John Mackey On Conscious Capitalism, Building An Empire & The Power of Plants To Heal and Thrive

Creating a huge business is one thing. Building it on principles of conscious awareness? Another thing altogether. This week I sit down with John Mackey, the father of conscious capitalism and the unlikely entrepreneur behind a $16 billion grocery behemoth that ushered in a global organic food movement and permanently changed the way we eat, live and think about business. The Bill Gates of organic food, John is the original, current and sole CEO of Whole Foods Markets, which he founded in 1980 and has parented to Fortune 500 status, employing over 90,000 people across 450+ stores in the United States, Canada and the UK. A strong believer in free market principles, Mackey is the co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism Movement and co-authored the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-seller Conscious Capitalism, which encourages business grounded in principles of ethical consciousness. Consistent with this ethos, John has birthed a myriad of philanthropic efforts, including the Whole Planet Foundation to help end poverty in developing nations, the Local Producer Loan Program to help local food producers expand their businesses, The Global Animal Partnership’s rating scale for humane farm animal treatment, and the Health Starts Here initiative to promote health and wellness. Mackey has been recognized as Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Overall Winner for the United States, Institutional Investor’s Best CEO in America, Barron’s World’s Best CEO, MarketWatch’s CEO of the Year, FORTUNE’s Businessperson of the Year, and Esquire’s Most Inspiring CEO. Aligning his actions with his values, John embraces an extremely grounded lifestyle in stark contrast to his means. This is a guy who in 2006 cut his annual pay to $1, donates all his stock options to charity, walks to work, cooks his own meals and meditates daily. A vegan for many years, John recently released The Whole Foods Diet*. Co-authored by Alona Pulde and Matthew Lederman of Forks Over Knives, it's a powerful primer that unequivocally establishes a whole foods, plant-based diet as the optimum protocol for health, disease prevention and longevity based on the huge body of science, research, and advice that is available today. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  If you look at the pie chart of what Americans eat, it's very disturbing. The standard American diet is 54% highly-processed, refined foods. A lot of sugar, a lot of white flour, a lot of oil. And that makes up 54% of our calories. Then you've got 32% are animal foods. And again, most of those animal foods are also coming out of a highly-industrialized system where the fat has been exaggerated, where the animals grow artificially quicker than they would in more natural conditions. And then, that leaves only 14% for whole, plant foods. And if you were gonna design a diet to kill people, well, you couldn't design a better system than that.

• 1:45Rich Roll?

  That's John Mackey, and this, well, this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:03Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. How you guys doing? What's going on? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to the podcast, the show where each week I bring you the best and the brightest, the most paradigm-breaking minds across all categories of health, fitness, diet, nutrition, entertainment, athletics, business, entrepreneurship. And I bring you all of these amazing people and personalities with one goal in mind, to help you self-actualize, to help you manifest your best, most authentic self. Did I mention I have John Mackey on the podcast today? John is the founder and CEO of Whole Foods Markets. He's got a new book out. It's called, not surprisingly, The Whole Foods Diet. So that's all very exciting, and that's coming to you in a couple minutes. But hey.

• 2:53Rich Roll?

  All right. John Mackey. John is one super interesting guy. In many ways, a very unlikely entrepreneur with a lot of compelling and often unexpected or counterintuitive ideas, ideas different than you might surmise or presume just based on his bio or his accomplishments. But for those that don't know, John is the original, the current, and the sole CEO of Whole Foods Markets, which he founded in 1980, and has parented all the way up to a $16 billion Fortune 500 endeavor that employs about 90,000 people, I think, across

• 3:33Rich Roll?

  over 450 stores in the US, Canada, and the UK. And in many ways, I think it's fair to say that Whole Foods Markets has played a huge role in the wellness explosion. It was really the first market to, in a big way, usher in the healthy, organic food movement. And that's something that we get into in the podcast. Mackey has also focused on building and promoting a more conscious way of doing business. And he's created a number of organizations to that end, organizations that Are structured to help end poverty in developing nations that help local food producers, expand their businesses, and promote humane farm animal treatment.

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  John has been recognized as Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year, overall winner for the United States, Institutional Investors Best CEO in America, Barron's World's Best CEO, Market Watch's CEO of the Year, Fortune's Businessperson of the Year, and Esquire's Most Inspiring CEO. John is also a guy who is a strong believer in free market principles. He co-founded the Conscious Capitalism Movement and also co-authored a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book entitled Conscious Capitalism, which is all about encouraging a way of doing business that is grounded in ethical consciousness. And this is another thing that we talk about in the podcast.

• 4:56Rich Roll?

  One thing I think a lot of people don't know about John is that in 2006, he cut his pay to just $1 a year and donates all of his stock options to charity. This is a guy who walks to work, basically lives a very grounded, minimal lifestyle, at least in comparison to how this guy could be rolling. He's a vegan for many years, and he's got a new book out called The Whole Foods Diet, and it's a great book. It's a book he co-authored with Alana Pulde and Matthew Lederman. You might know them from Forks Over Knives. And it's a book that basically, in very simple terms, lays out the case based on the huge body of science and research and advice that is available today, that a whole foods,

• 5:40Rich Roll?

  plant-based diet is the optimum diet for health and longevity. So this is a great conversation. It's a conversation about the state of the food industry. It's about fad diets. It's about health in America, the impact of the standard American diet and food addictions and our toxic food culture on the impact of our health and our environment. It's about John's ethical compunction to educate people about how to prevent lifestyle and dietary diseases. It's also about puritism versus pragmatism, how John balances his personal commitment to living a plant-based lifestyle against his fiduciary duties managing this gigantic $16 billion enterprise. We talk about entrepreneurship. We talk about conscious capitalism.

• 6:25Rich Roll?

  We talk about chasing your passion. But mostly, this is a conversation about the incredible power of adopting a plant-based lifestyle and the impact that that can have on disease prevention and reversal and longevity. I should point out, one thing we don't go into in this conversation is this battle that John is currently mired in to save his company. If you've been following the news lately, you may know that a couple powerful hedge funds have recently taken large positions in the company in Whole Foods Market, and they're pushing John to sell it, to sell it to like an Albertsons or an Amazon. And that's something that John does not want

• 7:07Rich Roll?

  to do, I can tell you that. And he really didn't want to get into the details of that. He's under a tremendous amount of pressure right now and at the time of this conversation. And because of this, this conversation is a little bit more truncated than my normal fare. Frankly, I'm surprised and grateful that he made the time at all to talk to me, given everything that he's enduring, that he's going through at the moment. In any event, I really love connecting with John. I knew that we were going to get along great. And this conversation validates that. It's packed with great takeaways and a lot of great information. I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. So with that said, let's talk to John, shall we? Let's do it.

• 7:49Rich Roll?

  John, so great to finally meet you and be sitting here with you today to talk about our shared passion for healthy lifestyle and diet and nutrition and all good things.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  The feeling's mutual, Rich. You're one of my heroes. What an honor it is to meet up with you.

• 8:05Rich Roll?

  I think you're the hero in the room here. What you've built and what you've created and the legacy of Whole Foods Markets is going to stand the test of time. And it's a tribute to your vision and your passion around the things that we're going to get into today. So I commend you for that.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Thank you. Of course, every founder wants to, you know, it looks like every parent wants their children to live on. I certainly hope Whole Foods... Lives on past its, one of its co-founders.

• 8:32Rich Roll?

