You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment (2024) s01e02 Episode Script
Episode 2
[woman] My name is Joanna.
I'm gonna help take care of you today.
- [Joanna] How are you?
- I'm good, thank you. How are you?
[Joanna] I'm doing well, thank you.
We're gonna be in this room here.
Have a seat in either one of the chairs,
if you will.
So I'm just gonna explain to you
a little about what we're gonna do today.
When the time comes
for us to start the procedure,
you'll get undressed from the waist down.
I'll set up the camera.
It's gonna record continuously
all the way through both of the videos
that you'll be watching today.
You'll pick a pornography video to watch.
- [chuckling]
- The first video I know, right?
Do you have hentai?
[laughter]
[Joanna] I'm sure it's in there.
- Okay.
- [laughter]
[light lounge music playing]
[Joanna] I am now gonna give you
the pornography tablet
so that you guys can look at the porn.
The thermography test was interesting.
- Yes.
- Um
Yeah. [laughs]
That was an interesting test.
Unique.
Just like us.
- [laughs]
- We're unique.
[laughing]
[Joanna] So if you scroll up,
there are different videos there
that you can look at.
Of course.
[laughs]
Why are you laughing?
- [Joanna laughs]
- It just caught me by surprise.
- [Rosalyn] So we go through here?
- No, scroll.
[Rosalyn] Oh. Up? Oh.
- Scroll.
- [Rosalyn] Oh.
[Rosalyn] We had to watch
- I guess I can say this.
- Porn.
Porn.
- We had to watch porn.
- You have to say it. That's what it is.
That's what it And we could choose.
- Oh, that's two girls.
- [both laughing]
Oh, did I press it?
[both laughing]
I'll just pick any one. Okay.
As long as it's that.
Okay. [laughs]
- [Joanna] Okay. Perfect.
- [laughing]
- [Rosalyn] I'll leave you to it. [laughs]
- Thank you.
[man] We're conducting a unique test
with women who are twins
by having them observe
visual sexual stimulation,
and then measuring arousal,
looking at temperature changes
in their genitals.
[Joanna] You are set.
And the purpose is to see if the diet
has an impact on genital arousal.
It's really never been done before.
[Joanna] I'm gonna pull out the stirrups.
[Irwin] We've used thermography before
for women,
and we've studied different sex toys
and their ability to genitally arouse.
And we've studied, uh,
the application of Viagra cream.
Both uses have been very successful
in quantifying the amount of arousal.
[laughter]
[Irwin] We've seen
this kind of outcome with men.
Dr. Aaron Spitz
did a pilot study in college athletes.
What we're gonna look at
is what effect the meal you have
has on your erections that night.
[Irwin] Men naturally have erections
while they sleep,
and his study analyzed
how what they ate for dinner
affected the quality
of those night erections.
[Dr. Spitz] Wow.
[laughter]
Their nighttime erection
monitoring studies
were of better superiority value
following the vegan diet.
So we're trying to replicate that,
more or less, in the women's population.
[Joanna] I'm gonna have you
start your video.
[Pam] Uh, it's buffering. Let's see.
Yeah, now it's
[man] There is an exciting adventure
in attracting spring and summer songbirds
to our backyards.
[birds chirping]
[Pam] You first watch a very boring
- Documentary.
- documentary on birds.
[man on video] One day,
spring finally arrives in all its glory.
[Irwin] To assess their genital arousal,
we have to do baseline studies
showing a non-visually
sexually stimulating, uh, movie.
[cheerful instrumental music playing]
- [Joanna] Carolyn? It's time to switch.
- [Carolyn] Okay.
[Joanna] Let me know
when you're starting the pornography.
- [Carolyn] Yep.
- [Joanna] Okay. Thank you.
[Irwin] And then, we have them see
a sexual stimulating video
before and after eight weeks.
We observe if there are to be any changes
in their genital arousal.
- [sultry jazz music playing]
- [woman moaning]
I wish I was afforded more time
to select my porn.
[Rosalyn] I agree.
I did not think the male subject
was as handsome as I'd like.
[woman moaning on video]
- We were able to watch hentai versus porn.
- Yeah. 'Cause we don't really like
- Real-people porn.
- Porn porn. Ew.
- Real-people porn.
- Real-people porn.
[both laugh]
- We like cartoon porn.
- [both laughing]
But with a good storyline
and a good romantic background.
- Yeah, it
- We're weird.
[woman moaning intensely on video]
[knocking on door]
[Joanna] We're all done.
[Carolyn] All done.
Just when I was getting to the good part.
[Joanna] You're all set? Okay.
Take care.
[laughter]
[Pam] Interesting.
[laughing]
I'm interested to see the results,
you know?
[scanner whirring]
[Amy] Okay, we have your baseline scan.
We're gonna go over
your body composition results.
Charlie, Michael,
you both have very similar values
in most categories.
Got your body fat percentage.
You're 23.2.
And you're 21.9.
- Lean machine.
- Can't say I'm surprised.
- Yeah?
- [laughs]
- I don't really know what 21% means. Like
- It's really good. It's ideal.
- You're a little taller
- I'm sorry, I'm what?
[laughs]
You're a little taller.
- [laughing] He's always saying that.
- [Amy laughs]
You had indicated
you thought you were "fragile."
- Yeah.
- Which is interesting, um, at six-five.
- Uh
- [twins laugh]
My mother would always say,
"Don't do it. You're gonna get hurt."
- Well, all of our moms said that despite
- Clearly
- Yeah.
- [laughter]
Those two,
I think they're really going to do well
with this study.
[scanner whirring]
Carolyn. Rosalyn.
We're gonna go over
your body composition results.
The DEXA machine measured you at 147.5,
and it measured you at 148.
When we look at your body composition,
or your body-fat percentage,
you're roughly, um, around 40 each.
We want you to be down in these 30s,
and this is what Nimai
will be working with you on.
Carolyn and Roslyn
need to lose fat while putting on muscle.
That's actually the most difficult
combination of things to do.
Um, it's very difficult
to get this sort of maneuver happening.
Over the last two years, my blood pressure
has been sometimes dangerously high.
[Joanna] And you didn't have
anything to drink this morning?
- Just water.
- [Joanna] Just water?
And no medication?
[Rosalyn] No.
I wanna see my blood pressure stabilize.
That's my goal.
And if exercising more
is going to match up
with a healthier, more nutritious diet,
then I should see my numbers improve.
The sum of your mass,
as determined by the DEXA system,
was 138.6 pounds.
And you were 137.2.
Your body composition is 11%,
and yours is 11.1%.
John and Jevon, oh.
Young, handsome, fit, low body fat.
They're an interesting duo
because there's just not
a lot of fat to be lost.
They certainly could use
more lean mass and muscle.
