Live In Dublin With The Happy Pear

This special mid-week edition of the podcast features a Q&A event that Julie and I hosted along with our friends Stephen & David Flynn of The Happy Pear that took place before a live audience at the gorgeous Smock Alley Theatre this past summer in Dublin, Ireland. Long-time listeners will well remember David and Stephen from #RRP 233, one of my most popular episodes of 2016. For those newer to the show, David & Stephen Flynn are the joined-at-the-hip identical twin brothers behind The Happy Pear, a family run chain of natural food stores and cafés in Ireland as well as a line of organic, locally harvested plant-based food products available across the UK. David & Stephen are also the co-authors of two incredible cookbooks – The Happy Pear (of course) and the more recently released World of the Happy Pear, both runaway, smash bestsellers across Ireland the UK. Fundamentally, The Happy Pear is a movement. A movement rooted in family and community with one singular goal — to make healthy food and lifestyle mainstream. When the super fit dads aren’t making pre-school breakfast picnics on the beach, engaging in impromptu handstand competitions, conducting community-oriented health education courses, or traveling extensively for public speaking, they enthusiastically guide a vast and devoted global audience of wellness warriors across every social media platform from YouTube to Instagram to Snapchat with an endless stream of highly entertaining, quality nutrition and fitness tips, recipes, and daily slice-of-life vlogs with inspiration for miles. David and Stephen Flynn just might be the most charismatic and emphatic advocates for healthy living I have ever met. I sincerely hope you enjoy our live presentation, which includes loads of great questions from the audience. 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?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually gonna make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then, it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Rich Roll?

  Eating plant-based, taking a plant-based approach to your plate, is the single, most powerful, most positively impactful thing that you can possibly do as a conscious, compassionate consumer. It is the medicine that will prevent and reverse all of these chronic diseases. It is the way to live more sustainably and more compassionately on this planet. And it is the first portal to greater self-actualization. If you change your plate, it holds the crazy, amazing, potential energy to change the planet. That's yours truly, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey people, what do you know? What is the latest? How are you feeling? Thanks for bringing me along during your daily commute, allowing me to join you on the treadmill. Maybe you're riding your bike, maybe you're trail running, lifting weights, or secretly listening at work, hoping your boss won't overhear. Wherever you are, I hope you're good. I'm Rich Roll. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. Today's episode is the audio from an event that Julie and I hosted along with our good friends Stephen and David Flynn of The Happy Pair that took place before a live audience at the beautiful Smock Alley Theatre this past summer in Dublin when we were visiting

• 2:45Rich Roll?

  Ireland. Longtime listeners will well remember David and Stephen from episode 233 of the podcast. That was last June. That was a very popular episode. I suggest you definitely check it out if you missed it the first time around. For those newer to the show, David and Stephen Flynn are the joined-at-the-hip, identical twin brothers behind The Happy Pair. And The Happy Pair is many things. It is a family-run natural food store and café with locations in both Greystones and Dublin, Ireland, where the brothers conduct wildly popular health education courses for their community. It's an enterprise that also encompasses a line of organic, locally harvested, plant-based

• 3:30Rich Roll?

  food products. But mainly, The Happy Pair is a movement. Through the boys' cookbooks, their live presentations, their year-round daily dips in the Irish Sea, and through their YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram platforms, these guys are truly the face of healthy living in Ireland, and they are inspiring millions of people all across the world to live and eat better.

• 3:57Rich Roll?

  Before we get into it, can I read an email? Let's read an email. For reasons that will become obvious, I'm going to keep this one anonymous. And it goes like this. Hello, Rich. I am an avid podcast listener because I have a long commute and recently stumbled upon your podcast after hearing you on 10% Happier. That's Dan Harris's podcast that I recently guested on. I've struggled with depression and an eating disorder almost my entire life. I am your age. I was vegan for two years, almost 20 years ago, but became frustrated and embarrassed by it. So I gave it up and went back to eating the typical American diet and gaining and losing year after year.

• 4:39Rich Roll?

  I am a runner too, but can't really because of chronic Achilles tendonitis. Sorry to hear about that. And a serious dressage rider. I would go off and on diets according to the latest trend and always feel frustrated and angry at myself for not being perfect. I was suicidal this past June. I almost went to the emergency room, but called a hotline instead and started seeing a new therapist. I've gone through this in the past and nothing seems to really help. Medicines, doctors, exercise, more of a temporary Band-Aid. I took up meditation again in September and tried to use mindfulness and yoga to help myself feel better about living this life.

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  Then I heard your interview, I read your book, and decided to give plant-based eating a try again. I felt better immediately. It is so much easier now than it was 20 years ago. More options and ways to eat plants, as well as easier access to ingredients. I know it is everything combined that is helping, but thank you so much for spreading your message. I feel much more out of my head now, so that I have the capacity to give to my family and my students like I have always wanted, but never had the energy. I'm writing this at work, quick and not that thought out, but I just wanted to let you know how grateful I am.

• 5:59Rich Roll?

  Well, I am grateful to you for that message. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sorry to hear what you have been going through, but I appreciate you being so vulnerable and open in sharing your story and your struggle. Life is, you know, it's so hard for so many people and it breaks my heart that you got to that point where you seriously considered taking your life, but I'm very grateful that my work has seemed to strike a chord with you and is in a small way helping to ease your suffering a bit. But it's the work that you put in, it's the changes that you put in place that are making a difference. And I think that takes strength. I think it takes courage and I commend you for that. So, well done and keep going. It's just the beginning.

• 6:44Rich Roll?

  And please understand that it's messages like this that really make a difference to me and make all the work that I put into this show and the other things that I do worth it. It really does. So, I greatly appreciate you trusting me with that message.

• 7:10Rich Roll?

  Okay, so Stephen and David are two of my very favorite people on earth. They are inseparable. They are just so full of energy and charisma and infectious enthusiasm. And they joined us for a couple of days during our Ireland retreat and then we joined them for two consecutive nights in Dublin for these live events. And this is the audio from the second night. You can't help but love these guys. So, with that being said, please enjoy this live event with audience Q and A with me, Julie, and the Happy Pair Lads.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Good evening and welcome.

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  I love Dublin. Oh my god, you guys are beautiful. Thank you for coming out tonight. Thank you to Stephen Day for organizing this amazing event. Much love for you guys and everything that you have done and the message that you are putting out to the world that is sending ripple effects across planet Earth. It's really beautiful and it's great to be here tonight to be able to share with you guys a little bit about our story and also to include all of you. I'm really excited tonight about the Q and A part. What we're gonna do is I'm just gonna talk for like five minutes and then that's the fake story and then Julie's gonna tell the real story. These guys might say a few words and then we're just gonna open it up. We're gonna have kind of a roundtable discussion.

• 8:35Rich Roll?

  So, to kick things off, I have a question for you guys. How many here are vegans? Yeah, that's a good number.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  More than likely.

• 8:47Rich Roll?

  How many here are vegetarian, like veg heads? Yeah, alright, good, cool. And the most important question, who here thinks this whole vegan, vegetarian, veg head thing is just utter nonsense and you got dragged here by your husband or your wife or your boyfriend and you're like, "I'm not having it"? You can raise your hand. Yes! Very brave person. Very brave of you. Yes, thank you. Well, we're gonna go on a journey tonight and I'm gonna check in with you at the end and see how you're doing. My name is Rich Roll. I am an ultra endurance athlete. I'm an author. This is my beautiful wife Julie, otherwise known as Shrimati. And I guess, you know, how can I encapsulate what I wanna say in five minutes?

• 9:32Rich Roll?

  That's tough. You give me two hours, I can go, "No problem". Five minutes is rough. But I will say this. Ten years ago, I was a very different person. Ten years ago, I was 50 pounds overweight, a basic, classic, fast food addicted, couch potato, hurtling into middle age on a crash course with lifestyle disease. And I had a health scare shortly before I turned 40. It was a very specific, crystallized moment in time where I realized... realized how I was living was leading me in a very bad direction. And I was blessed with the willingness and the wherewithal to actually take action and do something about it. It didn't happen overnight. It wasn't linear. It was often one step forward, two steps backwards.

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  But ultimately, I found a lot of solace in a plant-based diet. When I stumbled into eating plant-based, I didn't realize at the time it was called a whole-food, plant-based diet. I felt an incredible resurgence in my vitality and in my energy. For the first time in a very long time, I had the impulse to move my body, to exercise, to take care of myself. And I became very interested in the potential of the human experience because I became aware that I had overlooked so many important areas of my life. And I wanted to search within myself to see what I was capable of, what areas of my life I had overlooked.

