Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

Wow! Last week's guest, T. Colin Campbell, got a huge response. It's only a week since publication and the episode is well on its way to becoming one of the most popular editions of the RRP to date. Glad you enjoyed it and — as always — thanks for tuning in. Because the Dr. Campbell conversation introduced a large new population to the show, thought I would take a brief moment to clarify what we do here. You may think this is just another podcast focused on running & triathlon. I love those subjects and feature plenty of guests in those arenas. But my focus is broader. In short, each week I do my best to bring to you the most forward thinking, paradigm busting minds in health, fitness, wellness, diet, nutrition, spirituality, creativity, entrepreneurship and life transformation. My goal is pure and it is simple. To help motivate and inspire you take your life to the next level. To help you discover, unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. BOOM. If you have yet to check out last week's episode, I urge everyone to give that one a listen before checking out today’s show. Even if you think you know all there is to know about T. Colin Campbell, his research, The China Study* and the quote unquote alleged “controversy” surrounding the findings of this seminal work, you might be surprised. Dr. Campbell demonstrated tremendous candor. It was an honor to peek behind the curtain at a life well lived in service to the betterment of humankind. In any event, last week’s guest relates directly to today’s guest. As I mentioned last week, Dr. Campbell was intended as Part 1 of a 2-part series. What began with Dr. Campbell continues today with Howard Jacobson, Dr. Campbell’s contributing author on his latest book Whole: Rethinking The Science of Nutrition* – a book that picks up where The China Study* left off by addressing the inherent flaws in our “reductionist” approach to nutrition research and refocusing how we approach and begin to understand nutrition and it's impact on human physiology from a wholistic point of view – food functionality at the cellular level, working its way up to how it impacts the entire organism. Great. But who is Howard Jacobson? Well, Howard's background isn’t quite what you would think. He's not a doctor. He's not a nutritionist. physiologist or even a scientist. But he is a very smart guy. After getting his B. A. from Princeton, Howard began his career as a school teacher before becoming a successful marketing consultant, running an online marketing agency and writing the book Google AdWords for Dummies* (mental note: I should probably read this one). 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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• 1:06Rich Roll?

  Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 80 with Howard Jacobson.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  All right, everybody, welcome to the show. My name is Rich Roll. I am your friendly neighborhood podcast host. What do we do here? You know what we do here. What we do here is each week, I bring to you the best, most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, fitness, wellness, diet, nutrition, spirituality, creativity, entrepreneurship, and most importantly, life transformation. The goal is simple. The goal is to motivate and inspire you to take your life to the next level, to help you discover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Mind, body, spirit, balance, all of that. You're not going to agree with every guest I bring on the show. That's okay. Take what resonates with you, discard the rest.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  I have learned so much from all of my guests over these 80 episodes and my life has definitely been enriched and I hope that yours has as well. And I appreciate you tuning in. I know you have a lot of demands on your time. There's so many choices when it comes to content. So it means a lot to me that you guys are tuning into this podcast and spending your precious free time with me and my guests. So, all right, last week, last week's guest, that was a big one, T. Colin Campbell. It got a huge response. We're only one week into that since it posted and it's already well on its way towards becoming

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  one of the most popular episodes and probably one of the most informative and possibly the most important podcasts that I've posted. So if you haven't checked it out yet, please do. I encourage all of you to go and listen to it, particularly before listening to today's episode because these two episodes are related. And even if you think you know all there is to know about T. Colin Campbell, his research, his books, the China study, and the quote-unquote controversy surrounding the findings of the China study, you might be surprised. Dr. Campbell showed tremendous candor and openness and it was really a treat to spend that hour with him. And I learned things about him that I didn't know. You know, his life and

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  work is really important and I was really proud to help get his message further out there, particularly for those of you who are kind of brand new to what he has to say. So in any event, again, last week's guest relates to today's guest. As I mentioned last week, Dr. Campbell was part one and today is part two. So we pick up kind of today where we left off last week and I'm joined today by Howard Jacobson, who is Dr. Campbell's contributing author on his latest book, which is called Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition. And that book picks up where the China study left off by addressing the inherent flaws in our kind of what is

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  Called reductionist approach to nutrition research, which essentially means we take these isolated variables or nutrients within a particular food and we study their impact on the body. But what we don't do is take a 10,000 foot view and view the food as a whole and how it works as this incredibly, impossibly complex matrix of nutrients that all together have an impact on our physiological, you know, sort of wellbeing or functionality in a way that, in a way that we, we honestly can't even begin to comprehend because it's so complicated. And it's really a call to action to think about food in these, in these

• 5:03Rich Roll?

  terms and this, from this, rather than from this reductionist perspective, but from this holistic perspective. And by holistic, I'm spelling that W H O L I S T I C holistic. And how food works on our systems at the cellular level, working their way up to how they impact our entire organism. It's really interesting stuff and it's a great book. Anyway, all right. So Howard Jacobson, who is this guy? Well, his background, it's pretty interesting. His background is not what you would think, not what I would have expected. He's a smart guy. He graduated from Princeton, but he didn't study human biology or nutrition.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  He studied history and he began his career and continues to earn as a marketing consultant running an online marketing agency. He wrote a book called, uh, Google AdWords for Dummies, one of those yellow and black books. It's actually a book that I should probably read, making a mental note. Uh, but how does this marketing guy end up hooking up with T. Colin Campbell, the legend of plant-based nutrition, and ultimately become contributing author on this seminal work? It's a, it's, it's a question I certainly had on my mind. Uh, you know, I've met Howard a couple of times over the last couple of years and always enjoyed his company, but hadn't really spent any real time with him until this holistic holiday at

• 6:30Rich Roll?

  See this Caribbean cruise that I went on that I was a speaker on and his whole family was there, my whole family was there and I was able to kind of hang out with him for seven days and get to know his wife and his kids, all of whom are really amazing people. And I saved that question for the podcast and you're going to have to wait for the interview to hear the answer. But I can tell you it's really interesting. It's, it's really a story of a life journey in search of greater meaning, a life journey in search of greater authenticity and purpose. It's a story of faith and serendipity and what you can, and what can happen when you know, you take the leap into the unknown or set sail without a paddle and remain open to the possibilities the universe presents.

• 7:13Rich Roll?

  The idea that anything is possible. So during the course of our conversation, we do it all. Of course, it starts and ends with plant-based nutrition. His perspective on Dr. Campbell's work and the China study. His perspective on the China study, debunkers. And what's at the crux of whole, our reductionist proclivities when it comes to nutritional science and how we need to reframe how we think about food and how it impacts the body. So I guess the primary takeaway is this. Because our current health system and practices are unsustainable by all accounts, the public, and by the public, I mean you. You have more power and influence than ever before. Change is finally within our reach. We now know

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  that most heart attacks, strokes, cancers and unnecessary deaths are preventable through nutrition and lifestyle alteration. And we have the power to choose more wisely what we put into our mouths every day. So Howard is all about this, T. Colin Campbell is all about this, and this book Whole is an extraordinary tool that shows us how to free our bodies, our minds and our planet. From the economic disparity and biological logic that is making us sicker, making us poorer than ever before, which is a travesty. So this is a journey into cutting-edge nutrition and it's led by Howard and T. Colin Campbell. So it's pretty cool, right? So beyond that, we talk about his life, his work, the book, the advocacy,

• 8:42Rich Roll?

  and how he balances all of this with his marriage and homeschooling his kids, something which I'm very interested in because we homeschool our kids. And I could tell you, his kids are extraordinary human beings. And he's definitely doing a good job with his homeschooling. Again, my family had the honor and pleasure of hanging out with him and his lovely family during the course of this seven-day cruise, and it was a real treat. They're extraordinary people doing amazing things. And so it was my pleasure and it was my honor to bring this conversation to you today. Little note on the audio, bear in mind, we recorded this podcast on a boat. Boats are noisy. We found a quiet room in a restaurant on the boat that was closed,

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  and we thought it would be nice and quiet, but there's a lot of gurgling noises. We were pulling out of port and you know what? There's, you're gonna hear it. There's nothing I can do about it. But hopefully it just adds to the flair, the ambiance of the conversation. So, all right. That's it. Let's dig in.