That is their goal.
So the key now
is to get more lean on both of you
because there really isn't
much fat to lose.
So, in order to do that,
they're gonna need to consume
a lot of food.
I'm excited to see, you know,
what the food is like.
Our plan is to bulk up,
and I already struggle with eating enough.
So my only concern
about being on the vegan diet
is getting enough calories
to keep up with my energy output.
Wendy, Pam, we're ready to go over
your body composition results.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- [Amy] Your total weight was 202 pounds.
- [Wendy] Mm-hmm.
- And your total weight was 183.1 pounds.
- [Pam] Mm-hmm.
So you do weigh more than your sister,
as you know.
Your body-fat percentage, Wendy, is 45.9%.
And yours, Pam, is 44.5%.
And then,
we're also gonna look at visceral,
and this is important.
Visceral fat lies deep
in and around the organs.
That increases your risk
for metabolic syndromes,
type 2 diabetes, and other health issues.
You have 4.55 pounds of visceral,
- and you have 4.35 pounds of visceral.
- [Pam] Mm-hmm.
The visceral values are sort of
at that cusp of alarming to me.
[Wendy] Mm-hmm.
Four pounds or more
of that bad fat around the organs
is where that pre-diabetic state occurs,
and you both
are idling right around there,
and that's why I wanted to know
a little bit about
does anyone in your family
have type 2 diabetes?
- Um
- Dad had type 1.
- Dad was type 1. Okay.
- Yes.
My late brother, um,
he was overly obese,
but he never had type 2 diabetes.
I was surprised.
- We want to be mindful of that for sure.
- [Wendy] Mm-hmm.
Um, nutrition will help that a great deal.
As well as exercising, you know,
and doing some cardio.
Clearly, the the goal here
would be to lose fat.
You guys have a really great
amount of muscle.
My question is,
because you spend so much time together
I mean, your hair is the same,
you dress the same,
you finish each other's sentences.
When one of you starts to slip,
are you going to drag
the other one with you?
We need to find that balance
since we live together, we work together.
- One has to be stronger than the other.
- [Pam] Yeah. What I would love for us,
um, is to get to a point,
after eight weeks, that
it's we're not just doing this to,
like, "Oh yeah, we're on a study."
[Wendy] Mmm.
It's for us to get to the point to the
to the point where this is now
- [Wendy] A lifestyle-
- a 100%
- [Wendy] Lifestyle change.
- lifestyle change.
[car horns honking]
[distant siren wailing]
[man] You know, my mother used to say
that you will find yourself
in a dark place.
Now, you can decide
if it's a burial or a planting.
Sometimes out of tragedy
comes opportunity.
That dark place for me was when I woke up
one day unable to see the alarm clock.
And I thought it was sleep in my eyes
until, throughout the day,
it did not go away,
and, at the same time,
I was feeling
real severe pains in my stomach.
[distant siren wailing]
I thought it was colon cancer
'cause I just lost a good friend
to colon cancer,
and I decided to go to the doctor.
He checked my colon,
and he checked my stomach,
and when I came from under sedation,
he stated that I had an ulcer.
But he said, "The real problem
you're facing for your vision loss
is that, uh, you are type 2 diabetic."
I had no idea I was, and he said,
"You're going to lose your sight,
uh, in probably a year or so."
And the tingling I was feeling
in my fingers and toes,
he stated that, uh,
was permanent nerve damage,
and I'm going to eventually, uh,
probably lose some fingers and toes.
He said I had to go
on medicine right away.
Three medicines for my diabetes,
metformin, insulin,
medicine for high blood pressure,
medicine for my ulcer.
I felt like I was Duane Reade or Rite Aid,
I had so many darn pills and subscriptions
by the time I left the place.
And he gave me a pamphlet,
uh, and the pamphlet said,
"Living with diabetes."
And just something inside me said, uh,
"This is not my destiny."
[suspenseful music playing]
I googled "reversing diabetes."
That one word
took me down another journey.
And I met an amazing expert in the area,
Dr. Greger.
He just told me that "It's your food."
[Greger] If you look at the largest study
of human risk factors
for disease in history,
the number one cause of death
in these United States
is the American diet.
What we put in our mouths
is more important than anything else.
But there's conflicts of interest
among the dietary guidelines committee.
[newscaster 1]
New guidelines from the USDA
and Department of Health
and Human Services
are supposed to tell you what to eat,
but critics say
they're muddled and confusing,
and not by accident.
[Marion] From the get-go,
the meat industry has made sure
that no dietary recommendation
ever says, "Eat less meat."
They can live with
"Eat less saturated fat."
And so there's a euphemism.
[newscaster 1] Instead of saying,
"Eat less meat," they say,
"Less than 10% of your diet
should come from saturated fats."
[sizzling]
[Greger] It's not like
there's some grand conspiracy.
It's just how the system works.
Not necessarily
for the best interest of the health,
but the best interest
of those who are profiting off the system.
[TV narrator] Yes, folks,
the pleasing mildness of a Camel
is just as enjoyable to a doctor
as it is to you or me.
[Greger] We're in a really similar
situation with diet today
that we were back in the 1950s
with cigarette smoking.
[TV narrator]
What cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?
The American Medical Association
told people that smoking was good for you.
Not just neutral but good for you.
[TV narrator] More doctors smoke Camels
[Greger] Yet there were studies
dating back to the '30s,
but they were ignored
off the face of the earth until 1964.
By then, 7,000 studies
linking lung cancer to smoking
had had to accumulate
before, finally, the Surgeon General
comes out and says,
"Okay, fine,
smoking's associated with cancer."
We see a similar situation now
with processed meat.
[newscaster 2] Today's report
by the World Health Organization
said that eating processed meat,
such as cold cuts and bacon,
increases the risk of colon cancer,
and eating red meat likely does the same.
[Greger] Bacon, ham, hot dogs,
lunch meat, sausage.
The IARC, the official
World Health Organization body
that determines
what is and is not cancer-causing,
has determined that processed meat
is a known human carcinogen,
a Category 1 carcinogen,
meaning we are as sure
processed meat causes cancer in people
than we are cigarette smoke causes cancer
and asbestos causes cancer
and plutonium causes cancer, right?
Processed meat is a carcinogen.
And so, until society changes,
we need to take personal responsibility
for our own health, our family's health.
We can't wait until society
catches up to the science again
because it's a matter of life and death.
[food sizzling]
[Eric] It was really amazing to me
when you look
at all of the scientific evidence
that is, uh, hidden in plain sight.
You know, the old Greek, uh, term,
"Let food be thy medicine,
let medicine be thy food."
And I decided
I wanted to use the power of food
'cause I was really reluctant
to have to use insulin.