• 10:54Rich Roll?

  And I was attracted to this world of ultra-endurance sports as a template to wrestle with these questions and hopefully find answers. That's what led me into all of the races that I've done in 2008, 2009. I did this crazy race called Ultraman. It's a double Ironman race, a 320-mile race, which over the course of three days, you circumnavigate the big island of Hawaii. You know why it's called the big island? Because it's super fucking big. And I was as surprised as anyone to finish quite well in those races. In 2009, I was the fastest American, and I was sixth overall. And in 2010, my buddy Jason Lester and I did something called Epic Five, where we

• 11:39Rich Roll?

  did five Ironmans on five Hawaiian islands, all five Hawaiian islands, and we did it under a week. And that was something that no one had ever done. And we did it fueled on nothing but plants. Nothing but plants. But where do you get your protein? Where do you get your protein? Hopefully, somebody will raise their hand and ask that question. I'll be happy to answer it because I can't answer it in five minutes. But the upshot is, or the point I'm trying to make is, the results of my experiences in that world really helped me to answer these questions for myself. It helped me to understand what's important to me, how I want to invest my energy and my time. And the answer to that is in helping other people better self-actualize, to help other

• 12:21Rich Roll?

  people find the kind of answers that I found for myself, to help them get on a better, healthier trajectory for their life. Because right now, the truth is, we're in a crazy healthcare crisis. I don't know what the stats are. In Ireland, but in the United States, one out of every three people will die of a heart attack. One out of every three people. Fifty percent of Americans are obese or overweight. And by 2030, 50% of Americans are going to be diabetic or pre-diabetic. This is the epidemic of our age. It's really quite heartbreaking to hear that, especially when you discover, as I did, that about 80 to 90% of these chronic illnesses that are killing millions of people all over

• 13:03Rich Roll?

  the planet are completely preventable, if not entirely reversible, through eating plant-based, by getting more veg on your plate, by being plant-centric in your approach to your diet, and changing certain rudimentary, fundamental lifestyle habits. So that's what I like to talk about. I think it's never too late. I didn't start this journey until I was 40. I'm 50 years old right now. I'm performing at an athletic level that I wasn't even able to do when I was in my twenties. Age is just a number, and I'm really happy to be here with you guys tonight to talk about all of these issues, to answer your questions, and to hopefully inspire you guys to think differently about your food choices and your lifestyle habits.

• 13:48Rich Roll?

  Now Julie's going to tell the real story.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  Was that five minutes?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  That was pretty good. That was good. So that was all true. That really, all really happened. And I don't really know if this is where the real story is going to come out. Maybe in the Q and A it's going to come out deeper. But there's a couple of things that I think that I could share to add value. And the first is, is that food is the first portal to connecting to your deeper spiritual path. And a lot of us have been eating chemistry, and a lot of us have been eating violence. And this does have an effect on your spirit. It has an effect on your ability to sense and feel and commune with your heart's deepest desires, which the universe has completely designed for your evolution and for the blessing of everyone.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  But I was raised in Alaska on game meat. I incarnated into a family of a big game hunter. And I grew up eating caribou tacos and moose stew and more salmon than anyone would ever want to eat. And then I found yoga and I started practicing yoga. And I like to say that I never had to give up anything, because when I embraced a practice of yoga and meditation, the habits gave me up. So it was very easy. Suddenly I just couldn't eat meat anymore. I couldn't drink anymore. And I started to find this deeper awareness. It was very spontaneous and very natural. And I had this condition in that I was a skinny person my whole life.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  So I never had issues with food. I didn't have to diet. I didn't even know what that was like. And I received what I like to call a gift in the form of golf ball-sized cyst in the front of my neck. And this is a condition called thyroglottic duct cyst. It is common in children. It's a rare childhood disease that occurs in kids between the ages of eight and 12. And I was already, you know, in my 40s, so it made no sense whatsoever. So I had been practicing yoga for quite a few years and had been eating vegetarian-ish.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  But I really wasn't eating food as medicine. I hadn't really connected to my body in that way. And Rich and I went and we saw some physicians and had an MRI done. And I was advised by three different physicians at UCLA that I would have to get this, this cut out of my neck. And it was not an easy surgery. It was, it was kind of a medium level surgery where they would have to cut some bones and work around some delicate nerve issues. And at this time in my life, I decided to take my health into my own hands and to work to heal myself through predominantly embracing a plant-based diet and working with an Ayurvedic

• 16:47Speaker 02

  physician, which is an eastern science of medicine that incorporates lots of herbs, extremely smelly herbs.

• 16:54Rich Roll?

  Super smelly.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Super smelly. So I would have to drink this concoction of herbs that smelled like sewage, sulfur, and dirt on a nightly basis. And I would make an external paste that I would then put on the cyst. The cyst was right in the front of my neck, so it couldn't be hidden. You could really see it. And I would wrap that in a bandage and, much to everybody's horror in my family, including Rich, I just felt driven or compelled to embrace this gift and not waste it. I knew that it wasn't malignant, so I considered myself lucky. It wasn't like you're gonna die in four months and, you know, I didn't have to face that

• 17:41Speaker 02

  level of seriousness. But I really took it seriously and it wasn't pretty. In the beginning, I had hundreds of pus, kind of pimples that would come out on my face, literally for three months. And it was upsetting everyone in my community. I think when we really go to heal, we have to look at the dark parts of ourselves. And this cyst was coming out on my face. And people were begging me to stop taking the herbs and just go get the cyst cut out of my neck. But I stuck with it and after about three months, it started to go down and I knew I was gaining on it and I knew that I was gonna get this thing. So about...

• 18:24Speaker 02

  A year and a few months afterwards, it completely healed. It's completely gone and it never came back. This diet that I embraced during this time was predominantly a plant-based diet. There was some medicated ghee, that is traditional in Ayurvedic medicine, and some warm milk, sort of more as a tonic to bring the stress level down, you know, before bed. But this has been my journey into food. I went through this experience before Rich became plant-based. And then, when he went all the way vegan, I decided out of solidarity to go vegan.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  And my experience has been, I've never been stronger, healthier, and more alive since I made that final transition.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  So I think now we're gonna open it up to Q and A, because I think that's the best bit and it makes it most relevant. And everyone had different things which they want to get out of Rich and Julie. And maybe we can add something too. But, so I think if anyone's to kick it off and ask questions, I think last night we went boy, girl, boy, girl.

• 19:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, definitely, boy, girl, boy, girl.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  So who's gonna... Let's go, girl, boy.

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  Girl, boy.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Girl, boy.

• 19:43Rich Roll?

  Girl. Girl.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Oh, and the rowing mic.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  I think I'm gonna cry. I'm just so happy to be here. I just wanna say, I have a question. I'm a triathlete. I train with the Irish team. And I became vegan, I turned vegan in February. And spiritually, I am just, I can't even, I can't put it into words. I feel so connected with myself. I've never had this sense of self-belief and trust in myself. And that was sparked when I turned, stopped eating like animal products. And so I feel like that's really, really, it's going really well. And I'm so grateful to have, to have, I guess, made that change or to come to me. But I am struggling with one thing.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  And I train UTE year like four times a day, three times a day. And I am getting tired and I have to nap all the time. And to be so, I guess, spiritually and mentally... I guess, just, I feel like, healthy. And I am, I do feel like I may be lacking, I don't know. I feel like I'm doing, I'm trying my best and I, I am feeling pretty tired a lot of the time.

• 21:00Rich Roll?

  Great, great. Well, thank you for your question, and that's beautiful, what you just expressed. As Julie would say, food really is the first portal to self-actualization and is sort of nutty and out there as that may sound. I truly believe that. Like, you are, we're all energy. So, doesn't it make sense that the energy that we put in our bodies is going to impact the energy that comes out of our bodies? Right? And when we're more mindful of that vibration that we're taking into ourselves, we can shift not only how we feel, but our perspective on the world. It's, it is like a portal that can open you up to many, many different things. I mean, when I started, you know, I just wanted to lose the belly fat. Like, I just wanted to have, you know, good energy to enjoy my children. That was my only goal.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  And now here I am, getting up in front of groups of people, talking about the environmental crisis and this ethical crisis and how we're, you know, how we, how we've created this food system that creates so much harm, not only on the planet, but on all these sentient beings. That is not what I thought I was gonna be doing, you know, with my life. So, I have experienced that myself. And to answer your question specifically, it's hard, it's hard to give you a specific answer without knowing exactly what you're eating and what your training program looks like. I would say that it probably has just as much to do with the training load that you're trying to manage as it does with your food. There could be an over-training aspect to what you're trying to do. At the same time, when you're training hard, you need to nap. There's nothing wrong with napping.

