The Great Plant Based Con! | Jayne Buxton | Plant Free MD Ep 146

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hello everyone uh thank you for coming on to another episode of the plant free MD podcast I'm your host Dr Anthony chafee and today I have a very special guest Jane Buxton who is author of The plant-based comms an excellent book that we read in our patreon book club meeting recently Jane thank you so much for coming on my pleasure nice to be here so uh oh I'd love to talk about your work and your book in particular can you tell us a bit about yourself and and your book and we'll sort of get into it I've written a known um in the past non-fiction and fiction journalism um but I really came to this book as um as a concerned citizen more than anything else um I started to become very alarmed around you know the middle of 2019 I started to notice a real increase in the volume of the arguments for everybody to be vegan um to save planet and every other reason that they could tack onto it and um and then I uh I saw the movie The Game Changers and realized how many people were taken in by that and I just thought wow this is going to become a real big Health crisis if we're not careful and particularly young people are going to be the ones that suffer because they're going to be um taken in by it they they want to do the best they can so and they think that this is the best they can so they're all going to go vegan or at least try it and um so I thought well a book has to be written and I looked around and there were books on this subject of course there were and there have been some fantastic ones um but I felt there was still a bit more to be said and I felt that there was room to really address the subject head on which is which is what I did and uh the um you know the title is very head-on it's it's quite controversial and uh purposely so because I really wanted people to sort of sit up and think oh well there might be another point of view what is it even if even if they think I'm crazy um you know I just needed that to be the first thing that they registered yeah well it is a great name know just a great plant-based con just really really hits that home I mean I mean that one of my more popular lectures I just named plants are trying to kill you and it's just you know it just takes it there it just said hey this is this is this is what we're this is what we're talking about so I think it's a it's a great head-on message and I thought you did an excellent job um for the for the books I mean there are a number of parts and and uh and first of all you argue or basically present the evidence for and against you know it is a plant-based actually healthy for you so you know what are they saying you know makes up a healthy plant-based diet why are they saying it's better and and why may not that be the case well I think that they they say it for all kinds of reasons which are untrue so uh they'll be saying and most of the argument in favor of a plant-based diet it seems to me rests on the demonization of saturated fats and cholesterol so whenever you read any any sort of uh popular mainstream article they'll be talking about oh well you're better off getting your protein from plant Source because animal sources have cholesterol and you know saturated fat and that'll raise your cholesterol in your body etc etc so the fact that we have disproven those links and that we now know and it is widely acknowledged that cholesterol in food has nothing to do with cholesterol in your body the fact that the the link between saturated fat and cholesterol LDL has been shaken if not completely debunked repeatedly particularly in the past five years there have been a number of studies um that doesn't seem to stop the arguments still being made so so then you get to you have to think well how are we going to argue with that so you have to you have to unpick all that data around saturated fat and I did that over a very very lengthy chapter and probably too long but it there was just so much to be said um but the reason I then go into the reason why I don't think that a plant's only diet is good for health and I think it rests on probably four key um uh arguments to do with the nutrients that are in that diet uh I.E the lack of them uh the the excess of anti-nutrients in the diet the poor quality of the protein and the excessive carbohydrate intake which is usually consistent with that diet and you know what are the health implications of that you know there are many and we could go into those but those are the main um main reasons that I argue you're not better off eating a plant-based diet so I think you you'll be very familiar with this I think you have an encyclopedic memory for you know studies which I've seen in action recently at a conference so I know that you can cite all kinds of um facts and studies around just the stuff I'm I'm talking about but uh what a lot of people really don't realize when you tell them they're they're shocked is that you know you know you can't get certain nutrients from Plants you can't get vitamin A you can't get B12 D3 K2 creatine uh you know heme iron or there's so many that you can't get EPA DHA and and they kind of look at you dumbfounded because they've been taught and led to believe that plants are Gods you know that they have all the nutrients we need so that's a big surprise and then you have the the other side of that nutrient coin is is the um the fact that some nutrients that you can get are less bioavailable so the iron being one of them um uh they're they're very low amounts of zinc and methionine and leucine and a number of other things and in fact the who recognizes this so for zinc for example they um they have increased the recommended daily allowance for those countries where there's not much meat consumed and where it's mostly grains so this is a complete acknowledgment of the fact that the zinc from the grains is not doing the job and you need to therefore eat double the amount of even the RDA and that's not happening around the world but um so yeah that's the nutrient argument and then of course those anti-nutrients which speaks to your your point earlier about um plants are trying to kill you so there are these compounds in plants that again people are so unaware of and I think we're becoming a little bit more aware of things like oxalates now thanks to some popular work being produced um the likes of selling Norton toxic superfoods um making people aware of the fact that there are these things called oxalates they're little crystals that can form they can cause anything from gastro distress to kidney stones to arthritic uh um joints um to brain fog you know there are a whole number of repercussions of eating those and uh it's probably okay if we're eating them in small quantities but in a vegan diet you're not going to be eating them in small quantity you're probably loading up the spinach right you're loading up on the chia seeds chia seeds I never know which way to say that is it Chia or Chaya anyway yeah I don't eat them um and you know there's a hundred grams in a table of oxalates in a tablespoon of those seeds and then you'll have say a thousand um sorry milligrams thousand milligrams in in a big serving of spinach well this is probably 10 times what you should be having in oxalates in a day so um that you are correct that in in large quantities plants are trying to kill us yeah right hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor the carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products that will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks guys yeah well and that's the thing you know people people just don't recognize that and so we're saying more plants equals Better Health and that's