But all the doctors I sat down with
to get alternatives basically said,
"Eric, this is your new norm."
And one doctor, my endocrinologist,
I remember, uh, sitting down with her,
and she said it was impossible.
And I said, "Well, I'm going to try."
When she saw my numbers reverse in my A1C,
what is the
an indicator of your sugar level,
she says,
"Wow, the medicine must be working."
And I remember placing on the table
all of the medicine, unused,
and said, "No, I didn't use the medicine."
"I went on a whole-food,
plant-based diet."
And my second doctor, my endocrinologist,
I sent her one of the books that I read,
and she called me late one night
and said that "I've never known this."
"I was in medical school all these years,
and it's unbelievable
that I was never taught this."
And I figured out it was never my DNA,
it was my dinner.
And that put me on a journey
to a plant-based diet.
[Michael] Okay, I opened up the boxes.
- [Pam] Oh!
- [Wendy] This is a heavy box.
I just got my first shipment
of the Trifecta meals.
My first week of vegan.
[John] Some tofu stuff.
[Michael] Oh man, curried steak.
Sunny-side eggs?
You won't get that
on the plant-based diet.
[John] I haven't had a lot of this stuff.
- Lentils, okay. I've heard of these.
- [laughter]
Plant-based chicken
with roasted herb squash and rice.
I mean, I just hope
it tastes like actual meat, honestly.
That's the biggest thing.
[Christopher] I recruit human beings
for my studies.
I don't ever do mice.
I don't ever do rats.
I do humans.
They exercise differently.
They sleep differently.
They have all kinds of things going on.
[Carolyn] "Banana cinnamon pecan oatmeal."
[Michael] Can't say I'm excited
about eating pre-cooked eggs.
One of the challenges in my field
when you're trying to not just get people
to take a pill or a placebo
but actually change their diet is
how well do they adhere
to the guidelines you had hoped for?
My first meal. This is turkey sausage
with Brussels sprouts and an egg scramble.
The first four weeks of the study,
we are hoping for near perfect adherence.
[Jevon] Week one
was very nice and convenient,
you know, being able
to just pick out what I wanted
and then throw it in the oven
for, you know, 12 minutes,
and it was done and ready to eat.
- [Michael grunting]
- [child giggles]
[Michael] No.
I'm filming me making my breakfast.
[child giggles]
[Christopher] The twins will be eating
all the foods we give you
and no other foods, which is the intent.
You should be very highly adherent
to both vegan
and a good, healthy, omnivorous diet.
Here we go, week two.
Lucky day today. Just got home.
Rachel says she just cooked me dinner.
And by "cooked dinner," she heated it up.
[Rachel laughs]
I'm very excited for a new change
and to see how my body transforms.
[sounds of traffic]
[indistinct chattering]
All right, good morning, everybody.
Cell phones off your person,
ear buds off your ears. I gotta take roll.
This is gonna take a while
'cause I see a lot of empty desks.
I am a high school teacher.
Okay, anyone else wanna come up?
I'm a rule follower.
I do like rules, I do like structure.
Your final project is due when?
[students] 5:00 p.m.
[Rosalyn] By five o'clock tonight.
Even though I'm on the omnivore diet,
I actually don't think it would take much
to seriously consider a vegan diet.
With the pandemic,
and being a high school teacher,
there were so many unknowns
and so many ways
that we had to pivot and to be flexible.
I was working so hard and so stressed out
that I lost track of my overall health.
I allowed myself to believe some lies.
Things like,
"I deserve two bowls of ice cream today."
So come up with three points,
three important points, from that article.
That was my way
of dealing with the stressors in my life.
All right.
We have to acknowledge that,
for some, food is a trigger.
Is what we eat a moral issue?
Does it matter what we eat?
Okay, go.
[girl 1] It's an environmental issue.
Animals that are put in slaughterhouses
that are basically bred to be killed,
and also, like, endangered species.
Sometimes with fish
and, like, stuff like that, it comes up.
So I'd say definitely environmental.
- [girl 2] Coming from a vegetarian.
- Yeah, from a vegetarian. Yeah.
I don't really pay attention to that.
If the food tastes good, then I'll eat it.
That's That's all I
That's all that really matters to me.
I have, like, trouble, like,
with, like, baby animals.
I can't really eat that. [chuckles]
[cows mooing]
[man] We have 30 calves. About 30 mamas.
All but a couple of 'em
were born on the farm.
- They've lived here their whole lives.
- [cow moos]
My name's Thomas Locke,
and I am a regenerative cattle rancher
in Northeast Texas,
on family land
that we have owned since 1850.
Whoo-oh!
- Come on.
- [cows mooing]
We rotate our cows around the farm
using high-density grazing.
Come on, y'all.
Which is essentially
trying to mimic buffalo herds.
Come on.
Just like buffalo and sheep
and other ruminant animals,
cattle evolved to be herbivores.
They were designed to eat
a diverse set of grasses and plants.
That's why we do this.
And it's really all about focusing on
the quality and the health of the animal.
With grass-fed beef, that just takes time.
But, for the most part,
raising beef across our country
looks different.
96% of all beef in this country was,
at some point, in an industrial feedlot
where the cows can't move.
They're sitting there gorging themselves
on these extremely high caloric foods,
like corn and soy,
trying to fatten it up quickly,
and then send it to your grocery store.
The reason why we practice
industrial agriculture in this country
is because the world demand
for beef right now is remarkably high.
In fact, I would say
it's gluttonous in the United States.
[man] This is a problem of scale.
There's 1.7 billion cows on Earth
right now that are being raised for food.
If you weighed those cows
and compared them to the total mass
of every mammal, bird, reptile,
and amphibian living on land,
the cows outweigh them
by more than a factor of ten.
And this huge meat industry
is producing vast amounts of pollution.
Cattle have this unfortunate rumen system,
which causes them to burp methane.
And methane is a greenhouse gas
that's much worse than carbon dioxide.
[George] The reality is
that agricultural industry
is one of the greatest sources
of greenhouse gases on Earth.
The livestock sector
produces more greenhouse gases
than the entire
global transportation sector.
[horn blares]
We are facing the greatest predicament
humankind has ever encountered,
the potential collapse
of our life-support systems.
The world is on thin ice
according to the UN's latest,
and most alarming, climate report.
Humanity is on track to blow past
the goal of limiting warming of the planet
to 1.5 degrees Celsius
in the next ten years.
[Pat] A lot of climate scientists
have used 1.5 degrees Celsius
as a critical threshold
for climate change,
and it's not arbitrary.
It's because, around that temperature,
a lot of the most
catastrophic consequences
of global heating,
like melting in the Arctic,
and collapse of coral reefs,
go from moderate risk
to high risk around that temperature.