• 22:27Rich Roll?

  But, to the extent that there is some relationship between the fatigue that you're experiencing and the diet that you're eating, you know, it's worth taking a look at. You might wanna get a blood panel, see if you're deficient in anything, and you can make some dietary adjustments from there. But, one thing I hear quite commonly, when people start eating plant-based and are having that kind of fatigue experience, it's usually because they're not eating enough calories. Right? And you're somebody who's out there pushing your body very, very hard. So, it could be as simple as eat more, you know? And then, you know, we could talk after, and you could tell me a little bit more about what exactly you are eating, and I could make some suggestions from there. And then also, you know, do you have a coach? If you're on the Irish team, probably have a coach, right? Like, so there's many tweaks that can be made.

• 23:12Rich Roll?

  But I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater and just say this plant-based thing doesn't work. Obviously, there's some aspect of it that is agreeing with you, and I think this issue can be easily rectified.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  I think boy now? Do you want to go find a boy?

• 23:28Rich Roll?

  Okay. Look at how much energy these guys have.

• 23:30Speaker 05

  Hi, Rich. Hi, Julie. Thanks a lot for all that you're doing. Just a couple of quick questions. Firstly, it's fasting. Where does fasting, or does it play a role in your life, and especially when you have heavy training loads, Rich? Do you do any fasting? And secondly, also, you guys are extremely busy. You have a lot of things you're trying to accomplish. How do you kind of manage living your life while also aspiring for all these great things and changes you're trying to make in the world?

• 24:04Rich Roll?

  Great question. That's the question we just answered for the Q and A video we just made with these guys. The first part, intermittent fasting. I have begun experimenting with that a little bit. I would not hold myself out as an expert in that field, but I've been playing around with how it feels and what the impact is of doing sort of short little fasts, like one day fast. So I'll wake up in the morning and I'll train, and I won't eat until dinner time, and then see how that impacts my training throughout the week. And I think the sort of, this is like an N of one, just experiential, you know, results that doesn't have to do with any studies out there, but I've had good results with it. I think there's something to be said for training your body and acclimating your body

• 24:47Rich Roll?

  to going without, and the body is unbelievably adaptive, right? And if you go through short periods of depriving it of certain things, it will strengthen itself to accommodate that. I wouldn't overdo it, though, but I think it is, this field is very interesting. There's a lot of cool research that's coming out. There are certain people that are having great results with it, and there's some indication that it is connected with. Disease prevention and reversal, so I'm keeping an eye on it. And I will say, the first impetus for me going plant-based at the very beginning of my journey, in the wake of this health crisis, this health scare that I had, was a seven-day vegetable juice cleanse. So it wasn't a complete fast, but it was a fast from solid food, and I'd never done anything like that before in my life.

• 25:31Rich Roll?

  And that was kind of a remarkable experience that helped me kind of reboot my operating system and got me thinking about food in a new and different way. As for the second part of the question, I'll let Julie answer that, and then maybe I can chime in.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  What was the second part of the question?

• 25:46Rich Roll?

  About balancing your lifestyle with all the things that we're doing to make it all work.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Right. Well, I'd like to answer the first one as well, from my perspective. I think that fasting is really good, seasonally. Just short for my body, I can't go a really long time. And I think using vegetables and not sweet fruits. So like a vegetable juice fast for three days, or possibly on a Sunday of a week, a day when you're not doing a lot, is really, really good. I also think that if you need to reset what you're doing, like Rich was saying, sometimes doing a cleanse or a fast is a great way to kind of shift and begin anew.

• 26:31Rich Roll?

  I could say one more thing about that, though, before you go.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  I guess you can, because you have a mic.

• 26:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. I think the important thing with that is to really use it to reset your trajectory. Like, I think a lot of people, they do these cleanses, or these short-term fasts, or whatever, periodically, and then they just go back to eating whatever they were eating before. Like, if that's what you're gonna do, probably not the greatest idea. Like, use it as a tool to then reframe what you're gonna do after the conclusion of that period.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think it's all a journey, and as you start going down the rabbit hole, different things become relevant. Like, once you get stabilized as plant-based, then you might want to try fasting more. In my case, as far as balancing it, right now, I'm writing cookbooks. I just finished my first solo book, called This Cheese is Nuts, and it has over 75 amazing recipes of plant-based cheeses, absolutely delicious, like, new evolution of cheese. But now, I'm turning in Plant Power Italia, which is over 120 recipes of plant-based Italian food. So I won't be fasting until I turn those books in. So it's been a little bit of an imbalance because I've been in that vibration for a

• 27:43Speaker 02

  long time, or that task, that expression. So that's sort of mandated how I'm eating. So that's one challenge.

• 27:52Rich Roll?

  In terms of the balance aspect of your question, you know, there's a lot of moving pieces in what we do. You know, Julie's writing books, I'm writing books, there's events like this. We just completed this amazing retreat down in Ballyvolan where we took 20 people through a seven-day, you know, extraordinary experience. I'm training for a race, I'm going to be racing in a race in September, and we're raising children. Like, there's a lot going on. And it can be difficult to apportion your energy and your time so that you're meeting all the requirements and all these categories in your life. And, you know, we do it imperfectly, but we do it with the best of intentions. And I look at all of these different things that we do as different, just different modalities or distribution

• 28:35Rich Roll?

  methods for the same thing, the same message that we're trying to put out. So how I perform in a race is a way of me carrying the message that I'm trying to deliver to you guys today through a microphone. Same thing with the podcast and the books, et cetera. They're all just different ways of communicating with people to try to, like I said at the outset of this, trigger or catalyze some deeper thinking and behavioral changes around food and lifestyle.

• 29:00Speaker 06

  Beautiful. Girl. Is there any girl who'd ever... Nope. Oh, great.

• 29:10Speaker 07

  Thank you. Hello. So I've been vegan for two years now, and I live in the States. And I've been traveling around Ireland for the last week. And I've noticed whenever a restaurant says that something's vegan, it has honey in it. And, or that's what I've found so far in Ireland. But in the States... I'm kind of confused. I want to know what your opinion on honey is and whether or not it's vegan and if it has health benefits.

• 29:37Rich Roll?

  I'm going to let Julie manage most of that question. I think the honey thing is a trigger point for a lot of people. There's certainly a contingent of vegans that are very anti-eating honey, a very puritan subculture within the vegan movement. We're more lax than that. We do have honey in some of our recipes. And there's some indication that eating certain kinds of honey is appropriate medicinally. But I think the broader question is, the vegan ideology is do no harm to animals. But we're in this crisis right now where the bee population is dwindling.

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  And so to the extent that there's a way to get involved in cultivating bee communities, like we have hives on our property. We're trying to create more bee hives because this is such an important thing and we're in a crisis with this. So the honey that we get is from these hives and it's apportioned in a way that it's not harming the bees and they're getting plenty of it. So there's not a harm quotient that gets built into that. So I think it's about how the honey is manufactured when you're trying to evaluate the impact of that choice for yourself.

• 30:51Speaker 06

  We have three hives in our garden. And similarly, the vegan religion says one should not consume honey. However, I think it's down to a personal choice. And I think we keep bees because, as Rich said, I think there's a huge issue with colony collapse disorder. And I'm curious, how do bees work? It's a perfect female colony. Female do all the work. Men do nothing but impregnate the queen. But I think we take possibly one frame out of it. And most beekeepers feed sugar water and that's part of the reason for colony collapse disorder. So I think it's a personal choice in our experience. I try not to use it in recipes, but if we get it from the garden, I'll lash into it.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed. Bees are really magnificent life forms that we have a lot to learn from. And I feel that they have a spiritual energy that is beneficial to us. So I think rather than shut the door and say, "I'm not going there", we need to cultivate awareness and bring them in and learn from them. But that means to understand what a gift honey is. It's an offering. It's a reverent, healing elixir that should be consumed, you know, very sustainably. So it shouldn't be your number one choice of sweetener. And so that's my stance on it. I don't use it in recipes either for this same reason.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  But I do mention it in the Plant Power Way as something we need to learn more about and become reverent about.

