Chef Babette: Fit at 72, Self-Love & Life Transformation Through Food

A force of nature, Chef Babette is the chef and owner of Stuff I Eat, a plant-based restaurant in Inglewood, California. After weathering an extremely challenging childhood, years addicted to drugs and processed foods, and suffering from a myriad of health issues, Babette managed to get clean and transform her life wholesale. From going plant-based in her 40’s, to starting a restaurant in her 50’s despite no experience, to becoming the very model of fit and radiant at 72 years young, Babette is a living testament to all late bloomers that it’s never too late to change. This conversation is about all that and more. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: House of Macadamias: https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/ Salomon: https://www.salomon.com/richroll Athletic Greens: https://www.athleticgreens.com/richroll Express VPN: https://www.expressvpn.com/RICHROLL Voicing Change II: bit.ly/voicingchangeII Peace + Plants, 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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• 1:14Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  All you have is the moment. I am in complete and total control over my seconds, and now I can be as happy as I choose to be.

• 1:31Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is the incomparable chef, Babette. Babette is a vegan chef, of course. You might have intuited that. She is the owner of the plant-based restaurant, Stuff I Eat, in Los Angeles. And she's basically just an unstoppable force of nature.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  I just love movement. I love knowing that I can move.

• 1:57Rich Roll?

  I first came across her at this big gala fundraising event for Mercy for Animals here in town, and pretty much knew immediately, upon setting eyes on her, that I wanted to share her powerful story on the podcast. So here we are. This is such a good one, and it's all coming up right quick. But first...

• 2:21Rich Roll?

  Okay. Chef Babette has been featured on Inside Edition, The Chew, The Steve Harvey Show, and other television shows. And she's the author of the dessert cookbook, Cash in on Cashews. She also chronicles her daily fitness journey on social media, which is super powerful. But perhaps the most impressive thing about Chef Babette is that she didn't actually even get started with a healthy vegan diet, or even exercise for that matter, until she was in her 40s. And she didn't start her restaurant until her 50s.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Each and every one of us has to determine what is important to me about the gift of life.

• 3:03Rich Roll?

  This is a person who grew up in East LA, weathered in extremely challenging childhood that involved things like sexual abuse. She spent years addicted to drugs and processed food, suffered from a myriad of health issues, and basically managed to overcome all of that to become this truly inspiring example of transformation. And now, at 72, she's crazy fit, ripped, just radiant. Her skin is insane, and just this living testament to the idea that it's never too late.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  I started with one push-up, and every day I would add a push-up. Start with one.

• 3:45Rich Roll?

  Babette brings the heat today. She delivers the goods with more energy and enthusiasm than I've seen across this desk in quite a while, and at the same time was also very vulnerable, open, and quite candid about the traumatic experiences that she survived in her early years. I could sing her praises all day long. She was such a joy to spend time with, but I'm not going to make you wait any longer. This is me and your new inspirational role model, Chef Babette.

• 4:19Rich Roll?

  Are you ready? Because we've got a lot to talk about.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  I'm so ready.

• 4:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, so nice to have you here. What a delight to have you in the studio. So excited to get into it with you. I mean, first of all, you look fantastic. You came in, your energy is like through the roof. Your skin is radiating. Your outfit is like off the chain. Like, everything about you is positivity and like love and welcoming. This welcoming energy. And, you know, I mean, just when I walked in here, you guys were already here. And I was like, wow, this is like, I can feel it.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 4:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Let's, I don't even know where to start because there's so many things I want to talk to you about.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  From the beginning.

• 5:01Rich Roll?

  But let's start at the beginning.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 5:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Tell me about growing up, your relationship with food, with fitness, the whole evolution. I want to hear every beat of the story.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my pleasure. I love to share. My life has been quite a journey. But you know, that's, that's what it is when we come to this planet. We're on a journey. And as a child, I went through quite a bit. I was molested at five years old by a total stranger. And I know I was five years old because my sister was in the crib in the next room. And I'm five years older than her.

• 5:48Rich Roll?

  Wow. Is that, is that a memory that stayed with you?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  It never left.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  Or a memory that you retrieved later?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Never left. I never told anybody. It was actually the babysitter's son. Now, I don't know if this guy was an adult, but I was five, so. He came up to my bedroom, did whatever he had to do, and then he left. We both went downstairs where his mother was doing laundry. I stood on one side of her. He stood on the other side of her. Nobody ever said a word. And I never told anyone until I was an adult.

• 6:27Rich Roll?

  What was the inflection point that caused you to finally talk to somebody?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  It was a conversation.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  That I was having with my mother. But prior to that, you know, I had been with different caretakers. Because my mother came from North Carolina. She had a third grade education. But she was bound and determined not to be on welfare. She did domestic work. She cleaned, she cooked. And she worked two and three jobs. So obviously, we needed caretakers. My brother was 10 years older than myself. And he was a kid that was always in trouble, juvenile hall. So he wasn't necessarily in my life. It was myself and my younger sister. I had a godparent that had actually christened me.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And my mother felt very comfortable leaving me with her.

• 7:26Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. She was the Seventh Day Adventist, right?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. But she was cruel. Very, very cruel. There was a time that she told me I had to make a pallet, wash all the dishes. She had guests that evening. She said, "I want you to wash all the dishes. And then I want you to make yourself a pallet and go sleep in the garage with the dog." As I was attempting to get the pallet together, her husband said to me, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, Godmother wanted me to clean up the kitchen and then make a pallet." Now, I'm only around seven, eight years old then. She wants me to go sleep in the garage with Booger Bear. That was the dog.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  And he said, "Go to bed. I'll clean the kitchen. And don't ever, ever make a pallet to go sleep in the garage with the dog." Now, I never heard any more about it. But I'm sure he had something to say to her. So I went through that all week. And then my stepfather, who was Italian. My mother had a loving heart, very open. So race was never anything that we dealt with. Everybody was the same. And that was the one great thing in my life. But he would come to pick me up.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  And he would sit me in his lap and pretend I was driving the way home as he...

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Fondled me or whatever. So I had to live with her during the week and go through all of the pain of being mistreated with her. And then he would pick me up on Fridays. And then I had to go through all that.

• 9:15Rich Roll?

  And that was after the babysitter's son?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  That was after the babysitter, yeah. Cause now I'm three, four years older.

• 9:21Rich Roll?

  Oof.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty, pretty nuts. Now, you know, I think about my mom determined not to get us on welfare. We weren't gonna be a part of the system. No, I'm not doing that. I'm gonna work. But what if we did receive welfare? Would I have been able to be there with her? Would she have been able to watch me more? As we make our comments and our judgments towards people who receive assistance, sometimes it's needed. But she did what she felt was best. So the reason I wound up telling her, I was late in my

• 10:03Speaker 01

  twenties, when I finally told her about her husband and the babysitter, she was making a comment, a negative comment about my first husband, who was a childhood sweetheart. And I said to her, which I know it was extremely painful at the time, I said, well, perhaps he doesn't come home and endorse his checks and sign them over to me. But there were some things your husband did that my husband would never do. And they were done to me. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I told her. And she said, I saw him pat

• 10:47Speaker 01

  you one time. And I told him.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  That if I was not enough for him, he should leave. It stopped. So obviously, she did say something to him. I never knew why it stopped, but it stopped.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  But when those types of things happen to you as a young person in your formative years, I suspect that makes it very difficult to trust other people or to embrace the idea that the world is a safe place. Like, the world is dangerous. Your mom doing what she thought was in your best interest entrusted you to certain people who betrayed you profoundly. And you carrying that around for so many years as a young person. How do you grapple with that and come out with the sort of attitude that you have now?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  That is such an awesome question, and I was giving that a lot of thought last evening. Because the pain didn't stop there. When I got married at 21 and had a child, my spouse was addicted to heroin. So you can imagine what kind of life that was. I decided not to go to college. I went and got a job immediately out of high school. And we were married for quite a number of years, and then I met someone else. We divorced, and he was abusive physically. So I've been cold cocked.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  I've been picked up and body slammed. I've had my head run through a wall.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Part of the journey. But it doesn't end there. So when I'm done with him, I meet someone else. This particular person had me smoking crack cocaine.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Part of the journey.

• 12:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, how old were you then?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  I'm now in my 30s, you know, but the crack cocaine was so debilitating. And what we did was, he and I, I was working for the airlines when I started using the crack. The guy that kind of used to whip me around, he was a drug dealer. And then after I left him and I was living in Denver, Colorado, after I left him and moved back to Los Angeles and met my brand new person, we decided we were going to cook crack cocaine, form the rocks and sell them. And that's how we would make our living.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Well, he liked to snort it and I liked to smoke it. So you can imagine where that lifestyle was going.

• 13:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a lot, some chaos in there.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  It was a hot mess. And I can remember being at my mother's home in the bedroom where I grew up. Now, we grew up on the east side of LA, Washington Boulevard and Central Avenue, went to Thomas Jefferson High School, 20th Street Elementary School, Carver Junior High School. So I was an east side girl.

• 14:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  I can remember sitting in this bedroom after smoking these rocks and going through a piggy bank. And I can remember, it was like a voice said, so that's who you are now.

