Ep 267 – Why Bad Nutrition Advice Goes Viral (w/ Mic the Vegan)

Evidence-based nutrition doesn’t always win the attention economy…but it’s what leads to lasting health. In this episode of Muscles by Brussels Radio, Ben and Coach Sawyer sit down with Mic the Vegan to discuss his journey from skeptical omnivore to one of the most trusted science communicators in the vegan space. Mike shares how he built his platform by prioritizing research over sensationalism, the challenges of combating nutrition misinformation online, and why balanced, evidence-driven messaging matters more than ever.

The conversation explores why people are drawn to nutrition trends, how social media rewards controversy over nuance, and the importance of interpreting scientific research correctly instead of relying on isolated mechanisms or clickbait headlines. They also dive into common misconceptions surrounding cholesterol, saturated fat, whole foods, superfoods, and vegan diets, while discussing how genetics, lifestyle, and overall dietary patterns all contribute to long-term health.

Along the way, the group discusses athletic performance on a vegan diet, practical strategies for building sustainable eating habits, why enjoyable movement matters, and how everyday vegans can become positive ambassadors for the lifestyle. Whether you’re interested in improving your health, understanding nutrition research, or simply becoming a more informed consumer of health information online, this episode is packed with thoughtful discussion and practical takeaways.

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TRANSCRIPT

Ben (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Ben, and today I’m joined by Coach Sawyer, as you know from previous episodes. But today we also have a special guest, Mic the Vegan. So, Mike is a vegan science writer that covers a variety of topics from the health effects of a vegan diet and the environmental impact of eating animal products to the sociological phenomenon of the casual,

animal exploitation. So based in the US, he regularly tackles debunking the myths that perpetuate harmful dietary and lifestyle behaviors, all with a drop of humor that only he thinks is funny. But I must push back on that, Mike, because I’ve been watching your videos for a few years now and I feel like you do a really great job of balancing the entertainment with education. I think your edits are really well timed and and humorous. So I have been watching your videos for quite some time and really enjoy that kind of

Blend and I know Sawyer has as well. So I first and foremost just want to say thank you so much for giving us your time today to come on to the podcast and and talk shop.

Mic the Vegan (00:58)
Yeah, it’s great to be here. Maybe I need to change it so only me and two other people think is sorta funny. Two people in the room with us. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (01:04)
Yeah, just keep adding to that number. Dude, I I actually laugh out loud

Ben (01:02)
Ha ha ha ha.

Coach Sawyer (01:08)
watching your videos sometimes and that’s something that takes a lot for me to do. Like if I’m alone and you’re laughing, like that’s when you know somebody’s funny. So I gotta say, man, yeah.

Mic the Vegan (01:17)
Nice. Okay, I appreciate that. I’ll try to add more

for you in the future. Sometimes I just get so caught up in like getting the information out that I like forget to put to just like have a good time and put jokes in there. And then someone comments like, where are the jokes in this video? Or like sometimes the topic is really serious. And I’m like, I don’t know if I can just like throw too many jokes in here. but yeah. Yeah, it’s I’m happy you like it.

Coach Sawyer (01:35)
Yeah. That makes sense.

No, you gotta do it when it feels organic, right? If you force it too much, it won’t it probably won’t come across as well anyway. So

Mic the Vegan (01:41)
Mm-hmm. But sometimes

I do have to do the weird, like, you know, when I like Photoshop my face into like a worm or something, like RFK’s brain worm. Like sometimes those are also funny too, because I’m doing it imagining that I’m gonna be the brain worm later. It’s like I can’t see what you see. So it’s like a little it’s goofy. But it’s fun. yeah, the that’s low hanging fruit. The brain worm’s low hanging. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (01:48)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s so funny. Yeah. I love that one. That one cracked me up actually. That was probably the most recent good laugh I had.

Ben (02:09)
So

Mike, I think before we get into the topics for today, we like to just start the podcast by having a little bit of just casual chit-chat. Before we got on, you had mentioned you’re like, hey, I got my oatmeal here. I’m gonna be you might be eating that kind of throughout the the podcast. Yeah. There we go. Well, hey, I was just, you know, I was saying I’m

Mic the Vegan (02:21)
I might take a couple bites, but I’m not like starving. It’s it’s probably the ugliest bowl of oatmeal I have because I just threw it together, but I got a bunch of blueberries in here. They’re high the whole bottom

Coach Sawyer (02:24)
Mm-hmm.

I was gonna say where the berry’s at. There it is. Nice.

Mic the Vegan (02:32)
is covered in blueberries.

I got cinnamon on top. And normally I would put even even more in, but I’m like, I’ll just throw it together. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (02:37)
Yeah.

Ben (02:39)
but I was just gonna say, like, you know,

we as the coaches, like we often get on on our our podcast and we’re eating while we’re while we’re talking, doing things. And I think people always kind of are interested to see, you know, what we have to eat in our group and they’re curious about you know, what that looks like. And I feel like also for you must have gotten, I’m I’m guessing you’ve probably gotten a lot of requests for like full day of eating videos like over time because people love that why do you think people like those things so much? Especially like with content creators.

Mic the Vegan (03:01)
Yeah.

I think it’s because it’s just so

so like concrete in like what are you actually putting in your body? People are just abstractly talking about it. And I haven’t done it in a while. I need to do it. especially because I’ve been eating even healthier lately than normal. but yeah, it’s just just the idea of like how are they actually consuming food? What are they actually preparing? How hard is it to prepare it? How expensive does it seem? There’s just so many questions people have about people’s diets. It’s like, can I accomplish that?

Or is it so complicated that I can just say, no, I could never eat like that and just like throw my hands up? Like some people watch just to do that. Or really those that genre of video kind of started from just like there’d be like a really fit, hot, attractive girl that people were trying to like a lot of people were trying to be like or be skinny like. That’s like back in the Freely days, sort of. And then people were like, you know, what do you eat so I can look like you kind of vibes, like completely just superficial.

Coach Sawyer (03:35)
Mm.

Mic the Vegan (03:53)
unfortunately. And then now we have probably a more healthy healthy view of that of like how can I be healthy like you or how can I be ripped like you is probably what, you know, it’s motivating a few of these. And so people haven’t been requesting it that much lately of me. They probably can just look back to my older videos ’cause I haven’t really changed that much. But yeah.

Coach Sawyer (04:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I was gonna say that is that like it seems like it’s hard to come up with ideas that are like sexy or exciting enough in our spaces because we’re giving advice that’s pretty like I don’t know, at least compared to the rest of the industry that’s like trying to push like these kind of I don’t know, cutting edge like narratives about like what could be killing you or like what you know what I mean, and we’re having to keep up with like keep eating your oatmeal and stuff you know what I mean? So it’s just kind of like a

Ben (04:09)
I that’s

Mic the Vegan (04:19)
That’s it.

Yep. Yeah, yeah.

Coach Sawyer (04:34)
It’s a tricky balance, but I think you do a good job of like keeping the content interesting and like current event relevant, but like still reminding people of like, hey, the basics do the work. Like they they’re the things that are moving the, you know, the ball downhill or uphill is just a second.

Mic the Vegan (04:47)
Yeah, and I mean I could be more

creative about it. I mean, like I’m I’m just eating my oatmeal bowl with very like rotating fruit and nuts and berries. but there’s way more you can do. Like I’m working on a like a Mediterranean, like Mike’s Mediterranean cookbook or something like that. Not exactly sure. And I’m trying to like reinvent a few things that I haven’t seen before. So we’ll see how that goes. But in general, like there’s so many more things. Like I could be going like half buckwheat or something and still be healthy. Like I should probably be switching it up a little bit so people don’t go

Coach Sawyer (05:02)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (05:16)
insane but my main meals also are more way more varied than my breakfast. My breakfast is just like okay oatmeal or actually I have been doing like half and half oatmeal rye flakes which get from my local health health food store.

Coach Sawyer (05:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mm.