• 32:26Speaker 08

  My question is in relation to family. And you both went vegan relatively late in life, maybe 30s. Myself and my wife are transitioning, I suppose, as you want to say. I have been slower to transition than my wife.

• 32:44Speaker 08

  But how did your families react to it? Your parents, brothers, sisters? Has that been a difficult journey? How do you, when you're raising your children, do people react to the fact that you're only feeding them a plant-based diet? How has that been for you and how do you deal with it?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, I think this is something we need to get comfortable with. The bottom line is when you're shifting a paradigm, you're going to make people uncomfortable. And the last people that are going to go along with you are your birth family. They're just not, you know, it's like it's kind of set up that way. So I think with your siblings and your parents, there's going to be some, you know, some moments. But I think if you can just understand that you're creating a new way and stay in, you know, love and compassion and just neutral in your own experience and not, you know, try to be too enthusiastic in imposing what you're going through on other people,

• 33:45Speaker 02

  I think that you will cultivate more of an example, like you're a shining example for them to see. It may take a long time. I mean, my own siblings and my mom still are not vegan and they eat at my house all the time and they love my food and they have my cookbooks, but they're still not vegan. So, they haven't stopped and they have all the information. So you would think that our families would be, you know, they'd be like, "Oh, look what they're doing. Let's do it." That's not how it works. It just doesn't work that way. But then our own family, though, we came into this way of living very organically. So, we've allowed everybody to have their own organic process with it

• 34:29Speaker 02

  and understand that, you know, when we started this, I was vegetarian, Rich was eating In-N-Out burger, then he switched to, you know, vegan diet.

• 34:38Rich Roll?

  I think they have In-N-Out in Ireland.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Oh, they don't? Like, really greasy burgers, like, super greasy.

• 34:43Rich Roll?

  McDonald's, basically.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  And then, one of our sons was more naturally vegetarian, the other one was eating what we thought was clean meat, you know, the white meat or whatever. And then our little girls have never eaten meat, but they did eat some dairy at a young age. And I think it's a journey. It's not a black and white thing. It's a process. And when you learn to respect people at their own stage of the journey, it's much more powerful than judging them. Or, you know, so, we need to be open and diverse and, and like your, what it says on the building down the road of this beautiful Irish decree, the city of Dublin, this tolerance, I don't know what that's called. But, you know, it seems like this culture is, is very

• 35:26Speaker 02

  open and very tolerant of a lot of different viewpoints. And that's beautiful to see. So I would, I would cultivate that perspective.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a dance. You know, I think food is incredibly emotional. We associate it with love and especially with our nuclear family members. So when you make this shift, it can be interpreted as a rejection of love. And that complicates it. And so, you have to be really...

• 35:55Rich Roll?

  Grounded and mindful and neutral in how you communicate about it. When you're going over to a family member's house and they're not necessarily down with the program, how are you going to, you know, do that dance and handle it with that level of grace? And I think it involves really looking at yourself and your own behaviors. What are the buttons that get pushed that make you react that then turn something into like, you know, a cascading argument? And try to be this lighthouse, like this person of strength. And just because somebody else doesn't agree with you or they're giving you grief because they don't understand, doesn't mean that you have to compromise your values to make somebody else feel okay.

• 36:36Rich Roll?

  You know, this is about self empowerment and it's about healthy boundaries. And so it does take time. You know, my parents aren't vegan. I don't know what else I could do to try to, you know, get them. It's inevitable. But my sister is now. My sister now, after many, many years, she like messaged me on Facebook, like maybe a year and a half ago, and she's like, "Did you see this movie Forks Over Knives?" And I was like, "Dude." Seriously. I've been doing this for 10 years, you know? But it takes what it takes. Like, they don't want to hear it from me, they have to find their own way to it. And it's beautiful and it's great. And with respect to the children aspect of it, you know, within our own families, our approach has always been to try to empower our kids, to understand that they are sovereign

• 37:20Rich Roll?

  beings in their own right, and to, you know, provide them with decision-making ability for themselves, as long as we're constantly arming them with the education and the tools that they need to make those choices. So, every aspect, every facet of food is a learning experience, a homeschooling experience for our kids. Take them to the farmer's market. Every booth is an opportunity to have a discussion with a farmer. Why are we getting this food and not this food, et cetera? And also teaching them at a young age how to make certain recipes. The first recipe that we taught our boys was chia seed pudding. They loved it. That's what they want to make. And when a child knows how to make something delicious that's healthy, that's what they want to make. And they want to show you, they want to show it off.

• 38:04Rich Roll?

  And that's that self empowerment thing taking shape. And, you know, they'll go off to a birthday party.

• 38:12Rich Roll?

  And there'll be pizza, and there'll be cake, and whatever. And we allow them to make their own choice over that. And there's no shame, and there's no judgment. There might be a conversation on the car ride home about the tummy ache, and we could talk about that. But it's not about that. It's about the long term. It's about cultivating the awareness, and the mindset, and the skills, so that 10, 20 years from now, they can make the best choice for themselves.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Can I just tell a story from Mark, like, in Irish context? I remember, we went away travelling after being a pair of meatheads, and leaving and coming back. And I remember we talked with mum on the phone, and the lads were coming home. They're coming home, like, "What do you want, lads? Do you want the beef, or the lamb? What are we gonna have for dinner?" And I remember on the phone saying, "No, mum, I told you, I'm a vegetarian. I'm vegetarian." Mum was like, "Ah, enough of that shite, right. What are you having?" You know. And anyway, we both came home, and mum said, "I didn't know which to cook, the beef or the lamb, so I cooked the beef and the lamb." And then mum was here last night, so I couldn't tell the full version of the story. But I remember we came home, and mum was like, you know, she was serving out everyone, and she was like, "Now, Stephen, what do you have? The beef or the lamb?"

• 39:23Speaker 01

  And Stephen said, "Mum, come on, I told you, I'm a vegetarian now." And then mum said, "You what? No son of mine's a vegetarian. I prefer if you told me you're gay than a fecking vegetarian." You know. This was, now, this was 16 years ago, and she wasn't very PC. But, you know, she's probably been vegetarian for about seven years now. What's that? Get it through my mind.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But we had our first vegan Christmas last year for 17 people, the aunts and the uncles, and the cousins, and everyone, and they all, you know, it was gas. So it's funny, over time, it just kinda changed.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  And now we're on to girl. I should get in the back. Any... Great, there we are.

• 40:08Speaker 09

  Hi, I'm a mom of two and on my second child, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. And the consultants at the time advised me to eat a lot of protein, said that I was lucky, I was Irish, because I could have a full Irish breakfast every morning, eggs for lunch, and that it was going to be really easy for me. And I'm just wondering, if we're thinking of having, say, a third child, they've advised me six months in advance to change my diet, increase my protein, reduce my sugars and carbohydrates. Is there any kind of good reads that I should be thinking about on how to change my diet, to think about more vegetarian and possibly vegan options with this in mind, thinking

• 40:53Speaker 09

  about?

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  Yes, what's your name?

• 40:55Speaker 09

  Eva.

• 40:56Rich Roll?

  Eva, nice to meet you. I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist, nor do I play one on the internet or in front of large groups in church-like halls. So I can't, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give you medical advice, but I will say this. Most doctors are not well-versed in nutrition. It's not on the curriculum at most medical schools. And we're in a culture in which we have decided that doctors know everything, and we have empowered them to make decisions for us. We've turned over our decision-making authority to them, and our job is to just do as we're told. And if there's anything I can relate about my experience, Julie's experience, and the

• 41:39Rich Roll?

  many, many people that we've encountered and met on this journey, is that it's important to take personal responsibility for your own health, to educate yourself, so you can make the best, most informed decision about what is right for you. With respect to your specific condition, I would encourage you to educate yourself as much as possible. There are plenty of resources out there. I would start with Dr. Michael Greger's book, How Not to Die. He also has a website called nutritionfacts.org. He has short, research-based videos on every conceivable ailment and food, anything you would ever want to know the answer to, chances are he probably has a video on it. Dr. Garth Davis has a book called Proteinaholic that you might want to check out, especially

• 42:23Rich Roll?

  in light of the advice you're getting to increase your protein intake. And I'm happy to provide you with more, you know, resources. We can talk after the event. But I would start there.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  And from my perspective, I would, if you're interested in an Eastern Indian perspective and how Ayurveda might balance the body and deal with those issues, I would go to ayurveda.com. It is the website for the Institute of Ayurveda for Dr. Vasant Lad, who is a world-renowned Ayurvedic physician. And I would also seek out an Ayurvedic physician locally, someone that can take your pulse and can sort of give you an assessment of where you are. It's extremely powerful practice. If myself, with anything very serious that I'm facing, and even women's hormonal issues, these type of things, I always turn to Ayurveda. That's my, that's my thing.

