Transcript of this interview
I’m your host Chef AJ and this is where I introduce you to amazing people like you who are doing great
things in the world that I think you should know about well my guest today is coming to us live all the way from
Australia where it’s very early in the morning to talk to us about food systems and the environment he’s a registered
dietitian plant-based of course and his name is Dr Peter Johnson and please welcome him to the show thanks for
getting up early for us it’s a pleasure AJ I’m so lovely to see
you I’m very excited and honored to be on your show well thank you for reaching out because that’s the best way to get
on the show is to come and ask us that is fantastic well registered
Peters story
dietitians always get a lot of questions and we have so many that were sent in in advance but before we get to the questions I’d like to learn a little bit
about you when you became plant-based was it before or after you became a dietitian and tell us your story
I became plant-based um fully plant-based 31 years ago after reading
John Robbins amazing book diet for new America in 91.
1991 I’ve been vegetarian for 10 years before that um after meeting and living with a
vegetarian girlfriend and I thought it was the weirdest thing I’d never met a vegetarian before and we knew nothing
about the health or the environment or the ethics it was just the way she ate and we agreed to eat that way in our
Share House lunch with students flatting together in 81 and um
after about 12 months I gagged on a ham roll at University and couldn’t and said
I’m done no more fish meat chicken so that was 41 years ago and 10 years
later John Robin’s book pushed me off eggs and dairy and I’ve stuck to a 100
ever since and so grateful I did the only regret I have is I wish I’d started earlier I’ve been born and bred this way
yeah you may not need these reading glasses perhaps yeah that’s fantastic so you’re like a vegan
OG oh gee old gangster that’s just like a like like the OG like the Original
Old Gangster
Gangster it’s like you know like you’ve been doing it a long time in other words yeah and I really got into it when I
moved to San Francisco and there were actually a few vegans there and we had vegan neighbors upstairs who were doing
food not bombs and it was easier and more more Community there um but it was still weird like I
remember going to restaurants and cafes and people the way that staff didn’t know what vegan was their eyes would
glaze over and one person even asked me if I was a Trekkie that’s fine I think they mix it up for
Vulcan and you know it’s it’s different dates now there was not no vegan junk food then
when did you go to dietetic school I came back to Australia in 95 and with
Dietetic School
the express purpose of retraining because I’d been a human genetics engineer
and was cloning human genes and working in Montreal and that postdoc didn’t go
well um postdoctoral research Fellowship postdoc for short and I
was working out what to do with my life and I came back to Australia to do a masters in dietetics my mum was a
dietitian retired now I think she’s listening hi mum and uh
and uh studied the Masters in nutrition in 96 97.
so what did you say you were what was your profession before I didn’t I don’t I didn’t quite get with that I was a
Research Scientist
research scientist I did a doctorate in human genetics I was wanting to figure
out what causes aging I have something of a Peter Pan complex and I’m terrified of getting old
what does cause aging I wish we knew
oh boys that’s something did they teach you anything about a vegan or plant-based diet and dietetic school
Vegan Dietetics
no sadly they didn’t and the students I Mentor now tell me they still don’t
but I am doing much more time now speaking to medical students at conferences and events and in two weeks
I’m speaking to a class of dietitian students who are doing their master’s degrees
giving the same talk I’m giving today later with on food and environment but
I’m hoping that I can get into more of the dietetics classes too push the the plant-based message
nice nice but certainly it’s sadly it’s still not taught seemingly the students
don’t know this I’m not sure how where the lecturers are it’s it’s really not right and I want to really try to rock
that boat and make a change that’s great you how do you work with
Working with people
people is it just in groups in person did you ever work at a hospital setting
I did Hospital placements in my Master’s Degree and I hated them because it was
really Band-Aid stuff and you’re part of a big ecosystem without much freedom and flexibility or autonomy and and people
are already very sick um I was bored and frustrated doing that
but now I work in private practice and see people one to one but with my
wonderful colleagues Dr Malcolm Mackay who you’ve interviewed and his partner Jenny Cameron we we work with the
business Melbourne lifestyle medicine and do Retreats and webinars coaching
seminars we coordinate the plant-powered Melbourne pods
from Nelson Campbell’s work there’s one in Melbourne that we have lots of people who meet regularly for potluck dinners
um so we would also offer Workplace Health programs we’ve done some fabulous work in workplace settings helping
people switch to plant-based for just three weeks and and checking taking blood tests
before and after and we get incredible changes we we get any staff we want to
volunteer they to go 100 Whole Food plant-based for three weeks we blood test them
immediately before and after and we’ve got an average total cholesterol drop in three weeks of over 20 percent
LDL drops about the same we get an average weight loss in three weeks of three kilos
people get amazing changes in their well-being their sleep their pain drops
they have better focus at work so we’ve got a Malcolm Jenny and I are
looking to just have as many different approaches to helping people shift and learn more
about this as possible so far
Range of problems
range of problems and I really like that um I’d prefer not to be a specialist because I really like the variety I love
seeing expecting mums or new mothers with little infants and helping them set
a new new little human on a healthy path for life and and also you know less environmental
footprint I love seeing people who’ve who’ve got unwell and helping them to
which is sad but helping them to reverse their diseases in many cases I’ve seen help many people reverse their
type 2 diabetes rheumatoid arthritis get their cholesterol back into safe region
um aches and pains go you know gut problems settle I really enjoy the whole range of things
and sometimes when I get something new or different I really enjoy going to the books and the research and getting a lot
of new background on it before I see that person which extends my knowledge and keeps it interesting
so it’s it’s I love learning I’m constantly have my nose in books or
learning you know from new research and all the other plant-based experts around
the world so it’s never boring but it’s it’s as you know it’s so gratifying helping it’s really
life-changing work you mentioned that you’ve even had a few clients in the United States
Zoom
some from the us some from England one from Middle East um people from all around Australia
I’d see people face to face all by Zoom whatever suits them I mean face to face is lovely but we’ve all got used to zoom
over the pandemic and it works really well and I’ve seen amazing results with
people that I’ve never met face to face you know in in very long long way away
from me in different parts of Australia because as you know this is a very big country I’m curious if they don’t even discuss
Dietary School
vegan or plant-based diets in dietary school what what do they teach you uh look I don’t want to be too rude
about the courses but it’s it’s when I went through about 80 percent of
people worked and were destined to work in hospitals and so they prepare you for that taking
a a dietary record of what people eat the last 24 hours
um how to do that hospital dietetics some preparing some people for industry around learning about food safety and so
on but to to be honest I don’t really use much of what I did in my masters
I’ve I’ve been voraciously learning in those 20 plus years since and I
or nearly 30 years I just keep learning myself around this stuff and I was
