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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Protester, Priest and Politician: Effective Altruists before their time, published by NickLaing on September 5, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Epistemic status: Motivated and biased as a Christian, gazing in awe through rose-tinted glasses at inspiring humans of days gone by. Written primarily for a Christian audience, with hopefully something of use for all. Benjamin Lay - The Protester Benjamin Lay, only 4½ feet tall, stood outside the Quaker meeting house in the heart of Pennsylvania winter, his right leg exposed and thrust deep into the snow. One shocked churchgoer after another urged him to protect his life and limb - but he only replied "Ah, you pretend compassion for me but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields, who go all winter half clad."[1] Portrait of Benjamin Lay (1790) by William Williams. In 1700 Lay's moral stances were more than radical.[2] He thought women equal to men, was anti-death penalty, pro animal rights and an early campaigner for the abolition of slavery. In the Caribbean he made friends with indentured people while he boycotted all slave produced products such as tea, sugar and coffee. I thought Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute[3] was ahead of his time for going vegan in 1987 - well, how about Lay in the 1700s? Many of these moral stances might seem unimpressive now, but back then I would bet under 1% of people held any one of them. These were deeply neglected and important causes, and Lay fought against the odds to make them tractable. His creative protests were perhaps as impressive as his morals. He smashed fine china teacups in the street saying people cared more about the cups than the slaves that produced tea. He yelled out "there's another Negro master" when slave owners spoke in Quaker meetings. He even temporarily kidnapped a slave owner's child, so his parents would experience a taste of the pain parents back in Africa felt while their children were permanently kidnapped. These protests stemmed from a deep spiritual devotion to do and proclaim the right thing - people's feelings and cultural norms be darned. Extreme actions like these have potential to backfire, but Lay chose wisely to perform most protests within his own Quaker church. Perhaps he knew that within the Quakers lay fertile ground to change hearts and minds - despite it taking 50 years to make serious inroads. When the Quakers officially denounced slavery In 1758 - perhaps the first large organization to do so - a then feeble Lay, aged 77, exclaimed: "Thanksgiving and praise be rendered unto the Lord God… I can now die in peace." John Wesley - The Priest "Employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree to the household of faith, to all men!" - John Wesley A key early insight of the "Effective Altruism" movement was the power of "earning to give" - that we can do great good not just through direct deeds, but by earning as much money as possible and then giving it away to effective causes. Yet one man had the same insight with similar depth of understanding 230 years earlier, outlined in just one sermon derived almost entirely from biblical principles.[4] John Wesley preached extreme generosity as a clear mandate from Jesus. His message was simple but radical. Earn all you can, live simply to save money, then give the rest to good causes. Sounds great but who actually does that? He also had deep insight in the pitfalls of earning to give. We should keep ourselves healthy and not overwork. We should sleep well and preserve "the spirit of a healthful mind". We should eschew evil on the path to the big bucks. And don't get rich while you're earning the big bucks, as you risk falling away from your faith and mission. He also understood that earning to give wasn't a path for e...
Headlines Matter: Topline Takeaways From A Recent Ultra-Processed Food Study Are Wrong And Irresponsible by Amy Williams at GFI.org Original post: https://thegoodfoodinstitute.substack.com/p/headlines-matter-topline-takeaways Bruce Friedrich on Rich Roll Podcast: https://www.richroll.com/podcast/bruce-friedrich-617/ The Good Food Institute is an international nonprofit reimagining meat production in order to make the global food system better for the planet, people, and animals. GFI understands that with “alternative proteins” we can mitigate the environmental impact of our food system, decrease the risk of zoonotic disease, and ultimately feed more people with fewer resources. Visit GFI.org for more information. How to support the podcast: Share with others. Recommend the podcast on your social media. Follow/subscribe to the show wherever you listen. Buy some vegan/plant based merch: https://www.plantbasedbriefing.com/shop Follow Plant Based Briefing on social media: Twitter: @PlantBasedBrief YouTube: YouTube.com/PlantBasedBriefing Facebook: Facebook.com/PlantBasedBriefing LinkedIn: Plant Based Briefing Podcast Instagram: @PlantBasedBriefing #Vegan #PlantBased #plantbasedbriefing #GFI #alternativeprotein #altprotein #plantbasedmeat #headlinesmatter #processedfood
Has science cracked the code on mass producing realistic meat substitutes? Or are lab-gown alternative proteins an impossible dream? In this week's episode of Cleaning Up, Baroness Bryony Worthington sits down with president of the Good Food Institute, Bruce Friedrich, to explore the future of food. Friedrich details his vision for a more sustainable food system through technologies like plant-based and cultivated meat and outlines the promising progress and significant challenges remaining in scaling these novel proteins. Worthington and Friedrich debate the roles of policy, public opinion, and big agriculture in determining whether alternative proteins can truly transform our food system or remain forever niche.Links and more: The Good Food Institute (https://gfi.org) TEA of cultivated meat. Future projections for different scenarios (https://cedelft.eu/publications/tea-of-cultivated-meat/) A new land dividend: the opportunity of alternative proteins in Europe (https://green-alliance.org.uk/publication/a-new-land-dividend-the-opportunity-of-alternative-proteins-in-europe/) Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System: (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/406c71a3-c13f-49cd-8f3f-a071715858fb) UNEP Report on alternative proteins (https://www.unep.org/resources/whats-cooking-assessment-potential-impacts-selected-novel-alternatives-conventional) Episode 136 with Jim Mellon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqFPic5iqds)
Upon reading his obituary, Mark Twain reportedly wrote that “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Whether Twain actually wrote this or not, the reality remains that today the reports of the death of cultivated meat are indeed quite real. Yet Bruce Friedrich, the president of the Good Food Institute, is here to tell you that he believes such reports are not based on science and are indeed greatly exaggerated. Few people have done more to inspire others to pursue alternative protein—including cultivated meat—as a strategy to ameliorate world problems than Bruce. I've known Bruce since 1996, and one thing that's remained constant during the past three decades is that Bruce's commitment to reducing suffering on the planet is simply enormous. Whether in his role as part of the nonprofit animal advocacy world or the crusade he's been on since co-founding GFI in 2016 to render alternative proteins no longer alternative, Bruce's lodestar has always been: how can he do as much good as possible during his limited time on the planet? In this conversation, Bruce and I focus on the state of the plant-based and cultivated meat industries today, why he believes the critics are misguided, whether China will lead this race, how to respond to the new cultivated meat bans like those newly passed in Florida and Alabama, and critically: what it will take for alt-protein to no longer be alt. Discussed in this episode This episode is the 10th in our ten-part podcast series on cultivated meat. The previous nine episodes include Orbillion Bio, UPSIDE Foods, Avant Meats, BlueNalu, Eat Just, Fork & Good, Mosa Meat, New Harvest, and Aleph Farms. Dr. Elliot Swartz's presentation: The Cost Drivers of Cultivated Meat Production. GFI's Plant-Based Meat Production Volume Modeling 2030 analysis. GFI's numerous additional resources, including The Science of Cultivated Meat, Advancing Solutions for Alternative Protein, The Costs and Environmental Impacts of Cultivated Meat, and The GFI Startup Manual. You can sign up to receive GFI's many newsletters and to be alerted to their many webinars and other events and resources at gfi.org/newsletters. Bruce cites numerous laws, including Amara's Law (we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run), Wright's Law (for every cumulative doubling of units produced, costs will fall by a constant percentage), and even Newton's Third Law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). Good Meat is now selling cultivated chicken at a butchery in Singapore. China's five-year plan for the future of meat. The cultivated meat documentary Meat the Future. Bruce recommends Hannah Ritchie's book, Not The End of the World. You can see Paul's review of it here. Ezra Klein's 2021 NY Times column, Let's Launch a Moonshot for Meatless Meat. Bruce's 2019 TED Talk. The Center for Strategic and International Studies' report: The Future Appetite for Alternative Proteins. Our past episodes with Ryan Bethencourt and Jason Matheny. An upcoming episode with Israel's albumin producer PoLoPo! More about Bruce Friedrich Bruce Friedrich is founder & president of the Good Food Institute, a global network of nonprofit science-focused think tanks, with more than 220 full-time team members across affiliates in the U.S., India, Israel, Brazil, Singapore, and Europe (UK, Germany, & EC). GFI works on alternative protein policy, science, and corporate engagement - to accelerate the production of plant-based and cultivated meat in order to bolster the global protein supply while protecting our environment, promoting global health, and preventing food insecurity. Friedrich is a TED Fellow, Y Combinator alum, 2021 "American Food Hero" (EatingWell Magazine), and popular speaker on food innovation. He has penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Nature Food, Wired, and many other publications. He has represented GFI on the TED Radio Hour, New Yorker Radio Hour, the Ezra Klein Show, Making Sense (Sam Harris), and a variety of other podcasts and TV programs. Bruce's 2019 TED talk has been viewed more than 2.4 million times and translated into 30 languages. Friedrich graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics.
Art Bell - Bruce Friedrich - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Wins 2023, published by Shakeel Hashim on December 31, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Crossposted from Twitter. As the year comes to an end, we want to highlight and celebrate some of the incredible achievements from in and around the effective altruism ecosystem this year. 1. A new malaria vaccine The World Health Organization recommended its second-ever malaria vaccine this year: R21/Matrix-M, designed to protect babies and young children from malaria. The drug's recently concluded Phase III trial, which was co-funded by Open Philanthropy, found that the vaccine was between 68-75% effective at targeting the disease, which kills around 600,000 people (mainly children) each year. The work didn't stop there, though. Following advocacy from many people - including Zacharia Kafuko of 1 Day Sooner - the WHO quickly prequalified the vaccine, laying the groundwork for an expedited deployment and potentially saving hundreds of thousands of children's lives. 1 Day Sooner is now working to raise money to expedite the deployment further. 2. The Supreme Court upholds an animal welfare law In 2018, Californians voted for Proposition 12 - a bill that banned intensive cage confinement and the sale of animal products from animals in intensive confinement. The meat industry challenged the law for being unconstitutional - but in May of this year, the US Supreme Court upheld Prop 12, a decision that will improve the lives of millions of animals who would otherwise be kept in cruel and inhumane conditions. Organizations such as The Humane League - one of Animal Charity Evaluators' top charities - are a major part of this victory; their tireless campaigning is part of what made Prop 12 happen. Watch a panel discussion featuring The Humane League at EAG London 2023 here. 3. AI safety goes mainstream 2023 was the year AI safety went mainstream. After years of work from people in and around effective altruism, this year saw hundreds of high-profile AI experts - including two Turing Award winners say that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority". That was followed by a flurry of activity from policymakers, including a US Executive Order, an international AI Safety Summit, the establishment of the UK Frontier AI Taskforce, and a deal on the EU AI Act - which, thanks to the efforts of campaigners, is now going to regulate foundation models that pose a systemic risk to society. Important progress was made in technical AI safety, too, including work on adversarial robustness, mechanistic interpretability, and lie detection. Watch a talk from EAG Boston 2023 on technical AI safety here. 4. Results from the world's largest UBI study Since 2018, GiveDirectly - an organization that distributes direct cash transfers to those in need - has been running the world's largest universal basic income experiment in rural Kenya. In September, researchers led by MIT economist Taveneet Suri and Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, published their latest analysis of the data - finding that giving people money as a lump sum leads to better results than dispersing it via monthly payments. Long-term UBI was also found to be highly effective and didn't discourage work. The results could have significant implications for how governments disburse cash aid. Watch GiveDirectly's talk at EAGx Nordics 2023. 5. Cultivated meat approved for sale in US After years of work from organizations like the Good Food Institute, in June 2023 the USDA finally approved cultivated meat for sale in the US. The watershed moment made the US the second country (after Singapore) to legalize the product, which could have significant impacts on animal welfare by reducing the number of animals that need to be raised and killed for meat. Watch the Good Food Institute's Bruce Friedrich talk about alternative ...
Don't fear as the holidays draw near! Bruce Friedrich is here with a wealth of conversational advice to guide plant-based people through potential holiday woes. If you find yourself dreading those inevitable questions and possible confrontations about your vegan lifestyle choices, this episode is for you! Bruce provides practical strategies, specific wording and phrases, and even role-plays conversations with Toni and Michelle to help anyone feel more comfortable engaging about veganism (or other issues that matter to you!) with just about anyone you come across, not the least, family at the holiday meal table. Show Notes Newsletter Sign-Up Support The Show Your Hosts: Toni Okamoto & Michelle Cehn Thanks for tuning in to the Plant-Powered People Podcast! Be sure to subscribe at PlantPoweredPodcast.com to get our podcast e-mail newsletters. Resources Plant-Based on a Budget (budget recipes) World of Vegan (vegan recipes and guides) The Friendly Vegan Cookbook Plant-Based on a Budget Meal Plans Connect with World of Vegan Website Instagram TikTok YouTube Facebook Newsletter
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EAGxVirtual: Speaker announcements, timings, and other updates, published by Sasha Berezhnoi on November 2, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. EAGxVirtual is fast approaching and we're excited to share some more details about the event! This post covers updates from the team, including dates and times, content, unique features, and demographic data. In the previous post , we covered the conference theme, reasons to attend, and reviews from the previous attendees. Content: what to expect We're very excited to announce our key speakers for this event: Peter Singer on the most pressing moral issues facing humanity . Bruce Friedrich, President of The Good Food Institute on longtermism and alternative proteins. Carl Robichaud, Co-lead on nuclear policy grantmaking at Longview Philanthropy on a turning point in the story of nuclear weapons. Olga Kikou, Head of the EU Office of Compassion in World Farming on ending the cage age in the EU. Neel Nanda, Research Engineer at DeepMind on open problems in mechanistic interpretability. We are working hard on the program. Beyond the above talks (and many more talks and workshops!), you can expect office hours hosted by experts and EA orgs, fireside chats, group meetups and icebreakers, lightning talks from attendees, and unofficial satellite events. The tentative schedule is available here (all times are in UTC). Please note that the schedule is subject to change. The final schedule will be available on the Swapcard app, which we aim to launch next week. Taking action anywhere in the world We have already received 600 applications from people representing over 70 countries. We welcome all who have a genuine interest in learning more or connecting, including those who are new to effective altruism. If you are a highly-engaged EA, you can make a difference by being responsive to requests from first-time attendees. The map below shows the geographical distribution of the participants: We would love to see more applications. If you know someone who you think should attend the conference, please encourage them to apply by sending them this link: eagxvirtual.com The deadline for applications is 11:59 pm UTC on Thursday, 16 November. Apply here if you haven't already. Dates and times The conference will be taking place from 10 am UTC on Friday, November 17th, until 11:59 pm UTC on Sunday, November 19th. We don't expect you to always be online you can be flexible with your participation! It's completely okay if you can attend only on one of the days. Recordings will be available for registered attendees, so you can watch the sessions you missed later. Friday will feature introductory-level content for participants who are relatively new to EA and a career fair on Gather Town . Saturday and Sunday will have full-day schedules, starting at 7 am UTC each day. There will be a break in the program on Sunday between 2 am and 7 am UTC. Conference features Our main content and networking platform for the conference is the Swapcard . We will share access to the app with all the attendees on November 6 and provide guidance on how to use it and get the most out of the conference. We collaborate with EA Gather Town to make an always-available virtual venue for the attendees to spark more connections and unstructured discussions throughout the conference. Extensive stewardship program . We will highlight ambassadors across different cause areas whom you can speak to get advice or feedback on your career plans. Evergreen discussion space : we are inviting everyone to use EA Anywhere Slack as a discussion space. No more Slacks that are abandoned immediately after the conference is over! Ways to contribute If you want to represent your organization at the career fair or host office hours, please, fill out this form . Apply to give a Lightning talk if ...
This week on O+O: UK Net Zero rollbacks, the rise of global populism and why we should all be hungry for (protein) alternatives. Pull up a chair to the table and tuck in to this week's episode. With the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's recent announcement that he plans to ‘roll back' Net Zero commitments, coupled with the disturbing rise of global populist politicians choosing to hack the climate crisis conversation, our hosts Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson, ask: why, and why now, are these leaders choosing to act against the scientific consensus and hit the brakes on progress? Tune in this week to hear the hosts' lively and insightful analysis on this worrying trend in global politics. Alternative proteins is the topic of this week's guest interview. Bruce Friedrich from the Good Food Institute is interviewed by the unflappable Andy Jarvis from theBezos Earth Fund, using his expertise in this area to dig into this incredibly important and hugely influential issue. Bruce, Andy and the hosts unpacked the outsized positive impact that alternative proteins can have not only on tackling the climate crisis, but also our health, animal well-being and nature restoration. He also issued a stark warning with regards to the huge quantities of antibiotics we feed our animals and the current and future on human health: “The UK government said the threat to the human race from antimicrobial resistance is more certain than the threat from climate change. It's already killing 1.3 million people per year. It's predicted to be killing 10 million people per year by 2050, according to an article in The Lancet last year. Seventy percent of medically relevant antibiotics are being fed to farm animals. Now, former head of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, has said the end of working antibiotics is the end of modern medicine.” * Yikes. Music this week comes from Colombian Psychedelic band ‘BALTHVS' and their track ‘Eclipse Solar'. NOTES AND RESOURCES * Bruce quotes an article published in Jan 2022 by The Lancet: Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis. This article in turn quotes the UK's AMR review's final paper:Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally: Final report and recommendations (2016) which is the original source of the figures Bruce uses in the quote above. PLUM VILLAGE Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet course. Sign up HERE and make sure to check out their scholarships on offer if support is needed. GUESTS Bruce Friedrich, President and Founder of The Good Food Institute Twitter | LinkedIn The Good Food Institute Twitter | LinkedIn Andy Jarvis, Director of Future of Food at Bezos Earth Fund Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram MUSIC BALTHVS Website | Instagram | YouTube Learn more about the Paris Agreement. It's official, we're a TED Audio Collective Podcast - Proof! Check out more podcasts from The TED Audio Collective Please follow us on social media! Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn
First, I'm answering your questions about lab-grown meat, then I am talking to Dr. Deepika Krishna about healing gynecological cancer, and finally I'll be covering one of the most controversial topics of our time and making a very special announcement. Part 1: What's The Deal with Lab-Grown Meat? With Bruce Friedrich Lab-grown meat, also known as cultured meat, is a big advancement in making food in a better way. Instead of raising lots of animals on farms, scientists grow just the muscle part of animals in labs. This helps solve problems like hurting animals and harming the environment. Lab-grown meat has great advantages: it can stop animals from suffering on farms, give us healthier meat, and help our planet by causing less pollution and using fewer resources. Bruce Friedrich is co-founder and executive director of The Good Food Institute (GFI.org), a nonprofit organization that promotes healthy and sustainable alternatives to industrially produced meat, dairy, and eggs. Bruce is the co-author of Clean Protein: The Revolution that Will Reshape Your Body, Boost Your Energy—and Save Our Planet Part 2: Taking a Holistic Approach to Gynecological Cancer with Dr. Deepika Krishna Dr. Deepika Krishna is an Integrative Health Coach and accomplished gynecologist, specializing in supporting people in their journey towards healing from chronic lifestyle ailments while promoting immunity and long-lasting well-being. Her expertise extends to gynecological cancers, and she places a strong emphasis on strengthening the body's defense mechanisms to ward off diseases, including cancer and other persistent health issues. Driven by personal experience, she embarked on a holistic mission to restore her own health after facing hormonal imbalances that traditional medical approaches couldn't resolve. This profound journey led her to recognize the importance of considering the entire body, rather than just symptoms, allowing her to better guide her patients towards comprehensive wellness. Her commitment to this approach is reflected in her work, aimed at empowering others to achieve optimal health and vitality. Learn more about her holistic approach at https://www.immunosciences.in/health-reset Part 3: A Controversial Topic and Special Announcement You're gonna have to listen to find out more! We're on Patreon! Nourish, Heal, Repeat: Exclusive Monthly Content By becoming a patron, you can access exclusive content tailored to your specific wellness goals. Whether you want to support my green juice habit, get access to extra exclusive episodes, download vegan recipes, take online wellness classes, or join our Zoom parties, there is a membership tier that is perfect for you! Join me on this transformative path and unlock the benefits of healing yourself through food! Join Now at Patreon.com/FoodHeals Thank You to Our Sponsors! CURED Nutrition You deserve to take control of your mental and physical health. CURED Nutrition is trying to make it easier for you to do exactly that. Formulated with their trinity of ingredients – a blend of full-spectrum cannabinoids, functional mushrooms, and adaptogens – Cure is your answer to finding the calm in every storm. Go to Curednutrition.com/foodheals and use code foodheals for 20% off. Organifi Organifi, is a line of organic superfood blends that offers plant based nutrition made with high quality ingredients. Organifi takes pride in offering the best tasting superfood products on the market at a price that works out to less than $3 a day. Go to www.organifi.com/foodheals and use code foodheals for 20% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Bruce Friedrich is the founder and CEO of the Good Food Institute (GFI). As a child, hebecame profoundly aware of the poverty and starvation of others and was compelled to dosomething about it. He explains how this led him to found GFI to address global poverty andchallenge the industrialized food system. GFI does this while also supporting a work culture thatpromotes vocational self-actualization and avoids burnout. This conversation highlights Bruce'sbelief that making animal products without animals (plant-based and cellular agriculture) can doa huge amount to prevent climate change, preserve biodiversity, and mitigate existential risks.
This episode of Hub Dialogues features Sean Speer in conversation with Bruce Friedrich, founder and President of the Good Food Institute, about the economic, environmental and moral case for cell- and plant-based alternatives to traditional meat.The Hub Dialogues (which is one of The Hub's regular podcasts) feature The Hub's editor-at-large, Sean Speer, in conversation with leading entrepreneurs, policymakers, scholars, and thinkers on the issues and challenges that will shape Canada's future at home and abroad. The episodes are generously supported by The Ira Gluskin And Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation and the Linda Frum and Howard Sokolowski Charitable Foundation.If you like what you are hearing on Hub Dialogues consider subscribing to The Hub's free weekly email newsletter featuring our insights and analysis on key public policy issues. Sign up here: https://thehub.ca/free-member-sign-up/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thank you David and to everyone listening and watching! - Timestamps - 00:00 - Start and Intro of David 01:42 - David's Journey to Today 04:11 - What David Does 06:19 - On Making A Better Organization Structure 08:52 - How Delegation Can Make or Break Organizations 11:45 - Dealing with the Change of Leadership Roles 15:12 - The Process of Passing Roles to Successors 20:08 - The Difference Between Board and Advisory Board 22:40 - Managing Stakeholders 23:31 - Donors and Memberships 27:55 - On Gaining More Members 39:12 - Source Recommendations 44:20 - Pros and Cons of Effective Altruism 48:56 - David's Favorite Bands 50:36 - Last Thoughts and Outro Links: The Engagement by Sasha Issenberg - https://bit.ly/3KpnNWx Engines of Liberty by Davide Cole - https://bit.ly/41eDPck The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement -https://bit.ly/3ZN5iko Management in a Changing World - https://www.managementcenter.org/our-book/ Nonprofit Lifecycles: Stage-Based Wisdom for Nonprofit Capacity - https://bit.ly/3MwBhSO Who is David Coman-Hidy? David Coman-Hidy, former Executive Director of The Humane League. Under his leadership, The Humane League has grown into a national presence with offices spanning from coast to coast—winning campaigns against some of the largest foodservice and retail corporations in the world and reaching millions of young people each year with a message of compassion for farmed animals. David has spoken on factory farming and effective advocacy at conferences and on campuses across America. He has advised dozens of successful campaigns and his thoughts on activism have been published in Uncaged: Top Activists Share Their Wisdom on Effective Farm Animal Advocacy alongside experts Peter Singer, Bruce Friedrich, and Matt Ball. David graduated Summa Cum Laude from Emerson College's honors program in only three years after winning the communication college's Forensics Award and entrance into the Gold Key Honours society. As I want to run this podcast ad-free, the best way to support me is through Patreon: https://www. patreon.com/martinskadal If you live in Norway, you can consider becoming a support member in the two organizations I run. It costs NOK 50 a year. The more members we have, the more influence we have and the more funding we get as well. Right now we have around 500 members of World Saving Hustle (WSH) and 300 members of Altruism for Youth (AY). • Become a support member of WSH:https://forms.gle/ogwYPF1c62a59TsRA • Become a support member of AY: https://forms.gle/LSa4P1gyyyUmDsuP7 If you want to become a volunteer for World Saving Hustle or Altruism for Youth, send me an email and I'll forward it to our team. It might take some time before you'll get an answer as we're currently run by volunteers, but you'll get an answer eventually! Do you have any feedback, questions, suggestions for either topics/guests, let me know in the comment section. If you want to get in touch, the best way is through email: martin@worldsavinghustle.com Thanks to everyone in World Saving Hustle backing up this project and thanks to my creative partner Candace for editing this podcast! Thanks everyone and have an amazing day as always!! • instagram https://www.instagram.com/skadal/ • linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinska . . . • facebook https://www.facebook.com/martinsskadal/ • twitter https://twitter.com/martinskadal • Norwegian YT https://www.youtube.com/@martinskadal353 • Patreon https://www.patreon . com/martinskadal
What Is cultivated meat? Could it change the future of food? By Charlotte Pointing at VegNews.com Original post: https://vegnews.com/vegan-news/environment/save-whales-stop-eating-lobster Rich Roll Episode with Bruce Friedrich: https://youtu.be/2GzGU_pMG5M Launched in 2000, VegNews is the largest vegan media brand in the world. They have a best-selling plant-based magazine, and they create amazing content from food and fashion to travel, celebrity interviews, beauty and health info, a meal planner, and vegan travel excursions. Their Guide section on their website is full of great information and they have an online shop where you can find cookbooks, foods, kitchen tools, vegan meal delivery services. They also have a website, VeganWeddings.com. Please visit www.VegNews.com for a wealth of resources. How to support the podcast: Share with others. Recommend the podcast on your social media. Follow/subscribe to the show wherever you listen. Buy some vegan/plant based merch: https://www.plantbasedbriefing.com/shop Follow Plant Based Briefing on social media: Twitter: @PlantBasedBrief YouTube: YouTube.com/PlantBasedBriefing Facebook: Facebook.com/PlantBasedBriefing LinkedIn: Plant Based Briefing Podcast Instagram: @PlantBasedBriefing #vegan #plantbased #plantbasedpodcast #veganpodcast #plantbasedbriefing #cultivatedmeat #culturedmeat #3dmeat #labgrownmeat #altprotein #cultfoods #sustainability
Alternative proteins will benefit enormously from government support (e.g., research funding, private sector incentives, and regulatory clarity). In this talk, GFI's Bruce Friedrich discusses lessons from the alt protein playbook and suggest strategies that can be applied to EA public-sector efforts around the world (e.g., localizing your public-sector strategy, finding experienced guides, focusing on job creation, pursuing multiple vectors of influence simultaneously, framing your issue as non-partisan, borrowing from other movements, and maintaining a continuous learning mindset).Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.
Good Food Institute founder and CEO Bruce Friedrich explains GFI's thesis that our industrial meat production system is a threat to humanity that is even more dangerous than fossil fuel production, with serious jeopardy to humanity across climate change, biodiversity loss, food security, antibiotic resistance, pandemic risk, and more. All forecasts by agricultural economists indicate that meat consumption is going to rise inexorably, by between 70 and more than 100 percent by 2050. We are not going to convince consumers to change their diets, much like we are not going to convince the world to consume less energy or drive less. So, we need to remake meat.View the original talk and video here.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.