At our current trajectory,
we're gonna cross that
by the end of this decade.
[man] We know that a large amount
of global emissions of greenhouse gases
come from
the whole global agricultural sector.
Most of that
comes from emissions from cattle.
It's very clear this is an obligation
of all people on the planet.
We have to reduce the consumption of meat.
[Pat] It would be, by far,
the fastest and most powerful way
to put the brakes on climate change.
We certainly don't have the ability
to scale regenerative beef production
to the level
that industrial beef production is.
You have to have
an enormous amount of land.
[cow moos]
[George] There was a study
in the United States saying,
"What would happen if we'd switch
to eating pasture-fed beef?"
It found that you would
have to increase the area
on which cattle were kept by 270%.
You would have to cut down
all the forests,
you'd have to drain all the wetlands,
you'd have to demolish
all the cities in the United States,
and you would still be importing
much of your beef from the Amazon.
[machinery whirring]
Most people eating meat
do not want to destroy the Amazon.
They are in favor
of conservation of the Amazon.
Unfortunately,
they don't see the connectivity
between the meat
they are purchasing in the supermarkets
and deforestation.
[cow moos]
The main driver of deforestation
in the Amazon is livestock farming.
The idea is to create a pasture
for a cattle range.
First, they cut down all the trees.
And then they set fire.
They burn the vegetation,
the trees, the trunks,
to release the nutrients
that are in the vegetation.
So that's for starting grass
for a pasture.
Then they start bringing cows.
[mooing]
After several years,
many cattle ranchers abandon the pasture
because it loses productivity,
and then moves on and deforests new areas.
[tree thuds]
The expansion of the cattle ranches,
it exists to meet the global demand
for the consumption of meat.
And the US is one of the largest importers
of beef produced in the Amazon.
[Pat] Every time you eat a steak,
a little puff of smoke
goes up in the Amazon.
And you can think of that smoke
rising from the Amazon
as the secondhand smoke from your burger.
[birds chirping]
[Thomas] It is insane that we are
cutting down the Amazon rainforest
so that we can get
a one-dollar cheeseburger at McDonald's.
It's just crazy.
[sizzling]
We believe in eating much, much less meat
than the average consumer,
even if it's from a regenerative source.
We need to have a more diverse diet.
We need to eat more plants.
- [man] Come through.
- [Wendy] I'm excited.
[man] These all are meat pies.
Lamb curry, chicken curry, cottage pies,
lamb tomato bredie, and samosas.
[Wendy] Pam is vegan.
[man] Oh shit, I couldn't do that.
[laughter]
All the South Africans are all about meat.
- Yeah, that is true.
- Everybody's about meat.
[Pam] Especially beef.
[laughter]
[Pam] Wendy and I grew up
in Durban, South Africa.
[man] That's sausages for the barbecue.
- It's called boerewors.
- [man] Boerewors.
[Pam] South Africa's
a huge meat-eating country.
- Meat is extremely
- Meat is extremely important.
- [Wendy] There's a lot of meat.
- There's a lot of meat. Yeah.
[man] We are making pies here right now.
Ground-beef curry.
In our father's side of the family,
they owned a farm, they had cattle.
I remember
when we'd go there over Christmas,
they would literally
- slaughter a huge cow.
- Yeah.
And that is what we'd eat
throughout December.
Just indulge in meat,
and then, after that,
my mom would have to feed us castor oil
to kind of di
- [laughs]
- Oh God. It's the worst.
[Wendy] How many pounds is this meat?
Uh, 22.
Oh, this looks nice.
[Pam] Give us three hours
to get everything done.
I just need to taste this meat
to make sure that it's
- No, you don't need to taste the meat.
- I need to taste the meat.
- You can't taste the meat.
- I need to make sure it's soft enough.
- No more meat for you.
- [Wendy] I'm omnivore, sweetheart.
You're not gonna lose weight
if you eat too much meat.
It's nice and soft, yeah?
Why are you evil?
My biggest challenge
is not tasting the food while I'm working.
I'm so used of doing that, you know?
I'm so used of like,
"Okay, it's cooked. Let me taste it."
[Wendy] I just think
it must be a challenge
being on a vegan diet being a chef.
[horns honking]
[man] When I was starting out to cook,
I never thought that, one day,
I would open a vegan restaurant.
That's beautiful.
- And these are plated ahead of time?
- Yes. Plated and steamed together.
- And the tonburi? Also ahead of time?
- Yes. Yeah.
This will be hot
in the same way the tofu is now.
It's fucking beautiful.
I started cooking
in fine-dining restaurants in Europe.
For many years, I worked 16-hour days,
six days a week.
I took my competitive mindset to cooking.
I wanna go work for the best,
I wanna become the best,
and I wanna make cooking my life.
Eleven Madison Park
was a brasserie that I took over.
We were known
for honey-lavender-roasted duck,
butter-poached lobsters.
We had foie gras on the menu.
In the beginning,
I continued to cook that type of food.
We did what this game was all about.
I knew that I wanted
to have Michelin stars.
I needed to have Michelin stars
to be recognized.
First, we got one star,
and then we got two stars,
and in 2011, we got, actually,
three Michelin stars.
We started moving up on a ladder
of the best restaurant in the world.
The world's best restaurant, 2017.
From New York, it's Eleven Madison Park.
[cheering and applause]
In 2017, our restaurant was actually named
the very best in the world.
[dramatic string music playing]
I think after that,
there came a lot of reflection.
We reached the very top of that mountain.
And it felt empty.
- [Daniel] Oh my God. Wild They're wild.
- Wild, yeah.
[Daniel] Wood ear, is that the name?
I saved for you, uh,
the one with the wood.
- [Daniel] With the
- With the bark.
- [Daniel] Really?
- Yeah.
- [Daniel] Do you have it?
- Yes.
Nice.
[Daniel] How often can you get them?
- [man] No, this is just by nature.
- [Daniel laughs]
- [man] We don't know.
- Yeah.
- [man] Whenever nature gives.
- Yeah.
[Daniel] After receiving the award,
I looked at the 20 years
of Eleven Madison Park
and the ingredients
that came to the kitchen.
And if I'm truly honest,
things have changed.
It's changed a lot,
and in the last five years,
it's changed more rapidly
than ever before.
Things used to be wild,
now they're farm-raised.
Things used to be available,
now they're not available.
Things used to taste a certain way,
now they taste totally different.
- The flavor wasn't right.
- Yeah.
[Daniel] The quality of our food,
it's changing in front of us, rapidly.
[cows mooing]
I started to realize
the impact that animal farming has
all over the world.
I started to realize
what was going on in the fish industry,
and how broken it is.
I started to feel guilty
because I felt that, for a long time,
I didn't question enough
exactly where our food was coming from.