already vegan when I went through dietetic school what was that like did you did you
The China Study
mention that you were or did you just keep your lip zipped no no I was quite open about it and I challenged the
lecturers from time to time because I was already a political activist so I was quite happy to rock the boat and and
have arguments with people and I was probably a bit annoying but
um I you know I remember raising The China Study with with lecturers and they
hadn’t heard of it um and so you know discussing why this was so important and people needed to
know about this this was back in in the mid 90s um
but it it there was one other vegan I think in my master’s class of about 30 people
wow but now Australia has lots of vegans and plant eaters don’t they
Vegans in Australia
we do um I’m hoping it’s reaching some kind of Tipping Point it’s it’s now so normal
that everyone knows what it is everyone has a vegan in the family um
the challenge I’m finding though is that I’m seeing more overweight and unwell vegans because they’re eating a lot of
vegan junk food and it’s everywhere like this the supermarkets and cafes are just
full of it and I’m helping vegans get healthy and opening their eyes to Whole
Food plant-based you know and cutting out the oil making their own food having less junk food
and there’s there’s not enough understanding of that yet I think that’s the next big Frontier
um and it’s like it’s like 31 years ago when I became a vegan you couldn’t eat out at restaurants or cafes I know there
was a millennium back then in San Francisco which was expensive but super Gourmet but otherwise you couldn’t eat
out but now it’s the same for Whole Food plant-based so the restaurants don’t get the no oil no salt
no refined grains but I think if we ask and we keep asking you know like vegan
meals it will happen the the businesses need to know that there’s a market for this so I really
encourage everyone I work with to keep asking politely every establishment ring them ahead of time
and say can you do a dish without oil I’m vegan it’s so hard for restaurants I
Vegan Restaurants
worked in one day they first of all they don’t get it like you like you said or they don’t get no sugar no oil no salt
because then they think it’s going to not taste good and you’re not going to want to pay for it I think yeah exactly but you can still make
fabulous food like at our Retreats we have a 900 hour qualified vegan Chef she’s from New York but she lives in
Melbourne now and she does fabulous catering and it has no oil very low salt
and and no refined sugar and the The Retreat participants love the food they
Rave about it we’ve even arranged with a couple of restaurants to do oil-free meals like an
Indian restaurant um and the guy was completely perplexed about our request but he he worked it
out and the people loved the food so it can be done where do you think
Olive Oil
this idea of olive oil as a health food came from because you know people whether they eat sugar or not I don’t
think anybody’s counting it as a health food you know they know it’s a highly processed food it’s it’s you know it’s
not it doesn’t really have nutrients it’s addictive but yet like people just think oil is amazing a lot of people not
people necessarily that watch this show but in the general population and even in the vegan world there’s vegan doctors
that think it’s Health promoting yeah I know it’s I think because the
Sciences the the industry is being smart and and demonstrating that it’s better than lard or better than butter which it
is but and people like good news about their
bad habits as you know and as I think Dr McDougall said that so
it’s people cling to it like a like a security blanket in a way that they’re
psychologically challenged When you mention it’s not healthy and you get quite strong reactions from
people and as you said no one disputes that white sugars are junk food but oil is in exactly the same situation but
worse in most ways because it’s more than twice as energy dense I’ve done some numbers and 20 grams of
olive oil which is we have larger tablespoons than you it’s about a large tablespoon in Australia
20 grams of olive oil is the same calories as two cups of blueberries or five to six cups of broccoli
now it’s an absolute no-brainer which is better for you like if you if you’re eating that 20
grams of olive oil you’re either displacing the blueberries or the broccoli or you’re overeating it’s one or the
other you know you add you add that extra fat and you don’t displace the berries or
the broccoli then you you over consuming your daily needs and you’ll get fat which most people are overweight or
you’re displacing more nutrient-dense foods like the blueberries or the broccoli or beans or potatoes which is
detrimental because it’s a lost opportunity to nourish ourselves more so it’s it’s really not that complicated
when you look at it you don’t need to go to the biochemistry you just or complicated research about about
vascular flow or inflammation it’s it’s just simply if you include that junk
food you’re pushing out foods that are more whole and more nutrient dense or you’re overeating
yeah absolutely is the obesity rate in Australia anywhere near the OBC rate in
Obesity
the United States we tend to follow your Trends very closely sadly
um so we’re pretty similar um which is very sad it’s heartbreaking we
the lot like America most Australian adults are
overweight and they have chronic disease um the last census data reported that
half of Australians reported having one or more chronic diseases and many of those people
won’t have no won’t the ones who didn’t report won’t know they have a chronic disease because they’ll have vascular
damage they might have pre-diabetes so there’s probably a lot more than than is
reported is the census started was people self-reported to these status so
when we’re not a world population sadly is the process food in Australia the
Processed Food
same as the American processed food or like do you have your own version of like Skittles and M M’s and things like
that we have some um America seems to have a lot more and
it’s when I am in the US and I go to somewhere like Walmart and I look at the
the process sugary junk Foods I’m gobsmacked at how in your face they are and omnipresent they are we have that
stuff around and it’s getting more prevalent and the businesses know that this stuff sells because people are deep
in the pleasure trap and they want the sugar they want the fat and the salt and highly super palatable food the refined
grains you know so it’s everywhere everywhere you go you fill up for petrol or gas as you call it
and there’s chocolate Slurpees chips Donuts you have Slurpees I could come to
Australia I haven’t had a Slurpee since July 6 2003 but that was my undoing work
that I mean what kind of grown-up during Slurpees for breakfast you know that’s really yeah
I know but this stuff is everywhere you turn it’s an obesogenic environment and people find it a real real challenge to
stay off that food oh yeah I that’s what I’ve been screaming from the rooftops for 10 years
Food Addiction
and a lot of people even in the vegan Community just don’t believe that for many people certain foods have an
addictive-like process and that’s why they can’t stop eating them exactly yeah
yeah is food addiction talked about it all in Australia by any a lot yeah heaps and I I actually see a lot of
people who acknowledged their food addicts and I’m getting more referrals from people I’ve helped who referring
other people it’s a huge problem and I think it’s a problem that’s under diagnosed and people don’t realize that
what they’re dealing with is food addiction um people are binging people are craving
these rich processed foods uh there’s a food addicts anonymous there are groups of that that meet to
support people so it is people are more aware of this um
and I help people with that you know introduce them to the pleasure track book and those Concepts and um
that you never I’ve never met anyone who’s addicted to broccoli or carrots it it they’re not addictive you know so
people can stick to those kind of foods they can they can break out of this cycle of addiction
yeah good to know good to know now you call your website perfect human
Perfect Human Food
food how come well I’m a I’m a Virgo I’m not really into