  I think it's going to. Well, I thought a good place to kind of launch into, you know, talking about the new book and, and just your philosophy on life, et cetera, is to kind of note that we were both part of an email chain that circulated over the last couple of days that was initiated by our mutual friend, Garth Davis, who was sort of lamenting how in this age of alternative facts, there is so much misinformation that is getting spread across the internet through, you know, sort of well orchestrated campaigns to confuse people and obfuscate the truth around healthy diet and lifestyle. And I

• 9:13Rich Roll?

  think in particular, this sort of high fat, you know, high protein sort of craze that's going around that seems to have caught fire with people and is resonating with them as a counterpoint to, you know, the philosophy around food and lifestyle that we share.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very disturbing. I think there's many reasons why it's occurring. I mean, for one thing, you have powerful economic interests who, who don't want to see their businesses shrink. So they fund various studies that are kind of doctored up and they, they would just want people to be confused because if people are confused about diet, healthy diet, then they'll just throw up their hands and say, I can't figure it out. So I just eat what I want to eat.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  Right. That is our product.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And that's exactly what they want the conclusion to be. So there is the vested interest, but then there's also the fact that, I mean, if you look at the pie chart of what Americans eat, it's very disturbing. The standard American diet is, is 54% highly processed refined foods. A lot of sugar, a lot of white flour, a lot of, a lot of oil. And that makes up 54% of our calories. Then you've got 32% that are, that are animal foods. And again, most of those animal foods are also coming out of a highly industrialized system where the fat has been exaggerated, where, where the animals grow artificially quicker than they would in more natural conditions. And then you've got, that leaves only 14%

• 10:50Speaker 01

  for whole plant foods. And that's, that's, if you were going to design a diet to kill people. Well, you couldn't design a better system than that. So, people have these serious food addictions, and it's easy for people to sell books that tell people that what they're actually want to eat is really good for them. Or, as we point out in the book, many people be willing to sacrifice sugar if they can eat all the cheese, butter, steak, fried chicken, that they want to. A lot of people will make that exchange. So, there's no lack of people who want to believe that message, because that's the way they want to eat.

• 11:32Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So, what's your, you know, what's your take on this cadre of doctors who are out there, who are advocating this high-fat approach to diet, or this sort of ketosis diet, as a means of not just weight loss, but, you know, really promulgating health, and, and, and, and as a disease prevention mechanism? I mean, you see a lot of this out there right now.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Well, there's no science behind it. I mean, it's, it's, it's, there's just no science behind it. Yeah, you can lose weight on a short-term basis if you, you know, the argument is that if you stop eating carbohydrates, then your body's going to burn fat, and that's going to be, you're going to change your system from, to a ketosis, and you're going to be burning fat. But, studies show that those are not more effective in weight loss than, I mean, calories in, calories out. And one of the myths of the whole low-carb movement is, is that, well, it's not calories in and calories out. That in fact, if you eat fat calories, you don't, you can eat more of them and not gain weight. And the

• 12:40Speaker 01

  evidence for that is, is, is just not there, except for some trumped-up studies which compare refined carbohydrates against fats, and, and argue that, that fats are better than refined carbohydrates, but... There's no evidence whatsoever that eating a super high-fat diet full of animal foods is a healthier diet than eating a plant-based, whole foods diet based on healthy starches and whole grains and beans and fruits and vegetables. There's just zero evidence for that.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  I think there's a lot of confusion also over this vilification of carbohydrates and what sugar is, specifically conflating, you know, conflating fruits and vegetables with refined sugars and essentially saying that they're one in the same. Whether you're eating fruit or you're drinking a Pepsi, sugar is sugar.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, again, I think they make, they make sugar into the scapegoat nutrient. And I, but I never want to defend sugar because I don't think refined carbohydrates are good for people. I think what people do is, that they're more guilty of is throwing out all the healthy starches. In the paleo movement, you don't eat any grains, you don't eat any beans, and those, and you don't, and you, they might be allowed to eat a little bit of starchy vegetables, you know, like sweet potatoes, but no whole grains, no beans, and those are like super healthy foods associated in all the blue zones, for example, with longevity and long life. So, that's bad. And, yes, I, most of these people think fruits

• 14:17Speaker 01

  and vegetables are okay, or vegetables are okay. They're not so sure about fruit because it has sugar in it. Again, the scientific evidence indicates that fruit is extraordinarily healthy. It has so many antioxidants, it has so many phytonutrients in it that it's one of the healthiest foods we can eat.

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  Right. So, let's talk about the book. There's a lot of diet books out there, and there's a lot of, you know, plant-centric or plant-based books out there as well. So, what motivated you to speak your mind in this space?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Well, this is kind of a bucket list book for me, Rich, because...

• 14:58Speaker 01

  I mean, imagine that you know, and you do know, so I don't think you have to do a whole lot of imagining. I'm asking you questions I already know the answer to, but go ahead. But imagine, for the listener, that you know there's a health crisis in America. I mean, seventy-one percent of adults are overweight, seventy-one percent. It's almost three out of four. And thirty-eight percent are obese. People are dying from lifestyle diseases, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer. These are primarily lifestyle and dietary diseases. And imagine that you know the solution to it. Eighty percent of the dollars we spend on healthcare, which threatens to bankrupt our

• 15:38Speaker 01

  nation over the long term, come from these preventable lifestyle dietary diseases. So, you know the solution. You know how to help people. How can you, it's an ethical compunction. I had to speak up, I had to finally, you know, I mean, I had to say what I know to be true. And I, I will reach people that the other books don't reach. I have a, some I'll be preaching to the choir that already knows it, but there'll be other people. I mean, our team members at Whole Foods Market, for example, the customers that shop in our stores, the people I, I come across in my many wanderings around the world in corporate America. So, I have a, you know, I have a reasonably big platform.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  So, I just thought, I need to get this message out. And I don't think I, we don't really claim, you know, myself and the co-authors, Matt Letterman and Alon Polde of Forks Over Knives fame, that we've really done anything particularly original. But what we have done is we've created a synthesis, and there's too much squabbling in the Whole Foods plant-based movement. Too much squabbling about how much starches you should eat, whether nuts and seeds are good for you, whether or not fruit should be minimized, and it's a bunch of little quibbly stuff.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And when the pattern is clear, eat real food, mostly plants. And that... If that's, if you follow those two rules, you're gonna, most of these health problems are gonna disappear.

• 17:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  So, one other thing worth mentioning here that inspired me to write the book, we have a program in Whole Foods, Market Rich, we call the Total Health Immersion. So, we take our sickest team members, those who are obese, those who have type 2 diabetes, those who have heart disease, those who have just terrible biometrics, you know, high, really high cholesterol and blood pressure. And at the expense of the company, we will pay for them to go to a medically supervised Total Health Immersion. We do four a year with doctors that are, we write about in the book and are well-known in our, in our movement. Dr. McDougal, Dr. Furman, Dr. Esselstyn, and Dr. Stoll. We work with those four doctors. And we sent now over 4,000 team members through that program.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  $4,000 a pop, so I think that's like $16 million if you've invested in this program to improve the health of our people.

• 18:05Rich Roll?

  And Rip Esselstyn is pretty involved in that as well. I just ran into Adam Sud too, who now I know is on staff with that as well, right?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, Adam's on staff with, works with Rip, but he also is on our, we have a medical center here that's, that's a, for primary healthcare for our, for our team members. So, I have seen so many people heal themselves quickly. My own health journey's been a long one, and I've had these various stages in it, but I never, my health never got that bad, and it's gotten super good now, but I had to, I had to keep learning. But when people go through a Total Health Immersion, and they come in and they're sick, and they're obese, and they're diabetic, and they're on, you know, six different kind of medications, and they can lose, go off the type, they can cure their type 2 diabetes

• 18:58Speaker 01

  in just a few weeks, when in a, in a year, they can lose 100 pounds, when they get their life back, and autoimmune diseases begin to disappear. When I travel around to our stores, every store I go into, I have people come up and hug me and thank me for saving their lives, or saving the lives of their husband, giving their mother back to their children. It's deeply gratifying. And so it's like, well, look, I know this works. How can I not spread the word? I just feel an ethical obligation to do so.

• 19:30Rich Roll?