• 9:51Rich Roll?

  Your story is pretty interesting about how you initially became involved in this plant-based world. It was, it was almost by, well, it's divinely inspired, I guess, in some regard, and also, you know, perhaps a bit of happenstance. Yeah, well, we didn't get into the beginnings of it, which is, you know, it's embarrassing to tell you how many times I have landed in the plant-based world and then sort of rolled out of it. It reminded me a little bit when I was reading your story where... Is that thunder or is that the engines of the boat? I don't know. This is the end of the podcast? Yeah, I know. God bless you all. All right. Either the boat is gonna explode or, yeah, they're pumping the bilge.

• 10:35Rich Roll?

  I don't know what's going on. Anyway, continue. Wow.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  The anchor.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  Oh, the anchor. Oh, they're pulling the anchor up. Alright, keep talking.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Okay, well, we'll have to use an anchor metaphor at some point. So I first, as I say, when I was reading your book and all the, you know, the kind of the ups and downs. Like it wasn't a, you know, I hit bottom and then I came back up and everything was fine, but there were sort of, you know, bumps along the way and forgetting, a very sort of human story. It's not a, you know, it's not a Hollywood trajectory. And it was the same thing for me. So, um, in 1990, uh, my dad died of a heart attack and he was 71, which felt very young for me, to me. I was only 23 or 24 at the time. And like two weeks later, I was in a bookstore and I saw Diet for a New America

• 11:30Speaker 01

  by John Robbins. And I had no interest in any of this stuff and I, for some reason, picked up the book and read it and went completely vegan, like, you know, the next week. Like, there was no, there was no thought, there was no effort.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  And I lost, you know, 20 pounds. I could wear size like 31 jeans for the first and last time in my life.

• 11:54Rich Roll?

  But in terms of like no thought or no effort, I mean, something profound sort of clicked in your mind, right? To make you make such a, I mean, how were you eating before that?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Very standard. I mean, as a kid, I was a huge eater. I would just eat, you know, prodigious amounts of pretty much everything. Um, nothing really bothered me. Um, I could, you know, I could eat like three chickens. Like, like that many pieces of chicken if there was like a buffet.

• 12:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Um, lots of candy. I remember loving Kit Kats. In college, I used to fuel my all-nighters with Kit Kats and Coca-Cola. So, you know, there was, there was nothing, though I'd say the one thing I didn't do, I never ate from the window diet. Like, I just, I just, I think because when I was five years old, my parents were political activists and I had been told when I was five that McDonald's had donated money to the Nixon campaign.

• 12:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  And so. Like that was my identity. I was, you know, you know, you know, union progressive. So I kind of stayed away from, from fast food mostly.

• 13:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  But, you know, so I did that and I became this, you know, vegan and it, it kind of lasted for, I don't know, four, five, six years and then sort of gradually stopped. And I'm not sure exactly how or why it wasn't conscious. Like there might've been a cookie one day and then the world didn't end.

• 13:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  And I didn't have.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  Once you have one cookie, that's the way my brain works, you know, that's why I don't think I could ever do one of those programs where you get a cheat day.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  You know, because once I've kind of crossed that line, it becomes so much easier to cross it again. And it's easier, it's actually, it seems harder, but it's actually easier for me to toe a, a more of a hardcore line.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, one, you know, one of the things I talk about, um, when I help people to transition is this concept of decision fatigue. Which is the more decisions you make, the less willpower you end up with. So if you're constantly, you know, there have been done studies where they had people like picking out items for a wedding registry. And it was, it was a fake thing that no one was getting married. You just had to pick, you know, do I want the bone china or the other thing? And after that, they had all these decisions, they had people do the traditional test of willpower, which is stick your hand in a bucket of ice water for as long as you can. And the people who had other tasks, they didn't, they just had to look and rate the stuff or did they like it or did they not like it?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Did much better. They could keep their hands in the water much longer than people who had to choose between one or the other. So if you have a diet in which you're, you're kind of, you know, using your intuition or your, your brain on a daily basis and you don't have set rules. If you're approaching it in terms of should I, shouldn't I, you literally deplete your willpower. So by the end of the day, you're like, that cookie is much stronger than I am.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  Right. I've never heard that before. That's really fascinating. So in other words, if you have this rule system set up, that's just your guiding principles, then you're not really having to make decisions. You're just following these rules. So it's not, it doesn't involve a lot of mental fatigue.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:11Rich Roll?

  But if you're leaving it open-ended, then every proposition involves a decision tree.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Right. So for higher brain function, I wanna, I'm clear that I only have a certain amount to spend every day, and I wanna spend it where it matters. So anything that doesn't really matter to me, I just don't care about, or I'll set a rule so I don't have to think about it anymore.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  You know, I think President Obama supposedly has like two different suits, many, multiple copies of each suit, but he just opens a closet and puts one on because he knows his entire day is deciding things.

• 15:41Rich Roll?

  He doesn't wanna have to make that decision too.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:45Rich Roll?

  He could probably find somebody to make that decision for him, though, about his attire every day.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:51Rich Roll?

  That's really interesting. All right, so, so you start, you start to fall away from this, though. You become a

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Normal.

• 15:59Rich Roll?

  A former plant-based person for a while. And what year was this?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  I don't even remember. It was sort of like in the 90s. I know my daughter, Yael, was born in 96, and from the photos, I'm sort of, you know, getting wider and wider. I'm putting on all the pregnancy weight.

• 16:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  And I had, I had a, another epiphany in, it must've been late 95, when my wife Mia was pregnant with Yael, and I needed to go to the drugstore at like 2:00 in the morning to fill some prescription or to get something. And it was to fill a prescription because I had to wait. And I, there's nothing to do in the drugstore at 3:00 in the morning except take your blood pressure with a little cuff machine. So I was like doing that, doing blood pressure and pulse over and over again. And when I first got there, it was quite high, because, you know, I'd gotten in the car and I'd, you know, roused myself from sleep, but over the course of an hour, I could not get it down. And I realized, you know, I stood at a scale and I did my pulse, and I realized my numbers suck.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, I have a pregnant wife, and like I'm not, you know, my numbers are not predicting a long life. And my dad died at seventy one. Um, he'd had cancer before the heart attack. And, you know, it occurred to me that I needed to clean up.

• 17:22Rich Roll?

  And you weren't like obese or anything like that, and you weren't eating tons of junk food. You were just kind of eating maybe how a typical American would eat.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:31Rich Roll?

  Maybe even better.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Much better because we were cooking.

• 17:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Like, we never did the, like, the totally processed, the TV dinners. You know, we would cook. So we'd sit down, we'd make soups and things.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  But, you know, it's like, you know, nine egg omelets for, for Saturday morning and have some friends over and lots of desserts.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  I wasn't exercising that much because frankly, I didn't really feel like it. You know, that's why, you know, this, this eat, eat less, exercise more advice that people give, you know, with such sort of haughty superiority, like, you know, duh, this is so simple, they'll make it complicated. Turns out to be really hard to do because if you're eating badly and you eat less, you have even less energy to exercise.

• 18:15Rich Roll?

  Right, your motivation wanes.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Your motivation wanes, you just don't have the fuel. And then you start to try to exercise and you're expending all your willpower to stay on the treadmill, literally and figuratively.

• 18:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  And then you come home and all you want is like that hot fudge sundae.

• 18:31Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And you're restricting, you're focused on restricting your calories all the time.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:37Rich Roll?

  So, all right, so you're at the drugstore at three in the morning and then what's, what happens next?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Um, what happens next is not much. Like, like it was one of those mini epiphanies and I probably like bought some salad.

• 18:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  You know.

• 18:53Rich Roll?