Like, all of our food.
When you have that knowledge,
you have the responsibility
to speak about it.
[man] In eastern North Carolina,
there are more hogs than there are
anywhere else in the country.
There are hog operations
around every bank of trees.
Flying over, you see these massive
Pepto-Bismol-colored ponds.
They call them lagoons,
but many of them hold ten million gallons
of untreated feces and urine
from these hogs.
[pigs grunting]
The smell from the hog operations
is so intense
that it'll make your eyes water,
it'll make your nose run,
it'll make you go inside.
[woman] Some days it smells so bad
that even the dogs won't go outside.
In the county where I live,
there are 33 hogs
for every individual in the county.
We are number two in hog production
in the United States.
The adjoining county is number one.
These large hog operations
are called CAFOs.
The Department of Agriculture
actually defines it as an operation
that has a thousand or more animals in it.
[pigs grunting]
Each animal in one of those operations
releases approximately
1.3 gallons of manure every day.
That's over a thousand gallons
of manure a day,
and this is a process
that happens day after day after day,
and most of these operations
are much larger than a thousand animals.
All of the waste sits
until the farmer sprays the liquid
onto adjoining fields to prevent overflow.
[Mike] The spraying of the pools,
that's hog feces
literally jet-propelled
dozens of feet in the air.
It'll go 300 feet long.
The drift takes it even further.
And you can imagine all the problems
that the neighbors have to live with.
[woman] This is the home
that I was raised in.
They've been spraying the lagoon
about 30 years.
We wasn't rich by no means,
so our washing machine was outside.
And then we used to hang our clothes
on the line.
It was so close that, when he would spray,
it would actually hit our clothes.
The grandkids played around our property,
and they was coming in the house
saying it was raining outside,
and we was like,
"No, it's not raining outside."
But we find out that it was feces.
Less than 30 feet
from my mom and dad's back kitchen door.
And we finna eat dinner.
[Mike] I can't imagine
anything more humiliating
and, frankly, inhumane,
than being sprayed with animal waste.
[Sherri] Some of the homes
are so close to the CAFO,
that there was bacteria
that ended up on their homes.
[Mike] There's a particular bacteria
called Pig-2-Bac
that is only found in the gut of hogs.
They've found that bacteria on kids' toys,
on refrigerators in the home.
There are a number of health concerns,
like increased respiratory illnesses,
like asthma, heart attacks,
high blood pressure,
various types of cancers,
for folks who live near the CAFOs.
Many of them owned the properties
long before the CAFOs were there,
but had no control over the CAFO
going in next door to them.
I have worked on environmental justice
issues for most of my life.
I want people to understand
that this kind of thing would never happen
in a community where folks had access
to money and power and politicians,
but would only happen
in communities of color
and low-income communities.
[pig squeals]
[woman] Most people don't know
that CAFOs are where
99% of the nine billion animals
in this country
live pretty much their entire lives.
Even though they impact
their neighbors so significantly,
there's no right to know
where these facilities are
or how close they might be
to your water supply or your home.
[chickens clucking]
[distant siren wailing]
[John Sr.] You know what?
You gotta make sure you get your protein.
You look hungry all the time.
When you take care of your body right,
everything else will follow.
- Who's on the plant-based?
- [John] I am.
You're on the plant-based? Okay.
So, I'm curious to know
how it's been going for you,
and how you feel the last four weeks.
Um, I feel pretty good.
I did notice, when I would compare
on the Trifecta meals,
the protein count, um
compared to the omnivore,
it's low like, lower.
I still do struggle, I feel,
to eat enough in a day.
That's just still something
I'm kinda working on.
The workouts so far have been really good.
I've really had a lot of fun with them.
What's been most challenging, honestly,
is just taking time out of each day
to, like, prioritize eating,
which was something I wasn't used to.
[Nimai] Two. Good job.
[John Sr.] Come up.
[Nimai] Three. There we go.
- Keep those arms high.
- Stay tight.
[John] I feel like I look a bit bigger
when I'm looking at myself in the mirror.
Finish strong, finish strong,
finish strong, finish strong.
[John] But I don't know.
- Good job. There we go.
- [John Sr.] Good job.
Seven, eight, nine. Breathe.
- Ten, eleven, twelve.
- Ow.
I'm not gonna be able to walk tomorrow.
Wait, no. I will.
- You will.
- I'll be okay.
- 'Cause you're gonna do cardio tomorrow.
- Yep.
[trainer] Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
If you employ a major dietary change
and sustain that over the course of weeks
[Carolyn] That'll be for my lunch.
[Justin]you can see
very positive changes
in the gut microbiome.
[Michael] All right, looks pretty good.
[Justin] But participants
need to be motivated
to stick with the study.
[Wendy] How does it feel being a vegan?
It's very hard.
[Rosalyn] This recipe is so easy,
you could do it.
So for the second four weeks,
they will be making their own food.
[Charlie] This is my first time
cooking vegan food.
For dinner,
we were gonna have some chicken.
[Valerie] It's next to impossible to tell
where any product that you pick up
at the grocery store was produced.
People deserve to know
what they're eating
and where it came from.
[man] You can't trust these labels.
If they got about this much room
to go outside in, then that's free-range.
It's ridiculous.
Hey, you know what,
maybe I'll just go pescatarian.
[Wendy] Is it wild caught?
- [man] Look how nice and red inside.
- [Wendy] Yeah.
[man] You're guaranteed
a decent quality of fish.
[Wendy] Right.
- So some of this is like 20% fat.
- [Wendy] Mm-hmm.
[Pam] This is horrible fish.
I wouldn't serve this to my dog, my cat,
not even the mother-in-law.
[Miyoko] These are looking good.
- Food is not just to nourish the body.
- [woman] Oh yeah.
[Miyoko] Food nourishes the soul.
You have to romance people.
It has to be something
that makes people go,
"Oh my God. I can't wait
to get a fork and dig into that."
And that's what we're trying to do.
[gentle electronic music playing]
I'm gonna help take care of you today.
- [Joanna] How are you?
- I'm good, thank you. How are you?
[Joanna] I'm doing well, thank you.
We're gonna be in this room here.
Have a seat in either one of the chairs,
if you will.
So I'm just gonna explain to you
a little about what we're gonna do today.
When the time comes
for us to start the procedure,
you'll get undressed from the waist down.
I'll set up the camera.
It's gonna record continuously
all the way through both of the videos
that you'll be watching today.
You'll pick a pornography video to watch.
- [chuckling]
- The first video I know, right?
Do you have hentai?
[laughter]
[Joanna] I'm sure it's in there.
- Okay.
- [laughter]
[light lounge music playing]
[Joanna] I am now gonna give you
the pornography tablet
so that you guys can look at the porn.