  I think the book does a really good job of kind of comprehensively canvassing, you know, every aspect of how to do this, and makes it really facile and simple to understand. I mean, you hit all the beats. You talk about heart disease, you talk about diabetes, you talk about, you know, the various sort of, you know, less appealing diets that seem to be in vogue right now, and you share the pros and you share the cons. But you really lay it out in a pretty elementary way that I think anybody who looks at this book can totally understand where you're coming from. And then you've got the 28-day plan at the back where you can just, this is how you do it.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the books, I am proud of the book. I think, I think we, the book, it reads very well, meaning it has a good cadence to it, a good flow to it. It's not difficult to read. It's, I think, completely grounded in science. We didn't want to go beyond the science, or what we thought the science currently says today. It's the kind of book where frankly, if you read the book, you'll know more than 99% of the other people out there about healthy eating. And also, we attempt to clear up many of the misconceptions out there. Things like, what about the paleo diet? What about low carb? What about, you know, what about sugar? What about, what kind of supplements should you take? And we go also deeply, because we know how difficult it is for people to transition diet, we also

• 20:54Speaker 01

  have a few chapters on basically how to make the transition. The importance of dealing with, you know, the great book that Doug Lyle and Alan Goldhammer wrote, The Pleasure Trap, which is, it's important that people understand those basic concepts, because until you do, you're, you have food addictions, and you don't know what to do about them.

• 21:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's a blind spot, I think, for a lot of people, addressing the psychology behind all of this. Because you can, you can be, you can receive all of the information, but if you're not, you know, mentally in a place to be able to manage the transition for yourself, it's unlikely to stick.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  It's really true, and also, we live in such a toxic food culture that we're surrounded by fast foods. If you go out to eat, you're gonna get a huge dose generally of fat and oil and sugar and salt. I mean, that's, that makes the restaurant where I go by, or a big slab of, you know, of animal protein, which people also crave. Here's one of the insights that, I don't think it's unique to our book, but I don't see talked about very much, is, and the paleo people really try to make a big deal out of the way people evolved eating. And, well, I just don't think they get their facts right. So, for

• 22:15Speaker 01

  most of our history, for hundreds of thousands of years, I mean, if you even go back beyond to our, to our nearest primate cousins, say the chimpanzees and, and the bonobos and the gorillas, I mean, the chimpanzees and bonobos are ninety-five percent plant-based. They do eat a little bit of animal foods, but they're definitely plant-based. The gorillas are about a hundred percent plant-based. And, by the way, those are very strong animals.

• 22:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  I don't wanna mess with the gorilla or a chimpanzee, they're like three or four times stronger than a, a strong man. So, what humans were up against for most of evolutionary history was not getting enough to eat. Starvation was always the issue. And they weren't able to preserve food for very long periods of time. And, the risk of not running out of food was very important. So, we evolved in such a way to crave calorie density. When we can get concentrated sources of calories, we pretty much like it. Our, we like things that are sweet, and that's, that's calorie density. We like, we like, it's animal foods, because they're a concentrated source of protein and usually a concentrated source

• 23:23Speaker 01

  of calories. Of course, the animals we eat today, that have been fed full of corn and soybeans and a lot of marbling and fat and with artificial growth stimulants is far cry from the kind of meat that people might have eaten. Hundreds of thousands of years ago. And but back then, it was probably so rare that they were able to get any animal foods. That's made a big deal out of hunters and gatherers. It's really gatherers, gatherers, gatherers, gatherers, and an occasional hunt. Because they just didn't score that much animal food.

• 23:56Rich Roll?

  And also, the amount of energy expended to track an animal and kill it is a, you know, that's sort of, that was the luxury, right? Not the norm. The norm was eating readily accessible plants.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Which I have no doubt that our paleo ancestors were experts on plants. They knew every plant that was out there. What was nutrient? What you could use for herbs for healing? Which ones were toxic and poisoning could kill you? And they were like, if you take an expert herbalist today, they're probably a shadow of what pretty much every paleolithic human being knew. They just knew the plant environment they were living in. So, we crave calorie density, Rich. And that's what we get hooked on. So, we like things that are super calorie dense. And that's the hardest thing for people to make that shift. Because we strip down our plant foods to take out the fiber.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  And fiber's like one of the most healthy things in the plant food. It feeds our microbiome. It's essential. It scrubs our bowels and moves food through. And yet, people avoid or don't like high fiber foods. They want the stripped down carbohydrate, the stripped down fat. So, we get addicted to those things. And it's very difficult for people to make the shift.

• 25:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that The paleo diet, from my perspective, sort of observing it from the sidelines, has been bastardized in the sense that it's now, the animal component of it has been overemphasized, and from what I think was the original conception behind it. Because I thought you did a really good job of saying, "Listen, there's a lot of good things about this, too." Like, if you're eating a standard American diet and you adopt a paleo diet, like, that's great. You're moving in the right direction. Maybe you're not all the way there yet, but in the Venn diagram of plant-based and paleo, there's a lot of overlap and there's a lot to like. And I feel like that, that kind of tone is a theme throughout the book, where you're

• 26:09Rich Roll?

  trying to say, "Listen, let's look at the commonalities." I mean, you spoke about the quibbling, you know, amongst the various subcultures within the plant-based community, which I think is problematic, but you're trying to sort of cast a wide net here. And I think behind that also was this, you know, conscious decision that you made to not make this strictly 100% plant-based, but to allow, you know, sort of some flexibility around, you know, 10% of your calories coming from animal products. And as somebody who's a longtime plant-based person like yourself, that had to be, you know, a decision that you had to think through quite a bit before including it in the book.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Well, we did. Of course, all three authors are 100% plant-based, we're all vegans. And, but we, we're not, we just don't think the science shows that 100% is better than 95%, or 92%, or 90%. We do know that past a certain point, consumption of animal foods, your risk for heart disease and cancer begins to go up, and the more you eat, the more it goes up. On the other hand, there's absolutely no evidence. I mean, all the longest-lived peoples, you asked Dan Buettner, and we did his meta-analysis of diet and the blue zones, you know, you've got the five blue zones. You've got Okinawa, you've got Schrodini, Italy, you've got Ikaria, Greece, you've got Nicoya, Costa Rica, and you've got Loma Linda, California.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  All of them were plant-based, about ninety percent. They all ate about, on average, the meta-analysis showed about ten percent of calories from animal foods. And by the way, they were eating real foods, not highly-processed packaged foods. And so, we just didn't think the science was really clear. And if you think about it, I mean, the whole idea of being a vegan, and I'm an ethical vegan, we actually write about it in chapter thirteen, and I write about it from my own personal perspective. But, in the entire history of, it was only, the word came into, it was invented in like nineteen forty-four. If you look at the historical vegetarians, most of them were like lacto vegetarians. They consumed

• 28:12Speaker 01

  a little bit of dairy products. And, so the whole vegan movement is kind of an historically new thing, and I support it, and I'm part of it. It's, yeah, but it's a giant experiment, because, and it's a giant ethical experiment. I mean, we know, for example, that we, there's no evidence that we ever had that there's ever been a vegan tribe, or a vegan culture, or a vegan civilization, and we just don't find that in the record. We find mostly omnivorous plant-eaters who eat a little bit of animal foods. And then, when you think about the fact that, uh, people just, uh, they just, so many people just don't want to identify

• 28:57Speaker 01

  as being a vegan. That, that, that, they don't want that label, and they don't want to belong to that subculture. And so, we think the science does not show that a hundred percent's better than ninety-five percent, or ninety-two percent, or ninety percent. So, we wanted to stick to the science. It's not like a cop-out. We weren't just trying to make the book more popular. It's generally what we believe.

• 29:20Rich Roll?

  What is your, your own evolution into this lifestyle is pretty interesting. I mean, you've had, like you said, you've had phases with this, but, you know, when did you, when did you become totally vegan, and what were the circumstances around that? I know it was initiated by an animal rights activist that you ended up in an email engagement with.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the story is, and it's about fourteen years for me now, as a vegan, and... It started in two thousand and three when I engaged, we had a annual meeting for Whole Foods Market and we had animal activists show up and they were very upset about the ducks we were selling. They were arguing these were very cruelly treated ducks and they were factory farm ducks and that Whole Foods Market shouldn't be selling them. Of course, I wasn't happy they showed up. They disrupted our annual meeting. You know, they were, I thought it was inappropriate behavior. But I did begin engaging in conversation with one of the activists, an activist named Lauren O'Nealius. And she was very passionate.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  She was about like five feet tall or four ten or something, very small woman but very, you know, very powerful.