  But in the back of your mind that you have this, you know, nagging thing about your blood pressure.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, you know, at the same time, and I just remember this, it's kind of funny that I'd forgotten. I was in a, I did a six-year program in health education at Temple University. And so I was able to really distract myself about what real, what really brings about health. Because health education, you know, it was aligned with sort of medical education. So, health is, you know, making sure people are compliant on their meds. You know, exercise is good, but there really wasn't this, you know, laser focus on lifestyle.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  And so there was plenty of ways in which I could distract myself. One of the ways I was distracting myself was through stress reduction, meditation, relaxation techniques, which are great, and there's no, there's no question that they are a core part of, of physical and mental and spiritual and psychological health. But I was trying to use them for everything. So I remember sitting there with a blood pressure cuff, trying to meditate my way to like one-ten over sixty.

• 20:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, like the yogi Kudu bringing your pulse down to ten or something like that.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, so, in that, in that respect, I look back, it's like a cheat. Like, you know, you talked, in your talk, about everyone wants to know, what's the biohack? So I was trying to do like a meditative biohack and do an end run around the-

• 20:26Rich Roll?

  The reality.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  The reality.

• 20:27Rich Roll?

  Actually, how you were living your life. And, you know, the irony is palpable because you're, is that what you got your PhD in?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, in health education.

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  So you're getting your PhD in health education, and yet you're living your life in accordance with some sort of, you know, principles that are at odds with optimal health, at least is how you see it now.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, we were struggling financially in that, you know, it wasn't terrible. I'm sure it's better than, than some people who are listening to this, but when I say struggle, I mean, it was on my mind every day.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  It was never clear that we were gonna pay the mortgage. And that, that just seemed much more important. Like that, you know, if you're like bleeding out on oxygen, you don't, you don't worry about getting a back massage.

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  And sort of, you know, money is kind of like oxygen-

• 21:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  In this society. So it didn't, it didn't feel like I had the luxury. Of really taking care of myself.

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that's the perception is that taking care of yourself is a luxury and it's dispensable when there are real life pressures on you to provide and just literally, I mean for lack of a better word, survive day to day.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:46Rich Roll?

  And so, alright, so where does the journey take you from there?

• 21:52Speaker 01

  So, fast forward several years, it's 2003 and I'm at a internet marketing conference and I meet a guy who is eating a plant-based diet and he's a bodybuilder and he's working out. I'll give him a little shout out, his name is John Allen Mullenhauer.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  And we started talking and he like was doing everything that I knew from 13 years ago that I should be doing. And I was really attracted to the results he was getting and to the philosophy.

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Was that incompatible with the curriculum that you were studying during your PhD?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. I mean, you know, it's fine to be a vegetarian, but it's, you know, it's certainly not necessary and it's kind of cute, but it's, you know, there's, there was no one saying this is the most important part of health is to eat whole plant foods. This is the foundation. No one was saying that. People, you know, my, one of my main focuses of study was like indoor asthma and so I would say I spent the better part of a year thinking about hypoallergenic pillowcases. That's important stuff, but it's not fundamental.

• 23:13Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, I mean, I'm inferring that there was some level of disillusionment with what you got your PhD in if suddenly you're sort of embarking into this internet marketing world as opposed to just finding, finding a career in the field in which you studied for so many years.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that feels like a very generous interpretation. I think I just wanted to make money for the first time in my life. Cause while I was getting my PhD, I was a school teacher and I, you know, I didn't actually know anyone who made more than like $29,000 a year and I couldn't, I couldn't imagine how that was even possible. And then, so I decided I wanted to go into the business world. And through a whole bunch of missteps and false steps, um, I found myself, um, in two thousand and one, uh, with my own business.

• 24:02Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Um, and it started out sort of a small business coaching and marketing. Um, and I discovered that when I was trying to talk to people about health and meditation and spirituality, that nobody really cared.

• 24:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  But when I was talking to people about how to get more visitors to their website, about how to convert more prospect into sales, about how to build a funnel for a strong backend, that everybody really wanted to know that and they would pay me a hell of a lot more money for that information. And of course, the things that were stopping them ultimately were not like strategic decisions because I could tell them what to do in fifteen seconds, but they didn't have the energy to do it, they didn't have the focus to do it. Um, you know, it ended up coming back to lifestyle and then I would be coaching people on ostensibly about internet marketing and it was like, well, you know, what do you eat?

• 24:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And, you know, if we fix that, you'll have, you have two more hours of productive thinking each day.

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  And, you know, I just, I discovered the, uh, the, the secret of, of coming in not where you are, but where other people are.

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  By solving the problems they want to solve and ultimately all problems end up, you know, coming back to ourselves, our, our, our engines of, of desire and manifestation.

• 25:22Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, interesting. Um, yeah, and I feel like it's interesting what you say about how people were so, um, drawn to this idea of how to kind of create sales. But it also seems to me like there's so much focus on that and not as much focus on the actual content than that they're trying to sell. You know, it's, it's lead generation and sales funnels and building your list and all of these kinds of things. Um, and, and, and there's so much focus on that, but it doesn't seem like... At least in my experience, and I could be totally wrong or speaking out of school here, but it seems like that's much more fashionable and gets a lot more attention than focusing

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  on the quality of whatever it is that you're trying to offer that might be helpful to people.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  It's funny, as you're speaking, I can feel like these rusty marketing gears starting to turn in my head, like the anchor is going down, like this whole other part of my brain is starting to light up. And yeah, it's so true that, you know, I mean, the internet is still kind of the wild west. It's where, it's where people go with a, you know, their, with their gold panning equipment to try to, to make it big. And you can see people who've made it big. And the truth, the most of the people who've made it really big, at least initially, it's because they had great content. It's because they had something tremendously valuable to offer. They were personable, they worked really hard, they had interesting thoughts, and they really cared about getting this message out. And they used a whole bunch

• 26:55Speaker 01

  of media and methods to do it. So what we do is we say, oh, well, look, Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.TV did a, did a video podcast every single day. So all I have to do is do a video podcast every single day. And then, you know, there's no there there.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  But if you don't have a message that's compelling or helpful or dynamic or a list of any other, you know, sort of things that are compelling, adequately compelling, then it doesn't really matter.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, you know, all these media techniques are, are subject to the goal of helping people. You know, if I say, if you, if you want to say, I want to be a success, I want to, I want to have a successful business, I would say, do you love the people you want to help? Are you, are you dedicated to improving their lives? And if the answer is yes, then everything else is window dressing. Everything else falls into place. But to, to look at someone else's steps to success and copy those without copying the, the motive force behind it. I mean, and, and you know what, there's a lot of people who, who will

• 28:05Speaker 01

  be successful at that for a while. Because all, you know, all of us have insecurities, we all have these, you know, greed dreams. And if we hear someone talking about how, how they're going to make us rich, we're gonna, we're gonna buy that for a little while.

• 28:19Rich Roll?

  Right, we're inherently wired to be attracted to that.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  But, you know, I know, I know a lot of those folks and, you know, the reality is, most of them are not that happy. They're not fulfilled. Their money doesn't last and they can show you their big PayPal checks, but they don't show you the big PayPal returns when eighty-five percent of the people get their product and realize it's utter crap.

• 28:45Rich Roll?

  And don't come back.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  And don't come back and tell their friends and they have to reinvent themselves in some other industry. You know, so, you know, marketing is really about sharing your love in a way that people are ready to hear.

• 29:02Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. That's, and that's something that, I don't know, you can't really teach that. People either inherently have that passion for whatever it is that they're speaking to, or they don't, right? I mean, that's not something you're gonna learn in a class.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  You're not gonna learn that in a class. You might learn it in therapy.