• 14:23Rich Roll?

  The piggy bank that you had as a kid in your childhood room.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  You're going through a piggy bank. That was the very last time I ever dealt with cocaine.

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not that different than, you know, sort of crawling through the carpet, looking for the tiny rocks that might have...

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Baby, I smoked so much cornbread. Look.

• 14:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Child, look.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  But did you, were you able to just stop? Or you still have this epiphany?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  I stopped.

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  When that voice came to me.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  No N A or anything like that?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  I never went to anything. I stopped, went and got a job with Republic Airlines and reservations. And I can remember the very second paycheck. I can remember driving on the 110 freeway and saying to myself, "Man, got this paycheck. You could really get high today." And the other voice said, "And mess everything up."

• 15:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  I have never looked back. Never looked back when it came to that.

• 15:22Rich Roll?

  That's powerful.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  That is powerful.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's, that's a tough one.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:26Rich Roll?

  For most people to overcome. And to do it kind of on your own is very unusual.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  I did it.

• 15:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  And I'm so proud of myself that I did it. But I, I, I'm just now sharing this story because I've walked in so many different shoes, Rich. I, I know that there's somebody out there that can identify with what I'm saying right now. That knows exactly what I've been through. You know what I mean? I have to share. It's part of the journey. It's part of the experience. And what I've done, because I, I embraced the love. I met my current husband. He turned me on to the vegan lifestyle. He wasn't even vegan. So now I'm reaching that point where healing is about to begin.

• 16:15Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  And I read two books, Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, and The Mucusless Diet Healing System by Professor Arnold Eret. Changed my world.

• 16:28Rich Roll?

  Let's put a pin in that for a moment, though, because you just turbocharged through a whole bunch of stuff that I don't want to bypass too quickly.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:36Rich Roll?

  I'm curious about how you, you made peace with the tumult of your childhood. How you, you know, kind of worked through the pain of those abusive situations that you were in.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Embracing love.

• 16:52Rich Roll?

  As a choice.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  I mean, it was either be angry, judgmental, all of those things. Those, those things are not going to heal me. To take responsibility for being the human that I am, and knowing that going forward, each and every second of my journey, I'm learning every single day. I'm not running a hundred, obviously, but I learn every single day. Love is a lot easier than hating. Now, I have said, and I just learned this a few weeks ago, I've said, "I don't regret not one step of my journey." And I had someone say to me, "You shouldn't regret it.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Those were horrible things that happened to you. What's important is that you didn't wallow in it. That's what's important."

• 17:46Rich Roll?

  Right, and regret is usually associated with something that you did, and these are things that happened to you.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. But, but now, I can, I feel it that way. I, I, I regret that man came up to my room and did that to me. But, I didn't stay there. I embraced love, and that is where I am now. It makes me wanna cry. It's like, I could be a bitter, old, cranky lady. But I realize I have each and every second guaranteed to me, and I am now in control of those moments. And if there's anybody out there that has gone through anything and you feel like you just, just wait a second. Just wait a second. And be in control of those moments,

• 18:35Speaker 01

  because it means everything in terms of this journey and your life experiences, and what I feel like I was called to do. Now I'm the hot vegan, seventy-two years old, you can't mess with me now.

• 18:49Rich Roll?

  I know. Now, that's, I mean, that's undisputed, but, I think that journey has a lot to do with cultivating self-love. Like, you were a victim of horrible situations, and I think it's very common and, you know, to be expected, that those experiences foment a sense of, of shame or a sense of worthlessness that make it very difficult to hold yourself in, in high regard. So, where does that instinct within you to revere yourself so deeply come from? Is that... The result of a spiritual practice, is that something that you just have always had

• 19:32Rich Roll?

  within you? Like, how do you, you know, sort of embody that sensibility of self-love such that, because you can't give love and be of service if you're not

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  in healthy self-regard of yourself.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  That's so true. You know, I, I, I think, as, as a child, I think it was always there, but because I was so frightened, I was scared a lot. I was scared a lot that I was always gonna be in trouble, that something was, was gonna happen to me. And then, as I grew, and, because I was raped. I was raped once, had to have an abortion. So when people have the conversation about abortions, I'm like, I, I paid eighty dollars for an abortion. Some woman came into my, my home and gave me a, a douche with, uh, something really weird. I think she went to jail after that, but it was like, really weird. So if anybody

• 20:29Speaker 01

  ever offers you anything like this, women, say no, thank you. But it was ivory liquid and pine salt.

• 20:38Rich Roll?

  Oh my god.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  And I paid her eighty-three dollars to do that. Later on, I think she did go to jail for really hurting somebody. But, um, I don't, I don't know. I, I walked into this church, City of Angels, and the person that was the speaker, or the minister of that church, was O.C. Smith. "God didn't make little green apples," you remember him? O.C. Smith.

• 21:07Rich Roll?

  I know, but I know Agape and

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I was there too.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  Michael Beckwith.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  I was there with, in, at Agape, and, um, O.C. just spoke to everyone. I don't care if you were a professor sitting in that audience, or somebody with, like my mom, a third-grade education. He spoke to everyone and I knew right then and there, I'm home. It was all about love. It was all about now. It was not living in yesterday. Cause he used to say, yesterday is a cancelled check. And tomorrow is an I O U. All you have is the moment. What do you choose to do with your moment?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And I just started living that. I've got a teary eye. But it was that that started resonating with me. I have the moment. I am in complete and total control over my seconds. And now I can be as happy as I choose to be. And that is where I stay.

• 22:17Rich Roll?

  Empowering to have agency.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Oh, it's wonderful. It really intru- now that's not to say I don't shed a tear. Cause honey, I've shed some tears, enough tears to drown. But I always, I know where to go now to bring it back. To reel it in, to say, this is your time.

• 22:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  This is nobody else's moment but yours. What are you gonna think? How you gonna feel? You gonna laugh? You gonna cry? What are you gonna do with this moment? This now? When I see people, I hugged you as soon as I saw you. I believe in the oneness of the universe. I'm just, I'm just somewhere else now. Believe that we all were created by the same intelligence. And that we're one in this. I don't care about complexions. I think diversities are, we need to be embracing each and every one of our differences. And learning to love one another. And that is what has gotten me through. And that is why I don't wallow in yesterday.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And I ain't really too worried about how I'm gonna pay the rent tomorrow. Because I got now.

• 23:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Intellectually, I'm 100% there, but in practice, this is something that I struggle with. Like, I woke up this morning melancholy and thinking about things I could have done better the other day, or a stone that's unturned that I should have turned over, or a choice that I made that wasn't, you know, kind of in alignment with the person that I want to be, and I'll beat myself up, and I'll run a tape, and I'll loop on it, and then I'll wake up in the middle of the night and think about it, even though I know everything that you just said is true. Making that leap from understanding to practice to actually living it in the moment to moment

• 24:12Rich Roll?

  is challenging, right? And you seem to have mastered that.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  I have my moments. I have my moments, just like you. I'm not running 100. I just remind myself. At 72 years old, sweetheart, I figure between now and 28 years, that's what I have. That's the time I have. And I don't want to be as miserable as I was.

• 24:38Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  So, I remind myself. Even if somebody hurts my feelings, I'll either have a gentle conversation with them, "This is how you made me feel. Let's move past this," or I just let it go. I take responsibility for it.

• 24:55Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Period.

• 24:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  You are totally responsible for you. And I'm responsible for me and my feelings.

• 25:04Rich Roll?

  That's the good news and the bad news.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  But it is what it is.

• 25:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  And we've been given the power, that is a beautiful thing, Rich, to have the power to determine what your moments are going to feel like.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  That's power. I take and accept that power.

• 25:25Rich Roll?

  So you have this realization. How old were you when this kind of came into your awareness?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  I was probably around in my late 30s. You know, something like that.

• 25:37Rich Roll?

  And during that period of time, you had all these different careers. You worked for the airlines, but you were a hairdresser, right? And you were a singer. And then you were like singing in Tokyo. And like, there's all kinds. I mean, like, there's so many layer. Like, the chef thing is like the most recent thing.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  You did a lot of things before.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  I had floral arrangements. I was a balloon designer. I did.

• 25:59Rich Roll?

  Balloon designer?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I did all kinds of stuff. You know what? But isn't that the beauty of the journey? And especially a little girl coming from the east side of LA. That we had nothing. To be able to say, "Life is still good. I want to see what more it has to offer. And I'm just gonna do me." I decided not to go to college, so I didn't have that. But, you know what? I was... I had a lot of gifts. Yeah, I was singing.

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  And that's how you end up meeting Ron, right?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  How do you know all this stuff? Rich, I have not even had a conversation with you.

• 26:40Rich Roll?

  I do a little bit of homework. Try to understand who I'm gonna be sitting across from. I should say, because I was gonna say it at the outset, like, you're here because I was at the Mercy for Animals Gala Benefit. And they gave you an award, and they showed this video, and you got up and you accepted this award, and you gave this impassioned speech. And I didn't know who you were, and I was like, "I don't know who that person is, but like, I need to know more about her. I need some of that energy in my life. Like, I'm getting her on the show, you know, come hell or high water."