that astrology but I’m a bit of a perfectionist and um and I’m a perfectionist with my own
health because I don’t want to injure my body anymore and I want to prolong my my health span as much as I can
um and I think Whole Food plant-based is the perfect human diet so I assist people in that direction as
far as I want to go I’m realistic that that’s not for everybody but as you know in the audience will
know the more plants people can eat the better that so any to any extent they can
create out the processed food and the animal food with eating more plants then their health will improve so but
I will support them as far as they want to go all the way to what I would consider the perfect human diet which is
which is Whole Food plant-based nice I know you’ve prepared a
Presentation
presentation for us would you like we jump in on it or do
you want to do the questions first uh let’s do the presentation if that’s all right please I look forward to them
and see how we go the presentation my uh quite a few slides but I can speed it up
or slow it down as need be we’ve got all the time you need thank you
how does that look that looks perfect okay good so
Introduction
um so this is a talk about food systems and the environment and I must say
um very much in debt to Dr Richard oppenlander who you interviewed earlier this year I think
he’s a wonderful wonderful communicator and I love his work and it’s also drawn
on some of the work of um Julian crib an Australian author and
um science journalist who’s done some amazing work um but it’s sort of it’s a collection of
a whole range of challenges to our food system which are bearing down upon us and
I wanted to preface this by saying also this talk is quite grim we’re in an enormous trouble as a
species and ecologically and we’re going to have to really make some serious
changes if we’re going to avoid a catastrophic ending so on that note
[Music] um why is that so this is about me I’ve spent a lot of
About me
time at University um and studying a voracious learner basically avoiding getting a real job I
guess for a long time I’m and I’m the advisory Council of doctors for nutrition
Advisory Council of Doctors for Nutrition
which is an independent registered charity in Australia this is a photo
taken at our first conference in 2019 we have another conference coming up in
um next year in February which I’ll talk about in a sec so doctors for nutrition has an advisory council with doctors and
Dr Renee Thomas
dietitians from around Australia and some of the big names you can see in the bottom right from around the world
including Renee Thomas who’s Australian based in Loma Linda
um so this is a conference coming up in 29
Conference
2023 next February um the shares eyes are coming out to present
as well as Dr Alan Desmond and Dr Gemma Newman who I believe you know you’ve had on from the UK
Renee Thomas is coming out and Michael Greger and as Caldwell esselstom will be presenting virtually
so highly recommended this would be very exciting I’m presenting as well as well
as my colleagues Dr Malcolm Mackay and Jenny Cameron talking about our Retreats and our group programs
Summary
so summary of this talk um as I said we’re in really big trouble ecologically and as a species
ending ending all fossil fuel use won’t be enough to get us out of trouble The
Sciences very clear we have to also change our food system the good news is that from your next
meal you can help create change today or hopefully you already are if you’re not eating animal Foods
and I’ll explain how animal food is so destructive to the environment as the talk goes through
though also there are exciting industry initiatives now these are not really foods for vegans
um this is replica meats and so on which there’s good news on that front environmentally
so these are some of the Diabolical challenges facing us there’s a lot and
I’ll cover each of these briefly this is a very quick zipping over this talk I’ve
given this talk as an all-day lecture to master students and and that was six and a half hours so this is quite a
compressed version of the talk and a a sort of a executive summary because it’s it’s
there’s a lot to this each of these areas could be a a several hour talk
um so just touching on health quickly so this is the census data I mentioned from Australia so self-reported almost half
Health
of Australians have one or more chronic conditions and two-thirds of us are overweight and our health systems are
overburdened due to this chronic disease pandemic and the US is similar we know
from um um Centers for Disease Control Data in the U.S at half of All American adults
are diabetic or pre-diabetic this is a catastrophe we’re just sleepwalking into a modern
catastrophe so I won’t talk about health anymore this is just a quick part about health
so with the with the environment this is at the dawn of Agriculture about 10 000
Environment
years ago you can see that humans comprised about one percent of the total
mammal biomass and wild mammals were 99 of all mammals on the planet
so jump forward to 2015 and look at this livestock comprise 67
Mammals
humans have jumped to 32 and poor odd wild mammals have been squeezed down to
one and a half percent of biomass they’re disappearing this is heartbreaking
the same with bird populations 70 of all birds now are food animals for humans
chickens and other poultry wild birds are collapsing in numbers so
we’re actually in the sixth mass extinction so you can see the background
Mass Extinction
rate of Extinction at the bottom that dotted line and since the mid-18th century the rate of
Extinction of these categories of animals has started to Skyrocket way above the natural rate
and insects I’ll come to are becoming extinct at a much faster rate
again okay this has been caused by many factors so
Land Clearing
land clearing this is in Australia this is in one year 90 000 hectares of
koala habitat were logged and this is
put down to the beef industry so there’s a beef Farmers clearing land for more grazing
Tropical Forests
this is our Vital lungs of the Earth the tropical forests like the Amazonian
rainforest 11 million hectares of tree cover lost in 2021. just one year
this is still proceeding at at a crazy pace and with losing species that have
never even been described these are the lungs of the Earth this is heartbreaking
insect population numbers are collapsing I’m a bit creeped out by bugs but like
many people but we need them these are a vital part of our ecosystem and if you’re old enough to remember
driving through the country and nighttime or dusk 20 30 years ago your
windscreen would be covered in bugs you’d have to wipe it every couple of hours that doesn’t happen anymore we’ve
had a 70 collapse in insect population and and biomass since 1990. and this is
they’re predicting that insects could vanish within a century at the current rate of decline
and this insect Extinction rate is eight times faster than that of mammals birds and reptiles which I showed you in that
earlier chart so they’re Vanishing at a really fast rate and this is because of intensive
Pesticides
agriculture widespread pesticide use particularly the neo-nicotino nicotinoids which are
really devastating to Insects it’s really accelerated since these new pesticides
it’s also from land clearing lack of vegetation for insects to live
in and climate change and this insect biomass is falling by
two and a half percent per year now that might sound quite small but every decade that’s 25 percent
that’s it’s the biomass is dropping by a quarter every decade
Jonas Salk
this is a quote from Jonas Salk Jonas Salk who invented the polio vaccine see
he said if all the insects were to disappear from the earth within 50 years all life on Earth would end
and yet if all human beings disappeared from the earth within 50 years all forms of life would flourish
Ocean Dead Zones
moving on we’ve got ocean dead zones so huge areas of the ocean are suffocating
um due to being starved of oxygen and this is from effluent runoff from animal
farming fertilizer runoff warm oceans hold less oxygen
and algal blooms foreign the meat industry has been blamed for
these for the and including for this largest ever dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico
um through runoff from animal agriculture Visit our partners, – leaders in fashionable footwear!