• 29:19Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah. A different kind of class.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, you know, I mean, I've worked with a lot of people who, you know, they've got a business, ten, fifteen years old, and it feels a little bit stale, and they're coming to me for some, like, marketing ideas. And I can give them those marketing ideas and they're very not valuable. What was valuable that I can do is help people remember why they went into the business in the first place, and then they get all these ideas. They get excited, they remember, you know. I help them to learn about their customers, to think about what do they want, what are their fears, what keeps them awake at three in the morning, what are some innovations they can offer that no one else is doing? What are some of the holes in the marketplace that no one else is filling? And then they can, they become heroic. And they're like, I, you know, I'm doing this as a mission,

• 30:07Speaker 01

  not just to pay the bills, not just to, you know, send my, my ex-wife's kids to school. You know, it's, it becomes something that's, that's fulfilling, rather than something that was exciting once and has become a drudge.

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  Right. I think there's a, there's a sense of gratitude that comes with being devoted to.

• 30:30Rich Roll?

  Service of your customer base or your audience or something like that. And when you, when you have that inherent passion for that, then like you said, I mean, the other things sort of take care of themselves.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was sitting next to Dr. Colin Campbell last night and he was signing books. And I assume most of your listeners may know.

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the author of The China Study, and we're gonna get into that in a second.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  And, you know, I'm sitting there next to him, I'm the contributing author to Hold, the second, his second book, and so I'm sitting there and, you know, people are very nice to me, but they wanna, they wanna meet him. And almost everyone has a story they wanna tell him of how they, he saved their life, how he saved their wife's life, how he saved their mother-in-law, how their kids, you know, no longer are asthmatic, whatever it is. And, you know, we're on a cruise with like fifteen hundred people who worship him, and I can still see in his face the, the way that that feeds the deepest part of his soul. Cause, you know, he spent fifty, forty of his fifty-year career basically getting no thanks at all and just getting grief.

• 31:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  And for this, you know, for this ten years to here, this, it's almost like it's a wonderful life, but he didn't have to like almost jump off a bridge.

• 31:46Rich Roll?

  Right. He just had to be stuck on a boat.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Well, it's pretty much everywhere he goes.

• 31:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine, I mean, I just observing him throughout the course of the week, I mean, I'm exhausted from the schedule here, it's, you know, it hasn't, it hasn't been like a leisure-oriented experience, it's been wonderful and amazing and fantastic. But we're on a boat and there's, there's only so many places you can go and hide. And for somebody like him, you know, everybody's here to see him, right? So the demands that are being placed on him, for everybody wants to have their moment with him, that, you know, if he walks outside of his cabin, you know, he's gonna have to interact with people continuously until he returns to his cabin and shuts the door. And that's gotta be fatiguing and, you know, I'm sort of empathetic to.

• 32:36Rich Roll?

  The amount of energy that it takes to really be present with every person and engage them because, you know, these stories are important and they're life-changing and there's a lot of passion and heartfelt, you know, love for this journey that we're all on together. And when you hear those stories of people that have reversed their heart disease or, you know, sort of come back from some, you know, illness that they thought they were stuck with the rest of their life, or lost a hundred pounds, or whatever it is, it's, there is nothing more sort of dramatic that you can share. I mean, you can see the emotion,

• 33:20Rich Roll?

  you can feel the emotion in these encounters. And, but it's also, you know, that's, that takes a lot of energy to sit with that, you know, throughout the day with so many people.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, he does, he does get exhausted. But, you know, I think what he, I don't know how, you know, I've only known him for, for a decade, but I think, you know, all of us have, have some soul mission. And to get, to have such a difficult path as he's had, where his funding was challenged, personally attacked, called the terrorist, you know, working hard for five or six years on a report and then find out that it's, it comes out totally gutted or misrepresented by the media, to hear, at this point, he's

• 34:11Speaker 01

  going to be eighty next week, to hear that, you know, you, you lived your life. You didn't live anybody else's life.

• 34:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  You know, you didn't become a, a paid spokesperson for the beef industry, which is where he probably would have headed, you know, starting out by, with his, his career in increasing protein yield. You know, to look back and say, I lived my own life, and I took the chances that I had to take, and I made the sacrifices. Like, there's joy in that.

• 34:40Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  And I can, and I can see that in him.

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 34:55Rich Roll?

  Well, let's fast forward to the point at which he comes into your life. So, you're pursuing this internet marketing career. And then, explain a little bit about what transpired, the kind of thing we were talking about at dinner the other night.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Right. So, in 2003, I was starting to feel like I want to do my marketing for good. So, I started working with John Allen. And one of the things we did was we went out to a conference called VegSource in 2004. And then, there was this whole lineup of speakers, you know, from Dr. Campbell, to Doug Lyle, to Dean Ornish, to John McDougal, Brenda Davis, and...

• 35:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a great event. I spoke there last year. It was fantastic.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was, you know, completely life-changing for me because for the first time, I was like outnumbered.

• 35:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  There was no way to play defense against this idea. And I just let it sort of wash over me.

• 35:57Rich Roll?

  The idea being?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Being that diet, you know, a plant-based diet is like the most profound thing that most people can do to improve their health in a really rapid way. Like, you don't need to have faith. You know, it's like, people don't exercise. And you tell them, you know, "Just do something for three weeks and you'll be amazed at how your cardiovascular system will evolve to manage it." And so, you get this quick hit of proof, like your body tells you yes. And at that point, things become easier. It's not so cerebral. It's not faith-based. The same thing happens when you start, you know, really cleaning up your diet. You know, your story about that day five or day six of your juice fast, your juice cleanse.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it happens whether you believe it's going to happen or not.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Right, so to see, to see something outside of your own perception, um, you know, to, to, to see something that looks objective is very powerful. So, so people are getting all these stories and I thought, well, I can try this. And, and I'd met, I met Dr. Campbell there. I was in line with like 700 people to shake his hand. Couple of months later, the book came out, um, The China Study.

• 37:10Rich Roll?

  The China Study.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  And I, I sort of devoured it. And, um, it came out in December and I wrote a review on Amazon at the end of January. So this is, this is how slowly things were moving.

• 37:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, usually i- if you don't post a review immediately, you know, books, the, the reviews start to stack up quickly with most new releases.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, there was, it was sort of the earlier days of Amazon, but even so, this book had not been publicized. There was no money behind it. It had been rejected by most publishers. Uh, the ones who didn't reject it demanded that it be turned into a cookbook and that you get rid of all the science. And this one publisher took a chance on it and their, their imprint was mainly like, like teen horror novels.

• 37:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? I didn't know that. That's amazing. Like, I didn't know that story. I, I just, I guess I just presumed that when it came out, it made this immediate impact.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  You know, it was, uh, we went to, um, a, a book signing with Dr. Campbell in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in a giant Barnes and Noble, in a very affluent section. And it was the four of us, our family, and then a lady who was tired.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  That was it?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  There was a, there was a chair. And he, you know, he'd flown, he'd flown all the way from Mythica. He'd done, he had talked to the Philadelphia College of Physicians and then he did this book signing. Like, nobody cared.

• 38:34Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  But it's, so I did this, this review like, you know, seven, six, seven weeks after it was published and it was the third review on, on Amazon for the book.

• 38:44Rich Roll?

  Seven, six, seven weeks after it's published, there's only three review. You're the third person to review the book?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  That's unbelievable.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  And I double-checked this because, you know, you look, you go to your review and it, underneath it says the date that it was posted. And then I checked the publication date of the book. And, you know, it's, it just goes to show how little effort was behind the, the, the initial marketing. No one, no one thought this was going to be anything.

• 39:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  You know, there were

• 39:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  I can't even begin to tell you how low the expectations were about this book. And like, maybe a few doctors would read it.

• 39:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Maybe some, someone in policy was gonna, gonna make some little change because of it. And a few months later, I get a call on my home phone from Dr. Campbell. Says, this is Howard Jacobson. Yeah. Says, did, did you write this review of my, you know, at this point, I'm like in, you know, celebrity awkward, like stuttering.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  Right. How do you get your home number?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know that.

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  Phone book or something?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  I think it was my

• 39:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Maybe my initial, but you know, I mean, he's a good researcher.