• 27:11Speaker 01

  You learned everything. That is so adorable. I love it. Okay. What did you just ask me? How did you know about Ron?

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  You met Ron through... You initially met him through... Didn't you audition?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Well, actually, he had a friend that I was still eating fish. I was at the fish market, buying some dinner. I had...

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I had just gotten rid of all the men in my world and so.

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  You needed to get rid of those guys.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I did. I used to be a hairstylist. So I had like a little salon created on my service porch. And I went to the fish market and I met this guy, Ron's friend, and they had a band. And so they invited me over. I said, yeah, well, I'm a singer. They invited me over to come and audition. And I did. And that's how I met Rondo Davis. And he actually prepared my very first vegan meal for me. And it was amazing because food, that was another thing that was hard on me. I had eczema, asthma. I was a wipeout. Couldn't digest my food because I just ate the standard American diet and it was killing me.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  And he prepared this beautiful vegan meal for me and he offered me those two books. And I thought he was kind of cute, you know, so, okay, I'm gonna read the books. I'm not really that big of a reader, but I'll read these books. Best thing that ever happened to me.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  So Fit for Life and the Mucusless.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Diet Healing System.

• 28:45Rich Roll?

  Okay. I've heard of Fit for Life. I haven't heard of that other book.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Professor Arnold Eret.

• 28:51Rich Roll?

  It's all about reducing inflammation, essentially.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  And that's what he believed. Arnold Eret believed, I don't care what name you give a disease, you're pretty much just inflamed.

• 29:01Rich Roll?

  Sure. All of this or chronic lifestyle diseases that we're suffering from, whether it's obesity, heart disease, et cetera, you know, can be tracked to the level of inflammation that we have and that inflammation is a result of the foods that we're eating and the lifestyles that we're living.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 29:17Rich Roll?

  So prior to that, though, paint the picture of your relationship with food and exercise. You know, as a person, the pre, I guess we're talking about the pre-Ron era.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  I was, when I was a kid in high school, I was really fast. I could always run really fast, a great sprinter. But when I got my first job, I just kind of sat down like everybody else. I stopped moving. And when I met, it has to be Ron. When I met him, our first date was going up running the hills at Griffith Park. Well, he ran the whole thing backwards. And I kept thinking to myself. Something is wrong with this man.

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  And I couldn't understand.

• 30:02Rich Roll?

  I kinda like him, but I don't know if I like him that much.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  I don't know if I like him that much, really. How many more inclines? And he would say, oh, just another one around the corner. But I thought to myself, because he was only two years older than me.

• 30:14Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  And I thought, wow, if he can run this whole thing backwards, I'm struggling walking. One of these days, I'm gonna be able to run this hill.

• 30:25Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Rich Roll?

  And the food part. So what was your diet like, growing up?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Maybe everything from...

• 30:32Rich Roll?

  Pre Ron, pre Ron's first meal.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Honey, give me a pig. I ate everything from the root of to the tootin' no. I actually ate chitlins. I actually cooked chitlins. I cooked chitlins. I saw the poop in chitlins and still boiled them and ate them. So, you know, I just, I ate everything.

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  This is the culture that you...

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Refined sugar. Very hard on me. I could hardly wear anything backless. Now you can hardly keep me out of something backless. Like I said, my skin was just ripped. And every single month, I broke out in my face like with a rash.

• 31:09Rich Roll?

  That's crazy, because your skin is absolutely perfection.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Isn't that incredible?

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  Translucent.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Isn't it? And it was all diet related. It was all diet related. Unbelievable. I finally learned, started treating myself to massages and scrubs. And I was like, ooh, seventy-two and you got skin that feel like this?

• 31:31Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  So it was just a brand-new world that just I entered into with healthy eating. I could eat and I wasn't making the loudest belches on the planet. And I wasn't constipated constantly. It just, everything just got easier. And then with the movement, I got stronger.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  So now, I feel worse if I'm not moving than I do keeping it going.

• 31:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not dissimilar from my own story, which also started at 40. Changing my relationship to food, finding a plant-based diet, and then having that resurgence of vitality and energy that got me interested in movement and fitness for the first time in a long time. And those two things kind of, you know, overlapping each other is a very powerful combination.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  It really is. And I heard about your story too. And I thought about, man, he was doing that thing around the same, I mean, you know, the same age as myself.

• 32:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think at 40, you know, that's a moment where you start to reflect a little bit. I'm like, am I on the right path here? You know, maybe you're a little more open to some changes than you would otherwise. And it was a line in the sand kind of thing for me, just like it sounds like it was for you. Like you, alright, so you go on this hike with Ron. He's running backwards. He prepares this meal. He gives you these books. You read these books. The light bulb goes off. And you kind of like basically just cross that line in the sand. And that was it, just like putting the crack pipe down.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. And now, it's very important to take responsibility for myself and my feelings. No matter what, I take responsibility for those things in particular. But it wasn't always like that. I did a lot of finger pointing. And if it wasn't for you, and if it hadn't been for that, and if I would, you know what I'm saying?

• 33:27Rich Roll?

  The victimhood.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  The victim. And it doesn't really serve me in my life to be the victim. I don't need to hold grudges.

• 33:36Rich Roll?

  So how did you make that switch?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Just understanding, and that's happening right today, Rich. It's been a gradual thing for me to understand. Because I can cry like that, it's not always coming from out there. Why are you really crying? Why is this really hurting you? You know? So I take responsibility for me. And I just think it's important for each and every one of us to do that and to understand that. They're all learning experiences. I just appreciate this human journey so very much. Because from whence I came to where I am now, and my voice being bigger and bigger,

• 34:21Speaker 01

  I would have never thought anybody would ever even listen to me.

• 34:24Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  But to now share that human experience and embrace love, that is the key to all of our issues, is love. It really is. I can't say it enough.

• 34:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's certainly something we need a little bit more of right now.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  We need a whole bunch more of it.

• 34:53Rich Roll?

  I feel like that relationship with love and connection with each other and appreciation of the wholeness is a little bit fractured right now.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  It's very fractured, but that's why we are individually responsible. Each of us. You understand? When each of us takes on the responsibility of embracing love and understanding that there is no separation. It's like I am just an expression of my Creator. Period. It's like I can't make that amazing mac and cheese I made today before I left the restaurant without it being also an expression of me.

• 35:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  And so I know that I believe I was created in and of this power of love. And so I feel better in that space than I do anywhere else. I feel like I've known you forever. My mother never met strangers, and I remember that as a kid. I was like, this lady talks to everybody. What's wrong with her? She never met a stranger. People loved her wherever she went. I'm her now.

• 36:11Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  I just want to embrace you. I just want to love you. I'm not thinking about anything else. I don't want to.

• 36:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful act of service also to embody that natural disposition. But also as somebody who makes food, to prepare food with that love and then give it to somebody else. Like that is, you know, there's, there's, there's just something beautiful.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  So beautiful.

• 36:37Rich Roll?

  About that, right?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  It really is.

• 36:38Rich Roll?

  And I know, like, obviously, I get the sense that all the food you make is injected with your, you know, very specific vibration of love, like it's a transmission of energy. There's a sacredness to that.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  And when I have my moments, I'm human. When I have those moments when I'm, somebody has said something to me in the restaurant, or Rondo said something to me in the restaurant, and I have to remember the energy. I have to remember me touching this food and I'm handling food. Calm down.

• 37:12Rich Roll?

  It's a practice.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, is it a practice. We've been in our screaming matches before because we're, it's real. I'm not trying to paint a picture to you that comes off like I'm Gandhi.

• 37:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. No, I get you.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Trust that. But awareness is what I have now.

• 37:32Rich Roll?

  Awareness and appreciation of the innate fallibility of the human condition.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:38Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 37:39Rich Roll?

  And to, you know, make space for grace with that.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:45Rich Roll?

  Right? So you have this kind of awakening moment and you're embracing the vitality of the foods that you're eating and learning to prepare. But when does the light bulb moment of like, I'm going to now take what I'm learning about food and make it an offering for other people?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  You know, Ron and I, we, we dated for two years. So I met him in 1990 and we got married in 1992. And our lifestyle was pretty cool, you know, we injected movement in that and we've got a healthy diet, we're feeling good. And I'm thinking, this food is really good. Maybe we should share this. So after I went to Japan, I thought I was wanting to be a singer, but when I was over there, I was cooking for everybody and working out. And I was like, you know, my thing is really, really movement and food right now. That's where I am. So when I got back to the States, I decided I'm gonna, I'm gonna maybe have

• 38:47Speaker 01

  myself a, what do you call those, a company where I, I can prepare food for people if they're having parties.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  Catering.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  That's what I thought I was going to do. And Ron eventually asked me, would you like for me to help you in this? And I said, sure, why not? So we had an opportunity to go over to Agape Spiritual Center. And Reverend Michael Beckwith allowed us to bring our cart that we had built on the parking lot.

• 39:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  And we began to accumulate block long lines.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  What years was this?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  This was like, okay, um, late 90s, early 2000s. I don't even know, I don't know, man, it's 2022 now.

• 39:35Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to think.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Were you there?

• 39:37Rich Roll?

