the news reported over there at the time, but people really just tend to look at headlines. Yeah. But apparently they can keep chickens in cages. They're like new enriched cages. And they basically, from my understanding, have to have the space of like a normal piece of paper basically to stay on.
Protein Deficient Vegan:What a ridiculous thing to call a cage. An enriched cage. Yeah. Where you're shoved in there with like hundreds of other chickens standing on like a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little tiny piece of paper.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I guess the old style cage was called a battery cage. And that's the one that was specifically restricted.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Not that uncaged is much better.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It seems like most people in the UK just have this vision that all their chickens are free roam now.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Well, I was reading the article. It said 95% of all the chickens in the UK are factory farmed. Yeah. So, you're wrong.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Unfortunate. I think it was like 94, 95% of the people who knew about the new cages did not approve of the practice.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, it's something they care about, but they still eat chicken.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, I also saw in that article that apparently more than half of the people asked in the UK did not know that cows had to be pregnant in order to have milk.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, which honestly, like... It's so obvious, but it's something I never thought about. Like, it's not that they have to be, well, first of all, I never even considered they had to be pregnant to have milk. But it's also like the fact that you want them to be producing milk constantly. So they have to basically constantly be pregnant more or less.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, no, it's crazy. It's definitely not something you think about unless you're looking for this information, which I think is true for most of this information. Yeah. Unless you're seeking it out, it's not going to be given to you.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I think there's a period of time, like, after they have the baby, obviously they keep producing milk. But I think they have to be impregnated like once a year or something.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's pretty frequent.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The next piece of news is that Beyond Meat is debuting their mycelium steak fillets in U.S. supermarkets. They're starting out in Wegmans and HEB in the U.S.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I love HEB.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I don't think we have either one of those near us.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:They used to sell the mycelium steak on their test kitchen website.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think they do still sell it. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But it will also be available in supermarkets. It's basically a big steak filet is what it looks like, which is not really a product that we've had a lot of replacements for.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, the macros on it are crazy.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It is 230 calories, 28 grams of protein, 3 grams of fiber, and only 1 gram of saturated fat, which is a big improvement over a normal steak.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I think it's probably closest to, like, Meati. You've had that before. I think they're out of business now.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah. I think so.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Probably, like, the closest thing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Theirs was really good, so I can see this being pretty good as well. We'll have to try it out.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We still have some. We bought it on the test kitchen a while ago, but I'm scared to touch it. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, the cool thing about this type of product is that this is something you could probably take out on the grill. So if you're trying to have like that cookout vibe or something, you could use these mycelium steaks.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I'm probably going to make you cook it because that kind of stuff really grosses me out on like a base level.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you probably haven't had steak in quite a while.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No. And even when I had it, it was like almost against my will. Yeah. I say it's like the grossest of the meat because it's like not at all processed.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We'll have to try that one and let you guys know how it is. Or if you try it, let us know how it is.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You're going to try it and let everyone know how it is.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I need some seasoning tips, but I'll figure it out. All right. The last piece of news we have is that plant-based milk has apparently outpaced dairy milk's growth in the U.S. food service industry over the last year. The Good Food Institute released a new report, which we'll have linked in the show notes with the rest of these stories. And plant-based milks grew at like a 14% rate or something like that. And I think dairy milk was like 12%. But that resulted in plant-based milks total market share increasing by 1%, which is pretty good. That is good. There were a couple of other categories like plant-based creamers and eggs that were increasing. Some of the others were decreasing. Like cheese is down like 15%. plant-based meats are down like 13 percent.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah so that one looked more like it was like the frozen type because i think it said like your whole food types like tofu tempeh right i think they were like either steady or like one percent growth
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right this was specifically about like the protein replacement quote-unquote type products which is still it's kind of hard to talk about these because it's like what what is meat replacement really like we're just talking about other food but yeah uh typically that's like a beyond patty an impossible patty although i did see um chicken nuggets were up the plant-based chicken nuggets specifically yeah they had a breakdown of the different types of protein they.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Do have good vegan chicken nuggets yeah for sure yeah it seemed like a lot of the reason though is because the plant-based options are still like significantly higher so that's where like the tofu and the tempeh aren't hit in that way because they're actually cheaper than