"We've seen a lot of progress in the last few years. We are on a significant upward trajectory that will continue. But plugging into these endeavors is how we can make a difference." -Bruce Friedrich Since the turn of the 21st Century, global meat consumption has increased significantly around the world. This growing demand is unsustainable and highly detrimental to our climate, our health, and our security. The good news is that we already have the solution right before us— alternative proteins. With alternative proteins, we lessen the cost of production while also reducing carbon emissions from agriculture. And not only are they solving global environmental issues, but they are also ethical for the animals and healthy for humans. The challenge is enormous, but not impossible. Many companies have begun working at the intersection of innovation, food, and sustainability. But we, too, have a significant role to play. In this episode, we hear how the Good Food Institute is revolutionizing the field of biotechnology and food innovation from their CEO and Founder, Bruce Friedrich himself. Listen in as Justine and Bruce share how much the agricultural sector is contributing to climate change, how much food is wasted unnecessarily, and how we— as students, individual consumers, founders, and leaders— can help create a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternatives, but choices for everyone. Meet Bruce: Bruce Friedrich serves as GFI's chief thought leader and relationship-builder, working in close partnership with GFI's global teams and food system stakeholders around the world. Areas of expertise: alternative proteins generally, GFI's global programs and strategy, bicycling in heavy traffic. Bruce oversees GFI's global strategy, working with and across all of GFI's international teams (Asia Pacific, Brazil, Europe, India, Israel, and United States) to ensure that GFI is maximally effective at implementing programs that deliver mission-focused results. Bruce is a TED Fellow, Y Combinator alum, 2021 “American Food Hero” (EatingWell Magazine), and popular speaker on food innovation. He has penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wired, and many other publications. He has represented GFI on the TED Radio Hour, New Yorker Radio Hour, Ezra Klein Show, Making Sense (Sam Harris), ReCode Decode, and other programs and podcasts. Bruce's 2019 TED talk has been viewed two million times and translated into dozens of languages. He graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics. Twitter LinkedIn Connect with Good Food Institute: Website Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram YouTube Linkedin Episode Highlights: 01:16 The Good Food Institute Mission 05:01 How Much Food is Wasted 13:12 Solution: Alternative Proteins 16:51 50% Alternative Meat by 2050 18:33 What Can You Do?
David and Sarah are joined by Bruce Friedrich, founder and CEO of the Good Food Institute, to discuss cultivated meat and the next agricultural revolution. What's the difference between plant-based meat and cultivated meat? What's the environmental impact of reimagining meat production? If it's August, it's our meat episode. Show Notes:-Bruce Friedrich's TED Talk-Good Food Institute
We were lucky enough to sit down with Bruce Friedrich, the founder and CEO of the Good Food Institute (GFI) which is pioneering open access science, policy and corporate engagement to make plant based meat taste as good and cost less than it's traditional counterparts as part of a solution to feed future populations and reduce the impacts on climate, health and poverty. This was an inspiring interview and we are really grateful for Bruce sharing his time with us, and for the work that he has spearheaded at GFI. You can donate to GFI and support all their excellent work via Giving What We Can: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/charities/good-food-institute WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GFI?
If you are in the alt-protein industry or even just interested in the space, chances are you know about the Good Food Institute. In this episode, I caught up with GFI CEO and co-founder Bruce Friedrich to talk about the evolution of the space, the politics of alternative meat, the regulatory environment and where he sees the market going. You'll want to check it out! You can find out more about GFI at www.gfi.org. As always, find more podcast at The Spoon. via Knit
In this conversation with Bruce Friedrich, the Co-Founder of The Good Food Institute, an international nonprofit that is working towards a sustainable agricultural system through food innovation and accelerating the production of plant-based and cell-based meat, we deep dive into the future of 'good' food. Is there an alternative that is both healthier for us and better for the planet? This episode debunks and highlights all the facts on the innovations within plant-based and lab-based meats and proves that the future of good food is possible and that story is likely narrated by innovation. Bruce is also TED Fellow, Y Combinator alum and 2021 “American Food Hero”.Read more about the Good Food InstituteLearn more about the Xploring podcast and Conservation X Labs www.conservationxlabs.comMay the #Xploring continue!
For the remainder of season six of the SHINE podcast, the interviews and focus will point light on how we optimize for our well being and how that is interconnected to the planet's well-being. Today's episode highlights my new friend Alejandra Schrader on combating climate change, one bite at a time. Alejandra and I both had our first books debut in 2021. Alejandra has focused and used her platform to educate and inspire folks with plant based meals, recipes and ways to eat in ways that are sustainable with environmentally friendly farming practices. Her first book, The Low Carbon Cookbook and Action Plan: Reduce Food Waste and Combat Climate Change with 140 Sustainable Plant-based Recipes is amazing. Alejandra and I talk about her mission to support people to be mindful of what they consume, how they consume, and how their cooking can support the health of our bodies and the planet. Guest Links: Alejandra Schrader- https://alejandraschrader.com/ Alejandra on Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/chefaleschrader/ The Low Carbon Cookbook and Action Plan: Reduce Food Waste and Combat Climate Change with 140 Sustainable Plant-based Recipes- https://thelow-carboncookbook.com/ Shine Podcast- Taking a Stand for a Good Food System with Bruce Friedrich- https://carleyhauck.com/podcast/54-taking-a-stand-for-a-good-food-system-with-bruce-friedrich Reducetarian Summit- https://www.reducetarian.org/summit-2022 Meat Me Halfway- https://www.meatmehalfway.org/ SHINE Links: Thank you for listening. Want to build a high trust culture and psychological safety at work? Sign up for our newsletter and get the free handout and be alerted to more inspiring Shine episodes Building Trust Free Gift — https://www.leadfromlight.com Carley Links Book Carley for Speaking — https://carleyhauck.com/speaking Leading from Wholeness Learning & Development — https://carleyhauck.com/learning-and-development Carley's Book — https://carleyhauck.com/shinebook Executive Coaching with Carley — https://carleyhauck.com/executive-coaching Contact Carley — https://carleyhauck.com/contact Carley's Patreon Page https://www.patreon.com/carleyhauck Well Being Resources: Inner Game Meditations — https://carleyhauck.com/meditations Doterra — https://www.doterra.com/US/en/site/carleyhauck 4 Sigmatic — 15% Discount code Shine — https://us.foursigmatic.com/?rfsn=4405553.d15cc7&discount=SHINE Social: LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/carley-hauck/ IG — https://www.instagram.com/carley.hauck/ Website — https://www.carleyhauck.com Newsletter — https://www.leadfromlight.com Shine Podcast Page — https://carleyhauck.com/podcast The Imperfect Shownotes 0:01 Carley Hauck Hi, my name is Carley Hauck. I am your host of the SHINE podcast, welcome. This podcast focuses on the intersection of the application of how to be a conscious, inclusive leader, the recipe for high performing teams, and awareness practices, so that you can cultivate a strong inner game. To be the kind of leader our world needs. Now, I facilitate two to three episodes a month. And before I tell you about our wonderful topic today, please go over to your Apple podcasts and hit the subscribe button. This way you don't miss any future interviews. We are in season six of the SHINE podcast. And this season is all about how we optimize to live, work, play, so that we can bring our whole and best selves to our mission, to our life, to our relationships. This includes being mindful of our consumption or energy leaks. And really figuring out how we can have the best performance for our minds, bodies, hearts, how we can support the wellbeing of our communities and our planet. For the remainder of the season, there will be a specific focus on the well being of our bodies and how that's interconnected to the planet's well being. And we will be kicking that off right now with today's episode, Combating Climate Change One Bite at a Time with my new friend Alejandra Schrader. Alejandra and I both had our first books debut in 2021. And we each had a similar mission, and inspiration and writing our books. We were dedicated to awakening humanity, in service of people and planet, and my book Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and In the World, I focus on the body of work that I've successfully facilitated, and supported many leaders in business so that they can align with business as a force for good and social and environmental responsible actions. I also highlight in my book three trailblazing leaders and their journeys, and how to promote more vegan, plant based food options to mitigate climate change, and change the food system for good. Alejandra has focused and used her platform for plant based meals that are cooked smart and packed with flavor, nutritional value. She advocates for sustainable diets and environmentally friendly farming practices. And her first book, The Low Carbon Cookbook and Action Plan: Reduce Food Waste and Combat Climate Change with 140 Sustainable Plant-based Recipes is amazing. Alejandra and I talk about what consciousness inclusive leadership means to her, what it looks like in her journey, her mission for really supporting people to be mindful of what they consume, how they consume, and how their cooking can be in the greatest support of the earth and all the resources that we all share. There are some special highlights in this episode, and I would love for you to listen. Thanks for tuning in. Carley Hauck 3:55 Hello, SHINE podcasters. I am delighted to be here with my friend, Alejandra Schrader. And Alejandra, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Alejandra Schrader 4:12 Yeah, it's truly a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Carley Hauck 4:15 Yeah, well, I I saw your book and I think I found it because there was a post that you had liked. Bruce Friedrich the president, I don't know what I should call him Grand Puba, he was like all plant based alternative proteins, you know, the Good Food Institute and I saw your book and I thought, look at her. She wrote a recipe book, focused completely on recipes that would lower our carbon footprint. I have got to get to know this woman. So thank you again for writing your new book, The Low Carbon Cookbook and Action Plan: Reduce Food Waste and Combat Climate Change with 140 Sustainable Plant-based Recipes. Before I jump into the motivation for that, one of the first questions that I always ask folks on the SHINE podcast is the question. How do you view being a conscious, inclusive leader? Like what does that mean to you? Alejandra Schrader 5:30 Well, first of all, it means a great sense of responsibility that is driven my by my purpose, by a sense of purpose to leave this planet a better place than I found it. As we will talk later, I have a baby, and I want to make sure that he is able to enjoy a planet in which he can thrive. And by being a conscious leader, I also feel the responsibility to lead by example, to attract more than to promote, to lead the way that I carry myself, that I show up, that I work, and that I communicate in a way that other people feel encouraged and empowered to join me to follow my lead to find their own calling their own purpose, but ultimately to have as a common denominator, the greater good for people and the planet. Carley Hauck 6:36 Lovely, great answer. So I heard, you know, a greater responsibility, and wanting to leave behind a better world really acting and service of the greatest good. Thank you. Well, based on that answer, tell me more about your motivation for writing your book. Alejandra Schrader 7:01 Yes, I think that there are many layers to that. And I would say the first one definitely is my love for Mama Earth, for the planet. And my focus on the subject of sustainability, which I have, since I was a little girl, I would see how our actions impacted, at that time, the environment in which I was in, I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and one of my favorite parks, it's kind of because it's a big city, kind of like New York City. And there's not the same but we have something similar to what will be the Central Park and I remember walking by and seeing how some trees that were in front of a tall building that had many curtain wall, which is that reflective glass, they will be dying. And I would ask my mom like what, you know, why are these three stances so well, you know, because we live in a tropical country and the sun once it hits the facade of the building reflects upon these trees and is too much heat and the trees can handle it and I remember that is you know, sort of blew my mind and I was like well then why why first of all right, they will build this building so close to the park and why would they choose that material that is reflect you know, and I had all these questions. Funny enough, I went on to become an architect. And while I was in architecture school, I went to CyArk a very progressive, designer Oriented Architecture School and I pushed every envelope when it came to sustainability every one of my buildings tried to the design it really tried to use the environment in which was in like that concept that form follows function how can I maximize the intake of air or the exposure of the song and and that was a principle that I didn't carry to everything else I've done in my life. I went to graduate school to do work in urban planning and sustainability was again my like the foundation of my research and my projects. And after an unfortunate event when I lost my career in architecture and urban planning, I am really by a very lucky shot and working in the food world in the culinary world, it only made sense to bring that passion for sustainability. Little did I know really at the time it was only it was so many something like one of those gut feelings that innate like it's just an intuitive thought I need to I need to continue to you know to work this path. Little did I know at the time that genuinely food has this massive effect on on the planet how we produce it. how we shop, how we cook, what we eat, how we dispose of waste our food. You know, food is responsible for over a quarter of all greenhouse gasses. And so again, you know, I'm saying little did I know because I cannot take credit for the for that awareness at the time. But thank goodness, right that sometimes we hear a calling, and we have a sense of strong sense of intuition. And you know, some of us, well, actually, I should say that at that point in my life, I was willing to listen to that. Carley Hauck 10:35 And what I hear is that you had a greater consciousness at a younger age, and you saw the inter-connection of everything from, you know, living spaces to the well being of the planet to the well being of ourselves, our own ecosystem, right? And, yes, it reminds me of the consciousness that I had as a little girl too, because I did not grow up in Venezuela, but I grew up in Florida. And I would take these walks on the beach, St. Augustine, which is one of the oldest cities in the United States. And, you know, Florida has just, I'd say recently, maybe in the last 10 years has started a recycling program, they still do not have a lot of composting at all, which I know you and I are communicating to, we dug about food waste, but I was picking up plastic bottles of the sand whenever I did find any plastic because I knew that a sea turtle was going to see that plastic as a jellyfish and they were going to try to eat it. And so in a similar to you, I just knew like this isn't this isn't right, this isn't supposed to be and it's gonna do more harm than positive. So that was your first layer. Tell me. Alejandra Schrader 11:52 Yes. So the next layer comes after the work that I you know, I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I believe in greater callings on God shots, you know, whatever people want us to define them as, but I sort of fell into this wonderful line of work. And in my work as a chef, and as a culinary professional, where I could help bridge that gap between what people what people eat, and, and where are cooked, where food is coming from how the farmers that are working the land properly, the work of scientists determining what is the best food for planet health and human health. And by working on that I got exposed to a lot of information that at one point, I couldn't unsee. I, you know, I got invited to the United Nations to present the EAT-Lancet report on planetary health. And here I am talking in the great chambers to people about, you know, that we have the power to change that with a shift in our diets to help combat the climate crisis, and I'm passing all these beautiful messages that I've learned. And at the same time I am aware of, especially in the United States, how the industrial industrialized animal production works and how that's so bad for the production of greenhouse gasses, especially methane, it got to a point that I knew too much. And I felt here, here we go again, back to that concept that I couldn't tell people don't eat meat anymore. But I said, You know what, I'm going to stop eating meat, I'm going to transition slowly into a plant based diet for the sake of the planet, and because of all these, all these things that I know that I cannot no longer avoid or turn my back into. And then the third layer, which is a simple one, but very impactful, was my own health. I've always had, since I was six years old, battled with issues of obesity of my body, you know, I tend to gain weight very quickly. There's a lot of third world food insecurity embedded into me and you know, that's a whole conversation, but at one point, I was dealing with really high levels of cholesterol, triglycerides, etc. And this at the same time, right that, you know, again, I'm exposed to these vast amount of information. So I said, I'm gonna give it a try. I'm gonna go plant weeks and three months after I switch to a plant based diet, all of my blood work levels were perfect. Not even decent. They were perfect. And that was that's, that's ultimately what sold me I said, You know what, this again, these are layers. I'm doing it for the planet. I'm doing it for my integrity, but I'm also doing it for my health. Carley Hauck 14:47 Fabulous, thank you. Well, you talk about in, you know, layer two this broken food system, which we're gonna have to be solving and fixing for quite a long time, not just in the United States but all over the world. And then I loved hearing kind of that more personal investment, and the amazing results that you've seen in adopting a plant based, maybe vegan, would you would you say your diet is mostly vegan? Alejandra Schrader 15:17 When I talk about plant based. And I think that there are many definitions out there. But the main difference for me is, as opposed to going to the supermarket and navigating the refrigerated aisles section finding vegan sausage, vegan pizza, vegan chicken, I stay on the perimeters of the store and I really use produce, and vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, algae, fungi, but I eat mushrooms to create beautiful and delicious dishes. And I try to stay away from vegan products that are a little more processed and less healthy. So that's why I like to focus more on the plant based nomenclature, because this is one that I identify more with. Carley Hauck 16:09 And that's helpful, I think, for our listeners, because I think a lot of people can get confused on, okay, what's plant based? What's whole foods? What's vegan? And so that was very specific. I appreciate that. Alejandra Schrader 16:26 Yes. And, and one more piece again, because sometimes people get too hung up, I will, if you will, on the terminology. You know, there's times where I've traveled to the Northern Triangle and Central America to do some work on the field. And there's genuinely nothing else to eat it true story than beans and cheese. And so, you know, if I spent a significant amount of time there, I can only eat so many beans, you know, to sad that there were more vegetables available in a land that is so frugal and fertile. But so there's been times in my plant based diet journey where I have had some dairy, soy mixed in and so on and I think that's another big difference between plant based and vegan is that we avoid animal source products, and focus on a wider variety of plant based ingredients. Carley Hauck 17:23 Wonderful. And I tend to eat very whole food based as well, I love fruits and vegetables. And I'm also not eating dairy products and really limiting my meat sources very much so I can eat in a much similar way. I wanted to talk a little bit about food waste, because this is an area that you focus on a lot in the beginning of the book. And I'm going to actually just take this quote directly from your book, you said, “About 1/3 of the global food supply never gets eaten. Food loss occurs during the post harvest and processing phases of food production, while food waste occurs on the consumption side of food systems. When edible food, when edible, good food goes unconsumed food waste and loss accounts for 6% of all carbon emissions, which is more than three times the global aviation. There are more than 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, co2 due to throwing food away in the garbage and not composting. And Americans throw away about 20% of food that they buy.” And so you and I both live in California. Correct. And what was so encouraging to me was that the beginning of this year, California put a statewide mandate that everybody has to compost. Now I've been composting for a long time, and I imagine that you have to, but I just am so excited about that. Because my hope and desire is that other states are going to follow suit. So let's talk a little bit about food waste. Alejandra Schrader 19:15 Yes. So from the, you know, I wrote, I wrote this book in the second half of 2020. And I just want to update because some of these figures have actually gone up. Some studies show that even up to 40% of the food that Americans are buying are ending up in the trash, which is pretty sad and worrisome. Also the fact that as consumers we really cannot do much about the food that is being lost in the production phase of the food supply chain. Maybe we can do a little bit there are some companies like Imperfect Foods where they try to recuperate some of these, which actually are being thrown away, because most consumers will go to the store and be like, well, this apple is not as big as this other one, or it has a tiny bruise or, you know, or the color has some discoloration. And, you know, and so here's where we as consumers can also become more, you know, more conscious about the food that we demand so that the suppliers don't feel the need to, to let food go to waste. But what we can do, definitely as consumers is then, you know, buy in a conscious way so that we don't have so much stuff at home that a lot of it is, you know, becoming spoiled and having to throw it away, that when we do dine out and we ask for that little bag, or that little box that we actually consume that instead of just tossing it in the trash, and that we do a better job at what I like to say, the utilizing the investment, maximizing the investment that we've made in food. And that's where we get to use ingredients that are ingredients or parts of the plant that are traditionally thrown in the trash. A lot of times I go to the market and my heart shrinks when I see people ripping the greens of carrots and leaving them on the shelves and just taking the carrots home. Or when we get home and we buy these beautiful radishes with radish greens. And usually they get caught off and thrown in the trash. There is a lot of nourishment, a lot of phytochemicals, and good for us stuff and all of these elements that are being thrown away that why I mean, it took a lot of resources for Mother Earth to help you know water, you name it, to help them grow. And so we should find creative ways to utilize them whether we make pesto sauce with the carrot greens, whether we make a chimichurri with the radish greens, whether we actually wash them really well and use them as a salad, make a salsa verde or use them instead of cilantro. And like those two, there are so many, so many ingredients that are being thrown away. That's why I talk about using the plant from root to leaf as much as the plant as we can. That way we honor those resources that went into, into growing them. And there are some studies that talk about how much we can minimize our individual carbon footprints by just doing these small changes. And I think that to me that it just makes me feel like I have so much power, like a lot of people say, Oh, well, you know, I've tried to do something for the environment, I'm gonna start using paper straws. It's not impactful, it's not enough, you know, we can do a lot more. And if we take responsibility for the fact that our actions can make a big difference, I think people will be more likely to make some of these changes at home. Carley Hauck 22:58 Thank you for that, you know, one of the other things that you mentioned is and, and this was something that happened in the midst of a pandemic, you know, a lot of people were getting to-go's right. And so a lot of people were also cooking at home. But I think to add to your point, when you go and you're, you know, buying food from a restaurant, you can actually bring your own container, you know, because the pandemic has definitely calmed down a bit, I think people didn't feel like they can even bring their own container, but you can bring your own container so that we're not continually adding more and more plastic to our soil to our air to our water. And one of the other things that you were mentioning around you know, eating a more plant based diet and whole foods is the link to the carbon that's coming when we're eating more agriculture, or rather livestock. And one of the things that we also need to be mindful of is the water consumption. And so you know, we have an infinite amount of water. And as more and more people are living on this planet, and the more resources that we need to grow food, we need to find ways that are sustainable, to be able to feed everyone and again, you know, eating from root to leaf, and eating more of these plants is going to reduce our need for more and more water and it's also going to lower our carbon footprint. Alejandra Schrader 24:29 Exactly. Well said. Carley Hauck 24:31 some things that I was thinking about. What are some of the favorite ways that you, you know, might reuse recipes? I know you have some ideas or not even reused recipes but reuse food so you know we tend to always have leftovers right? And I'm a big proponent of eating all my leftovers. I don't want any food going to waste but how are you maximizing for that when you think about your kitchen right now at home? Alejandra Schrader 24:58 Well so in my own kitchen, and granted, that is just my husband and I until recently, and even then my son is an infant. So he eats, he doesn't eat yet the same food as we do, because I've tried to prevent him from eating salt and other ingredients. But even though we're a small household, and actually I like to see that as an asset, then what that means is, one meal can last me for longer for many for more days than in other families where there are more people. I always talk about, you know, finding a day like a meal prepping day in your week where you can allocate to four hours on a Sunday afternoon, and you can cook up onto stuff so that you can actually separate it into smaller containers. And some dishes are actually fabulous in the, you know, to freeze and reheat later, especially stews I love. Actually, I believe that it gets even more of enhanced flavor when you freeze and then reheat, I don't know, lentils through this, or maybe some curry, or maybe after gene, there's just, there's just something about sitting there for a while and then being reheated. And then that way, we only eat what we can for the day or the next couple of days. And then we get to free something else. And then, you know, a month from now, a lot of these foods are good to freeze for even six months. So that would be sort of like one way to cook smart. And to avoid food waste by saving stuff for later. I love to repurpose foods and I think that some cooks, when they're less versed in the kitchen, may feel a little more intimidated by this. But I always I always think it's a good idea to think like how can I turn this leftover pasta dish into a casserole, maybe I just add a little more sauce and sprinkle little cheese and put it in the oven it leaded grit, you know, create a beautiful grated internalization on the top and wa-la, you know, now you have a new dish. But I think that the biggest impact is probably from the kind of food waste, where we again are utilizing parts of the vegetable, the fruit that we traditionally don't like, if I'm gonna peel potatoes to make a match, I'm going to save those fields. And I'm going to toss them in the oven with a little olive oil and salt and pepper until they get crisp. And now I can scoop my hummus or my guacamole with it. And I use them as chips or crackers instead of throwing away and I know sort of like trust me on this one that I saved my banana peels, and I poached them I scraped the inner membrane, I shred them. And now I can make a delicious pulled fork type of ingredient. And to sort of attest that this works. This is actually what I just served. Last month I went to Cali Colombia to help open like it was the inauguration of the newest seed bank a, gene bank by the CGIR. And there were 220 people in attendance. And I get up and the first thing I say is I love to cook with trash, and I am going to serve you. Instead of meat, I'm gonna make a shredded banana peel dish. And I think people you know tilted their heads a little bit. But everyone was so blown up that they could call me to their tables to tell me how much they had left. So having an open mind that has a lot to do with the success of this event. And I just encourage people to try to be a little daring when it comes to food waste. Carley Hauck 29:04 Thank you for sharing some of the recipes and the ways that you're doing that at home right now. That's inspiring. I wanted to pivot a little bit into travel. And you actually just spoke about how you are in Colombia. One of the things that I've been thinking about when we think about lowering our carbon footprint, you know, it's not only in how we're eating, but it's how we're traveling. And as the world is starting to open up again, and we're getting on planes more and we're traveling more. The way that we used to travel I don't feel was very sustainable. You know, we go to Paris for a week from New York or from California and we come back. And when you're traveling as a tourist, you're usually accumulating a lot of plastic, you're eating out a lot and not to mention the carbon that is occurring from the plane, you know. And then the way that travel typically, you know is happening is that we're given all this single use plastics. And so this has always been a problem. But we have more consciousness. Now we know that the way that we were traveling, the way that we were eating was not going to support a thriving world or planet. So I wanted to use some of our conversation today to bring a little more awareness to inspire more conscious action. And so I was just in Austin last week for a conference and I had the opportunity to stay with a friend. But I also really wanted to stay with a friend because I knew that that would actually minimize some of the waste that I would have if I stayed in an Airbnb or in a hotel. And so we did a lot of cooking while we were there, and anything that we ate out, I brought home and I ate it, I had very, very little food waste, I was so happy about that. Austin also is an area of Texas that composts. And what was interesting is the friend that I was staying with had a green compost bin in their backyard. But she wasn't composting. Her family wasn't composting, I thought what is going on, but they just weren't thinking about it. They thought that that was only for yard waste. So I showed them how easy it was. As a going away gift, I got them a compost bin and you know, compost baggies. And in fact, I got a text from her this morning, she said that it was almost completely full yesterday. Yes, you kiddos. So the kids or now composting. Now, not every state or city has a composting program. But we know that when we're regenerating the soil, that we're actually extracting carbon from the atmosphere, putting it in the soil instead of it going into the ocean, which is then creating more warming and acidification of all of our marine animals. So I'm bringing all of this because I think it's important that we start to think if we're going to be traveling, how can it be more regenerative? How can we be finding ways to cook to eat less out to be more mindful of the plastics that we're bringing, whenever I go travel, I always bring my own water bottles so that the flight attendants can pour water directly into my bottle, we need to minimize the single use plastics because only 7% actually gets recycled, the rest of its going into our soil and to our food into our water. And I'm going to pause there because I'd love to hear any of your thoughts. Alejandra Schrader 32:41 Yes, I mean, you've touched upon so many interest in so subjects within this greater topic. First of all, you're absolutely right about traveling period, right, like, not all of us and, and I'll, I'll use this to, to, to plug in something I've been sort of joking about but I really mean it, you know, like I am so grateful for, for the for the younger generations that are really really really fighting the good fight. And not all of us can be Greta Thunberg. So you know, when I go do these very meaningful events that I travel for, I couldn't really, you know, get on a sailboat and go across the Atlantic each time. And so I make it a point that the purpose of the treat of the trip is valuable and meaningful enough to in a way offset the carbon generated by it, by the trip itself. I actually when it comes to vacations, we much rather go on road trips as a family especially now that we have a little one but also on my day to day live and and again as a way to offset the carbon footprint that I'm generating by my sporadic business trips is we've you know, we walk and we use a lot of non motorized transportation methods like bike and I live in a very walkable communities so I am very fortunate to have access to goods and services within walking distance or bike rides. And then again, yes, you're absolutely right about that when we do have to travel and jump on a plane like you know, making small changes from bringing the water bottle to actually packing in our own food. We get to eat healthier than eating airport food if we