Mic the Vegan (05:28)
Which

looks a little bit different and tastes a little bit different, but it’s like more or less the same thing. Like they look it looks like why is why is there some slightly darker oatmeal in my oatmeal? Like that’s not gonna get any any prizes for cooking ingenuity or anything like that. But yeah, there’s always a new diet to like they’re the new carnivore diet, blah, blah, blah. Like the newest thing that’s gonna like reverse all disease, even though it doesn’t have science. It’s like if we’re sticking the science, like the food isn’t gonna change that much, unfortunately.

Coach Sawyer (05:36)
Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I have to vote that you name it the Mike’s magical Mediterranean meals so that it’s just all M’s. Just just putting that in. Yeah, exactly. And it’s like and it’s like mmm too. It’s like yummy. So just putting it out there. Yeah. There you go. I don’t think that’s been used.

Mic the Vegan (05:59)
MM and then I’ll just have M’s everywhere. Okay. I’ll put that on the list. Mm-mm, good. I should use that slogan. Mm-mm good. I don’t think that one is taken by any large corporations.

Ben (05:58)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ha ha

Well now

you’ll have to give five percent of kickbacks to to vegan proteins here after Sawyer’s suggestion for the for the branding. That’s that’s that’s how we get it. Mike, I’m curious. So like what you mentioned you’ve been really trying to lean into cooking healthy meals for yourself recently. What keeps you kind of like

Coach Sawyer (06:19)
yeah. Whoops.

Mic the Vegan (06:20)
there you go. Yeah. This

is what it you guys were actually just entrapping me with ideas. Yeah, you just bring people on here.

Ben (06:33)
motivated or inspired to continue doing that. Cause I think for a lot of people, it’s like they’ll have these streaks where for maybe a couple of weeks or a couple months, they they get really, you know, they’re like, I’m gonna, you know, change everything I’m eating. I’m gonna focus on you know, having all these kind of one percenters. what what for you is like that driving factor that, you know, when you wake up each day, you’re like, I’m gonna make this choice instead of that choice?

Mic the Vegan (06:54)
Mm.

That’s a hard one. I feel like for me it’s just a driving like, hey, let’s try to not get disease as much. I mean, like I’ve talked about before, part of my like and I realized later it was like subconscious health journey was having like living with my grandma who had Alzheimer’s pretty brutally. That was kind of a brutal story. And so I’m just like, let’s change my diet to not get Alzheimer’s. And I read the the China study and there’s like a section about brain health in there if we’re gonna like get to my origin story. And so that’s definitely part of it. Another one is just like keeping things down, like I

Coach Sawyer (07:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mic the Vegan (07:22)
my partner her cholesterol to t to just straight up out her genetically for whatever reason her cholesterol is just so much more sensitive to like any any fat, plant based saturated fat. Of course animal fat it’d be way higher.

And so she’s like the one who’s also pushing me to eat way healthier. and so if she does not eat like really well, her cholesterol will go higher than your average vegan by far. And so it’s like, okay, let’s, you know, make sure we’re getting a lot of fiber, whole foods, getting the like coconut oily products and things like that out as much as possible for her.

Coach Sawyer (07:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (07:55)
And

then it’s like, okay, I have to eat like you more or less, even though my cholesterol is really low. Cause I luckily have genetically lower cholesterol, even. And so yeah, I will eat some extra little, like, like I have like these little almond puddings that she won’t eat. Like that’s an example of like how our diet differs. but yeah, that’s that’s one motivator.

Coach Sawyer (08:08)
Mm.

So it sounds like it’s like a

it’s like a team effort. So first of all, you got you have a partner who’s like on board with you. And then you’ve also got some like metrics that you’re using to kind of keep you in the lines a little bit. You’re like, that’s getting a little more than I like. And I think that’s something we talk about a lot with clients is like, hey, if you have some things you’re paying attention to and you don’t catastrophize about, like it can really actually help keep you in line. and I don’t think it’s bad to kind of put some parameters on yourself for like

Mic the Vegan (08:15)
for sure.

Coach Sawyer (08:38)
Hey, I’m gonna try to color in these lines, so long as it’s not like a tightrope, right? If you’re like, if this goes one degree off, I’m freaking out and I’m I’m jumping off, jumping ship. but I think it’s cool how you mentioned that. Like, hey, I’m looking at my cholesterol, or she’s looking at her cholesterol, so that makes us better. And then I’m looking at my brain health and vascular health, that makes us better. That’s cool. I like that.

Mic the Vegan (08:56)
And another

one is the scale, the like body analyzer scale I have. If I see things kind of drifting, like if I’m traveling and I’m not working out, I’ll see like my body fat go up a little bit and I’ll feel it go up a little bit and then I’ll you know, I’ll get back home and I’ll be like on that seeing ’cause it shows body fat and muscle and I’ll try to like do what I can to do a little bit of recomp and like

Coach Sawyer (09:00)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (09:18)
work out harder or exercise more and like not eat as much like processed foods, et cetera. And and usually I’m able to correct myself. So

Coach Sawyer (09:25)
Yeah. I like that.

Yeah, ’cause it’s so easy. I mean, I’ve worked with so many people who are like, you know, I didn’t even realize how bad it was getting. And then I looked at a picture of myself, you know, four months, six months later and I was like, Whoa, it got that bad. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s why it’s good good to pay attention to stuff before it gets like, you know, it starts to depress you how far it’s gone, you know? So yeah.

Mic the Vegan (09:44)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. Like we weren’t using

that scale for a little bit. And then I was like, crap. Yeah, I’ve definitely been letting too many processed foods slip in. And it was like, you know, that even has like visceral fat, which is still really low, but it like went up slightly. And I’m like, okay, yeah, it’s time to to just do all the like for me, my my weekly routine is like sports three or four times a week, depending on the sport, and then like going to do like some workouts in between that.

Coach Sawyer (09:48)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (10:10)
not that I’m like super jacked or anything, but yeah. Just try to get I try to get good cardio in. Yeah, yeah.

Coach Sawyer (10:12)
That’s awesome. Mm-hmm.

Ben (10:15)
What sports do you like to play, Mike?

Mic the Vegan (10:16)
my best cardio sport right now is Ultimate Frisbee because when we’re playing yeah, you play it nice. We play it like nice. Heck yeah, dude. Yeah, when it’s like especially when it’s hot out, the cardio is insane. We’re just sprinting up and down a field constantly. Especially ’cause I’m usually the one who’s like down in the end zone, which I should, you know, pace myself a little bit. that and then I do play like men’s softball.

Coach Sawyer (10:21)
you’re talking to the king

Mic the Vegan (10:38)
twice a week actually because there’s been really good numbers for that. And then I play street hockey, which is like kind of a goofy version. It’s like you just have your shoes and a ball and you play. and that’s decent cardio. So it’s like not as good cardio as Ultimate Frisbee, but way better than softball where you’re like sitting there. Like the term Charlie horse came from baseball because people would just sit and run. And there’s a guy named Charlie who would like pull muscles all the time and get cramps because he’s just sitting so long. And so that’s not the best cardio. But you get sprint. You do sprint in that.

Coach Sawyer (10:44)
Whoa.

Mm-hmm. That’s cool.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Ben (11:02)
Ha ha ha.

Mic the Vegan (11:06)
Which is good.

Coach Sawyer (11:06)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (11:07)
No, I think that’s great. I think it’s like finding something that is enjoyable for you when it comes to exercise or activity is so big for the majority of people. And it isn’t to say that it always has to be enjoyable. Like I think there’s certain people where it’s like, okay, you know, maybe going to the gym and lifting weights is more like brushing my teeth.

for for that person because they it’s not something that they love but it’s something that they know is good for them and that they should do anything or like eating you know eating broccoli maybe broccoli is some a vegetable they don’t like but maybe they can find some vegetables that they do like and and that can kind of be a a supplement to that. And like you were getting at, I don’t think there has to be one reason why we make some of these changes. There can be multiple reasons. It can be for health reasons, it can be for athletic performance, it can be for aesthetics and there’s nothing wrong with having a couple of these different motivators to you know

remind you of why you’re doing the the things that you’re doing on a on a daily basis. And it doesn’t all have to be discipline and and you know, staying on track. Like it can it can be fun too.