The thermography test was interesting.
- Yes.
- Um
Yeah. [laughs]
That was an interesting test.
Unique.
Just like us.
- [laughs]
- We're unique.
[laughing]
[Joanna] So if you scroll up,
there are different videos there
that you can look at.
Of course.
[laughs]
Why are you laughing?
- [Joanna laughs]
- It just caught me by surprise.
- [Rosalyn] So we go through here?
- No, scroll.
[Rosalyn] Oh. Up? Oh.
- Scroll.
- [Rosalyn] Oh.
[Rosalyn] We had to watch
- I guess I can say this.
- Porn.
Porn.
- We had to watch porn.
- You have to say it. That's what it is.
That's what it And we could choose.
- Oh, that's two girls.
- [both laughing]
Oh, did I press it?
[both laughing]
I'll just pick any one. Okay.
As long as it's that.
Okay. [laughs]
- [Joanna] Okay. Perfect.
- [laughing]
- [Rosalyn] I'll leave you to it. [laughs]
- Thank you.
[man] We're conducting a unique test
with women who are twins
by having them observe
visual sexual stimulation,
and then measuring arousal,
looking at temperature changes
in their genitals.
[Joanna] You are set.
And the purpose is to see if the diet
has an impact on genital arousal.
It's really never been done before.
[Joanna] I'm gonna pull out the stirrups.
[Irwin] We've used thermography before
for women,
and we've studied different sex toys
and their ability to genitally arouse.
And we've studied, uh,
the application of Viagra cream.
Both uses have been very successful
in quantifying the amount of arousal.
[laughter]
[Irwin] We've seen
this kind of outcome with men.
Dr. Aaron Spitz
did a pilot study in college athletes.
What we're gonna look at
is what effect the meal you have
has on your erections that night.
[Irwin] Men naturally have erections
while they sleep,
and his study analyzed
how what they ate for dinner
affected the quality
of those night erections.
[Dr. Spitz] Wow.
[laughter]
Their nighttime erection
monitoring studies
were of better superiority value
following the vegan diet.
So we're trying to replicate that,
more or less, in the women's population.
[Joanna] I'm gonna have you
start your video.
[Pam] Uh, it's buffering. Let's see.
Yeah, now it's
[man] There is an exciting adventure
in attracting spring and summer songbirds
to our backyards.
[birds chirping]
[Pam] You first watch a very boring
- Documentary.
- documentary on birds.
[man on video] One day,
spring finally arrives in all its glory.
[Irwin] To assess their genital arousal,
we have to do baseline studies
showing a non-visually
sexually stimulating, uh, movie.
[cheerful instrumental music playing]
- [Joanna] Carolyn? It's time to switch.
- [Carolyn] Okay.
[Joanna] Let me know
when you're starting the pornography.
- [Carolyn] Yep.
- [Joanna] Okay. Thank you.
[Irwin] And then, we have them see
a sexual stimulating video
before and after eight weeks.
We observe if there are to be any changes
in their genital arousal.
- [sultry jazz music playing]
- [woman moaning]
I wish I was afforded more time
to select my porn.
[Rosalyn] I agree.
I did not think the male subject
was as handsome as I'd like.
[woman moaning on video]
- We were able to watch hentai versus porn.
- Yeah. 'Cause we don't really like
- Real-people porn.
- Porn porn. Ew.
- Real-people porn.
- Real-people porn.
[both laugh]
- We like cartoon porn.
- [both laughing]
But with a good storyline
and a good romantic background.
- Yeah, it
- We're weird.
[woman moaning intensely on video]
[knocking on door]
[Joanna] We're all done.
[Carolyn] All done.
Just when I was getting to the good part.
[Joanna] You're all set? Okay.
Take care.
[laughter]
[Pam] Interesting.
[laughing]
I'm interested to see the results,
you know?
[scanner whirring]
[Amy] Okay, we have your baseline scan.
We're gonna go over
your body composition results.
Charlie, Michael,
you both have very similar values
in most categories.
Got your body fat percentage.
You're 23.2.
And you're 21.9.
- Lean machine.
- Can't say I'm surprised.
- Yeah?
- [laughs]
- I don't really know what 21% means. Like
- It's really good. It's ideal.
- You're a little taller
- I'm sorry, I'm what?
[laughs]
You're a little taller.
- [laughing] He's always saying that.
- [Amy laughs]
You had indicated
you thought you were "fragile."
- Yeah.
- Which is interesting, um, at six-five.
- Uh
- [twins laugh]
My mother would always say,
"Don't do it. You're gonna get hurt."
- Well, all of our moms said that despite
- Clearly
- Yeah.
- [laughter]
Those two,
I think they're really going to do well
with this study.
[scanner whirring]
Carolyn. Rosalyn.
We're gonna go over
your body composition results.
The DEXA machine measured you at 147.5,
and it measured you at 148.
When we look at your body composition,
or your body-fat percentage,
you're roughly, um, around 40 each.
We want you to be down in these 30s,
and this is what Nimai
will be working with you on.
Carolyn and Roslyn
need to lose fat while putting on muscle.
That's actually the most difficult
combination of things to do.
Um, it's very difficult
to get this sort of maneuver happening.
Over the last two years, my blood pressure
has been sometimes dangerously high.
[Joanna] And you didn't have
anything to drink this morning?
- Just water.
- [Joanna] Just water?
And no medication?
[Rosalyn] No.
I wanna see my blood pressure stabilize.
That's my goal.
And if exercising more
is going to match up
with a healthier, more nutritious diet,
then I should see my numbers improve.
The sum of your mass,
as determined by the DEXA system,
was 138.6 pounds.
And you were 137.2.
Your body composition is 11%,
and yours is 11.1%.
John and Jevon, oh.
Young, handsome, fit, low body fat.
They're an interesting duo
because there's just not
a lot of fat to be lost.
They certainly could use
more lean mass and muscle.
That is their goal.
So the key now
is to get more lean on both of you
because there really isn't
much fat to lose.
So, in order to do that,
they're gonna need to consume
a lot of food.
I'm excited to see, you know,
what the food is like.
Our plan is to bulk up,
and I already struggle with eating enough.
So my only concern
about being on the vegan diet
is getting enough calories
to keep up with my energy output.
Wendy, Pam, we're ready to go over
your body composition results.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- [Amy] Your total weight was 202 pounds.
- [Wendy] Mm-hmm.
- And your total weight was 183.1 pounds.
- [Pam] Mm-hmm.
So you do weigh more than your sister,
as you know.
Your body-fat percentage, Wendy, is 45.9%.
And yours, Pam, is 44.5%.
And then,
we're also gonna look at visceral,
and this is important.
Visceral fat lies deep
in and around the organs.