• 39:56Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, I guess, yeah, that's one thing he knows how to do, right? He got to the bottom of how to track you down.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  So he found me and he just, you know, he thanked me because, you know, a lot of the reviews, once the book had started becoming a little bit popular, the, um, some people from the Weston Price Foundation had, were orchestrating a real, like, campaign to smear it. They were writing negative reviews, um, they were attending his events and heckling.

• 40:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  And so

• 40:21Rich Roll?

  And really quickly, because we don't have that much time, but can you explain a little bit about the Weston Price Foundation and who, who these people are and kind of what they're about?

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Um, I'm not entirely sure

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  It's kind of unclear, right? It's sort of shrouded in some kind of bizarre secrecy, right? But they're responsible for a lot of the vitriol surrounding the book.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Right, you know, I was, I was, uh, I was not shocked to get a, a Google alert that says that they had rated, uh, the whole two thumbs down.

• 40:50Rich Roll?

  Two thumbs down, right? One thumb down wasn't enough?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah, there wasn't, yeah, I think they're, they're, uh, the sort of early proponents of what's basically a paleo diet, you know, huge amounts of fat, you know, butter in your coffee, um, grass fed.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  And I'm not, I'm not clear. I know a lot of people who are, you know, there's a lot of the stuff in the Weston Price rhetoric that appeals to me.

• 41:15Rich Roll?

  Right. There is a sort of whole food approach to it in a certain regard and kind of getting rid of the processed foods, et cetera.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:22Rich Roll?

  And it's unclear whether they're being funded by any of the, like, the beef industry, or I'm not sure what's going on exactly.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I haven't figured that out. But it's, you know, it's a very sort of DIY ethic around, let's re-take control of the food system from the industrial and from the politically correct.

• 41:44Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  And, you know, the industrial I'm all for, the politically correct is people like us saying, you know, maybe you shouldn't have that cheeseburger.

• 41:51Rich Roll?

  Right. Alright, so Dr. Campbell calls you out of the blue to thank you for writing this review.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, we were going up to upstate New York and we said, oh, we'd love to meet you. And we went over to their house and my son got stung by a bee in their back garden and they took care of us. And we just, we had a really nice time together. And it's like, um, one of the speakers on the cruise, Jessica Porter, was going off on this riff, like, she has this fantasy about, like, which celebrity she could be friends with.

• 42:21Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Like, you know, I could be friends with Meryl Streep. She'd like me. We'd have a good time. And I had had that fantasy about, like, Colin Campbell. Like, what?

• 42:30Rich Roll?

  And then like- You're manifesting this in your life.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm like, I really do like this guy. He's, you know, he's so humble. No matter what the claim anyone makes, he's just, oh, could you show me the research on that? I'd really, I'm really curious.

• 42:44Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Um, so we just started becoming friendly. And then a year later, we moved down to Durham, where he has a home. And we just, we just kept up a friendship. When he was in town, we'd, we'd cook them dinner. And, um, then in, like, 2010, I think, he, he knew I was in marketing. He said, there are some folks who, um, may need some marketing help. They were, they were working on a movie about him and Caldwell Esselstyn. And would I be interested in talking with them? And I said, oh, tell me more. And he sent me an email from the producer, and they're calling this movie Forks Over Knives.

• 43:24Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  And I said, that's the dumbest title I've ever heard. This is, this is, I'm not even gonna waste my time. These people don't know what they're doing. This, this project is going nowhere.

• 43:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  So.

• 43:36Rich Roll?

  Little did we know.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:38Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, I I saw an early cut of it as well and I was unsure as to whether this was gonna resonate. I just thought, I don't know if anyone's gonna take to this. So, I'm as surprised as you that it has become this force of nature, this movie, and I think it's a testament to just how powerful the information is that's conveyed.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was talking to to Lee Fulkerson, the director, and also to Brian Wendell, the producer, and I was, I I kind of admitted that I had really serious doubts based on the name, and they were like, yeah, we didn't think this name was going anywhere either. We didn't know what to call it.

• 44:14Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  But I asked Brian, I don't know if you know.

• 44:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know Brian.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  You know, I said, well, how did, you know, what was your background? It was, you know, in film, in documentaries?

• 44:22Rich Roll?

  He's a real estate guy.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  I was a realtor.

• 44:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  I said, well, how did, you know, how on earth, why did you even try this? How did you think this was gonna? He says, I just knew it was gonna work.

• 44:31Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Like, wow, that's, I'd like, well, I'd like some of that.

• 44:35Rich Roll?

  That conviction.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:37Rich Roll?

  So you got, you did get involved in marketing, or you said, no, I'm past?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  I said, no.

• 44:41Rich Roll?

  You passed up on that opportunity?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  I passed up on that.

• 44:43Rich Roll?

  Did you help Dr. Campbell with marketing the China study?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  No, not, not at all.

• 44:49Rich Roll?

  What was it that that kind of tipped the equation when it went from a book that was, had three reviews to suddenly becoming so well-known? Was there one thing that happened, or was it just a very slow?

• 45:04Speaker 01

  I think it was just, it was just a slow, you know, this graph where just things keep doubling, and, you know, doubles from one to two, and two to four, and four to eight, doesn't look very impressive.

• 45:15Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  But when it starts doubling from like a thousand twenty-four to two thousand fifty-six, you know, then very quickly, it it gets big, and I think what was happening was people were buying like ten copies and giving them to everyone they knew.

• 45:28Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  And then it would hit a a certain person, a, you know, a, a.

• 45:34Rich Roll?

  An influencer or something.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  An influencer, a connector, a sharer, and then, you know, we found out that the governor of, of North Carolina had read it and was friends with Bill Clinton and sent him a copy.

• 45:45Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  And we had, we had them over to dinner at our house one night, and we don't have a TV in our house, we live in a community that has a TV in the, in the common house, and he says, we have to watch TV. I was, you know, surprised. We went over there and it was the golf channel he had to watch.

• 46:02Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I was even more surprised. There was an interview with Gary Player, great South African golfer.

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Who literally, and I know what that word means, you English majors, literally, got down on his knees, holding a copy of the China Study and begged every American to read it.

• 46:18Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  And then he proceeded to, at the age of 70, to like run on a treadmill while pumping like two 25-pound barbells for like a minute.

• 46:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And he says, "I attribute this to my plant-based diet."

• 46:32Rich Roll?

  That's amazing. I mean, you can't predict anything like that. And again, it goes back to the power of the message in the book. And it's almost, looking back, it's almost this Malcolm Gladwell-esque tipping point. You know, you could do a case study on it.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, I have no idea. I mean, as a marketer, I can explain anything in hindsight, but I could also have explained the opposite. Like, I could tell you why forks over knives is never going to amount to anything.

• 46:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  With as much, you know, clarity and conviction as the opposite. But what I saw people resonated with in the China Study was a guy who really wanted to know the truth. And the way he told his story was, you know, it just kind of cut through the confusion. Just said, "Look, here's what we know. We don't know everything, but I'm not trying to push anything on you." It ends with, "Look, can I say anything with 100% uncertainty?" No, science doesn't work that way. All I can say is, "Here's the bulk of the evidence and I invite you to try it." And it really was a breath of fresh air. And it just, it had a ring of truth to it.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  We read a lot of diet books and it's like, you know, this is a fat-burning molecule and it's all sort of, you know, tricks and techniques. And this was just fundamental. So, look, this is how the human body works. And here is the evidence from so many different places that all point to the same thing. And here's why you're hearing different. And just give it a try. And, you know, like I said, it doesn't take very long for people to see and feel and experience the results.

• 48:09Rich Roll?

  It's been interesting lately to kind of take the temperature with the book and it's sort of like how all things go where, you know, something becomes popular and everybody celebrates it and then you take a five-minute break and then it's time to tear it down. And it's become very in vogue to sort of say, well, the China study has been debunked, didn't you hear, right?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:32Rich Roll?

