Joe Rogan's Thoughts on the Game Changers Debate

I enjoyed that game changer with Chris Kresser. It's a little bit like listening to a Protestant and a Catholic argue over the minutia of how to worship God. Like they both believe in God or like a Sunni and a Shia. It was very interesting in that sense, like how human beings get steeped in too much information and then we'll start parsing out stuff that's not that helpful to the listener. Well, it's a long conversation. The conversation about health is very long. And unfortunately, when Chris was talking about the game changers, he got several things wrong. Particularly the big ones were the amount of protein that you can get in peanut butter, the amount of protein that's in bread, and whether or not that is equal to 3 ounces of ground meat. And what Wilkes was showing is that it is. And he made his point very well. And that made Chris, his argument, not look very good. And then there was the other problem, where as Chris Kresser sort of personally defined what he defines as low carb versus medium carb versus high carb, and wasn't making a distinction that this is not the consensus amongst nutritionists. What they consider low carb, medium carb. James accused him of that. Chris denied it. James pulled out all of these different articles that show that he has a different version of what he calls low carb, medium carb, or high carb. The problem with all this is he's just making Chris look bad and he's not necessarily proving that a vegetarian or vegan diet is better for you. But he is, rightly, pointing out that he was wrongly criticized. So I get his position. I was very impressed with James' ability to come prepared. Very prepared. I do believe he spent 3,000 hours. I mean an hour, 1,000 hours. I believe that. Yeah, I believe that now. He knows his shit. Yes. After talking to him about this and the way he handled it. But I kept going back to what Chris was saying, which was, hey, hey, hey. I believe in plants. I eat mostly plants. A little animal products, some animal products, it's going to get, it's an easier way to get B1. Yes, but that's the problem. It's not going to kill you. That's the problem with doing a documentary. And then that's a problem with someone criticizing the documentary. You know, it's like... But the documentary... He's got enough stuff that he can say you were inaccurate with the criticism. So that then we get lost in the argument. Like, is meat bad for you? Is it like... That's the main question. It's not. No. Neither is dairy. That's the problem. But the way they're conflating it with people who were advertising for cigarettes and doctors advertising for cigarettes back in the day and saying that cigarettes are fine. These are the same people that are doing this. Like, no, the problem is everyone was aware for a long time that cigarettes are not healthy. Right. This is not the case with meat. No. These studies that where you connect people with all these diseases with meat, they connect their diet as a whole. They could be eating cheeseburgers and bread and soda and lifestyle and drinking and smoking, but they also eat meat versus people who don't eat meat. If someone is going to be conscientious and think about even if they're incorrect and they just assume that the science says that eating meat is bad for you, you start eating more fish or more chicken or more vegetables, you clean up your diet, I bet just statistically those people have less drinking. I agree 100%. I bet statistically they have less cigarette smoking. They're probably healthier on the whole because they're making choices that even if it's incorrect, they think are good for you like not eating meat or as much meat. As a non-nutritionist who doesn't know shit, when I watched Game Changers, I have to say that it did seem like the narrative, the story of the movie was that being a vegan is better for you for all these reasons, all these scientific reasons than eating any meat. That's what I, for me it was a vegan film. 100% of the movie. Even though James would probably disagree with that, for me just as a viewer, the argument was being made that being a vegan, from just what I got, regardless of what was meant, I got that being a vegan is better for you. It keeps your dick hard. You won't die of cancer and you'll have less inflammation and all those things. More endurance. All of which seemed, I talked to Lane Norton about this for a while. He had written this thing. When he had a video, you could watch his video on Game Changers, Debunked, where he broke down basically every single claim that they made that was incorrect scientifically as a PhD. He's a legit scientist. He absolutely understands what's really going on when it comes to nutritional science. I would have just said at the end of the day, this is a debate about can you eat some meat and dairy? But here's the problem. Because of Kresser's criticism of the film, he was in every right. He had every right to defend the criticism. I respect it. He did it right. The problem was we didn't get any closer at the end. There was some confusion that was about whether or not it is healthy or not healthy to eat meat. He was citing some studies and Kresser was saying those studies aren't valid because of this and that. That's where we would have been if we had a guy like Lane Norton in here would have helped a lot. We could have someone actually explain it. But you could also have a guy who comes in and goes, hey, guys, here's the thing, man. Let's just look at cultures that live a long time and have vibrant lives and good lives. Some of it is like I'd like to look at the Blue Zones who eat meat and they have a lot of times they eat some form of dairy and they drink and they have good communities. They don't retire. There's a lot more to longevity and health and living a good life than being a purist. For sure. Whether or not it's in this direction or that direction, I think. It's all in regard, like it's the result of a real conversation that we really need to have because overpopulation is real. The conversation is really ultimately what is sustainable. It's not what is sustainable right now for your lifespan. It's like what is sustainable for the future and should we engineer for a better tomorrow? We already are though, aren't we? We sort of are. We're not though. People are acting as individuals. There's not really a whole lot of engineering in terms of slowing down the rate of childbirth or trying to prevent people from having too many kids, trying to prevent overpopulation. A lot of cultures, I mean a lot of countries and societies are at zero population growth, don't they? Yes, but the thing is there's plenty of people that live below the poverty line in terms of what our perception of the poverty line is. And what you're seeing in a lot of these more industrialized nations is as people start developing careers and men and women get careers, you have less childbirth. Like you've seen that in Japan. Japan has apparently an issue with a lack of childbirth. Not as many as they should have. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable.