Jon Stewart Talks With Joe Rogan About His Switch to a Plant-Based Diet

Let me ask you a question because now this is I'm wondering because you're talking about sort of evolving to a place where your body and like when you had James on and he was talking about Do you have moral qualms about meat or do you not like you said we're hunters and that like is that ever an issue for you or is it purely a health issue? Or is it? There's both things. There's a health issue. There is a moral qualm with factory farming. There's not a moral qualm with hunting. Because I know the reality of the life of a deer. If you don't kill that deer it's going to die a horrible death from a wolf or a coyote or a mountain lion or whatever the fuck gets a hold of it. It's going to freeze to death. It's going you can either die quickly by the hand of a person you respect that life and it'll nurture your body and the bodies of your family. Our problem is a disconnection more than anything and let me tell you something when the COVID lockdown happened I got more requests from friends and more requests for information about hunting and gun ownership. How do I protect myself and how do I feed myself and how do I grow food? Those were three really big questions that I kept getting from people. It's funny I have such a different perspective on it in terms of just the the relationship between myself and I didn't. I was a big meat eater. I was a big deli guy. Kishrami and corned beef and all that. My wife got into rescue and these types of things. We ended up with a farm with pigs and goats and sheep and things like that. It became untenable for me to make that decision. You know that sort of that decision of I think you'll be better off if I kill you. It was something I could no longer manage once I knew the process of it. It's been a very hard process for me. It's only been about four or five years. How is your health? I'm an old Jew so baseline pretty much we don't age well to begin with. How old are you now John? We age a bit like avocados when you leave them out. I'm 57. I'm 52 so we're in similar boats. Similar boat. I mean it's hard to note I feel good. If you look at markers like cholesterol or blood pressure or those things it's better. But like you say I don't know enough about how the body processes to know if I feel better, the numbers say I'm better. But you know genetics I'm sure plays a part in it as well. But the funny thing is like I don't even think about it anymore. Like I just don't even think about it anymore. Well once you get into a custom and once your gut biome changes you really get accustomed to whatever you're eating good or bad unfortunately and that's one of the reasons why people have such a hard time quitting sugar and bread and pasta and things along those lines. So your body just craves it. That's what it wants. When you start eating healthier food your body does crave that. It can go off of meat and still be incredibly unhealthy. You can be vegan and just exist on Lay's potato chips. Right. So it is you know and it's a tougher road and the world is certainly not built for that and it certainly feels a little bit of a narrower lane that you have to do. And I also think it's an incredibly emotional topic. Yeah. Very little that's as emotional and personal as what people put in their bodies and how they eat and what they do. And I'm always very respectful because I also I got no leg to stand on man. I like this is what I'm doing. It feels better for me. But I I always say like but it's such a personal and individual choice and you everybody's got to do for themselves. The only thing I would say is like I do think it's important for people to get educated on it. To read up on like you say factory farming or what might be the you know nutritional cost of it or what are some of the things that are in it or what maybe is it going to do to our immunity when you know we use so many antibiotics in the meat production. That's the only thing I say is like try and educate yourself to how your meal gets to your table. That's why I'm a huge advocate for like local farming and agriculture because those are the people that just grow in their food and they're bringing it to your table. I find that incredible. But I also don't I try not to take a position of judgment on people because I feel like that's unfair. Well I think that's very wise of you and I think that there's a lot of people that share your position on animal death and I think that's one of the more promising aspects of laboratory created meat as long as it can be done in a way that's actually going to be healthy for us. It seems like there's some real science behind that and they're very very close to releasing that on large scale. So it would be actual meat that doesn't come with death which is really fascinating. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about like the one that they had I saw like it's a tank and he pulls out it's like twenty thousand dollars for a chicken breast. They did that yeah it was really expensive at one point in time but they've gotten it down to a burger now like they can actually make a burger out of this stuff and they feel like as this this technology improves they mean essentially flesh when it's not. Would you if you could if you could still have the part of meat that you like but it came without death do you think you would make that switch or is that something that. Well I certainly would with domestic animals. The difference between that and hunting there's there's a conservation aspect of it. One thing that leads to protection of wildlife habitat is actually the money that comes from hunting tags and hunting equipment. There's that there's also the the type of relationship you have with your food when you actually work very hard and hunt it and kill it is very different than buying food from a store. And I would say similar in a similar way growing. Whole food when you go to whole food sometimes you really got to stop that you know there's there's a lot that goes into the trip to whole food. Yeah so I find a good parking spot. That's right. Yeah I get it. Growing your own food in your backyard is very satisfying too and I would say to people like that's a microcosm like it's a very micro form of what it feels like to hunt an animal and then eat it and feed your family for you know if I shoot an elk I eat it literally for a year. So one animal death equals like a year of my meals and you know there's also the moral high ground position you know I think a lot of people love to look at the moral high ground of eating vegetables and only eating vegetables as being a superior way to live their life and that's that's a good decision. I understand where you're coming from. I understand that there's people that look at life very differently than me. They maybe don't have this sort of fatalistic perspective even though it's respectful. I have a very fatalistic perspective when it comes to just all organic organisms competing for resources and for life. These animals I mean I've run into them when they've killed each other. I've seen animals that have been taken out by other animals. I've come across their bodies torn apart by wolves in the woods. It's a wild wild thing out there man and I think we're so insulated by it in our culture of today that it's one of the reasons why veganism and all these things are becoming so attractive. I would hope that along with that we're going to be nicer to each other that we're going to be we're going to grow to be a kinder human race. I really I really hope that. Yeah because I think it's about consideration you know for me I think it was there was a certain part of consciousness that I never ascribed to animals to some extent. I mean it's funny because I always thought of myself as oh I you know I love animals. I you know I've always had dogs and cats and you know you find a bird with a broken wing and you stick him in a box and two weeks later he flies away and you're a hero. But I never really ascribed like individuality to them and I think that was the change for me was interacting in an individual way with different on the farm. Yeah you know I always told my brother once we named them but it's fun. Yeah you watch them like they're played they'll play or they and it just changed my relationship to what I wanted it to be with animals and it just made it untenable in that moment for me but I truly understand like that that is in a really individualized personalized experience that that that I made and like I say I would love it for people to make that connection because I think it's profound. There is there is something about that connection for people that when they do see it you know it's funny I'll talk about the pigs and they'll be like what you know they're going to just eat everything you're like no they're really playful they're smart don't dogs you do belly rubs yeah it's it's but that was shocking to me I didn't know that I just thought oh it's like a blob again beings we're talking about nature John and there's nothing natural about a farm that's part of the problem I mean it's all it's an animal prison and they're domesticated because we give them food and we kind of remove the the natural fear that they would have of any you know eyeball facing forward predator which is what we are you know what they're about to their health like what having our farm with sheep and goats and pigs and they're all rescues is like having a nursing home like you can't believe the fragility of factory farmed animals like they are to be sick like pneumonia uh like genetically designed to gain too much weight for their legs it really is you know the island of misfic to it like they they've genetically mod up or done whatever they've done and and the health of these animals that are in our food supply yeah that our mainstay of our food supply is really suspect yeah that's why for nursing home yeah that's why I prefer hunting the when if you're eating an animal that's a wild animal you're eating an athlete I mean they're they're sinewy and thick and they're strong and they've survived and they're so much more nutrient dense when you're when you're talking about factory farmed animals you're talking about I mean well factory farmed animals is the worst version of what human beings are capable of they were capable of ignoring suffering to the point where we lock them all in warehouses their piss goes down in a tunnel and fills a small lake up and they've flown over these places with drones it's horrific right the pig farms in particular they're horrific but when you're talking about what you're doing on your farm like of course you can't eat those things they're your pets that would be I mean you're you're naming them and feeding them and touching them but I extrapolate that now so I I think what happened was I went oh right that's in the same way that like I love my dog but if you have a dog I wouldn't kill your dog and eat because I look at dogs now in a different way so I think I extrapolate to the animal kingdom in a way a different I have it I feel like because of my wife and she's been she's a much kinder smarter version of me so uh because of her kind of showing me that relationship and experiencing myself like it's just changed the way that I view it