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  Firecracker.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  A firecracker, exactly. And we talked that day and we swapped email addresses. We continued our discussion via email. And after a month or so, we were both getting a little bit frustrated. And then I remember Lauren saying, she said, you know, Mr. Mackey, I never could get her to call me John at that time. Mr. Mackey, I can see that you're actually a pretty idealistic guy and you really have good intentions. But when it comes to animal and the way animals are raised for food in America and around the world, you really aren't very well informed. You don't know what you're talking about. And I was a little bit taken aback. But I thought about it. I thought, you know what, she's kind of right. Because I'm getting a lot of my opinions just from other people at Whole Foods Market

• 31:13Speaker 01

  who are, and I don't know from my own firsthand study of it. So I took it on as a challenge. And that's summer, the summer of two thousand and three, or like in June, or May or June, I began to read. I read, over a two or three month period, I read about a dozen books on, on the way we raise animals in America and livestock production. And I was like, by the time I got to about the third or fourth book, I was like, oh, my God, she's right. She's right.

• 31:43Rich Roll?

  Were you like, I should have known this before.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  I know. I was so, I was embarrassed and I was a bit ashamed that I didn't know this. And then, but then I made this decision. I said, you know what, I just, I'm not going to eat animals anymore. I'm not going to eat any animal foods at all. And I've been a vegetarian for many years, a kind of a lacto-ovo vegetarian. And then I became a pescatarian. And I just, you know, I just said, that's it, not going to eat anymore. And for a little while. We have chickens out at our farm and I ate the eggs because these chickens were free range chickens and we'd never slaughtered them. They just lived unnatural lives. So I thought these were really ethical eggs. But I only ate them for about a year and it was

• 32:28Speaker 01

  like, I got so tired of talking to the media who was fascinated that I was a vegan and then they'd always ask me about the eggs. And I'd always have to go and explain about these eggs. And it was like, I don't want to explain this anymore. I'm just not going to eat eggs anymore. So I stopped eating the eggs. I haven't had any eggs since and never have missed them. And so anyway, that's kind of the story and I also wanted Whole Foods to step up and do more for creating a higher standard of if we're gonna, if people are gonna eat animals for food, we can do a lot better job of the way those animals are raised.

• 33:02Rich Roll?

  Right. So how did that translate into policies that you've put into effect over the years?

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Well, we've done a lot of things. I mean, we took care of the most egregious stuff first, you know, we were the first company to go a hundred percent cage free. We did that, I don't know, fourteen or fifteen years ago. And we were the first company, I think, we banned foie gras, for example. We, the only veal we would sell in our stores was veal that we absolutely knew was not tethered and also was not denied irons to make the, you know, they're denied, those veal calves are denied iron so that their meat will be sort of this white meat. And we, so we, those were the first things that we did. And then

• 33:48Speaker 01

  we began to work on creating a standards of animal welfare. We brought in, we did very collaboratively, we brought in the activists like Lauren and HSUS and PETA. We brought in animal scientists. We brought in the farmers and the ranchers who are raising the animals and we had a Whole Foods market team there. And then we went through a process about how could we create a system that is more humane, that's better for the animals. And what we realized is that, one of the things we realized about something like organic or fair trade is that it's an absolute system. You either get certified or you don't. But then...

• 34:33Speaker 01

  We were thinking that there are these different stages in welfare. And that it's hard if you set up, if you don't set the standard up high enough. And people will just do the minimum required to get the rating. And you'll end up not setting the bar high enough so that some people can, more people can play. So what we did is we said, you know what? We're going to just create, we're going to do a rating system and going all the way up to the highest standard of rating for each of these animals. Which almost always involves not having any type of mutilation of the animal at all, like branding, or castration, or, or beak trimming, or any of that stuff. And, but also no transportation. You have to do on-farm slaughter.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And, and there's, there's hundreds of other protocols involved in it. But I'm proud of that system. We get attacked by many of the animal rights groups because they think we're, we're keeping people from becoming vegans. I see it exactly the opposite. Once you wake people's consciousness up, people will go on a journey and they'll begin to eat more, higher welfare, animal welfare products. And eventually they'll, they'll move completely away from it at all. That's, that's, I've seen that happen. I've seen that happen over and over and over again.

• 35:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum for you, being an ethical vegan, and, and yet being the CEO of this, what is it, $16 billion operation with 90,000 employees and market, how many markets are there now?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  About 465, I think.

• 36:10Rich Roll?

  Three, three countries. And, and also being the face of conscious capitalism and what that means. And trying to align your own, you know, actions with your core values. And you, you know, you did that with your diet and you've done that with, you, since 2006, I think, you have only taken a dollar in salary and you donate your stock options to charity foundations. And yet also being in charge of this operation that, you know, is an ongoing capitalistic concern that is serving, you know, millions of people in these markets all over the world. So how do you think about how that makes sense for you?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  You know, it's a good question. And, and to me, it's, it's not a problem. Other people are much more troubled by it than I am. I guess because... I understand, I'm in business, and maybe the best way I can explain it is, the very first store that I did before I did Whole Foods Market was called Safer Way. And it's about less than half a mile of where we're sitting right now, having this conversation. And it was an old house, and on the first floor, we had a store, a natural food store. The second floor, we had a vegetarian restaurant. And the third floor was an office, and Renee and I lived up there as well. So Safer Way was incredibly pure. We didn't, it was vegetarian, we did sell eggs and milk, but again, I never heard of

• 37:37Speaker 01

  vegan back in 1978. And we didn't sell sugar, we didn't sell white flour, we didn't sell coffee, we didn't sell caffeine, we didn't sell alcohol. It was very, very high standard of food. And this is back, you're, how old are you at this point? Like, started it when I was 25. Uh huh. Long-haired, hippie, with socialist tendencies at the time. Yep. Yeah. And here's the thing, Safer Way was very pure and very idealistic, and it did very little business. It's because we were not selling the food that people really wanted to buy. And the art of business is, how do you put forth high standards? How do you put forth your values and your ideals?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And yet, do it in such a way that it's gonna appeal to enough people to have a viable business. If you don't have any standards at all, then I don't think you are fulfilling your sort of ethical possibilities. But on the other hand, if you have too many, then you won't be able to have a successful business. So the art of Whole Foods Market has always been straddling those two. And we get, some people are mad at us because they think our standards aren't high enough, and other people hate us because we won't sell their Coke, or their, the products that they really want us to buy and have to go buy at another store. So we don't sell anything with artificial ingredients, flavorings, colorings, or, for

• 39:05Speaker 01

  example. Now that's, a lot of people are trying to copy that, but we were like, you know, decades ahead of any conventional supermarket. And that's, that's my answer. My answer is, is that...

• 39:19Speaker 01

  I can try to educate people. I can put myself out as an example. I can write a book like The Whole Foods Diet, but I can't compel people to make different choices than they want to make. And if I tried to do so, well, actually, I'd be removed as the CEO if all of a sudden I said, you know, just selling any kind of animal foods is wrong. We're just, I'm sending out, I'm a CEO, beginning next Monday, we're not going to sell any animal foods. So get them out of your stores, do a big closeout sale if you want to, or just throw them away, but we're done with it. This is a wrong thing to do. Can't exploit animals.

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  Be ousted.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Of course. You know what would happen first, Rich? Is nobody, everybody thinks, look, is it April 1st? You know, this must be a joke. And then I would say, no, actually, I'm very serious about this. I've really, it's troubled me for years, and I'm just going to do something about it now. So you gotta do it. If you don't do it, I'm going to fire you.

• 40:08Rich Roll?

  I think it brings up a broader conversation around advocacy in general. And, you know, when you look at, if you, if you look specifically at the animal rights movement, you know, there's a spectrum of philosophies around how to, you know, effectively communicate that message. You know, on the one hand, you have people like Gary Francion, who are abolitionists and think that any concession whatsoever is, is moving you in the wrong direction. And then you have, you know, more of a placating approach of just trying to entice people into thinking about things more broadly. And there's a psychology at play there that I think it's tricky in terms of how do you effectively communicate to the largest audience possible?

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  And I think it brings it back to that email chain that, you know, we started this conversation about, like, how do you, like, when you look at, I sort of think of it like this. If you look at the paleo movement or the low carb movement, it's almost like the Republican Party. They have their talking points, they're on message, they don't waver. And the plant-based community is more like the Democrats, where they're arguing amongst themselves about quibbling, like we talked about earlier. And I think that ultimately undermines the movement's ability to really reach consensus with the average human being.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think Republicans squabble, and I also think paleo people squabble. So, because I've been part of lots of movements. Yeah, I'm part of the, I'm part of the vegan movement, I'm part of the plant-based movement. I'm also part of the animal movement. I'm on the board of the Humane Just side of the United States. I've been part of a freedom movement. I've been part of the organic movement. And so I've been part of lots of social change movements. And they all have the same thing in common. There's a polarity or a dynamic between what we could call the purist and the pragmatist. The purist, and they're both necessary. So once you see the dialectical play, you'll see they're both important. The purists want and hold the movement to the very highest standards.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  They want it to be perfect. And if it's not perfect, they will attack and criticize those who they see as sort of heretics, those who are not on the true path. Because all the movements have elements of religious movements to them. And then there's the pragmatist, who says, "Well, that's great, but you're not going to get anything done, because you're easy to be perfect on a mountaintop. But if you want to be amongst the marketplace with people, you have to meet people where you find them. So if you set, if you become too judgmental and you are too idealistic, then you're just going to turn everybody off." Yeah, you're alienating everybody. So both are necessary. Both are important.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, you need the people to hold the line, right? Exactly. You do need, and you also need people that can get things done. And every movement needs it, and they need the dialectic, and it's in every movement I've ever been in. There's those that are purists and those are the pragmatists. You know, I do, I'm a very, I consider myself extremely idealistic. But at the end of the day, I'm about accomplishing things. Uh huh. I'm a doer. I'm a change agent. I'm a pragmatist. Almost all my best friends in every movement are also pragmatists, and much like myself. And we're always attacked by the purists. All I'm, I, when I routinely speak now, and I go out in public, I'm frequently attacked

• 43:41Speaker 01

  by animal rights people who are upset that Whole Foods Market has these animal welfare standards. Arguably, Whole Foods is doing more to help animals than any of these animal activist groups are, in terms of lessening pain and improving the quality of life of these animals. And yet, they're not attacking the factory farm supermarkets, the ones that are from HEB to Kroger to Safeway to everybody else, or Trader Joe's for that matter. Instead, they're attacking the one company that's trying to make it better.

• 44:13Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Because we're seen as a heretic. As a founder, Peter told me, he says, "You're keeping people from becoming vegans, and that's unacceptable." And I said, "I'm not keeping anybody from becoming a vegan. I'm trying to lessen animal suffering here by raising the standard of the way these animals are raised. I'm trying to create a race to the top." And no, they can't see that. They just see some people rationalizing, "Well, you know, I'm gonna just eat humanly-raised beef, and that's okay." And they blame that on me.

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Right, 'cause the idea behind that is, if somebody's doing that, then they're less likely to go plant-based, 'cause they feel better about that choice.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:55Rich Roll?

  They're sort of, their head hits the pillow at night, and they feel like they're being a good person.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, and again, any movement needs people holding it to a high standard, and so I understand where they're coming from. But I am a pragmatist, and can I have my head hit the pillow every night, knowing that I could've lessened the pain? I mean, Whole Foods Market's standards literally make it better for hundreds of millions of animals a year. Is it a perfect system? No, it's far from perfect. But it's the perfect scenery, the good. It does make things better for hundreds of millions of animals. The whole world's not gonna convert to becoming vegans today, tomorrow, next week, next year, or even ten years, probably even a hundred years from now, unless we can grow meat.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  And it looks like that may be something we can do. I'm pretty excited about those entrepreneurial initiatives.

• 45:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I sat down with Bruce Friedrich about a month ago. We had an amazing conversation about what's happening, you know, in technology and food innovation.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Bruce is a good friend, and he's an ally, he's a pragmatist idealist like myself. We actually go out and we've debated about the ethics and health of eating animal foods at, and won at both Harvard and Stanford, and had great fun at both places. And I've made donations to Bruce's work personally because I think it's such important work and he's introduced me to some of the entrepreneurs behind those organizations like Memphis Meats for example.

• 46:26Rich Roll?

  Right, Uma Valetti.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a brilliant guy and I'm very excited about it. I mean, I'm not going to eat that stuff myself, but if we could raise meat that had no pain and suffering in death, I'm all for it.

• 46:41Rich Roll?

  It's crazy times.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  I'm still for it.

• 46:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, right? Well, let's talk about conscious capitalism a little bit, if you can indulge me. I think it's a term that's, you know, is now, now sort of gets bandied about without perhaps a true understanding of what you really mean by that. So, you know, tell me how you define that.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Well, first I can tell you how it's commonly defined and then I'll contrast it with how I define it. So, I think the common view of what conscious capitalism means, it either means like socially responsible business, or it means doing well by doing good. So, it's not that those are, you know, it's not that those are like wrong so much as they're incomplete. They're just a more limited meaning of it.

• 47:39Rich Roll?

  That's more like social entrepreneurship.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, what we mean by it and what we write about in the book is that we identify four basic tenets of conscious capitalism. The first tenet is, every business has the potential for a higher purpose beyond just trying to make money. And if you think about, if you ask people, if you go to a cocktail party or go to a party and you just randomly ask people, "What's the purpose of business?" They'll give you a quizzical look and they'll say, "What do you mean with the purpose of business?" Everybody knows the purpose of business. The purpose of business is to make money.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  That's such an odd answer. Because he asked what the purpose of a doctor is. Doctors are extremely well-paid. They're, they're, they, they make a ton of money. And, but nobody says, oh, everybody knows the purpose of a doctor is to make money. Or a teacher. Teacher educates. Engineers construct things. Architects design buildings. Every one of the professions refers back to some type of social purpose, some type of value creation for other people. And business is arguably the greatest value creator in the world. It creates value for its customers, for its employees, for its suppliers, for its investors, and for the communities that it's part of. And yet, business is put in this narrow box that it only cares about money.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  And it's like a bunch of sociopaths running around, just trying to rape, pillage, exploit, and, uh, they're evil. And so, well, so we think business has a higher purpose, and, and besides making money. And you just have to be conscious of it. So, I mean, it's clear to me Whole Foods Market's always had a higher purpose. We are, have always been about helping people to eat more healthy. We've always been about creating more sustainable agriculture. We've always been about a special place to work that allows humans to reach their highest potential. We've always had a higher purpose from the very beginning. Uh, second pillar is, there's more stakeholders than just, uh, just the investors. There, that the business should be creating value, not just for the investors in the

• 49:42Speaker 01

  business, but for the customers, and its employees, and the suppliers, and, uh, the community, communities it's a part of, and it should be doing it to minimize its environmental impact, in the context of all those stakeholders. So, once you get stakeholders, then you never look at business quite the same again. And frankly, Whole Foods Market's being attacked by activists, who argue that Whole Foods Market's not creating enough value for its shareholders over the last few years, and therefore, the company should be sold. And it's like...

• 50:17Speaker 01

  That's not what we're about. Yes, we want to make money for our investors, but we're much more than that. But they're not interested in anything more than that. They're like what I would call a Lord of the Rings ring wraiths, if you know the books. These were people that were consumed by the ring of power. And I meet these people that are consumed by their lust for money. All they care about is money. And no matter how much they have, it's not enough. And Whole Foods is so much more than that. We're not just a corporation trying to just make as much money as possible. So higher purpose is important, stakeholders is important, and then the third pillar is leadership. And the best way to decide a conscious leader is one who A embraces the higher purpose of the business, but also serves it. So we

• 51:01Speaker 01

  have a strong emphasis on servant leadership, meaning, and part of the reason I don't take any compensation for the last 10 years, is I embrace the idea of servant leadership. I am there to serve Whole Foods Market. And to make it crystal clear, I'm there to serve it. I take nothing. I take no compensation at all. And it makes my motives, you know, whatever you might think about me, I'm not doing it for the money. And, uh, and that's actually deeply fulfilling for me. Service is very fulfilling. And once you reposition yourself to serve rather than to take, uh, you'll see things in a very different light. The fourth part is to create, fourth pillar for conscious capitalism, and I'm almost

• 51:42Speaker 01

  done, is to create cultures that allow human beings to fully flourish. We're very proud that Whole Foods has been named one of the 100 best companies to work for by Fortune 20 consecutive years. That's a big part of what our company is about, human potential, human fulfillment.

• 51:58Rich Roll?

  Underpinning all of this is the idea that if you adopt these pillars and, and create a company and a company culture around these ideas, that ultimately that will make you successful, right? So that the idea of chasing blind profits or shareholder value,

• 52:19Rich Roll?

  you know, above all else, is ultimately short sighted.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  You know, one of the things people, that's a very, I'm glad you asked that question, because this is one of the things people are most confused about business. And it gives me an opportunity to, to explore it a little deeper. So. We grow up in a culture that, you know, people play sports and it's a competitive culture. And we come to believe that someone wins, someone else loses. And that's the way the world works. If someone gets rich, then someone else must be poor. Zero sum game. A zero sum game. And the most amazing thing about, or about capitalism, is that it's not a zero sum game. That in fact, there are multiple winners.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Because business is about creating value for other people. And so, and it's based on voluntary exchange. So no one has to trade, let's take Whole Foods as an example. No one has to trade with us. If you think our prices are too expensive, or our quality is not good enough, or you have better alternatives in the marketplace, then you don't shop with us. And in fact, the truth is, most of America doesn't shop with us. Even though we're 16 billion, that's still like one and a half percent of the total food market in the United States. So, um, most people choose other alternatives. Um, and so, business is creating value for customers who are trading with it voluntarily, right? If they didn't like it, they don't have to trade there. Same thing, we're creating value for our employees, our team members, because they

• 53:51Speaker 01

  don't have to work there. They have other competitive alternatives in the marketplace. If they don't like pay, the working conditions, the way they're treated, or they don't think they have better opportunities elsewhere, they go get jobs elsewhere. In fact, that happens every single day. Mm-hmm. Third, all the suppliers we're trading with, they're doing that for mutual gain. They don't have to trade with us. No one forces them. We can't dictate terms to them. They trade with us because it's in their best interest to do so. And we trade with them because it's in our best interest to do so. So, by trading with us, they're winning. Investors don't have to invest, we're a public company. If you don't like Whole Foods Market, or we do things, sell your stock. Or don't buy it in the first place. So, I'd like to be able to tell that to the activist shareholders, but I'm afraid they would not find that a compelling argument. But the point is, is that...

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Business is not the zero-sum game. It's this positive sum where everyone who's trading with the business is benefiting. And that creates these multiple ripple effects that go out. And that's how we make progress in society. We continually get better and better and better because competition in the marketplaces forces business to create more value. And it does.

• 54:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's, there's a distinction between that philosophy being woven into the very fabric of the culture, you know, for example, that you've created at Whole Foods versus paying lip service to it. Because, you know, you sort of are at the vanguard of this. And the sort of ripple effect down from that, what you've seen culturally is other companies realizing like, oh, we need to get sort of on board with this, but not doing it in a fundamental way, more in a, in a sort of surface level way like, oh, well, it's cool to be green. We should be green. And, you know, if we give a little bit back here, if we, you know, devote a small percentage

• 55:38Rich Roll?

  of our profits to this cause and we create a lot of press around that, then we're doing the same thing.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Well, again, if you adopt a win-win-win-win philosophy, sure, there's some shallow manifestations of it. But I would say that business is inherently value-creating. It's only the, the ring race, the ones who have gotten totally addicted to the financial side of the business that are not creating value for everyone they're trading with. Now, most business people aren't very conscious about it, right? But inherently, if you're just trying to make money, you can't do that in most businesses without creating value for customers. It's hard to create value for customers if your employees aren't working hard and don't care. So you've got to take care of them. And you also have to trade with suppliers.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And if you're, if you're routinely screwing your suppliers, then they're not gonna, you're not gonna, they're not gonna trade with you, or you're not gonna get very good quality or service from them. So most business is engaged in value creation. They're just not very conscious of it. So conscious capitalism is like making things very explicit, which are kind of implicit. And then, once you make, become more conscious, you can do it more skillfully. Because it's like, I want to create value for our customers. I want to create value for our team members. And that's how you win at the game of business. And so by becoming more conscious, you get better at it, and you end up with these win-win-win scenarios, which is why I love business. It gives me great joy to see team members flourish and

• 57:11Speaker 01

  prosper at Whole Foods Market. I love the fact suppliers come up to me and they just sold their business and they got started at Whole Foods Market because we would pick their products up. Or I get excited when customers come up to me like they did yesterday when I was at the new opening of our store and say, "I've been shopping at Whole Foods Market for 30 years. Thank you so much. I love what you've done. You've made such a difference in my life." So it's about that kind of value creation and it has positive feedback loops in our larger society.

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  I think it's catching on. You know, I think that especially with millennials and the younger generation who are much more rigorous and demanding transparency from the corporations that they patronize and are much more interested in these issues of sustainability and, you know, sort of workforce contentment and all of these things, that there's a mindfulness with younger people that doesn't exist in our generation.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  I think that's true. I mean, Rich, I think that there is more consciousness. The younger generation is more conscious than my generation was at a similar age. And my generation was pretty conscious. So we're evolving. The culture's evolving. And this is a... But of course, there are some other negative trends as well. You've also got like, we live in this more transparent world where, and we, and the social media connects us and the internet connects us. And now, but there's ways to just completely slander people. And you launch these attacks based on basically lies. And people hop on the bandwagon.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  And if you can get, if you get associated, for example, with being a racist, or a misogynist, or a sexual predator, and there are people who lack, I've seen this happen to friends multiple times where... They're actually guilty of anything except pissing somebody off and then they go after them with this type of accusations and the accusations become real to people because they see it repeated over and over and over again. It must be true. So there's that whole concept or whole phenomenon of sort of fake news. And we live in this very transparent society, but yet we haven't created yet created rules of engagement, rules of, and people

• 59:32Speaker 01

  have not yet learned to become cynical of the things they hear and read or more skeptical about it in any case.

• 59:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a big problem. I don't know how we see ourselves through that. I think we're, I think we're, um, beliedly ignorant, uh, to the extent to which internet culture has just begun and the profound impact that it's having on us.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely right. And this is, we can circle back around to how we started our conversation today. Think about all the fake, inaccurate news that you read about, about in nutrition and healthy eating. There's so many different crazy philosophies. They're not grounded in science. They're not grounded in research. They're just stuff people kind of make up and, uh, and get excited about. And I, I'm not going to name names, but you and I were talking about some of it before we got on, on, on the air today. But there is so much false information circulating around, around nutrition and healthy eating. It can be very discouraging because sometimes I think we're taking, you know, two steps

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  forward and three steps backwards. I, I, I believe in the long-term truth wins out and science wins out, but it's not automatic. It's a, it's a long journey and, and you have to vanquish liars and cheaters and, uh, people who just make stuff up. And I think we have that happening right now.

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I, there's no question about that. I also think that we have strange, mysterious psychological barriers because the stuff is not that complicated. You know, it's like eat more fruits and vegetables, eat whole grains, eat whole foods, like, don't overcomplicate it. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, take me behind the velvet rope. Like, what is the one thing that I need? You know what I mean? Like, our human brains are wired to... Search that out when the truth is self-evident and is right in front of us.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  I know. One of the things I do, and I've been doing my book tour, is I always circle back around to how simple it is. Look, there's just two rules. Eat real, whole foods, mostly plants. Just do those two things. Don't worry about the rest of it. You can eat as much as you want to, as long as you're not eating a bunch of refined grains and sugar and oil and lots of animal foods. You can just eat however much you want, and you'll lose weight. You'll get to your optimum weight, and you'll stay there. Most of your disease and health problems are going to disappear just doing that. It's not complicated.