that's one of the arguments is that well these studies show that the the more fruits and vegetables you eat you know the better your health outcomes and and the more you eat the lower your cancer rates are and all these sorts of things but those are a bit disingenuous too aren't they because they're not comparing it's not that you're replacing uh meat with fruits and vegetables is it no no so they're not taking the carbs out of the quest studies that are probably you know taken with a grain of salt because say they're probably inaccurate right um so anytime you're asking people to recall what they've eaten and to tell you was it five servings or was it ten or did I have any actually uh since I'm on this survey I might say 10 because I think that's what they want to hear you know you get all this kind of stuff going on um which means you really can't say that that link is uh is a proven one at all now I'm not saying that vegetables don't have some benefits I think they do and they clearly um have some vinegar vitamins and minerals um uh phytonutrients which again is a double-edged sword but which is what we're talking about here um but I think you can also get very very good nutrition from animal Source foods with just a few vegetables or even no vegetables so I think it depends on the quality of the nutrients it doesn't really matter uh where you're getting it from yeah definitely and and that's the thing too is that I mean I I I don't care to eat any plants I don't feel that I need uh you know and so and I'm so I'm happy with that um but I don't have a problem with other people eat eggs and cheese and dairy or or you just meat well I mostly meat uh sometimes Dairy very rarely uh 99 of what I eat is just beef and and that's what I feel best on and so even I rarely eat chicken rarely pork uh but that would be like you know maybe you know beef lamb pork way down here chicken maybe probably fish in both pork but yeah the vast majority of what I eat is just beef and and that's it you know I don't go in for the you know keto snacks or carnivore treats or you know anything else oh they can be they can be another road to Hell on the on their own exactly you know just just a big steak that that's my carnivore treat like that is a treat I've never I've never felt felt unhappy with a big amazing steak I don't I don't know if that's humanly possible unless you're just not hungry you know yeah yeah yeah and but you know but at the same time I don't begrudge people eating this stuff it's just I just want them to understand you know hey you don't have to it's not you know it's not like well you know I don't mind eating this out but you know it's not that you don't have to it's just you know this can be a problem and even the people acknowledging well yes you know but there may be a hormetic benefit right um you know because you know because if it's poisonous maybe a micro dose of that poison could be or medic right well you know not everything problematic some things just just are bad and so um but if it were hermetic it is a small dose and then after that small dose you get damage right so you really need to quantify that and no one's doing that and so no one's even recognizing it needs to be Quantified and so I think that's that's probably the most important thing uh well that I think you know that I'm trying to do here is just just make people aware that that question should be answered or at least asked before diving head first into this sort of diet yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean and I guess you like me will see um personal cases individual cases of of this all the time where you're dying to say to somebody um if you only tried this if you only tried cutting out some of those vegetables that you've told me you're eating and adding some fishes some meat into your diet you might find your health problems reversed you know I came came across a young woman who'd had me uh for six years and she's 23 years old and um hadn't been able to get out of bed most of the time she could barely make it to the kitchen didn't she stopped school you know all that kind of stuff and she was starting to feel a little bit better I think she got a new cocktail of drugs and and she came out to lunch and then she said she was vegan and I thought did it ever occur to you that the veganism could be the whole driving force behind this and nobody had told her this and and I didn't tell her because her mother's sitting there and her mother's a vegetarian and it's not the kind of environment where you can say where you can play doctor but it it made me weep the fact that nobody said she hadn't managed to read anything or find out anything and I sort of hoped she'd read my book and and then maybe decide to try something but it's very hard because as you say you you don't want to you don't want to tell people what to eat you just want people to have their eyes open yeah exactly well maybe you can just you know send her you know like a Christmas in July present of your book got this for you you know I signed it that's for you yeah yeah yeah yeah and just yeah just uh you know an unsubtle hint uh yes maybe this is doing it um yeah yeah you did mention you know in some of these studies as well that you know the the that it's the the balance of evidence is isn't just in the plant-based side there's actually quite a lot of evidence that that uh you know just not eating these sorts of plants or meat base is actually beneficial and other things are that are sort of a mixed I think I believe you spoke about a um uh study with uh who had like 50 000 people looking at you know they were used for plant-based and they didn't actually see much benefit can you can you talk about that a bit I'm trying to think which one you mean did I tell you about that or was that in the book uh in the book yeah yeah and they had done studies and a few studies that said there's really no evidence for instance for eating loads of plants prevents cancer so we only have small epidemiological subsets of those studies but that particular study um didn't show it um and uh of course the the who study which everyone uses to damn meat is the 2015 study which came out with a conclusion that red meat was probably carcinogenic and you know processed red meat is is definitely carcinogenic and so uh if anybody I'm sure you're you're um group of people that your regular listeners will have already cottoned onto this but there's so many debunks of that who study examining why it's um led to the wrong conclusions why it was um badly done why the evidence can't be trusted and in fact the most damning thing I heard said was um uh Dr David klerfeld of the USDA who had taken part in the study he'd been one of the 15 scientists um doing it he had been he said it was the most uh uncomfortable um awful experience of his professional life because he saw the evidence being skewed he saw good studies important studies being thrown out and weak epidemiology being used as a basis for these Grand claims and you know unfortunately the world still cites that study it comes up every time don't you know the who says meet will give you cancer you know it's um it's quite extraordinary because even if you could trust it I mean they even if you could trust that the methodology was robust which it isn't or wasn't um the the the hazard ratios of 1.18 are just so infinitesimally small that really nobody should be paying I don't think anybody should be paying any attention to those when you consider the noise in the system that probably surrounds that Hazard ratio um it's just a it's just a nonsense to be honest and at the same time what we tend to have is this discounting of studies that are showing the real health benefits of eating meat so let's let's forget that