  I was. Yeah, no, my wife and I would go to Agape. I mean, we, we didn't go every-

• 39:42Speaker 01

  On Slauson, right? On Slauson?

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  In Culver.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  In Culver City, yeah.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  Um, maybe 90, 2000, 2002, 2003, around that era. We, we went pretty frequently and we would eat. So I'm pretty sure I ate your food.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  I'm sure you ate my food. It had to be the early 2000s too, because we were on the parking lot for six years. And we, okay, 2004, we got the building on Market Street. We had no money.

• 40:11Rich Roll?

  In Inglewood.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  It was a gift in Inglewood. The owner just almost gifted us the place. And I remember it was 2004, it took us four years to open the doors, because we had to get in there and try to fix everything up.

• 40:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I was, I was on the parking lot at Agape for six years. So it had to be the begin, you know.

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, early 2000s.

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  Pretty sure, pretty sure I enjoyed your food at some point during that.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great. They were wild rice tacos.

• 40:38Rich Roll?

  Long lines.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  And they were pretty popular. And I had this souped up, it was like a souped up hot dog cart. And we had a griddle, refrigeration. We could make smoothies on the other side. It was just awesome. And we'd set up every Sunday. And, um, yeah, it was great. And then we wound up opening the rest of the doors in 2008. We didn't even have table and chairs. I think we had the three bistro tables and chairs. We didn't even have trash cans. But we opened the doors because I heard that if you open the doors, the people will come.

• 41:11Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  And sure enough. But that's when Mercy for Animals, they really put us on the map.

• 41:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  They really did.

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  Did, uh, business go through the roof?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Oh, let me tell you. Let me tell you. When they did that first video of me, the first one, it was the first time we ever had lines like that. We couldn't even keep up. We couldn't even keep up. It was incredible.

• 41:32Rich Roll?

  So the food cart at Agape in the parking lot is almost like perfect training wheels to figure out, like, how do you make a business out of this? What are the recipes people like? So that by the time you're in the restaurant, you kind of have an understanding of what to do?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  We had already, basically, people had already tested the food. We knew it would sell. We knew people liked it, you know? Um, and the only other thing that we added, because we were in Inglewood, it was predominantly black and brown community at the time. Um, we hadn't brought the soul food platter into it. So it was still just tacos, burritos, the enchilada pie, that.

• 42:12Rich Roll?

  And had to be the only plant-based restaurant anywhere around there.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  On our side of the street, it was a desert. There was not too much going on downtown Inglewood in 2008.

• 42:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  But, um, people would come in and, you know, no chicken, no, no meat. What is this? And, um, I would treat them to tacos. Just come back, try my taco. But I had to put the soul food platter on the menu.

• 42:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  It was vital.

• 42:40Rich Roll?

  But you were chasing people down the street. You were running out and giving them free food to rope them in.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  And let me give you a taco.

• 42:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How much free food did you give away?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  I might have given away a whole bunch of free food, but guess what?

• 42:53Rich Roll?

  But you get the lifelong customers.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  They became perfect customers and I still have some of those customers today.

• 43:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  You know?

• 43:01Rich Roll?

  Well, what's interesting is, first of all, you make the decision to open the restaurant in 2008, which is the peak of the recession.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  And you decide to open a organic, plant-based, you know, cuisine place in a food desert and offer it to a demographic of people who, you know, aren't inclined to, you know, be favorable to that.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Was I just, who did I?

• 43:23Rich Roll?

  No, but like, I want to understand, like, how, and now you've made it work, like, I want to, you know, you got through the pandemic, I want to talk about that, but, you know, when we talk about healthy eating, plant-based or not, like, how are we educating people about how to take care of themselves amidst, you know, healthcare crisis in which increasingly, you know, more and more people are succumbing and falling prey to these chronic lifestyle ailments that are entirely avoidable through making different choices? And also ailments that are disproportionately impacting communities of color and lower income, you know, neighborhoods?

• 44:02Rich Roll?

  So on some level, like, do you feel this calling or a sense of responsibility to try to do something about this? Or was this merely an expression of your passion and a way to create a business around it? Like, how do you think about those broader issues about health, nutrition, diet, disease? And, you know, and how it impacts your community?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  It was all about a responsibility. It was more than just creating a business for myself, because trust me, I did not have to put a salad on every plate. And we were the two, my husband and I, were the two people that would come by your plate and be like, "The only life on your plate is that salad. Do you need a to-go container for that salad? You need to eat that salad."

• 44:51Rich Roll?

  Browbeating the customers who were willing to at least come in and pay. Now you're going to scare them off.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  But what I started learning through studying, the China study, just, you know, just increasing my knowledge about my lifestyle, if you will, and what I'm sharing with the message. Now, we created... A um, I like to say that our menu is one that helps you transition. It's a transitional menu. I have a lot of belief in eating food live. I know that that is the best food for me to grab hold to. Because I know that every time I'm cooking something to certain temperatures, I'm killing the life in that food. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  So I would explain to people, I put a salad on your plate. So you have some life on your plate. This menu is a transitional menu. But it'll take you away from clogged arteries and some of the horrible diseases we're faced with today. And I would always sit down with people and talk to them. Not browbeat them, except for the salad. But but just share with them. Like I would always make this example. You love chicken? I love chicken too. I didn't quit eating chicken because I didn't like it. But check this out. If you burned yourself and it blistered, what's in the blister?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  And they would say, mm, pus or body fluids. And I'd say, OK. So you take that piece of chicken, you stick it in the oven. You pull it out and you open it up. What is that stuff oozing out of that chicken? And they'd go, ugh.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  They taught you that that stuff easing out of that chicken is juice. It's body fluids. It, you subjected it to temperature, high temperatures. You've cooked it. And now it's, that stuff is oozing out. But you would never prick that burn. You would never think about pricking that burn and sucking those juices.

• 47:07Rich Roll?

  No, you wouldn't.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I would do that.

• 47:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  People come in and they tell me.

• 47:12Rich Roll?

  How'd that speech go over with people though?

• 47:13Speaker 01

  They tell me that story. A lot of them have transitioned.

• 47:16Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Because of that.

• 47:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Because I don't think we think enough about what we're eating, what we're really eating, what we're really ingesting. We don't give enough thought to it. I used to think everything sold in the supermarket, because of all of our governmental agencies that's supposed to have our back. I used to think, everything, if it's sold in the supermarket, it's okay to eat. I really thought that way. Do you know how many of us think that way?

• 47:43Rich Roll?

  Most people, if they think about it at all.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Think about it at all. Thank you very much. So, they survive those lessons from Chef B.

• 47:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Okay. That's hilarious.

• 47:59Rich Roll?

  How has it impacted the sort of community more broadly though? Like the Inglewood community? Like, you know, like, so much of it is an entry point, right? But then they're gonna go home and they're gonna do what they're gonna do. And, you know, healthcare is about follow-up care too. And I would consider you to be a healthcare practitioner, the truest sense of the word. But really, changing people's habits in a sustainable way is as much about education and follow-up and accountability and creating kind of a community, you know, bond over a certain value that takes root.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  You know, more of that is happening now, that I'm older. Because of who I am today, people believe me. I think they believe me more than they did when I was younger.

• 48:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  You know? They don't understand, how can you do 75 push-ups at 72? Why are you still running that hill at 72 years? Why do you still look like that at 72? It was self-love and self-care. And now, I have people coming in saying, you know, you taught me about such and such a long time ago when you guys first opened. So now, I hear more of that, you know? But the beauty is that... The change on the planet right now. I just came from St. Martin and they had vegan. So you know what I'm saying? They understand vegan. So because of documentaries, like some of the ones that we've seen,

• 49:38Speaker 01

  that got people kind of fired up. It's made my job and my place in the community more welcomed. And it just has made my job easier, if you will.

• 49:52Rich Roll?

  Well, I think what you're doing is, I would argue, you know, more important than the average person who maybe is your age or eats well or even has a restaurant. In that because of the fact that, you know, these chronic ailments are disproportionately impacting communities of color. You need role models and people to look up to who are, you know, living a certain lifestyle as educators and inspirers. Because the vegan movement or plant-based or whatever is often characterized as an aspirational kind of high net worth lifestyle that, you know, isn't accessible to most people, right? And how can you do it on a budget? How can we make it more accessible and affordable? Especially in food desert communities

• 50:37Rich Roll?

  where all they have is a bodega and a fast food restaurant on the corner. They don't even have a supermarket with the healthy options amongst the unhealthy options at the same time. And that is really, like, we're not going to solve this problem unless we solve that problem, which I think is the biggest problem and the communities that need the most education, assistance, help, et cetera.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right about that. And I, I would have to agree with you. Ron and I made the decision because, and that's why we named the place Stuff I Eat.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  We're pretty much organic. That cost us a grip of money.

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  But we brought it.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  That's going to raise the prices, obviously, in the restaurant.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  We brought it to a community where they could have cared less about organic. But that was one of our teaching points. If you try to get organic, if you can. But if you cannot, try to stay plant-based. But it wasn't and isn't that simple. But. Doing what we've done, we've been a gift, I'd say, to the community. Because when they couldn't go anywhere else, they knew we were there. And then they would bring parents in that are not feeling good. Can you suggest to us? Or my child has lada da, heard you had asthma. What did you do for that?

