Joe Rogan Clarifies Claims That Nate Diaz is Vegan

Another problem that I had in the film, especially in relations to sport, is the Nate Diaz Conor McGregor comparison. First of all, Nate Diaz is not a vegan. Nate Diaz eats fish and he eats eggs. And he does try to follow a whole food vegan diet, I think during camp. So I would have to talk to him about that. I know he's done interviews talking about that, but I've definitely seen him eat fish. I watched him on the Anthony Bourdain television show and he was eating fish. I know he's eaten eggs. He doesn't eat land animals. I think what he does is avoids red meat. Well, fish and eggs take care of it because fish is actually higher often than meat in terms of protein ounce for ounce. It's also very high in collagen, which is super important for recovery and repair. And explains, lack of collagen probably explains why a lot of vegan athletes get injured, which we can talk about more later. And then eggs, as you know, are super, they're really high on the DS scale. They're bioavailable, lots of other nutrients. Here's another problem with that whole comparison. First of all, Nate Diaz is a fantastic fighter. He's a long time mixed martial arts veteran. He's outstanding in all areas. He has a fantastic submission game. His brother, Nick Diaz, is one of the best in the world. He's also outstanding in all. And his brother, Nick, I believe is vegan. He's probably a better example because, you know, even though Nick hasn't beaten like some of the top flight fighters in a few years, back when he was in strike force, he was top of the food chain. I mean, he's an elite fighter for sure. I'm not sure if he was vegan back then. I'd have to ask him. But the point being that Nate is an exceptional, exceptionally skilled athlete. And he was coming into that fight on extremely short notice. So he was most likely following his off-camp diet, which is eggs and eaten fish and things along those lines. And I think he said he was partying in Mexico. So who knows what the fuck he was doing? It was like 11 days out. They call him and they set up this fight. I forget how many days out it was, but it was a very, very short amount of time. Connor was preparing for a 155-pound fight against Rafael dos Andros. So he was reducing his caloric intake, dropping his weight down to try to make this 155-pound weight class. It's a big cut for him. So when you do that, you are in anticipation that the person you're fighting is also doing that. So you both kind of agree that you're going to be in a certain weakened state when you actually weigh in at 155 pounds. So was that like two weight classes below his normal? Well, let me keep going. So he's, that was the first and only time, well, except the rematch with Nate was the only time that he's fought at 170. So they made a decision to fight at 170 instead of 155 because Nate did not have time to reduce his calories and cut the weight. And it takes a long time. It's a slow process of Nate is a big fella. He walks around probably over 200 pounds easy and he drops weight and he didn't want to drop that much weight. He's a big guy, man. He's big and long. And Connor was dropping his weight down to 155. So he's 10 days out and he just starts packing on food, eating as much food as he can. Not only that, but stylistically Nate's a nightmare for him. Nate has a fucking evil submission game. He's tough as nails. His endurance is always fantastic because off season he's always doing triathlons and he's always doing like endurance sports. He's in phenomenal shape and his jujitsu is like many levels better than Connor's. He's a legit top of the food chain MMA black belt in jujitsu. So they have this fight. Connor gets tired. Nate beats him up, gets him on the ground, submits him and they're saying this is a victory for veganism. What they don't say is five months later they fought and Connor beat him. They fought again. They fought. This time they had a full training camp for Connor prepared and it was a very close fight I should say. You could have scored it either way. I mean it was a really close fight. Razor's thin. The fact remains Connor beat him in the rematch. So I mean they leave this out of the narrative like oh my god the vegans are dominating. Look vegan dominated. But he's you know this is a last minute fight. Connor goes up and wait. Nate Diaz you know steps in and takes care of business and wins the fight. It speaks more to how good Nate Diaz is than a vegan diet. Right. And it doesn't take into account that four months later or five months later whatever it was he loses. And he's not vegan. Yeah it's not vegan. I mean there's there are few other. He follows it sometimes. There are a few other examples like that in the film where you catch like a certain window of it but they don't show what happens afterwards. We talked about the vegan honeymoon. So Brian Jennings the boxer. Yes. They talked about he went vegan in end of 2013. He was 17 and 0 before he was vegan and he's been so he's 7 and 4 after that. So you can't say that that's because he transitioned to a vegan diet but you can't also say nor can you say that veganism improved his performance. Right. I mean objectively he's gotten worse since then. Well the argument against that would be that he's moving up into the upper echelons of the heavyweight division and it's filled with killers like any combat sport. And that as he got in many fighters don't make it to get in. He lost to wasn't one of the Klitschko's? Yes. I think he lost to Vladimir. I think he lost to Vladimir Klitschko in a decision and he handled himself very well. It was a very good fight for him. He looked real good. But yeah I mean that that upper loan you get to these Andy Ruiz, Deontay Wilder, I mean killers. Yeah. It's like not most people that get up into that division they start losing. He's a good example too of this principle of context being everything because he said in the film my early years growing up in Philly the only thing we knew was spinach in a can and collard greens and Popeyes, KFC, everybody frying chicken. I grew up not even knowing about half these other vegetables. Asparagus to me just came out like five years ago. So you know clearly. Again vegan honeymoon. Yeah going from like a crappy standard American diet to a whole foods diet I don't doubt that someone's gonna feel better. But what do you felt better like you said eating some grass fed bison and some eggs along with all of those plants? That's the question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.