• 1:01:57Rich Roll?

  Right. And then the, then the hands go up, right? And what are the questions that you're fielding?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Where do you get your protein? Are, what kind of supplements do you take? And, and they, they get these complicated questions out there that are... One thing I have noticed, this is an interesting thing, is Americans are much more concerned about being deficient in things, meaning they're worried they're not getting enough of something. When actually our problem's just the opposite. We have an excess of bad things. And it's, people heal up when they stop poisoning themselves. When they stop eating the bad stuff and eat the real foods, almost all their problems begin to disappear. And yet, they're obsessed with, maybe I'm not getting enough protein. What are you, do you get enough calcium? What about,

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  uh, and those that are a little more sophisticated might say, what about DHA? Do you take B12? And they get into the, the kind of the weeds, but forget that it's, the most important stuff is the simplest stuff. Just eat more whole plant foods. It's not that complicated. It's simple. Just do it. And, and yet, there's something about the way our brains work, that we don't, we wanna, we wanna move away from the simple stuff.

• 1:03:09Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh. Yeah, that is interesting about deficiencies. You know, all the processed food and the, you know, the other junk that we're eating is, is crowding out the nutrition.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:03:18Rich Roll?

  So that's, you know, if there's any deficiency, it's coming with that. So when you remove those, you know, poor foods, those empty calories, you make room for the nutritious foods and the deficiencies go away. They take care of themselves. Nature has this wired, you know? We've evolved over however long we've evolved, so that it's taken care of. We don't have to use our thinking brains.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  We really don't. We don't. I mean, I'm interested in it myself, but I wouldn't need to be. You don't have to be.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  That well informed. If you just follow the two rules in the whole foods diet, I pretty much guarantee you're gonna get great results from it. Just eat real foods, mostly plants.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  I know I gotta let you go in a couple of minutes, but there's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this show and reflecting back on your career as arguably one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. How do you think about the arc of that? And like, what do you attribute your success to? Like, what can you impart to somebody who's a business owner, who's trying to create a business of value?

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I never intended to be a business guy, to be clear. I was studying philosophy at the University of Texas, and I didn't know what I was gonna be, but I didn't have any interest in being a businessman. And what changed my life was when I was about 19 or 20 years old, and I was on track to get a degree in philosophy from the University of Texas of Austin. But I had a required course I had to take, and I just really hated the course. And I hated the books, and I didn't like the professor, but I had to do it. I had to buckle down and get a pass and grade in this. But I had this big debate internally. It's like, I don't want to read this book. I don't like this professor. I don't want to take this course. Well, you have to. Otherwise, you're not gonna get a degree. It's like, I don't want to take this course. I don't want to like this professor. I don't

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  read these books. So I'm in this internal debate.

• 1:05:15Rich Roll?

  You're a contrarian through and through.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, one day, one night, I'm trying to read the book. I couldn't concentrate on it, and I stood up and actually literally threw the book down on the floor and said...

• 1:05:26Rich Roll?

  This is the Sartre book, yeah?

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna read this book. And I dropped the course the next day, and I started working through the implications. Okay, I get it. I'm not gonna get a degree. And once I let go of that, I was like free to completely learn whatever I was interested in. I no longer was on the track. So I just took courses I was interested in. I just read books that I was interested in. I took complete control of my education. And then, that began to ripple through the rest of my life. It's like, you know, I'm just gonna do things I really want to do. Life's short. I'd read enough philosophy on existentialism to know life was short. And it was that point that I made the decision, basically, be true to myself, to be authentic, to follow my own heart. And two years later, I started the company.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  It was like, um, I'd found my path. I moved in this vegetarian co-op. I learned how to cook. I became the food buyer and I had found the purpose of my life. And if I'd stayed on that philosophy track, I never would have. So one of the things I tell entrepreneurs is it's all about following your passions. And, and if you follow your passions, then you'll be doing exactly what you're interested in. You're going to learn so much more rapidly. I mean, I didn't take any business classes when I was in college, but once I started a business, I got in business education incredibly quickly, not only in the school of hard knocks in the world, but I began to devour every book about business I could find because I was interested in it. If I tried to read it before, I wouldn't have been interested in it.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  So entrepreneurs are people that are genuinely very passionate individuals. And generally, they're motivated by some type of, uh, of dream that they have. That they, something they, they may not even been able to articulate it to themselves, but they're driven by some desire to realize some type of dream or passion. And that's what cuts entrepreneurs apart from kind of the, I think, the ordinary individual. But you need to develop all the business skills. You need to learn about strategy. You need to learn about markets. You need to learn about it all. It's a complex, it's a game and it's a complex game and you need to get good at it.

• 1:07:32Rich Roll?

  We're in a time right now where the ascendancy of the entrepreneur has been elevated to, you know, almost rock star status because of startup culture, et cetera. Everybody's a founder. Everybody wants to be a CEO. I'm not sure everyone who, who, you know, steps into that is appropriately well-suited to that. But I've never seen so much interest in business and entrepreneurship as what we have right now.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Although statistically, I mean, that's an anecdotal experience and I meet entrepreneurs all the time as well, but. Statistically, our amount of entrepreneurial startups is declining. We have fewer entrepreneurs today. Yeah, and there's good reasons for it. Regulations are extremely high and hard. It's hard sometimes to even get started in business. You've got a lot of barriers to entry. You've got, in many cases, high minimum wages that startup business can't afford to pay. You've got a lot of challenges. And as a result, there are fewer and fewer entrepreneurs. And there's a lot more social entrepreneurs. There's a lot more people that are combining the two.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  There's a huge amount of creativity and innovation going on. But just sheer numbers or sheer percentage, it's actually in decline.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. I would have thought it would have been the opposite, at least in the app space or in the software realm.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Yes, but, and I see tremendous innovation going on in the food sector where I am. There's so many different kind of startups. It's kind of a golden age for food innovation.

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  If you go to Expo West, it's crazy how much that has grown.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  It is. But in other sectors of our society, you're seeing a lot less innovation. So, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, I've read that, but maybe that's worth checking out again. Well, I don't know for, I just know what I've read. And we were talking about how there's a lot of fake news out there, so maybe that one's fake, too. I don't know for sure.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  I'll look into it.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, check that one out.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  If you woke up in some kind of crazy parallel universe to find out that you were now the Surgeon General of the United States, what would you put into place? What changes would you make?

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Well, if I woke up that way, I'd probably have to immediately check into some kind of, see some kind of psychiatrist.

• 1:09:55Rich Roll?

  I know, it's not your plan.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  But I get the...

• 1:10:00Rich Roll?

  You know what I'm getting at.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  I know what you're trying to get to. You know, I really do believe in lifestyle medicine. I really think that diet and lifestyle are huge. Our medical system is spending hundreds of millions, hundreds of billions of dollars a year on drugs and surgeries that really aren't good for people.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  And they ultimately are necessary if people would, so I would, I like the whole lifestyle medicine and that's, that's early, but we're seeing more and more doctors get in there, we're seeing more and more holistic kind of coaches and holistic life coaches. And the surgeon general, I would promote those things. I would, I would set up certification in medical schools. I would, I would, I would say, I want every medical school to have a track for lifestyle medicine and government's going to provide funding for that, say, to, to encourage it. Maybe not on a permanent basis, but enough to get it started. And I, I think that, yeah, I would come out definitely and urge people to change their diets. I would

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  become, if I was the surgeon general, I'm the most public health official in the United States. Yeah, I would come out and I'd make a lot of statements that would probably piss a lot of people off, try to get me fired. I would talk about, shouldn't be eating all these processed foods. And then, and I would be supporting these taxes on, on the super unhealthy foods. And I would be probably wanting, I'd be trying to raise the standards for how these animals are treated. And, and trying to encourage people to eat fewer animal foods. I would definitely, I'd, I'd be on the soapbox. That's what, surgeons should be in the soapbox for healthier living, healthier lifestyle, healthier eating, healthier everything.