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Meat yeah and another part of the study they looked at was about price and they said there is still a price gap but the price gap is actually narrowing as well so yeah a study and there's like a slide deck with like a bunch of slides and it's really interesting to look at it'd be hard to cover it all here, but I would definitely encourage you to check it out.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I do think that was why cheese specifically was down so much. It is like You go in the grocery store, it's like significantly more expensive and it's sitting right next to the dairy cheese.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. If you're somebody who's not actually vegan and you're looking at that cheese right next to the cheese you always buy, it's pretty hard sell.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, so then they also covered basically like likelihood to buy these products at a restaurant.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Okay.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like a non-vegan restaurant that would have vegan options. And so they surveyed 3,500 people. And so basically here are some of the reasons why they would buy a plant-based meat dish at a restaurant. Okay, got it. Okay. So 46% said it has to have flavors and ingredients that sound tasty. I don't know what that means.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I fear that that means it doesn't say the word tofu.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I feel like if it said vital weak gluten, they also wouldn't know what that meant or TVP.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Because they don't know what's the ingredients in the protein. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel like that's really just a roundabout way of saying, like, we don't know what's in it, and that makes us not want to buy it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Which is fair. It probably does need better marketing. And that's another reason why we need to stop calling things like chicken. Like, you need to really familiarize people with what the actual food is underneath.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think that would take away some of the stigma of, like, everything's over-processed, too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, yeah, so 46% said it has to have flavors and ingredients that sound tasty. 40% said the taste and texture needs to be exactly like conventional meat. Wow. Which I just don't think is fair.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, like, unless you're looking at, you know, lab-created meat, it's never going to be identical. And that's, like, a high bar to hold something up to. And I also don't know,
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Like, necessarily why it needs to be. Like, if it tastes good and you like the texture, you know, I've come more and more, actually pretty quickly, But more and more around to like, why does it matter what the animal product was like? Like, this is a good food. It tastes great.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So I haven't eaten animal products or like, you know, animals since I was 12. So the meats, I really have very faint memories of what meat actually tastes like. So that's not super hard for me. But, you know, I did have dairy about six years ago. Yeah. So like, that's one for me that I thought was going to be a big struggling point of like, is mac and cheese going to taste like mac and cheese? But now it's just, it's like, is the sauce good? Like, is this a good sauce? I don't know. I just don't really think of it in terms of like, it needs to taste identical to cheese anymore.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Is this a good macaroni pasta dish, basically?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, exactly. I feel like kind of an excuse, but let's move on. This one was interesting. 35% said they would choose it if the menu showed it as high in protein.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, that is interesting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I don't think restaurants do a very good job of doing that at all, especially on vegan stuff. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Even the ones like, you know, Alice and Friends in Chicago is really good about having like some solid protein options. Seitan and soy protein and stuff like that. But they don't really market it as like this is high protein or even say how much protein it is. So even the restaurants that are really leaning into like the best protein options for vegans still don't really lean into that number or anything.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Exactly. I think this also plays into people not understanding what ingredients are in these products. So like if you don't know if it's soy and you don't know that soy is high in protein or you don't know what the heck vital weak gluten is. gonna have no idea it's high in protein right so yeah i think if omnivore restaurants want people to pick the vegan option maybe they should market it as high in protein maybe they should put some of the macros in there right it kind of reminds me of um man weren't we talking to Stu from Veganuary about the sausage rolls or something oh yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah i keep seeing i saw somebody else talk about those last week.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah but basically um someplace in the uk Greggs is very known for their sausage rolls and then they started offering like a vegan sausage roll right but apparently I think this is the same place but I saw like an Instagram reel where they had the macros next to it and the vegan one actually had a little bit more protein so like people were just choosing it because it's like yeah it has more protein
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah I mean there are a lot of people who pick like a meat to get the protein so if you give them something else that's more protein they're like okay I'll try that yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah honestly this is kind of in line on a lot of my recipes I've been trying to like figure out how can I make my like stuff reach omnivores that just have an interest in high protein foods because I feel like my stuff only reaches vegans, which is great. That's what I want. Right. But it's like also I'm not necessarily saying I can convince a bunch of gym bros to go vegan. But if I could convince them to switch, you know, some dairy product for a vegan product, that'd be a great thing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. If you could at least convince them they don't have to live in like chicken breast and rice hell, you know, which is another like obviously we don't want them to be eating chicken. But also that's like a really bland, terrible, boring diet. Exactly. A lot of them are committed to day in and day out. And we have a lot of other plant-based options that would give them just as much protein and be way more tasty.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I just have no idea how to reach those people. Yeah. So that's been like a sticking point for me. But, yeah, I guess that's a sticking point for restaurants too. Right. But at least they can put the macros on their menu and let people choose. Yeah. Okay. So then 31% said they would choose a plant-based dish if someone they knew already recommended it. Okay.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's interesting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Mm-hmm. Um, 20, this is a pretty big number. 29% said if the menu shows that it's good for heart health, they would choose it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Wow. I find that really interesting because a lot of people choose things that they already know are bad for heart health.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I know. I think it's just like being faced with it while you're making that decision. Yeah. It's like having it written and you're like, you know, oh, these three dishes are good for my heart, but these other dishes don't say they're good for my heart. Are they bad for my heart? Oh my God, I can't choose something bad for my heart. You know, like when it's in black and white writing, maybe you're more likely to pick it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, if we're going to use marketing tricks, we should at least use them to make people healthier.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I agree. Okay, so then 28% said they would choose a plant-based dish if it costs less than a similar conventional meat dish.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I could see that for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And that's always the opposite. Especially at omnivore restaurants, there's always, honestly, a pretty big markup on plant-based options, whether it's plant-based cheese on a pizza or plant-based protein sources like tofu. It's like, oh, instead of chicken, if you want to add tofu, it's an extra $2. And it's like, what the fuck?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Exactly. It's like add a scoop of chicken for a dollar, add a scoop of tofu for $2 or $3.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You're like, oh. Yeah, exactly.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It doesn't make any sense, really.