• 43:18Rich Roll?

  Also, pcrm.org, which is Dr. Neil Bernard's organization. He's written a book called Prevent and Reverse Diabetes. I think that's the title, something like that. I would check that out.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  He's deadly, yeah. He's brilliant.

• 43:30Speaker 06

  Male question now, any lads? Yeah. Here's, this guy here. Richie.

• 43:35Speaker 10

  Cheers, yeah. Hiya, Rich. Just want to check with you how the plant-based diet affects your macros? And I'm sure you change your diet accordingly to your training as well, coming up to your races. You probably balance a little bit with the carbohydrates and fat, and if you could, you know, say something about that.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Have you seen his calves?

• 43:54Rich Roll?

  That's an interesting question. You know, the, the, the most honest answer I can give you is, I don't think about it. I really don't. Like, I, I know there's a lot of people that put a lot of thought and planning into their ratio of macros, carbohydrates to fats, to protein, et cetera. I will say this, I eat lots of carbohydrates. I eat a tremendous amount of food. I eat when I'm hungry. I basically, my rule is, eat plant food as close to its natural state as possible. And from there, I don't get too caught up in the specifics and the details. When I'm training for a performance goal, I'll be a little bit more mindful of it.

• 44:35Rich Roll?

  I do a lot more super nutrient-dense smoothies, and I make sure that I get my healthy fats and all that kind of stuff. But I don't overthink it. And I think the point behind that, really, is... You gotta find a way to make it sustainable in the construct of your busy life. And in my experience, people that get really caught up in very specific protocols around these kinds of ratios, etc., they tend to burn out. You know, they'll like do it for a while and then it just becomes too onerous because we're busy living our lives, right? So, for me, I'm just eating lots of super nutritious plant foods as much as possible. That's the truth.

• 45:13Speaker 06

  Female? Okay, yeah, great. Ah, the girl, the no-sayer.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Where do you get your protein?

• 45:24Rich Roll?

  Dudes! Where do you get your protein?

• 45:31Speaker 06

  Have you ever been asked that one before, Rich?

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  I know, thank God somebody asked that question. We'd possibly got through this whole evening without somebody asking that. Beautiful. Where do I get my protein? I get my protein in the same place some of the largest, most ferocious, powerful land animals on earth get it. The elephants and the Cape buffalo and the gorilla. I just get it lower on the food chain. So, beans and greens, nuts and seeds, etc. There's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding around protein and our protein requirements. Essentially, when we're talking about protein, I wish the word "protein" didn't even exist because it creates so much confusion. Essentially, we're talking about amino acids, the building blocks of protein.

• 46:18Rich Roll?

  And specifically, the essential amino acids, the nine amino acids that our bodies cannot synthesize on our own and we need to get them from the foods that we're eating. But those nine essential amino acids are found in almost every plant. Like, different plants have different proportions of them, some don't have all the amino acids we need, but nature's almost rigged it, whereas if you just graze randomly on plant foods all day long, you are not going to have a problem meeting your recommended daily allowance of protein, which is about 10% of calories. The World Health Organization actually has set that standard much lower, around the 2% to 3% of calories taken in every day.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  And we're in this culture where we've been brainwashed to believe that if we don't drink a massive protein shake in the morning, immediately upon waking up, that we're going to be unable to breathe air in and out of our lungs. It's like it's insane.

• 47:15Rich Roll?

  There's no study that I'm aware of that shows that intake of protein beyond your recommended daily allowance has any impact on you being healthier, or recovering more quickly, or getting bigger muscles, or anything like that. Most people are eating two to five times the amount of protein that they should be eating. So the truth is, it's really a non-issue. It's like this red herring. We shouldn't even be talking about it. What we should be talking about is how are we getting more fiber in our diet? We're mostly fiber deprived. No doctor that I know, all the doctors that are in my orbit as a result of this journey and the podcasts that I do, none of them have ever treated a patient

• 47:54Rich Roll?

  for a protein deficiency. And yet, most people are walking around incredibly fiber deficient, and that's a contributing factor to so many of these diseases and the obesity that we're seeing.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  I think it's a statistic. I think eight or 10 Irish people don't get enough fiber. Wow.

• 48:14Rich Roll?

  Okay, there you go.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  But not these people, no one here, I'm sure. I think it's a boy question. Oh, yeah.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  Good evening. I remember the first time I heard your name, Rich. It was said to me by a yoga...

• 48:30Rich Roll?

  Uh-oh.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  It was said to me by a yoga teacher that I knew, and I found yoga first, and that was my in to realizing that we're all connected, and there's no difference really between us. So, I'm really nervous talking right now, so I'm just gonna acknowledge that fact and carry on, okay?

• 48:47Rich Roll?

  What's your name?

• 48:49Speaker 03

  My name is Kevin Kylie Jr., and I own, one of the owners of the Old Forest Station, vegetarian vegan restaurant, Limerick.

• 48:56Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:58Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  So, my question's gonna come at the end, but I just wanna say something into your spirit, 'cause you deserve to hear it, okay? I'm an actor, so it's really apparent, and after we're here, and this is where we meet, it's bizarre to me, really bizarre. A year ago, I was in the Happy Pear Cafe. Derek Hartigan asked me would I do a triathlon series, and I said, "Yes." Never done one before, and I fucking hate swimming, but I said, "Yes," anyway, and I did 10 triathlons in a year.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  I also want to say that when I was in London, I became successful. My first job out of drama school was at the Old Vic. My second job was The Dark Knight Rises. My third job was The Cop That Gets Murdered in World War Z Off The Motorbike. So I was successful and going somewhere. I was never so upset or disconnected than when I was being successful. And I developed a gambling addiction. And I was homeless twice in London. So I just want to say that for me to be a businessman, for me to not be an actor anymore, to turn to owning a restaurant,

• 50:19Speaker 03

  and the fact that that's more important than being a successful actor, that journey happened because I found out about you. So everything that you've done has got a resonance with me. And I'm really grateful to just say thank you. My question is, as a vegetarian, vegan business owner, how do you guys cope with allowing milk to be sold on your premises? And allowing butter to be on the scones, even though they're vegan? How do you kind of show,

• 51:04Speaker 03

  beyond the looking glass, without being judgmental and harsh and angry? Kind of how do you let people in without pushing them away? That's my question.

• 51:16Speaker 06

  Brilliant. Geez, well done. Fabulous.

• 51:28Speaker 06

  Terrence, wasn't it? Your name is Terrence, or Kevin, sorry. I got lost in your story. It was fabulous. I think it's... Yeah, Kevin. I think none of us are perfect. I think when we started The Happy Pair in Greystones, a small community, south of Dublin, where there was 15,000 people, no extra vegetarians, and what we really needed was community sport. And we were going out on a limb even, serving, being a vegetarian cafe. And we were two stinking hippies that most people were suspicious we were selling drugs out the back. So for, I guess we saw dairy as an entry point to people eating more veg. And for many people who come in and go, "I'm not into this fucking vegetarian shit."

• 52:13Speaker 06

  You know, this type of thing. But then they'd see a cheesy thing and they go, "Oh, that looks nice. I'll start with that." And before they know it, they're eating dal, they're eating brown rice, and they're starting to become a little healthier. So I think even for, it was last, last month, we sat down, me, Dave and Dara, who kind of were kind of, we started the company and we kind of, you know, it's very much in our heart. And we've been eating a vegan diet for about 16 years. And all our YouTube videos are, and our latest cookbook's exclusively vegan. And we're, I guess, we're much more that way. It was like, "Is it time to turn it vegan?" And then Dad was very adamant, "Well, you've got to be an entry point. You're trying to make healthy food more accessible to everyone. And vegan makes it a niche. And many people have turned it into exclusive." So we try to not even brand it as vegetarian, it's just healthy food. And if people are vegan, great.