Coach Sawyer (12:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (12:00)
Yeah,

or just like looking good for the animals. I love when people like people are super vain and they’re like, For the animals. Yeah. there you go just walking b yeah, yeah, walking billboard. That is true. That is very true. Vegans I’m really all about vegans like being healthy and looking healthy and

Ben (12:04)
Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (12:05)
Walking bulb billboard.

Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (12:14)
It’s yeah, it’s it’s hard ’cause people do age and and when a vegan just ages, it’s like that’s gotta be from a lack of animal protein or some deterioration or something and it’s like, No Like I love like the vegan zombie got a comment that he posted and he’s been vegan like twenty years and someone’s like, my gosh, you look like you’re thirty He’s like, Thanks, I’m forty or forty five or something like that like people are trying to say you look solid and it’s like no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s like it’s kind of a wild kind of wild thing. But yeah.

Coach Sawyer (12:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I remember that.

Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (12:38)
It’s

Ben (12:38)
So

Mic the Vegan (12:39)
also

good to be a vegan in these sports locally too, I was gonna say.

Ben (12:41)
Mm.

Coach Sawyer (12:42)
Very true.

Mic the Vegan (12:42)
and like be

decent, hit some home run. Like I hit definitely hit like like the other day. Actually yesterday I hit a home run. And it’s like I try to hit a home run every single time we play. And like maybe I’m not trying to like toot my own horn or anything, but like maybe there’s like two or three guys that are hitting a home run in any given game. And it’s like, that’s the vegan guy that just hit the home run. And then there’s another vegan guy that also hits the home runs there. And it’s like maybe that’s clicking a little bit for people that like there’s, you know, a couple agile

Coach Sawyer (12:52)
Yeah.

That’s cool.

Mic the Vegan (13:09)
vegans that are also hitting home runs and it’s like I don’t maybe need to slam down meat as much. Not that they those guys are probably even noticing, but anyway. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Coach Sawyer (13:18)
Hard to say, but you know, you’re putting your best foot forward, which is yeah. Sorry, go ahead, Ben.

Ben (13:18)
Would you yeah, and and would you

No, I was just gonna say, Mike, you were talking about just then, like, well, you know, I’m trying, you know, I want to help people be, you know, the best advocates that they can be, you know, for for veganism. Is that kind of one of the reasons that you got into creating content? Like, how did this all start for you? Like why what made you want to be a science communicator?

Mic the Vegan (13:42)
Yeah, I mean a lot of it was I was just

really hesitant to go vegan initially. Like I had my partner who was yeah, vegan vegan’s good, being healthy. I was Yeah, but don’t need a little bit of animal protein? Like I’m gonna wither away if I don’t get any animal protein, blah blah blah. And so I ended up looking at all the studies to try to like just see what was up, if I was right or if I was wrong. And then realizing more and more that I was wrong and then finally changing my opinion. And then every t anytime someone would talk about it, I’d be like, well I read this study and you know talked about how vegans had lower

levels of this disease or whatever. And so people were like, maybe you should just like make a quick video of what you said so you don’t have to say it over and over again or so I can send it to somebody if you know if a vegan’s listening. And so that combined with a really pseudoscientific YouTube climate at the time in 2015.

you know, it was kind of kind of like fruitarian dominated, interesting period. And so I was like, okay, I’m gonna go in and only cite science behind every like major claim that I’m making. And that yeah, that was how I started. And no one watched for the first few videos and then

Coach Sawyer (14:36)
Yeah.

I dn I didn’t realize you started it.

Yeah. You started in 2015. Cause that’s I went vegan in 2016 and I remember the the feeling of like, I don’t know anybody who’s doing this who looks like I want to look, who who thinks like I think. And I think one thing I really appreciated about your channel was that it didn’t feel hyperbolic. It felt like everything you were saying was you could back it up.

Mic the Vegan (14:45)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Sawyer (15:03)
And you weren’t trying to sensationalize veganism in the same way that a lot of people were at that time. So I think that’s a testament to like why you’ve lasted longer than a lot of these people have and a lot of their influence has. Yeah. So I really appreciate the way you communicate. Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (15:15)
Possible, yeah. Yeah, and that’s what I was saying is like

Thanks, I appreciate that a lot as well. And so I I remember thinking, yeah, there’s channels that like burn bright and then burn out.

Like there was some like vegan, I think it was even this guy named the vegan drama. And he would just go and just talk crap about vegans. He was getting like as much many views as me, and maybe even more in some cases. And it was like, Man, I’m putting all of this work in. Cited 20 studies in that in that video. And this guy just comes on and says like just makes up stuff, like slanderous stuff a lot of the time. And it was like doing so well. And I was like, you know, this guy’s definitely gonna it’s just gonna burn out, it’ll burn a little brighter in terms of views and stuff. But he’s

Coach Sawyer (15:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (15:54)
not gonna last. Like that can’t that mentality can’t last. And like people will catch on eventually that it’s just like not not an accurate source of information as well. And so that’s been my goal is to just be like a steady sort of steady sort of bastion of fee good information.

Coach Sawyer (15:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I think you have achieved that and I think that was really wise of you to see that early on because it’s it’s very tempting to go with what feels like, Well, this is the way the industry works, I guess, or the platform works. I have to do that, you know, and lean into it. But it just doesn’t.

Mic the Vegan (16:20)
Mm. Yeah, and so I have my cycle

of like

maybe one in four videos I’ll try to mention like a celebrity or a person and it’s just so obvious that that’s what people want to watch. Like if you just look back, it’s like, Billy Eilish video, fifty or seventy thousand views. like a a new vegan study came out, like s ten thousand views maybe. And then it’s like, Gaz Oakley no longer vegan, seventy thousand views. new Oral Health study. No one watches it. Like it’s like so obvious that people want there to be some like social story as well, which I should be should be a little bit better on. There’s

Coach Sawyer (16:34)
Mm-hmm.

Ha ha.

Mm.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (16:52)
There’s more like response videos that I should be doing, to people in general and like tying more people in. But yeah, it’s painful.

Coach Sawyer (16:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. It’s always a balance, right? You have to be making what

what you find interesting, but also what’s gonna keep people coming to you for information because you’re at some level competing with these more sensationalized, more like hyperbolic people. And so you have to be like, Hey, I could talk about that stuff too, but here’s what really matters when we’re talking about this stuff. So it’s like, you know, the old bait and switch. Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (17:19)
Yeah, all the time and I’m like, look, if I can Yes, yeah, the obey and switch, the clickbait stuff, but

clickbait and switch. If I can get a video that has only ten thousand views, but actually help somebody, like three or four people reverse a disease and like not die, like that’s a huge part of my mission, obviously. And sometimes you get both. Like I had my erectile dysfunction video, which I think has a million views, and I’ve had multiple dudes come up to me in real life and be like, Hey, I watched that video and changed my diet and like reverse my erectile dysfunction and I like, Bro, that’s crazy. Like you don’t even think when you’re making those videos, you don’t think anyone’s gonna like actually

Coach Sawyer (17:25)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Wow.

That’s cool. Probably save some marriages.

Mic the Vegan (17:53)
do. Yeah, saved a Yeah, who knows all the marriages I say of people that don’t people that aren’t like shameless

Coach Sawyer (17:55)
Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (17:59)
enough to come up to you and be like, my D stop working and you fixed it for me, bro. And I’m like, I don’t know. There’s probably people who are like thinking it or like maybe other people helped them out, like maybe Gregor or something, and they they’re not gonna say it because it like admit they have to admit that they that it wasn’t working in the first place. Yeah. So anyway.

Coach Sawyer (18:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (18:18)
Yeah, it’s it’s

almost it’s almost like those videos that are more kind of attention grabbing. Like those are the videos that maybe for people who are kind of interested in the science or interested in the research, but they, you know, they might not be inclined enough to stick around unless they’re getting a little bit of that like, ooh, like what’s the, you know, what’s the gossip here? What’s the drama here? So it’s almost like you’re kind of yeah, you’re you’re retaining or, you know, you’re bringing new people into your world and then maybe they

Mic the Vegan (18:35)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ben (18:43)
over time start to be, you know what? Actually, this science is a little bit in it more interesting to me. Let me pay attention to you know, my health or let me learn a little bit more about this. so I feel like, yeah, like what you were saying, what Sawyer was saying, you it kind of has to be this balance. Cause if you only make drama videos, then I’d imagine that would probably kind of, you know, you’d be like, why am I doing this? Am I really helping people? you know, what’s the point of this? You might burn out like you were kind of mentioning earlier on. So it has to be like, you know,

striking that balance between what you want to make and and what you know, playing the game, so so to speak with social media.

Mic the Vegan (19:15)
Yeah, it’s really hard. And it’s it it is something to be said too that like those can be fun in moderation. And yeah, it’s like there’s an attention economy right now that is so unbalanced where it’s like the fact that I’m not making more short form content is also disastrous. Like I need to be making more short term content content. But it’s like the people who are coming off of like highly addictive, rapid fire short-term content, short form content.

And then for me to expect them to watch like a 20-minute science video about a topic that like I think is kind of important, but like most people aren’t even that interested in, is like it’s a really big ask. And so I’m just happy that anybody’s still watching at all at this point. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (19:46)
Hmm. I mean,

at the same time too though, like if you do a like and you do a really thorough job of s speaking on a spr a particular issue that needs kind of that nuance, that needs that amount of time,

you know, you have somebody who doesn’t watch these videos regularly, but you know, is now confr gets a diagnosis or has a really big scare or something. Those are the videos that are gonna affect them the most because they’re like, I want to learn as much as I can about this thing. So you might not cast as wide a net.

But the people that it does capture with those kind of videos are it’s it’s gonna really hit hard because they’re really looking for that thing. You know, they wanna soak up as much as they can. So I appreciate those those videos too. Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (20:23)
Yeah. That’s the goal too. But then

Yeah,

yeah, that’s my that’s my goal, and that’s why I’m like I’m trying to cover every major disease that’s connected here and there, like piecemeal. Like I’ll PCOS and stuff, and that one was one that didn’t get a lot of views at first. But then a lot of people were like, thank you for even talking about this. Most people aren’t talking this. But then I’ll be like, Okay, I’m gonna do a sc screw worm video, because there’s like a screw worm invasion into the southern US and like they cut all the funding for the screw worm monitoring, and like that’s a big issue and it’s gonna cause so much animal suffering. Then it’s like no one really wants to care about that. Like it’s gross, it’s

Coach Sawyer (20:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (20:56)
It’s not

Coach Sawyer (20:57)
Mm.

Mic the Vegan (20:57)
a health issue. It’s an animal and like in an environmental issue. It’s an animal issue. It’s even a political issue as well. But it’s still like, do you want to watch a 10-minute screw worm video when you can just go and like scroll on like Instagram baddies or something? Like, I don’t think most people are gonna click the screw worm video, but at least 10, I think at least 10,000 people did, and that’s good. Maybe there’s more gonna be more awareness, a little bit more awareness, although it’s been the the news anyway. But on the connection of just like it it to animals as well. I mean, it’s literally like a bot fly that eats animals.

animal flesh as as the little worm larva state and like we cut like the doge cuts cut fifteen million a fifteen million dollar screw worm monitoring program as it was creeping north through Latin America to our borders and now it’s here so we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what happens. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (21:29)
That’s crazy.

my god.

that’s crazy.

Ben (21:42)
Yeah, I mean, you

never know, right? Like, do you ever have it happen? I’ve heard this before where it’s like you made a video a while ago, it didn’t get that many views when you first made it, but then like the topic becomes relevant and a certain video begins to pick up steam. Has has that sort of thing ever happened? ‘Cause it’s like, yeah, maybe in the in the time that you made it, it didn’t really, you know, pick up, but then for whatever reason that topic becomes popular and now people are seeing those videos.

Mic the Vegan (22:02)
You know, a funny one, a

funny one which s sort of fits that bill was back in the day YouTube used to give you a consultant. I sat down with my consultant and he was like, Hey, let’s make a video that’s just gonna get you views just for fun, just to see if it’ll do it. So I’m like, All I’m gonna do a cannabis science video. And I posted that video and it got less views than my average video for that first twenty four hours to the point where I like, well, it’s a flop. And then I checked back on it and I realized, my gosh, it’s like approaching a million views. And so that was one

One of my videos that’s broken a million views, or around a million views, that like I it was meant to get views, but it looked like it was gonna flop. And so it was like that was kind of interesting. And there are ones that grow, and then there’s just weird things. Like I did like a grounding mat video talking about like are they real or like what’s really going on with grounding, and and the main kind of message was like, Hey, this is probably bogus. and yet for some reason, that money that like the money from that video, like the turnover, like everyone.

Coach Sawyer (22:38)
Hmm.

Mic the Vegan (22:57)
Everyone clicked on that video and bought a grounding mat because that video has made more money than like any of my other videos, which makes me really annoyed because yeah, it just and that doesn’t even have as many views as other videos. But if I look at like top performing revenue videos, it’s like, wow. Anyway, so that shows that like the wellness and I the wellness industry itself is larger than the suppli the larger than the pharmaceutical industry.

Coach Sawyer (23:00)
Ha ha ha

Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (23:17)
But that also includes the exercise industry as well. Like wellness is not just supplements, but like it just showed the wellness industry is highly profitable. And that’s a lot of why we get not even just these products, but also these diets being pushed so hard. Like the carnivore industry, s which is tied into the meat industry, has a huge amount of like astroturfing and pushing from the outside, like, you know, of of it growing. Like there’s like it didn’t just grow organically, let’s just say that. It wasn’t free range.

Coach Sawyer (23:42)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (23:42)
Right. What what keeps you like

what keeps you like going when there is so much misinformation or I would say even disinformation out there? Like does it does it ever feel kind of like pointless trying to debunk it all because there’s always people who are like

you know, gonna be grifters and are trying to take advantage of people and get their money. Or maybe in some cases they genuinely believe the messaging, but they’ve just like have a fundamental understanding of how science research, you know, is carried out or interpreting research or statistics. Like, what you know, do you ever have days where it feels like, man, like it’s just it’s impossible to there’s some there’s some like law rule where it’s like the amount of effort that it takes to refute

Bullshit is like greater than the amount that it I forget the name of that, but I’m I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Mic the Vegan (24:26)
Yeah, I mean it definitely is an uphill battle and like my debunk like my debunk videos are one of my main genres of video. Like if you type in Mic the Vegan, I think it auto fills debunk or something like that.

And so people are looking to me for that. And it’s so clear that like my debunk debunking videos are almost never gonna get 10% of the views of the original one. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they get like if there’s somebody making some really bogus claims and not getting a ton of views, like sometimes I’ll like roughly the same amount of views as kind of like the entertainment of how ridiculous that thing that they said was. But in general, yeah, I mean this sensational stuff is just almost like psychologically addicting. And it’s I think it’s like that you get that dopamine hit like they hear

well, cholesterol is actually good for you. The higher the cholesterol, the better. As one of those carnivore doctors just said that I think maybe happy, healthy vegan Ryan responded to that. I should probably check into it and respond to that. But it’s like that is just like has a nice little dopamine spike for the person that really wants to hear it, and that person is 95% of the population.

Ben (25:21)
I wanna touch on something that you were mentioning when you were talking about starting your YouTube channel, which is these people who you know, actually thinking on the opposite side of the spectrum. Let’s go back to people who are vegan or are plant based, but the views or the stances that they take are perhaps a little out there, a little extreme. and I’ve

Mic the Vegan (25:39)
Mm, this is a huge issue.

Ben (25:40)
Yeah, and I’ve noticed the trend over time is I think a lot of the people who stop being vegan are people who fall into this camp of taking a very extreme approach to it. so is this something that you’ve observed after doing a lot of these like ex vegan videos over time? Like what kind of trends are you picking up on when when you’re making these videos?