Protein Deficient Vegan:There's definitely a markup in plant-based products. Yeah. But apparently, if that wasn't there or if it was cheaper, then they'd pick it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. That's not surprising.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Okay. So then 26% said they would choose a plant-based option if the restaurant staff recommended it. Oh. Which I thought was interesting.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That is interesting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because, you know, a lot of people go and they're like, oh, tell me what your favorite menu option is.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And probably none of them are recommending tofu.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, they probably recommend what is about to go bad.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They probably do.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I don't actually know that was a joke. I don't want to offend any servers out there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:25% said they would choose it if it's a brand of plant-based meat that they recognize. Okay. So like that brand name, the name recognition of like, oh, it's beyond or impossible, that goes a long way with people.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And I think that's a good reason to get those brands into, like, typically normal restaurants, quote unquote, kind of like Burger King and Impossible Whopper. I think that really helps normalize that kind of thing. So, like, you see Impossible next to a normal burger at Burger King. You see Impossible next to your burgers at the grocery store. So, I mean, I think that kind of thing really does help them over time. So, if they do go to another restaurant, they're like, okay, yeah, Impossible. I'm familiar with that. It's not some weird thing I've never heard of or whatever. So, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I do think it's funny, though, because, like, you know, that first group, it's like, it has to have ingredients that sound tasty.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And it's like... I feel like those things compete, right?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Not saying Impossible Beyond aren't tasty, but like when you read the ingredient list, you're not like, ooh, yum. Right. You know, like pea protein isolate. Oh, that sounds great. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I agree.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So 24% said they'd choose it if the menu showed that it was high in fiber, which I think shows that, you know, fiber is becoming trendy. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And with a lot of our options, we could have it show heart healthy, high in protein, and high in fiber. Exactly. You'd think everybody would pick it, right? I know.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And that gets us into another one, which is that 21% said they'd choose it if the menu showed it as environmentally friendly. Because, you know, all the plant-based options are always going to be more environmentally friendly. And I think I saw this in a different social media post. Some restaurant was doing it where they were showing, like, I think the carbon footprint of various products on the menu. And, like, people were actually choosing the vegan option because the carbon footprint is less.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Different people care about different things. Let's hit them from all angles, you know?
Protein Deficient Vegan:My thing is like, okay, if you're someone who cares about the environmental stuff, wouldn't you already know that plant-based products are just like better for the environment in general? If you really cared, wouldn't you have already looked that up?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, you would think, but then we watch like these documentaries that are about the environment and they don't even want to talk about, you know, animal agriculture.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I just think that's odd.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, you know, it's interesting to me how the vegan options kind of hit all the marks for, like, fiber, protein, heart health, environmentally friendly, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, every time you address it from a different angle or a different perspective, it gets harder to make the argument about because it has so many good marks for it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's got everything going for it. Yeah. And then the last one is that 20% of people said if it was featured prominently on the menu or as a special or limited time option, they would buy it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I believe that. Like, the vegan options are very rarely, like, a signature dish.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. They usually don't even have them on the main menu. Right. There's, like, a separate vegan menu, like, on the back where you have to, like, ask for it specifically. Yeah. I really like... So, we go to this place in Northwest Indiana called Tiger Lily in Chesterton. Yeah. Indiana. And so, they have... It's a vegan and a traditional restaurant, but it's, like, half the menu is traditional, so, like, has meat products and stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But half of the menu's fully vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And they split it, like, evenly. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a full,
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Like, it's got a lot of vegan options.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But what I like about it is that it doesn't have, like, a front or a back on the menu. It's, like, it's just a large front, and so, like, half of it is traditional and half of it's vegan. So they're both getting like, in my mind, the same, like, I don't know, airtime or like, they both get the same space. They're sharing space. Like one isn't prioritized over another, which I think is really an interesting way to do it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Plus they have like some prominent kind of signature items that are vegan only. Like the pub sandwich is one of their flagship items, but it's a vegan only option.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And a lot of their sides are just, they just are vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Most, actually most of their side, I don't even, I think all their sides are vegan actually.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And they have.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Potato salad, macaroni salad, all that stuff's just vegan by default.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. And they have like a little dessert situation up front and they label everything is like either vegan or traditional, which I really like that they intentionally label stuff vegan or traditional instead of like othering the vegan where it's like these aren't labeled because they aren't like vegan, right? Like vegan is the only one that gets a label. Yeah. But they're really good about like this is vegan. This is traditional. And I think making it so that one doesn't seem better than the other. Yeah. I think they do a great job.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's definitely the most, like, the one where you feel like they've taken the most care, other than a fully vegan restaurant, obviously. Yeah. Taking the most care to, like, present real, substantial, like, thoughtful vegan items.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. We actually asked the restaurant owner, because we go there so often, and we were like, are you vegan? And apparently she isn't vegan, but she has, I think she had two vegan sons or at least one vegan son. Yeah. And so that's caused her to, like... you know want to create things that they really love yeah and the food is like super super good it's better than some of the vegan places we've had oh
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's fantastic yeah it's.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like nothing nothing ever misses yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Even the baked.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Goods i think if you're even in chicago you should go check out tiger lily even though it's like i don't know probably over an hour drive but you should do
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It it's definitely on par with the places in chicago.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh yeah we've told them that before too we almost pick it over chicago options most of the time just because it's a closer drive for us but yeah yeah really good place but i i just wanted to point out like they make sure to list vegan and non-vegan in the same way they don't like make the vegan options seem like less than and i really appreciate that
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah it's kind of like a deli vibes almost like you got pub sandwich cuban sandwich i think they do a couple little pizzas and stuff.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like yeah they got a bunch of different like salads and stuff yeah and then you know surprisingly in the survey only 5% said nothing could convince me to buy it and I think that's a really exciting number.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, no, that's...