• 52:05Speaker 01

  And that's when the gifting begins. Educating, sharing where I've come from, what I've been through, what Rondell has been through with all of those who care to know. And it was a very important purpose for Stuff I Eat to be there then and now. And thank God, we made it through COVID.

• 52:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, how did you do that when it closed so many restaurants?

• 52:31Speaker 01

  We wound up just opening up, what was it? Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, four days a week. We shut down a few days.

• 52:40Rich Roll?

  For just takeaway?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  And for just takeaway. And we had to let go quite a few employees. So we're still down, very limited on employees. We're just coming back. We're still not 100%, but we're not going anywhere either.

• 52:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  As a matter of fact, we're now contemplating a Stuff I Eat Express, more of a franchise situation.

• 53:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Probably won't have the soul food platter in there, but the easier, you know, because like I said, I make my own burgers. Everybody loves a good burger, but they're clean burgers. I, you know, I just, and that's another thing. We don't feed people out of boxes and, you know, I like fresh food. Everything kind of comes from plants and nuts and seeds. And it works that way, except for like, I just, I just beefed up my mac and cheese because I kind of want Stuff I Eat to be known for some serious mac and cheese, like Grandma's mac and cheese, but vegan. So I've done that, but.

• 53:48Rich Roll?

  With like a cashew sauce?

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, we're using just one of the non-dairy milks, water and some of the vegan cheese to do that. But I'm putting more cheese on it. And so it's coming off like the traditional mac and cheese instead of just this creamy out of the box. Mac and cheese.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  I got you.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 54:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  That one.

• 54:11Rich Roll?

  But as a transition food, as an entry point.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:14Rich Roll?

  If you can deliver on that.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 54:16Rich Roll?

  Then you got a customer who, you know, you can pivot or kind of push them towards the salads.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 54:21Rich Roll?

  And all that kind of stuff, right?

• 54:22Speaker 01

  It's so true, but you know, they're eating their salads now.

• 54:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, okay. I don't doubt it. I mean, listen, it's one thing to profess a healthy lifestyle or give somebody the science or have them write a book. But I think what really impacts people the most is when they see somebody who is a living example of a certain lifestyle and they're doing it in a way that is aspirational, but still like, you know, not so far out there that they can't see themselves in that person. And I feel like you serve that role beautifully in many categories. I mean, first of all, as somebody who's been eating, you know, an organic, plant-based diet and I don't know, probably predominantly raw for like 30 years right now. You're on the cusp of turning 72.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  You're, like I said earlier, you're just, you're radiating positivity. Your skin is insane. Like, it's crazy that you're 72. Like, you just, you look like, I don't know, you look like you're 36 or something. And you're totally jacked. You got like veins coming out of your arm. You can do push-ups all day. And on Instagram, you're sharing these videos of you doing your exercise routine. And it's very inspiring and it's very empowering, like reframing how we think about aging and having this conversation around longevity and the relationship between the choices that we make, the things that we put in our body, the choices we make about how we interact with other people. Like, it's more than just, oh, here's a salad. It's about that self-love piece.

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  It's about exuding love. It's about like, how are you being of service? How are you contributing? All of these things that you're about without being preachy. You're just an example. And they say, like in the parlance of recovery, you can't transmit something you haven't got. In other words, you can't be, you can't be an example of something if you're not actually living it yourself or you haven't like intuited all of those habits. And you so clearly do that in a beautiful way. And I think that's the real power in your message. Yes, of course, the restaurant and all of that, but you now have this platform where you can talk about these things. And I think it really, you know, I know for myself even, it really helps you rethink about what our relationship is to getting older and what that means.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  The beauty of it, the beauty of the aging process. And after that's this entire journey, to be able to say that I'm seventy-two and enjoy each and every moment of my time on this planet in this forum. It's just amazing and I'm so grateful to life. I really am. I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to do what it is that I do and love it so much. Wow, you set a mouth a little bit.

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  Let's, let's walk me through the fitness routine. I want to know, first of all, you don't sleep? We can talk about that. Like I've read that you get up at like two-thirty in the morning. So I don't know about that.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I go to bed at six, Rich. I go to bed at six, come on.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  All right, they left that part out.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  I get plenty of rest, trust. I'm very, very still and quiet at home most of the time. I'm, I'm to myself. I live alone. I enjoy that. But yeah, I, I usually wake up between one-thirty and two. And usually I just get up because then, you know, I'm, I'm getting myself ready. If I'm gonna go work out with shabnam or go to the restaurant that day. I just get my day started early. Like you say, the energy, my energy is just off the roof. So I'm, you know, ready to go. But to be able to, to be able to share that and let people know that,

• 58:06Speaker 01

  man, part of, part of the whole self-loving thing is to be a part of all of this, to be able to move. You know, if, if, if I want to run a hill, I can run a hill. I don't want to have a life alert. I don't, I don't want to get in the bathtub and can't get out. So I force myself to take baths. Sometimes I'm not always taking showers. Make sure you can get your butt out the tub.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  But.

• 58:35Rich Roll?

  That's the whole thing. When you get older, it's all about like if you fall down and you can't get up.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  And you can't get, that's, that's what people need to really understand. Now, of course, sometimes we have accidents that, you know, it's not any fault of our own. But when we just sit down and just let it go, that's generally what will happen to you. You lose strength. And a, a, another thing that I, I, I think is I'm not a superficial person. I, um, I enjoy the aging process. I don't look like I looked when I was 60. You know what I mean? But however it is, however this look is going to be as I age, I embrace it. Because just think, I've lived an entire lifetime looking different.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  So, you know what I mean? It's not a bad thing to have the, the crow's feet. I, I don't, I don't care to use anything to get rid of that. I'm okay with it. I, I want to see what it's gonna be. I saw one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen before. She had lines like in this table. But she was beautiful. She was beautiful. And if just to experience.

• 59:46Rich Roll?

  And she's comfortable with who she is and yeah.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Oh, she was just gorgeous. And that is how we should all be because it's each step of the journey that we embrace and appreciate. And don't, you know, I can't wear the bushy eyelashes. I'm a little bit too old for that. That don't work on this face.

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  But you did, when you turned 70, you posted these, you did like a bathing suit shoot, right?

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Oh, remember the bathing suit shoot.

• 1:00:14Rich Roll?

  When everybody was sharing that and all of it, right?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  It went crazy. That one went crazy.

• 1:00:18Rich Roll?

  That was another like inflection point in your, your, your kind of story arc, right?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, people really, really love that. I got a little bowl the next year and did bikinis and stuff. But this year I am gonna do a, a beautiful photo of myself. But, um, you'll see. It, it'll be, but no more bathing suits. I'm good for that. I still have my little calendars. I wasn't able to give them all away and now it's the end of the year.

• 1:00:42Rich Roll?

  You made like a bathing suit calendar?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Yes, I should have brought you one.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  Hang it up over here.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  We gotta get you one, Rich. We gotta get you one.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  So I still want to go through like the day in the life, the 2:30 wake up, the what is the routine? I know you go to the restaurant quite early, but like walk me through a day in the life of like food, fitness, being a chef.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Especially if I'm working that day and working out that day. So I get up around two, take care of myself, pull out my paint gun and spray paint the face. Once I got her all beat up and wrapped my hair, then I'm out of the, but I do have this to admit. I got a little OCD, so everything has to be exactly right in the house. I can't stand hair in the bathroom.

• 1:01:33Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  That's goofy, but, but I, once everything is exactly the way I want it to be. So when I come home, I come home to what I left. Then I head over to the restaurant and I prep generally from like four in the morning until we open.

• 1:01:51Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  I do all the cooking right now. And sometimes I think I'm just, you need to find yourself a chef. I'm too old for this, but.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  That's a hard, having a restaurant, man. Relentless.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  It's work sweetheart. You are never done.

• 1:02:09Rich Roll?

  You don't have sous chefs and?

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. No. I, the one chef that I had there, uh, she's working in Arizona now. She had to move. I loved her. She was awesome, but she's gone and then COVID hit. So we let everybody go. So it's me now.

• 1:02:25Rich Roll?

  Coming back now.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  It's me. No.

• 1:02:28Rich Roll?

  It's coming back. After this goes up, I'm gonna get some new people over there and, and you know, pad the bank account a little bit and hire some help.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  There you go. Hire some help. But right at the moment, I'm responsible. As a matter of fact, I was working before I came here today. I worked all day yesterday because I had been out of town for a while, traveling and, um, So yeah, I worked all day yesterday and went in there and they still had a list for me this morning. So I completed the list, came over here and the rest of the day is mine. I think we have a Zoom call today.

• 1:03:03Rich Roll?

  But typically, are you in, when you're not doing podcasts, you're in the restaurant all day?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  I'm in the restaurant usually till noon. And then if my trainer can see me after I'm out of the restaurant, I'll go over there, get about an hour workout on with her, stop by Rainbow Acres, get all my goodies, and then go back to the house and enjoy Babette for the rest of the evening. I live a very simple life. I'm careful about the energy that comes into my space because of what I've been through. I understand, I'm very, very careful. And now I pay attention to signs, whereas as a kid, you know, something would be presented to me and I'd be like, it's not that big a deal, I can handle that.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  No, no, I pay attention to the signs now because I'm responsible for me.