• 52:58Speaker 06

  And if they're not, you're fucking, enjoy your steak. Try to eat a bit more veg. I guess that's our point, that ultimately we're all gonna die. No one's getting out of here alive. So I think it's to do the best we can. And I think there's a huge amount of research saying the more whole plant foods you eat, the healthier you're gonna be. So I think it's to do our best and to not suffer the Irish guilt stick.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if I can just add too, is I think sometimes we get tripped up in this absoluteness. And, you know, I'm a chef and I just released a plant-based book on cheeses, right? And I did that in service to the planet. It's dedicated to Gaia and all of her children, including the cows, including goats, including us. However, when I was, when I was doing my book launch, I did some videos with Neil Barnard, Dr. Barnard, who just released The Cheese Trap. And I use coconut oil in, you know, most of my cheeses. And he doesn't advocate coconut oil. But we came together over these videos and we made cheese together. I don't eat, I don't serve milk in my home.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  I don't serve animal products in my home. These guys have made the decision to do it in their cafe and we collaborate together. And all I do is love them. We need to connect in the ways we're more similar. If you feel like it's your life, like, mission to have a totally vegan cafe and you want to draw that line, then I support you in that. I completely trust you and believe in you to do what's right, just as I trust these guys. I trust them completely to the ends of the earth. And I've got their back and I've got your back. And we have to get out of this absolute, "I trust you to make the right choice. I trust you to not eat honey if that's your choice."

• 54:46Speaker 02

  And I trust me also to have my own experience.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Woo! I was just gonna chime in by saying it's about including people, I think. That's something that, like, bringing, attracting people rather than, like, we found if we, I think when we first became vegan back like 16 years ago, we were fucking weirdos and we were already socially exclusive and every time you went to dinner in someone's house it was like, "Oh, what are you eating? Why don't you eat meat?" And it was like, I don't know. We sell dairy products and it includes people and we're doing our best.

• 55:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think, just to like, tag on to that a little bit, I mean, I think the umbrella issue, the broader issue, is creating that welcome mat, creating a, you know, cultivating a sense of inclusion and welcomeness for the uninitiated. And I think there's, you know, there's a contingent of the ardent, plant-based vegan community that get very caught up in the minutia and the details and it can be off-putting to somebody who perhaps might be interested if the presentation of the information was a little bit softer and gentler.

• 56:04Rich Roll?

  And I think that's kind of the approach that you guys are trying to foster, right?

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Very elegant.

• 56:09Speaker 06

  Much more elegant to say.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  We do girl question?

• 56:13Speaker 06

  Great. Maybe we'll do this girl.

• 56:17Speaker 11

  This is still a dairy related question, so I'm not vegan, so I would be in the happy pair with my milk and my coffee, eating a vegan meal, so it's good that you do that. My question is, Judy, you mentioned earlier that when your girls were younger, they had dairy, was that a choice to give them dairy, or were you not yet vegan at that point?

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we weren't vegan yet at that point, so it was organic, you know, very, very limited, maybe yogurt once in a while, something like that, or a piece of pizza at a party, something like that.

• 56:50Speaker 11

  Okay, it's just, you know, obviously when you have young kids and you're deciding whether or not to be vegan or give up dairy, but you give it to your kids, how do you wrestle with, you're choosing not to have that, and I'm sure you guys are the same, you're not having that, but is it okay for them to have it, or will the grannies go crazy if you don't let them have any milk?

• 57:10Speaker 02

  I just think, I mean, I know that dairy is not good for us at all, so, you know, that's my experience, that's my awareness. In my own experience, it caused a lot of inflammation in my sinuses, it caused cystic breakouts on my face, I just, I don't think it's good for any of us. That being said, it tastes good, and we have an emotional component and also an evolution in it, and that's why I spent two years, and I came up with an entirely new technology to actually, and I say technology, it's so simple and so easy, we made three recipes together today, they were freaking out at how easy these recipes are.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  So you can make these delicious creamy cheeses out of nuts, seeds, tofu, it's easy, it's simple, you can all do it at home. So we have to start to look beyond our taste buds and into the environment and what our choices are doing to our health first, also to the planet, and also to our animals, and this is Cheese 2.0, it's an amazing, really just an amazing body of work, and I'm extremely proud of it, and I hope you'll check the book out.

• 58:22Rich Roll?

  I think it's tricky when you have small children, right? Every parent wants to do right by their kids. And it's terrifying because every day you're presented with decisions and you're like, "Oh my God, am I doing the right thing? Am I not doing the right thing?" And it's easy to just do what everyone else is doing, right? Because there's comfort in that, there's safety in that. And it's challenging to say, "I know every other small child is eating this way, but I'm gonna eat this way." It's a scary thing, right? It takes courage to step outside of that. But, you know, I've met tons of people that have vegan babies, have raised vegan children from day one. And, you know, it's a weird thing when you kind of realize that we're the only species

• 59:06Rich Roll?

  that drinks the milk of another animal. It's like, we've made this cultural decision that this is okay, and this is so integrated into our culture. But it's kind of weird. It's a little bit weird, right? And to like, challenge that, then you're a crazy person, right? But, you know, the hormones and the sort of nutritional components of dairy milk are basically concocted to blow up a tiny calf into like, this thousand-pound beast in a very short period of time. Is that really what we should be taking into our own bodies? And so, I would encourage you to, again, you know, Neil Bernard's name's gonna come up. He's done a lot of work around this, and there's lots of resources on his website, pcrm.org, about raising kids without dairy, so maybe check that out as well.

• 59:56Rich Roll?

  I think we've time for two more questions, so I think it's girl or is it boy? Steve-O?

• 1:00:03Speaker 12

  I was the boy one.

• 1:00:06Speaker 12

  Hi, Rich. A question that probably has multiple layers, unfortunately. You mentioned Neil Bernard and a lot of doctors who you've also spoken to on your podcast and probably generally. There seems to be an awful lot of mainstream medical professionals who are cottoning on to a plant-based lifestyle, being one of the ways forward to revolutionize how we become more healthier as a society. What do you think is the...

• 1:00:37Speaker 12

  The stumbling block or what will be the catalyst to change perception in more wider medical community and public consciousness because that seems to be the thing that's most lacking.

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would agree with that. We're in a war of ideas right now and we have a divide within the medical community. There is a contingent, a growing contingent, a very passionate contingent of the medical community that is realizing that this research around plant-based nutrition with respect to not only just living well but disease prevention and disease reversal is really potent. But it basically requires like a leap of faith. If somebody's been practicing medicine for 20 or 30 years and you're presenting them with something that's so radically different from everything that they ever thought, the way that they see the world, it's going to take time, you know? And we're seeing it happen.

• 1:01:32Rich Roll?

  I mean, it is just the fact that all of you guys are here tonight and there's so much enthusiasm and excitement about these ideas, I'm very optimistic about the future. But it is challenging in the sort of forum of popular opinion because you're telling people like, "Hey, all those things that you like to eat, you gotta stop eating them." And people, you know, psychologically want to hear good news about the bad habits. So when you tell them they should be putting butter in their coffee and it's great to eat bacon, you know, for breakfast and it's healthy and this is what you should be doing, this high-fat, high-protein diet, they're more likely to jump on board with that because that is consistent with the way that they would like to eat and live their life. So you have this challenge, there's this hump that we gotta get over.

• 1:02:15Rich Roll?

  And I think the way that we're gonna win this war of ideas is to, it's really from, it's from the top up and it's from the bottom down. So it's a grassroots movement. I really think that we're gonna win the hearts and minds by, by events just like this, you know, people getting together to talk about these things, taking these ideas back into their own lives and incorporating them into their daily habits and sharing it with their communities and their loved ones. And from the top up, there's a lot of work that has to be done at the government level. We need to get, you know, corporate funds. Out of some of this research, we need to do a better job of how we vet all of these studies that get put out into the world, that journalists cover without even reading

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  who funded these studies. There's a lot of work that needs to get done there. We need to overhaul how governments subsidize certain industries like animal agriculture that depress the prices of these products and make unhealthy foods, the cheapest foods, and that's really the driver in a lot of these problems that we're having. So it has to come from both sides, and there's a lot of work that needs to get done. I don't think there's any magic bullet about it, but I think we all need to understand that we're up here talking about these ideas, but every single one of you is an agent of change, every single one of you. You have the information, and you have a choice. Are you going to use this information,

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  and how are you going to share it? Understand that you're all very powerful. You have the power, you have the potential energy to impact not only the trajectory of your own life, but the lives of those that surround you. And never forget that. Take that to heart. And really, I think that is the way forward.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Just to give an Irish context to that, Steve, last night, we met the fourth Irish plant-based doctor that we've met, and it was very interesting. She sent us a text this morning, sent Steve one, which you read it. This is good interest.

• 1:04:11Rich Roll?

  She or he?