meat might be bad for you how about meat might actually be good for you so the fact that they you know there was a study came out in I can't remember where uh nature I think showing um uh that L-Carnitine has a cardio protective effect and then you know you go you re and you read further down the paper and it tells you where you get L-Carnitine okay and of course you get it from meat fish eggs and especially for meat um so here we could be having a narrative that says if you want to prevent heart disease and keep your heart healthy make sure you have a bit of meat every day and we don't hear that because those studies are never given the prominence never I never see them advertise you know sort of promoted in our mainstream press over here I don't know if you do in the in Australia but it's it's always the vegan story it's always the vegetables which are getting the headlines yeah absolutely and and one thing you know other studies that have uh shown the benefits of of carnitine people say well carnitine is not an essential amino acid obviously we make it so that's you know moot point uh that's not quite true because there are a lot of studies actually show that more is better yes we do make it but not everybody does only 30 percent oh sorry 30 of people don't make enough or even at all carnitine yeah so sometimes or make an in-defficient amounts and so you know you're going to have negative Health outcomes if you yeah you know if you aren't getting that in your diet specifically with your brain I don't know if you came across this but there was a study out of Texas A M that looked at autism and they found that there were higher rates of autism and parents who were vegan and vegetarian and they and they found this uh connection with carnitine and so it was in these children weren't able to make enough carnitine and they weren't getting it from their diet because it doesn't exist in plants or fungus and since they weren't meat um and they especially weren't eating red meat which is a very high amount of carnitine that they were they were deficient and unfortunately it's well it it's unfortunate that they weren't getting it but carnitine is integral for the development of neurons and right so you know they were getting a misdevelopment of their neurons and unfortunately they were kidding uh you know uh intellectual impairment as a result which is yeah magic it's interesting you bring that up autism and the connection with mediating because um I got myself into trouble recently I went on to a podcast with a comedian who professed very open-minded and um we were talking about this and I mentioned that I knew of somebody who had um cured their bipolar for instance with a meat heavy ketogenic diet that ketogenic diets were um which are meat heavy are used to treat epilepsy and autism and and that people are seeing good results well the reason I got into trouble is this person objected to the very idea that we should be trying to treat or cure epilepsy and autism and view them as illnesses so there's a kind of political correctness that sets in when you're talking about this stuff as well right you have to be very careful because I guess she was coming from the school of thought that said what's wrong with autism right well I think that if you have extreme autistic behaviors both the people suffering and their families would really like to find ways of raining those in while well yes we know autistic people also have many other great um capabilities right but they also have problematic behaviors and neural functioning as you say so um I think when you get the issue clouded with that kind of level of fear of discussion political correctness you will that's another barrier to understanding forget the whole bias against meat that's the that's another barrier yeah well that's the thing what was just an illness and why should we try to fix it well because because we try to fix illnesses you know that's why we have doctors or at least try to do or at least set out to do or at least that's what we take an oath to do whether we do it or not who knows but um that that is the whole idea is curing illnesses and and you know you're not less of you know you're not any less of a person you don't matter any less uh because you're in an accident you lose your legs but it would sure be a lot easier to go through life with two legs yes that's right something and and we put on Prosthetics as well you know someone loses their leg they get a they get a prosthetic and it helps them walk at well why are you trying to do that they're just as good of a person with only one leg and then being around they don't need those crutches how dare you you're insulting them and the person there's like um please give those back I like those you know those help and so you know I think that um oh that's very fortunate that they didn't really think too much about that but but of course you know anyone who has autism or you know has a family member from autism of course they would want the best for them of course they would want you know something that would would help them that doesn't mean they're going to love them any less if they don't get the help and if it doesn't help them and you know all you know change things dramatically but you know if you if you can help you know someone who has that why wouldn't you uh I I know many many many people and first of all there are actually plenty of studies you know there are studies looking at there's actually a whole paper for a very long paper just said you know ketogenic diet as a treatment modality for autism yeah yeah so I mean this is this is in the published literature I mean this isn't just like anecdotal we've seen some people yeah we've not made it up no and and so you know there are already uh you know uh medical institutions that that are using ketogenic metabolic therapy as as an adjunct to treating kids with autism and they're getting fantastic results and you know I had a a lady on my um on my podcast named Ali and she had a had a son I met her at ketocon I met her son it was very nice little boy seemed pretty normal and uh didn't think anything of it and she said you know this is my son he actually is a non-verbal autistic and I'm like thinking to myself I'm pretty sure I heard him speak and then she followed him saying uh only when he eats carbohydrates yeah yeah and so she you know is on Carnivore she was transitioning damage getting him on it he was doing better and better and better and then he'll go over to his grandparents house who who at the time weren't necessarily on board and so you know they're trying to like oh well they want cookies they want candy let's just give them that and have this nice bonding time with you know doing drugs together I guess and and uh and and the kid would come back he wouldn't be able to speak for three days you know he was there normally not and be mute for three days she was able to get him basically on a carnivore diet or at least strongly ketogenic based diet and uh after about a year or so I don't know exactly time she she messaged me and she said my son has just tested into the gifted program in school oh that's an amazing story wow yeah and I mean even if there was an off chance that that could happen for your child I would you know I would I would really want that for my kid and uh with a chance I I had another conversation with a gentleman uh Jonathan Griffiths and uh very nice guy he's a professional bodybuilder in the UK he does carnivore and and uh carnivore coaching things like that and uh autism came up in the conversation and he just just said he was like actually I'm autistic and I would not have guessed that for a second and he said if I am you know you know before I went carnivore you know one year ago I would not have been able to have the conversation we're having right now you know a full-grown adult and yet it still had that dramatic difference for him which I think is just absolutely amazing yeah every time I hear one of these stories it doesn't it sends shivers down my spine it um the idea that something so powerful and yet so simple is is also something that a lot of people don't know about and want to accept you know it's it's very interesting I was um when I wrote the book I put in a short chapter on Carnivore diets because I really wanted the world to know about the healing impact of meat only diets um uh for some people for some conditions but also what can we learn about that about the value of meat in itself for all of us from that story right um and it was the one area where my publish was a little bit um afraid and really would have preferred that I take the chapter out um because they said are you saying everybody should be carnivore well no I'm not saying everybody should carnivore I'm just saying everyone should be aware of what carnivore can do for people um in certain situations and that it is something uh to be experimented with perhaps something certainly to be open about and so I it was a short chapter but I was allowed to keep it in and I was very pleased with that um but it strikes me that people are so afraid of talking about the benefits of meat like it's um it's it's you know it's gonna reach out and attack you if you talk about it sort of thing whereas we're not afraid to talk about well carbs are this I love carbs let's eat more carbs carbs are fun everybody loves carbs um and yet you and I both know and lots of lots of us are aware of the extreme harm done by excessive carbohydrate intake so for your autistic patient or person then of course that's one example um for diabetics you know pre-diabetics people on the road to diabetes it's it's also it's criminal what carbohydrates do and yet we we sort of lionize them because they're essential and they're good and they're delicious and we all need them yeah yeah well and and they make a lot of a lot of people a lot of money I think that's the main thing yeah I think yeah I learned about the you know the the base of the food pyramid at one point where it was uh you know the government had bought up too much grain basically say the world will guarantee all the grain that you produce and so you know we'll buy it don't worry about it and all of a sudden they have this massive amount of grains produced and we're like why'd we do that and uh and so all of a sudden they came out with this like you know new recommendations you need you know nine to twelve servings of grains is so good for you buy it up oh god oh go go go right now you know and so and they're like oh thank God we got that off ourselves okay take it back then after you've sold off your your con and you know speaking about you know plant-based con yeah that was a con you know and so when you're done with your con you know just say oh hey actually you know what guys sorry it looks like things have changed we'll just you know maybe maybe three to four something like that you know but they shipped it in for the decades you know yeah so yeah and it's still in there that whole you know thing of whole grains it's still there isn't it in Great quantities yeah I wonder when you what will make them take it back when they will rescind because I remember uh Fiona Godley of the the ex editor of the bmj I went to a conference a couple of years ago actually it was four years ago now with Swiss free and um it was concluded that all the advice on saturated fat for instance was proven Incorrect and she said there needs to be a big Maya culpa from everyone who supported a big turnaround and we haven't seen it we haven't seen the AHA turn around we haven't seen any of our official dietary organizations turn around and is it just money do you think or is there is there a pride thing is there a resistance and institutional resistance to making that turn around the I think it's I think it's probably both I mean with the aha I mean they were fraught from the get-go you know a lot of people on the pay of of the sugar industry and that's why they misrepresented the Framingham study you know decades ago uh you know two hours two years after the Framingham study was published they reported the opposite results on on cholesterol and heart disease right so you know the Framingham City actually showed that as your as your cholesterol goes down uh you know deaths from heart attack and stroke go up and they reported it as oh no the higher your cholesterol goes you know the more death of from a cardiovascular disease goes up so it was a bald-faced lie they did it on purpose and so it's not like that oh we got this wrong sorry about that they're like we know we got it wrong shut up you know so like you know they were doing this on purpose and they're trying to cover their tracks and now they're just they're just trying to now they're just gaslighting people so yeah it was yeah you know the influences they still have in their life or maybe they just you know just don't want to like admit anything you know it's like politicians you know if you admit that you got something wrong then well then I'm gonna then people are gonna think I'm wrong you know next time I have to be infallible which is stupid and maybe even in politics you know because you know people like um uh you know Keynes you know Maynard K uh you know Lord Mary Kane's in England you know he he keenly would change his mind on things and people oh you're flip-flopping this is like no and new evidence presence it presents itself do you change your opinion if if you need to that's called being responsible and it is you know and so yeah yeah uh and people loved him for it you know he was very very popular for that because they knew that if he said like oh actually this this was wrong like he would tell them you know so they they were more willing to go along with him because he would say hey let's back up if if they if he felt needed to and those people are rare you know it's also um Tim uh Professor Tim Knox is is one of those people who flipped yes he saw the actions and of course people pillory him now for having flipped Hillary him but um so it takes a big person to do it I also think it probably takes a lot of that Old Guard dying off so yeah you need as the fresh blood comes in and they don't have anything to hide anymore and they um they can tell the truth that might that might help but it is um yeah yeah it definitely does need some sort of Mayor culpas do need to be said I think so yeah and and certainly there's still industry money involved in all parties of all parties involved so I'm sure there's that um so so going on in your book uh you do one and you discussed the other aspect of this which is which is the environment we're saying oh we have to save the planet even if and I actually talk to people and they say look I I agree with you I don't feel well on a vegan diet but I I you know we're going to destroy the Earth I have to do my part and so this is a very well responsible you know ethic that people are organizing but you know and they're they're trying to do the right thing like you say especially you know younger people that are like hey you know we need to do something we need to change the world they've got the energy and the ambition to do it they don't and they they just they want a direction to go in and this it seems like the most obvious one and uh saying look you know I I'm with you you know eating meat is the best way to go I agree with you on that but I I just I still don't do it because of the environmental issue so so for for people in that camp I mean are we are we going to destroy the world by bringing back the buffalo destroy it by keeping eating cows now it's interesting that you bring the whole bring back the Buffalo thing because there have been a number of experiments in bringing back wild ruminants to certain parts of the world and um in Tanzania a particular study came to comes to mind in 2023 where they they showed that the wild ruminants were generating just as much methane as the cows before them so the trade-off is but you're not eating the Wild Ones yeah and they're just traveling all over the place right nobody's managing them either so the biodiversity is not being managed because animals do need to be managed in some way in this in the real world anyway not in fantasy world but in the real world um so the whole methane equation is interesting but whether you know we need to go back to basics which is understanding whether the methane problem the emissions problem is as bad as people think it is uh from cows and the the bottom line is that it isn't it doesn't mean that we can't make improvements and there are things that we need to do but the basic case is exaggerated and it's exaggerated because um we're using a metric which exaggerate which is gwp 100 which exaggerates the warming impact of methane from cattle by four times and that is acknowledged this is not some made up thing this is acknowledged by the ipcc and the CCC and and climate scientists none of these um claims about the emissions from cattle take into account carbon sequestration they don't take into account the fact that we're we're counting life cycle emissions for cattle but we don't do that for cars you know so totally totally unfair comparison cars it's just what comes out of their rear ends for cows everything everything what they eat the land they're on everything right it's just completely mad um and then you get basic lying right so you'll get something like cowspiracy saying that you know cows are responsible for 50 of all emissions well a lot of people go around believing that still this is uh eight years later they still believe that and I see it written down in lots of places on protest placards and things um now that number even at the time the number was 14 and a half percent not 50. so that's a big big lie um now the FAO is saying that actually it's about 11 Global livestock as a percentage of total emissions so yeah there were lots of problems with how precise you can be in measuring these things but we do know one thing for sure which is the case against the cows is being exaggerated to great effect um and then I think that the potential for cows to help the situation is being underplayed so people are not talking about the role that livestock play in Land Management in creating carbon-rich soils or or soils that have the capability to be carbon rich as it were through their actions of eating and trampling and weeing and pooing and everything else um we're not talking about the biodiversity benefits of having cows on pasture uh the return of butterflies dung beetles um all kinds of uh insects that feed on the cows manure the birds that then feed on the insects you know so it's a whole Cascade effect um and people will I think say well um cows not all cows are managed in that way and that's true you know so a feedlot is not doing all those great things feedlock cattle are not doing those great things but we could make them do that we could manage them in that way so we could be saying let's revolutionize the way we Farm cattle and make every cattle ranch every Farm as good as the best ones let's make everybody do a Gabe brown or Joel salatin or any number of the Allen Savory Farms that he that he has evidence of um that has huge potential and people like to Discount that potential they don't believe it they think it's a fairy story for some reason because it's based on real experience and Farmers on the ground practical experience and their numbers right it's not some fancy model which is concocted in in the Ivory Towers of Oxford University where they shove a bunch of false numbers in a bunch of assumptions and lo and behold they come out with with something a case that's condemning of livestock um so the whole thing needs to be shaken up and as I say I I'm not saying that we don't need to do certain things to improve the methane and Emissions picture and to improve the way we manage livestock and we may need to therefore reduce certain types of meat consumption and again it's usually monogastrics that we we're told we need we should be reducing because I think there was a study by tedichi a little while ago that showed that if you just made a shift of about 10 to 12 percent from chicken and other monograph gastrics to beef you could reduce the overall emissions burden by five percent so that's that's huge and everybody you know we recognize that monogastrics chickens pigs they are fed grains which are often grown on deforested land and that that's the thing we really have to stop so in the future we may be eating less chicken I don't think we need to be eating less beef yeah and and yeah absolutely and you know from from the ethical standpoint that's one of the stats you know as Mark Twain said there's three kinds of lies lies damn lies and statistics and so they use these obviously they do they can just make damn lies about statistics like like we've seen what you'll say is 50 of emissions but you know some of the some of the the clever ways that they'll manipulate things is they'll you know there was a study out of University of New South Wales in 2011 that showed that if you're eating sort of large animals like you know cows and sheep and things like that that you'll to grow one kilo of pro animal-based protein you kill 25 times less animals than one kilo of plant-based protein right because there's a lot of Downstream effects from you know mono cropping and things like that and you're you're killing all these animals and you know pesticides are killing birds and then they're killing Australians of insects which then aren't able to be available for the food supply for births or is even bigger knock-on effect and things getting in the waterways and so on so you know you're actually killing you're actually causing a huge ecological disaster from growing these crops and and and and you know with the biodiversity issue plant-based proteins and nutrients I I think that if you if you considered you know the bioavailable amount of protein there I think it would be much more than 25 and then I see some people that say and well no if you look at chickens if people just ate chickens then you'd actually kill you know you'd kill like slightly more you know uh chickens than you would these other things like we're not talking chickens right because you know there's about 300 chickens per cow right yes you know you just yeah so you're saying there's three times you know um you have to eat you kill three times as many chickens as you do these animals to grow crops great so that means that you know you have to you know do a hundred times less animals if you just eat a cow because a cow is 300 chickens or something like that you know so I mean that that's them sort of you know tacitly admitting that but of course they use that example because it it furthers their point and you have to sort of watch out for those little Weasley uh ways of doing things absolutely and and you mentioned something about if we looked at nutrition not say kilos of of product um nutrition bioavailable protein uh bioavailable nutrients of other kinds um amino acid profile if you looked at that and said okay which delivers that better for a given unit of emissions ghds you would suddenly see the playing field evening out or maybe being more in favor of the animal proteins because but we don't talk about it that way we talk about kilos of product or calories and um it's just not a good way to evaluate food you know we don't live on calories we live on what we do to a certain extent but we live on nutrients um and empty calories are just not what we need to be to be looking at but everything we're talking about is complex yeah and it seems to me there's only a certain amount of appetite for complexity in this whole debate and policy makers want short sharp visible demonstrable um benefit generating uh policies and so rather than have this whole debate about let's over time shift our farming system towards more beef less monogastrics let's make sure everybody is using regenerative principles that we're storing x amount of carbon per acre where we're retaining the water you know um flow and it's not therefore we have less flooding all of these other benefits they won't talk about that instead they'll say let's cut emissions to so we can meet Net Zero so let's kill 30 of the cows which is what they're they're recommending in Ireland right now which is a very very short-sighted um policy and not only is it unjust because what about the people farming the cows and what about the nutrition um it's also short-sighted because it it will rebound we will get rid of the cows in Ireland if it happens if it goes through and where you know that meat will just come from somewhere else probably somewhere worse where the cows are not raised very um productively on on the grass probably in some feedlot it'll be cheaper and it'll be worse and so the net result for the world will not be any better it's just that Ireland will temporarily have cut down its um its emissions it will reach its Net Zero Target it's just a numbers game and I wish that we could we could make more people aware of how those simplistic arguments and simplistic policies really are are going to backfire yeah and especially when I mean we're we're sort of missing the force for the trees as well when we're talking about this I mean obviously we have an impact on this Earth especially with pollution and different I mean it's ecological disaster that is agriculture uh is I think is a huge one you were losing 27 billion tons of topsoil every single year because of our farming this is you know it's an area the size of Kentucky every single year um yeah you know so that that's that's massive so you know people in Europe that's you know an area the size of well beer than Ireland probably you know another quarter again the size of Ireland so big big territory of of of uh topsoil which takes 500 years to grow uh a centimeter right so that that's a that's a Vanishing commodity and you know it's it's a resource that it that is will will run out and will run out pretty pretty quickly so you know we're we're not thinking about that we're thinking about our emissions fine it's fine to do that but you know let's put this in context because nothing matters outside of context um you know so every everything that we're doing everything all admissions including all Agriculture and and cars and everything like that is less than the emissions that are produced from volcanoes every year yeah right yeah and that's less than all of the emissions from all the naturally decaying plant life around the world yeah every year and all of that all of that encompasses about five percent of the of the total CO2 discharged in the world 95 of it comes from the oceans and there's really nothing to do about that and they say well if you heat things up it heats up the oceans and then it produces more CO2 which is true uh and Al Gore talks about that in his in his in his talk the problem with that is that there's about a 700 year delay it takes it takes hundreds of years to heat up these oceans right miles and deep and so you know 70 some percent of Griffiths the expression fiddling while Rome Burns is is never been more apt yeah than it is now and a few scientists are saying this they're trying to speak and a recent paper just come out that said look beef in the U.S two percent of emissions yes we can shave some off that by doing things differently farming differently by um putting additives in so that the methane is less methane is burped out all of those kinds of things but really it's a drop in the bucket because it's only two percent of the US emissions so shouldn't we be looking at other sectors where we get more bang for the buck and I of course any sensible person will see that that's what we should be doing but they either don't want to go down that route because cows represent a convenient storyline you know that lets others off the hook or they don't know how to get those other sectors to fall into place I don't think we know how to reduce consumerism yeah how to stop fossil fuel burning in the name of growth in the name of things that we buy right and and we don't know how to stop and I don't have the answer to this either we don't know how to stop people flying we don't know what a world would be like if we are not flying and and and you know we become so used to being connected in that way seeing people living all over the world um and there are huge benefits to that so nobody wants really to attack that too too much so the poor old cow defenseless and the poor old farmer who who's also defenseless um is the one is the battering ram you know it's sort of like okay let's try that but it's it's really very very short-sighted as as you said yeah I I agree um so uh just to uh just just to wrap up is what who who's driving this like who's behind this I mean it's not just it's not just I mean they're obviously well-meaning people out there that are that are that are pushing this but they're not the driving force they're not the ones behind this you know convincing people to to take on this lifestyle who who is it exactly that's behind all this know one group and there is no one person or group orchestrating everything the way I look at it is it's a whole group of a different con interests who all have a stake in a plant-based future and therefore they align with one another and it's almost like they form this ring you know where they link arms and it makes this argument so um unsurmountable um irrefutable right so you'll have we know why corporations are interested right they like to they'd rather make cheap processed food with a cheap um soy basting and Corn based ingredients and make a lot of profit on it there's not a lot of profit in in eggs and there's not a lot there's no profit in milk and yes there's some profit in meat but not for the farmers only for the the big guys in the chain so we know why corporations are interested we know why the Seventh-day Adventist Church is interested in pushing this narrative because they've constantly had since the beginning of their their the foundation of their Church they've had a belief that meat was evil and that we all needed to eat nuts and seeds a vegetarian diet so they are they're creating research that supports the cause constantly they have universities and hospitals um and sometimes you can look at these studies and you notice it was peer reviewed by Loma Linda University Seventh-day Adventist University and you know that they're giving a free pass to anything that's vegetable like right you just know that that's happening so we know why they're doing it and the media I think is is pushing this along because some of them are lazy some of them are incompetent they don't know how to look at a paper they don't have a report on this stuff and they just go with the Zeitgeist because it sells newspapers right and my experience of dealing with some of the media is some of them were very brave with me and others just refused to even talk to me about the book because we can't go there we can't go there it's too