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  So how do you work through what you say yes to and what you say no to?

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Well, if it doesn't, if it doesn't feel right, I'm real big on not hurting. I don't, I don't want to create pain for anybody. I don't like messy. I don't want to be involved in anything where it's going to be messy and somebody's going to wind up getting, I don't, no, I don't want, I'm not into hurting. That's not what I'm about. And if I hurt you, let me know because I am the first to humbly apologize to you. That is not my purpose here, to inflict pain. So at my age, I take control. I take control of me. And then if I'm not in the restaurant, maybe a trainer has time for me at 8 o'clock in the morning. I hit it right over there to my trainer.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  We get a cool workout on and the rest of the day is mine. Most of the times I'm busy on Zooms or, you know, doing something nowadays. But I have a very, very simple, beautiful life right now.

• 1:05:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  But the fitness routine, that's basically like strength training.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  That's everything.

• 1:05:17Rich Roll?

  You're in the gym. And some hiking or stairs, you like to do the stairs and stuff like that. But it's pretty basic stuff.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Now, I had a torn groin, so I hadn't been really doing too much of the hike because I'm a part of a docu-series in Houston, Texas. And we were, we, I was feeling good from the, I didn't feel like I still had the tear. And we went to the track. When we got to the track, the sister was sprinting and I was like, yeah, I feel really good. So I got up there and all the athletes were like, no, no chef, you haven't stretched, you haven't. I got out there and I, by the time I got to the end, I had to limp back.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  Uh oh. Yeah. You gotta have yourself a little bit.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  You know how a groin tear will do. It takes a long time.

• 1:06:05Rich Roll?

  You're, you're a long, long time.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  A long time.

• 1:06:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  So we've been very careful, my trainer and I, going forward, not to stretch that too much. And stairs, I love stairs and you know I love running heels. I just posted a video when we were in St. Martin of me hitting a hill. I just love movement. I love knowing that I can move. I love that. I've often thought, if something ever happened and I was the only person that could get to help, even at my age, I know I'm in shape enough to do that.

• 1:06:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  That's important.

• 1:06:42Rich Roll?

  And maintaining that is so key, especially as you get older and it's harder to, yeah, like the gym stuff becomes really important.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  I started with one push-up and every day I would add a push-up. And if I couldn't add a push-up, I'd do the numbers that I'd done the day before. But I tell people that, I tell women that, start with one. Inch by inch. Life's a cinch.

• 1:07:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, whether it's push-ups or anything.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Anything.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  That's, that's the way you do anything.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Rich Roll?

  It's by starting with one.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Starting with one. Like, I have to do at least 72 push-ups on my birthday. So I'm gonna do it in the restaurant. Anybody that wants to come to the restaurant and hang out and either get down there and do some push-ups with me, maybe I'll give you a taco.

• 1:07:32Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Especially.

• 1:07:34Rich Roll?

  Free tacos?

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Free taco, especially.

• 1:07:36Rich Roll?

  Watch the push-up competition?

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  I'll give you two tacos if you can do all 72 with me.

• 1:07:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. This is why you can't hire somebody to help you in the restaurant. You're giving away too much stuff.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  That's my husband. You sound like my husband.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  But I figured like this, if somebody suggested to me, because I was doing sets of 25, and somebody said, you know, I can do that many, but I do sets of 10. And then I thought, that's a lot easier, because the time between sets is only like a minute or two versus three to four minutes when I'm doing sets of 25. So I'm gonna do sets of 10, I might even get pushed out 100, honey.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, if you break it down into sets of 10, then it's easier to build and improve.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. There you go. Yeah, tell me about the docu-series.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Okay, check this out. This is another thing that's so exciting. I'm in two series right now. You get to be 70 years old, and then somebody invites you to be a part in the series. Now, the one series is called The Right Turn Series. I'm so excited. I play myself pretty much in that, and that's probably coming out towards the end of the year. But then the Heart and Soul of a Champion is Dr. Baxter Montgomery, who is a board-certified cardiologist, and he's healing people through diet and exercise. Literally, he has a raw food restaurant in his practice.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  So when his patients come in, and I mean patients with like taking 15, 16 different meds.

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Levels all off the chart, and he puts them on a raw diet, and guess what? They don't even have to go home and cook. You just go to his kitchen, and they'll bag you up your meal.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  And he has this in his medical practice?

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  In his medical practice.

• 1:09:31Rich Roll?

  This guy's in Houston, right?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  It's in Houston. We were just at a gala event that he put on, and...

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Very beautiful doctors came to speak. We had John Sally there.

• 1:09:48Rich Roll?

  I love John.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was another doctor there that I just fell in love with. I can't Ken Williams.

• 1:09:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, I know. Oh, Kim Williams.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Kim Williams. Incredible, incredible. But yeah.

• 1:10:00Rich Roll?

  Former president of the American Association of Cardiologists.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Smart as can be. And he laid it out at that gala. And just the fact that everybody that I was responsible for interviewing our guests as they came in, everybody's story, the same rich healing from food and movement, healing really, really, really chronic illnesses. And they're all like in tears because Dr. Baxter Montgomery practicing medicine that's healing people through diet. It's just incredible.

• 1:10:38Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this docu-series includes you got athletes. You remember Green, what's his name? He was the fastest runner. Yeah.

• 1:10:48Rich Roll?

  Sprinter?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was running football, football player.

• 1:10:52Rich Roll?

  NFL player?

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  Which cream?

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Daryl Green.

• 1:10:56Rich Roll?

  Daryl Green. Uh huh.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He was there. Just several different athletes. And the docu-series shows you how they came in and how he got them within a few weeks.

• 1:11:10Rich Roll?

  Get their numbers down and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  You know how it goes. As soon as you start, the human body just starts to heal if you're consistent and if you're true. Isn't it incre- isn't it such, it's just so intelligent.

• 1:11:24Rich Roll?

  Knows what to do.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  It does. If you give it.

• 1:11:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Now, look, remember you gave me this because my eye was tearing. My body always tells me when I've gotten, I've been a little out. I went to St. Martin for some days and I came back and we had to go to Houston and then I wound up in Vegas. You know that whole travel thing. This eye gets inflamed if I'm, it's time to fast, in other words. Now, once I fast, and I'll probably do the master cleanse because I'm going to go hard on the cayenne pepper and the lemon and that sort of thing. Within a week's time.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  All this tearing will subside. Been there, done that.

• 1:12:07Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Very interesting.

• 1:12:09Rich Roll?

  You do that a couple of times a year, right?

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I have to. I do it like about, I usually do three to four times a year. Now, Master Cleanse, this Master Cleanse is, I'm going hard on this one because I really need to reduce the

• 1:12:23Rich Roll?

  That's the cayenne pepper, maple syrup.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  And the lemon juice and, yeah.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's hardcore.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  That one's serious. But it works. It really does work. As a matter of fact, I can remember the first time doing that and all of a sudden after day four, I could smell everything. I was like, whoa, I'm smelling everything now. It's, it's an incredible cleanse. Incredible cleanse.

• 1:12:49Rich Roll?

  Have you ever played around with intermittent fasting?

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  I do that. Yeah, that's my thing. That's my thing. That's how I roll.

• 1:12:55Rich Roll?

  So what does that look like for you?

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  I don't even weigh myself. I was telling Shabna, I just make sure I keep that separation between my thighs. You know what I'm saying? And I'm good to go. I'm good to go. I don't need a scale. It's like, yeah, I'm still good here. Okay. I don't know if I answered you.

• 1:13:18Rich Roll?

  Where is the docu-series gonna air?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  I would have to, I think towards the end of the year. I think the first episodes are getting ready to.

• 1:13:29Rich Roll?

  For, do you know where?

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't have that information, but we'll definitely get it back to you. Baxter Montgomery. Brilliant. Brilliant. Houston.

• 1:13:41Rich Roll?

  It's interesting that, you know, with all the documentaries, what the health and all that kind of thing, and the explosion of interest in the plant-based lifestyle and the number of plant-based restaurants and food products and the level of education has expanded. I mean, it's, you know, compared to 2008, when you opened your restaurant and, you know, that's kind of when I was starting to get going to. It's a thing that it wasn't back then, but still, people have difficulty wrapping their head around. Really getting on board, even seeing you at 72 banging out the pushups and with your skin and you know rocking the attitude and like the whole thing. They're like, yeah, but like where am I going to get my protein? How's this going to work? Like I don't maybe,

• 1:14:25Rich Roll?

  maybe you know Babette is some crazy outlier and it's not possible for me. Like so how do you think about and communicate with that person?