bag our own. I don't know roasted seeds and dry and dry fruits and so forth. I'm a big fan of silicone bags so that we don't have to keep throwing away these little Ziploc baggies. They freeze great by the way. And then you talked about compost, and it is true compost is something that we should all be practicing a little bit more. But I want to just sort of shed light on it. I have a little graphic in my book that it's like an inverted pyramid. And while composting is great, there are other things that we get to do with our food waste that are not just more meaningful, but best utilized for the greater purpose of reducing our carbon footprint. And, you know, a lot of times food that is perfectly good, gets to be thrown away because no one likes it or, or, you know, no one's gonna eat it, we should be considering gifting that food, especially here in the state of California, we have a lot of homeless populations that we could help or even donate the food to shelters and things like that. Yeah, and then there are other layers like we've been trying to repurpose it for your pet or things like that. And then you know, compos being the last one. So just trying to find creative ways. And I'll give you one little example, when you are foot foot prepping, and you have like the shells of your audience, or the caps of your bell peppers, or, and I mean shells, like the little skins that you remove from garlic, or the base of your salary, or the tops of a carrot.You put all that in a silicone bag, you say you do purchase and invest in a big silicone bag like a pound to bow. And every time you have some of these scraps, you put it in this bag, and you keep it in your freezer. And whenever that bag is full, you put it in a big pot, add four to six quarts of water and you make a delicious vegetable broth. Carley Hauck 37:00 I knew you were gonna say that. I would. That sounds amazing. Speaking of plastic bags, as I was actually coming back from Austin, I was there for almost 10 days for some professional development and, and a culture summit. But I always bring my own food on the plane because it's healthier and then I don't, you know, inherit any more plastic. But I was sitting next to this Indian couple, they were older. And they brought out their bags of peas and rice. And it was and they were just eating it out of the bag. And then here I was with my little Tupperware of all vegetables and some nuts. And we were all eating it at the same time. And I said, Are you vegetarian? And they said yes. And I. And I said, I love vegetables too. And it was just so fun. We were all eating our, you know, brought food and I was like, Ooh, what do they have? And so anyway, yeah, yeah, you can create a culture around it on the plane. So I know we only have a little bit longer. But I wanted to also ask you about your inner game, Alejandra, because it was clear to me that you had cultivated a strong inner game. And for those that have been listening to the podcast, the inner game is the internal operating system that really impacts how we show up in the world. And so what do you feel like you have really, maybe dive deeper on as your commitment to your self growth, let's say in the last year, I know that you were birthing this book at about the same time you were birthing this brand new little boy into the world. Alejandra Schrader 38:44 Yes. And that's such a meaningful question for me, because especially when the pandemic hit, and I as a small business owner, took a big hit. And yet again, professionally, I found myself in despair. I had to really tap you know, until my inner self and remember the kind of resilience that I have built throughout my life. Trust that when I've thrown a curveball a lot of times is life just presented me the opportunity to take on a new challenge. It happened, you know, in 2009 when I lost in quotes my career in planning and development and I was quote, forced into the culinary world. And, and especially because the way in which I was living is it was not sustainable working 60 to 70 hours a week, not dedicating enough time to self care to my husband, to the quality of my life. It was only normal and perfect that I had to lose my business when the pandemic hit so that the opportunities were created. So that, one, I finally after eight years of pursuing a book deal, got it. And that after decades of being married, I became pregnant, something that I actually wanted. And I didn't have the means of just being fully transparent, the financial means to get myself or to put myself through, let's just say fertilization methods, and to go on to grow two babies at the same time. I also had to tap into something that is so important for me now, which is empathy for myself, as a way to be more empathetic towards others, to have a greater awareness of my purpose, of my assets of what I am, what am I able to bring to the table, and to finally, and this actually is getting me really emotional to show up authentically to no longer try to be a chameleon to adapt to, to pretend to be someone that I'm not just so that I am liked, just so that I am accepted. And, you know, looking back, I'm like of course! Only when I allowed myself that opportunity to play my inner game skills, everything unfolded into what I now have, the opportunities that I'm given, just the great responsibility that I have for and this passion that is bursting. And I have the means to practice it, to share it and to empower others with. Carley Hauck 42:11 Beautiful. Y'all, you can't see Alejandra, but I can and she's just shining, which is, as you know the title of this podcast. So there are so many me too's, that I can relate to and that and I, I don't know if you felt this way, but when I was actually going through the journey of writing this book, which was four years, and then it actually came out last year, it was really a birthing of myself, you know, to have to continually talk and show up again and again and again, in service of this message, which is really in service of waking humanity up for the greatest good, you know, there are tests, there are challenges, you have to own it, you have to embody it, you have to show up, you have to walk it, and I am really grateful for what that has, what has evolved in me as a result of that, can you relate to that? Alejandra Schrader 43:18 Oh, absolutely. And to trust, to trust that, in that part is so hard as a, you know, I was born in the States, but I grew up in South America and as a woman of color that felt like an immigrant that, you know, it's it feeling the need to control it was so, you know, such a big part of who I was, and I and I felt like it had to be that way. And the moment that I let go, and I just allowed for things to happen. And I trusted that I was taking care of and that as long as I did that work, as long as I put the right energy into doing the work, everything was, you know, everything's gonna work out. Now, I don't even question it. I know, I know. And, and to, you know, to be a sort of, like, I couldn't have any any more tangible evidence that that is true than my book, my child and all of these beautiful, amazing opportunities to really be such an like, you know, I get to be a steward of the planet. Now I get to, you know, I often say that my book is the love letter to Mother Earth written from my kitchen. And now I get to talk to decision makers and impactful people, high profile officials and cetera about this message and I hope to make a big difference. And now I have the platform to do it. Carley Hauck 44:55 You do, and it's so amazing. I love hearing about your journey. So as we're wrapping up, tell us about these two events you have coming out in May and June. Were you get to do this? Alejandra Schrader 45:07 Yes. So, in May, I am invited to speak at the 75th World Health Assembly, which is the decision making body of the World Health Organization in Geneva. And I am part of a side event where the launch of the periodic table of food initiative is taking place, it's May 22. And I get to come and talk about my favorite subject: food waste and sustainability, eating within planetary boundaries. And then in June, I was invited to speak at the Women in Food and Agriculture Summit, the WFP summit in Frankfort. And, and again, I'm going to have the platform to talk about, you know, sustainable food systems, and hopefully, hopefully, you know, like, light up that spark, and yet another or a couple few or 100 individuals so that we can all start working towards a more sustainable future. Carley Hauck 46:12 Thank you, well, I know you're gonna send me those show links. And we will provide them for our listeners to tune into. You also have a really fun Instagram account with beautiful recipes, I actually have picked out one of your recipes from your book, it's the zucchini noodle and portobello steak, which in the show notes so folks can go and you know, cook that up. And I hope people will go and find your book and find some really fun inspiration for the spring and summer. Wherever you are listening in from. And is there. Is there anything else that you want to leave our listeners with? Alejandra Schrader 46:51 I just say, I would just say like, you know, you don't have to say yes, but you can stop saying no. And, and I say that in regards to trying to make meaningful shifts to the way that you eat, and that you think about food. And, if that's saying yes means trying one new vegetable every week, maybe not having an animal source product one meal a day, maybe even practicing meatless Mondays, there's not too small of a change, every small action can make big wonderful effects as part of a collective action. Carley Hauck 47:36 Well, Alejandra, thank you so much for your wisdom, for your service. I look forward to staying connected and just seeing how this light continues to spread and inspire so many others. And if there's a way that I can support you, please feel free to reach out. Alejandra Schrader 47:55 Thank you so much. It means so much to us what a wonderful conversation. I'm very grateful. Carley Hauck 48:04 Thank you so much, Alexandra for your voice, your passion, sharing your story. I'll link to all the wonderful resources Alejandra mentioned in the show notes. As you heard, we can mitigate climate change, protect our resources by eating mostly whole foods plants, being mindful of how we cook, how we even use our food scraps, and how we can reduce the consumption of meat so that there is more for everyone, and we're taking good care of the planet. While there are many plant based and alternative protein products coming into the market. What is also part of these new products is plastic and packaging. And what I'd like to invite as you start to move towards a more vegan plant based diet is that you focus on buying more fruits and vegetables. Buy foods in bulk. Bring your own bags, use your own utensils when you're traveling or when you're just out and about keep them in your car. Use water bottles, instead of buying plastic bottles. And even keep a to-go plastic container or maybe a metal container in your car so that when you do go out to eat when you have leftovers, you don't have to take another plastic container. All of this plastic is going into our soil or water, our oceans. Only 7% of plastic is actually recyclable. So in our efforts to focus and optimize our wellbeing, the planet's wellbeing our families or communities, we have to get rid of this plastic consumption. So my invitation: How can you minimize your plastic this week? This year? And as a way to support you to reduce your meat consumption, I want to tell you about this fabulous conference that I'll be attending from May 12 through 14th. That's right outside of the Bay Area, I believe there will be a virtual opportunity as well. The tickets are really affordable. And I believe they're not turning anyone away. And this is the fourth annual summit, they had to push pause because of a pandemic. I will be attending, the organizer Brian invited me. I am so delighted. And Bruce Friedrich, who was our first interview of the season, who is the co-founder of The Good Food Institute, Brian actually worked for Bruce years ago. So if you missed that interview, which is Standing For a Good Food System, you definitely want to listen to that one. But going back to the Reducetarian Summit May 12 through 14th, definitely check that out. The link is in the show notes. And if you can't attend, there is also a cookbook that Brian has written and his documentary Meat Me Halfway, yes, m-e-a-t me halfway, came out last summer, and I highly recommend it. All of these links will be in the show notes. The SHINE podcast has been self sponsored since May 2019. It is freely offered from my heartfelt desire to be in service and support of a workplace and world that works for everyone and is living in greater harmony with the Earth from conscious inclusive leadership and socially responsible business practices. I would love and appreciate your support so that I can continue to have these wonderful interviews with inspiring leaders bringing science tips and evidence to your ears. And you can donate and support me by going to my Patreon page www.patreon.com/carleyhauck, the link is in the show notes. Your generosity helps so much. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends, family or colleagues. If you have questions, comments or topics you'd like me to address, please email me. I would love to hear from you support@carleyhauck.com. Until we meet again, and that's going to be really soon my friend because I have another fabulous episode coming out on Earth Day. Oh, I can't wait to share it with you. But until we meet again, be the light and shine your light.
Imagine meat that's cultured in factory tanks instead of grown on a farm. Thinks it's a fantasy of the future? They're already selling it in Singapore - and professional tasters can't tell the difference between the laboratory and the farm-raised version. Bruce Friedrich, CEO of the Good Food Institute, joins us again to explain how pathbreaking companies are "cultivating" meat from animal cells - and how it could help solve some of the world's most dangerous problems.
Bruce Friedrich, former master strategist at PETA, streaked naked past Buckingham Palace with "GoVeg" painted on his body. Like that tactic or not, you'll be astonished as Bruce explains how you can fight global poverty, help prevent a medical crisis, fight climate change - and prevent massive suffering - simply by cutting back on (or shunning) farm-raised meat.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Potential Theories of Change for the Animal Advocacy movement, published by James Ozden on February 9, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary Changing the world is complicated, and I think we're more likely to succeed by taking several different promising approaches rather than only the most cost-effective one or two. I think this will make the animal advocacy movement more robust to various failure modes or different ways the world could turn out. I don't think this is happening currently: it doesn't seem that we have a well-diversified animal advocacy movement in terms of differing theories of change or strategies. I currently think that we're on a bad trajectory for farmed animals over the next approximately fifty years, with a 55% chance that farmed animal suffering will remain large or get worse. I think we can do more to learn from other movements to understand which theories of change were the most effective for comparable issues. In other words, more research is needed. There are some other theories of change that might merit more attention with effective animal advocacy, such as policy advocacy, especially in developing countries, international movement building and culturally delegitimising animal products. Caveat: This analysis is farmed animal suffering specific (i.e. doesn't include what might happen to wild animals) and speculative, with lots of value judgements. I've also simplified things quite a lot in my graphs, so take them with a pinch of salt. For these scenarios, I'm generally thinking on a 50 year timeline, give or take 10 years. Note: Thanks to Bruce Friedrich for some alternative protein-related comments. Cross-posted from a newsletter that I'll be writing on more frequently if anyone is interested. Introduction Based on this previous Forum post, a following comment and related conversations, I've tried to map out some ways the animal advocacy movement might turn out over the next 30-50 years. This is highly speculative but I think it's interesting nonetheless and hope it inspires some discussion on the topic. The key things I would be interested in is: Are there likely future scenarios that I've missed completely? Which scenarios do people predict being the most likely? How do we ensure that the best scenarios end up happening? What portfolio of advocacy strategies maximises our chances of success based on potential future outcomes? I've tried to illustrate my thinking and intuitions in diagrams, which can be seen below. I would outline the five different scenarios I've mapped out as: Technology optimistic scenario: Alternative proteins, primarily cultivated meat, reach cost competitiveness with the cheapest animal products and displace animal products from the food system. Animal suffering drops significantly. Heavy regulation scenario: Significant welfare reform wins (e.g. all animals cage free, maybe the end of confined animal feeding operations) and high regulation of animal industry which significantly increases production costs of animal protein. Animal suffering drops significantly. Moral advocacy optimistic: Significant moral advocacy wins e.g. abolishing factory farming but little success with alternative proteins, but animal suffering drops significantly. Business as usual: Welfare reforms continue with no transformative changes (e.g. factory farming continues and alternative proteins aren't cost competitive). Animal suffering remains considerably large. Worst case: Animal product production continues to rise, especially in countries with low welfare standards, with no other transformative breakthroughs. This means animal suffering grows even larger than what it is currently. I haven't mapped out the scenarios for significant welfare wins or moral advocacy success with alternative protein success as I believe alternative pro...
We are kicking off season six with a conversion about the important topic of taking a stand for a good food system. I have the privilege and the delight to start this season with my friend Bruce Friedrich. Bruce is the CEO and founder of The Good Food Institute and he oversees their global strategy, working with the US leadership team and international managing directors to ensure that the Good Food Institute is maximally effective at implementing programs that deliver mission focused results. In this inspiring interview, Bruce and I talk about the importance of taking a stand for a good food system. We speak about how he got started in the plant based and cultivated meat industry, and one of the best ways we can mitigate the warming of the planet, which is to increase the plant based and cultivated meat products and policy to support these products to market so that we can reduce the meat on our plates. Bruce also shares some fascinating statistics and science on this topic for our listeners, as the Good Food Institute is one of the incredible vehicles that supports the research policy and industry in this space worldwide. Lastly, we talk about the future of food being a combination of plant based and cultivated meat. Many big food companies are supporting and adopting this necessary and sustainable shift. This is one of the many interviews of the season that will support you to optimize your inner game so you can lead consciously at work in the world. Thanks for tuning in. Guest Links: Bruce Friedrich https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucegfriedrich/ GFI on Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/thegoodfoodinstitute/?hl=en https://futurefoodtechsf.com/ The Next Global Agricultural Revolution Ted Talk by Bruce Friedrich- https://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_friedrich_the_next_global_agricultural_revolution?language=en GFI.org https://carleyhauck.com/podcast/43-the-future-of-food-is-cultivated-meat-with-curt-albright SHINE Links: Book Carley for Speaking — https://carleyhauck.com/speaking Leading from Wholeness Learning & Development — https://carleyhauck.com/learning-and-development Executive Coaching with Carley — https://carleyhauck.com/executive-coaching Contact Carley — https://carleyhauck.com/contact Well Being Resources: Carley's Book — https://carleyhauck.com/shinebook Inner Game Meditations — https://carleyhauck.com/meditations Doterra — https://www.doterra.com/US/en/site/carleyhauck 4 Sigmatic — 15% Discount code Shine — https://us.foursigmatic.com/?rfsn=4405553.d15cc7&discount=SHINE Social: LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/carley-hauck/ IG — https://www.instagram.com/carley.hauck/ Website — https://www.carleyhauck.com Newsletter — https://www.leadfromlight.com Website Page — https://carleyhauck.com/podcast Carley's Patreon Page — https://www.patreon.com/carleyhauck The Imperfect Shownotes 0:01 Carley Hauck Hi, welcome to the SHINE podcast. My name is Carley Hauck and I am your host. This podcast focuses on the science, spiritual perspective, and the application of conscious, inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices that you can cultivate to be the kind of leader our world needs now, I will be facilitating two to three episodes a month. And before I tell you about our incredible guest and interview today, please go over to Apple podcasts and hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any wonderful episodes. For those of you joining for the first time, welcome. This season is going to focus on topics related to optimizing how we live, work, and play. So that we can cultivate a strong inner game. The inner game is what I refer to, in my book, Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and In the World as the internal operating model that we can develop on the inside. So we bring our whole and best selves to our teams, our workplaces, our community, and our relationships. The inner game rules the outer game, and I have the privilege and the delight to start season six off with my friend Bruce Friedrich and he has a pretty badass inner game y'all. We are going to be talking about the important topic of taking a stand for a good food system. Bruce is the CEO and founder of The Good Food Institute. And in this inspiring interview, we speak about how he got started in the plant based and cultivated meat industry. We talk about one of the best ways we can mitigate the warming of the planet, which is to increase the plant based and cultivated meat products and policy to support these products to market so that we can reduce the meat on our plates. In fact, a recent study from the UK a few weeks ago just documented that 40%, 47%, of carbon emissions are not coming from transportation, which is where most of governmental resources go to but livestock farms and the way that we eat. If we can bring mindfulness to our food and consumption patterns and habits, we will ensure a more regenerative world and thus can bring back wild forests and have all the sustenance that nature provides. In this interview, Bruce also shares some fascinating statistics and science on this topic for our listeners, as the Good Food Institute is one of the incredible vehicles that supports the research policy and industry in this space worldwide. Lastly, we talk about the future of food being a combination of plant based and cultivated meat because the majority of food companies are supporting and adopting this necessary and sustainable shift. Bruce oversees the Good Food Institute's global strategy working with the US leadership team and international managing directors to ensure that the Good Food Institute is maximally effective at implementing programs that deliver mission focused results. He is a TED Fellow and his 2019 TED talk has been viewed 2 million times and translated into dozens of languages. He has been called the American food hero by Eating Well magazine. He graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics. This is one of the many interviews of this season that will support you to optimize your inner game so you can lead consciously at work in the world. Thanks for tuning in. Carley Hauck 4:30 Hello, everyone. I am so excited to share with you a wonderful leader and human. Bruce Friedrich, thank you so much for being on the Stein Podcast. Bruce Friedrich 4:43 I'm delighted to be here, Carley, thanks so much for having me. Carley Hauck 4:46 Thank you. Well, Bruce we met last year and I have just been so impressed and inspired. I've been following your journey for a couple years but I finally, I think I just posted something about you on LinkedIn because I couldn't contain my enthusiasm anymore. And I'm just so excited to share your story and your leadership today. So, before we go deep into your journey of conscious, inclusive leadership, how would you define conscious, inclusive leadership? And why is that important to you? Bruce Friedrich 5:24 Well, let me start currently by thanking you for that insanely kind introduction, undeserved, but super gracious. And I'm really grateful. Conscious, inclusive leadership. I mean, it's, it feels cliche, but I really do like the concept of servant leadership. And there has been a lot written about servant leadership. And at least for me, I've mostly found it, I've mostly found servant leadership writing to really be quite good. But the phrase basically encapsulates the concept really well. And so I'm not gonna, I think, add much color for people who are versed in it. But really recognizing that the role of leadership is to help people vocationally self-actualize. So for all of my time, or close to all of my time, running organizations or running departments, what I have tried to do is provide a space where people remember why they're doing the work they're doing. And that's particularly easy to do at some place, like the Good Food Institute, and probably pretty easy to do, that most nonprofit organizations, you have a mission, you have a vision. Everybody who is there is already excited about the mission and the vision. And it's just taking the time to, as frequently as it doesn't get old for team members, remind people that although things can sometimes feel a bit like grind, the mission and the vision or they're helping us to charge forward. So for GFI, radically transforming the way that food is made with all of the benefits that I imagine we'll be chatting a little bit more about. And reminding people sort of keeping people on the team and focused on that. Which is easier said than done to some degree. But I think at a nonprofit organization, not that difficult. And then the other two elements of vocational self actualization. I really love Daniel Pink's book Drive, which is about this topic. And the other two things that he talks about. One of them is putting people into roles where they feel challenged, but not too challenged. As somebody who's spent a couple years teaching in inner city, Baltimore, through Teach for America, and studied education at Johns Hopkins, it's kind of the theme also of how education works. And how you move somebody forward. If it's too easy, you're outside the sweet spot. And if it's too hard if people throw up their hands and disengage. And I think that same concept is what you're going for, as a leader, leading a team. And then the third element is sometimes called autonomy. Although oftentimes people get the wrong idea about vocational autonomy and think it means do whatever you want to do, which, obviously it doesn't, people are at the organization and hired into specific roles. And at least at GFI, we set objectives and key results. So everybody is responsible for the key results that they have set on an annual basis, and then we recalibrate a couple times a year. So we're checking in three times a year in total on key results. So we've sort of reframed autonomy as significant reliance on the team at the frontline team member, to be the one who figures out how the work gets done. I'm still part of a team, you know, people are counting on you, but people are also supporting you. But strong mission, strong like focus on mission and a high degree of autonomy to figure out how to get the work done. And then challenge but not to challenge and the role of the conscious inclusive leader is to create that for people to help people self actualize in their vocations. Carley Hauck 10:03 Hmm, that's wonderful. Yeah, I love the reference to servant leadership and the focus on mission autonomy. And really focusing more on results versus, you know, checking. Did you do this? Right, you know, which I think, typically tends to be old fashioned performance reviews, but they're not really empowering, or inspiring people to bring their best. Bruce Friedrich 10:29 Yeah, yeah, I think that's sort of the micro managerial mindset is pretty demoralizing for people. And, and I think what's like a GFII, we do have a very rigorous hiring process. And, and we treat the idea, we really want people to come to GFI with full awareness of what the organization is that they're joining. So our hiring process gives people a bit of a snapshot into that. But we also want to make sure that once we bring people onto the team, we feel confident, once they're on-boarded and trained, we feel confident, relying on them to represent the organization and to do the work without anything that approaches or might even look like micromanagement. So we do, we go out of our way to hire phenomenally competent, and also extraordinarily kind team members. And if we get that right, which we do the vast majority of the time, that makes conscious, inclusive leadership for the people on the leadership team a lot easier to feel confident leading in that way. Carley Hauck 11:47 Wonderful. Yeah. You're definitely looking and scanning for the right people to meet the culture. So tell our listeners more about the trajectory of GFI, the Good Food Institute, when it started, how it evolved, where it is today, what is the vision going forward? Bruce Friedrich 12:12 Um, wow, that is a big, Carley Hauck 12:16 It's a mouthful. Try to put it into, you know, a couple bites, if you can. Bruce Friedrich 12:22 Yeah. So the genesis of GFI, was really looking at what the Beyond Meat folks, Ethan Brown and his team and the Impossible Foods folks, Pat Brown and his team, and at that point, Hampton Creek now, Eat Just, and this idea that we have been for decades, educating people with a view toward convincing them that they should eat less meat or no meat. And the brainstorm of the folks in the alternative protein movement is that that endeavor will be facilitated in a colossal way, if we can give people alternatives that don't require sacrifice. So for decades, we've been trying to convince people that through the moral weight of the argument to eat less meat or no meat, and per capita meat consumption, even in developed economies, where education is the greatest, it just keeps going up. So illustrative of that, is that even in the United States, where people best understand the external costs of meat production, per capita, meat consumption was the highest it had been in recorded history. In 2019 it went up, in 2020. I haven't seen figures for 2021. But I think the early predictions are that it will have gone up again in 2021. Carley Hauck 13:58 I feel so outraged hearing that that's a surprise. Wow. Bruce Friedrich 14:02 The remarkable thing about that, Carley is every, every year, in January and February, there are these articles about all of the people who are saying to pollsters that they are eating less meat, or no meat. And it's just not true, at least according to the statistics from USDA, and I think they're right. People are not good at evaluating their own behavior when they're answering questions and polls. There's the degree to which people say what their aspiration is. And it's sort of, I mean, it's similar to the vast numbers of people who if you ask them, Are you trying to lose weight? Will say yes, and yet, every single year for decades, obesity and overweight has gone up. So even as people understand what needs to happen, to not be overweight or obese, nevertheless, they need whole new colors for the maps to look at, you know what percentage of each state is overweight or obese on and it just gets worse and worse the same thing is true on with meat. People learn more and more about the external costs and harms. But where food is concerned physiology it's the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, its physiology. And for the vast majority of people, food is not something that is rational, and where ethics, or even weight loss figure in as much as people might prefer. And so at GFI, following the lead of companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods and Hampton Creek, leaning into the idea that instead of working against human nature, we can work with human nature. And we can give people the precise products that they are craving, but we can make them in a way that does not have the external costs. So we can create the precise meat experience using plants. Or we can create actual animal meat by culturing the meat, instead of growing vast quantities of crops and feeding it to animals with all of the global health and biodiversity and climate and animal cruelty harms that come with the current system. Carley Hauck 16:34 You've really honed in on the science, the policy, the research around these two distinct subjects in when we think about eating healthier, plant based, or the cultivation of clean meat, we could say or cultivated meat. And I know that there are lots of resources and education on the Good Food Institute around this. But I feel curious, you know, for you, your evolution, why does this matter so much to you? I mean, it's evident, you know, to me, but I'd love to hear so you can share with the listeners because, you know, again, there's an ethical, there's a conscious, deeper internal motivation that is driving you that not everybody has. And I'd love it if you could spark that in everyone. Bruce Friedrich 17:31 Well, I mean for me, for me, it does go all the way back to my confirmation classes in the mid 1980s. And reading Matthew 25, which is for me, it has to do with Catholicism, but I think you can put it into a context for any faith or no faith, like what does it mean to be an ethical human being in the world. And in a world where hundreds of millions of people are living a nutritional deficit, hundreds of millions of people, their caloric intake is not sustaining basic bodily function to the degree that 10s of millions of people die every year from nutrition deficit related causes. That was the thing that was motivating for me and starting GFI, the sort of foundational question was, how do we feed close to 10 billion people without burning the planet to a crisp. And if we're going to add another couple billion people by 2050, and we're already living in a world where somewhere on the order of 700 million people are living in extreme poverty, we need a system that where that doesn't require that the vast majority of calories that are created by our farm system are given to farm animals. So the most efficient animal at turning crops into meat is the chicken. And according to the World Resources Institute, it takes nine calories of crops to get one calorie back out in the form of chicken meat. That's literally 800% food waste. So for all of your listeners who are concerned about food waste, which I'm guessing is 100% of them. We are rightly outraged at the fact that something like 40% of all food that's produced is wasted. But the simple biological fact is if you feed eight calories to a chicken, nine calories to check to get one one