controversial so they're failing to do what the media should do which is to be brave to question things to look at all sides they're just not um so you know you have these and then you have this so-called you know the altruistic so-called organizations you've got the vegan Society you've got pcrm which is a Physicians committee for responsible medicine which sounds like a you know a group of doctors who are doing the best for human health but it's actually an advocacy group of which only 10 percent are doctors right so they're just advocating and so they're doing it because they believe in animal welfare and animal sentience and that that's is is is the number one priority so you see everyone has their has their angle and when you add all the angles together you get the pretty big Force and I think that's what the problem is and they can all call on each other to support each other and the very thing that we did today about talking about the claims about health and the claims about the environment when you match those two together it is very hard to argue for you to argue against that because you'll get hit by one or the other so if somebody thinks meat's unhealthy they'll go um uh but but not bad for the environment or the or the opposite way around they can always call on the other argument to back up their own and um it's yeah it's it's insurmountable but I feel we must keep keep mounting the battle Yeah well that that and that's certainly something that I've noticed when when debating people you know just just not even in formal debates but just in discussions where people will say well you know vegan how dare you and all these sorts of things and I'll just you know I'll just say well look you know it's just purely from a nutritional standpoint you know this is where I'm coming from and all that sort of stuff and so they'll they'll try to debate me on that and um you know it's all the normal ones no cholesterol what about fiber you're not going to get all the nutrients very easy stuff that you know you might answer a thousand times so you know it's all just fresh in your memory and and then you know once they they feel themselves losing ground you know they'll pivot to well but but I mean the disaster only in environment all sorts of things and also it was like look that's a very important thing to talk about and we can definitely talk about that but I'm just talking about nutrition here I'm just talking from a nutritional standard as a doctor for my patients and myself you know I'm just saying this and then they're like okay all right you know so you keep going and that and then you and you wear them down and you but you keep them on point you know and just say okay yeah and um and and you'll get you wear them down like okay all right fine well uh yeah well I agree with you that nutritionally this is definitely the best way to go but environmentally like this is just a disaster and we just can't afford to do this you know eight billion people this is unsustainable okay well that's great let's talk about that and then we go into that and uh and then and then halfway through that they feel themselves like going like oh my God I'm losing this one too like what the hell happened and then go but I mean ethically I mean you can't just murder all is that and that's something it's very important and I agree with you this is very important but right now we're just talking about just environmentally and these and they're like okay you know they go back and we should get them on those and then they'll go okay all right fine okay yes I agree with you on the nutrition and the environment but I mean how can you justify murdering glad you asked so and then you go into that and that's a good strategy yeah oh it's the only way I mean because you know people people just just slip by and that's and that's the problem too uh with with having these debates online because people can just slip off and you know if you're face to face with someone talking with someone it's very very difficult to worm out of things you know because you can just quickly just be like no no no you're you're running away from it here you're there's a red herring this is like we're talking about this and if they're just still just talking about this other thing you know it's just like okay this person has lost their mind you know I mean that's just not a normal way of conversing so but you can do that on on online and on Twitter and things like that and so uh you'll see a bunch of slippery eels uh just they they just oh yeah will not answer questions will not stay on the topic just constantly changing no we're talking about this you made this point and you're wrong and here's this you know defend your position and they'll just they'll just talk all over and find one thing that you said and they'll just spin a tangent on it and things like that so it's difficult with those guys but everyone else sees what they're doing and everyone else sees them and completely dishonest do I have a little bit of faith that the argument will win the day have to I agree with you in a time um what we are seeing is that the despite all the noise the actual conversion to veganism is not terribly High and you know it Still Remains you know too creeping up to three percent um of the population now and we also see that the alt Meat Market whether you're talking plant-based meats or lab-based Meats is floundering right um sales are shin King we just had a big company called the meatless Farm go bankrupt this this week um three years ago I was writing about them as having been the new star that was being funded by channel four our channel four and um so they've gone under every day almost you read about a vegan restaurant can't make it closing or going back to selling uh animal Foods so it's clearly a bumpy ride and you know maybe that's always the way but there I know there's somebody um the head of the ultimate Lab at Barkley um in California says that lab meat will never work never because all of the difficulties involved in producing at scale all the possibilities of contamination um the impossibility of recreating the very functionality of the protein the way it operates animal protein operates so if he's saying it then um I think we should take note and so I think all of those things add up to okay I don't think we're going to have an easy replacement here with all these um other sources of meat so we're going to have to go back to the nutrition question again and say okay what is it worth to us to have that better nutrition we need some of these Foods in our diet and um I hope that that's where we'll be in in four five six years time when when this whole old meat thing is played out um which I hope it will I do too and I think I think a lot of people are becoming aware of this you know people like yourself you know are pointing this out like say hey we've been lied to we've been misled and and I think that that message is really resonating with people because people don't like to be fooled you know especially when they're when they're good intentions are taken advantage of you know you know it's always the story with con artists the most successful con artists are the ones who conned people who are a bit bit sleazy themselves and and they get them involved in cons that are like conning someone else like oh yeah we're gonna do this thing on it's going to be this back door sort of deal we're gonna get we have we have some inside information we're going to do this on something and it goes horribly wrong and someone dies like oh my God we got to get out of here and then they get out of there or they realize they've been calm but they're like you know what all right how do I go to the cops and tell them that we were going to try to you know