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  First of all, we're all animals. We're part of the human species. We're all the same. Period. If it works for me, it will work for you. Self-love, self-care, period. Educate yourself because knowledge is power. Don't walk around here being ignorant and saying ignorant things and keeping yourself in an ignorant space. There's so much knowledge out here to be gained. All those documentaries that you mentioned, do you know how many times I've watched What the Health? And I always see something that I missed. I just

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  try to stay knowledgeable because I know that this lifestyle, this side of the tracks has done me good. So I want to know more and more and more. I can't change anybody's mind, but I can be an example and maybe somebody will change their mind. Now, I don't know how quickly any of this change is going to happen for the masses. We may not even be here. But I do know it's not just about the one species on the planet. It's about the

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  whole. It's about our home. It's like, you gotta at least understand that the climate is changing because we're too hot. So and that is primarily because of what we are doing and our obsession with money and power and greed.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  When the planet goes for me, it goes for you too. You understand? So I don't care how much money you have. Now, you can jet off into outer space if you want to. But if you don't know how to take care of this home, you're not gonna know how to take care of that home either. So, my thing is, you better educate yourself and you better understand where protein comes from. All the different sources. As a matter of fact, here's the old 72-year-old telling you youngsters out there, "Google it."

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  "Google it."

• 1:16:51Rich Roll?

  I love that you're extreme. Like, you're just like, "I'm done with that. I'm over here now." Right? Like, that's the way I function. Most people don't function that way.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 1:17:00Rich Roll?

  They're like, "I need a little... Well, I'm gonna try this and dabble around in this." Takes them a little bit longer. Everybody's different. And you, as an example, or as somebody who's trying to lead or hold somebody's hand, you have to be patient with that as well.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  I could still be crawling around on the forest smoking cornbread.

• 1:17:24Rich Roll?

  The other thing, though, also, is that, you know, your entry point was your own personal health, as it was for me. And now you're talking about, you know, healing the planet and our collective responsibility to, you know, shoulder, you know, what we have to do to prevent catastrophe. That's a realization that only comes in time with this starting point of being... And, you know, look, personal health, you can characterize that as sort of selfish. Like, I just care what I wanna feel like and etc. So, somebody who says to you, "Yeah, but I like my chicken," or it's like, you know, "It's about my personal choice and what I want." Right? And then the retort, of course, is, "Listen, you know, the planet's burning. We need to understand, like, how we're manufacturing our food and the downstream implications of that on..."

• 1:18:07Rich Roll?

  You know, CO2 emissions and all these other things that, you know, are part and parcel of the consumer choices that we're making every day.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we are responsible for those choices, even us in the restaurant. Plastic, plastic is over the top.

• 1:18:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy. And it's hard to get around that because if you want to put a product out into the world, or your vendors are sending you stuff and everything is like, and there's no other way of doing it.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  Like, you kind of have to figure out how to do your best with a terrible situation.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  But that's where you, as the individual, you've got to take responsibility. That is why I'm not crawling around looking for cocaine rocks. It's because my mother, she didn't teach me anything else. She taught me responsibility. She did teach me that. And it used to be all about me, but I'm one with all of it. So, once I began to understand my oneness with the whole, then it wasn't just all about me.

• 1:19:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Part of that speech comes out in your browbeating of Howard Schultz and that Starbucks.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 1:19:19Rich Roll?

  PSA.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  It's like, dude.

• 1:19:22Rich Roll?

  You did that with Dotsey, right? It's which were good.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Huh? Yes, yes, but...

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so talk about that. The campaign to get, because Starbucks upcharges for their plant-based milks, but they don't for their dairy additives.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  They give away the creamer. You can take as much creamer as you want, and no extra charge. But you're going to charge me for a plant-based alternative?

• 1:19:45Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  I can't do dairy. I'm one of your customers that cannot do dairy. Not just because I'm vegan, I can't do it.

• 1:19:55Rich Roll?

  Lactose intolerant.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, you require me to pay more for the plant-based option? As wealthy as you are? Give a little. Just give a little. For the whole, do that.

• 1:20:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a, I'll put, it's on YouTube, I'll link it up in the show notes.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  Man.

• 1:20:15Rich Roll?

  Has there been any movement there? Any, any response, official response from Starbucks?

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  They just got in touch with me today on doing something else with them. I was like,

• 1:20:23Rich Roll?

  Starbucks did, or Switch for Good?

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Switch for Good. I said, you know what? I'm down. Whatever we can do, whatever I can say, what they gonna do to an old lady? Yeah, yeah. What you need me to say?

• 1:20:33Rich Roll?

  That's the good thing about getting older, is you start to just not give a fuck.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  You don't care.

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  Anymore.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  You don't care. No, no. Because I know that what I'm saying and what I'm offering is truth, and it's for the good of all. I'm not over there putting out bullshit. I'm telling you the truth through my experiences, and I'm sharing that with you, listen or not, but...

• 1:20:57Rich Roll?

  But no, no voicemail from Howard yet?

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  I was, I was kinda hoping, maybe, maybe I could get a little, you know, but no, haven't heard anything.

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  There's an interesting, on this subject of, of kind of expanding your consciousness, you change your relationship with food, you're bringing a different vibration into your body, you start to, you know, raise your, you know, awareness of other things that maybe you've been told earlier that aren't quite correct, and you start to question some paradigms out there, whether it's the food pyramid, or, you know, ideas around what's good for you and what's not good for you. Obviously, that leads you into an awareness of, you know, how we're treating all these animals, with how we're raising them for food, and it's not a big leap from that into, you know, kind of justice more broadly, right? So how do you think about,

• 1:21:51Rich Roll?

  like, your relationship with food and, and sort of the movement around that with respect to, you know, the, the animal rights issue, and also just food justice more broadly?

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Well, in terms of, especially with, in terms of the animal rights, we don't have the capacity to serve animals and their byproducts to the masses. We're failing at that. We just don't have the capacity. When you think about animal waste and our water and our air and all of those things, when you think, when you make that connection, you realize we don't have the capacity. We are, we have, not we are, we have failed when it comes to producing animals for food.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  We failed. We're failing our health, individual health. We're failing the health of our planet. We're killing off sentient beings that want to have a life, that deserve to enjoy their experience, if you will. We kill elephants for tusk. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? And so we feel like we kill enough of them, so if we, if they die off, we got these tusks we can sell. What is wrong with you? It's so, it's so selfish in the way that we, we think and live.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  We're very, very selfish and we don't have a problem hurting others to be that way. And it's, for me, it just, it's painful to watch, but at the same time, as an individual, I have to do my part and speak my truth. I hope that's answering part of your...

• 1:23:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, certainly, you know, we've, we've created in this factory farming, industrial complex that we've, you know, created a highly unsustainable and, and toxic industry that is, you know, slaughtering and, and torturing billions of animals every year.

• 1:24:13Rich Roll?

  If there's one thing that it does successfully, it creates a situation in which that animal uses the least amount of resources and is on the planet as shortly as possible to blow it up and turn it into food. But the byproducts, the waste, it's an intolerable situation. And it's just, I think it's, you know, toxic on a soul level, too, because we've normalized it and we turn a blind eye to it. And we just say, well, this is what we need to do to feed ourselves and we all need to eat. But I think there's, you know, in the, in the, you know, background of our consciousness, we all know that it's deeply wrong, right?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  It's so wrong.

• 1:24:50Rich Roll?

  And so how does that kind of erode, you know, how we feel about ourselves as a species, I guess, right? And if we can't resolve that within ourselves, how do we then, you know, treat our brothers and sisters with the highest respect and regard?

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  You're right. And that, right there, sounds like self-love to me. If you don't love you, you can't love outside of you. And that's what I think is happening. Because I love me, so I'm gonna find out what caused the eczema, what caused the asthma, and I stay clear of those things. Because now I don't wanna hurt me, the individual, by ingesting those things that are gonna cause me issues. That's practicing some self-love right there. But if you don't care to find out the truth about what you should be ingesting as a human, then that means you have very little love for you.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  And so you're sure as heck are not gonna have too much love for anybody else, and especially an animal. Now, you gonna love that dog, you gonna love that dog or cat.

• 1:25:56Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  That dog and that cat, better not touch that dog or that cat. But to hell with a pig, cow, chicken, or turkey. So it's like, or fish. What are we doing? We go out and we catch all these fish and all we want is tuna. So what do we do with the rest of the fish? You know what I'm saying, so it's us individually. Each and every one of us has to determine what is important to me about the gift of life. What is truly important to me. And being amongst, I went to Yellowstone one year. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  And to see all of nature, just walking around doing them, you know what I mean? Not bothering anybody. I went to Kenya, same thing, just, just seeing nature. But then I can look at a documentary and see chickens housed in warehouses and pigs and people in the community being sick from the waste. And each and every one of us has to change that. And we have to demand change, but we have to know why we need to change. And, and that's, it's like lifting weights, especially the real.

• 1:27:24Rich Roll?

  You gotta get up and do it every day.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  Those real heavy ones, when you just gotta get stronger and stronger and stronger.

• 1:27:30Rich Roll?

  Embrace work that has no end.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  I love life and, and I'm embracing the love of life and all life on this planet.

• 1:27:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So if somebody's listening to this and they're like, man, I just, I need some of that energy in my life, like I'm inspired by what Babette has to share. I, I know that I haven't been practicing self-love and I haven't been taking care of myself, or I haven't been, you know, eating the high vibration foods and I just don't know how to start or where to begin. Like, how do you guide that person? What's the first step to catalyze that trajectory?