That increases your risk
for metabolic syndromes,
type 2 diabetes, and other health issues.
You have 4.55 pounds of visceral,
- and you have 4.35 pounds of visceral.
- [Pam] Mm-hmm.
The visceral values are sort of
at that cusp of alarming to me.
[Wendy] Mm-hmm.
Four pounds or more
of that bad fat around the organs
is where that pre-diabetic state occurs,
and you both
are idling right around there,
and that's why I wanted to know
a little bit about
does anyone in your family
have type 2 diabetes?
- Um
- Dad had type 1.
- Dad was type 1. Okay.
- Yes.
My late brother, um,
he was overly obese,
but he never had type 2 diabetes.
I was surprised.
- We want to be mindful of that for sure.
- [Wendy] Mm-hmm.
Um, nutrition will help that a great deal.
As well as exercising, you know,
and doing some cardio.
Clearly, the the goal here
would be to lose fat.
You guys have a really great
amount of muscle.
My question is,
because you spend so much time together
I mean, your hair is the same,
you dress the same,
you finish each other's sentences.
When one of you starts to slip,
are you going to drag
the other one with you?
We need to find that balance
since we live together, we work together.
- One has to be stronger than the other.
- [Pam] Yeah. What I would love for us,
um, is to get to a point,
after eight weeks, that
it's we're not just doing this to,
like, "Oh yeah, we're on a study."
[Wendy] Mmm.
It's for us to get to the point to the
to the point where this is now
- [Wendy] A lifestyle-
- a 100%
- [Wendy] Lifestyle change.
- lifestyle change.
[car horns honking]
[distant siren wailing]
[man] You know, my mother used to say
that you will find yourself
in a dark place.
Now, you can decide
if it's a burial or a planting.
Sometimes out of tragedy
comes opportunity.
That dark place for me was when I woke up
one day unable to see the alarm clock.
And I thought it was sleep in my eyes
until, throughout the day,
it did not go away,
and, at the same time,
I was feeling
real severe pains in my stomach.
[distant siren wailing]
I thought it was colon cancer
'cause I just lost a good friend
to colon cancer,
and I decided to go to the doctor.
He checked my colon,
and he checked my stomach,
and when I came from under sedation,
he stated that I had an ulcer.
But he said, "The real problem
you're facing for your vision loss
is that, uh, you are type 2 diabetic."
I had no idea I was, and he said,
"You're going to lose your sight,
uh, in probably a year or so."
And the tingling I was feeling
in my fingers and toes,
he stated that, uh,
was permanent nerve damage,
and I'm going to eventually, uh,
probably lose some fingers and toes.
He said I had to go
on medicine right away.
Three medicines for my diabetes,
metformin, insulin,
medicine for high blood pressure,
medicine for my ulcer.
I felt like I was Duane Reade or Rite Aid,
I had so many darn pills and subscriptions
by the time I left the place.
And he gave me a pamphlet,
uh, and the pamphlet said,
"Living with diabetes."
And just something inside me said, uh,
"This is not my destiny."
[suspenseful music playing]
I googled "reversing diabetes."
That one word
took me down another journey.
And I met an amazing expert in the area,
Dr. Greger.
He just told me that "It's your food."
[Greger] If you look at the largest study
of human risk factors
for disease in history,
the number one cause of death
in these United States
is the American diet.
What we put in our mouths
is more important than anything else.
But there's conflicts of interest
among the dietary guidelines committee.
[newscaster 1]
New guidelines from the USDA
and Department of Health
and Human Services
are supposed to tell you what to eat,
but critics say
they're muddled and confusing,
and not by accident.
[Marion] From the get-go,
the meat industry has made sure
that no dietary recommendation
ever says, "Eat less meat."
They can live with
"Eat less saturated fat."
And so there's a euphemism.
[newscaster 1] Instead of saying,
"Eat less meat," they say,
"Less than 10% of your diet
should come from saturated fats."
[sizzling]
[Greger] It's not like
there's some grand conspiracy.
It's just how the system works.
Not necessarily
for the best interest of the health,
but the best interest
of those who are profiting off the system.
[TV narrator] Yes, folks,
the pleasing mildness of a Camel
is just as enjoyable to a doctor
as it is to you or me.
[Greger] We're in a really similar
situation with diet today
that we were back in the 1950s
with cigarette smoking.
[TV narrator]
What cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?
The American Medical Association
told people that smoking was good for you.
Not just neutral but good for you.
[TV narrator] More doctors smoke Camels
[Greger] Yet there were studies
dating back to the '30s,
but they were ignored
off the face of the earth until 1964.
By then, 7,000 studies
linking lung cancer to smoking
had had to accumulate
before, finally, the Surgeon General
comes out and says,
"Okay, fine,
smoking's associated with cancer."
We see a similar situation now
with processed meat.
[newscaster 2] Today's report
by the World Health Organization
said that eating processed meat,
such as cold cuts and bacon,
increases the risk of colon cancer,
and eating red meat likely does the same.
[Greger] Bacon, ham, hot dogs,
lunch meat, sausage.
The IARC, the official
World Health Organization body
that determines
what is and is not cancer-causing,
has determined that processed meat
is a known human carcinogen,
a Category 1 carcinogen,
meaning we are as sure
processed meat causes cancer in people
than we are cigarette smoke causes cancer
and asbestos causes cancer
and plutonium causes cancer, right?
Processed meat is a carcinogen.
And so, until society changes,
we need to take personal responsibility
for our own health, our family's health.
We can't wait until society
catches up to the science again
because it's a matter of life and death.
[food sizzling]
[Eric] It was really amazing to me
when you look
at all of the scientific evidence
that is, uh, hidden in plain sight.
You know, the old Greek, uh, term,
"Let food be thy medicine,
let medicine be thy food."
And I decided
I wanted to use the power of food
'cause I was really reluctant
to have to use insulin.
But all the doctors I sat down with
to get alternatives basically said,
"Eric, this is your new norm."
And one doctor, my endocrinologist,
I remember, uh, sitting down with her,
and she said it was impossible.
And I said, "Well, I'm going to try."
When she saw my numbers reverse in my A1C,
what is the
an indicator of your sugar level,
she says,
"Wow, the medicine must be working."
And I remember placing on the table
all of the medicine, unused,
and said, "No, I didn't use the medicine."
"I went on a whole-food,
plant-based diet."
And my second doctor, my endocrinologist,
I sent her one of the books that I read,
and she called me late one night
and said that "I've never known this."
"I was in medical school all these years,
and it's unbelievable
that I was never taught this."
And I figured out it was never my DNA,
it was my dinner.
And that put me on a journey
to a plant-based diet.
[Michael] Okay, I opened up the boxes.
- [Pam] Oh!
- [Wendy] This is a heavy box.