we’re scientists are forecasting we could see a collapse of fisheries and potential fishless Oceans by mid-century
Whales
the estimates are that as many as 650 000 Wales dolphins and seals are killed
every year by fishing vessels now that might not sound a lot on a huge Planet but some context there are only
estimated only one and a half million whales left and only 10 to 25
000 blue whales and about 600 000 bottlenose dolphins such as the one in the picture
so losing 650 000 of these is a lot and that’s excuse
me every year from fishing vessels
moving on so zoonotic diseases these are diseases that are transferred from animals to humans like the SARS
Zoonotic Diseases
um the the um covered pandemic we’ve just been through this is a quote from a
professor where I did my doctorate at the Australian National University he was forecasting that we were overdue for
another pandemic which would make AIDS look like a picnic so these are
Epidemics
um from Dr greger’s work in his how to survive a pandemic book and his talk so
the first wave of epidemics we didn’t have epidemics until we
started domesticating animals and then we began to get these infectious diseases jumping from animals to humans
such as measles and smallpox we think whooping cough typhoid fever leprosy
[Music] pandemic influenza from Ducks common cold from horses
so it’s estimated that 75 or so of our infectious diseases have have come to us
through our unnatural proximity to animals through farming them the second wave of epidemics is the
Noncommunicable diseases
non-communicable diseases or the diseases of over consumption and we’re all very familiar with these they’re the
ones that kill our family members and Friends through over consumption and this began with the Industrial
Revolution and we’re very much still in the grip of this but we’re now in a
Third wave
third wave of epidemics which began in the mid 70s when we began expanding into
forestry areas larger to go logging in Africa and the Amazon and exposing us to
viruses and diseases we’d never encountered before so that this led to
Aids HIV from primates Ebola from primates SARS from the Civic
Fox West Nile virus from bird smuggling covert whether that was bats pangolins
we’re not sure monkey Pops from primates so as we intensify animal Agriculture
and have more feedlot farming and concentrated farming we’re just creating Petri dishes for the development of more
of these epidemics and in some sense covert’s been a lucky training run it had a fairly low mortality rate you know
maybe half a percent who if those who got it died but the next one might might kill five percent or ten percent or
twenty percent we don’t know we’re just rolling the dice on this and it’s it’s crazy
um there’ll be more pandemics coming down the Chute if we don’t change the way we farm animals
Inefficient animal farming
so at inefficiency of animal farming so this is from the amazing and Powerful
study from poor nemesic in 2018 so this was highly regarded and it was
praised for its um extraordinary thoroughness and it’s bottom-up approach they now have access
to agricultural data from all over the world and they estimated that 83 of all
Farmland is used for animal farming but produces only 18 of our calories
this is extraordinarily wasteful it’s insane when we’re struggling to feed the
world’s population and we’re encroaching on forests to produce more food
yet they estimated that if the whole world went vegan and stopped eating animal food we could put 76 of all
Farmland back to Wilderness what an amazing break that would be for our struggling planet to let all of that
land go back to Wilderness and be promote biodiversity and and more lungs
to clean the uh the atmosphere to take out carbon dioxide
so in terms of global warming food production is estimated to be responsible for about a third of all
Global warming
Global greenhouse gas emissions and of that meat production accounts for about 60 percent
so this is the elephant in the room that a lot of environmental organizations are still not talking about even though
we’ve had conspiracy available around the world that fabulous documentary for
quite a few years environment groups are still not looking at this as the as the enormous
contributor that it is and and my mission is really to get this message out far and wide that we need to talk
about food and in terms of meat production we’re not even slowing down
Meat production
I mean there’s still steady growth in meat consumption around the world and this is expected to cons continue
growing overcoming decades as the population increases and especially as the
developing countries want to westernize their diets
Greenhouse gas emissions
this is from our world and data so you can see that the greenhouse gas Footprints of different food types so
beef at the top is way way higher than the plant Foods
on the bottom section so animal foods are creating the Lion’s
Share of global greenhouse gas emissions eating plant Foods is a tiny contributor
to these gases so moving on to hunger and starvation so
Hunger and starvation
worldwide at least half of all the grain produced is fed directly to livestock and this is like a food factory in
Reverse you put in about 10 kilos of grain you get about one kilo of meat this is crazy
this is Medieval type farming and we don’t need to do this today this is just
a an a crazy inefficient way to feed the planet if all that grain were fed to humans we
could feed an extra three and a half billion people and as per earlier we could put 76 of
all the world Farmland back to Wilderness now of course we’d have to support those Farmers to transition and
we need to budget for that and we need to help retrain those people we needed to help with that transition of that
land and this is coming as I’ll mention later whether we like it or not the
animal Industries will become stranded assets um
and yet with all this extra food weight fed to animals 15 000 children under
five starved to death every day we’re letting we’re letting children
around the world starve and we’ve got enough food to feed them
Antibiotic overuse
moving on antibiotic resistance so approximately 80 of all antibiotic uses
for livestock which is incredibly wasteful of this precious resource it’s used
prophylactically to prevent disease it’s used as a growth promoter
and yet already around 23 000 people a year in the U.S die from resistant
bacteria because of overuse because the more you use these the more the ant the
bacteria develop antibiotic resistance we’re fast approaching a post-antibiotic
era which means that if you get a serious infection in one of your limbs
the only recourse to save your life will be to amputate that area we won’t have
these tools anymore if we keep over using them which is terrifying
Slaughterhouse workers
looking at the ethics of how we’re living and feeding um we’re essentially stealing the future
from our children and grandchildren and also in terms of the workers the
people we pay to do this this work killing animals we’re subjecting them to trauma and violence
this is this is a very nasty job and I’ve done this work I’ve worked in the slaughterhouses in New Zealand as a
summer job collecting blood when I worked for a biotech company back when I was a student and
I cannot erase those images from my brain that it was traumatic the the
smell the the sight of animals bleeding to death and kicking machines that rip
their faces off and dismembered the animals um this is a horrible business that
nobody should have to see or participate in um and we know that this work increases
the health problems and domestic violence amongst slaughterhouse workers
Numbers
just some numbers we Slaughter around 80 billion land animals a year for food
and this is just for almost 8 billion humans will be 8 billion in the next decade or so
um this is a large-scale suffering of these sentient beautiful gentle animals that
that we’re we’re killing needlessly and we’re we’re fishing out of the ocean
about two and a half trillion animals that also feel pain and ascentient beings
and and up to 40 of that fish caught globally is discarded because it’s so-called bycatch
uh we’re just hoovering the oceans dry industrial troll is a drag netting
across the oceans and and Hauling out everything in their path
Demand Constraints
food security now this is from the work of Julian crib and this is this is
really terrifying as well we’ve we’ve got demands and constraints so we’ve got about a million new humans born every
three days and they’re living longer lives we’re expecting we might be 10 billion people
by mid-century and as mentioned the developing nations
have got a growing demand for meat and other animal Foods so we may need to double the food supply
by 2060. and yet constraint wise we’re pumping
aquifers dry around the world including the large Ogallala aquifer in North America and the aquifers that Supply the
Indian food bowl in the Punjab those aquifers are dropping up you know meters
per year but they’re not they’re being drawn upon faster than they can replace naturally we’re pumping Rivers dry such
as the Colorado and the Australian Murray darling Basin these Rivers won’t
reach the ocean anymore unless we have regulations to hold back a small proportion of that water
and cities are relying on water supply from acquisition those aquifers are
dropping as well for drinking water um and some of that is backfilling with ocean water which is making it saltier
and less usable we’re also facing Peak land so
the Farmland through overuse is is some of it’s becoming desert we’re building over agricultural land As Cities expand
we’re facing peak oil as we’re we’re depleting this finite resource that’s
been pumped out of the ground Pig phosphorus so 70 of the world’s
phosphorus comes from Morocco and this is being used at a at a rate it’s not
being replaced then and we will run out of this fertilizer pink fish so the oceans as I mentioned
have been overfished in most of the world’s major Fisheries are in collapse
Pig pollinators so the collapse of insect populations mean that we’re running out of bees and other insects
which pollinate our food supply and there’s a drought in research and development and add to that global
warming is is decreasing the yields through flooding through through droughts we’ve just had major floods in
Melbourne and it’s going to put up the price of food because a lot of Farmland has been flooded and the crops have been
destroyed and in terms of those pollinators around 75 of our food depends on those
pollinators so this is a quote from Lester Brown
Peak Water Overpumping
who’s been working in this space for many decades um the real threat to our future is Peak water
over pumping means some Nations have reached Peak water and we’re seeing increasing Mega
droughts like in California when I moved to Australia I mean to Melbourne 20 years ago we were in a
decade-long mega drought and we had water rationing now we’ve just had massive floods our dams are all full I’m
expecting more rain and more flooding in the next week um Rivers as I said being over irrigated
from depleting aquifers increased flooding so this is a is a serious Challenge and
we’ll get worse is climate change gets worse we’re also losing topsoil no there’s
Top Soil
some debate about this but some scientists predict we might only have about 50 years left of topsoil
um because we lose top soil with every year of mono cropping it blows away it
washes away into streams it this top soil takes hundreds of thousands of years to build up and we’re depleting
this from the food bowl regions of the planet and this thin veneer of topsoil around the planet is what gives us life
on land and civilizations in the past where topsoilers lost has been gone has
been lost have collapsed so this is what we’re facing if we don’t look after the soil and develop more
regenerative agriculture which is free of pesticides and lets the soil build up
again so this is a graph of human population growth over the last 10 000 years and
Population Growth
you can see that for the first 10 000 years or so we use muscle power from
humans and animals and then around um the 1800s we developed fossil fuels
and this essentially reduced the negative feedback on our growth as a species and
enabled explosive population increases of humans around the world and so we’re
now pushing 8 billion people and that rate of growth is not sustainable
um in many ways with the damage we’re doing to the environment you can now describe Humanity as a plague
this is also illustrates that use of fossil fuel so
Fossil Fuels
this is our use of these is like this thin flame in a long dark night
um these fossil fuels are rapidly running out and we need to transition to sustainable energy sources
Boom and Bust Cycle
this is a generic graph of species that have a boom and bust cycle and this isn’t what we are likely doing as a
species ourselves as humans we’ve had this long boom phase and with all these
constraints on the environment we’re approaching a point where there’ll be
a crash in our species numbers if and we can if we’re smart and we coordinate this
collaboratively we can plan this and we can do it in an orderly way and reduce our population our demands on the
ecosystem or nature will force this on us um this is Dr Professor William Reese
Climate Crisis
from Canada who’s got some fabulous Talks on YouTube but he’s predicting the
climate crisis May wipe out six billion humans I’m sorry this talk is dark but we do we
do need to know this and we do need to make changes so we we actually pay for animal food
which is way too cheap three times we we pay at the checkout when we buy these
products we subsidize them heavily from our taxes which I’ll talk about more in the next
slide and we we pay for the cleanup costs to the environment these externality
externalities are not built into the price of the meat the meat and other animal products
the the farmers don’t pay for the health bills they don’t pay for the cleanup we do as taxpayers
so these taxes and subsidies is almost a trillion dollars in subsidies to
Taxes Subsidies
agriculture globally almost all of that to animal Agriculture and almost none of that for the
environment to clean up these externalities to to fix up the Damage Done by this this
agriculture and in terms of fossil fuel subsidies it’s almost 6 trillion us a year much of
that for agriculture in Australia we have um subsidies of diesel for Farmers which
is crazy you know these products should be taxed we should be subsidizing farmers who are
regenerating the soil producing healthier food and cheaper plant foods and we should have taxes on animal food
to capture these externalities of the environmental of that and the health damage like in the U.S your health costs
are coming up towards 20 of gross domestic product so 20 of All American expenditures on
fixing sick people this is this can be laid at the door of of Agriculture or animal agriculture
because most people are in hospital because of what they put in their mouth and it’s less so from tobacco and
alcohol it’s predominantly from the food so as mentioned at the beginning to if
Stop Global Warming
we want to stop global warming we have to change how we produce food this is from a research paper from the
science journal this year even if we could eliminate fossil fuel
emissions immediately this without changes to the food system we will not make
it’s not stop going past one degree one and a half degrees warming and we may
not even prevent two degrees warming and and if you understand the climate
science the two degrees warming is is pretty catastrophic for us as a species
we do not want to go there if we can help it and we’re we’re close to one and a half degrees already
so we we need major changes in food production methods and we need this
pretty urgently this is a huge study released in 2019
Lancet Commission 31
that eat Lancet commission 31 also experts from around the world
gather together to advise on the best diet for human health and environmental
health and this was their takeaway message food is the single strongest lever to optimize human and environmental
sustainability human health the single strongest lever
IPCC Report
this is from this year’s ipcc report so this is um the Baseline of xero is
the I don’t know if you can see my cursor here but this is the standard Australian or American diet so Mediterranean diets
better because it has more plant food but look how much better it is to have a fully plant-based diet
this is mitigation of greenhouse gases so hugely beneficial so this is this is
from world climate experts saying we need to shift towards more plant-based diets they’re starting to screamness
from the rooftops because they know the science and they can see the heavy footprint of
animal agriculture so this is going back to this study from poor nemesek I mentioned earlier so this
Poor Nemesek
was their takeout avoiding meat and dairies the single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth
and animal aquaculture is just so inefficient and wasteful we really need
to shift from this mode of production so really every time you spend any money you’re
Vote for the world you want
casting a vote for the kind of world you want it’s really important to think about that what kind of planet do you want for
your rest of your life and for your children your grandchildren we really each of us has to think about
that and and this is power we have you know we can’t change government policy or get laws made necessarily but we do
have power with our dollars we need to take that seriously what can you do well every time you have
Every time you have a meal
a meal you can have a delicious meal like this and leave out the animal food or a meal like this
or one like this or um given that we’re approaching
Thanksgiving and Christmas you can prepare the turkey differently
Preparing the turkey differently
we don’t have Thanksgiving in Australia but I’ll read this to you because I think this is delightful this guy
learning is a local cartoonist here and he’s he’s an absolute gem so how to
prepare the turkey approach the turkey calmly insteadily speak gently and frankly about your intentions
sit quietly and listen to the turkey you might hear something you hadn’t considered be prepared to alter your
plans don’t push the discussion too hard take a break and arrange a further meeting
perhaps in a small Cafe somewhere cheery and relaxed stroll together along a beach through a
park down a cobble Lane continue to talk and listen a strolling conversation is more real
has a special dignity as a poetic outcome sit side by side and watch the sunset
watch your stars come out travel together and tell each other of your dreams open up your hearts and take
comfort and being together you will not have Christmas dinner but so what you’ll have peace Divine
fellowship and most importantly a feathered friend how delightful is that