Mic the Vegan (25:59)
Well, I do have my

little ex vegan bingo board that I made and that’s pretty much on there of diet trend followers, one of the the boxes on my ex vegan one.

just not listening to science I think is one. I can’t remember exactly how I worded it. But yeah, it’s a big problem. And I have done in the past, like one of my videos that actually did all right was debunking vegan myths. And one of them was was talking about how like dairy leaches acid from your bones. Or because it’s acidic, least leeches minerals from your bones. Like that’s just there’s no science behind that. Like our body will just like buffer

calcium unless I mean maybe there’s a situation where like if you’re just drinking like hydrochloric acid water.

For months and not eating food, like yeah. But if you’re consuming food in any reasonable amount, like dairy and the protein, it was also like the logic. It was like dairy has protein, which is acidic. Amino acids are acids, therefore it’s leaching minerals from your body. It’s like, well, so that means if you take a vegan protein powder, you’re leaching that you then it’d be acidic on your body and like it would leach. Like the logic didn’t make any sense at all. And so I did a video on that. It’s like we have enough, enough like valid points to talk about.

there. And then there’s also like the refuting that’s been a big part from the beginning is refuting the idea that you shouldn’t take B12 or that you don’t need to take B12.

Which, you know, whether you’re whether you believe that we were able to get it through non-animal sources prehistorically, somehow through water or whatever, like it’s completely irrelevant. Like nowadays, you have to take a B twelve supplement or be consistently eating fortified foods. And so we had like, for example, I think I made a video responding to fully raw Kristina, who’s a raw foodist who said in the past that you didn’t need to take it. And then she switched her position. I made a video basically friend in a friendly way calling her out, being like, Hey, actually we really do need to take this, and then going through the science on it.

And then she changed her viewpoint at some point. And then a couple years later she messaged me, hey, I’m getting a lot of hate from this video that you made, which had like 400,000 views. And so I just took that video down because I was like, okay, this is no longer relevant. the information was still good, but it was like in a way, it was almost like slanderous against her if people were interpreting it wrong. so yeah. So there’s times where it’s like there’s still and there’s still a lot of a lot of vegan myths out there that that are pro pro-vegan that still need to be like toned down.

Coach Sawyer (27:51)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think it’s really important that you do that because I remember when I first went vegan and I was kind of getting a lot of information that was was very like hyperbolic or like, you know, going vegan’s gonna solve every life problem you’ve ever had. I I think the it it’s really problematic because you start to see through that eventually because it’s not like you’re not human and not still are you still gonna have problems and health problems and whatever if you go vegan. So I really do like the fact that you

Mic the Vegan (28:20)
Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (28:33)
Provide that like sobering, kind of grounded view based in the science. And and I think that’s why it’s, you know, the people who follow that tend to stay vegan. one thing I’ve noticed, and I’m wondering if you have as well, is it seems like a lot of the theories that come out and the and the new diets and things like that are usually based in like mechanistic understandings, like very rudimentary sometimes mechanistic understandings of how.

foods interact and things like that. And it seems like to me that there are like these smart people who get way too zoomed in on like mechanisms and say, this happens when you know this happens in a petri dish. Therefore, you know, and they create a whole like theory around it. So I feel like one thing you do really well in your content is you like extrapolate that you say, hey, like observational data matters, human trials matter. Like

We can’t just zoom in like that. And I feel like that’s something I’ve learned from you. So I appreciate yeah.

Mic the Vegan (29:27)
That’s such a good thing. I appreciate

that. Such a good example of that is like the Dave Asprey biohacking people. Well, like they’ll hear about something, they’ll be like, well, like red light blocking is good for or red light glasses, blue light blocking is good for like circadian rhythm to have it. you know, which of course you’d want that at night. And so they just wear the glasses like seemingly all the time during the day, which would then dampen like the blue light exposure that you need to like maintain circadian rhythm.

Coach Sawyer (29:34)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (29:53)
And that’s

Coach Sawyer (29:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (29:53)
one example. The other example would be like he’s really pro saturated fat. You know, this guy he’s

Dave Asprey is like pretty sure he’s keto, or at least in and out of keto, very, very anti-vegan. I think he was saying that oat one of the people that was like oatmeal is like the worst food ever, because your glycemic, you could get like a glycemic spike. And it’s like, well, have you seen the studies on like tre like reversing diabetes with oatmeal? Like and just how oatmeal is just consistently associated with like lower disease, lower heart disease, lower diabetes even, which is what he’s concerned about, and just on and on on it. It’s like he sees that one mechanism and then just gets tunnel vision.

Coach Sawyer (30:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (30:27)
and already has his biases of like anything that is carbs is bad, anything that like most plant based foods are bad and like meat and dairy and animal fat is great. And so it’s like, he’ll he’ll hear like one thing like, maybe there’s one you take one of the like fats that’s in dairy and you put it you you isolate it and you like give it to some rats and it like helps.

Coach Sawyer (30:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (30:47)
And it’s like, okay, now you’re ignoring all of the other things about it. You’re ignoring the IGF one acne cancer connection, all the other like cholesterol raising of the whole fat, like together. Like it’s just yeah, yeah. The y you hit the nail on the head with that.

Coach Sawyer (30:47)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ben (30:59)
We just interviewed Cyrus sorry. Yeah. I was just gonna say we we just interviewed Cyrus Khambata for of Mastering Diabetes last week on the podcast and he was touching on this a little bit about some of the common misconceptions around like how diabetes you know forms and actually it’s more of usually like a saturated fat problem than it is anything to do with carbohydrates and how those things kind of end up getting conflated and you have these wacky claims about how you know oatmeal

Coach Sawyer (30:59)
Yeah, no, I’m glad you see that.

go ahead.

Ben (31:25)
is is killing you or is you know wrecking your health and those sort of things. And you had touched on saturated fat earlier when you were mentioning your partner like has maybe some like familial hypocholesteremia. did I I hope I said that right. it’s it’s been it’s been yeah. basically like individuals who are prone to just having higher cholesterol and like you were saying they have to be

Coach Sawyer (31:37)
Hyper

Mic the Vegan (31:38)
Close enough.

Ben (31:45)
more sensitive or more aware of their their sources. And even on a you know on a vegan diet, even on a plant-based diet, even on, you know, even if you’re eating primarily you know, whole food plant-based diet, you could still end up having a couple, you know, products that are maybe higher, like maybe you use a little bit of plant butter here and there, or maybe you cook with some, you know, coconut milk or something, and you could end up getting a little bit more of those saturated plant fats, often like the tropical fats. And I’m just wondering how how can somebody

know if they need to be somebody who watches that more carefully. Like can they do kind of an N of one, you know, observation on themselves where they get their blood work, they try to like reduce it for a certain number of months, see if the, you know, it improves at all or you know, see if it gets any better. Like how how concerned or how careful should we pay attention to you know, the our saturated fat intake if we’re already eating a plant-based diet?

Mic the Vegan (32:34)
yeah, first I’d say consult your doctor.

about health advice. but it yeah, I mean it’s a cholesterol panel is a super routine test. And so you can do that. If you want to get more advanced, you can get one of these genetic tests, which I did a while back and I could see it was like I was I was lower risk for cholesterol genes as well. but yeah it’s like there are people who message me and this is actually one of the messages I get more often than not. It’s like, hey I’m vegan and my cholesterol still is high and it’s usually coconut oil

oil getting it sneaking in there. Coconut cream you mentioned, which is good because if you turn down a co if you turn around a coconut cream can, it’s like gosh, it’s like twenty grams of saturated fat or something in there.

or maybe more for the whole can. and so obviously you could track you can just keep tracking your cholesterol and just see, you know, and becoming aware of these things that have covert saturated fat. And because we love the thing is humans love saturated fat. They love the texture of it. Like the reason people love ice cream and they love gelato especially, the reason that gelato is better than like low fat Greek yogurt or something like frozen yogurt is because of the saturated fat. Your body’s like, Wow, this is so calorically dense.

and like the just the texture of it as well has like a richness because it’s solid at room temperature.