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I, I just share with them, is everything that you ate, you just omit this, this, and this. That is why we have the menu that we have. Tacos, burritos, quesadillas, you know what I'm saying? It's a, it's one of those soul food. I make sweet potato pie. I just don't use a dozen eggs in it like my mama did. You know, I figured out how arrowroot powder works. You know what I'm saying? So I can still have sweet potato pie, I can still have the mac and cheese. So my share to them is, you don't have to really omit anything.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  But death, that's the only thing I'm asking you to stop ingesting. And just, they have so many vegan recipes now. I will go, if I want to make something, because I'm not a self, I'm a trained chef. I'm, you know, come, come out the kitchen at home and took it to a restaurant. But I can look up recipes, I'll play with them and make them my own.

• 1:29:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  It's that simple. Now, for those in, who, who live in areas and they can't get out, they, you know, like you said, the food deserts. I, I made a post one time, I wasn't trying to be funny. I, I went to Von's, which is a place right by the restaurant. And I went in with my phone and I was in the produce section. And I said, hey, you guys, you see all this, this is food, this is real food. I, I just shot, oranges, apples, potatoes, everything. And I said, too much of this is what we eat. And I went over to the cracker section.

• 1:29:41Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. You just say the whole rest of the market.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Could have said that for sure. But I went over to the cracker section and there was something on a box of Cheez-Its that I had never seen before because I don't buy this product. But I went to the ingredients because too many times people are looking at the nutritional facts and they avoid the ingredients. I don't personally care to eat anything or ingest anything if I can't, I don't know what it is. If I, I don't know what the word is, I can't even say it, I, I don't know if I should be eating that. Um, I kind of like words like apple, orange, broccoli, those words I got. And on the box of Cheez-Its, it had in very light, black writing

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  that it was bioengineered. It's not even real. It's a food-like substance that they've created in a laboratory. Now, when I started that video, but then I had, I got feedback from a couple of people like, you know, some of us live in areas where that's all we have. And you, you don't want to come off insensitive and be like, that's when we need to get some planting pots and go to Costco or Home Depot and pick up, they have organic seeds now. And sometimes we need to start planting our own food. If you're living in the area where you can't get too fresh food, sometimes you have to

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  take the responsibility of planting your own food and feeding yourself. Now-

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  But it's a lot, I mean, you, you know, that's a lot to ask, especially people in that community are working multiple jobs and-

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  And, and some of them don't even-

• 1:31:25Rich Roll?

  Now you're asking them like, now I gotta grow it myself, too?

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Some of them are still where I was, thinking that everything they sell in whatever supermarket is okay to eat because the government gave the okay. And I, I have to remember that as well. I was there. I thought anything in the supermarket was A-OK.

• 1:31:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  And there are tons of people out there just like me and living in food deserts.

• 1:31:51Rich Roll?

  Who's the guy, I'm looking him up right now, the, the guy in LA, Ron, who's the urban gardener, who's ta-

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:00Rich Roll?

  You know who I'm talking about? What's his name? I'm forgetting his last name.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Bennett, uh, I forgot his last, is it Bennett?

• 1:32:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, Ron Finley.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  Finley.

• 1:32:07Rich Roll?

  Ron Finley.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know Ron Finley.

• 1:32:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like taking over vacant lots.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, what he, and what he did was he planted, uh, right at his curbside. He was planting food and people could come by and pick whatever they wanted. That's how he got started. And the city tried to give him flack for that.

• 1:32:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  You can't-

• 1:32:26Rich Roll?

  Tried to shut him down.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  You have to put grass out here.

• 1:32:29Rich Roll?

  They should be giving him money to do-

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Thank you, to do it.

• 1:32:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  And they tried to shut him down with that, but he didn't go-

• 1:32:34Rich Roll?

  That's, that's not still the case, though, is it?

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  I know, I think he, he-

• 1:32:36Rich Roll?

  No, he started massive TED Talk and like-

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  He did okay.

• 1:32:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  He did okay after the TED Talk.

• 1:32:41Rich Roll?

  But we need more of that.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  We need much more of that. But that's my point.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Can government get out of the way and allow us to nourish ourselves? Because you're not. You said it's okay to put those crackers in the store. Oh, this is the best part of that. I got home, my granddaughter was living with me and she has a little two-year-old. I looked on top of my refrigerator, those same Cheez-Its were in my apartment. And she had been giving them to her child. The same ones, and that is what I mean, were so wrapped up in ignorance, not knowing. And of course, I had to share that. These crackers are in my house and I just made a video about these darn things.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  But, um, yeah, we just, I don't know, sweetheart. I don't have all the answers. I wish I did. I share when I can share and because I don't want to come off as mean or cranky or I got it all together, because I don't. But, um, educate yourself.

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  Right, well, you're doing your part. You know, I think what you're doing is beautiful. I think that you should have like your own cooking show on network television. Like, you know, more Babette out there, right? And like, why, you, I know you have this cashew book, but you should have like a full-blown cookbook. You must be working on that.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  You know what? Chefs, I have a, another book that has been written for at least two years. It's called Stuff, Your Stuff. And what I've done is I've taken portobello mushrooms, bell pepper, the huge tomatoes and potatoes. And I've made a different stuffing for each one of those four, like four mushrooms, four. And they're absolutely delicious. All I need to do is just write the book. I have all the recipes all down, ready to go. I just haven't written the book.

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  Well, you get up at two in the morning.

• 1:34:51Rich Roll?

  Sounds like you're busy, though. But I'm sure you gotta squeeze out time to finish that, right?

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  I see, that's motivation. Thank you, motivating me.

• 1:35:01Rich Roll?

  And I think, you know, you need like some kind of fitness challenge that brings the community in. Like, I know you're like, hey, on my 72nd birthday, I'm gonna do 72 pushups. But I think there's a lot of people out there that, you know, are enjoying what you have to offer and to make that analog, like something in Griffith Park or something, you know, that's community-based where people could actually come out and do the workouts with you.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  You know, I've thought about it. You know, I have. And, and right now, because I'm so responsible for prepping all the food in the restaurant and my time is...

• 1:35:35Rich Roll?

  God, get you help. You need infrastructure.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  I do, honey.

• 1:35:38Rich Roll?

  Because your shit's going like this. It's scaling, you know? But you gotta figure out how to surround yourself with people who can do the things that you can delegate, so that you can be you.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:50Rich Roll?

  Because the world needs more of you.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  I agree. I love you for that. Thank you.

• 1:35:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, let me know how I can help out with that.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  Okay, I will.

• 1:35:58Rich Roll?

  Anyway, any last thoughts here before we wrap this up?

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Well, just, I want to thank you so very much for having me on. I'm gonna tell you a little secret. Now, Shabnam probably already blabbed her mouth, but Shab said, "Get in touch with Rich Roll." And I was like, "He's not gonna even read my message. Come on."

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  No, no, no.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  And she said, "Try it. Just reach out." And when you responded to me...

• 1:36:25Rich Roll?

  Well, what was funny is I had been at the gala and I was like, "Oh, I'm getting her on." And I might have mentioned it to somebody or whatever. So I was like, I was getting ready to send you a message.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:36:36Rich Roll?

  And then you sent one to me, like, literally that day I was gonna ping you.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Are you kidding me?

• 1:36:41Rich Roll?

  No, no, no. So I thought maybe somebody told you, like, "Oh, Rich wants to get in touch with you."

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  No, it was Shabnam, that, that my trainer, that, that told me, "Get in touch with him." And I said, "He's not gonna read." Man, do you know how many people try to get in touch with me and I don't even see? She said, "I bet you he will. Just try it." And when I reached out, and I've never done a backflip in my life.

• 1:37:03Rich Roll?

  Oh.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  I almost did one after. I said, "Almost."

• 1:37:06Rich Roll?

  I'm surprised you knew what I was doing or who I was because I had just seen you and I was like, this is great.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Oh my, but I just want to say thank you for what you're doing too. Your podcast is off the chain. I love it. I always just, I was so excited about coming on because it just, the way you speak, it just, it felt so comfortable and I knew I was going to have a good time here. But for my brothers and sisters on the planet, try it. Try embracing love, starting with yourself. And then, don't worry about anything other than the fact that you are an expression of the greatness that created all of this. Be the best expression you can possibly be.

• 1:37:49Rich Roll?

  Beautifully put.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:37:52Rich Roll?

  I think that's a good way to end it. Yeah, how do you feel?

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Wonderful.

• 1:37:56Rich Roll?

  We did it. I think we did pretty good.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  We did good.

• 1:37:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah? You feel good?

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  We friends, we, we is family now.

• 1:38:02Rich Roll?

  I gotta get you out of here before your bedtime, too.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  You did not, you did not say that.

• 1:38:09Rich Roll?

  I got to bed at like 8:30 and I thought I was a lunatic, so you got me beat.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Alright, baby.

• 1:38:17Rich Roll?

  Alright, well come back and talk to me again sometime. Alright, much love.

• 1:38:21Speaker 01

  You too.

• 1:38:22Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants. Yeah. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 1:39:05Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering

• 1:39:48Rich Roll?

  by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpoviate. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.