Protein Deficient Vegan:That only 5% so that nothing you could do would convince me to buy the plant-based option.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So we can reach the other 95%. That's good enough. And then once, you know, you get all of them, the other 5% will eventually fold. Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So yeah, we just need to use all the tactics.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, cool. All right, let's get into our main segment and talk about why honey isn't vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And remember, if you've already listened to this, you can skip this and go into the bite-sized coaching.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's right. So honey seems to be one of the things that people really struggle to understand why vegans don't use it. There's also some debate in the vegan community on whether honey is or is not vegan. But I think the answer is fairly obvious because the bottom line is we don't exploit animals for our own gain. So it's not vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I will say honey is one of the things I didn't really understand before I went vegan because I just assumed there wasn't like any harm. What did you think?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, honestly, even for a little while after I was vegan, we hadn't had honey yet but i had to like understand like why we couldn't do honey because i always thought like kind of some of the stuff we're going to talk about here like honey is just like a thing that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Exists yeah so no that's true for me i think as soon as i went vegan i was like oh we're not supposed to have honey so i'm not gonna eat honey but i actually like never looked into the why's behind that um and then i think this is a question that's often asked to vegans it's like if bees are naturally making honey and then no bees have to die in the process of producing honey then why isn't it vegan right
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And it's really i mean this is really um i don't know if i'd say a gray area but it's definitely contested because i've been to vegan restaurants that use honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah i think there are a lot of plant-based restaurants that call themselves vegan restaurants and it's like i think they're like health focused plant-based restaurants but they like to use the word vegan which can be a little confusing because vegans aren't eating honey yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I mean i've seen at least one restaurant that has the word vegan in their title and they apparently use honey yeah Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think another thing that confuses non-vegans is that because honey is seen as like a healthy thing. A lot of non-vegans think that vegans are vegans for health. So they're like, if honey is, you know, unquestionably healthy, then why aren't vegans eating it?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, that's not really a great argument. I know. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But I've seen it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then, so I think let's start with what is honey? So first off, bees are not making honey for humans,
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Obviously. Yeah, that makes sense.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They don't care about us. They don't care about us. We're just these big giant things.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That they hate.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that they hate. They want to sting you. No, no. But honey is actually their primary food source, and it's their energy supply for the winter season.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't think I really realized that it was their primary food source. Like, I think I knew they ate it, but I never really considered that that's, like, why they were making it is to make food for themselves.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's interesting because, I mean, I guess, unless you go seeking out this information, I think everyone's limited knowledge is... So Winnie the Pooh steals honey, of which there seems to be an abundance in beehives.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Way more than the bees could ever use.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So then that seems fine, I guess, question mark. But then also honey is pitched as like this like super healthy thing that will keep you from being allergic to wherever you live or something like that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. It hasn't been proven to be a thing. Never say never, I guess. Yeah. But they've done a lot of research on it. So far, it does not appear to be a thing. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So honey is actually for the bees. It helps them survive through the winter, and it's also incredibly important to just colony survival in general because there are certain bees within the colony that don't actually produce honey. Do you know how honey is made, and will you tell us?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, I learned how honey is made. So worker bees collect the nectar from the flowers.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Such little good guys. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:They fly the nectar all the way back to their hive, and you've probably seen bees with, like, stuff all over their back. That's how they get it there. They just, like, basically get in the flower, roll around in it. It's all attached to them, and they fly back to the hive.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Okay, you want to know what I have seen? What? I've seen really cute pictures of a little tired bee that's all fuzzy that falls asleep in a flower, and he has pollen on his little butt, and it's so cute.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's how it works.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And they're just sleepy, and they just sleep in the flower.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yep. So once they get back to the hive, they basically regurgitate it over and over again, and they pass it between multiple bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Honestly, this is kind of gross. I'm not sure why people eat it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You're eating bee vomit that's passed between many bees. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, and then the enzymes in their little bee mouths break down the complex sugars and turn them into simple sugars. Hmm. Um, then the bees fan their wings to dry it and remove the excess moisture. What do you think about that?
Protein Deficient Vegan:That part- That sounds kind of adorable.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's pretty cool. Um, then they seal it in wax honeycombs so that it stays good for a long time.
Protein Deficient Vegan:This is kind of stupid. But, like, I, for some reason, never thought about where does the bees' wax come from. So I was reading about it when I, like, researched this. And I guess young female worker bees that are like between 12 and 18 days old, they make the wax by consuming honey and converting its sugars into wax inside their bodies. And then the liquid wax is secreted through their special abdominal glands and it hardens into tiny flakes.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So they're basically like a little manufacturing plant in there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then they just like mold it into like hexagonal honeycomb cell. Hexagonal. I think it's hexagonal. What are you saying it is?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Hexagonal.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Because hexagon.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think it's hexagonal.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Okay.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We're going to look that up. Let's look it up right now. Hold on, please. This is really important to me. Hexagonal. That's not what either of us were saying.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We've lost the plot. What were we talking about?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Anyway, I think we're all wrong.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But that's also why we don't use beeswax.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Because they make it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They do make it. And it's for them.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:For them to put their honey in.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They got to put their honey somewhere so it's all sealed and kept safe. Right. This is really sad to me, but apparently a single bee can only produce one twelfth of a teaspoon in their entire lifetime.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Of honey?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Of honey. And they spend their whole little lives making it, and then bitches are out there eating whole spoonfuls of it in their tea. It took like 12 little bees entire lives for your one teaspoon. And you're using more of that. You're not just using one teaspoon. You're using like a tablespoon. That's 36 little bees entire lives.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's crazy, actually.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Doesn't that make you sad?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That kind of does make me sad.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It makes me so sad. I mean, I might be close to my period, but I was almost crying reading this. I'm very upset about the bees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's, wow, 36 bees for three teaspoons of honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's sad.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's nuts.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Apparently, tens of thousands of little bees work together to produce a hive's honey stores. Yeah. Tens of thousands of little bees that are so tired all day they have to fall asleep in flowers. That's how tired they are.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Teamwork makes the dream work. So now why are the bees making that honey? So to survive the winter, droughts, things like poor flowering seasons, raising baby bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Baby bees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Feeding the entire bee colony in general. Like it's literally their main food supply. And then humans just come in and take it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's evil. They take it so fast. Yeah. Okay. Now bees scare the shit out of me. But like I think reading about it made me like bees more. But they still scare me, but I'm never going to hurt them.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I respect them. And I also think they're cute, but I just really don't want them to touch me because I don't know why. They just scare me.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But I saw this guy the other day on TikTok. He got stung by this bee. And apparently, okay, so you know how their stingers get stuck in your arm. If they get stuck in your arm and then they pull out and they don't get their stinger out, they die. They hemorrhage.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think that is only certain types of bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Sure. Yeah. This was the bee this guy got stung by. Yeah. So instead of like trying to get rid of the bee, he let this little bee zoom around in like different directions for like five minutes straight to get his little stinger out so he didn't die.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, my gosh.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And he was just like, he looked so, the little bee looked so embarrassed to you. He was just like, man, I'm really sorry about this. Sometimes it just gets stuck places. But he was like doing circles to the left and then doing circles to the right. Because I guess they have like ridges on them and stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's got a barb on it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So he's like trying to work it out of this guy's arm. It was kind of cute. I don't know what I would do. I'd be really scared.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I've seen you around bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I get so freaked out around bees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't know if he'd get the chance.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I don't know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Not by any malintention on your part.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think I just wave my arms kind of maniacally. Yeah. That guy's a hero. He just let that little bee wiggle its butt out. Anyways, so that's that. So let's talk about how beekeepers are assholes.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So it sounds bad enough that humans just steal the actual bee food they work so hard to make, but it does get a little worse from there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It gets so sad.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So let's talk about what happens during commercial honey production. So beekeepers use smoke on the bees to keep them calm. I think everybody kind of knows that part.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, but I don't think most people know why. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So it makes the bees believe that the hive may burn down, which causes them to, like, gorge themselves on honey because they think all their hard work is going up in flames.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That is really, really sad. They basically think their house is on fire and they're trying to get as much as they can. Yeah. Before they escape.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. And so they get so full on honey that they become less defensive. And beekeepers kind of intentionally manipulate the bees to have a stress response.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That doesn't sound very vegan.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No, I don't think that is very vegan. So when the bees are at their most vulnerable, the beekeepers come in and they take a lot of the honey out of the hive while they're all docile from eating honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because they thought their house was all burning on.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Obviously, this stresses the bees out even more. They spend a lot of energy trying to replace the honey that was taken. And also the beekeepers will sometimes replace the bee honey they took with like corn syrup or sugar syrup.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's a shitty replacement.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And the reason it's a shitty replacement is because honey contains things like enzymes, amino acids, antioxidants, and some nutrients and natural antimicrobial compounds that keep the bees healthy and well-fed. But regular sugar syrup doesn't really have most of those things.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Humans suck at bartering. That is a horrible trade.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's sad.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It actually is really sad. And then apparently other common commercial honey stealing practices also include artificial insemination of the queen, which we don't like that, clipping the queen's wings. They're clipping her wings.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's sad.
Protein Deficient Vegan:She needs those. Then sometimes they'll even replace the old queen if she's not being productive enough with her like, you know, little army of bees. That's shitty. They should get to vote on when the monarch's replaced.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But even worse, they kill older queens.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Wow. It's like some Game of Thrones shit.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I know. Why are humans messing with the monarchy of bees? And also stealing their food.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, this does seem to make the argument that honey's not vegan for sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's really upsetting because I'm just imagining, okay, the closest I'm going to be able to get is Bugs Life. But I'm just imagining like the Ant Queen. I loved the Ant Queen in Bugs Life.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I loved the little ant princesses.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I'm just imagining them clipping their little wings. It's super sad.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Some of the other things that happen are the male drones are often removed because they're consuming the resources, but they don't produce honey. Yeah. So most people assume that bees don't die during honey production, but that's not really true.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, apparently there are accidental deaths where bees can be crushed during inspections, killed by machinery, and trapped during transport.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It makes sense because you're pulling the honeycombs and stuff in and out all the time. Surely you're going to crush some bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They're not super careful.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Also, I read that sometimes they will kill off entire colonies of bees after their pollination contracts are up. Because it's cheaper to buy new bees than it is to keep those alive through the next season.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:No, that sucks.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's fucking ridiculous.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Especially when we have, like, I keep hearing about the bee shortage.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You know.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We'll get into that, too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And we're not saying every beekeeper does this, but it is a practice within the commercial honey industry. I know there are some beekeepers out there that are very protective over their bees. I still don't think it's vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, I think if they wanted to be really nice to their bees, they'd let the bees keep their honey.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's true.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So that's that on that. So now we're going to talk about some environmental impacts. Did you know that honeybees aren't actually the only bees or the only pollinators?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, I knew they weren't the only bees, but I guess I didn't know. Well, I guess bumblebees are pollinators, so I guess I knew that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So apparently honeybees are managed as livestock in many parts of the world so that humans can steal their honey because they're very efficient at producing honey. But there are actually a lot of native bees as well. Like you said, bumblebees, mason bees, leafcutter bees. Isn't that a cute little name? I don't know about that. Mining bees, sweat bees, and carpenter bees. And a lot of the native bee populations are decreasing.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah, I've heard about this for a long time now.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Well, so high densities of honeybees can actually be bad for the native bees.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, interesting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because they're basically competing for nectar and pollen with the native bees. Okay. So, like, they're coming in from places that they shouldn't be. And then they're competing with the bees that already live there.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So because we're breeding honeybees to make honey for us, that makes more honeybees, which are worse for the other bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Okay.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So because we're breeding them, they can spread parasites and diseases more.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And alter plant-pollinator interactions. Yeah. And in general, it just kind of hurts the natural biodiversity, which would have a bunch of different pollinators.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. It wouldn't be the vast majority honeybees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. And if you think about it this way, if we are like forcing a large majority of honeybees and then you have like a disease that could potentially wipe out one specific type of bee and like now all we have is honeybees, how are we going to pollinate our food?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Because like you basically like screwed over the native bees. And, you know, a lot of people assume that our crops won't be pollinated if not for beekeepers keeping the bees. But that's not really true because there are lots of pollinators.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then wild pollinators can sometimes pollinate certain plants more effectively than honeybees can.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, they, you know, that's what they do.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it's like just, you know, their natural skill set. But, and then, you know, other pollinators, some of the other native bee species, sometimes they'll visit flowers under different weather conditions than like honeybees would.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, they work a different shift.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, exactly. They complement the honeybee population.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That makes sense.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So protecting the native pollinators is actually more beneficial for the long term than managing honeybee colonies, which, I mean, I think makes sense because, like, that's how it's been for thousands of years before we started, like, fucking around honeybees. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Who would have thought that nature is better at doing nature than corporations are? Me.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So even if you're buying locally from beekeepers who seem to care for their bees and don't kill their bees, we are still taking food from bees that is meant for bees. So, definitely not vegan. And I think that's that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I know one thing. Like, I think the bees make more honey than they'll use, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should take the honey. Because, again, they are stocking.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. It's for, like, other things.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, they're stocking up so much because, like, things might happen. And they think, like, and I guess maybe these things wouldn't happen in a honeybee farm or something, but they don't know that. So, they're just stocking it up for issues that might happen. Maybe the beekeeper will die and they need all the honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Exactly. But also, they don't understand that they're being bee kept. Yeah. Right. Like they just think I need all of these stores because like winter might happen or like something might happen with the flowers and I may need this stores. And then even if those things don't happen and they have excess, if the beekeepers are taking it, that kind of freaks them out because they're like, well, oh, shit, I don't have as much as I need. So then they work harder and harder and harder, which reduces their lifespan. And they just live a very stressed life.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:They're just little preppers. Yeah. You won't let them prep.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I feel such a kinship after hearing all of that, because I'm also a prepper.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:What are some of the alternatives to honey? Well, we have...