I love this cartoon so I send this to people here around Christmas time my patients and just to
say there’s another way to prepare the turkey you don’t have to support the slaughter of these gentle beautiful
creatures something else you can do I heard about this app recently this guy’s the
The Lentil Intervention
grandson of Charles Darwin he lives in Australia and I think
um and he was interviewed recently on a podcast a fabulous podcast by my friends called the lentil Intervention which I
highly recommend so this this app on your phone and they’ve done they’ve dug into the
research to get these stats so for example if you had two meat-free meals a week
this will do all these things Below in blue it’ll add to your lifespan it’ll take 10
cars off the road per year saves all these fish chickens helps with chronic
malnutrition save 600 bus loads of water three tennis courts of Marine reserve saved three tennis courts of forest this
is just two meat-free meals a week for a year so if you didn’t went fully plant-based and had 21 meat-free meals a
week you can multiply this by 10. so this lets you calculate as a
cumulative total the positive impact of avoiding animal of avoiding just meat
so this can be quite an incentivizing and rewarding
so moving on um I really like the work of this San Francisco Think Tank could rethink X
Food and Agriculture
their food and agriculture report from a couple of years ago says that we’re on the cusp of the fastest deepest most
consequential disruption of Agriculture and history now this is driven by business this is not reliant on
government policy on politicians seeing the light this is money this is business talking and this
will happen regardless of what government does because there are multi billions of dollars being invested in
Precision fermentation and alternative Meats like Beyond beef
um and impossible Foods um many different replica animal foods and again these are not for vegans we’re
not the target audience but this will switch people who immediators over to
these products because they’ll be as good as or better than and cheaper than and safer then because they won’t
have bacterial contamination and fecal contamination and this will undercut the um
foods from actual animals so they’re estimating these fermentation products will be cheaper than animal
Foods by 2030. they have a massively lower environmental footprint
like 95 99 lower so they’re estimating that by the end of
this decade animal agriculture will be bankrupt and these industries will be stranded
Assets Now again we have to we have to support Farmers that this is coming and
that they need to transition and we have to support them financially to retool and put their land back to Wilderness
many of them this will be heartbreaking there are generations of farmers and I feel for them but this is coming
regardless of government policy there are trillions of dollars being billions of dollars sorry being invested in this
around the world and this is already happening we can see this happening in Singapore they’ve
already legalized these foods and you can buy Precision fermented chicken products in
Singapore this is Boston Consulting Group this year saying plant-based meat is by the
Boston Consulting Group
far the best climate investment so non-animal proteins can play a
critical role in tackling the climate crisis and these are just some of the multi-billion dollar Investments
Protein Companies
happening around the world so meat Industries are now calling
themselves protein companies and and this focus on protein is kind of misguided because we know that a whole
food plant-based diet you cannot design it to be protein deficient even potatoes have more protein than we need but this
is still good these are not Foods I’ll be buying but they’re foods that will switch omnivores and meat eaters over to
these replica foods and will give the environment a break and the Animals a break so this is really a win-win
they’re not necessarily healthier but it’s going to save our planet
so that’s into my talk that was very depressing I’m sorry AJ
Labgrown Meat
and sorry to the audience but I think we need to know this I agree you know one of the viewers is
saying what do you think about lab meat lab-grown meat well I think it’s exciting that it’s
coming but I won’t be buying it like I stopped eating meat 41 years ago
I find it disgusting and revolting and I look away when I go past the butchers and I hold my nose
and but it’s great if it’s there available for meat eaters and it’s cheaper and it switches them off food
from a real animal I’m really excited yeah and I’m not the customer and I’m sure you aren’t AJ either well I
didn’t like meat in the first place so it wasn’t hard for me to give it up but I’m thinking that all the ill effects of
meat would still be in lab meat would that not be correct oh yes yeah it won’t be good for the health I mean you’re not
likely to get salmonella poisoning or or other bacterial contamination because
it’s it’s cleaner um but it certainly won’t be animal protein we know is inflammatory it’s not
good for the kidneys it promotes cancer the saturated fats the cholesterol are
not going to help anyone but if they’re not eating food from a real animal that’s still a big win for the planet no
you know and I agree I mean because it’s it’s definitely even though there might be one cell from you know one animal
it’s still going to be a lot more Humane I believe yes yeah they can take a biopsy of like
a sesame seed size and they can use that indefinitely so no more animals need to suffer
ing for that reason and also will help the environment too won’t it huge yeah
it’s a massive win for the animals and the environment but it’s it’s not healthy but it’ll be there that’s okay
because the people the people that are eating it probably aren’t eating it for health right so oh no no they’re eating
it because it’s trendy it’s new it’s cheaper it’s more available the foods from actual animals will become a
boutique Niche product and increasingly forced out of the market wow you you know I I understand why people love
processed food because let’s be honest it’s delicious I mean I I mean you know it’s not good for you but I was addicted
to it for years but I never understood the animal products because you need plants to make them taste good like like
very few people really eat raw meat very I don’t know anybody you know you could say Okay sushi but even then they’re
putting it with you know soy sauce and vinegar and rice and and vegetables and I just I don’t understand the obsession
with animal products in this country cheese I get because if it’s addictive but I don’t understand why people really
believe they need it and then why I just I never I just it just was so gross to me but you know um Elizabeth agreed with
me that this is depressing you know sorry I know I know people we need to we
need to to hear it though so but I don’t think people want to hear it though because you know they you know
they don’t want uh bad bad news about their bad habits they want good news
about their bad habits the good news is that industry you’re going to solve this for us either way towards the end of
this decade that things are shifting but also you can make a change and help the environment with every meal you eat so
you you as a consumer and a person who eats you do have quite a lot of power and you can keep doing good work to to
be a lighthouse to inspire those around you and and help others make the change and
be the healthy person that people want to know why you’re so healthy and bring your beautiful food plant-based food to
work and have your friends around for beautiful plant-based meals you can still Inspire the change that we all
want to see yeah help with these Ripple effects spreading through the community so
we do have some power Jenny says so great to see and hear you Dr Peter wonderful presentation
I I Elizabeth says we are doomed well maybe you know Rex says this man is a hero
um yeah devastating news we must do what we can
first don’t eat animal products I mean you think people would get the message that all these diseases like you know
mad cow and pandemics I don’t get why people are so reticent to change even
with the information well even environmental groups don’t want to know like I’ve reached out to a
local environment group and they didn’t reply to my email I said I’ve got a talk on food and environment and I think it
would be useful for your group and um there’s they’ve been going for quite
a while 15 years and there’s nothing about food on all of their blogs on the website and I I said well this is
something important to consider and and this is common with environment groups it’s not in the media as a major
problem we get lots of environment news in our media in Australia you know climate change and biospecies
biodiversity loss Etc but food’s not it’s the elephant in the room it’s not discussed as a major corporate
and and this is I think it’s partly money because these are these are
multi-billion dollar Industries how their their powerful advertisers and the mainstream media don’t want to alienate
them I don’t mean to make it sound like a conspiracy but there’s not much money to be made in
telling people to eat more broccoli and carrots and go for a walk every day
yeah so let me read this comment here Josh says
one time I went to Chipotle and they asked if I wanted protein instead of meat restaurants feel like that if you