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Or he, yeah.

• 1:04:14Speaker 06

  Just wanted to thank you for putting on such a good evening with Rich, Raul, and Julie. Also, I didn't get a chance, but wanted to say thank you for you and Dave for helping me with my plant-based journey. Okay, a few years ago, I was diagnosed with a kind of complicated word, and reactive arthritis. Walking was difficult, and I felt rotten. I was offered nasty drugs by my rheumatologist and told I shouldn't try to run anymore. Long story, short. I decided to ignore conventional medicine, even though I was a doctor, and try plant-based. Your books and blog kept me fed and played a big role in teaching me how to cook vegan. I'm now completely well and back running again. Plant power all the way.

• 1:04:52Speaker 06

  But even more, and even, we've been doing the Happy Heart Course for years and we've pretty seen thousands of people reduce the symptoms of cardiovascular disease with some of the measurements. And last year we were invited to the Royal College of Surgeons to talk to 80 doctors. And I remember Dave was absolutely shitting himself, excuse my language, all day, "We're gonna go into the doctors, they're gonna grill us, they're gonna rip us apart like tigers being fed a line," or a lamb. And we went in and we just spoke of our own experience and they were so receptive, amongst the most receptive people we've ever spoken to. And even this year we were invited to Galway Hospital to talk to the...

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  I think they were trainee doctors, there was about 200 of them. But it was amazing to see how receptive and interested and like, just really, really, it was a totally different kind of paradigm for us.

• 1:05:41Speaker 06

  And there's four plant-based doctors in Ireland, which is, woo! So I think there's a lot of change happening, which is fabulous. I think we've got time for another one or two questions.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  I think it's a girl now. Anyone, I think we've got in the back just because you already did that.

• 1:05:57Speaker 13

  Hi, I've got two questions, if that's okay. First of all, do you take any supplements?

• 1:06:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, we answer that question first?

• 1:06:08Speaker 13

  That's the first question.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, occasionally a B12, I'm not like, super strict about it, like, when I see it there, I'll take it. I think the lads have the same experience with that. But, you know, I've had my own journey with supplements. When I first started this, I was still trying to break free of all this conventional wisdom and I, you know, went out and bought all kinds of plastic tubs of all sorts of things. And, you know, have slowly weaned myself off of them, wondering whether these things are doing anything or I'm just wasting my money. And now I really don't use anything, other than the occasional B12. I get my blood work done every three or six months, everything's super in check and perfect. Occasionally a little plant-based protein in a smoothie, but by no means a daily occurrence. And so, I think supplements are okay if you have a deficiency, you can find out if you

• 1:06:54Rich Roll?

  have a deficiency if you get a blood panel done, then you can address that. But supplements are to supplement. We shouldn't be looking to supplements to meet our nutritional needs. Our nutritional needs should be met from the foods that we're eating. Whole plant-based foods close to their natural state. On top of that, if there's something that you need to tweak, perhaps you're vitamin D deficient, a lot of people are, it has nothing to do with being vegan or not being vegan, then that's something that you need to like, look into and address and either eat more vitamin D fortified foods or supplement. But first, understand what your baselines are and then kind of go from there.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  And yeah, that's all really in alignment with me as well. However, in addition to a whole food plant-based diet and B12, I also take Ayurvedic herbs on top of my food.

• 1:07:43Speaker 13

  My second question's for you Julie. And how did you discover yoga?

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  How did I discover yoga? Well, let's see. I just started going to my local yoga studio. I actually met this very controversial fellow named Steve Ross and he taught yoga to loud hip-hop and funk music. And I remember doing his class the first time and I was shaking so bad, like my whole body was shaking uncontrollably and there was sweat streaming down my body. And I wanted to go back so badly, I just couldn't even handle it. So, that actually helped me get the bug. I stopped practicing with him some years after that and went into a very deep practice in another way.

• 1:08:31Rich Roll?

  We met in that class.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  We met in that class, actually. So it was really just in a community class and then it opened up a whole world of beautiful, beautiful practices. I really believe that yoga as a science, asana as well as meditation and pranayama, these are sacred techniques that are what I call shelter. They offer a shelter from this very intense life. And without those practices, I would not have lived such a beautifully meaningful miraculous life. So, any way you can find it in any form, it's the foundation of everything that I do. And had I not had that connection, Rich and I wouldn't have had this journey together

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  because what was underneath this plant-based journey was a very, very deep spiritual connection and conviction about what we were supposed to do. And I was holding that theme for many, many, many years. So, find some yoga, everybody, meditate.

• 1:09:31Speaker 06

  Maybe last question, quick one, quick one. Chris, you have to spring stuff up, so we have to ask you.

• 1:09:37Speaker 14

  Cheers, man. How's it going, guys? Delighted to be here. And yeah, you're all brilliant, some of my favourite humans in the world sitting up there. So, thanks very much. I actually first saw, Rich, I saw you on one of the lads YouTube videos and you were talking about microbiome. And I was like, oh, this fellow looks smart with his glasses on. Check out this podcast. I fooled you. Geez, that podcast, honestly, it's sent me on a serious trajectory, man, to just crushing life, like, across the board. It's absolutely amazing. And I've put about four or five of my mates on to it in the last year, and literally three of them in the last six months have gone totally plant-based,

• 1:10:17Speaker 14

  purely from your podcast. So, it's amazing stuff. So, I'm obviously sold on a plant-based stuff. It's really, it's the way for me.

• 1:10:27Speaker 14

  I have a huge family, is the issue, one of these big Irish families, like, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, like, pecking loads of them. And none of them have a clue what being vegetarian or vegan, you know what I mean, is about. So, I don't really know where to begin. And I do find as well, particularly with the family, they're, they won't read anything, or they won't look at anything if you give it to them. They want all the information from you directly when they're sitting down chatting, if they give you an ear for a few minutes. So, I found myself having to just dig out all the information, listening to Neil Bernard, Michael Greger, all of it, and educating myself.

• 1:11:09Speaker 14

  So, I'm trying to help people get the message across, but it weighs on me a little bit. And I'll give you an example. So, I'm from Cork, but I just came up to come to this for a couple of days. I've got some family here in Dublin. And I'm staying with them, right, for two, three days. My aunt and uncle and I haven't seen them in about a year and a half and they're both looking a bit unhealthy now, like just aging fairly rapidly and if you look inside the fridge, you'll know why, you know, it's bacon, rashers, milk, eggs, the whole shebang. And just today I called over to my grandmother and I was walking back to their house and they'd gone out, they'd given me the number to get into the house. So I walk into the house and

• 1:11:53Speaker 14

  there's a smell of smoke and I walk inside, right, frying pan's been left on, there's nobody in the house, so I'm only up visiting. And I opened up the top of the pot that was in there and it was just beef being cooked, right, and it'd been left there and it was all black. There's smoke coming out of it like, and I'm going, fucking hell, like, I'm just up here visiting, what if I hadn't have come back in here to the house, like, the whole thing could have gone up, like. So I go mad, like, so I'm kind of taking this as a sign, like, you need to share the information with them, like, you need to push it a little bit to help them see the madness that they're doing by eating the stuff that they're eating. But as far as weighing on me, like, so all day, that's where my head was, all day, how

• 1:12:35Speaker 14

  can I prepare something inside my head to get the information across to them, which is the least bushy and the most inviting. But honestly, it wrecks my head. I'm stuck up at night trying to meditate, half the time thinking of these conversations I was having with my family. I see all the little babies getting fed bacon and ham and all this stuff and it's hard. So I don't know if any of yous can resonate with it, but how might you go about managing that and keeping yourself in a good headspace and centered to be able to help other people?

• 1:13:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a tough question, you know, it's, it's kind of like what we were talking about earlier, it's a dance, right? And I think that the first thing you have to kind of recognize is

• 1:13:23Rich Roll?

  That they might not get it, right? So it's your relationship to the results of this advocacy that you're trying to share with them, right? And your desire, your need, your attachment to this result, that they're gonna see things the way that you see them and change their behavior. That is a setup that usually doesn't go so well. So the first thing you have to do is, first of all, be convicted in your own habits. Learn how to stand in your strength as a lighthouse and detach from the results of this. You will have a much better chance in actually activating them or catalyzing change if you can get into a scenario in which they're approaching you as opposed to you approaching them.

• 1:14:07Rich Roll?