That’s unfortunate because we end up trying to put all of these saturated fat sources in, you know. Peanut butter, unfortunately, has a bit more saturated fat than other nut butters. So that’s one that some people can end up slamming it in accidentally. Or like someone might just be going, I love going and getting like curry at the Thai restaurant. And it’s like, well, you might be eating like 15 grams of saturated fat, unfortunately, in that coconut curry, which sucks for some people who are gonna respond to it. And then thankfully, coconut oil, for example, just

Just to keep keep our heads level, if you it was some randomized trials comparing coconut oil to butter, coconut oil didn’t raise LDL as much as butter, so it’s the different types of of saturated fats, like palmitic and that stuff. But if you yeah, if you’re not careful, you can like get you can get some of these in there. olive oil, I’ll let you talk in a second, but yeah, the olive oil has a bed too.

Coach Sawyer (34:29)
Quick question. What about

yeah, what about I’ve read some things about steric acid in in like chocolate being kind of neutral in terms of I don’t know. I don’t know about that. What do you what do you think about that?

Mic the Vegan (34:37)
Mm.

I mean, the amount

is probably really, really low. I mean, it depends though, because different types of chocolate have different cocoa butter contents. And so if you have a really high cocoa butter content and then you’re getting a lot, like probably not. Yeah, there’s different different saturated fats literally have different like some of them don’t raise LDL really much, and then some of them raise it way more. and I need to look at the chart before I make any direct claims of like which one’s raised by what percentage. but

Coach Sawyer (34:47)
Mm, mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (35:03)
Yeah, it’s very clear. Very clear that there’s a difference. And then yeah, steric yeah, steeric acid might not be doing horrible. Although steeric acid, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s one I think that’s not quite as bad, although that is also an animal product. So who know who knows? And then it’s also like you could argue that even if vegans have slightly higher LDL that they’re gonna have higher antioxidant capacity, and then that the ox is less likely to oxidize and do damage. But then it’s like, look, the bet the lower the better, because things there’s a time when somebody

Coach Sawyer (35:15)
Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (35:29)
Somebody’s sick, or somebody’s not eating as well, or somebody’s sleep deprived for an extended period of time, or they’re just aging where the oxidation starts creeping in. And that’s why these these keto carnivore people are also delusional in that. And I don’t have like plaque yet, or my coronary calcium score isn’t high yet. And so I’m just gonna keep doing this indefinitely. And it’s like, dude, you’re gonna hit like 50.

Coach Sawyer (35:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (35:53)
And your C-reactive protein or whatever might go up, your aging, inflammation, like inflammation and aging are like the same thing once you get to a certain point. And unfortunately, at least the risk of it happening. And so like that’s gonna oxidize the LDL. And then from there it’s gonna be like they lit a fire and it’s just like they’re they’re just gonna immediately, immediately get clogging.

Coach Sawyer (36:11)
That’s problem that these these

health issues are so latent that it’s like people can feel great doing the exact wrong things and then just be like, Yep, this is me now and then you solidify that more and more as years go on. Oof.

Mic the Vegan (36:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That’s why I always mention the French guy that ate a plane. ‘Cause it’s like he he literally just like ground up the metal from an entire plane and just like slowly ate it. And like he didn’t get diabetes, like he he didn’t get heavy metal poisoning, like he survived, but it was like that doesn’t mean we should all just become planivores and like it’s gonna have negative health effects. so yeah. People just wanna deny it.

Coach Sawyer (36:29)
Mm.

What?

Ben (36:47)
I mean even when you look at

Coach Sawyer (36:48)
I thought maybe you misspoke.

I was like, what you ate a plane? my god.

Mic the Vegan (36:50)
No. It’s a whole new meaning

to the like, yeah, your food’s coming, you know, little the little jet plane.

Ben (36:56)
Ha ha ha.

It’s

it’s an interesting point though you’re talking about like, you know, people will say, well, I feel healthy or you know, I seemingly am healthy for you know doing these things, but you know, there’s a compounding effect. Like I I’m thinking about the world that we’re in, like fitness and bodybuilders, and oftentimes people look at them and they think, well, these people look super ripped, they look look super jacked, they must be healthy. You know, one thing is, you know, a lot of these people are are taking some sort of, you know, performance-enhancing drug often.

If they’re in the fitness industry, they have a huge platform. The incentive is just a lot higher. But secondly, even if they aren’t, you know, I’ve seen it many times where it’s like, okay, I was, you know, slamming just like tons of animal products for decades in order to for me to, you know, achieve this physique or whatever it is. but then later down the line, they inevitably end up having health problems. They have to switch you know, what they’re eating or, you know, you know, they kind of come to, you know, they have their come to Jesus moment, so to speak.

Or it’s like, actually, you know, even though I thought I wasn’t doing harm all these years, I was. And I think it’s just, you know, a good reminder that, hey, we have tons of plant-based and vegan athletes these days who are crushing it and, you know, hitting, you know, winning competitions, you know, breaking records, and you don’t have to, you know, consume a bunch of animal products in order to be successful in your sport or in your athletic endeavor. And you can even make the case sometimes that there are benefits of, you know, eating a plant-based or vegan diet when you look at these studies that compare

you know, an omnivorous diet versus a vegan diet in these strength and you know, power outcomes, they tend to be, you know, pretty equivalent. So if you can take that, but then you can also think about outside of the health benefits, maybe you’re reducing you know, inflammation that can help you recover faster and you can, you know, push more volume and adapt and grow better. Like there’s I think there’s a lot of different ways where we could say, actually this might end up being a benefit.

Mic the Vegan (38:37)
Yeah, for sure. And that was my most recent video. It was on what is that that guy’s channel? He’s like two and a half million. Was it William, Brandon William? Crap, I forgot his name because I just rushed that video so hard. But I was just reacting to that strength competition he had, which was six vegans versus six meat eaters. And the guy, he’s like a Calisthenics guy, is on. Yeah, he’s on the meat eating team. He’s he’s trying to win. He’s stacking his team so he’ll win. And they had six competitions, six

Coach Sawyer (38:55)
yeah.

Mic the Vegan (39:04)
little categories challenges and the vegans won four out of six.

Which was hilarious ’cause these guys, like I said in the video, like these guys on the other side are slamming down meat so much to be strong. And these people come in who are eating no meat, and you know, they win in the arm wrestle. And this guy’s overhead pressing, the vegan’s overhead pressing more than the non-vegan guy, and they’re choosing the strongest people for each category. And then even the category that they wrote won. So, like if you watch the video, the first one is deadlift. And there’s this guy who’s got probably a hundred pounds on the vegan and like a foot of height on the vegan guy, and he’s wearing

He’s using straps, which I mentioned from in the video that you get we have studies showing 10 to 20% extra weight lifting capacity with straps for deadlift for the deadlift specifically. The vegan guy’s not doing straps and then he loses by 40 pounds. The vegan guy loses by 40 pounds. So like even the one that they lost, like you could argue was completely unfair and like stacked. So like I don’t know. Like they did great. And yeah. Dude, watch it.

Coach Sawyer (39:48)
Mm-hmm.

I can’t believe I didn’t watch it. Yeah, I didn’t watch it, but you’re so

right about the lifting straps. Cause Mel, I mean, one of the people on the V like Ben’s hat right there, Vegan Strong, like a lot of those people, or was it just was it just Alice’s coach? I forget his name that was on in that video, Ben? Brady. Yeah, yeah. So he won the the like grip holding thing because I saw him posting it on on social media, which was

Ben (40:13)
Brady, vegan Hercules. Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (40:23)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Sawyer (40:23)
Like,

even just that, dude, my heart was like thumping. I don’t know why, but I was like, dude, these vegans better crush these meat eaters. Yeah. I was like, my.

Mic the Vegan (40:26)
Yeah. Hundred and fifty pounds on each arm’s spread. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought I joked on him in

the video. I’m like, he’s envisioning envisioning like pigs in gas chambers right now. But I think it was leg he was legitimately that much stronger because that guy, the meat eater guy, only lasted like 38 seconds or something, and he was going to like 45, and it was like, Do I need to stop? And like, yeah, you might as well just stop because like you won. All right, I’m gonna make sure I got this guy’s name right. Brandon William.

Coach Sawyer (40:35)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

He’s a beast.

I don’t is that the keto guy? Wait, I think I saw him.

Mic the Vegan (40:55)
He might

be. Yeah, Brandon William. I got his name right. Good. Okay. Yeah. He’s got two and a half million followers. And yeah, yeah. He won the calisthenics competition. So they had like one where they had to do a bunch of like muscle ups and then like little dips on the top of the bar and then stuff. And he won the that was one of the other ones where meet the meat team won by like ten. But then I’m like, let’s get somebody like Frank Medrano there, who is I’m like 99% sure is still vegan. I mentioned him in the video. And he could just like he’s just like not even a human when he gets on the bars. He’s just like can just defy gravity. It’s crazy. So I’m sure he would.

Coach Sawyer (40:58)
Okay. Forget.

Mic the Vegan (41:24)
Would

crush. But anyway. Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (41:26)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (41:27)
I wanted to touch back on what we’re talking about with kind of individual foods to a certain extent. So we’re talking about these foods might be, you know, raise your your LDL or raise your cholesterol. but there will also be studies where they look at a particular food and like, okay, we gave, you know, we split the people into two groups. We gave this person, you know, this group a placebo, and we gave this group the, you know, the

the treatment, whatever that might be, and that might be a a food, something in you know capsule form, a supplement, and they see increases or, you know, improvements in in certain markers. and I think this is a pretty popular idea, like the idea of like there being super foods or foods that we can that are like, you know, really impactful on our health. to you know, I’m just curious, as a science communicator, what

How do we kind of look at these individual studies telling us about certain foods? Like is it really, is it kind of an indication of like this general pattern is a good way? And these are some little things, the little tweaks that we can include here or there? Like how should we think about these these kind of studies?

Mic the Vegan (42:23)
Hmm. It’s hard because it depends on the food. And I think sometimes it’s like if there’s one little healthy food that can get somebody excited about eating healthy, it’s like like whatever someone really thinks that asai berries are gonna like turn their health around, like go for it, you know? And then all of a sudden they’re making more smoothies and they’re eating more healthy food, and that’s good. Another one that I think is funny, which you’re you kind of hit the nail on the head again there, is that is the whole fresh milled flour movement. You have these people who are eating like a standard American diet, and this woman is

Out there saying, hey, buy my mills and fresh mill your flour and it’s gonna make you so much healthier. And then you have these people who are like, I’ve had freaking ulcerative colitis my whole life, and then I or forever, and now I’ve I mean I’m eating whole milled flour or fresh milled flour and it’s gone, or like my husband had diabetes and high cholesterol, and now that’s gone. Now that we eat it like three times a day, and it’s like what they’re doing is they’re actually introducing a whole plant food into their diet, into for for like a large enough of a portion of their diet that it’s having a health effect.

Like they’re probably eating fifteen grams of fiber per day, that’s the average before they’re doing that. And then they’re just adding a whole grain and it’s like a miracle food because they’re actually introducing a whole plant food for like the first time in a in like a considerable amount. And they’re just making like whole grain bread or like little like whole grain pancakes and like muffins and stuff. And they’re like, my god, my life has changed But they do say it tastes a lot better too than normal bread, so yeah.

Coach Sawyer (43:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (43:38)
I made it really quickly and I did it wrong and I made like a brick and I still it still tasted good. I need to do it again ’cause I did like like I need to do a video on it. ‘Cause I did the video on on these people and their claims and what’s actually probably happening, but then I

Coach Sawyer (43:38)
That’s kind cool.

Mm-hmm. Does it is it like exer is

it like an actual workout to do it too? I was like, I wonder if that doing the thing would actually benefit their health too. They’re like, I have to do this three times a day now. You know.

Mic the Vegan (43:56)
There you go. That’s funny, yeah. Maybe the bread, like

making the bread, but no, what it is, they’re just throwing the mill they buy a mill and they just put these wheat berries, the like whole wheat grain, into the mill and they get the whole grain and then they like bake bread or whatever. Yeah, maybe the kneading is like getting enough exercise and stuff like that. But there’s this woman who’s like, Yeah, I had severe colitis and like tried every possible thing for years and then I just ate fresh milk flour products

Coach Sawyer (44:15)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mic the Vegan (44:24)
And it’s gone. And I was like, that’s you mean you had fiber for the first time? I don’t know. That’s it’s not that simple with all sort plays, obviously. People can eat fiber and still have it. but in her case, like maybe just the first time she had was excited enough about something from some crazy claims about a food that she just ended up eating. Yeah. So so it depends. But then you have the whole like bacon is a superfood stuff. So like that term is hijacked as well. And so you gotta be a little gotta be a little bit careful, just follow the science.

Coach Sawyer (44:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ben (44:49)
Yeah, I think, you know, you’re kind of getting at this idea of like that a lot of these things are like replacement or displacement effects, like, okay, we’re introducing this food and it can be about what we’re eating, but it can also be about what we’re then taking out of our diets or what we’re replacing. Like oftentimes when you know, we’re talking to clients, we might not say like, cut these things out. We might just say like, hey, can you try to eat a portion of vegetables at each meal? Because by default they’re going to be

Mic the Vegan (45:02)
That’s true.

Ben (45:15)
you know, take you’re probably not as hungry and they might just be, you know, taking out some of the, you know, wherever they’re coming from, they might be taking out some of the the meat that they’ve been eating, or they might be switching some more, you know, processed carbohydrate for, you know, whole plant foods and and that in and of itself is having an impact. Or like you said, like they’re getting excited and now they’re making these other changes. Maybe they’ve also started exercising. So it can be kind of, I guess, hard to parse out exactly what’s what’s going on there. I think there’s I feel like that’s sometimes a

critique as well from what I’ve seen. It’s like this, when it’s like a vegan group versus like a non vegan group, they it’s like a healthy user bias or something like that, where it’s like, the vegans are maybe doing all these other things as well that are healthy. But I think you can control for that. So I’m you know, you would probably know better than me on that.

Mic the Vegan (45:59)
Yeah, it depends on the study. Some of the studies don’t. A lot of them do, and a lot of them try. And a lot of them, ironically, what I’ve been finding with an issue is that we’re overcorrecting for vegans a lot of the times. Like the vegans are being overadjusted. So it’s like, you know, vegans, like we’re gonna they have lower cholesterol, but that’s separate. We’re just gonna adjust that away. We’re actually gonna just crank up the disease rate that we’re looking at because the vegans have lower cholesterol and that’s just something they have. And it’s like, no, that’s actually causal.

Coach Sawyer (46:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (46:26)
because of their diet. And so that can be really frustrating. And you’re absolutely right. Like the person who’s eating three big servings of fresh milk flour a day is not going to be eating as much red and processed meat as well. They’re just not going to be able to fit it. And so that’s of course going to have a huge effect on all sorts of colitis. Like they’re going to have less like nitroso compounds forming in their their colon. And like that could have been what did it right there, like preservative sulfites and stuff. And so yeah, that’s that’s a good observation.

Coach Sawyer (46:28)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Makes a lot of sense. I think one thing I wanted to kind of interject with, because it was kind of reminding me of an earlier topic we were talking about, which is that like these sensationalized kind of topics that people will come and bring up, like we can we can learn something from those people, right? Like with our content. We could say, like, if we kind of sensationalize like good advice and we say, like, what, this one swap changed my whole life, and it’s like

A very simple, like, hey, you eat oatmeal for breakfast now or whatever type of thing. Like it can’t and then we’ve also zoom out and talk about the science about why that matters. So that like, because I think really education is empowering. It’s like it prevents them from coming back and being fooled by counterclaims and things, right? So it’s like we can use the same tactics to get in the door and be like, hey, this magic pill is gonna change your whole life. Like, and then we kind of slip in some education in there. I feel like that is what gets people.

out of that loop of like constantly being like susceptible to that bombardment of like, Hey, you’re not doing things right. Change your whole life. You know what I mean? And like having that layer and layer and layer. So I don’t know.