  And certainly, there are some outspoken critics and some blog posts and some articles written, some longer than others, some with more citations than others. And this is something that, you know, people that are coming from this low-carb perspective are really kind of hanging their hats on right now. And I'm interested in your kind of perspective on the criticisms and how, you know, how that kind of colors how you defend the material. And then I want to talk about Hole after that because we're running out of time.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, what it reminds me of, and the words you use are verbatim, right? Oh, the China study has been debunked. It reminds me of these clips on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show where he'll show like the, you know, the Fox News talking points and like thirty-five different, you know, legislators and Fox anchors will use the exact same phrase. Like, somebody worked that out in a marketing office and then sent out the memo.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  So it really is a form of laziness for most of the people who haven't even, you know, who haven't read these blog posts, who don't understand them.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  And just to say it's been debunked. So first of all, the China study, the book, is about seven or eight hundred studies, not just the China study, the study.

• 49:57Rich Roll?

  Right. And quite possibly, it would have been more aptly titled something else because the China study is just one aspect of this book.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Right. And I believe Colin didn't like the title.

• 50:09Rich Roll?

  For that rea-- I mean, probably because he had foresight that this could be something that would come up.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Right. It's not about the China. It's partly, but not entirely. And there's so much more evidence than just that. So--

• 50:24Speaker 01

  You know, I've done a lot of research into the research that is is put out by the the low carb, the paleo, who they say the China study has been debunked. So one of the main sources is a a reanalysis of the statistics by Denise Minger.

• 50:40Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. That's sort of the reigning kind of blog, this incredibly long blog post that everyone kind of points to.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Right, and she's simply wrong. She's simply.

• 50:50Rich Roll?

  So walk me through it for somebody who might be, who's somebody who may have read that article. I mean, it's so dense, it's very difficult to even read it. And even if you read the whole thing, I mean, it's not like I'm gonna go and check all of her references, you know, it's so, you know, so it's left, I mean, for the normal consumer.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Right, well, so I can't walk you through it because it involves, it involves sort of delicacies of regression analysis. So, you know, in two years, we could.

• 51:24Rich Roll?

  But if you could, if you could sum it up in a few sentences.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  I could summarize in a few. So the China study itself was a correlational study of about 8,000 different inputs. So let's look at everything that could possibly affect, you know, disease states, rates of disease, mortality from the disease, and biomarkers of the disease, like cholesterol and weight and blood pressure and things like that. And let's look at all these different inputs from from fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, exercise, hours slept, you know, huge, huge analysis, and it was meant to be correlational. So if we get all that data, one thing you can be sure of is if you have that many data

• 52:09Speaker 01

  points, so you could correlate every single data point to every other single data point. So you'd get, you know, 8,000.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  To the eight thousand, I don't, you know, I'm not completely, but just, you know, billions and billions of individual correlations of, you know, data point one to data point eight thousand, data point one to data point seven thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. Every single one of those, you could say, is that significant? And when you have that many, you're gonna find a lot of statistically significant things that don't really matter. You know, you might find that everyone who wore yellow on Tuesday has lower blood pressure than everyone else. So you then you go around and say, well, what we should do is have everybody wear yellow on Tuesday. It's the distinction between causality and correlation. Partly, but it's actually the distinction between just getting so much data that you're

• 53:03Speaker 01

  gonna have some random significance that doesn't really mean anything. Okay, I got you. So the incorrect way to read this, to read the China study, is to look for any correlation and say, that's the one that matters. The correct way is to put it all into a giant regression analysis and say, what are the big trends? Because we're not trying to prove that yellow on Tuesday does anything. We're trying to say, let's look at this huge group of people with kind of homogeneous, to some extent, genetics and very heterogeneous lifestyles, and which people do better? And why? And so when you're looking at it from that big perspective, from space, you can see, you know, the oceans and the continents, and you can say, okay, I understand Earth.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  What Denise Minger and others have done is they've zoomed down to the microscopic level. And they say, no, Earth, you know, this, Earth isn't made up of land. Look, there's a puddle. Look, it's, Earth is made up of water. He's completely wrong. So it's simply a misunderstanding of how to use a study like that. They're applying the tools of, you know, a clinical trial where every data point is supposed to be correlated in a very controlled space where you control all the variables except the ones you're studying. They're applying those statistics, those lenses to a very, very different type of study. So Colin Campbell went out in space and took a picture of the Earth and said, look how beautiful this is.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  And, and they're saying, no, you, you know, when we go down to the-

• 54:35Rich Roll?

  It's not beautiful because we, here's one toxic dump site over here.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Good, good analogy.

• 54:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, interesting. Um, it's amazing, though, how much traction this sort of singular individual in her blog has, has sort of magnetized, uh, you know, a community to, you know, in essence, like I said before, like hang their hat on this idea that, that this is the definitive sort of statement on this book and it has been officially debunked, right?

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, uh-

• 55:07Rich Roll?

  I mean, how does Colin take that?

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Well, he's all pissed off, frankly, that, uh, you know, that that's how the world works. Um, I just finished a really interesting book called Trust Me, I'm Lying by, by Ryan Holiday, I think, who's a guy who manipulated the internet for a living, for his clients, to create scandal, to create controversy, to create stories where there were nuns and then get denials that then became additional stories.

• 55:33Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  And so it's very, you know, the internet is a, it's like yellow journalism back in, like, nineteen oh three. It's very easy to, to influence. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of people with a lot of money being funneled into things that look real. You know, there's like activistcash.com, there's a whole bunch of, of these websites by a guy, I can't remember his name right now, that look like, you know, sort of consumer groups raging against the food police.

• 56:01Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  You know, like, like you and me and Dr. Campbell, who, uh, who kind of say, you know, look, here's, here's a pretty good way to eat.

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Um, so there's, you know, they're very good at framing. And, and when you frame things in terms of, of fear and anger and opposition, it's very hard to respond with a soundbite that includes sort of love and compassion and tenderness and nuance. We just, you know, we just don't get this, you know, in a-

• 56:31Rich Roll?

  Now, that doesn't get page views either.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:33Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, interesting. Yeah, and I, I know that the sort of, uh-

• 56:39Rich Roll?

  You know, kind of idea of where he was coming from when the book came out was this presumption that he's presenting all this information and that it would be warmly received, or at least sort of intellectually considered, and to have it kind of come out and to not receive that response, at least initially or immediately, was jarring to him. Like, hey, I'm just presenting all this information. This could change like the way we look at things. Isn't this, isn't this cool? And that was not the reaction.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, which, which is of course very good for me, because then he had to write another book.

• 57:15Rich Roll?

  Right, so let's get into that, yeah. I mean, when he approached you and said, I want you to be my co-author in this book, that must have been a cool moment for you.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wish it had happened.

• 57:26Rich Roll?

  What do you mean?

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Instead, he had a manuscript, and he said, you know, can you help me clean this up a little bit?

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  I got you. All right, you back-ended yourself into it.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he hired me as, you know, on an hourly basis as an editor, just to kind of clean things up. So I wasn't sure I could do it. I wasn't sure how long it was going to take. So I took one chapter and I rewrote the first four pages of it and sent it back. And I said, is this what you're looking for? And he said, that looks great. So we started working on it. And he had really, he'd begun writing Hole in 2007. And he would write a chapter at a time over many, many years. It was four, he'd been working on it for four years. And I was just floored by the ideas in it. But the manuscript needed work. And we started working on it. And through the process of, of, of working on it together

• 58:17Speaker 01

  and me asking questions, and I think, you know, partly what I wanted to do was be a marketer, and just make this really, really clear and persuasive. And

• 58:29Rich Roll?

  That you could bring an everyman or consumer eye to something that's coming from a heady scientific brain.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted, I wanted

• 58:39Rich Roll?