Protein Deficient Vegan:There are a ton.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Some of them are like maple syrup. That's a big one. That just comes out of trees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Agave syrup. Date syrup.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We have some agave in our fridge. Brown rice syrup. Sorghum syrup.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Dandelion honey you can.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Make your own dandelion
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Honey apple honey.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We should make dandelion honey i get kind of stressed out like is there a good way to wash dandelions and make sure they're not like dirty
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The pollen and flowers isn't typically what people are allergic to but i just don't know how i'd feel about like eating dandelion honey because i do have a pollen allergy so we have to look at a little more i.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Mean i guess you're just gonna have to not be a little bitch
Muscle Deficient Vegan:About it yeah i guess i will um there's also uh be free vegan honey Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We've bought this before. It tastes very similar.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It tastes basically the same.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and I think with the Be Free vegan honey, I'm pretty sure that the people that are making it are actually, like, throwing it up and stuff over and over again.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Bonus!
Protein Deficient Vegan:They're not. You should still buy it. It's not gross.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It really does taste just the same as honey to me. It does, yeah. I can't notice any difference at all.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I tried it because the only way I can eat tea is if it's 50% honey because I hate the taste of tea.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, tried it in that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It also, like, looks the same, same consistency. I mean, it's, like, identical.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it is pretty much.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, if you want to help bees, some of the things you can do are plant native wildflowers. We plant, you know, not a huge patch, but we plant some wildflowers in the backyard. Also, we plant flowers, like, in the middle of our garden. Yeah. So, the bees can come and help pollinate our garden plants and stuff like that. But, you know, it's a win-win.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. We don't know where their hive is, but we wouldn't steal their honey even if we did.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, try to avoid broad-spectrum pesticides. That could cause issues for the bees.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yep. This one, I mean, this is like if you want bees in your yard, but the suggestion is to leave some areas in your yard less manicured so that they can, like, nest.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Maybe not if you have, like, dogs or, like, small children running around. I don't know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I mean, we're growing the flowers. I don't know if we're going to let the grass grow wild for bees, but we do have the flowers.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, you can grow flowering plants that bloom across multiple seasons. Not necessarily flowers, but plants that flower. Okay. So, several episodes back, we added in, like, a kind of secondary main topic. We were doing another thing. Turns out the podcast runs pretty long when we do that. So we're going to go back to just one main topic and then have a small bite-sized coaching segment to talk a little bit about fitness in each episode.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and our plan going forward is to almost always keep the main topic vegan or vegan related and then, you know, still pull in your personal training knowledge into the bite-sized coaching.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, sounds good. All right, so this week we're going to talk about working out with minimal equipment or maybe just working out at home in general. So maybe sometimes you want to start exercising, but you don't have much, if any, equipment or nearby gyms available to you. Or maybe you just don't have time to go to the commercial gym once you factor in, like, drive time, waiting around for the machines, stuff like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Going to the gym in person, it can add, like, 30 minutes to an hour plus.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, for sure. It's like you have maybe a 45-minute workout, but it's going to take you two hours maybe to, like, go there, get changed or whatever, do the workout. Maybe if you shower at the gym, you know, all that stuff takes a lot of time. Yeah. Not to mention the waiting on machines. I've spent so much time just waiting on a squat rack to free up in my life.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. That's definitely true. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So let's talk about how to maybe get in a good workout at home first. If you don't have any equipment at all, you can still make good progress with body weight exercises. Yeah. So things like push-ups, lunges, where you're just kind of one leg at a time, doing walking lunges, stair calf raises, which is still actually how I do calf raises. You just stand on a stair and, like, you know, do a calf raise. Yeah. You hold on to the rail. You're fine. Very effective. Oh, yeah. And then crunches, things like that. There are some good bodyweight routines in the bodyweight fitness subreddit wiki, which I'll link in the show notes too. Now, the one thing about bodyweight exercises is that you'll probably need like higher reps and more sets to really challenge yourself on some of these, especially after a few months of progressing. Right. There is a certain point where a lot of these exercises, like your bodyweight, isn't going to be enough to challenge you anymore, really, which is why typically you would move into weights eventually. But if you don't have that option, you can kind of increase reps, increase sets, and things like that. If you maybe have some minimal equipment, like if you can manage to swing some resistance bands, which are just like big rubber bands, you can get them on Amazon or Walmart or wherever you buy them.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, Dick's Sporting Goods.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Dick's Sporting Goods, yeah. Or if you can maybe get like one or two pair of dumbbells, like maybe even on the lighter end, those can help a little bit. It gives you more options for things that may be too challenging with your body weight in some cases. Um, so if it's something where it's like, okay, I can't really do a pushup, but I could do like a chest press with some 10 pound dumbbells or something like that. Like that's going to be easier than your body weight. So that is useful for that. In other cases, it can actually add more challenge in addition to your body weight. So something like a lunge where it's like, okay, I'm doing lunges with my body weight. That's getting a little too easy. Now I carry these dumbbells while I do it and a little bit of weight. So I can kind of go both directions there. Some affordable options for maybe getting some equipment are to like find used weights and used benches on Facebook Marketplace or like Goodwill or things like that. I would just make sure those are like totally safe and functional. They're not like rusted out or broken bolts or anything like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely before you pick them up over your head.