Mic the Vegan (47:52)
Yeah. Definitely doesn’t hurt

to be enthusiastic when just like having health message, which is huge. And like I’ve tried to do that a little bit, sometimes it works. Like I did like, this is nature’s Ozempic video, because Nature’s Ozempic was also like a trending term. And it was just talking about the studies of how whole carbohydrates, like for example, that whole that fresh milled flour would actually have similar effects of G on GLP one.

Coach Sawyer (47:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (48:18)
as GLP one drugs. And so there’s other things like that. And and yeah, hopefully you can get that type of person to listen to the science too and not just like click off immediately when it didn’t tell them to just snort bacon grease for disease reversal.

Coach Sawyer (48:34)
man. Wanna meet the person who could do that and like be excited about it. That’s pretty hardcore.

Mic the Vegan (48:40)
Or like the guy, my

gosh. I mean those people eat crazy stuff. Like there’s the meat, the like rotten meat guy that I’ve seen here and there. He like tries to eat a jar of rotten meat because he thinks it’s gonna be like a probiotic and he just gets sick every time. And it’s like, dude, what are you doing? So yeah, people will try. There’s definitely a big I now that I put bacon grease snorting out into the atmosphere, somebody’s into the ether, somebody’s gonna do it.

Coach Sawyer (48:54)
my god.

Yeah. Yeah, we gotta

Ben (49:02)
Somebody somebody’s gonna try

Coach Sawyer (49:03)
be careful what we joke about, man. This people will do it.

Ben (49:03)
it. Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully I like to believe our our listeners are a little bit more clued in and hopefully listeners, please, none of you do that. I don’t know why you would. But I’m sure honor

Mic the Vegan (49:05)
Yeah. This is how health trends start.

You don’t have like hate you don’t have like hate subscribers that might be eating a bacon based

Coach Sawyer (49:15)
That’s a

I don’t think we’re big enough yet.

Ben (49:19)
On our main channel,

I’m sure we probably get more of those on the podcast channel. It tends to be people who are kind of already about the messaging that we have. So, you know, maybe maybe that’s a sign that we’ve made it when we start getting some of those people that are are haters.

Coach Sawyer (49:27)
Yeah. Yeah, we’ll be like, Yeah, somebody

Mic the Vegan (49:27)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (49:33)
snorted the bacon grease. We made it.

Mic the Vegan (49:35)
Yeah, some sword of the bank increase. Yeah. That’s how you yeah, that’s how you know, man. That’s hilarious.

Ben (49:41)
as we kind of

close things out today, Mike, thank you again for your time and for coming on today. I would love to maybe just leave listeners with I guess one last piece of perhaps advice from yourself. If they’re trying to be more

literate consumers of content, of science information. how can how can somebody better understand who is really just trying to maybe you know, take advantage of some fears or anxieties that I have and maybe you know, get some sort of financial gain out of that versus who is actually out there trying to provide information like yourself to kind of just help

on these, you know, actionable things that we can do to improve our our health and our longevity. how can you know, what’s maybe a useful metric for people to obviously it’s not so simple as one piece of advice, but to maybe get more of it right and listen to people who are a little bit you know, actually more evidence based versus people who appear to be.

Mic the Vegan (50:36)
Yeah, that’s really hard and it’s super nuanced. a couple of little tips. One is like, is what they’re promoting also backed by like giant mega corporations that lobby a ton of money? Like, is that something that happens? Whether you know, and and people believe it with the sugar industry, like, that’s so easy to believe.

But then for some reason they don’t believe it with like the meat and dairy industry, even though it’s like a massive multi-million billion dollar industry that has a huge, huge motivation to be paying influencers to do that. But it’s also worth mentioning that influencers need to also support themselves. So selling something or anything alone is not enough for some for something to just be factually incorrect. Because if that was the case, then every claim would be factually like every angle, whether it’s plant-based or keto or whatever, like everyone is probably writing.

A little ebook to try to sell it or doing some little coaching or something. And so you can’t just say, they’re selling something, therefore they’re wrong.

Coach Sawyer (51:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (51:28)
but I think, you know, is the person citing some science? You know, there’s there’s people with credentials that are worth listening to and not worth listening to also, which is really hard. You know, you’ll have your carnivore doctor saying cholesterol doesn’t matter at all. You know, here’s here’s someone’s cholesterol, here’s steak and butter gal’s cholesterol, which is like through the roof, but that’s totally fine. You know, so you have to you have to be careful and generally it helps to follow the consensus.

Coach Sawyer (51:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (51:51)
But then it’s like, is the consensus always right? I don’t know. man, it’s so hard. but yeah.

I mean there’s there’s there’s like for example I’m not like a huge like my god use AI all the time. AI I think can be can be very dangerous to use in inappropriately too and and you know there’s environmental problems but like consensus AI if you just type in like what is the current literature’s view on whether or not high cholesterol is bad.

And then you’ll get like a bar of like 75 or 80% say cholester high cholesterol is a bad thing. And obviously that’s not listening to an influencer. You have to go and do that yourself. But like, you know, try and actually figure out if there’s science behind what someone’s saying. Like just do like do some spot checks. Like, does this match up with the science or not? And yeah, sometimes it’s hard because there’s industry-funded science as well. You there’s meta-analyses paid for the by the dairy industry.

Coach Sawyer (52:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (52:38)
so there’s no easy answer, man. You hit me with a hard one at the end there. so yeah. Yeah. Do your best.

Ben (52:40)
Yeah. I did. I did. But if and but if anything, that’s

Coach Sawyer (52:41)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (52:45)
more more incentive for people to go check out your videos and do a little bit more deep dive into some of the topics you cover so that you can give the nuance and can give you know, the elaboration. So you’re anything you want to say before we close things out?

Mic the Vegan (52:50)
Yeah.

Coach Sawyer (52:51)
Very

true.

Mic the Vegan (52:56)
I don’t know if you heard you, but I was gonna say that everybody is wrong about something too. Like I’m wrong about stuff. If somebody’s telling you that they’re right about everything, that is a major red flag. Okay, there you go.

Ben (53:01)
Mm.

Coach Sawyer (53:05)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (53:06)
That’s very true. Sawyer, closing thoughts?

Coach Sawyer (53:07)
Definitely.

No man, I just really appreciate you, Mike, for coming on. you know, been a long, long time coming because I just have always appreciated your content and really value what you have to say on on a lot of topics and just makes me think so much deeply more deeply about certain things that I made assumptions about and I think it would have been a lot easier along my vegan journey to get led astray if not for a lot of your content. So I just want to

Thank you for coming on and thank you for doing what you do.

Mic the Vegan (53:36)
Appreciate that.

Coach Sawyer (53:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mic the Vegan (53:37)
Well, happy to keep you on the straight and narrow, the stra the science zone or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, I I really appreciate you guys too. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, keep keep paying attention to the science, even if it’s boring. Listen to the science here and there. And yeah, and get buff. There you go. There you go.

Coach Sawyer (53:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, the science is boring, but we’re sexy, so that’s that’s how we get it across, right?

Ben (53:52)
There we go.

Ha ha.

Mic the Vegan (53:59)
Be s be sexy. Be a sexy vegan of a recent study just came out by Matthew Nagger looking at all the ways that vegans are hotter. So maybe we’ll do a video on that. Yeah.

Ben (54:07)
I saw that. Yeah, that would be

Coach Sawyer (54:08)
Nice.

Ben (54:09)
awesome. That would be awesome. Definitely do a video on that. Well, thank you again, Mike, for for coming on. we’ll link all your stuff down in the description below. And if you guys enjoyed listening, please be sure to leave a comment. and let you know let Mike know that you found some value out of this podcast. definitely go check out his YouTube channel and we’ll catch everyone in the next episode. Thanks guys.

Coach Sawyer (54:09)
That’s so cool.