  And translate that so that the populace could absorb it appropriately.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Not even the apopulis, but me. Like, I would read a chapter, like, I don't, I don't quite get this. Like, there's something big here. And I, I wanted to give other people the experience I had of just having my eyes open by this manuscript. And to say, you know, this is a really big point. Like, there was a, one study that he sort of mentioned in, in the book that I, I couldn't believe. And it was this, one of his students, Rui Hai Liu, who had come from China. His dad had been a, a traditional Chinese herbalist. And he wanted to study the vi- vitamin C properties of an apple. And he, um, did that and he found that there was like fifteen hundred milligrams of vitamin C-like activity in a hundred grams of apple.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  And then he want, he, he did a biochemical assay in the lab to see how much actual vitamin C there was, all the, all the flavonoids and, you know, ascorbic acid. And he found it was only five point seven milligrams. So five point seven created in the, in the whole apple fifteen hundred of activity.

• 59:48Rich Roll?

  Because of some kind of incredibly complex matrix of nutrients that working together creates something that, you know, is not two plus two equals four, but two plus two equals ten.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Right. This was, this was, the, the amount of vitamin C activity was two hundred and sixty-three times greater than what was predicted by the actual materials in the apple. And that blew me away. And I think, and I wanted it to blow everyone away. So that was sort of my contribution was to, uh, through my own lens, to, to, to share my amazement at what Dr. Campbell had discovered and what he had researched and, and kind of brought together and the, you know, the, the philosophy that he had been developing for, for decades.

• 1:00:37Rich Roll?

  And the idea of whole is essentially that, uh, we need to take a step back and reevaluate our reductionist approach to science, to nutrition and to health and to... Look at it from a more macro perspective and understand and appreciate the incredible complexities, not only in the foods that we eat, but in the way our biomechanical systems, our bodies, operate. And to understand that it's more than meets the eye. It's more than what that vitamin C pill, you know, that you take as a supplement is doing to your body in an isolated sense, but that there is much more going on. And in a sense, to coin the phrase that is used in the book, holism, correct?

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, is that the idea behind the book? And where does that idea come from? Is that generated out of his experience with the China study? Or what is the sort of germination of this drive to put this book out and the information in it?

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Right. I, well, I can let Dr. Campbell speak for himself about the initial drive, but I, you know, the, from the worldview is that, you know, reductionist science, which is seen as the only kind of science worth funding and worth learning from, is quite myopic. And it doesn't, it doesn't give us the big picture. And it's very susceptible to hanky panky in the funding process. Because when you're only looking at tiny little details, it's not neutral which details get looked at. The details that get looked at are those that have market potential. And things that have market potential tend to be quick fix.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  And if you really want to have market potential, you sell a drug that has side effects, so you can sell additional drugs to take care of those side effects. So not only is reductionist science not giving us the whole picture, it's actually giving us parts of the picture that are exploiting us.

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  In some respects, reductionist science is really, you know, kind of the scientific method, though, because you have to isolate out these variables and focus on how one thing affects something else, and you have to remove all the other aspects of what might influence that result, right? So, the idea of holism or anti-reductionist, you know, science is to appreciate that it's that's never the case, at least with biological systems.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I think, you know, there's nothing wrong with the reductionist science, but I think of it like, imagine, you know, a million scientists each looking at the world through a microscope, and all of them are arguing about what the world is. So, it's wonderful information, but there needs to be someone with a perspective to say, "Hey, let's put this all together." You know, so there's an old, I think, Indian fable about the six blind men trying to describe an elephant, and each one's touching a different piece of the elephant, and they're arguing. You know, the one with the ear is saying, "The elephant is a fan." The one with the tail, "The elephant's a rope," or "The elephant's a hose," or "A wall," or "A pillar." And, of course, from the outside, we can look and say, "Well, they're all right, and they're all wrong."

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  The trouble is, in our, in this society, the scientists who are examining the elephant are all being funded, and we are, we don't have access to the elephant. We have to take their word for it. So, so, we're, we're listening to, you know, is it a paleo-elephant? Is it a vegan elephant? Is it a raw elephant? And, and people, scientists are not trained or incented to look at the big picture. There's no funding to look at the big picture. It's called be going on a fishing expedition. It's, it's not real science to be interested in the world as a whole.

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  So what is the solution to this? Like, how do we move from this reductionist perspective into a more, you know, how can we take that 10,000-foot view approach and improve how we evaluate these things?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Well, one thing is for people to see for themselves that holism is real. And I think we're all born with a sense that everything's kind of connected. So if you, you know, if you try the plant-based diet, which holistic studies and holistic, the bulk of evidence suggests is the healthiest way to eat, you try that, you might start feeling better, you might start, you know, exercising more, you'll experience the holistic power in your own life. You can look beyond that and see that a plant-based diet also has holistic effects on the planet,

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  on social justice, on your own mood, on your relationship with nature. You know, I think that's, to me, that's the ultimate break of holism, is that we, as a Western civilization, have been cut off from nature. And every symptom, every one of our addictions is based on we're self-medicating to try to get back to nature. And when we do reductionist science only, and we call it the only science that we're allowed to do, it's essentially torturing nature to reveal its secrets. And, you know, in the same, it's part of the same mindset that tortures animals, that

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  tortures people in Third World countries, that tortures the earth, and end up ultimately torturing ourselves with these diseases and with the lives of quiet desperation, as you put it in your talk. I think the solution is experiential. There's great work to be done in sort of reading and studying and learning this stuff, but ultimately... When we experience wholeness for ourselves, the facade of a separate world starts to fall away. And I think we can move more and more into integrating ourselves into our own bodies, integrating into our communities, integrating our food system into a civilization that regenerates the earth rather than destroys it.

• 1:07:00Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  You know, I think we're waking up and, you know, people like Dr. Campbell are way ahead of us saying, "Hey, look, there's a cliff down there. Maybe we want to change direction."

• 1:07:11Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, in some respects, when you are beautifully put, by the way. Thank you.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:07:17Rich Roll?

  It's sort of become, it transcends this focus on nutrients and diet and biological symptoms, and it becomes much broader than that. And the way you describe it, it starts to sound more like a spiritual journey.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Well, for me, it is. You know, when we eat, we eat the world. We're, it's the most intimate relationship we have with the rest of creation. You know, we chew it up, we make it part of ourselves. And we, you know, as human beings, we tend to think of ourselves as so separate. But it's, you know, the nutrients come in and become us. We go out into the world, we say words, those become nutrients or poisons for other people. You know, there's a flow. And, you know, I mean, that, to me, that's the ultimate reason that this mindset is going to win. It's just more joyful to live this way than to be miserable and medicate yourself with comfort foods and junk foods and all the other addictions.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  You know, ultimately, not being addicted to things just feels better.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. We have to wrap it up. We're out of time. There's so many things I still want to talk to you about. We didn't even get into the low-carb fraud book that you worked on. We didn't talk about homeschooling. So I hope that you will sit down with me again in the near future.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  I would, I would, I would love to.

• 1:08:38Rich Roll?

  Maybe we could go for a couple hours next time.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  I would love to. I'd love to ask you all the questions about your journey, too.

• 1:08:44Rich Roll?

  Absolutely, we can do that. But I do want to sort of leave everybody with a final...

• 1:08:54Rich Roll?

  With some final thoughts from you, you know, somebody who's listening, somebody's listening to this, maybe they haven't read the China study, maybe they have, they have, maybe they're not sure where they stand with the whole thing, but they're feeling kind of stuck and unsure about the best way to eat, or the best way to kind of transition out of some situation that they're in in their life where they feel stuck. Is there any kind of guidance, or encouragement, or insight you could provide to those people?

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Well, I'd say in general, what I've learned about myself is my first impulse when I'm stuck somewhere, or not happy, is to figure out why it's my fault, and why I should be mad at myself for it. And then I'll try to use that negative motivation to like, you know, kick my ass out of that situation into some other situation, and that only makes things worse. For me-

• 1:09:50Rich Roll?