calorie back out, you've wasted eight of those calories you've went to 800% food waste just in the nature of what the production system looks like. With cattle, it's 4,000% food waste 40 calories and to get one calorie back out in a world where hundreds of millions of people are living in extreme poverty. And that is just morally outrageous. And then you factor in climate change. Carley Hauck 19:55 And we're running out of water because we're in a drought. When we think about, for example, you mentioned the chicken, you know, eggs, and how much water it requires to, again, feed the chickens to be able to give them the feed, and then all the water loss as well. And you've mentioned Hampton Creek now, Eat Just, Josh Tetrick is a friend. And he's one of the leaders that I highlighted in my recent book. And so I talked to Josh many, many times really understanding his motivation, the journey of Just and how they've gotten to where they are, but you know, the product that they had been able to bring to market and distribute in a much bigger way is the just ag and they're also number ginning on the cultivated meatspace as well, just to add that in. Bruce Friedrich 20:47 Yeah, the United Nations released a 408 page report titled Livestock's Long Shadow. And they said, the inefficiency involved in growing crops to feed them to animals so that we can eat animals, you know, further to what you just said, if it takes nine calories into a chicken to get one calorie back out, that's nine times the water, nine times the herbicides and pesticides, nine times the land. And then for cattle, it's 40 times for pork, it's somewhere on the order of 13 to 15 times, for eggs or dairy, it's four to six times, that is just vast amounts of waste. And the UN report, they said, whatever environmental issue you're looking at, from the smallest and most local to the largest and most global, the inefficiency of producing animal foods is one of the top three causes. So shifting to making meat from plants, turning the meat directly into plants, or cultivating meat directly from cells, where you don't waste the vast majority of the calories fed to the animal on simply allowing the animal to exist or turning it into bones, or feathers or other bits of the animal that we don't eat. It's just a far more efficient process across all of the environment. And it also I mean, just two things to toss out quickly. One of them is antibiotic resistance, more than 70% of all antibiotics produced by the pharmaceutical industry globally are fed to farm animals. And that is leading to antibiotic resistance, which could lead to the end of modern medicine. No antibiotics are required for plant based or cultivated meat, so it takes the risk of your food causing antibiotic resistance from huge to zero. Carley Hauck 22:40 Let's talk about, for people that I'm sure you know, I'm sure are aware but why are they needing to feed antibiotics to all these animals? I mean, you and I know, but could you just lay it out? Bruce Friedrich 22:51 Um, it Yeah, it's two things. The first one is they discovered decades ago, if you feed antibiotics to farm animals for reasons that veterinarians still don't understand, the animals will convert food into meat significantly more quickly. And then they also discovered that factory farms are viable if you use prophylactic antibiotics. So you couldn't cram 50,000 chickens into a shed without colossal death losses, if you were not drugging the animals up prophylactically. So it's not that they're using antibiotics to treat sick animals, it's that they're using antibiotics to allow animals to live in intensive conditions that would otherwise kill vast numbers of them, and make the factory farming system less profitable. So it's kind of a dual benefit. And it's interesting, the number of times the pharmaceutical and industrial farming industry in the United States has gotten sort of another bite at the apple where FDA will say, okay, they're going to voluntarily not use antibiotics for growth promotion anymore. And front page news and the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, you know, victory on antibiotics and farm animals. And yet, year after year, since that announcement, maybe eight or 10 years ago, antibiotic use has actually gone up. Just the prescriptions no longer say that it's for growth promotion, they say it's to prophylactically keep the animals alive. And oh, hey, it also causes them to grow more quickly. Who knew? It's really sort of a remarkable example of the degree to which the agencies that are supposed to be regulating these industries, all that aren't. Carley Hauck 24:54 Well, thank you for laying all of that out for our listeners. So I know I asked you a very big question. And I'm tracking our conversation. So you know, we started off with your deeper motivation, of wanting to be more ethical, more conscious, maybe coming more from your early days, probably as a child, learning more about Catholicism, but also then seeing the total inefficiency of how are we going to feed all of these people with our limited resources, and with our ecosystem already under so much duress, and on top of that, this inhumane way of, you know, nourishing our bodies through cruelty towards the animals when it's not necessary. And so going back to the Good Food Institute, there's been a real focus on science and industry and policy around plant based products, but also around the science and development of cultivated meat. And I feel curious if you could share a little bit more about the science of cultivated meat, because you've already talked a bit about, you know, slaughter houses, so to speak, and livestock farms. And I think there's a lot of information that is not clear around cultivated meat and why that would be such a better option. Bruce Friedrich 26:26 Yeah, absolutely. And one thing just to say about GFI. And I guess, sort of this background for this conversation, on the GFI website, which is just GFI dot org is pretty much Wikipedia, plus, you know, Wikipedia with like scientific curation, on alternative proteins. So if you go there. Carley Hauck 26:48 Yes, it's fabulous. And we're gonna leave a link in the show notes. I know, the website's incredible. Bruce Friedrich 26:53 Thank you. And yes, if anybody would like a deeper dive into cultivated meat production, you can go there, you can get there either through in the top nav, upper left, clicking on cultivated, or if you want a deep dive into the science, one, row down, click on science, and that will. So there's sort of two ways to get there, depending on whether you're more interested in cultivated meat as your primary interest or the science of creating meat, without live animals as your primary motivation. But until GFI existed, nobody had plotted out the technological readiness of any of these technologies. So you had people like Ethan and Pat focused on creating meat from plants. Or you had, well, nobody really other than Uma Valetti, the point at which GFI started, it was the only company that had been founded. And he had just been accepted into the Indy Bio, into the Indy Bio Accelerator at roughly, well, actually, the exact same month that GFI started that I started working on GFI. So we sort of grew up together, which was fun. But with all of these companies, nobody had, it was I have an idea. And then I have a company, I have an idea. And then I have a company, and nobody had taken a step back and said what is the technological readiness of the idea of thorough biomimicry of meat with plants? What is the technological readiness of cultivating meat from cells? In other words, cross applying therapeutics technologies over to the food space? What are the critical technology elements? What are the areas that are clear? What are the areas that are super unclear? Where should we be applying our scientific inquisitivity and really answering these questions and publishing peer review articles and doing research. So GFI, probably the plurality of GFI team members across all of our offices around the world are scientists and it's basically attempting to open source the science in a way that will be helpful to these entire industries as well as the basic science that we're trying to generate more and more of on university campuses. And the thing that's better on both the the cultivated meat side and the plant based meat side and in the case of cultivated meat, it's basically just like you can take a seed or a cutting from a plant and bathe the seed in nutrients, put it in hospitable soil and cause the seed to grow into a plant. You can do the same thing with cells from a chicken or a pig or a cow or a salmon where you bathe the cells in nutrients and the cells multiply and grow and become actual chicken meat. or pork meat or salmon, meat, or whatever else but without the need for a live animal. And we've been doing that for quite a while in therapeutics, doing tissue engineering. And obviously, therapeutics is going to be a much more expensive endeavor, it's going to require medical grade ingredients. So the trick is to figure out how do you cross-apply what we already know to food. And it has all of the benefits we were just chatting about. There's no live animals, so there's no cruelty to animals, there's no need for antibiotics, there's no possibility of increasing pandemic risk. There is a fraction of the climate change, as well as a fraction of the land use required. And then all of the environmental benefits that we were talking about just a minute ago. Carley Hauck 30:56 Wonderful, well, thank you for sharing that. And we're seeing new products, you know, in all of these pretty much standard meats, you know, we're seeing products that are either cultivated or plant based in the seafood space, in the beef space, in the egg space. We already talked about Just, I'm in San Diego today. And a company that I've been following, and I'm feeling very excited about is BlueNalu. And they're based here. I also know that on your website, you have created a partnership with the World Sustainability Organization to start to certify plant based seafood products under the Friend of the Sea certification program so that people know that this is not, you know, harming the planet. Could you share a little bit more about that, too? That's very exciting. Bruce Friedrich 31:50 Yeah, thank you. We're, I mean, one of the things that we're really working hard to do is frame plant based and cultivated meat, as meat. So just like your phone, that probably most people listening, have a phone in their pocket or within reach, and it's your cell phone. 25 years ago, very few people were using phones that didn't have cords, and it's still a phone. 25 years ago, there was no camera phone that was invented I think 21 years ago in South Korea or Japan. And nevertheless, your camera is still a camera, even though it doesn't have analog film. So when we think about seafood in the case of the relationships that we're building with sustainable seafood certifiers, but also with terrestrial animals, this is not an alternative to meat. This is an alternative way of making meat. So what Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are doing is making meat but doing it from plants because meat is the experience of meat. It's not the production process of getting there. And similarly cultivated meat is meat and plant based and cultivated seafood are seafood. So in talking with the sustainable seafood certifiers about using their sustainable seafood certification on behalf of companies like BlueNalu. They're in San Diego, and then also companies like Good Catch and other plant based seafood companies. We think it is critically important to help consumers in the world recognize that this is the same product they love, just produced in a way that doesn't have all the harms. Carley Hauck 33:50 Mm hmm. Wonderful. Well, and when we think about climate change, I mean, protecting and saving our oceans is so important because if we don't have our oceans, like we're 70% water. I feel like there's such a need to really have people start to transition and shift away from seafood and I believe in 2020 Seaspiracy, the documentary that was put out by Netflix was one of the most watched documentaries. So again, you know, more people are becoming more educated about the underbelly, the dark underbelly of the seafood industry and the havoc that that's causing, but as we started the podcast interview with it's still interesting that these patterns continue to repeat themselves, even when there's education and for me who studies systems and behavior change and, you know, bring a lot of different tools and learning pathways to support leaders and organizations to shift. It takes a lot for people to change their behaviors. And I find there often has to be, you know, something really personal that impacts or affects them or a lot of suffering, unfortunately. And I just see, you know, if we don't make these shifts, and I imagine you agree with me, there's just gonna be so much suffering that we could avoid right now. Bruce Friedrich 35:22 Yeah, and I mean, one of the things that we point out at GFI is across the issues, that these better ways of promoting meet, address. The people who are most adversely impacted are the people who are already suffering the most. So the people who are most adversely impacted by climate change, in addition to being the people who did the least to contribute to it, are the most vulnerable human populations. Similarly COVID-19 sent more than 100 million people into extreme poverty. None of those people were in developed economies, they were all in developing economies, lots of them in rural India, or Sub Saharan Africa. The same thing is true of the end of working antibiotics, which is the end of modern medicine that's going to most adversely impact people who can least afford medical care and don't have access to the medical care that you and I and probably 100% of your listeners have access to. And that doesn't even get into animals, billions of animals whose lives are categorized by just unmitigated misery throughout their entire lives. And so, so alternative proteins, correct for all of those harms. They don't, it's worth noting, solve for every harm and injustice across the entire food system chain. But they do solve for a lot of things that are worth solving for, as we have we, as we've been chatting about. So it's not a radical restructuring of the entire system. But certainly shifting from the way that meat has been produced for the last 12,000 years, to a way of producing meat that doesn't cause all of these harms. It's pretty spectacular. Carley Hauck 37:28 I agree. And so going back to the wide reaching arms that the Good Food Institute has, you started in the US, but as we were talking about before we started the recording, you're in Singapore and Europe, Brazil, you have expansion happening in Japan and South Korea. And there's areas that you're focusing on in science and industry and policy in education, and solutions. What is the vision with all these incredible locations and people coming together? I'd love to hear. Bruce Friedrich 38:09 Thanks, Carley. Yeah, so GFI right now, it's kind of a network of NGOs. So we have about 140 Full time Team members 75 of them in the US, 65 of them across our five affiliates in India, Israel, Brazil, Asia Pacific, as you said, out of Singapore, and then Europe, we have offices in Brussels and in London, on and the focus is really, to sort of the organizational battle cry, is to get governments to fund alternative protein open access research, and to incentivize private sector activity in the same way and for the same reasons that governments are doing that on climate change mitigation, and biodiversity. So 190-something I think governments have signed to the Paris agreement to keep climate change, hopefully under 1.5 degrees Celsius, but definitely under 2.0. That is a literal and scientific impossibility, unless meat consumption goes down. And alternative proteins are probably the only way that we are going to cause conventional meat consumption to go down. UN is predicting 70 to 100% more meat production by 2050. So alternative proteins, making meat from plants, cultivating it from cells is the only food and ag solution to climate change mitigation, that analogizes to renewable energy and electrification of transport. Carley Hauck 39:53 I want to just pause us there for a minute. That was, that was big. I just want everyone to listen to that. digest it. The only way. Okay, first, please keep going. Thank you. Bruce Friedrich 40:05 Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Currently, we have been trying to convince people to eat less meat, as I said earlier for 50 plus years. And yet per capita meat consumption just keeps going up. Carley Hauck 40:20 That's what's going on inside of me, Okay, keep going, I'm sorry. Bruce Friedrich 40:22 Most of the 70 to 100% meat that's going to be produced by 2050 is happening in developing economies, where we are least likely to use behavior change, to convince people to eat less. But just like the goal of renewable energy is not to go around the world and say, consume less energy, especially in developing economies that would be incredibly inequitable, and immoral. The goal is to say, yes, we're, you know, we're going to consume, we're not going to try to convince people not to consume, that would be a losing battle. But we can make consumption significantly less harmful by using renewable energy, that decarbonizes the economy. Same basic thing with electric vehicles, we're not going to convince people in developing economies that they should, you know, drive less, they're already driving less than us, we're not going to go in there and say, Yes, we, you know, drive a bazillion miles a year. And you don't get to because of climate change. Both here and there we say, let's use electric vehicles and decarbonize transportation. So this is the same thing with meat. Let's decarbonize me, let's eliminate methane production from ruminant digestion. Let's eliminate nitrous oxide production from manure decomposition, let's slash co2 production from all of the extra stages of production that are unnecessary. If you shift to plant based uncultivated, let's free up vast quantities of land that can be used for bio sequestration as part of a comprehensive or curation. And so yeah, the idea of alternative proteins and sort of the GFI global battle cry is to help governments and the NGO community that's focused on climate to integrate alternative proteins as their primary and most tractable food and ag solution to climate change. Right now, there's almost nothing happening on food and ag and Bill Gates in February when he launched this, how to avoid a climate disaster book he was saying until alternative proteins, he was scratching his head on food and ag, because they couldn't come up with anything that analogized to renewable energy, they couldn't come up with anything other than programs that require vast government oversight, or require vast amounts of individual behavior change. And both of those things are not tenable. Alternative proteins, this is the one solution that allows us to address the literally 1/3 of climate change that's attributable to food and agriculture. It's absolutely essential. Carley Hauck 43:06 I believe Bill Gates is an investor in Memphis meats as well, but I think he's an investor in a few other cultivated and plant based meat companies. So he clearly believes in it as the solution part of the solution. Bruce Friedrich 43:19 Yeah, in his book, it's the one thing he's enthusiastic about on the on the food and ag side and GFI actually worked with so Breakthrough Energy ventures, his his climate venture fund, spun off into Breakthrough Energy, which is an NGO, and GFI worked with them on their policy proposals around this, and, and on food and ag, the one thing they're calling for governments to do is exactly what we're calling for governments to do, which is fund Open Access science and incentivize private sector activity in this area. Carley Hauck 43:52 Well, wonderful, well, in order to have people shift to eating a different way, and therefore changing the food system, it sounds like we need to have more really wonderful products, going to market that people can buy, more education, but then also shifts in the greater system with policy and industry. Would you summarize that as kind of the two pathways or is there another way? Bruce Friedrich 44:19 Yes, I mean, so GFI, as you rightly noted, we focus on science because we need to build the scientific ecosystem and then the science feeds into policy and industry. So GFI's three programmatic areas are science policy, and industry. And on the industry front, we do think we've had a lot of luck working with the really big food and meat companies, which is probably the thing we've been most pleasantly surprised by is the openness of the world's largest to accompany all of the world's largest meat food companies appear to be really open to this new, better way of making meat and all of them are moving in this direction. And that we think are laudable and super encouraging. Carley Hauck 45:13 Can you name a couple of them? Bruce Friedrich 45:15 Oh, the largest meat company in the world is JBS, they just put $100 million into cultivated meat. And they have launched their entire plant based meat lines in both Brazil, where they are predominantly based. And in the US, where JBS US is certainly in the top three US based meat companies. But JBS globally is number one, Nestle similarly largest food company in the world is, is we're seeing similar activity on both the plant based and the cultivated meat side. So all of them or all of them are moving in this direction in ways that we think are super encouraging. Carley Hauck 52:52 That's wonderful. And then we have these, you know, smaller startups that have wonderful products. And one of our friends, Curt Albright, has several portfolio companies. There's also you know, this, which has really supported a lot of incredible products to market and distributing them far and wide. So it is happening, and there's a lot of food tech entrepreneurs. And then the system, you know, changing, changing the system, where do you feel inspired, that the systems are changing. And I'll also just name an area that I felt really inspired by earlier in the year. And we're only on January 14 today. But California, which is a huge state in the United States, has now created a new law for composting, which is fabulous when we think about the mitigation of climate change and soil regeneration. And that is a system that I've been wanting to shift for a long time. So I'm hoping that other states will follow that lead. So I use as an example of are there other systems that you're seeing shift that can support more of this, of this greater change happening within the food system? Bruce Friedrich 47:13 Yeah, I mean, the thing that's most exciting to me about a shift to alternative proteins is the global potential. So GFI is not in Singapore or Israel, because we are focused on what people are eating in Singapore and Israel. And similarly, we're not opening in South Korea in Japan this year, with a focus on what people are eating in Korea, South Korea or Japan. The science that happens in Singapore or Israel can take over nationally, this is, you know, back to the idea of analogizing to renewable energy and electric vehicles. The advances in one country have positive global impact because science is global. So, um, something like USDA, putting $10 million into a consortium of half a dozen universities led out of Tufts and Virginia Tech, focused on cultivated meat strikes us as a colossally good sign. Something like the National Food strategy in the UK, recommending 125 million pounds, about $180 million in private sector support for alternative proteins. And that's on the back of even more encouraging stuff that's happening in places like Singapore and Israel. And we're optimistic about governments in Japan and South Korea, basically creating something like the space race, but focused on food. And we see the systems changing, and you're seeing it with more and more scientists, you're seeing more and more governments taking this seriously. And all of the world since we were just talking about all of the world's biggest food and meat companies, recognizing that this could very well be the future of how meat is made, and wanting to be out in front of it. So it's systems change of a system that, you know, meat production has been done basically the same way for more than 10,000 years, and looking at shifting that to a new and better and less harmful way. Carley Hauck 49:22 Wonderful. Well, I know that there are lots of resources, we've talked a lot about some of the options from the Good Food Institute. I also feel curious if you might point our listeners to conferences, to maybe a book that you would really recommend if they're, if they're still kind of on the verge of shifting, they want to eat more plant based. They want to, you know, be more vegan in their lifestyle. I mean, all the information is out there. Hopefully this interview is inspiring more of that bigger step forward, but it's always great to leave resources are tips, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Bruce Friedrich 50:04 Well, I would encourage people to go to gfi.org/newsletters and see which of the GFI newsletters are of interest to you. We do also have gfi.org/community. We have monthly, two different monthly webinars. One of them is the business of alternative proteins. And the other is the science of alternative proteins for people who are interested. And if you sign up for our newsletter, we tag all of the conferences and events that are happening in alternative proteins, whether they're GFI events, and we have, as noted, at least 24 a year. And then we have lots of focused events on the various reports that we are publishing as well. And then we fund a lot of science. So we'll have events with the scientists that were funding and that sort of thing. And all of the upcoming conferences. My favorite conference is probably the Future of Food Tech conference, which happens in March in the Bay Area. And then June in New York City. And October, early October, in London, although that is pretty entrepreneurial focused. GFI has for the last number of years had our annual good food conference. But I think we probably are not going to do that this year. So that we can lean in to a lot more sort of one off focused webinars, and people can find out about all of those by signing up for one or more of our newsletters. Carley Hauck 5139 Wonderful. Well, this has been a fabulous conversation, I feel like I could talk to you for hours. I always learn a lot in these interviews. And if there is, you know, anything else that you'd love to share, I'd love to give you the floor. Bruce Friedrich 51:57 That's very kind of you, Carley. Thank you. I mean, I guess the main thing is, for people who are listening really think about where you can plug in. So alternative proteins, we are working very, very hard to make alternative proteins the way that meat, dairy, eggs are created for climate mitigation, to stop biodiversity loss, to keep antibiotics working to prevent the next pandemic to address cruelty to animals. This is a vocational way to spend your life that it's really worth, the time and the effort and super satisfying. So just challenge people to think about how they can plug in. And also just to note that GFI is pretty much always hiring. So we're about 140 people now and we'll be north of 200 by the end of 2022. So feel free to check out options at gfi.org/careers. And again, if you sign up for one of the newsletters, you'll find out about new openings as they come up. Carley Hauck 53:01 Wonderful, thank you. And I also wanted to just give a little light, there was a podcast that I did last year with our friend Curt Albright and we talk more about the future of food and we talk about some of the portfolio companies and products that he is supporting. So for folks that are curious about all the amazing products that they could try, there's a lot of links in the show notes and we talk about them also on the interview. But I would also say if you're living in an area where you don't see your favorite product for example in your Whole Foods or your natural you know food grocery store, ask for it it's so important to ask and ask repeatedly if they still don't get it in the store because you are the customer and companies and especially health food stores are going to listen to the customer. So for example I was living in Asheville, North Carolina, or outside of Asheville, North Carolina and they did not have Good Catch. And I asked for it again and again. And they then brought it in and I think I probably wasn't the only one but if I was then it worked. And you know sometimes you just have to look through the aisles a little bit more. What I wish would happen, I'm just gonna put it out there, is that the alternative based seafood and other products we're not at the very bottom of the aisle where nobody can see it or it's like there's cobwebs all over it. I noticed that tends to be where they stick it but it's at the very top or it's at eye level. Hello stores, let's put this in clear view. Bruce Friedrich 54:43 That's super nice. You had also asked about it. Yeah, definitely the power of one person to make a positive difference and obviously, you know that that makes those products available for all shoppers at that grocery store which is just so great. There's one book that people might really quite enjoy, Clean Meat by Paul Shapiro, with a foreword from Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens. It's really a fun, interesting look at especially the early days of the move toward cultivated meat. And folks can find that at cleanmeat.com online. Carley Hauck 55:23 Great. Bruce, thank you so much. Thank you for leading and showing up every day the way that you do. I know that you have got a huge mission. And you're just serving in such an incredible way again, so delighted to have this conversation. Thank you. Bruce Friedrich 55:40 Right back at you, Carley, thank you so much for focusing so much attention in this space. And thanks for your podcast and everything you're doing to make a more just food system really honored honor to spend this time with you, Carley Hauck 55:52 Bruce, this was worth the wait. I'm so glad that we were able to have you as the first guest in 2022. It was meant to be thank you for your light, your service, your leadership, and I am deeply grateful for you. If you want to get in touch with Bruce or the Good Food Institute, the links are in the show notes. Please check out the incredible resources available there. The SHINE podcast has been self sponsored since May 2019. It is freely offered from my heartfelt desire to be in service in support of a workplace in a world that works for everyone and is living in greater harmony with the Earth, from conscious inclusive leadership and socially responsible business practice. I would love and appreciate your support. To continue to ignite calls to action and interview wonderful leaders like Bruce and bring science and tips. Please feel free, if you feel motivated to support me by going to my Patreon page, which is patreon.com/carleyhauck. The link is in the show notes. Your generosity helps so much. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends, family or colleagues. We're all in this together. If you want to be alerted as to the next SHINE podcast, please go over to your favorite podcast carrier and hit the subscribe button or you can also sign up for my free newsletter at leadfromlight.com and you will be alerted to new offerings, podcasts and resources. If you have questions, comments or topics you would like me to address in the podcast please email me at support at carleyhauck.com. Thank you for tuning in. We have so many wonderful interviews for season six. Until we meet again be the light and shine the light.
welcome to the nonlinear library, where we use text-to-speech software to convert the best writing from the rationalist and ea communities into audio. this is: Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic, published by Neil_Dullaghan on the effective altruism forum. In a 2021 MotherJones article, Sinduja Rangarajan, Tom Philpott, Allison Esperanza, and Alexis Madrigal compiled and visualized 186 publicly available predictions about timelines for cultured meat (made primarily by cultured meat companies and a handful of researchers). I added 11 additional predictions ACE had collected, and 76 other predictions I found in the course of a forthcoming Rethink Priorities project. Check out our dataset Of the 273 predictions collected, 84 have resolved - nine resolving correctly, and 75 resolving incorrectly. Additionally, another 40 predictions should resolve at the end of the year and look to be resolving incorrectly. Overall, the state of these predictions suggest very systematic overconfidence. Cultured meat seems to have been perpetually just a few years away since as early as 2010 and this track record plausibly should make us skeptical of future claims from producers that cultured meat is just a few years away. Here I am presenting the results of predictions that have resolved, keeping in mind they are probably not a representative sample of publicly available predictions, nor assembled from a systematic search. Many of these are so vaguely worded that it's difficult to resolve them positively or negatively with high confidence. Few offer confidence ratings, so we can't measure calibration. Below is the graphic made in the MotherJones article. It is interactive in the original article. The first sale of a ~70% cultured meat chicken nugget occurred in a restaurant in Singapore on 2020 December 19th for S$23 (~$17 USD) for two nugget dishes at the 1880 private member's club, created by Eat Just at a loss to the company (Update 2021 Oct 15:" 1880 has now stopped offering the chicken nuggets, owing to “delays in production,” but hopes to put them back on menus by the end of the year." (Aronoff, 2021). We have independently tried to acquire the products ourselves from the restaurant and via delivery but have been unsuccessful so far). 65 predictions made on cultured meat being available on the market or in supermarkets specifically can now be resolved. 56 were resolved negatively and in the same direction - overly optimistic (update: the original post said 52). None resolved negatively for being overly pessimistic. These could resolve differently depending on your exact interpretation but I don't think there is an order of magnitude difference in interpretations. The nine that plausibly resolved positively are listed below (I also listed nine randomly chosen predictions that resolved negatively). In 2010 "At least another five to 10 years will pass, scientists say, before anything like it will be available for public consumption". (A literal reading of this resolves correct, even though one might interpret the meaning as a product will be available soon after ten years) Mark Post of Maastricht University & Mosa Meat in 2014 stated he “believes a commercially viable cultured meat product is achievable within seven years." (It's debatable if the Eat Just nugget is commercially viable as it is understood to be sold at a loss for the company). Peter Verstate of Mosa Meat in 2016 predicted that premium priced cultured products should be available in 5 years (ACE 2017) Mark Post in 2017 "says he is happy with his product, but is at least three years from selling one" (A literal reading of this resolves correct, even though one might interpret the meaning as a product will be available soon after three years) Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute in March 2018 predicted “clean-meat products will be available at a high price within two to three years” Unnamed scientists in December 2018 “say that you can buy it [meat in a labor...
Eating less meat or giving up flying are palpable ways people can help mitigate climate change. But how much does personal action matter? And how should societies meet the challenge of lowering greenhouse gas emissions?Yael Parag of the Reichman University in Tel Aviv weighs the merits of individual carbon budgets. Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute highlights the impact of eating beef. And Jon Fasman, The Economist's US digital editor, tries a lab-grown meat substitute to assess its flavour and potential.Hosted by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, The Economist's global energy and climate innovation editor, with environment editor Catherine Brahic, and Oliver Morton, our briefings editor. For full access to print, digital and audio editions as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/climatepod and you can sign up to our fortnightly climate newsletter at economist.com/theclimateissue. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Eating less meat or giving up flying are palpable ways people can help mitigate climate change. But how much does personal action matter? And how should societies meet the challenge of lowering greenhouse gas emissions?Yael Parag of the Reichman University in Tel Aviv weighs the merits of individual carbon budgets. Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute highlights the impact of eating beef. And Jon Fasman, The Economist's US digital editor, tries a lab-grown meat substitute to assess its flavour and potential.Hosted by Vijay Vaitheeswaran, The Economist's global energy and climate innovation editor, with environment editor Catherine Brahic, and Oliver Morton, our briefings editor. For full access to print, digital and audio editions as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/climatepod and you can sign up to our fortnightly climate newsletter at economist.com/theclimateissue. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Most animals are hunted by predators, and constantly have to remain vigilant lest they be killed, and perhaps experience the terror of being eaten alive. Resource competition often leads to chronic hunger or starvation. Their diseases and injuries are never treated. In winter wild animals freeze to death and in droughts they die of heat or thirst.There are fewer than 20 people in the world dedicating their lives to researching these problems.But according to Persis Eskander, if we sum up the negative experiences of all wild animals, their sheer number – trillions to quintillions, depending on which you count – could make the scale of the problem larger than most other near-term concerns. We chose Persis to introduce the problem of wild animal suffering.Full transcript, related links, and summary of this interviewThis episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on April 15, 2019. Some related episodes include:#91 – Lewis Bollard on big wins against factory farming and how they happened#99 – Leah Garcés on turning adversaries into allies to change the chicken industry#26 – Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it in every supermarket#20 – Bruce Friedrich on inventing outstanding meat substitutes to end speciesism & factory farming#14 – Sharon Nunez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal abuseSeries produced by Keiran Harris.
Every year tens of billions of animals are raised in terrible conditions in factory farms before being killed for human consumption. Despite the enormous scale of suffering this causes, the issue is largely neglected, with only about $50 million dollars spent each year tackling the problem globally.Since 2015, Lewis Bollard has led Open Philanthropy's program on farmed animal welfare, where he has conducted extensive research into the best ways to eliminate animal suffering in farms as soon as possible. He might be the single best person in the world to introduce the problem of factory farming.Full transcript, related links, and summary of this interviewThis episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on September 27th, 2017. Some related episodes include: #91 – Lewis Bollard on big wins against factory farming and how they happened #99 – Leah Garcés on turning adversaries into allies to change the chicken industry #26 – Marie Gibbons on how exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it in every supermarket #20 – Bruce Friedrich on inventing outstanding meat substitutes to end speciesism & factory farming #14 – Sharon Nunez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal abuse Series produced by Keiran Harris.
In Episode #148 I sit down with Bruce Friedrich, the founder and president of Good Food Institute, a non-for-profit organisation developing the roadmap for a sustainable, secure, and just global protein supply. Their objective? To create a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative. Hope you enjoy the episode. Resources: Connect with Bruce on Twitter Visit the Good Food Institute's website Listen to Bruce on Rich Roll's podcast from a few weeks ago Want to support the show? If you are enjoying the Plant Proof podcast a great way to support the show is by leaving a review on the Apple podcast app. It only takes a few minutes and helps more people find the episodes. Simon Hill, Nutritionist, Sports Physiotherapist Creator of Plantproof.com and host of the Plant Proof Podcast Author of The Proof is in the Plants Connect with me on Instagram and Twitter Download my two week meal planWant to support the show?
Curt AlbrIght is one of the key leaders highlighted in my new book Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World. He has over 30 years of experience in banking, investment banking, capital markets and corporate finance, and in 2011, Curt became keenly aware of the atrocities facing our planet and its inhabitants stemming from the dysfunctional food system. When I first spoke to Curt, he shared with me some of his spiritual awakening from investment banker to investing in plant based foods, fermentation companies and the cultivated meat technology space, and how he completely shifted his diet, his entire life, to be in service of a more regenerative food system that is in harmony with the planet. And he also shared his love of animals and I was so touched by his story and his commitment to people on the planet that I could not help but want to have him on the SHINE podcast to share more. On this podcast interview, Curt and I speak about the problems with animal agriculture, the fishing industry and the evolution of cultivated meat and plant based food products. We talk about what cultivated meat is and why it is the wave of the future, to feed our growing population in a way that nourishes life. If you have been interested and up leveling your inner game of well being, how to be mindful of how you consume and eat in a way that supports the flourishing of the planet and your body, this interview is for you. Resources mentioned in this episode: Curtis LinkedIn Clear Current Capital “Removing Animals From Your Plate” by Phil Wollen Eat to Live Dr. Joel Fuhrman Seaspiracy: The Movie BlueNalu, Inc. Good Food Institute Cowspiracy: The Sustainable Secret Forks Over Knives Meat Me Halfway Need to Grow How to be a Courageous Leader Amidst Climate Change SHINE panel discussion Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken Pachamama Alliance The Reducetarian Cookbook: 125 Easy, Healthy, and Delicious Plant-Based Recipes for Omnivores, Vegans, and Everyone In-Between by Brian Kateman Carley's recommendations Just Egg Goodcatch Foods Abbott's Butcher Sweet Earth Miyokos REBBL Ominfoods Alphafoods Beyond Meat Lightlife Wholy Veggie Honey Mamas Good Karma Connect with SHINE Conscious & Inclusive Leadership Retreat Leading from Wholeness Executive Coaching Leading from Wholeness Learning and Development Resources Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World by Carley Hauck Contact Carley Hauck Shareables: “I want to to have as great an effect for the good as I had for the bad before and get in the middle of this thing while I am still walking the earth ” — Curt Albright “I believe the oceans are the lungs of the earth and that the oceans die, we die.” — Curt Albright “Raising awareness in individuals can create people who can do unbelievable things… but not so much as to move the needle by getting more human capital to do the next right thing, which is getting animals off of our plate.” — Curt Albright “How we're going to get food onto our plates is probably the biggest problem when I think about everything that we're facing from climate change to social justice issues. That is at the center of it all.” — Carley Hauck “We're not trying to point fingers in the plant based food industry, we're trying to bring a solution as quick as we can.” — Curt Albright “What I want to do is inspire other people to feel the goodness that comes from living an authentic lifestyle.” — Curt Albright The Imperfect Shownotes Carley Hauck 00:01 Hi, this is Carley Hauck and welcome to another episode of the shine podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious, inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices. I will be facilitating three amazing interviews a month. Before I tell you about our topic today, if you can go over to Apple podcasts, hit the subscribe button, and if you love this episode, which I'm sure you will, please write a positive review, share it on your social media channel, or share it with some of your favorite people. It helps so much. Thank you. Our topic for today is the future of cultivated meat is here with Curt Albright. Before I introduce Curt, I wanted to share a little context for the origin of the SHINE podcast, and how that directly relates to this topic. I began doing research for my new book, Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World four years ago. And as part of the research, I was interviewing thought leaders, climate scientists, emerging leaders, business leaders that were really focusing on social justice, environmental responsibility, and I chose nine leaders and businesses that are really rocking it for people and planet. And out of those nine, there were three that I really focused on in the book that are all part of this plant based, cultivated meat technology, future of food movement. And it's been so incredible to watch where these leaders started in the journey as I was writing the book to where they are now and the momentum that they have gained, like Josh Tetrick of Eat Just and David Young of Omni Foods and Green Monday and Green Common. And Sheryl O'Laughlin, who was still the CEO of REBLL and now she's gone into so many other incredible different roles and leading the change and wonderful ways. And Curt, he is in this space as well. He is the founder managing member at Clear Current Capital since September 2017. From 1991 until 2017, Curt was Senior VP and partner to a national investment banking firm located in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has over 30 years of experience in banking, investment banking, capital markets and corporate finance. In 2011, Curt became keenly aware of the atrocities facing our planet and its inhabitants stemming from the dysfunctional food system. Clear current capital's targeted impact mission thesis is his life's work. When I first spoke to Curt, he shared with me some of his spiritual awakening from investment banker to investing in plant based foods, fermentation companies and the cultivated meat technology space. And how he completely shifted his diet, his entire life, to be in service of a more regenerative food system that is in harmony with the planet. And he also shared his love of animals and I was so touched by his story and his commitment to people on the planet that I could not help but want to have him on the SHINE podcast to share more. Carley Hauck 04:17 So in this interview, we talk about the problems with animal agriculture, the fishing industry, and the evolution of the cultivated meat and plant based food industry, which is amazing. We talk about the problems with animal agriculture, the fishing industry and the evolution of cultivated meat and plant based food products. We talk about what cultivated meat is and why it is the wave of the future, to feed our growing population in a way that nourishes life. If you have been interested and up leveling your inner game of well being, how to be mindful of how you consume and eat in a way that supports the flourishing of the planet and your body, this interview is for you. Carley Hauck 05:05 Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining the SHINE podcast. I'm here with my new friend, Curt Albright. Curt, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for the invitation. And just tell our listeners, where are you zooming in from today? Sure. So I'm just south of Vero Beach, Florida, on the east coast of Florida. Great. Thank you. And so one of the first questions that I usually always ask folks, because this is a podcast on conscious and inclusive leadership. What does conscious inclusive leadership mean to you? Curt Albright 05:43 Well, conscious and inclusive leadership means to me, I think the word that really comes to mind is mindfulness. It's just being self aware enough to know that, you know, I'm a work in progress, and always will be. And now that I've, I'm in a position where I've founded a venture capital firm, you know, I've got responsibilities today that I didn't have before. So in today's world, I face one issue at a time, and it excites me to think that I can help balance a world that could use some extra balance these days. Hmm. Carley Hauck 06:25 So I heard taking one thing at a time, and trying to bring more balance to the world. But that also means you have to be balanced on the inside that on the outside, right, I can't give what I don't have. And so you are managing partner at Clear Current Capital. And that is investing in plant based food fermentation companies and cultivated meat technology companies at more of the early stage of business, is that correct? Curt Albright 07:05 Yep, you got it. I was just gonna say, you know, that was a mindful decision on my part that I didn't see coming, you know, not two years previous to making that decision. And I ended a 26 year career in investment banking to start Clear, Current Capital. And the reason that I did that was because I had become keenly aware of the atrocities that were happening in our food system. And I saw this as being the most core way to deal to bring bring a solution to most of the problems that speak deeply to me. Carley Hauck 07:38 Yeah, so the reason that I wanted to invite you on to the podcast is, after one of the conversations we had recently, you told me about this big shift that happened for you. And I'd love to hear more how you turned vegan, how you became, you know, just very impacted by the suffering that was happening to animals, wherever you'd like to start. It was a beautiful story. Curt Albright 08:08 There's a lot there. Um, you know, I don't know where to start. It was it's been a heck of a journey and a heck of a ride. And it was again, it was nothing that I signed up for it was because I had a lot of speed bumps in life that I didn't have answers for, you know, and I was brought up in sports in a very different lifestyle than what I had today. And, and I was a finance major when right into banking, I was in private banking, in DC area where I grew up and went into the investment banking world, all my customers were banks, and it was a very money oriented world, which I had parts of me that like that a lot. And I just didn't know how to balance myself and my life got out of control from every aspect. And you know, at the end, which happened to me, I got a well, I'll give you one I didn't share with you before I was I was diagnosed in the year 2000 as a type one diabetic. That was the first thing that happened to me. And I believe that was due to my lifestyle. I was 38 years old, 37 years old. And so to get juvenile diabetes doesn't generally happen that late in life, but it was it was to me it was a God wink with what I know now. And I didn't do really much of any changing it took me five or six years of more pain. And in my very dysfunctional lifestyle to realize my life was not getting better. I had all the toys and that's what I thought was the big goal in life was he has been a sign of success. Yeah, that's it. I mean, at the big house and cars and you name it and a successful career and I was completely unhappy inside. And it just didn't make any sense to me on how I was taught to be happy to think in my head growing up and so I did some a bunch of therapy work. My marriage was in a shambles. And that's what started it. And it ended up becoming a realization to me that I didn't know how to live healthy I just never I because I'd never done it before. And and that's what got me into recovery, which I got into in November of 2006. And that so that transferring from therapy to save my marriage to doing spiritual work on myself to find out why am I not happy to getting into recovery, around alcohol abuse? It all started to tie together and it all started to make sense. And my self awareness just started to raise up and I realized that I was unhealthy because every aspect of my life was unhealthy. And so what am I going to do about it? Well, I got in the middle of the healthy lifestyle and just started looking for ways to be of service and, and one of the first things was I got introduced to Andrew Harvey, which I mentioned before and right. And, and his, his help to me was just, it was so core, I mean, I don't remember the exact meeting place, but but it was just one sentence. He said, meditate over what breaks your heart, the greatest and I kept thinking myself, I'm waiting for the rest of it. No, that was it. And so so that's what I did is I just asked myself, What breaks my heart the greatest and I kind of meditated over that. And he said, you know, the other thing that can be helpful is if you see an ad on TV, what do you have to turn your eyes away from because you get too emotional. And it was easy. That was easy. For me it was animal suffering. And so that's what started it for me and and, and so you know, I I cleaned up my, my lifestyle, I looked for ways to be of service to others and sponsored a bunch of men in recovery and still do and then started to look for ways to help animals and by bought 11 acres and donated it to a rescue in Charlotte where I was living. And what happened was, there was a mercy for animals undercover investigation at a Butterball factory in, I think it was Statesville, North Carolina and the director from the animal rescue was getting called in to help out with this undercover investigation rescue and it was absolutely horrific. And so that's what tied me into the food industry. So again, it's these organic things that just got placed right in front of me. And and so when I researched it, and looked, I was like, okay, the reason why the rescue wasn't working out so well was because I was on the wrong end of the business. It's they do great work, they rescued a couple 1000 animals every year, but I wanted to to have as great an effect for the good as I had for the bad before and get in the middle of this thing while I was still walking the earth and and so I researched mercy for animals that got me into some of the nonprofits and and I was just blown away by the numbers. I mean, I'm a numbers guy and you know, seeing that there were 30 billion animals that were suffering and slaughtered every year on the face of the earth. And you know, what just the animal husbandry part of our food system does to the planet itself. It just, I was blown away. And I knew that the animal farmed animal industry was not anything that I cared to know too much about. I was just afraid of my own emotions. That game was over. And and so I watched you know, movies and read books and just got in the middle of what was the truth was and what was going on and then began to look for ways to get in the middle of the the food industry. Curt Albright 13:43 And so the the the video in 2012 by Phil Wollen was was another one that I watched the 10 minute video called Removing Animals From Your Plate, and I realized I wasn't doing enough on my own to support removing animals from your plate. That's what you said. I believe. I believe that's the title of it. If you just Google Philip Wallen speech, it'll come up. Carley Hauck 14:12 Yeah, you mentioned it. I was saying it again for our listeners, because we'll be able to put a link to it in the show notes. Yeah, he was Citibank Australia. So having another banker talk about his emotions and feelings kind of validated what I was going through and gave me permission to dig deeper into the atrocities that were that is or animal based food system and, and so that got me looking for more ways to support so I ended up switching gears and and supporting a number in a philanthropic way, a number of effective nonprofits, like Mercy for Animals, like the Humane League. We opened up an office for the Humane League in Charlotte in 2013. And so you know, it just the path just kept going and I just kept feeling more and more centered. I was selling things I was getting rid of my stuff I was trying to live smaller, you know, I'd never met, you know, other guys that live that way and were authentic before I met them from the nonprofit work and one of them was Bruce Friedrich who ended up founding the Good Food Institute. And, and Bruce was just super kind to me. And he lives in DC, it's where I grew up. And so, you know, he kind of introduced me around to the who's who are the effective workers that were doing this greater good work and, and I again, never met people like that before, and I wanted more of it. And so when he started the Good Food Institute, you know, having the business angle to it, that was extremely attractive to me and, and watching them explode, watching their effects on the plant based food market in general in this country. I wanted to help and so not just try to make a bunch of money and give it away. And so we met in Atlanta. And that's where the idea came from, to start clear, current capital. Carley Hauck 16:05 Wonderful, wonderful, beautiful story. And how long have you been a vegan? Curt Albright 16:11 I think I officially turned to raise the flag in May of 2012. And, you know, just to kind of put a little extra in on that. At that time. I weighed 250 pounds. And so I had all kinds of health issues. What one of the things that I forgot to mention before was I met a doctor at right around that time, I had sleep apnea problems and this doctor, the first time that I met him, we had this heart to heart conversation, and I just blew me away to realize that this is the first time I met this doctor. And he said to me, Listen, I want you to read this book, called, I wrote it down. I didn't forget Eat to Live Dr. Joel Fuhrman. And he said, I want you to read this book, because it was written by another doctor, I read it and it changed my life. And it just, it just floored me to have a doctor share something that heartfelt with me the first time I met him, and that was another one of those kind of God winks to me that, you know, I'd bought the book, I read it, and there was all kinds of accolades around losing weight, if you don't think Dr. Furman mentioned the word vegan in there, it's all about eating healthy. And so I didn't believe it could work for me because I thought I was still different. And what I did is I started eating exactly like the book told me to eat and not only did I lose the weight, but I gained an energy and I just felt better and just everything, you know, again, it just started all coming together. So it's, it's been, there's been a lot of those on my journey. Carley Hauck 17:55 I just really love the journey that you've been on, like listening to this, this transformation and, and really being aware of the signs, so to speak, and opportunities of what to follow and, and what I'm hearing, and it's interesting that your your business is called Clear Current Capital, but it's almost like you're flowing with what actually is calling to you what what is making your heart, you know, feel most alive, which is, which is doing good, which is being part of the solution to these atrocities that the food agriculture system has developed. I mean, not only for animals, but for what's happening to our planet, and what's happening to the potential of our, of our humanity and and our survival. Curt Albright 18:52 Really. Absolutely. No, no, no, I love your analogy with the name because that was one of the feelings that I did have when we were naming the firm. In an early on, I was told that you know, I was living my life trying to force my will or force my way against the current and I could identify with that totally back everything was a battle and it was it was horrible. And once I let go and just, you know, let go the outcomes is just did the next right thing and started looking at ways to truly be of service and mean it. Everything shifted. Yeah, I mean, today, it's just it's got the flow. I mean, my life is nothing like I ever imagined it would be and and nor could I have ever imagined I'd be as happy with a different definition of what happy is to what it means to me today. Because today, it's really about, you know, self awareness and living a life of purpose. I can assure you that was not even on my radar screen 20 years ago. Carley Hauck 19:57 Lovely well, you know, I, I wanted to highlight you a lot in this interview, but I can really relate to that. And I shared with you the book that I've been, you know, writing for the last four years. But one of the impetus for that book was really the crisis that I see us. And as a humanity, I mean, I believe the planet is going to survive. But I don't know if we are based on our behaviors based on how we're treating each other, treating animals treating the planet. And I went to a conference at Stanford, about a year or two after I had started teaching there, and it was called Connect the Dots. And it was some of the world's you know, most distinguished climate scientists all coming together for one day. And they were sharing the research and what was at stake. And I thought that I knew the research, I thought I'd been tracking climate change science. And I was just blown away by how little time we have left. And then very shortly after attending that conference, I was spending a day with my nephew, who at the time was four, who's now 10. And he looked at me, and he said, Aunty Carley, will you help me save the oceans? And I, I mean, I still get kind of tears just thinking about it, because I'm still in that fight. You know, I'm still standing for that. And I'm not sure if we're going to be able to save the ocean. And this, this will come back to our conversation. But I knew that if I said yes to him, I had to really say yes. And as a little girl, I was very passionate about marine life, whales, dolphins, I went out of my way, many times to write letters to dictators of Japan, when I was seven or eight, you know, asking them to stop killing the whales, I was saving sea turtles, things like that. So I was also a very concerned child around this issue, and to have him say it to me. So I started writing my book. And I really wanted to highlight companies and leaders who were very committed to creating a sustainable future. And, and I know neither of us really like that word, because it can be, you know, it can have different connotations, but a company that is really committed to social justice, environmental responsibility. And so some of the leaders that I highlighted in that book, are all part of this plant based cultivated me, you know, Business Technology, like David Young, like Josh Tetrick of East Just, Cheryl O'Laughlin, from REBLL. And so that was kind of one of the ways that I met you, because it's an area that I also feel really passionate about. And so I wanted to just speak to why this is so important, and just some of the, the stats. So I believe these are pretty current. But what I found was that about 65% of Americans are lactose intolerant, and even more so in Asia. So as we can see, you know, in the plant based space, non dairy milks are having quite a rise. Oatly, I believe, had an IPO not too long ago. But we're, we're seeing lots of products like dyad, cheese, and Mykonos, and whatnot. And then we're also seeing that meat and dairy consumption is declining in Europe, and in the US. But it's on the rise in China and India. And I think that we need to really bring more awareness education around the clean, or the cultivated meat technologies, and why it's so important that we're eating more plant based, that we're not eating animals. And so, and one of the conversations that you and I recently had, you were saying to me that you really believe that the chicken and fish industry is one of the most devastating ones can you speak more to what you know about that? Curt Albright 24:23 Yeah. And, and I totally agree with what you said, on all fronts, especially when it comes to the oceans. Because, you know, I believe the oceans are the lungs of the earth and that the oceans die, we die. Right and, and, you know, I mean, there was a team of scientists, I don't remember how many years ago they did their study, but it was super in depth independent study, and basically what they came away with that it was the year 2048. If we continue to fish and and kill sea creatures at the level that we're doing it right now, the oceans will be dead by 2048. So we're literally in a race with time. And you know, that's from the mind from the heart. For me, it's all about animal suffering, right? And so I concentrate on numbers. And, you know, again, when you look at how many chickens does it take to equal the weight of a pig, you know how much meat comes from a chicken versus a pig, how much? How many chickens to take equal one cow. It's, it's a huge multiplier. And so the amount of suffering and I don't know if you've seen what they put chickens through to slaughter them, but it's just it's, it's unbelievable. I mean, anyone could even come up with the contraptions that they use. And what's going on now is is the, you know, the big meat industry is trying to get oversight and regulations further and further away from the industry because the animals don't have a voice. And so it's making the slaughter lines move faster. It's making the shackles buckle quicker. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's insanity. And we know it causes cancer in human beings. So, so of eating animals that are dirty to begin with, because of their living conditions. And that's before you get to the growth hormones and the and the antibiotics that they have to pump into them. It's just mind boggling the amount of solution that comes from getting them out of the food industry. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. On the ocean side, what really gets to me is, is you've got no oversight once again. And as we've witnessed over the past many years, when there's no oversight business tends to not do the right thing. Not big business. And because it's so profit driven, and and there's not that many mindfully operated huge businesses and especially without oversight. And you know, you've got dumping issue, you've got human trafficking issues, we've got, you know, slave labor, it's all in the seafood industry. And that's before you get to the mile wide net. And that what the mile wide nets will do is they'll catch if thereafter, say bluefin tuna, they'll catch the bluefin tuna or whatever's left of them, but they're also gonna catch everything else. Right. So the bycatch could be eight to 12 pounds of bycatch, of whale everything. And then, and then it's just they just kill them, their entire ecosystem, which is barely in balance is just getting annihilated because they're going after one particular species. Right. So it's, it's, I see this and, you know, again, my process was not fast, especially living through it. And but I would never, I mean, I'm so grateful for going through it because it was painful. But it also taught me that we can't get there. In my mind, we can't get there quick enough, by trying to raise awareness. Now, raising awareness in individuals can create people who can do unbelievable things. So I think that the messaging and getting it out is just vitally important, but not so much to move the needle, as it is to get more human capital into doing the next right thing, which is getting them off of our plate. Carley Hauck 28:07 Right. And I wanted to just bring another statistic, and this actually came from Seaspiracy the movie, which I highly recommend. And in fact, Curt recommended to me and I hadn't watched it yet. And real Netflix, yeah, losing the sea floor, which is what happens from the trolling. And the nets from the fishing industry is basically you know, estimated that it's wiping out 3.9 billion acres a year of seafloor, deforestation. So that's killing everything in the ocean. And again, like you said, if we, if we don't have the vitality of the ocean, we won't survive. We're 70% water. And when we're killing these big animals like dolphins and whales, when they come up to the surface, they're releasing phytoplankton, which helps actually nurture the rest of the ocean. So it's just and so many of these larger animals are dying, because they're full of plastic. They're full of fishing nets. And it's, there's, there's just some really big problems that we need to solve. But I agree with you that the food agriculture system, and how we are designing how we're going to get food onto our plates is probably the biggest problem when I think about everything that we're facing from climate change to social justice issues. That is at the center of it all. Curt Albright 29:45 And again, it gets worse the more you're open to doing your own research because like I remember, years ago, hearing years before I got involved, hearing about the Amazon rainforest, and it made no sense to me that the cattle industry had anything to do with it. The cattle industry has everything to do with it. And and now it's out in the open if you just Google it, but but it's just the the land clearing that's going on, and the devastation that's being done to this planet to, for animal agriculture is is crazy. And again, it's, it's, it's profitable at the expense of our planet. And it does not have to be that way. And so that's what you know, that's what I'm excited about is, you know, we're not trying to point fingers in the plant based food industry, we're trying to bring a solution as quick as we can, because and the solution is not Well, number one, it's a math game. I mean, we're at 7 billion people ish now. And they're saying by 2050, will be a 10 and change. We can't even feed 7 billion that we have on the planet right now in this dysfunctional industry. So how are we going to handle 10? There is not enough land, there is nothing sustainable about animal agriculture, you cannot utilize it and feed the number of people that we have today, or will be here in 2050. And so the solution that's what I love about the cultivated meat industry, is the efficiencies that come from plant based food, which was our first to market because it was easier to bring that quickly at price points. The next really meaningful industry is going to be cultivated meat, and what can be done in those biomass reactors by you know, cultivating meat cells that are identical to animals, biologically, and and can be done vertically, and be placed right next to where the demand is, for me is it's mind boggling. And so I'm very hopeful that that is going to happen. And I mean, the you know, we work closely with BlueNalu from from the beginning, and to see the PhDs that they've been able to hire and what they are putting together as quickly as they are it's been it gives me hope. And well, they don't knowBlueNalu. Can you share a little bit more for our listeners? Sure, BlueNalu is a is a cultivated meat but focused on seafood, sea creatures. startup company was founded, I guess it was founded in 2017. And so we were involved with them from the beginning, thanks to friends, and other VCs that we're aligned with that helped me in forming clear current capital, as well as the Good Food Institute. And Lou Cooperhouse is their CEO and founder. And Lou has done an amazing job of putting together their team, putting together their platform, their lab work and attracting capital from literally all around the world. You know, because what's happened in the tuna industry, what's happened in the seafood industry is we're we've fished it to the point now where there are you can't plan for a whether the animal that you're looking for is even available, and be what the price is going to be. So their supply chain aside from the pandemic is horrific. And so here's here's an opportunity to switch to something that's that is grown from cells, now the cells are removed from a living creature, there, they're then taken into a lab and grown by feeding the cells, allowing it to grow in a very clean environment, what you end up with is meat and muscle that is identical to the animal itself. And so it's a much safer environment. It doesn't have plastics involved with it, it doesn't have micro plastics or or, you know, mercury within the fish because it's never been in the water. It's grown from cells. And so, you know, there's some concerns about, you know, whether consumers are going to accept cultivated meat, I would argue that, that it's an opportunity for us to educate consumers on where their fish is coming from right now, because so much of what's in the marketplace right now is not healthy in the least to eat this label. Carley Hauck 34:08 Right? I was gonna share that even the even the products that say dolphin safe, there's no real regulation, like how do we really know that? So I was sharing this with you the other day I went, or just before the interview started, I went to this local grocery store here in Bend called market of choice. And I went to one of the, you know, store clerks and I said, Do you sell Good Catch? Because I knew that based on their website, they were selling it and so we went to the you know, the seafood aisle where the canned tuna and whatnot is, and it was very low down on this shelf. It was kind of pushed back. And for people that don't know what good catches This is another alternative plant based seafood and it's pretty much made out of chickpeas. Six legume. Yeah, it's fabulous. Really great. But as I'm looking at all the other products around Good catch, it's all saying dolphin safe, you know, reef friendly. But how do we really know that? And I don't, I don't believe that that's true, there's going to be bycatch likely in anything, and what are their nets. And so these are the things that we as consumers really need to poke holes in, and be concerned about, and, and speak up against. Curt Albright 35:35 And so talk about that, in the spirit see that it's another one of those, you know, greenwashed kind of things that, you know, you've got companies that are making donations to politicians to look, the other way to put some label on that has absolutely no oversight or bearing it just, it just makes consumers feel good. Like they're making the right choice. And it's unfortunate for animals and for the planet. Carley Hauck 36:00 And I think what's so interesting about cultivated meat is that, you know, we're trying to meet consumers where they are, right, like, people aren't willing to let go of fish, if we were all really willing just to eat fruits and vegetables, and beans, we'd be fine. But these industries are being formed to meet consumers where they are in the sense that there's been so much science around how a vegan and vegetarian diet is better for the planet, it's better for our bodies, you know, gives more resources to everyone. But that doesn't seem to be enough motivation to get people to change because we're attached to certain patterns and habits. And so cultivated meat, doesn't need to be here. But it does, because people aren't changing their habits, they're not changing and choosing differently. And so tell me more Curt Albright 36:55 What I was gonna say, that's a great point, I completely agree. And that's why we as a fund, I mean, we're an impact fund first. And and the other side of that coin is we're trying to provide above market returns to our investors, so that we attract more capital into this space, we only invest in scalable companies that are all protein that in other words, we're not looking to feed the vegans or the vegetarians. You know, and again, I'm one, and I eat super healthy, but I'm not the 98% of the consumers that are out there. And if we're going to say this planet, we got to get to the other 98 sooner than later. And so we're looking for to invest in scalable companies, startup companies that we can help grow and put on a solid foundation that are going to remove animals from the from the food system as quickly as possible. Yeah, so we're looking for strong founders that can can deliver and can deliver centerplate solutions. We're not looking for vegetable patties, we're looking for meat that's that taste as good or better than the McDonald's burger or the or the Whopper, there's a reason why they sell a gazillion of them every day. It's because they taste good. And they're cheap. And so that's what we're trying to bring as a solution taste good, cheap and convenient. Carley Hauck 38:13 And that's also why we're why we sell one of the most, you know, successful brands to start with was the impossible burger, because they recognize that's where the market was. That's where the demand was, how can we create a plant based product that tastes like a burger, and many people now have decided they liked the impossible burger better. And then Beyond Meat came out, and now has all these different products. And they're a publicly traded company. And I think that's really changed the landscape. Curt Albright 38:50 I remember the day that that IPO hit for Beyond, and believe me, I was watching and and, and it just blew me away to see that stock trade up in premarket before it was physically trading in the market. And so the success of the IPO just, you know, burned a new path for the next IPO for for plant based food company. And that's the awareness. That's the consumer demand. I mean, it is there and it is real. And so at this point, in our early stage, we're trying to get enough product in the market to to feed the demand that's already there. And that's a gift from, you know, those nonprofits like Mercy for Animals and the Good Food Institute that have raised the awareness. It's not always going to be that easy, and we're going to have a lot of competitors, but at the same time, we're trying to replace a trillion dollar meat industry. So we're far from saturation. That's not a concern of mine. The concern of mine is is trying to get these companies scaled up during a pandemic when we have distribution problems. Right and so there's there's you know, there's there's always going to be challenges and issues, but but but the pandemic is also doing is, is showing how, how many health issues there are in our supply chain from every angle as human beings, and how little we really know about how things are run. And everybody eats, you know, three, five times a day. So we were making conscious decisions. It has it has a byproduct on our own health. And it's a byproduct to the health of our planet. And so it's, it's, it'll take time to raise the awareness. And but the good news is, is there's a lot of companies that are that are coming up, I think the next couple of years are going to be really exciting. And the cultivated meatspace I think will, hopefully we'll get an FDA USDA approval from from the US government within the next, you know, 12 months, I think we'll start to see product coming, you know, within the next two years to shelves, and I believe that if it all comes together the way it looks like it could, it'll happen quickly, because again, they can put massive amounts of food into the system quickly, just by by nature of the business model. Carley Hauck 41:11 Thank you. So I think you probably understand this cycle better than I do. So when we look at Beyond Meat, you know, they started off as an early growth, early growth companies such as some of the ones that you're investing in, and then they, you know, were able to get into this more commercial space where you can see their products, at Whole Foods, at regular grocery stores all over and just egg, which is from the Eat Just company, Josh Tetrick, and whatnot. He's another one of the leaders that I highlight in the book, I've been so pleased to see Just Egg, that particular product in most grocery stores. And now there's, there's more products of Just Egg that are being offered. And I feel curious, like, how do you go from that early growth, to really getting that type of reach? Because that's ultimately what we want. Because the more choices we have, that are available to all these different types of socio economic status, they're in the restaurants, they're in fast food chains, like good catch now is at Long John Silver's, which is awesome. And I think, as impossible burger, I forgot what I mean, that's been a lot of restaurants, but it's also in fast food chains now as well, right? Curt Albright 42:38 That's correct. Yeah. It takes time and capital. I mean, those are those are the ingredients and, and and, you know, good founders and management and, and consumer demand as well, correct? Yeah. Oh, no question. I mean, it could be, it could be the best product known demand. But if it's if the consumers don't want it, or doesn't fill some void, that's not gonna fly off the shelves, and the velocity is what the the retail grocery stores are looking for. So if it's not turning off the shelves, they weren't invited back. Right. Right. But it's exciting to me back to Beyond Meat, I did want to mention that most people kind of have looked at the IPO and look at what's happened in such a short period of time, but I believe they were founded in like, 2009. This was not this was an overnight sensation that wasn't overnight. And so it takes time, it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of capital. And and that's one of the reasons why I really look for the at those founders, you know, if you find a really strong founder, no matter what their background is that that's heart LED, and really looking at this from a greater good perspective. That means a lot to me, especially coming from where I came from. Carley Hauck 43:46 Definitely. So let's pivot just a little bit. You know, I've heard you use the word that it's an impact fund, how is that different than a regular fund? For our listeners? Curt Albright 44:02 Sure. I mean, so we're a venture capital fund. And we are we invest in early stage, which means that we're typically investing we'll invest in companies that are pre revenue, will invest in their seed to series A, where we look to be fully invested in a company by the time their Series B comes through. So these are not publicly traded, private private companies. On the impact front, I mean, a typical venture capital fund is looking for returns only, I mean, that's it. I mean, it's it's 100% about returns and and so venture capital funds where we get our money from his his investors. And so we have 26 investors in our fund one all aligned all unders you know, it's it's been a great journey from from that front, too. So 25 others and myself are in fund one. And, and there they have, you know, there's a continuum. They all understand why we're doing this. That's their complete drive, return is it important to them others return is very important to them. So that's another reason why for me I want to take big picture I want to the impact is in the food industry and what our mission thesis is all around, you know, making food healthier and removing animals from the food system. The returns I believe will come from who we're trying to put in the marketplace. Those are scalable companies that are all protein oriented centerplate. So if if there, if we come up with three or four more beyond meats, we'll do just fine by our investors, and those returns will get out into the public eye, and hopefully attract a whole lot more investment into this space. And it's already happening. I mean, Oat Just IPO was super successful. We're hearing rumblings that Eat Just and and Impossible, maybe doing IPOs, you know, fairly soon. I mean, it's, the successes are there, there's also huge amounts of money that are waiting out the curve, private equity, late stage investors and venture capital, those are the really big funds, we're a small fund or fund one was a little over 13 million, we're targeting 50 million with our fund too. And we're doing we're trying to stay smaller, so that we can stay in that early stage where I feel like we'll have the greatest impact in helping this entire space. Carley Hauck 46:22 Right, and the more companies and the more founders that are getting into this space, that are successful, we're able to really change the food system. Yep. And that's the goal so that we can have a flourishing planet and our humanity is able to eat in a much more healthy way that's in harmony with the earth. Yeah, I mean, the planet needs to heal. Totally, totally. Curt Albright 46:53 So talk to me a little bit about some of the Good Food Institute, because I know that they're really supporting this movement, nationally, and internationally. And your connection with Bruce? Curt Albright 47:05 Yeah, so I mean, to me, Bruce was kind of like a mentor to me, coming from my unhealthy world into the world of animal welfare. And, and the effects of eating animals from the food system, both in its supply chain and the way it works in and on humans in the planet, I really hadn't made a conscious decision to learn more about that, until that undercover investigation in North Carolina opened my eyes and, and Bruce was just extremely generous in showing me what was happening. And when the Good Food Institute started, I believe they were 2016. So there was a lot going on in that little clump of years. And I'm just there I was, and boy was I lucky. And and so to watch them start, in my opinion, in the US Good Food Institute probably had the biggest influence on the successes of the plant based food industry as a whole. I mean, we have momentum within this space. That's the, you know, we're 10x to growth numbers that are coming out of the food industry as a whole. And so it's really exciting to see the demand, it's really exciting to see the new supply, and they're a nonprofit. So there's not, you know, there's there's no concern about stealing information and that type of thing. They're here to support, the greater good no matter what angle it's coming from. So I see them as a hub of knowledge. So individuals can go to GFI.org and feel good because they're at a nonprofits website, which is there to supply information so that you can make decisions that are right for you and your family. then beyond that, it's a corporate hub. So they help founders found companies, they help investors find those companies, they help investors give data and information into their nonprofit to help them make better choices as to you know, what's the company that's whitespace, that we need to get into the food system as quickly as possible to fill the void. Those types of conversations are conversations that we have, often and and it's very exciting to me now, what they've done over the past, you know, three years is gone completely International. And everything is done strategically. I mean, they've they've gone to markets that needed help, whether that's building bridges to governments that want to actively help our industry because it was healthier for them. And that has happened, they've got boots on the ground in other countries that had volunteers with food connections that might be vital to changing the food system in a country like India, where there's just massive amounts of people and change that needs to happen. So, you know, kudos to the team at GFI because they're tackling something that is just absolutely meant and just doing a stellar job with it. So they they have conferences, they have conferences in other countries, they have hubs set up to help people learn what's going on and make those decisions consciously about what speaks to them the deepest so that they can plug in and be super effective in the work that they're doing to help help make this happen. Carley Hauck 50:18 That's wonderful. Thank you so much, I think that's going to be a really wonderful resource for people listening. And we'll definitely leave a link in the show notes. So what I like to do with each of these interviews is really bring awareness, education, inspiration, but then calls to action. So for people that are listening, that are saying, Wow, I had no idea, you know, how devastating the food agriculture system was on the planet, or my eyes have been opened even more, and I actually really want to make different choices and how I invest, but also how I consume, what might you suggest and we've already talked about some of them, some of these amazing products people can start to buy, but also, if they really wanted to put their money. And and, you know, what we choose to really pay for I think, is kind of a way that we're voting so to speak, how might you suggest people and invest? Curt Albright 51:24 Well, well, okay, there's two different cuz my mind went right to the impact side of it. So yeah, investing, let me hit that. Second. First of all, the easiest thing that we can do as individuals is stop eating animals. I mean, it just is. And it's healthier for us, the planet and for the animals, obviously. And one of my favorite sayings is, is love animals eat plants. And that's how I live my life and boys, and it's empowering. It's empowering to live authentically with my own belief system. So So that's my first invitation. From an investment standpoint, there's a lot of vehicles coming to market. I mean, there's crowdfunding of companies that are happening that are extremely successful, there are rolling funds, which I really don't understand the structure. I'm an old time banker, I have my kind of structured ways of looking at finance and so there's new there's new funds that are coming out that have rolling closes that you can access with lower dollar amounts, we are structured as a traditional venture capital fund so we have a 10 year final and it's and so it's a very planned out easy to kind of understand structure. However, it's not highly regulated compared to my banking career was and so the federal government makes it mandatory that only accredited investors can invest in venture capital funds. And so you can google accredited investor and it can give you the definition of that but but there will be more venture capital funds coming to market we're raising capital for our second fund right now there are at least two or three other aligned funds that are being raised right now. There's so there's so much capital needed into this space. And again, just do your homework. You know, make sure you know the founders, make sure you know, you're aligned with the structure of what you're investing into. And just again, realize that that you're doing more than 98% of the humans walking the face of the earth if you're making conscious decisions to not eat animals. So I cut myself some slack in early vegan when I went vegan in the beginning to realize that I just didn't know before and now I do and I'm doing something about it and yeah, I want to do more but I could burn myself out if I don't paste this it's it's a marathon not a sprint but but I believe the answers are in the food system if we're going to get this thing turned around quickly and you know if I can help anyone access or map out what's going on I'm happy to do so but but there is a lot of information a lot of movies you mentioned Seaspiracy, the same producer did a movie, I guess two or three years previously called Cowspiracy. And Cowspiracy is another one that's just fact based. And Forks Over Knives was one I watched early on that was good for me because of the health issues and there's there's a lot of data and a lot of information out there and invite you to look at it. Carley Hauck 54:23 Definitely. Thank you. Thank you so much, Curt. You know, another thing for folks that are just kind of getting interested in vegetarian or veganism and hopefully many of you are already, you know, one or two feet already in but there's so much wonderful community that I would also say as a benefit. I mean, even myself, so I went into this grocery store yesterday. I've been shopping at it for the last five weeks since I've been in Oregon. And the sales associate that I spoke to who just happened to be, you know, stocking the aisles. I asked about this particular plant based process Good Catch. And, you know, was was talking to her about it and she proclaimed herself to be a vegan. And I said, Oh, well, have you seen this product? And we just started talking about different vegan products that we were both very excited about. And she didn't even know about Good Catch. But she said, Carly, have you checked out the community group here and Bender, that's specifically for vegans, there's a Facebook group, and they have all these gatherings and potlucks and, you know, so it's just very welcoming. And as I was shopping throughout the store, she came back to find me because she wanted to have another conversation. And so I would just say, even if you're, you know, in this time, we're like, I feel we're all really trying to find the meaning, like, why are we here? What are what are we really standing for? And some of these things you might be in a community where you feel passionate about being a vegan or vegetarianism or more, you know, food justice, but there's not a big community and, and there is a community that you could even find online. And maybe that inspires you to move to that community. So I just kind of want to invite people to follow their heart. Follow the the Clear, Current Capital, so to speak, just kidding. Curt Albright 56:35 No, I appreciate it the current. I mean, it's, it's so true. And that spoke deeply to me and identify exactly with what you're saying, because I went through that in the early days and loved it. And that's what we set up in Charlotte through the humane league office that we opened up there. And I ran the Charlotte Veg Fest for five years, and that community was just so tight. And everybody, again, is only kind of a different place. And that's, that's great. But, you know, the bottom line was, is that we had this core belief that, you know, things needed to change, and they needed to change, because there was so much suffering around us and that we were putting inside of ourselves, you know, every day that were alive, and it just didn't have to be that way. So it was very empowering. And, you know, almost any city has a tribe. And I know, I know that, you know, all these nonprofits have recipe booklets, they have all kinds of support and for social media and zoom, now it's so easy to connect with people that, that share your belief systems and are there to really support you not to point fingers or, or any of that stuff. I mean, again, I mean, I came from a complete opposite world. So the last thing I want to do is shame somebody for eating meat. What I want to do is inspire other people to feel the goodness that comes from living an authentic lifestyle. Carley Hauck 57:52 Definitely. Well, Curt, this was such a wonderful interview, I really enjoyed the conversation. One last question that I have is, you know, I know that you've been very much on this spiritual path. And I feel curious as you're leading in such a, what do we want to say exciting, but I'm sure kind of an intense time with all the things and projects, how do you keep yourself balance? Do you use that word at the very beginning? Like what are the practices that are keeping you able to, you know, swim through all the other waves, so to speak, in addition to that, that, I mean, you feel very clear on why you're here and what you're here to do, but I missed that what else is supporting you right now? Curt Albright 58:44 My entire life really, I mean, it's set up because it's, it speaks deeply to me I got remarried to someone who I share core beliefs with, I start every day with prayer meditation. You know, I have my tribe in recovery. I have my tribe in in this world. And I you know, I moved to Florida that was more of a personal choice than anything else. And I resource in nature. And so to resource amongst the palm trees, I kayak on the Indian River. I mean, having that offshoot, I probably don't feed myself those kind of things as much as I would like to just because there's so much that needs to be done but, but I know that when I start getting off my own balance beam, I start feeling it. And and that's not who I want to be. So you know, I have to take care of myself in order to be useful to others. Carley Hauck 59:40 Thank you. Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to leave our listeners or to share before we end? Curt Albright 59:48 I'm just grateful to be here, I appreciate you inviting me and, you know, again, if there's any way I can be of service to your listeners, to help kind of open up this world. I would love to be there. So our website is clearcurrentcapitital.com and and I think you've put a link up to that and and feel free to put a link to my email. And and I'm on LinkedIn too. So happy to have you to help if anyone is interested in mapping out this side of the world. Thank you for having me. Carley Hauck 1:00:26 Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Curt is a human being I literally feel like I could talk to you for weeks and weeks. Curt, thank you so much for your heart and your commitment to really creating a world that is living in greater harmony with the planet and is supporting all beings to thrive. Thank you for your leadership. If you would like to speak to Curt and learn more about his company Clear Current Capital and how you might support him, his LinkedIn handle is in the show notes. Before we part, I wanted to leave you with some research, some resources and a call to action. So this topic is something that I feel really passionate about, which is why I focused on three different leaders in the space in my book. But I wanted to leave you with some inspiring research. This was published in the peer reviewed journal Foods. This research was led by Dr. Kerry Syngenta of Arizona State University, where it surveyed more than 2000 US consumers and over 2000 Uk consumers to examine attitudes and perceptions of the general population on novel cultivated protein products. It was found in this research that consumers believe that cultivated protein could make up as much as 40% of their future meat intake, and an examined attitudes and adoption of cell based meats among US and UK consumers. The study also found patterns of greater willingness and interest from younger generations to try these products. Though general levels of acceptance was observed across all age groups. Here's another sobering statistic. The United Nations has warned that we have less than a decade left before the most catastrophic effects of climate change are irreversible. One of the reasons that we have these great challenges ahead of us is because it is estimated that 70 to 80% of deforestation in the Amazon is contributed to meat production. But as you heard from the conversation that Curt and I had, if you eat less meat, and you eat more plants, and you vote with your dollars, and you ask for products, that are living in greater harmony with the planet, are supporting the wellbeing of animals, you asked for this in your grocery store and you choose it. This is one of the most significant things that you can do to start to mitigate climate change. be educated and be an active consumer. This is being a conscious inclusive leader. So if you would like a little more education and you'd like some wonderful products to try, here's some resources for you. Three documentary films I highly recommend: Seaspiracy, Meat Me Halfway, and Need to Grow. The producer of Need to Grow was in a previous podcast panel with Josh Tetrick, who is the CEO and co-founder of Eat Just. And he's also one of the leaders in my book, and that is on how to be a courageous leader in the midst of climate change. It's a wonderful panel and I think you might really enjoy it if you liked this conversation. I also would love to recommend my book. In my book, I talk about the pathway of how to be a conscious and inclusive leader but in that there are a lot of practices and a lot of ways we can apply, how to be mindful consumers, how to be eating in a way that's in harmony with animals and the planet. And so there are lots of opportunities to practice if you listen to the audiobook or you purchase the hardcopy. I would also recommend Draw Down as an incredible resource of a book. And there is a new online course of how you can actually follow along in the book that was put out through the Pachamama Alliance earlier this year. And the Pachamama Alliance is an organization I highly respect and the co-founder is Lynne Twist who is an incredible leader and wrote the foreword for my book. I would also recommend the Riddick terian cookbook, which is a new book I discovered and it speaks to 125 plant based meals. And then of course, there's the wonderful Good Food Institute. And then if you want to start eating more plant based foods, you want to reduce your meat consumption. Here are a few of my favorite products that I could not live without. So I'm a big fan of the Just Egg for me eat just I eat it a few times a week. I also really like Good Catch, which is a plant based seafood alternative. Abbott's Butcher has this plant based chorizo, I don't even like real sausage I've never had but they're plant based version is amazing. And Sweet Earth is also wonderful. They have a wonderful plant based sausage again, I've never really gotten into real sausages but their sausages are great. They taste like vegetables but kind of smoky and I love the taste of vegetables. Miyokose is a dairy free cheese. REBBL is another one of the companies and leaders I highlight in my book and they have some incredible smoothie and plant based elixirs that are full of superfoods. There's Omnifoods, there's Alphafoods, there's incredible products by Beyond Meat. Light Life has a really wonderful tempeh that I use all the time.Wholy Veggie is a new product that I just discovered, which is in the frozen food section and it's gluten free and vegetables. I am also recommending all products that are gluten free because I have had a gluten allergy since I was a little girl so I don't eat any dairy and I don't eat any gluten. And then my absolute favorite chocolate which is just honey and rocket cow is Honey Mamas. If you have not experienced them, they're amazing. I keep trying to get them in the North Carolina Whole Foods and they have refused but they are missing out. Luckily the West Coast knows what it's out what's up because I can find it out here. It's a little bit challenging to find it on the east coast. But hopefully with this podcast that will change. And then I also have plant based smoothies in the morning for breakfast most days. And I use Good Karma which is a flaxseed, protein milk that I really love. So there it is, those are some of my suggestions. And if you're feeling inspired to bring more of this topic or conversation to your company or organization and you want to create a culture while being an inspired, conscious, inclusive leadership, please reach out to me I'd love to talk to you and you can book a free consultation and the link is in the show notes. Until we meet again. I wish you good health, a nourishing summer and I have lots of incredible podcast interviews coming your way to keep you inspired so that you can be the light and shine the light.
In Episode #148 I sit down with Bruce Friedrich, the founder and president of Good Food Institute, a non-for-profit organisation developing the roadmap for a sustainable, secure, and just global protein supply. Their objective? To create a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative.Hope you enjoy the episode.Resources:Connect with Bruce on TwitterVisit the Good Food Institute's websiteListen to Bruce on Rich Roll's podcast from a few weeks agoWant to support the show?If you are enjoying the Plant Proof podcast a great way to support the show is by leaving a review on the Apple podcast app. It only takes a few minutes and helps more people find the episodes.Simon Hill, Nutritionist, Sports PhysiotherapistCreator of Plantproof.com and host of the Plant Proof PodcastAuthor of The Proof is in the PlantsConnect with me on Instagram and TwitterDownload my two week meal planWant to support the show?
Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan join to break down all the week's news, from Simon Biles's decision to Adam Driver's transformation. Jason Concepcion takes us through a bracket of former celebrity couples to see which reunion would reign supreme. Jon interviews Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute to talk about meat without the downsides. And we test a diehard Olympic fan to see how well she's been watching - and listening - to Team USA. Look out. We're coming in hot this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Imagine a day when alternative protein is no longer alternative. Welcome to the moonshot for meatless meat.When it comes to meat, the news is both good and bad. On the one hand, alternative protein innovation is at an all-time high, with ever more options stocked at grocery stores across the country. However, despite the cultural ascension and mainstreaming of all things vegan & plant-based, the unfortunate reality is that globally, meat consumption is actually the highest it's ever been. And according to the UN, global meat production is projected to double by 2050.So what gives?To address this conundrum and bring us up to speed on the cultivated and plant-based meat state of affairs, I'm once again joined by my friend & resident expert on all things meatless meat, Bruce Friedrich—returning for his third appearance on the show (catch RRP 286 & 402if you missed them).Graduating magna cum laude from Georgetown Law with additional graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins and the London School of Economics, Bruce is the founder & president of The Good Food Institute, an international non-profit focused on facilitating the reimagination of meat production. He is also a TED Fellow, a Y Combinator alumnus, and a popular food innovation speaker at places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. Bruce has been profiled in The New York Times and many other prominent outlets and has penned op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wired, and many other publications.Today we pick up where we left off almost three years ago to assess the current state of the union on all things alternative protein.We discuss advances in both plant-based and cultivated meat. We review how the latest technological breakthroughs in fermentation, 3D printing and funghi (or mycoprotein) harvesting are changing the game. And we cover the political and regulatory landscape that frames the alternative protein movement—and the policy changes we need to realize a better food system for all.In addition we discuss the many problems solved by a global pivot to alternative proteins—including zoonotic disease, greenhouse gas emissions, resource reduction, and animal suffering.Overall, this is an optimistic forecast of food system innovation—how technology, urgency, and popular demand are rapidly converging to create healthy, sustainable, and compassionate solutions to help solve our current food, health, and environmental crises.To read more click here. You can also watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.As you will soon discover, Bruce is super smart. This episode is our smartest yet. Enjoy!Peace + Plants,Listen, Watch & SubscribeApple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | Google PodcastsThanks to this week's sponsors:Seed: Stewarding the future of how we will use bacteria to restore and sustain human and planetary health, Seed's DS-01TM Daily Synbiotic combines 24 clinically verified and naturally-occurring, probiotic strains with plant-based prebiotics. Visit seed.com/RICHROLL to learn more.Squarespace: The easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog, or online store for you and your ideas. Save 10% on your first purchase when you visit Squarespace.com/RICHROLL and use the discount code RICHROLL at checkout.ROKA: Cutting-edge eyewear & apparel built for top performance. Ultralight construction. Arms-Up Design. Official USAT Partner. If you're active like me and wear prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses, ROKA combines the no-slip performance you've been waiting for with fashionable frames. Visit roka.com and enter code RichRoll for 20% off.Theragun: With an OLED screen, a personalized Theragun app, and the quiet and power you need, there is no substitute for the Theragun Gen 4, starting at only $199. Try it for thirty days and experience the percussive therapy device that's unlike anything you've ever felt at Theragun.com/RICHROLLFor a complete list of all RRP sponsors, vanity URLs & discount codes, visit Our Sponsors.Show Notes:Connect with Bruce Friedrich: Website | Twitter | LinkedInGood Food Institute: AboutNew York Times: Let's Launch a Moonshot for Meatless MeatNew York Times: This Animal Activist Used to Get in Your Face. Now He's Going After Your Palate.New York Times: What, Exactly, Is Meat? Plant-Based Food Producers Sue Missouri Over LabelingForbes: Why Near-Monopolies In Plant-Based Meat Aren't Such A Bad ThingFast Company: Once we have lab-grown meat, will we still need animal advocacy?Washington Post: Biden's Climate Change Package May Not Nix Cheeseburgers, But Science Says Beef Should Be On The Chopping BlockHear This Idea: Bruce Friedrich on Protein Alternatives and the Good Food InstituteTED: Meat Without Animals: The Future Of FoodTED: Market Forces and Food Technology Will Save the WorldEating Well: Meet the Innovator Behind the Plant-Based Meat MovementWashington Post: Lab-grown meat is better for the planet — and government should get involvedLos Angeles Times: Op-Ed: Is in vitro Meat the new in vitro fertilization?Food Navigator: Introducing RhizaDD: West Sacramento alternative meat company opens new fermentation plantFood Ingredients: Global regulatory policies for cell-based meat spotlighted by Good Food InstituteThe Guardian: Lab-grown meat firms attract sixfold increase in investmentYouTube: Growing Trend of ‘Clean' Meat Offers Environmental BenefitsHOW CAN I SUPPORT THE PODCAST?Tell Your Friends & Share Online!Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Google PodcastsDonate: Check out our Patreon accountSupport The Sponsors: One of the best ways to support the podcast is to support our sponsors. For a complete list of all RRP sponsors and their respective vanity url's and discount codes, visit my Resources page and click "Sponsors".Thank The Team: I do not do this alone. Send your love to Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes and interstitial music; Margo Lubin and Blake Curtis for video, & editing; graphics by Jessica Miranda & Daniel Solis; portraits by Ali Rogers, Davy Greenberg & Grayson Wilder; copywriting by Georgia Whaley; and theme music by Tyler Piatt, Trapper Piatt & Hari Mathis. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Learn what plant-based meat is and listen to Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute explain the Stanford Medicine “Swap-Meat” study proving it's better for you than animal meat. The Good Food Institute is an international nonprofit reimagining meat production in order to make the global food system better for the planet, people, and animals. GFI understands that with “alternative proteins” we can mitigate the environmental impact of our food system, decrease the risk of zoonotic disease, and ultimately feed more people with fewer resources. Visit GFI.org for more information. Original posts: https://gfi.org/plant-based/ https://gfi.org/blog/swap-meat/ Follow Plant Based Briefing on social media: Twitter: @PlantBasedBrief YouTube: YouTube.com/PlantBasedBriefing Facebook: Facebook.com/PlantBasedBriefing LinkedIn: Plant Based Briefing Podcast Instagram: @PlantBasedBriefing #GFI #plantbasedmeat #alternativeprotein #protein #meat #cholesterol #saturatedfat #PlantBased #Vegan #plantbasedpodcast #veganpodcast #plantbasedbriefing
In this episode of the podcast Sam Harris speaks with Bruce Friedrich and Liz Specht from the Good Food Institute about the way the problems of climate change and pandemic risk are directly connected to animal agriculture. The Good Food Institute is an international nonprofit reimagining protein production. Bruce Friedrich oversees GFI’s global strategy, working with the U.S. leadership team and international managing directors to ensure that GFI is maximally effective at implementing programs that deliver mission-focused results. Bruce is a TED Fellow, Y Combinator alum, and popular speaker on food innovation. He has penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wired, and many other publications. Bruce’s 2019 TED talk has been viewed two million times and translated into dozens of languages. He graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics. Liz Specht works to identify and forecast areas of technological need within the alternative protein field. Her efforts also catalyze research to address these needs while supporting researchers in academia and industry to move the field forward. Liz has a bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University, a doctorate in biological sciences from the University of California San Diego, and postdoctoral research experience from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to joining GFI in 2016, Liz had accumulated a decade of academic research experience in synthetic biology, recombinant protein expression, and development of genetic tools. Website: gfi.org Twitter: @GoodFoodInst, @BruceGFriedrich, @LizSpecht
Bruce Friedrich, Co-founder of The Good Food Institute will be interviewed by Jim Mellon, co-founder of The Longevity Forum and Michael Corcoran, Partner at Hill Dickinson on the future of clean meat in a resilient world. Clean meat is not only better for the environment, but it also decreases dependence on antibiotics and improves food security. From cat food to cellular grown fish, we are creating new, sustainable ways to cultivate meat while avoiding the negative externalities of traditional agriculture. The field of agronomics is experiencing tremendous innovation and growth. https://thelongevityforum.com
On this episode of the podcast John Papola speaks with the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Good Food Institute, Bruce Friedrich. Bruce is also a TED Fellow whose TED 2019 Talk has been viewed millions of times. The two discuss Friedrich's journey to founding the Good Food Institute, and how he uses innovation and market forces to make food practices better for consumers. More On Our Guest Wikipedia Good Food Institute Bio Twitter Amazon Author Page “The next global agricultural revolution” TED Talk References from This Episode At The Fork (film) Clean Protein by Kathy Freston & Bruce Friedrich Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe Christianity and the Rights of Animals by Andrew Linzey
In Episode 109 I sit down with lawyer and Co-Founder of the Good Food Institute Bruce Friedrich to talk about two solutions to the current problems with our food system: these solutions being plant based meat and cultivated or 'cell-based' meat. Specifically we cover: What's wrong with the current food system and how it is impacting human health, planetary health and animal welfare Specifics on climate change, COVID-19, antibiotic resistance, production inefficiencies and food security What plant based and cultivated meats are Specifics related to bio mimicking meat using cells collected via biopsy Where these industries are currently and the projections The companies leading the way in these industries Why major meat companies are investing into this space Barriers to entry When we can expect to see cell based meat on shelf How these types of products are likely to be perceived by customers and much more Resources: Good Food Institute Bruce's Ted Talk Bruce on Twitter Good Food Institute on Instagram If you're a regular listener you will know I prefer to do these conversations in person. I apologise in advance for slightly tinny audio from Bruce's end - the recording software is a bit hit and miss compared to when you are in the same room! Nonetheless it's certainly not the worst audio I have heard and the information is tremendously insightful. Want to support the show? If you are enjoying the Plant Proof podcast a great way to support the show is by leaving a review on the Apple podcast app. It only takes a few minutes and helps more people find the episodes. Simon Hill, Nutritionist, Sports Physiotherapist Creator of Plantproof.com and host of the Plant Proof Podcast Author of The Proof is in the Plants Connect with me on Instagram and Twitter Download my two week meal plan
I sat down with world-renowned vegan chef and author Jason Wyrick who has co-authored a NY Times Bestseller "21 Day Weight Loss Kickstart" as well as the book "Powerfoods for the Brain" with Dr. Neal Barnard, MD. Other books he has written are "Vegan Tacos" and "Vegan Mexico". He was the food editor for "Living the Farm Sanctuary Life" with Gene Baur and Gene Stone. He's a coauthor of "Clean Protein" with Kathy Freston and Bruce Friedrich. Jason has published the world's first vegan food magazine, The Vegan Culinary Experience which is now defunct and has been featured in the NY Times, the LA Times, VegNews, and Vegetarian Times. He has traveled the world teaching cooking classes and is the first vegan instructor to teach in the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu program. We talk about being vegan, health benefits, dairy, cheese, his home delivery service of amazing vegan food called The Vegan Taste and his restaurant Casa Terra. Jason gives us such a great insight of his progression of eating like most of the population to becoming a vegetarian and finally a full out vegan. It was such an honor for me, to have such a celebrated chef and author on my show. Because I've eaten his food, this conversation had so much more of a meaning due to my various attempts of being vegan myself. I hope you enjoy this conversation and the knowledge Jason shares with us all from his heart. Jason Wyrick: Vegan Food Delivery Service: The Vegan Taste Vegan Restaurant: Casa Terra Co-authored a NY Times Bestseller: "21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart" and "Powerfoods for the Brain" with Dr. Neal Barnard, MD. Other books he has written are "Vegan Tacos" and "Vegan Mexico"He was the food editor for "Living the Farm Sanctuary Life" with Gene Baur and Gene Stone. He's a coauthor of "Clean Protein" with Kathy Freston and Bruce Friedrich. Connect with Jason: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/thevegantaste/videos Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jason.wyrick.5 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casaterrarestaurant Twitter: https://twitter.com/VeganChefJason https://youtu.be/6jzSCBvX7PA ********** Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass ********** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Subscribe, Rate & Review:I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Follow Joe: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcostelloglobal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jcostelloglobal/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jcostelloglobal/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUZsrJsf8-1dS6ddAa9Sr1Q?view_as=subscriber Transcript Jason Wyrick: Joe: All right, welcome, Chef Jason Wyrick, this has been a long time coming for me. I have looked forward to interviewing you the moment I tasted the food that was delivered to my house. So here we are and I'm so excited to have you on the podcast and I really appreciate the time and you actually saying yes to me, so thank you so much and welcome! Jason: Well, you're welcome, I appreciate you having me on here. Joe: Yeah man this is a, the way this came about for me was I got a flyer in the mail and it was one of those things like come to this free, healthy dinner to hear some, I don't know, some sort of talk about healthy eating and nutrition. And it happened to be from a nutritionist, a company in town, like an office in town. And I went and then I, I got pulled into it, you know. The food we had was great, but it wasn't necessarily vegan, it was just healthy. But then when I got into the program, which was not cheap by the way, but I felt I was worth it. They started to say, you know, do all this blood work and then we found out my, I knew my cholesterol is always a little high. So their program is doing vegan for 30 days on their menu. And then from there, you, you know, you the hope is you stay with it or you alter it a little bit or whatever, so that's how I got into this. And the problem for me was I literally was so busy I did not have the time to prep my food. It was taking me like half days on Saturdays, half days on Sundays. And I was like, my weekend is shot and I've prepped all this food and, and I, you know, any small amount of time I had was gone. So then I really went on the hunt for trying to find healthy vegan food that I could just literally eat and not do anything with. I had already done, I think I did Sun Basket a while back. You know, all the food prep things that you know Jason: Right. Joe: of and we talk about. So that's how you and I got connected. I, I don't even know how I ended up finding you. I say it was just purely, I was so desperate doing a Google search and I found you and I was like, SOLD! You mean I can just heat it and eat it, right? That's that's your thing, it's just heart and eat. So here we are. So I want to start from wherever you want to start. I know that this was a health thing for you in combination of other things. But knowing the stories that I've read and interviews I've seen of you, that this came about more for a health reason initially for you. And then it just blew up from there and and it became your passion, which is really cool to me, because this is what I preach on this show and on my videos, is that I want people to live or fulfilled lives doing what they love. And it's cool that you went into that direction knowing some of your past, which you can talk about om how this all started for you. So take Jason: I'm Joe: It away! Jason: Sure it was a kind of a winding journey, I think I mean, it, it seems kind of straightforward when you look at it. I was unhealthy, I went vegan, I got my health back. Hurray! But that's, that's really not how it started, I mean. It's starts when I'm a little kid because, I think I didn't eat great, but I didn't eat bad for the kind of regular American diet. Which meant, you know, my mom cooked some of the meals and occasionally ordered out and I played sports all the time, I was always active. So I was a super healthy rail thin kid. And then as I got older, towards the end of high school and in college, I kept eating the same way I had been eating the last few years and last few years had changed because my mom went to work, she got busier and so our food choices changed to, "What, which one of these seven different chicken dishes do you want tonight that I know how to make? or would you like Taco Bell or Burger King or Pizza Hut or something like that?" So when I stopped playing sports all the time and was super active, the calorie and taken and honestly, like the terrible food I was eating, started to catch up with me. And so I, I probably put on 30 pounds from when I was 16 to probably 19 and just kept going up about 10 pounds a year from there. Jason: So I was already getting overweight. And then right at the end to college, I started learning how to cook. So I went to, I went to this really great Egyptian restaurant in Fort Worth where I went to college, had the ah this amazing meal with the first amazing meal I'd ever had. And I was like, "I want to learn how to eat like this!" And I'm broke because I'm in college. So I started to learn how to cook for myself. And then right after that, it was like two months after that, I went vegetarian and that was solely for ethical reasons. No real idea of the health impact or anything like that, that it has. I didn't care at the time, I was just going to keep eating food that was super tasty and not worry about the health part. So, of course, even going vegetarian, a couple gaining weight. In fact, I was kind of a stupid vegetarian, I'll just be blunt about it. I took the meat I was eating and I replaced it with blocks of cheese. So instead of these instead of like these super fatty steak fajitas loaded with sour cream and cheese that I was eating before. Now I was eating cheese lover's pizza from Pizza Hut and the additional topping was extra cheese. Exactly! [laughter] Joe: [laughter] Jason: And that was that was my dinner. I was with someone at the time, she had her own pizza. It was it was terrible. And so I became incredibly overweight. I weighed about 330 pounds and I got type two diabetes by the time I was in my mid 20s. And I was, I was faced with having to take insulin for the rest of my life and in basically starting to deteriorate even more. Like I was already deteriorating, my eyesight sucked, sleeping 10 to 12 hours a day. Everything you can think of with Type two diabetes was going wrong with me. So I was facing having to take medication and deteriorate for the rest of my life, which was probably not going to be that long at this point or changed my diet. And so it's, it's funny because I was, I've been vegetarian for five years and I had, I had heard of vegans, but I didn't really know what they were. And I even made fun of it a little bit.[laughter] Joe: Right. Right. Jason: This was back in the late 90s. And then all of a sudden it's 2001 and I'm faced with having to make this choice, do I do I give up this food that I love, which is cheese, and live a better life or just keep going with the cheese and and it's funny because even though it it sounds like a no brainer, like eat cheese and die or give up cheese and regain your health. I mean, it sounds like an obvious choice, but there is so much there's so much pain involved in a lifestyle change, that the stress of that was really bad in itself and, and going vegan in 2001 when really no one else around me was, was vegan. It meant I had to learn how to cook, I had to learn how to fend for myself, I had to completely change all these foods that I knew how to make and eat when I was growing up. And so it was super stressful at first. And so I relaxed a little bit and decided I was going to give myself a cheat day. So I was going to be a cheating vegan once a week. So every Wednesday night I'd go out and I get all you can eat enchiladas at my favorite Mexican restaurant and they bring them out in pairs they'll bring you two enchiladas at a time. And the first time I went in there, the waiter was like, "OK, yeah, whatever, it cool! He brings out enchiladas, except I eat 14 of them. Joe: Oh, my gosh. Jason: And then they come back the next week and all of a sudden the waiter's like, "Hmmmmm" because I need another 14 enchiladas. So by the third week, the waiters like "I hate you but I have to serve you anyway." Joe: You're like the, you're like that all you can eat buffet, crab, Jason: Right. [laughter] Joe: Leg guy. [laughter] Jason: It's it's probably familial in some way because I know my, my little brother would go to a Mongolian stir fry places and he take the bowl and see how much he could pack in the bowl because it was one pass through. And so he'd, he'd have the regular bowl and it only come up like three inches and then there was like the six inch pile of stuff on top Joe: Oh, Jason: Of the. [laughter] Joe: My gosh. It's. Jason: So there must be something familial about that, that buffet all you can eat thing. I, so I, but anyway, the point is, I, I did that for a few months and even then I managed to start losing weight and my symptoms went away. So I'd be vegan for the entire week, except for this one, one rather egregious cheat meal but it was still just one meal. And then it went to once every other week when I would go to this place. And then once a month. And then I remember the last time I purposely had went to this place in order cheese that I order in the enchiladas and I, it was a weird experience because I looked at them and I realized they didn't taste good to me anymore. They didn't have that, that feeling you get when you cheese that Homer Simpson like, "dooonnuuttt" like when you eat dairy, so I didn't have that anymore. They didn't taste good and I realized I was ordering them out of habit and not because I actually wanted them. So I didn't even eat the enchiladas, I pushed them away, paid the waiter, who probably sighed relief Joe: Right. Jason: that I was getting had their there and that was the last time I ever stepped foot in that place. And at that point, I was a full on vegan, which took me about eight months. And it also coincided with me completely getting rid of diabetes. Jason: And Joe: Incredible! Jason: After the first year, I dropped about 60 pounds and then when I added in some real exercise, I dropped another 60, so I dropped about 120 pounds over two years. Joe: That's incredible. And I think Jason: Yeah. Joe: What people need to understand about you, you're a big guy. Like I know Jason: Yeah. Joe: from the interviews and stuff, 6' 3", right? Yeah, I mean, that's you know, and and I think at one point you said you, you went to school and lived in San Antonio...Fort Worth, sorry. So you're like in steak town. Jason: Yeah, I mean, Joe: Right. Jason: The nickname of Fort Worth is Cowtown. Joe: Yeah, ok, so there you go! Yeah, so that must, the be, that must be hard. It's just the stigmatism with, you know, vegan and yoga and all of those kind Jason: Ok. Joe: Of things. Right. It's tough. Jason: It depends. OK, it was weird because Texas is really interesting. I mean, I grew up here in Arizona but my dad is Texan. And so I was already pretty familiar with Texas before I actually moved there for school and stayed there afterwards. And Texas has this reputation of being big and boisterous and rednecky and it is. But it also has has this huge liberal side and has this huge health side, has this huge vegan side to it. I mean, I remember when I was in college, I went to the Texas Vegetarian Chili Cookoff. And this was in the mid 90s and it was like this huge gathering of people from all over Texas doing this Chili Cookoff. Like Texas had one of the biggest vegetarian societies in the 90s, at least when I was there participating in that stuff. And so Texas is just this really cool mix of all these different things, religion and Atheism and big hair money and rebel activists and steak eaters and vegans and no one is quiet about it. Maybe that's the one thing about Texans is, you know, everybody kind of gets by in the big city but they're, they're friendly but boisterous about that stuff, which makes it really cool. Anyway, that's my tangent on Texas. Joe: No, but that's great, because it's exactly you, you saying that is exactly how it educates people to know that it's not just big hats and boisterous voices and steak and whatever, it's, I had no idea that you would think that long ago people were vegan in the state of Texas. Jason: I mean, I think, I think Fort Worth had one of the first vegan restaurants in the country, which was Spiral Diner that opened up in 2001. Joe: Yes, I don't think anybody would ever know that. So that's, that's cool. So the tangent was great. OK, so you are, this is what year now that you go full vegan? Jason: So that was the, I started the beginning in 2001 and then I was full vegan by the end of 2001. Joe: Got it. Jason: And I think, I think I might be more like a lot of other people with this, like I've, you know, I've written books with a lot of the vegan doctors and usually their message is that's all or nothing proposition. You go from zero to 60. And from a physiological standpoint, you're going to regain your health really fast that way. But if you're miserable doing it, chances are you're going to quit out. And so I think for a lot of people transitioning, as long as they have it in their mind that it is a transition, it makes it easier for people. So that's that's what I did. It took me it took me about eight months to fully transition over. And I tried to zero to 60 approach for Joe: Right. Jason: three weeks, and it, I was miserable. Joe: Yeah, and for me, the 30 day thing I did not find hard, the part I found hard about it was the meal prep and that's literally what was difficult for me. And I even heard you in some other interviews, the good thing that we have going for us these days is that it's, it's much more accepted in the world. And when you go out to a restaurant, there are options that would have never been there 10 years ago. Jason: Yeah, there are plenty of options, Joe: Right. Jason: Which has made it an interesting landscape for vegan businesses. Because I think in the past, vegan's gravitated towards vegan businesses because that was their only choice. And now at least in the Phoenix area, vegan businesses are just one amongst a bunch of other vegan options. Joe: Right, but I think the key and the reason I was so excited to have you on is what helped me get through the, the, the next 30 days that they asked me to do because they could see that my cholesterol was dropping. So Jason: Great! Joe: They were like, will you, "Are you willing to buy into doing it another 30 days? And towards the middle or end of the first, as I think when I came across your website and then it was easier for me to say yes, because I literally just could not afford the time to prep. Jason: Right. Right. Joe: But but besides that, the biggest thing for me was the taste. And I don't know, like this could be a trademark or something that I'm saying, but I didn't know vegan food could taste so good, and you can still Jason: No it's true, Joe: if you want. If it's not taken by somebody, it's all yours. But, yeah, that's what it was for me, man. When I first dug into it and the way I worked with you was that I wanted it spicy, which you were all down for. I think even when I, I got from my doctor what I needed to do, he said, OK, well, if you're gonna get this food from The Vegan Taste, just make sure, ask them if it's low and oil, right?. And it so... Joe: It everything was a yes. Like all, you know, that was when I wrote to you, Yes, you know, it's either low or minimal oil or no oil. And I can get it the way I like it, so you made it spicy, which is the way you said you liked it in email. Jason: Right. Joe: So it was like the perfect marriage. I was like sold! Jason: Yeah, I think that's, that's the key to getting people to make a change. It's about honestly, I think it's like about the in the environment that you put people in. So I know Dan Buettner, who wrote the Blue Zones by it. And one of the things that he told me that really impacted the way I thought about food and getting food to people and the way we treat people, is that the the biggest determinant for someone making choices that let them live a long time was not their willpower, was not a doctor's prescription or anything like that, it was the environment in which they lived. And so if the choices were easy to make, to go out and exercise, statistically speaking, more people would go out and exercise...that way. And so to me, food is part of the environment that you're in. And so the easier I can make it on someone to make a better choice for themselves, the bigger chance they are they're going to have to actually make that choice. And so for me, that's putting ready to eat meals in front of someone that's going to make them happy. Joe: Yeah. Jason: The less you have to worry about it, the easier it is for you to be healthy. Joe: Yeah, it's it was so nice to find the website. It was that, I could hear that sound when the heavens open, I was like "Thank you!". It's the only thing that's gonna keep me on track. Now, you know, before, before we get too deep into this, I'm not full vegan. Since doing nutrition program, I've cut out a lot of, like I would use, I would snack before dinner. I'd be so hungry I'd come home at four o'clock, whatever, and I'd pull out the the block of cheddar cheese and some Triscuits and, you know, just take the edge off. I, I stopped doing that a lot more than I use, you know, it's, it's cut way back to almost minimal, you know, to none. I don't drink, I used to drink half and half of my coffee and now all I use is either oat milk or almond milk. So I've completely switched over to that type of stuff. So while we're on the subject of, of, you know, how this has helped you, why do you think dairy is so bad? Is it just that it's like, was it not meant to be eaten or drank? Is it just like we've created this product that should not have existed? Jason: I think so. I mean, dairy's primary uses to grow a baby. And so you're you're consuming something that's meant to grow another being and as, as adults, we're not, I don't think we're supposed to be consuming foods that are continue endlessly making us grow to that scale. Like I have a five year old daughter, I watch how much she eats and sometimes as much as I do, because she, she's always out there running around and she's, like I look at her in a week later, she's taller and I'm like, oh, my God! And so calorically dense foods are good for her, I mean, that's why human mothers breastfeed and you know, all this other stuff. But then when you stop growing and you keep eating those foods, you're consuming growth hormone and all this other stuff that I don't think we're meant to be consuming. And then, you know, there are a couple other issues that go with it, which it turns out casein, which is the protein in milk seems to be carcinogenic, even, even in that milks appropriate species after their weaning, it seems it seems like the incidence of cancer goes up in that species if they continue to consume milk even from their own species after they're supposed to stop drinking it. And then, I mean, look at us where we're drinking stuff that's meant to grow a baby cow into this big monster cow compared to humans I mean a cow is pretty heavy. Jason: So, you know, there's, there's that it's, it's loaded with fat and it's all if you have cheese, it's all condensed down into this calorically dense product with all these other, all these other ingredients into it that are probably not meant for us to just get fuel. And it's all like if you take milk, milk is this big volume, take cheese and it comes down to this little thing, all that condensed down. It's like a black hole of food. And then you're you're eating that, so, of course, no wonder you're you're getting fat, you're having arteriosclerosis as you age and all these other problems. So that's why I think the health problem is with dairy. From, from an evolutionary standpoint, it's was a good thing because you could have this nutrient dense food even in times of famine. That's, that was one of the benefits of cheese because cheese was basically shelf stable in a long period of human history when we didn't really have very many shelf stable foods, the same way that after a fashion beer, a shelf stable, just one of the reasons that beer was traded there and there are all these ways to preserve foods during times of famine and we just don't live in that anymore. Joe: Right. So on the dairy part of this, what I guess people have a hard time thinking of how they would substitute a cheese for these recipes, and I know that in you know, you have this enchilada recipe and you, there's I mean, you have a ton of different recipes. What are just some off the top of your head, some substitutes that you do use for cheese? Like, how would someone make a pizza? What would they put on it as their cheese? Jason: You know, it depends. There are a lot of nondairy commercial cheeses out there. I think from a health standpoint, they're good insofar as you're not getting casein and all these hormones that go with it, but I can't pretend that they are health food. Joe: Right. Jason: I mean, it's base, it's like cheese is solidified fat when it's dairy and the non vegan cheeses are still a solidified fat. They just have all the other junk that goes with them. So, you know, if you if you limit that look, if you're going to have a pizza and you have it once a week and you put some vegan cheese that's made out of almonds or cashews or something like that on it, you're going to be OK. If you do that every single day, you're not going to be so OK anymore. You can still be a junk food vegan. In fact, it's easier now to be a junk food vegan than it is to be a healthy vegan, because you can run over to Carl's Jr. and get a Beyond burger, that's, you know, still loaded up with all this fat and it's still a burger where as when I went vegan almost 20 years ago, if I was craving a burger, I had to make it myself. Joe: All right. Yeah, I mean, the creativity Jason: So that's. Joe: That, that you have to come up with for these recipes must be daunting. Jason: I sometimes, but only because when I do a lot of recipes, Joe: Right. Jason: I mean most, most chefs at a restaurant might do 30 recipes throughout the year. If they're really pushing themselves. I think with the delivery service, we're doing 300. Joe: WOW! Jason: Every, every year, at each year, it's different too. Joe: Ok. So you're rotating 300 recipes a year from The Vegan Taste. Jason: And we're just making about as we cook every week. Joe: It's amazing! Jason: Yeah, it's, it's, it's daunting, but it's cool. Joe: Yeah, it's. Jason: Yeah, I mean, and like back to the cheese thing, sometimes it's replacing that, that fatty mouthful, mouthfeel that cheese gives you so you can even use something like an avocado or you can use, what are my favorites is this thing called pipián verde, which is just this ah pepitas and tomatillo puree. It's it's a classic Mexican dip and I'll just use that on enchiladas or we'll make our own cheese at the restaurant, sometimes we'll make it just out of almonds and some other ingredients and we'll make our own queso fresco like that and we make our own mozzarellas and stuff. That's a little laborious, I think, for the for the home cook, it's just getting that, that creamy texture which you can get from nuts and seeds. Joe: Right. Yeah. Because even on the recipes at Casa Terra, your restaurant, I saw that there was I think you have is it brick oven pizzas or just... Jason: Yeah, Joe: Or Jason: We have worked fire Joe: Wood Jason: With Joe: Fire. Jason: Fire pizzas Joe: Right. Sorry. Wood fire. Yeah. And so and I did see one of the recipes are one of the descriptions of the you know, the pizza said mozzarella. So I was like, OK, how does he doing that? Jason: Right. It's just a, when you get to that type of cheese, that's it's a little time consuming and it's a mix of art and chemistry. Joe: Yup. It's just it's incredible. So I know we just kind of skipped over it a little bit but we talked about your daughter and, and I and I know we talked about, we didn't quite say that she's vegan, but I know that she is from based on my research about you. And I know it's tough with kids these days with all of the gluten allergies and, and everything that's going on that or used to be a lot tougher. Now, its parents are more aware there are more options and I would think that it's almost the same thing with your daughter as it is with a child that has a gluten allergy. When they go to a house for a birthday party and let's just go back to using pizza as a example, because that's how I grew up, right? That your parents would buy a bunch of pizzas, and... What does she do in that case? Or how how do you let the parents know that she's vegan and that, you know, that isn't something she would (A.) like to eat or (B.) she shouldn't eat or (C.) it might make her sick of she eats because she's not used to eating cheese. Jason: We just we tell them and ask them not to make a big deal out of it. And then we make sure our daughter has food that totally owns everybody else's. Joe: Perfect. Jason: I Joe: That's awesome! Jason: When she was in school before COVID hit, the teachers were asking if we could bring stuff for them. Joe: That is so funny. I can imagine, no I, listen, I know what it smells and tastes like. Every kid we sit there with, their pizza from Dominos going, WWO!, what are you eating? I'll trade you, I'll trade you two slices for that, that's perfect. Well good, she's totally vegan incorrect? That's amazing. So you, what is the Vcology project? Is that how you say it? Vcology Project? Jason: Vcology. Joe: Vcology. So. Jason: It's pretty much the umbrella for all the stuff that I do. Joe: That's what I thought, I just wanted to make sure. And I, because I know that you spoke about The Vegan Taste, which is the home delivery food service, Casa Terra, which is the restaurant out in Glendale, Arizona. And then I heard you speak about other things potentially coming down down the road, so I assumed that that was the umbrella where all of these things would fall under. Jason: Yeah, I mean, we're working on commercializing our cheeses on a large scale. We've already had one big vegan restaurant chain express some interest in it, which was really cool, it came out of the blue. But that was, that was a nice surprise. And Joe: Yeah. Jason: And we just want to roll out really high quality vegan cheeses onto the, onto the food service market and then retail, if we can. Joe: That's great. Jason: But if I can. I mean, if I can get, like some of the best restaurants in Phoenix using high quality of vegan cheeses, all of a sudden it opens up really great menu options for vegans around the entire town. Joe: Right. And I Jason: And Joe: Was Jason: I Joe: Thinking Jason: Think Joe: Good Jason: Go ahead. Joe: While I was sitting Jason: I think. Joe: On the dairy part of it, and I didn't even know that this underlying thing about the cheese had a broader scope or what was happening. I just I kind of chose the one thing that I know, like you, you know, it's like, how do you have ravioli? How do you have a pizza? How do you, if you you're so used to having half and half in your coffee, how do you make the move away from dairy? And I think that's, I think that's harder almost than the meat part of this or that Jason: It's way Joe: Or the Jason: Harder. Joe: Protein part of it. Right. Jason: I didn't know why until Dr. Barnard told me a few years ago that the casein in cheese is called the casomorphin and that basically means that acts like morphine. It acts like an opiate in your system. And I was like, "That makes sense!!", because one day I just gave up meat and it was like, whatever but when I gave up cheese, I had withdrawal symptoms. I was jonesing, I mean, like the hands were shaking and I had headaches and I was irritable and everything else that I had heard from people that were trying to give up cigarettes or drugs or something like that, I was going through and I'm like, "What the hell is going on?" That was, that was one way where I knew, like, I've really gotta get off this stuff, because Joe: All right. Jason: If I'm having that reaction, this is probably pretty bad for me. But it was a few years later when he told me why. And so Joe: That's Jason: Anyway, Joe: It. Jason: I think that's why cheese is so hard. Joe: That's incredible. How did the two of you get connected for that book? Your book? I wrote it down. I'm going to have it in the show Jason: Sure. Joe: Notes. Jason: The "21-day Weight Loss kickstart". So he was coming through town to do a talk and they wanted someone to do a cooking demo and I was the only one in Phoenix, doing this kind of stuff, so I just volunteered to do it. They were gonna pay me and I was like, don't worry about it, I'll just I'll just do it. And so we became friends through that and then I started teaching the cancer project classes here in Phoenix for a few years, which later became their Food for Life program. And, and during that, I just developed tons of recipes every single week. Because I think back then they were kind of in the same boat that a lot of healthy, healthy doctors are in, we're like, they're like, you have to change your diet. Here's how you do it. But they're not really experts at the here's how you do part. Joe: Right. Jason: And so, you know, their recipes were easy to do, but they weren't necessarily great. They were just like, "Ahhh". And so during that class, I just continuously develop stuff that was usually easy to make, but also really spectacular. And then because of that, we just wrote the book together. Joe: And that's really cool. It's just amazing how things, you know, you can make these connections and they just turn into something amazing like that, so, yeah. I'm trying not to skip around, there's so many things I have to ask you, I have so many notes, it's like this is, like I said, I, I was doing the meals for when I was doing the 30 day thing, basically for lunch and dinner. And then I started to do them just for lunch because my partner, Jo Ellen, we were like we were eating separate times, separate things at dinner, it felt like it wasn't this Jason: Right. Joe: Community. Jason: You loose the social part. Joe: Yeah, and so it's this balance for me. But so I thought at least at a bare minimum, and I think this is one thing that we talk about stepping stones and doing this in stages, is that it's worth at least trying to say to yourself, OK, "I'm going to eat vegan for lunch", just take a meal of the Jason: Right. Joe: day and say, this is what I'm going to do. And literally, breakfast is super easy because for me, it's, it's like a vegan smoothie, right? There's nothing and so I don't have to worry about that. It's not sausage, an egg and bacon and all this other stuff. So then you handle the vegan lunch part and you're already better than probably seventy five percent of the world in regards to how healthy you're eating. Jason: That's Joe: And Jason: What Joe: Then. Jason: I think. Joe: Right and then you just. So and that's kind of the approach I took. I don't know yet, just being honest with you, if I can completely eliminate that occasional steak or burger or Jason: Right. Joe: And I'm sure I can at some point, like for me, like you, I, I refuse to go on medication. So I'm 58 years old and I'm like, I'm not going on cholesterol medication. I don't take anything for high blood pressure. I'm not going to do any of that stuff. So if it's a, if it's food, it's going to make the difference, then that's the difference that I'll make. Go into the gym five days a week is already easy for me. But if I have to do that and get rid of the burgers and the steaks and whatever, and that's the mood that I would make. Jason: And if you could make that, did you make it fun and pleasurable, then why not? Joe: Right. That's Jason: If Joe: It. Jason: It's this chore, you know, like most people are gonna be like, ahhh screw it. I don't want to do it, Joe: Now, Jason: But. Joe: For me, it's it's talking my girlfriend into seeing if we can do it together, so that'll be the that'll be the piece we'll see. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about, oh, I also heard an interview where you said that your daughter growing up with two chefs. So is your wife also working with you at either at The Vegan Taste or Casa Terra? Jason: She she was Joe: Ok. Jason: Doing The Vegan Taste for a while. Joe: Ok. Jason: I mean, for, for years, she was with me in the kitchen. And sometimes when I was off doing other stuff, she was running at it for months at a time. Joe: Got it. Jason: But I now we're in a situation where it's hard for us to split our time like that. And so she takes care of the household and raises our daughter while I take care of the business. We tried where we were splitting it both ways and it was like, I think it's hard to multitask. Right? It's hard to be great at a bunch of different stuff at the same time. And so we just finally decided, well, I'll have to go off and kind of slug it out and be the champion for the business, while she's the champion for keeping the rest of the family sane. Joe: Which is the admirable thing for sure. So The Vegan Taste, let's talk about that really quickly. So The Vegan Taste as home delivery, vegan meals that come in these great packages that are, like you said, are the goal is to heat and eat. And Jason: Right. Joe: They I don't know. I'll let you just talk about it because I don't want to, I know I had a certain schedule and the whole thing with the coolers, but I'd like you to describe it so that the audience will know what it's all about and then they can make their decision from there. Jason: Yeah, it's it's super easy. So the menu changes every single week. It's a fixed menu. You put your order in by Friday night. My crew comes into the kitchen on the weekends, makes everything. We plate it up over the weekend. Pack it up for delivery on Monday and then my team of drivers go out every Monday and they deliver all the meals at once for your entire week, that Monday. They leave it in a cooler loaded up with ice packs so even in the middle of July, the meals will stay chilled until you can pick them up and then you put them in your fridge. I know, some of our clients will reheat them on the stovetop. They'll take the ingredients out and reheat them on the stove, top it honestly, talking to people, most of them stuff it in the microwave and they have a lunch in two minutes. Joe: Yup and those containers are microwaveable. Jason: Yes, Joe: Is that correct? Jason: Yes. Joe: Yes. I know I've done both. I've depending on what the food was, sometimes I would heat it on the stove and sometimes I would heat it in the microwave. And I think that's all, also another thing in my brain about microwaves, they know make me a little nervous thinking that maybe something's there that eventually Jason: Right. Joe: someone's going to admit to, so if I if I have enough time, I'll go to the stove. If I don't, I just use the Jason: I Joe: Microwave. Jason: Am exactly the same way. I mean, I don't even have time to cook for myself very much anymore, so so I use our delivery service for me and most of the time I just slide the contents out of the container and right to a pan. Joe: So in regards to the meals that are available, is it, are they just lunches and dinners? Are they breakfast, lunch and dinners or... Jason: It's basically lunches and dinners right now, but will add in a breakfast option and the juicing option and some desserts pretty soon. Joe: And and like me, at one point, I was getting doubles of things so that I could have something for lunch and then something completely different for dinner. So I assume you have clients across the board that are only lunch, only dinner or a combination of enough meals for, is that how many, how many Jason: Yeah, Joe: can they get? Is it Jason: So, Joe: The. Jason: Yeah, basically we do six different dishes every week and you can get a single portion of each one or you can get a double portion of each one. And the people that want to have our meals for lunch and dinner, get the double portion. Joe: Right and that's what I was doing for a time, that's, that's right. And then in my case, I said that I wanted it spicy but so you actually keep tabs of certain things that people request on a small, I assume a small level because you can't be doing personalized, you know, things across the board for everybody. Jason: Yeah, we have spice is one of the standard options we have for people. And then we have a gluten free option, soy free option, although we use pretty limited soy already anyway. And then no oil option in the meals, again, are are pretty much pretty low oil already. So we just talked to people like, do you really, really want no oil? Or is that that's that you're trying to minimize your your oil? Are you trying to minimize your soy? Are you trying to minimize gluten? Because we don't we don't use those types of ingredients heavily in the meal service. And then if there's something that we can, leave off as a garnish for someone like if someone's like, "I hate right onions." I'll tell them, you know, if it's mixed into the dish, we can't change it but if it's a garnish, we can make a note to leave it off for you. Joe: Right. Jason: I mean, most people are good about it, but then sometimes I get someone that sends me a list of like 10 different things, I can't, sorry, I can't do that. Joe: Thank God I do that I don't want to sit here and look at you in the camera and go, oh, I was one of those people. And Jason: No, not Joe: I Jason: At Joe: Think Jason: All. Joe: The only thing that I said, I everything was great for me. The only thing I request that I think was less tofu in some of my stuff only because I'm I, it's just me getting used to it, it's it, and, and it's not, I would, I wouldn't even say it's a texture thing for me because I eat oysters, right? That's about as weird of a texture as you can Jason: That's sure. Joe: get. So I don't know why I definitely have had tofu from your food service, that was amazing. And it's almost like it's firm and some of it sometimes is even like crispy, like it's it's hasn't where I've had it other times where it just, just, it's just weird. Jason: Yeah, I mean. Joe: I don't know if there's good or bad tofu, maybe there's just the quality of it, I don't know. Jason: It's the way, it's the way it's prepared. And I think it's also what you're used to growing up with. I mean, if you're used to growing up with, say, diced up firm tofu in a miso soup, you're not going to bat an eye at it. But if you're not used to that, the texture might be weird for you. And I think, when dealing with American culture where we're not used to that stuff, too many people just take tofu and throw it in a soup or a stew and they're like, "Okay, that's good enough." But it's not I mean, it's like to me that's like throwing in a raw hunk of meat and is something and being like whatever. So, Joe: Yeah, Jason: You know, it's just it's Joe: Ok. Jason: All in the preparation. Joe: Ok, good to know because I started to get to like it. And thanks to you once again, because I was definitely I grew up with, in an Italian restaurant family and my father was a chef and so all of this stuff is new to me. Jason: Right! Joe: I was eating pizza and pasta and bread and, and you name it. So I wanted to ask you about Cassa Terra. I noticed that on the website, like a lot of places, especially during this time we're living in right now with COVID-19, that the kitchen is closed for the summer, right? That's what it says on the website. Jason: Yeah, Joe: Is that true? OK. Jason: A lot of the high end restaurants, it seems, around town actually close up for the summer. Unless there are these big corporate things that can afford to take the loss that restaurants just suffer with the summer here. Joe: Is Casa Terra where you do actually all the food prep and making them? So that that kitchen is still being used for the food delivery service? Jason: Yeah, it's our Joe: It's. Jason: R&D kitchen and our delivery service kitchen. We do catering and stuff out of there, too. Joe: When does the restaurant open or when do you expect it to open back up in the fall or ? Jason: I'm not sure yet Joe: Ok. Jason: Because honest answer is for a, for the type of food that we do, our location is not that great. And so if we can find a location that's more central or on the east side, that makes more sense for us right now than trying to just reopen in Glendale. And Phoenix is a weird city, so, we have these really accessible freeways and it's actually pretty easy to get around here but I don't know if our food culture is is there yet, because if someone else to drive more than 20 minutes here for food, it's painful. And the chances are they won't do it. Joe: You know. Jason: Or if they do it, they'll come once a year. And Joe: Yeah. Jason: So it's, it's difficult that way we're compared to like Los Angeles and New York or Chicago, people will spend an hour getting to, getting to a place to have dinner. And if it's a good meal, that's just part of the it's part of the experience. That might not be a great part of the experience, but it's something you're willing to do. So. Joe: Yeah, absolutely, Jason: So Joe: Yeah. It's Jason: We Joe: Funny. Jason: Have to be, yeah, we have to be in a more central location. Joe: Yeah, because I know we're in, and I live in Arcadia and the boundary for me is pretty much like the 51. If it's on the other side of the 51, I have a hard time going that far west but I understand that. You, one of the things that I did read was that about the Le Cordon Bleu the school and it was something about you being, was it the first graduate of vegan Jason: First Joe: Or Jason: Instructor. Joe: First instructor of vegan? Jason: Remember when it was theater, 2007 or 2008 that I was teaching at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute Joe: Yeah. Jason: And right when I, right when I started teaching there, they became part of the Le Cordon Bleu program. And so I, because I became the first official vegan instructor in that program. Joe: That's really cool! Jason: There was there was cool. Joe: Yeah. There's so many things, the other thing was I remember either hearing or reading that philosophy was your major? And I think what, what struck me about it, when I when I read it and then who you are and, and I even, there was an interview about making the argument of why to go vegan, like how when someone find something like this and this is why this has been like I've wanted to talk about, even though I haven't gone full vegan, I think that the health benefits are so important and just the, the eliminating of dairy alone. I mean, I've told people when they said, oh, yeah, you know, it sucks getting old. I'm like, well, I'm 58, I agree with you, but I don't, I'm, I don't wake up feeling achy. And, and, and I never did a lot of dairy, but even cutting out what I've already done, I think the inflammation piece of this is what other, you know, is another part that people are missing. Jason: I'd, Joe: And so, Jason: Yeah, it's. Joe: You know, so getting back to the philosophy part about how you're able to convey this in a not like beating someone over the head with a club, you've got to do this, it's, it's the only way. Your approach to it is your first of all, your demeanor of how your, you know, your a 6' 3" guy who you would never think if I met you in the street, would say you're vegan. And then the way you intelligently talk about the food and then the bonus of all of it is how it tastes. And so there's just so many amazing things about this, it's why I was so excited to finally do this. Jason: Well, cool! Thank you. Joe: So the Jason: It's. Joe: Go ahead with the phil..., with the philosophy part of this, I think it's helped a lot. Jason: That that's actually what got me to go vegetarian, but also it it taught me a few things about the way people make decisions because I socially and just because of the way I was raised, I didn't want to go vegetarian because it meant changing my lifestyle. And intellectually, I've been kind of bandying it about for a couple months before I pulled the trigger on it. And I didn't do it, it was just something I had thought about it. And then I had an epiphany because I was watching, I was playing with my cat. And I, intellectually, I knew my cat is this other being with its own thoughts and her own emotions. But then there was something where I was just playing with her and I had that emotional epiphany and that's where it went off and I was like, I understood that my cat was this separate creature that was valuable and she had her own rich emotional life and because she was sitting there problem solving and she was getting excited about bringing this little bottle cap back to me and playing fetch with me. It wasn't like this, this robotic, emotionless, thinking-less, piece of matter that, that's how Descartes used to view animals and that's how he justified doing all these horrible experiments he did on them because he, you know, even though they would, they would scream and all this other stuff, he passed it off as they didn't have a soul and they weren't really conscious and all this other BS. And so you can intellectually know that, but then you have the understanding there is that connection. And within a second I was like, wait a minute, it's not ok for me to just, like, take a hammer and smash my cat apart right now, that's really jacked up, that's something serial killers do. Why? Why can't I do that to my cat but why am I paying someone to do it to a cow? And I was like, "I have to stop!" So I stopped, went vegetarian and then spent a month arguing against vegetarianism to see if any of the arguments hold up. And none of the arguments were self-consistent. And so I was like, I'm going to stay vegetarian. And that was the the rational part of that. But what I learned was I had to have that emotional epiphany to fully make that leap in my decision making. And then when I went vegan, it was even more so because I was doing it for health reasons. But then I found out about factory farming. So it's ironic because being vegetarian for a few years, I had no idea about factory farming and then all of a sudden I'm looking at it for health reasons and learning about factory farming and I know that it's what happens in a factory farming is horrible and I don't want to partake in it. But yet I'm going out and having all you can eat enchiladas once a week. Because I emotionally had that tie to the enchiladas and, and so I think for most people, decision making is ah, pain pleasure balance. And it's, it's a very immediate and very immediate decision. And it's funny because people that can make that decision for the long term, we call them wise, because in the short term, going out and jogging or lifting weights sucks for most people. But the wise people go out and do that because, you know, it's going to pay off in the long term. And so I think going through that myself, even though I was trying to be rational about it and I knew what the right decision was and not being able to make it because I had this emotional thing is what got me into food in the first place. Because I knew if I could if I could take the pain part of that calculus away for people and just give them an environment where they could make a good decision for themselves and for the planet and for the animals, then, then I had to do it. Joe: Yeah, it's, it's really cool. I mean, I learned so much more about you just doing the research that I wanted to do up front and, and I think it's important how the philosophy part of your, what your brain has done through, you know, getting that degree in school and then then I heard about the soul sucking marketing job that, you Jason: Oh, Joe: Know. Jason: It was horrible. Joe: Right. Yeah. And it's and this is it all plays, this is why this Jason: It's. Joe: is such a cool interview for me. And I don't want to keep you any longer because I know that, you know, you work really hard and but I, I would love to do more at some point, Jason: Yeah, that'll be Joe: You Jason: Fun. Joe: Know, it's just cool that you, you are doing your passion. It really means a lot to you. You're you know, you eat, sleep and breathe what you preach, but you preach it in a way that it's not preaching. The food tastes amazing! It was just a godsend for me to find it. We find out tonight as you're setting up here and give it a talk, you play the drums. It's like, what, what more of a kinship could we possibly have? And all I do is try to preach on my podcast and on my, you know, social media and all that is just people following their dream. And it's really cool to see you do this. It's, it's, it's great. And and I'm glad you're healthy. Glad you made the choice when you did. You're here Jason: Yeah. Joe: To help keep us all healthy and feed us. Jason: Well it's funny, so it's funny you brought that up, because I feel like I'm in another transition point in what I'm doing because, ah you know, I had this amazing journey where I lost all this weight, I cured my diabetes, became a chef and went and helped out other people. And in the last couple years my, my health started to decline and I was like, what's going on because I'm eating right. But there's, there's all this other stuff. So, I mean, you know, in the last couple of years, I almost got divorced. I was working 100 hours a week. I was doing all this other, other stuff. I was, you know, we went to set up to open up this restaurant, we had some guys steal about 50K from us and steal, ah... He probably cost us about 200 grand in the long term, which was almost all my family's money and almost all of my best friend's money that she had. And then we opened up this, opened up this restaurant, which you were in the restaurant business, so, you know, like it is a lot of work. And on top of that, we're doing these other businesses. Jason: And so there are all these other stressors and I realize it actually happened right wing COVID hit. Because we were thinking about like, we were really looking forward to the summer when we could shut the restaurant down for a while and get a breather. And then COVID hit and all of a sudden, oddly, my life got better. Because I was spending time with my family and I was killing myself anymore and my health started to improve. That was it, I had this very narrow focus in my life, which I was really good at but it also carried all the stress that I think, I think you have when you get a little bit older in your career and you're kind of at the, you're operating at a higher level, it's also a more stressful level. And there's a lot more at stake about point. And so when COVID hit, I had more time for my family. And then I started going on bike rides again and hiking and I started spending time playing the drums, I hadn't touched my drum set in three years. Joe: WOW! Jason: And I started playing again, which was actually cool. I have this thing where I get my, stop something for a while when I pick it up and better at it. So now I can actually play some of the Rush songs that I couldn't get through Joe: Nice. Jason: For three years. Like, where did this come from? Joe: It's awesome! Jason: You know, so that was cool. And so, so I realized, like, I'd been talking about environment with food choices. But I've been ignoring everything else that goes into being a healthy person and taking care of your mental state, taking care of your family, making sure you have time to not be insane with all this other other stuff and so I think my crew is shifting into a point where I'm going to start talking about more about holistic health and creating good environments for your, for your well-being as an adult. It's, I'm sure it's true for for kid or whatever part you're in but since I'm in my 40s and kind of went through the midlife crisis part, that's how I solved it, was figuring out that I had to create a good environment to make good choices throughout my whole life and not just with the food, because I'd just been concentrated on the food, which is one key. Joe: You. Yeah, it's amazing how many people I know, it's it's hurt a lot of people. But I personally, it's been the best three months and so long because I was running so hard. And like I said, I've gotten to do things that I want to do. I it's just it's been a good thing. And I'm glad to hear that everything is turning back around for you, too, as well. I worried about you when it happened, to be honest, because, you know, I, I know it devastated the event world for me, I mean everything just stopped. And so I was worried just purely whether or not you know how how well you would do during that time. And it's funny, speaking of, you know, COVID-19. Was there any concerns about, you know, your clients with Joe: The food delivery and any, any things that you had to do differently in order to to be, you know, follow the CDC guidelines or anything like that? Jason: We just did extra sanitation, but we were already doing that stuff anyway. Joe: Right. Jason: We were just more hardcore about it than normal. But that was it. Because I think with the food delivery, it's contactless, so our drivers just show up and Joe: Drop the Jason: They're Joe: Cooler. Jason: At their doorstep Joe: Yeah. Jason: In and head out. Joe: Yeah. Jason: So, so in a way, it didn't really affect the delivery service at all. Joe: Got Jason: It was Joe: It. Jason: horrible for the restaurant, but that ended up being a boom for us personally. Joe: Yep, yep. Well, awesome! Man. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you're here. Like I said, I was disappointed when I had a sort of postpone it last time, I just took on too much. It was one of those deals where I thought I could I forget how much time postproduction takes after I get off this thing to get it, Jason: Yeah. Joe: You know, ready for prime time. But I am super, super grateful that you said yes and you came on, I love your food and you're an amazing human being. The more I've done the research and get to know you now. And it sounds like your daughter is definitely waiting for you to put her to bed. So I'm glad, I could go on, I swear to God for another hour, there's so many questions about food and just things that you've done, but we'll do it another time for sure. Jason: Yeah, that'll be fun. I'd love to come back. Joe: I again, I can't thank you enough. It's an honor to have you on here. And I'd love to have you back again. Just for the audience sake and things like that, where's the best place to get in touch with you? And I'll put I'll do in the show notes, I'll list every, you know, your social media things but like in regards to, let's say, The Vegan Taste, what's the best way for people to reach out? Jason: Just go right to thevegantaste.com Joe: Okay, perfect. Jason: I mean, we have all the social media platforms, but it seems like, you know, Facebook changes what they want to show to people every few months and Instagram is the same way. You know, all these other ones. So just just go straight to thevegantaste.com Joe: Perfect. I'll put in all the other links, I'll take care of all of that. Again, thank you so much, I appreciate it, it's so, I look forward to actually meeting you live in person. Maybe we can sit around and jam one night. Jason: That would be awesome! Joe: I would love it. So. Jason: Cool. Joe: All right. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Jason: Hey, thank you. Have a good night. Joe: You too!
[spreaker type=player resource="episode_id=18977058" width="100%" height="80px" theme="light" playlist="false" playlist-continuous="false" autoplay="false" live-autoplay="false" chapters-image="true" episode-image-position="right" hide-logo="false" hide-likes="false" hide-comments="false" hide-sharing="false" hide-download="true"] Bruce Friedrich (@BruceGFriedrich) is co-founder and executive director of The Good Food Institute (@GoodFoodInst), a nonprofit that promotes plant, dairy, and eggs-based meats as well as clean meat (also known as cultured meat and cell-based meat), as alternatives to the products of conventional animal agriculture.
Bruce Friedrich is the Executive Director of The Good Food Institute, a non profit organization that promotes plant-based meat and clean meat as alternatives to animal products.Bruce is an inductee into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame and has appeared on NBC's Today Show, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Court TV. He is co author of the book The Animal Activist's Handbook and serves on the advisory board of the Christian Vegetarian Association.Bruce was responsible for the 2002 documentary Meet your Meat, narrated by Alec Baldwin. News of the DayExcuse of the Day: Plants have feelings!The Livegan Podcast Patreon Page The Livegan Podcast Facebook PageThe Livegan Podcast Instagram Page
Bruce Friedrich is leading food industry disruption by making plant-based meat palatable to the masses - a healthy option in an industy that has suffered from poor beef processing methods. Bruce exemplifies our belief that capitalists who combine purpose and profit motives can achieve success, generating solutions to our problems and wealth at the same time. This is an area where purpose and profit collide. That's exactly why we invited him to speak at the Capitalism Conference.
You've heard the numbers or some statistic like this: By the year 2050, we'll need to feed 9.7 billion humans on the planet. Our current production and meat-making methods -- growing crops to feed to animals to turn them into food -- can't keep up … not to mention it's not very good for the environment. Yet meat is at the center of the plate for most meals, for most people. So how do we go from where we are to where we need to be? Especially since food is fundamentally an emotional experience! You can't browbeat consumers into doing the "right" thing by selling on the rational benefits. You have to make them taste it … and crave it. In this episode of the a16z Podcast (continuing our annual Thanksgiving and ongoing food x tech series) Uma Valeti, CEO of Memphis Meats; David Lee, COO of Impossible Foods; and Bruce Friedrich, Executive Director of The Good Food Institute discuss -- in conversation with a16z partner Kyle Russell -- different methods of making meatless meats or “clean meats”. More broadly, we're beginning to see a new era of food, and with it, radical transparency around understanding where our food comes from and how it's made … something most people currently don't know (or don't want to know). From making to marketing, what will it take to turn the world's oldest food production tradition into an entirely new one? Could a personalized, local “meat brewery” be the future of food?
After recording this I was delighted to discover an article by Russell Brand advocating an end to debt, here: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/oct/11/russell-brand-revolution-exclusive-extract?CMP=twt_gu The podcast features an interview with Dr Pete Yendle, speaking about "White Poppies" and pacifism. There's a rant about cannabis being legalised which features on my blog here: http://margerrisons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/new-research-into-cannabis.html Bruce Friedrich's wikipedia is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Friedrich Tom Binns tweets here: https://twitter.com/tombinns The music is from The...
Bruce Friedrich is the Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives at Farm Sanctuary. He joins the show to discuss why a controversial lab-grown hamburger is a good thing for society. Friedrich also explains whether pigs are as smart as dogs, chickens and cows. He also discusses the process of killing animals for food, including cramming conditions. Find out more about Bruce Friedrich at www.brucefriedrich.org. Visit Farm Sanctuary at www.FarmSanctuary.org.