• 1:11:46Rich Roll?

  Well, all that-

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  And they'd probably fire me, but-

• 1:11:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't think you'd last very long.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:11:51Rich Roll?

  But I'd like to see that, actually. That would be good. All of these ideas are woven through-

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Someday when you're president, you could make me the surgeon general.

• 1:11:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's about as unlikely as you being surgeon general. The book is great. Congrats. You did a beautiful job. All of these ideas that we talked about today are contained in this, in this, you know, what is really a primer for getting healthier. You know, anybody, wherever you fall on the diet and health spectrum, I think that you would be well advised, advised to check this book out. There's lots to learn there. And like I said earlier, you lay it out in, in very basic terms that anybody can understand. And I really like how you highlighted the sort of heroes of the movement, all the doctors, many of which have been on this podcast, all the, you know, people that are out there

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  working hard to kind of shift cultural perceptions and ideas around, around, around diet and nutrition.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Well, I wanted to be a uniter instead of a divider. So, these are my personal heroes and they should be called out and they should be honored and the differences are far less important than the commonalities.

• 1:12:59Rich Roll?

  Right, so, great. So, pick up the book, The Whole Foods Diet, wherever you buy books. And are you out doing the book tour thing and speaking and things like that?

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  I'm doing some of it. It's been, it's been a little bit hijacked because Whole Foods has these shareholder activists now, so I, I can only do what I can do. And that's a lot less than I planned to do, but I'm doing what I can do, but I do have some other focuses right now.

• 1:13:20Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Well, you're an inspiration. Uh, I'm just, I'm in awe of what you've built and like I said at the outset, um, the legacy of this will live on. It's, uh, it's quite extraordinary and it's really shaped, um, it's really shaped how we think about food and nutrition. And now we see all these other businesses following in suits and, and kind of, um, understanding some of the principles that, that, you know, decades ago, you've been putting out there, but you really have impacted culture in a, in a gigantic way. And so, I appreciate you for that.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Rich. And hopefully, uh, we'll continue to do so.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks for your time.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  All right. Take care.

• 1:14:01Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Love.

• 1:14:04Rich Roll?

  Amazing guy, that John Mackey, right? Unbelievable. I really enjoyed that conversation very much. I hope you guys did too. He's the real deal, right? Do yourself a favor, pick up his new book, The Whole Foods Diet, uh, wherever you buy your books and hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and let me know what you thought of the conversation. Couple announcements before I let you go. Julie's brand new book, This Cheese Is Nuts, hits bookstores June 13th, but it's available for preorder now. Seventy-five unbelievably delicious, plant-based cheese recipes. Julie has really figured this stuff out. So many people say to me, "I go vegan, I go plant-based, but I just can't give up cheese." Well, Julie spent like two years in the kitchen trying to crack this wide open and

• 1:14:45Rich Roll?

  figure out a way to make delicious, healthy, non-dairy cheeses. And she succeeded. This book is just next level. The photography is insane, the recipes are unbelievable, and she really takes you through how you can do this yourself at home. It's a really amazing book. I'm so proud of her. And it would mean the world if you would go ahead and preorder it now from your favorite bookseller. Preorder numbers are very important in terms of raising visibility of the book, and it influences bookseller order sizes. It's a long conversation to get into that, but suffice it to say that these preorder numbers are really important. So it would be great if you went ahead and took care of that now, if it sounds like a book for

• 1:15:26Rich Roll?

  you. On that note, we just launched a Thunderclap campaign. What is Thunderclap, you're asking? Some of you might remember our Thunderclap campaign for the Plant Power Way, but for those of you who are new, Thunderclap is a free, simple crowdsourcing online platform that basically, when you sign up, allows you to pledge a social media post in support of the book, This Cheese Is Nuts. And that post will automatically publish to your timeline on June 13. Our goal is to achieve a social reach of 1 million people, so show your support for the movement and let all our voices be heard at once. I'll put a link to the Thunderclap

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  campaign in the show notes to make it easy for you guys to find. Also, Plant Power Ireland is coming up, July 24 through 31. This is going to be our amazing seven-day retreat on this James Bond-like manor that sits on 90 acres in the Irish countryside. It's going to be unbelievable. We've got the Happy Pear lads coming by, we're going to cook, we're going to eat, we're going to run, we're going to meditate, we're going to do tea ceremony, we're going to have super intensive workshops on everything from relationships to creativity to mindfulness. There's going to be Ayurvedic treatments. The whole idea is that at the conclusion of this seven days, that you will have transformed your life wholesale and be armed with the tools that you need to go back to your life and really live your best,

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  most authentic self. If this sounds like something for you, go to ourplantpowerworld.com for more information. Also, if you go to srimati.com, S-R-I-M-A-T-I.com, you can enter to win a free slot. We're giving away one free slot for this retreat when you purchase three copies of This Cheese Is Nuts. And you can find out information about that on the homepage. Srimati.com, just scroll down and you'll see the information there. Also, we just launched our new Plant Power Meal Planner. It's an online platform that offers you thousands of plant-based recipes, unlimited meal plans and grocery lists. Everything is totally personalized and customized based on your goals, your food preferences, your allergies, your time constraints.

• 1:17:33Rich Roll?

  We have customer support from a team of experts seven days a week, grocery delivery in 22 metropolitan areas. And we're getting great feedback on the people who have already signed up. People are really digging it. I'm so proud of this program and I think it's really improving people's lives. It's really a huge value add, especially if you're time crunched or you don't want to fuss about in the kitchen. You just want to know, how do I make this? What do I need? How can I get these groceries? What exactly is the process to making these healthy foods? And the Meal Planner makes it super simple. So to learn more, just go to ritual.com, click on Meal Planner. You'll see it at the top of any of the pages or you can type in meals.richroll.com.

• 1:18:18Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support this show and my work, there's a couple of ways to do that. You can share it with your friends and on social media. That's super easy and it's free. Leave a review on iTunes, subscribe on iTunes, both free and only take a second. And we have a Patreon for those who are interested in financially supporting the work that I do. And I appreciate everybody who has made that commitment. It means the world to me. If you would like to receive a free short weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. It's basically a rundown, a list of five or six things that I've come across over the course of the week that I found inspiring or informative or helpful. Usually a couple of articles from, you know, anything from the New York Times to Outside Magazine,

• 1:19:01Rich Roll?

  a product that I'm enjoying, a podcast I listen to. It's miscellaneous, it's fun. I'm not trying to sell you anything. There's no affiliate links or anything like that. I'm not going to spam you. It's just a way for me to share with people directly outside of the rubric of social media. So that sounds like something you'd be into. Sign up for it anywhere on my website, any of the places where you enter your email address. Will do the trick. I want to thank today's sponsors. Squarespace, the easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog, or online store for you and your ideas. Save 10% when you use the coupon code RICHROLL at checkout. That's Squarespace.com. Squarespace, build it beautiful. And Health IQ, reward your healthy lifestyle with life insurance that makes sense and never overpay again.

• 1:19:44Rich Roll?

  To learn more and get a free quote, go to HealthIQ.com/ROLL. And also, as always, I want to thank my team, all the people that endeavored, that worked very hard to help produce today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production, as well as show notes. He's been upping the ante and taking on more and more responsibility with the show, and he's doing a great job. Shawn Patterson for help on graphics. All the amazing motion graphics that you see, the stuff I post on Instagram, that's all Shawn. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. I'll see you back here in a couple of days, next week. Until then, take the information you heard today and implement it, use it, take advantage of it to make those changes in your life that are going to stick, that are going to

• 1:20:28Rich Roll?

  move you forward, that are going to shift your trajectory, and set you on a better course for unlocking your best, most authentic self. And until then, peace. Platts.