  You go into a shame spiral.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Yes. And the shame spiral simply feeds the addiction, whatever it is. It just makes, it makes me need, you know, the addiction is for me is always to numb out and distract myself. And so the more shame I feel, the more I need to numb out and distract myself. And to me, the fundamental practice in my life is tolerating my own feelings, being present for them, and working on coming to understand them and love them. And from that place, I find I have so much more room to make any kind of change, whatever it is. And you know what? If you wanna go paleo, go paleo and try it, and see if it works for

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  you. If you wanna go plant-based, go plant-based, try it. You know, don't get caught up in in dogma. You know, get caught up in your own experience. You know, be present for your own life, and you'll see what happens. You know, we, the truth does not need us. We need the truth. And when we become, you know, very dogmatic about the truth, it's like, you know, we're, we feel like the truth needs us to prop it up somehow. You know, we're so small, the world's so big. Just, you know, we're just-

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  I don't say, you know, sort of enjoy the journey, because for a lot of

• 1:11:10Rich Roll?

  Relax.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  For a lot of, yeah. For a lot of people, you know, that's like, you know, enjoying something when they're in the middle of a miserable episode is too much to ask, but just be present for it. I've found that nothing hurts as much as I think it does when I'm running away from it.

• 1:11:26Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. I have a very good friend, and he's fond of saying, "They're just feelings, man." You know, we work so hard to try to avoid certain feelings, or we live in fear of experiencing certain feelings, whether it's fear itself, or, you know, shame, or whatever it may be. And he's always saying, "Just feel the feelings when they come, and they change, and they pass, and you realize they won't kill you, and they inform the texture and the depth of your life experience, and you can draw from that." But just know that whatever you're experiencing, it will change, and you can get through it.

• 1:12:10Rich Roll?

  And to just embrace it, and accept it, and be present for it, and feel it, rather than try to resist it and make it go away.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, and I think that's the place from which change is possible, and from which our own agency becomes powerful.

• 1:12:28Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Beautiful, man. That was great. Thank you so much.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Thank you. Can I plug my website?

• 1:12:36Rich Roll?

  Absolutely. I was just gonna say, like, where can people go if they want to connect with you, learn more about what you're doing?

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I have a new website called plantyourself.com, that has very little on it, but it has a signup box, and I haven't sent out any emails yet, but I probably will. And if you're interested in finding out where this journey is gonna take me, you can go, you can go visit there, you can go to facebook slash plant yourself, and, you know, literally it's a couple of weeks old, and I don't know where it's gonna go, and it's always very easy to get off the list if you're tired of it.

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh, and the big secret is that Howard has a podcast that he refuses to market himself, so I am going to market it for you.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Bless you.

• 1:13:18Rich Roll?

  What's your podcast called?

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  It's called Plant Yourself.

• 1:13:21Rich Roll?

  Okay, so is that, that's on the same site?

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  That's on the site, I believe it's on iTunes, I'm embarrassed to say, I don't know how to find it.

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  You don't know? You're an internet marketer, come on.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:13:31Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be on there. How many episodes do you have up?

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Well, I've done about 55 interviews. Most of them are on another site. I was, I was working with one of Dr. Campbell's sons on a site called wholevanna.com. Most of the podcasts are available there and I'm, I'm doing stuff on my own right now. And so if you go to Plant Yourself, you can get the most recent ones. And I talk to wonderful people. I mean, I basically do it just for the opportunity to have great conversations and hopefully they're, they're worth listening, listening in on.

• 1:14:03Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right, man. Thanks so much. It's been a pleasure hanging out with you all week and your beautiful family. Your kids are lovely and phenomenal. They're bright shining stars and it's been really fun for our kids to hang out with your kids and to get to know your family. So, thank you.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Right back at you, brother.

• 1:14:22Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Peace.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Take care.

• 1:14:24Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 1:14:31Rich Roll?

  All right, everybody. That's our show. I hope you enjoyed it. Second part of two parts. A double plant-based nutrition whammy. If you want to learn more about Howard, check out the show notes at richroll.com. Pick up the book Whole by of course using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com and lots of other information in the show notes about what Howard is doing and where you can connect with him. So, want to support the show? Tell a friend. Let's just spread it by word of mouth. That's the thing, you guys. The show's free. It will always be free. I just ask that you say a kind word to somebody else who you think might enjoy the program. You want to take it a step further?

• 1:15:16Rich Roll?

  The Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. That's the way to do it. If you're going to buy something on Amazon, which you probably are because we're all doing that these days, click the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. You can find it on the homepage, on the blog page, on the podcast page. It's right there. It will take you over to Amazon, then buy whatever you're going to buy. It will not cost you a cent extra. Amazon kicks us some loose change, which keeps our lights on and helps me pay Tyler, my son, to produce the show, who, by the way, is doing an amazing job. And he does all the music for the show. He arranges all the audio. He's been fantastic. And give him a shout out

• 1:15:57Rich Roll?

  in the comments below, because I want to encourage him further. He's been a great producer. If you want to show your love even a little bit deeper, you can donate to the show. There's a donate button at ritual.com. You can donate whatever amount resonates with you. And again, the show's always going to be free. Don't feel obligated. But for those of you who have been using the Amazon banner ad and who have been donating, that means tremendous amount to me, to us, to Tyler, and we really appreciate it. So, thank you. Final thing you can do is leave a review on iTunes. That helps us out a lot. And you know what would be cool, too? I'm not, by the way, I'm not asking you to leave a five star review. Just, you know, share your thoughts on the show. And I would

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  appreciate it. What's also cool, which I love, is when people post images on Instagram of them listening to the show, tuning into the show, a picture of them out exercising with a picture of their iPhone, listening to the show and stuff like that. I love that stuff. So, keep that stuff coming. I really dig it. If you want to learn more about getting more plant-based, you're inspired by Howard and T. Colin Campbell, you can take T. Colin Campbell's E. Cornell course. There's a link to that in the show notes to the previous episode, episode 79, or you can check out my course, the course that Julie and I did for Mind Body Green. It's called The Ultimate Guide to

• 1:17:22Rich Roll?

  Plant-Based Nutrition. It's three and a half hours of streaming online video content. I basically took all of my knowledge and experience with this whole thing, put it together, tried to answer all the questions I commonly get about how to do it and how to do it right, everything from how do you get your kids to eat better, and how do you do it when you travel a lot, how do you handle business lunches, etc. You know, what do you eat during the day? Before you work out, after workout, all that kind of stuff. So it's all in this course. There's also an online community and all these downloadable tools, a free copy of our digital e-cookbook, Jai Seed, and lots of other bonuses. So, check that out at MindBodyGreen.com.

• 1:18:05Rich Roll?

  And of course, you want to wear your affiliation with this Plant Power Revolution proudly. You can do that now at RichRoll.com. We've got t-shirts, we've got trucker hats, we've got beanies, we have a couple nutritional supplement products. We've got vitamin B12, we have an athletic recovery supplement product called Jai Repair. We have new products coming soon. We're working on a cycling kit. I'm also working on an app, a mobile app, an iOS iPhone app. That's in development right now, we're getting close on that. But I'm pretty excited to be able to share that with you guys soon, which will be a great, new and easy way to tap into the podcast and get some added features and bonuses and the like.

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  So that's it. Follow me on Twitter, @RichRoll, Instagram, @RichRoll, Facebook, Facebook.com/RichRollFans. And that's it. All right, you guys, thanks for being a great audience. Thanks for all the support. Thanks for the love. And I am more encouraged and enthusiastic than ever to keep raising the bar and get better at this. Bring you better guests, more informative guests, and to continue to get better at my diction and my podcast production and all the like. So, anyway, that's it. Got great new guests coming up for you over the next couple of weeks. And I will see you guys next week. So have a great week, have an inspired week.

• 1:19:34Rich Roll?

  Do something that scares you. Try something new. See how that feels. Because the truth is, there is no stasis in life. In every single moment, you are either growing or you are regressing. So think on that. And I'll catch you next week. Thanks, you guys. Peace. Plants.