  You know, when you roll up on them and start, you know, giving them a laundry list of all the things that they're doing wrong in their life, it's probably not gonna go so well, right? So you being a vibrant, healthy human being and choosing your moments where like, hey, you know, bring your own food, that's delicious, you know? And be an example for these young people. Ultimately, over time, like, they will see that light in your eyes and they'll be like, hey, what's going on? You know, like, what's going on? And I think you need to like, like, take a little bit of the emotional charge out of it. There's a book by a guy named Doug Lyle, it's called The Pleasure Trap, it's all about this, you might wanna read it, might find helpful. But, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a process, you know, it's a process.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I would say just, you know, just make some really incredible food. You know, come just on the positive, come with your arms full, like, and if you can't cook or you're not at home, then go to the Happy Pair, like, just come with stuff, like lots of stuff. Make a salad. Just be like, oh, cool, you know, I brought you all these organic veggies, or just say veggies, I brought some salad. Just start making it. Make it like, positive. And then, you know, that's the best way. I think that's the best way, and when you show up with amazing food and people eat it and there's no, like, dialogue behind it, or there's no teaching or test, you know, just make amazing food, commune with love, be love, and, you know, have compassion and

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  understand everybody's in their own journey, and definitely keep an eye on that stove.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  I just have a quick point to that, I just say that I think for the first couple of years when we became vegan or vegetarian, we were like preachers, we were horrible, you know, everyone fucking hated us. Particularly at family events, it was the centre of every conversation, it was awful. And I think we realised after a period of time that like, gee shit, no one's getting it this way. So we just shut our mouths. And people would eventually start asking you questions going, "Oh, what's that, what are you eating?" And the conversation kind of shifted where we kind of just felt, as Rich said, when you take the charge out of where you're not kind of always trying to defend your corner, when you're kind of feel comfortable with it, you're doing it for yourself, not to preach to others, you know, that kind of way. So it was almost for ourselves, it was

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  like making peace with, you know, I don't have to preach to everyone, you know. Don't know if that's any use.

• 1:16:34Speaker 06

  So, last one for Jo.

• 1:16:38Speaker 15

  Hi, it's not a question, it's just a comment from the guy from Cork. I'm plant-based for about 13 months, and I come from a big family as well, from Tipperary. Go on, Tip. And, we'll win on Sunday, yeah. So, we, big family, loads of kids, mum and dad, like, you know, definitely overweight, but very happy, very meat-based family. And we just became vegan like about 14 months ago, I think. And not like exactly what you guys were saying, I'm literally nodding, it's exactly what I want to say, they started to like, look at our food and be like, "What is that, can I taste it?" And then it was

• 1:17:19Speaker 15

  way more delicious than what they were eating. And slowly but surely, they've, you know, they eat a lot more veg. But my sister has struggled with her weight for like her whole life, and the two of us, she's a little bit older than me, so it's always harder for her to look at me, never struggling, never having problems. And then, little by little, she kept looking at me every time I saw her. She lives in Cork, and she was like, "Do you know what, fuck this, I'm sick of going on that spinning bike, I'm sick of like all of this struggles that I'm having, I'm going vegan." And she went to her boyfriend, who also struggles with his weight and has lots of health problems, and said, "Look, we're gonna be vegan." And he was like, "Okay, let's do it." So, they've just got back from this camping trip all over Ireland, they got this little stove, and they're vegans for about...

• 1:18:02Speaker 15

  Two months, I think, and he's got a blog called The Fat Vegan Cork. Because he said, you know, people are gonna be in restaurants going, "That guy can't be a vegan, he's way too fat." So he decided to embrace it and go, "Do you know what? This is me, this is who I am, and this is what I'm gonna do. This is my journey through plant-based life as a fat person." And you should look him up, The Fat Vegan Cork. And just by being that person, being that, like, vibrant person, just being yourself. And my sister, another sister, there's loads of us, asked me, "Oh, God, what's your makeup? You know what makeup you're using?" My older sister said, "It's not her makeup, it's inside her body, what she's putting in, and that's what you're seeing. Isn't this a makeup thing, it's what's coming from inside." And we can be the change anywhere, just being yourself will be enough.

• 1:18:47Speaker 15

  Namaste.

• 1:18:48Rich Roll?

  Beautiful, yeah, alright.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Rick, do you wanna do a rapper?

• 1:18:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's wrap things up here. So Hippocrates got it right, however many thousands of years ago, when he said, "Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food." So profound. I'd heard it growing up in school, but I never really thought about it. And I've experienced it now, and everybody up here has experienced it, and most likely many of you in this room have experienced that. Food can heal, it's super powerful. And in addition to all of the crazy healthcare crises that we're weathering at the moment, at the same time, the population of the planet is growing at an alarming rate.

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  Pretty soon, we're gonna have eight million people on the planet. How are we gonna feed everybody? Our system of feeding the planet, animal agriculture, factory farming, is broken. It's unsustainable, it's incredibly wasteful, and it's decimating our planet's precious and dwindling resources. Right now, we're in the midst of the biggest mass species extinction since the dinosaurs. We are raping and pillaging the Amazonian rainforest at a ridiculous rate, something like one to two football fields every second. This is the planet's lungs, this is how we create oxygen in the atmosphere. Animal agriculture uses way too much land, way too much water, and it's polluting our water table.

• 1:20:26Rich Roll?

  It's acidifying our oceans. It's creating these massive dead zones where nothing can live. This is insanity. If an alien came down to our planet and said, "Show me how you make your food," and we show them what we're doing, they would say, "What is wrong with you people? We need a better way." The great thing is, there is a better way, and it's been staring us in the face all along. Because every meal, every plate, where you swap off the animal products and replace them with plant foods, saves a tremendous amount of resources. Tremendous amount of resources. Animal agriculture also contributes more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere than all of transportation combined. Think about that for a minute.

• 1:21:11Rich Roll?

  And as citizens, as consumers, it's easy to feel disenchanted, like our vote doesn't count. "I can't make a difference. I'm just one person. It's a huge problem. Who can do anything about it?" But when you make that choice, you are making a difference. You are taking a stand for yourself. You're making a statement about what you believe in. You are aligning your actions with your values. And that has consequences, positive consequences, to everybody around you. It's very powerful. It's very empowering. And together, if we embody this ethos, we really can make a difference. Because the truth is, eating plant-based, taking a plant-based approach to your plate

• 1:21:54Rich Roll?

  is the single most powerful, most positively impactful thing that you can possibly do as a conscious, compassionate consumer. It is the medicine that will prevent and reverse all of these chronic diseases. It is the way to live more sustainably and more compassionately on this planet. And it is the portal, the first portal, to greater self-actualization. If you change your plate, it holds the crazy, amazing, potential energy.

• 1:22:31Rich Roll?

  To change the planet. So with that said, I wish you all well. Thank you for coming here tonight. Take this into your life and be the agent to change for yourself and make a difference. Thank you.

• 1:22:46Speaker 13

  Woo! Thank you.

• 1:22:59Rich Roll?

  Alright, I hope you guys enjoyed that. Please make a point of checking out this week's show notes on the episode page for this episode at richroll.com. Lots of resources to take the experience of this conversation beyond the earbuds, including a list of all the Happy Pairs cookbooks, which I strongly suggest that you guys check out. If you would like to support my work, please make a point of subscribing on Apple Podcasts on iTunes. It only takes a moment and it really does help with the show's visibility. It helps extend reach. It helps expand the audience, which in turn will make it easier for me to book the very best people for future episodes. Other ways you can support my work,

• 1:23:40Rich Roll?

  you can share this podcast with your friends and on social media, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to my YouTube channel where we have videos of many of the episodes going forward, youtube.com/richroll. We also have a Patreon account if you want to support me financially and I'm providing exclusive content to Patreon supporters in the form of monthly live video AMAs, Ask Me Anything. But you gotta be a Patreon supporter to have access to that. The next one is coming up soon. I'm gonna be scheduling it shortly and we'll let all of you guys know. You can also follow me on Twitter and on Instagram, I'm @richroll. And you can also subscribe to my weekly free newsletter called Roll Call

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  by entering in your email address in any of the email capture windows on my website. It's a free weekly newsletter, just five or six things I came across over the course of the week that I found inspiring or interesting or helpful. That's it. As I mentioned in the last episode, I am looking for a new filmmaker slash photographer slash editor to collaborate with for a rundown on the exact details and qualifications for this gig. Please see the blog post for this episode at richroll.com. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes and interstitial music. Shawn Patterson for graphics and theme music by Anna Lima. See you guys in a few days. Until then, peace, plants and namaste.