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure. Or even carrying weight on a bench.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, for sure, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, Planet Fitness is actually a really great deal for a gym. I think maybe now it used to be $10 a month. I think maybe now it's like $15 a month.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, it is pretty cheap, and they have them in a lot of places.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, so you can, you know, go a lot of different places with one. There's, in most places, like, even out in, like, where I grew up in the Styx, there's a Planet Fitness in that town now. Yeah. So they're pretty much everywhere.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I hate that their hours went from 24 hours, though, to, like, their hours are pretty limited now, which kind of sucks.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that was, like, the big draw of them for a while is it used to be 24-7. Yeah. I think there are still some that are 24-7, but it's pretty limited.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, most of them have gotten pretty short.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But they're still about the same hours as most gyms.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that's true.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, another good time to buy something would be, like, Black Friday.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If you're planning out far enough, you can get a lot of really cheap gym equipment on Black Friday.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, especially if you're trying to buy weight. Because buying weight online can get pretty pricey. But they'll do, like, free shipping and stuff a lot on Black Fridays, which is a big deal. But also, if you're trying to buy weight, maybe check out Dick's or even, like, some gym supply stores near you. Because shipping weight is usually the most expensive part of buying weight. Right, yeah. So if you can, like, buy weight locally, you're probably going to save some money. Or if you could just, like a lot of times with the Facebook marketplace, you know, a lot of people buy a bunch of gym equipment, never use it and just want it out of their house. So they're willing to get rid of it really cheap.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Same with like garage sales. Like in the summer when there are garage sales, you might check some of those out.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure. In general, if you're doing these body weight routines or maybe some light equipment type routines, if you're getting more than about 25 reps in an exercise with the equipment that you have, that's probably when it's about time to try either a harder version of the exercise or obtain some equipment that will increase the challenge. Because if we're above somewhere around 25 to 30 reps, you're probably not, and that's like per set, you're probably not in the realm anymore where the weight or equipment you have is hard enough to really make good progress.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I will say, though, and you can correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not the personal trainer, but, like, if you're somebody who just – wants to be healthy and strong and isn't trying to like get you know a super strong physique look of a physique that you know no you're not trying to grow big muscles
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah if you're just trying to make sure you don't lose muscle you're probably still fine.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I'm gonna throw out p90x p90x is great and a lot of that stuff is um pretty minimal
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Equipment i think p90x just uses a couple dumbbells maybe do they use resistance bands at all um.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They do they usually have like modifications where you can either use a dumbbell or resistance
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Bands and you can buy p90x and one time and use it forever basically right and.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You can almost always find p90x dvds at like
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Goodwill exactly like p90x is so old it's still on like physical media so they do have now it's probably on youtube honestly yeah they have subscriptions and stuff now but you can find basically free versions at this point yeah, and uh yeah other like you do the workout along with the screen a lot of those things are pretty good a lot of them lean more towards cardio but p90x is actually, pretty good on like some strength exercises. So as a girl, I know a lot of people really like their routines. Hmm. Yeah, find some stuff like that. If you don't know exactly what to do, and like I said, you can go find those routines on the body weight fitness wiki. But even those, you kind of have to like keep track of things on your own. So if you're maybe like not that interested in kind of that tediousness of that, something just following along with something like P90X is a good plan. Yeah. Especially if you're mostly interested in like general fitness. You just want to have good cardio, maybe trying to drop a little weight, something like that's fine. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And even if you're not interested in like full resistance training, you can find a lot of good exercise videos on YouTube or you can buy old DVDs of exercise videos. Like I bought some like old kickboxing ones that were really popular in like the early 2000s. I like those.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, there are a lot of really cheap ways to get in good cardio, like jump rope, kickboxing videos, even like shadow boxing, just running is probably the cheapest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of good ones. Okay, we appreciate everybody listening. We still have the book club going on in the Deficient Vegans Discord. We just started week two of the book club, being the second section of Eating Animals. So you can join us down in the show notes on the Deficient Vegans Discord if you still want to get involved there. We have the different weeks split up into kind of different threads in our Discord server. so you can go back and like look at the previous conversations from the first week. You can answer the questions. You can even get back into the discussion there. No big deal.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And there's two weeks left.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That's right. And then we'll pick another book. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, if you can leave us a rating or review, that helps us out a lot. If you're listening on Spotify or YouTube, you can leave us a comment. We like replying to those. If you want to reach out to us directly or see our blogs, you can go down in the show notes. You can find our social media. You can find the Protein Deficient Vegan Recipe site, the Muscle Deficient Vegan Fitness blog site. also on the muscle deficient vegan site there is now a button to look at coaching options i'm accepting new clients so if you're interested in personal training online coaching or even just nutrition coaching you can check that out and look at the options there all right you want to say bye bye guys bye everybody.