Screw other someone else criminals don't go to the cops when they get robbed you know and so you know but you know honest people that are doing things for honest reasons and they're saying hey you know I'm trying to help the world I'm trying to help people and you know and and they have their good honest intentions are being corrupted and manipulated I think that really offends people and it really gets them upset and so uh you know I think I think that's going to Galvanize people as well you know when when a lot of these young people realize that they've been been taken in by this their health has suffered they're really really unwell and it's actually damaging the environment and it's really only profiting uh certain people and um and pushing you know an agenda for whatever reason I think that's gonna I think that's gonna bother people it's going it's grown quite dramatically when I came to Perth no one had heard of what I'm doing and I mean people thought I was out of my mind and I had to have that conversation where I would step wise people through this no no we're just talking about nutrition we'll get to that you know okay now we're talking about environment okay now we can talk about two three times a day easily every day every day and like for years like like two years and then more and more people you know were listening to that and they sort of like spread out and started making more copies and [Music] um a lot of them were vegetarian there was a big vegan vegetarian movement when I first got here I mean and just in Australia it was a huge huge plant-based movement and so you know that was that was a bit of a counter and so I a lot of the people I was talking to were vegetarians or vegan and I've got a 100 kill rate on them you know someone who actually engage and talk to me you know uh and uh you know even some of these people online if they'll actually engage and not not weasel around um you know I've gotten all of them and you know now you know a couple years even before I started my podcast I talked to people and they'd see what I'm eating if I'm at the hospital I've just got like 10 eggs and six strips of bacon and oh my God know you're trying to pack in the pro team well you know this is this is the only thing I eat so I need to eat a lot of it yes they're like oh you do you want a carnivore diet and though it's called by name and they're like oh yeah it's like well yeah I am and well you know my brother's doing that he's actually you know he feels really great doing that you know is that a good thing I was like yeah it works for me I do great yeah and so now people are doing that I've had patients recognize me like in the emergency department like go down like really right and you know and the neurosurge is very Niche right there's not that many people you know the reason is the reason for that because it's pretty damn difficult I would imagine and uh yeah and so you know it's um you get the not all that many patients need us and and but you know here's this person who has you know has this issue and all of a sudden we're talking about that issue and you know I'm admitting them into the hospital who's gonna you know get in for surgery and then so like I literally like just came back because I forgot one thing came back and you know grabbed something out of his chart and he just said hey um can I ask you a question I was like yeah I was like do you by any chance just only eat meat and I'm like yes like you know why why do you ask and he was just like you know I actually I actually follow you I've seen your podcasts and things like that so like you know this kid had recognized me and and then not like realized quite who I was and they was like I think that's I think that's him and so you know now you're getting you're getting people you know recognizing this and recognizing it by name um and uh and and so I think it is growing and I think that Grassroots movement which is the only way that's gonna gonna grow is there and so you know and now we're getting to the point where we're starting to get a bit more attention we're starting to get in the news like Daily Mail in the UK oh I saw that my goodness yeah yeah bizarre behaviors of this you know doctor only eats me hasn't eaten vegetables in years all these sorts of things and so you know was that what was what did Gandhi say first they ignore you then they laughed you then they attack you then you win so or maybe they tackling yeah yeah I think that's it and so you know they're definitely you know at the point of saying oh this is ridiculous like oh come on this is a joke because they were ignoring us before we weren't big enough to pay attention to now they have to pay attention to us and they're making fun and they're saying this is ridiculous this is just ugh this will go away so we're in there we're in phase two and um and so I think if we just keep moving forward and uh you know that that we'll we'll get there in the end yeah and yeah your podcast Nicole um of course you are in the home of uh well in a stronghold of The Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Australia too aren't you with um with the sanitarium and those links um I don't know if have you had um Belinda I I haven't but I plan to absolutely yeah he I think he should have both of them if you can but Linda tells a great story I think more people in Australia definitely need to know that because that that's where it it really you know has its strongest influence I think well you know which makes perfect sense with how strong the plant-based push is here and the vegan vegetarian which is here and the various Australian nutritionists who are just like no this is the only way this is the only way this is the only way and just everything coming out of their mouth is just pure propaganda it's like that's what they've been taught and it's it's fully understandable why they think that is because that's that's what they studied for a number of years and that's what they're being paid to say because the cereal manufacturers are you know sponsoring this and that and sponsoring the dietetics organization and you know how can you escape from that how can you escape so keep up the fight yeah well thank you very much and you too so yeah and and that well I I know you have to go thank you very much for your time it's been an absolute pleasure to see you again hopefully see you uh see much more of you in the future yeah maybe in a book club maybe next year's phc conference whatever yeah yeah absolutely and maybe both and so uh the book is called uh the great plant-based caused by Jane Buxton and I highly recommend this for everyone to read it is a very comprehensive uh look into the science and literature and and the robust arguments uh on why eating a plant-based diet is not what is cracked up to be Jane uh how do people get a hold of you and follow you and uh find your book uh book is on Amazon and some Brave bookstores you have to be we're brave enough to put it front and center in the window um and it's available in paperback now which is a lot easier for people it's half the price so that's good um on Twitter I'm just at Jane Reese Buxton I also have a website which is also Jane reecebuxton.com I'm not hugely active on Instagram but um I will engage with people who send me messages and want to be constructive and I've met some great people that way lovely okay well we'll put all the links for that in the description yeah not a problem and so people can find you there and uh hopefully we'll see you again soon Jane thank you so much thank you take care hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcasts and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you could share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys thank you