don’t have like like if it’s if you’re on a total then you’re you know they don’t understand like beans have protein
grains have vegetables have protein this obsession with protein
I know it drives me nuts I deal with this every day with people and I
I keep having to explain to people you know even human breast milk is only five percent of its calories from protein
that’s when we’re growing our fastest now even even white rice has more protein than that potatoes have more
protein than five percent grown human adults don’t need more protein than a baby who’s breastfeeding
you know this it’s it’s it’s it’s the most overhyped nutrient ever and and no doctor in Australia or America will see
any patient who’s protein deficient unless they’re not eating unless they’re anorexic but you just don’t see it and
most people don’t even know that the medical term for protein deficiency because it’s so rare
it’s it’s called kashiorkor and it’s you know seen in countries where there’s famine but you know we have cardiac
Wards in the hospitals we have bariatric Wards we have maternity Wards we have cancer Wards we don’t have any protein
deficiency warts in the hospital it’s it’s complete nonsense and these
people going on about protein they’ve almost certainly never met anybody who’s protein deficient it’s this this hype
you know so I I spent a lot of time having to explain that to people
um they will get there I’m patient I’m stubborn I’m an activist
well good luck and I appreciate what you do do you think you have time for a few questions and just like registered
dietitian type stuff from the viewers that sent them in in advance of course and and as per the doctors
it’s not medical advice I can I can give generic answers but I’m
I shouldn’t be giving advice to a person when I don’t know their situation and haven’t met them and and you know these
things are contextual but general questions like I’m happy to answer if I can okay how about this I’ll read it to
you and you can either say hey I can’t answer that you need a consult or ask your doctor or something like that how’s that okay okay
um here is a question from Gene I’m an aspiring vegan senior with severe
osteoporosis despite daily calcium magnesium and vitamin D the pizzorno book healthy bones healthy body cells
algae Cal is the safest most effective form of calcium that includes other nutrients it also states that minerals
like phosphorus Boron strontium iodine magnesium as well as vitamin D and K and omega-3 fatty acids are required to
potentiate the calcium any suggestions so maybe you could just talk about not not her case but you know like the the
minerals and stuff that we need for help and and if you’re eating a whole food
plant-based diet you’ll get all those minerals and by and vitamins and nutrients that you need the only one you
won’t get on a whole food plant-based diet is B12 and and that’s an artifact of model
living because it’s made by bacteria and we clean our food and we treat our water and we’re not eating contaminated food
and water anymore gurlers get it from puddles and streams and unwashed food so other than that
we’re very unlikely to get any of these deficiencies if we eat a range of whole plant Foods in colder climates you might
need some vitamin D in the winter um so Whole Food plant-based eating
gives you all of those Trace elements like Boron and magnesium and other things
and we get our calcium from beans and greens particularly but from Whole plants you know gorillas get it from
Plants elephants get it from plants so do giraffes and hippos and these other
huge Shrine animals a bull you know huge strong ball gets its muscles from eating
grass and it’s strong bones so that the major determinant for bone
strengths in in US is weight-bearing exercise we’re too sedentary in the modern world I’m at a standing desk as
we speak I have been the whole talk I’m not sitting down because I prefer to stand and make my bones do some work
with bones and muscles it’s really a case of use it or lose it
if you don’t use them they shrink and we know this from astronauts who are up in orbit and zero gravity their bone shrink
or long stay hospital patients their bones will shrink because bones are in a
constant state of flux with the osteoblasts building them up and osteoclasts breaking them down
and the body’s smart it’s going to figure out if we’re not loading these bones we don’t need such big bones we’ll
shrink them a bit and if they’re getting lots of work every day the body’s going to go we need stronger bones and they’ll
get thicker so you really have to work the bones and if you’re a senior like anyone over 50
even you should really be lifting weights at the gym which I do I did a hard routine last night and I go
to yoga one day I go to the gym the next and I’m still doing handstands at 64. so
you’ve got to look after your body otherwise it won’t look after you and that means sitting less
if you’re watching telly you know get a an exercise bike or a rowing machine and or do some weights while you’re watching
your favorite program it doesn’t cost much to get a set of dumbbells go for a walk every day stand
more get a standing desk at work these things are important for bone strength but you won’t be calcium
deficient if you eat a whole food plant-based diet amen thank you
here’s one about a low residue diet and it says despite a high fiber High plant
protein mostly SOS free diet I’ve remained very constipated and Bloated my
new Kaiser GI doctor recommended I switched to a low residue high calorie and high protein diet I mourn the loss
of my raw veggie salads loaded with crucifers and whole grains what is a low residue diet
meaning less fiber less fiber I’m guessing um I definitely wouldn’t support that and I
would say Seek the support of someone like Dr will Balsa which who has
described people can be constipated and it can take some time to unblock that even if you have a high fiber diet
the the bowel motility is based mainly on four things fiber content which
should be high hydration so as Dr B says you need a river to float a log
um I like I love his communication style he’s such a funny guy um you need movement so we need to be
moving through the day to help the peristalsis of the gut that’s the squeezing muscle of the gut muscles that
move things through and if you’ve got high stress that can block you up as well so there could be a number of things at
play and it’s worth trying to optimize all those four things so fiber hydration
movement and stress and seeing if that sorts it out otherwise you may need to see a good gastrointestinal enterologist
um or a plant-based dietitian but I certainly wouldn’t recommend a switch back to low fiber energy dense animal
Foods um that’s going to have other much more severe negative consequences over the
medium and longer term yeah so uh Roseanne says wonderful
presentation so thank you Dr Johnson and yes you can share this presentation right now it’s on YouTube as we speak
you can share in real time and I know the doctor will be isn’t doing you know private consults but he recommends
another wonderful plant-based GI doctor who can work with anyone virtually her name is Dr Vanessa Mendes
yeah and there are more of them um Dr Alan Desmond in the UK so we’re
starting to see more Specialists and medical practitioners who understand this science and can help people with
these particular problems and get you back on the healthy track no no here’s something I hear quite a
bit any advice for someone with serious sensitivities to onion and garlic
because they’re used to flavor a lot of our whole food plant-based recipes yes
um Dr B just had a really good um workshop on food intolerances and
I help people with this quite a bit as well um I’d recommend Dr B’s course it was
reasonably priced it was like just under 100 us and fabulous Resources with it
but basically you may want to do an Elimination Diet where you take these
things out and you introduce them teaspoon at a time to get your gut
um microbiota reuse to those kind of fibers and um oligosaccharides and and the
different things that may be giving you some grief it it in rare cases you may have an actual
allergy which is a different thing and and testing can see if you’re making ige
but it’s most likely an intolerance because you you may have an impaired
microbiome where you don’t have the microbes that can digest those particular oligosaccharides and products
in the alliums but it is a challenging thing to leave out of food because it’s so commonly
used um although at the retreat center we’re using they they have an indian-based
meditation group that runs the center and they require that we didn’t use any onion or garlic
in our catering for our week-long Retreats and our vegan Chef Julia gruskin who’s amazing
and would be a good guest for you Chef AJ um and who is she Julia gruskin she’s
a vegan qualified chef and she ran a cat cafe in America the first Cat Cafe
Cat Cafe that’s incredible yeah she’s a cat a cat Nutter very she bought four
cats out to Australia when she moved here with quarantine and everything but um
where was I have lost my train of thought um yeah we weren’t able to use onions or
garlic in our catering at these Retreats and Julius rolled with this and made food that’s still fabulous and people
didn’t notice the difference because that’s fantastic to it I think that’s one of the hardest things to make
things taste good without an onion so I would love to have her show us how to do that yeah we didn’t miss it and people
could didn’t notice there was no onion or garlic because this is the the people who run the retreat center they required
we didn’t use any that’s part of their belief system so yeah
that’s fantastic what is the number one reason people seek out your help
oh the most common one would be weight loss but then cardiovascular disease Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes GI problems but weight loss is the main one
yeah that’s a big one we get more people overweight now than ever before and more
that you know like what is it 70 something like that yeah it’s pretty close to that
that’s a real epidemic isn’t it it is a big epidemic it’s it’s heartbreaking because people don’t know what they
don’t know and they’re sleepwalking to health disasters and and the
these health issues are lagging consequences of their previous behaviors over many decades
and and so there’s because it’s not a close connection between the burger you
eat one day and the heart disease two three decades later people don’t don’t realize this I see
people eating out and what what they’re eating and I look at their trolleys surreptitiously at the supermarket and
my heart breaks I just really want to help people like that but you you can’t
just barge in and say you shouldn’t buy that and they need to be ready to listen and and
have some curiosity and you can’t tell people how to eat
no I know what you mean like you call it a trolley we call it a shopping cart but you could almost guess the weight of the
person by looking in the cart before you see the person it’s incredible I know and and seeing kids being given these
Foods it’s really makes me so sad you know the processed meats that are fed to children they should have warning labels
on them like cigarettes yes that is a great idea canister should
have a warning label yeah but given the wealth Health Organization has said nobody should eat processed Meats the
these because they’re proven to cause cancer they should have the warning levels the same as cigarettes really
nobody should eat anything when the word process is in the sentence processed
food processed meat yeah I mean we use a little bit of soy milk and coffee yeah
but I mean well yes but I mean when it’s soy milk has basically soybeans and water in it but yeah maybe you find
would be a better word so Jenny is saying are you able to help people with
celiacs disease yes I’ve helped many celiacs it’s a it’s a serious condition and it
needs to be taken incredibly seriously if you have celiac disease you have to be extremely stringent stringent about
zero gluten in your diet um every tiny bit will damage you so
it’s important to get it right um and once you have it it seems like
there’s no turning back it’s there’s no fix for it or cure but you can still
live really well without gluten but it’s important to have really good knowledge
about being strict and making sure there’s zero gluten intake is the damage
can be cumulative absolutely here’s a nice comment I’m
seeing from Debbie this is a hard message to hear but thank you for the awareness
thanks Debbie yeah it is a hard message and I do apologize that it’s quite
um grim but it’s not too late like things are pretty
dire but we we need to realize how serious this is and change and and I think there’s as I’ve
said already this is the elephant in the room it’s just not being discussed people are not aware of
of how bad things are and what’s causing it which is largely animal agriculture you know we of course we need to get rid
of fossil fuels um but we also need to change how we produce food
and how we eat it correct yeah if people want to get in
touch with you or do you have any presence on social media or how can they get more of you Dr Johnson
I’m on I’m not much of a social media user I’m on Facebook um I’m at my website perfect
humanfood.com or Melbourne lifestylemedson.com
I think those will be in your show Notes One Day AJ yes I put everything in the show notes
um I’m on Facebook um and Linkedin um but I recently read a terrifying book
called the chaos machine um he was the author was interviewed by
Rich Roll and it’s a deep dive into the harms of social media oh my gosh
see again the name of the book it sounds like something I have to read I don’t care for it but like you know if you’re
not on it you you know you Publishers drop you these days this in this day and age yeah it’s called the chaos machine
and I actually consumed it by audible I listened to a lot of books now while I’m at the gym and while I’m
I’m walking did you did you like the book do you recommend it oh it’s fabulous
um but it’s scary the authors Max Fisher thank you for listening sorry and you
can find him on the Rich Roll podcast about a month or two ago and it was a really good interview so I went straight
out and downloaded the book it’s a if you’ve seen the social Dilemma on Netflix yes I did like that very much
and I actually interviewed Dr Anna Lemke and I and her book dopamine Nation so is
it does it have the Dark Side of social media basically yes yeah yeah
um it’s important to know though I think people should know this as well and especially for their kids because it’s
as the the social dilemma showed it such a leading cause of depression and suicide amongst younger people and it’s
it’s causing Slaughter like in Myanmar you know that was Facebook driven
and the conflicts the polarization in the US between the Republicans and the
Democrats like this is an unbridgeable divide almost now and could lead to Civil War and social media is fueling
this so well thank you I mean not think again you really are the bearer of bad news
bad news books but I I apprec you know what I’m saying I appreciate it but you know like Susan says thank you Dr
Johnson for presenting these issues it can’t all be happy fun tasty presentations we need to be adults and
be realistic but uh what other audible books do you recommend because I have three credits and I just can’t decide
what to get um I’m blightedly listening to healthy
eating healthy World by Morris and Stanfield Hicks oh wait I’ve read that one though I I have read that yeah
really good yeah he’s been on the show he’s wonderful um of Colin Campbell’s books I love Dr T
Colin Campbell so listen to those on Audible again after reading them um I’ve listened to China study on
Audible but I haven’t listened to whole on Audible and of course like I can’t highly recommend enough the pleasure
trap which has a terrific narrator yep that’s I love that one that is such a that is I think that is the book that
explains why we’re doing all this stuff that’s harming the planet because we
because of the pleasure trap because if there wasn’t some benefit people wouldn’t do it yeah and I I think even
though that book’s almost 20 years old I still think that’s probably the most important health and well-being book I’ve ever read yeah I’m sure Dr Lyle and
goldhammer would appreciate you saying that and I will tell them Debbie says what do you like to do for fun
I do yoga I do windsurfing I speed sail so I compete in speed sailing we sail up to
80 kilometers an hour in gale force winds with helmets and padded vests is
kind of crazy but they’re like really Daredevil aren’t you it’s quite exhilarating yeah sort of half half pure
fear and half adrenaline and excitement well you do not look 64. I can tell you
thank you nor do you yeah but you’re not you’re only 50. I’m only 61 and a half but thank you very much don’t make me
any older than they are so last question every guest gets in on the show what do you eat in a day
um it’s early morning here it’s just what is it nine o’clock so I’m about to go and have some steamed kale with
nutritional yeast and balsamic vinegar for my breakfast I haven’t had breakfast yet then I’ll have a huge bowl of
porridge with berries for lunch it’ll be potatoes with a pea
sauce and some steamed broccoli and baked cauliflower
um we have lots of different food Mexican food Asian food Japanese pancakes economiyaki
buffalo wings with cauliflower and broccoli um we eat fabulously sounds delicious and I
love that you eat your vegetables you eat your greens first of course that’s great well this is such a
pleasure Doug hearing well the presentation wasn’t the greatest pleasure but getting to know you was because it just it is depressing and
it’s it’s you sometimes you feel like there’s because those of us that are doing this or you know like what more I can’t be
any more vegan you know what I’m saying I can get the information out but I find that when I do animal rights or
environment on this show people don’t want to hear as much as they want the recipes and the medical stuff but
that’s you know you gotta you have to be aware of what’s going on guys
well it’s something to feel good about if you’re a plant-based that you’re actually contributing enormously to a
lighter footprint on the earth into the change that we need to see so you can pat yourself on the back
yeah Elizabeth saying she’ll share the presentation and that really helps so basically eat the change you want to see
in the world yes yes yes that’s great well thank you so much Dr Johnson this
was really helpful a pleasure thank you for the opportunity and thank you to the audience and um
keep doing the fabulous work AJ I sure will thanks and thanks all of you
for watching another episode of Chef AJ live please come back tomorrow when my guest is the fabulous Melissa Sherlock
she’s been on the show before and you’ve asked for her to come