I just got my first shipment
of the Trifecta meals.
My first week of vegan.
[John] Some tofu stuff.
[Michael] Oh man, curried steak.
Sunny-side eggs?
You won't get that
on the plant-based diet.
[John] I haven't had a lot of this stuff.
- Lentils, okay. I've heard of these.
- [laughter]
Plant-based chicken
with roasted herb squash and rice.
I mean, I just hope
it tastes like actual meat, honestly.
That's the biggest thing.
[Christopher] I recruit human beings
for my studies.
I don't ever do mice.
I don't ever do rats.
I do humans.
They exercise differently.
They sleep differently.
They have all kinds of things going on.
[Carolyn] "Banana cinnamon pecan oatmeal."
[Michael] Can't say I'm excited
about eating pre-cooked eggs.
One of the challenges in my field
when you're trying to not just get people
to take a pill or a placebo
but actually change their diet is
how well do they adhere
to the guidelines you had hoped for?
My first meal. This is turkey sausage
with Brussels sprouts and an egg scramble.
The first four weeks of the study,
we are hoping for near perfect adherence.
[Jevon] Week one
was very nice and convenient,
you know, being able
to just pick out what I wanted
and then throw it in the oven
for, you know, 12 minutes,
and it was done and ready to eat.
- [Michael grunting]
- [child giggles]
[Michael] No.
I'm filming me making my breakfast.
[child giggles]
[Christopher] The twins will be eating
all the foods we give you
and no other foods, which is the intent.
You should be very highly adherent
to both vegan
and a good, healthy, omnivorous diet.
Here we go, week two.
Lucky day today. Just got home.
Rachel says she just cooked me dinner.
And by "cooked dinner," she heated it up.
[Rachel laughs]
I'm very excited for a new change
and to see how my body transforms.
[sounds of traffic]
[indistinct chattering]
All right, good morning, everybody.
Cell phones off your person,
ear buds off your ears. I gotta take roll.
This is gonna take a while
'cause I see a lot of empty desks.
I am a high school teacher.
Okay, anyone else wanna come up?
I'm a rule follower.
I do like rules, I do like structure.
Your final project is due when?
[students] 5:00 p.m.
[Rosalyn] By five o'clock tonight.
Even though I'm on the omnivore diet,
I actually don't think it would take much
to seriously consider a vegan diet.
With the pandemic,
and being a high school teacher,
there were so many unknowns
and so many ways
that we had to pivot and to be flexible.
I was working so hard and so stressed out
that I lost track of my overall health.
I allowed myself to believe some lies.
Things like,
"I deserve two bowls of ice cream today."
So come up with three points,
three important points, from that article.
That was my way
of dealing with the stressors in my life.
All right.
We have to acknowledge that,
for some, food is a trigger.
Is what we eat a moral issue?
Does it matter what we eat?
Okay, go.
[girl 1] It's an environmental issue.
Animals that are put in slaughterhouses
that are basically bred to be killed,
and also, like, endangered species.
Sometimes with fish
and, like, stuff like that, it comes up.
So I'd say definitely environmental.
- [girl 2] Coming from a vegetarian.
- Yeah, from a vegetarian. Yeah.
I don't really pay attention to that.
If the food tastes good, then I'll eat it.
That's That's all I
That's all that really matters to me.
I have, like, trouble, like,
with, like, baby animals.
I can't really eat that. [chuckles]
[cows mooing]
[man] We have 30 calves. About 30 mamas.
All but a couple of 'em
were born on the farm.
- They've lived here their whole lives.
- [cow moos]
My name's Thomas Locke,
and I am a regenerative cattle rancher
in Northeast Texas,
on family land
that we have owned since 1850.
Whoo-oh!
- Come on.
- [cows mooing]
We rotate our cows around the farm
using high-density grazing.
Come on, y'all.
Which is essentially
trying to mimic buffalo herds.
Come on.
Just like buffalo and sheep
and other ruminant animals,
cattle evolved to be herbivores.
They were designed to eat
a diverse set of grasses and plants.
That's why we do this.
And it's really all about focusing on
the quality and the health of the animal.
With grass-fed beef, that just takes time.
But, for the most part,
raising beef across our country
looks different.
96% of all beef in this country was,
at some point, in an industrial feedlot
where the cows can't move.
They're sitting there gorging themselves
on these extremely high caloric foods,
like corn and soy,
trying to fatten it up quickly,
and then send it to your grocery store.
The reason why we practice
industrial agriculture in this country
is because the world demand
for beef right now is remarkably high.
In fact, I would say
it's gluttonous in the United States.
[man] This is a problem of scale.
There's 1.7 billion cows on Earth
right now that are being raised for food.
If you weighed those cows
and compared them to the total mass
of every mammal, bird, reptile,
and amphibian living on land,
the cows outweigh them
by more than a factor of ten.
And this huge meat industry
is producing vast amounts of pollution.
Cattle have this unfortunate rumen system,
which causes them to burp methane.
And methane is a greenhouse gas
that's much worse than carbon dioxide.
[George] The reality is
that agricultural industry
is one of the greatest sources
of greenhouse gases on Earth.
The livestock sector
produces more greenhouse gases
than the entire
global transportation sector.
[horn blares]
We are facing the greatest predicament
humankind has ever encountered,
the potential collapse
of our life-support systems.
The world is on thin ice
according to the UN's latest,
and most alarming, climate report.
Humanity is on track to blow past
the goal of limiting warming of the planet
to 1.5 degrees Celsius
in the next ten years.
[Pat] A lot of climate scientists
have used 1.5 degrees Celsius
as a critical threshold
for climate change,
and it's not arbitrary.
It's because, around that temperature,
a lot of the most
catastrophic consequences
of global heating,
like melting in the Arctic,
and collapse of coral reefs,
go from moderate risk
to high risk around that temperature.
At our current trajectory,
we're gonna cross that
by the end of this decade.
[man] We know that a large amount
of global emissions of greenhouse gases
come from
the whole global agricultural sector.
Most of that
comes from emissions from cattle.
It's very clear this is an obligation
of all people on the planet.
We have to reduce the consumption of meat.
[Pat] It would be, by far,
the fastest and most powerful way
to put the brakes on climate change.
We certainly don't have the ability
to scale regenerative beef production
to the level
that industrial beef production is.
You have to have
an enormous amount of land.
[cow moos]
[George] There was a study
in the United States saying,
"What would happen if we'd switch
to eating pasture-fed beef?"
It found that you would
have to increase the area
on which cattle were kept by 270%.
You would have to cut down
all the forests,
you'd have to drain all the wetlands,
you'd have to demolish
all the cities in the United States,
and you would still be importing
much of your beef from the Amazon.
[machinery whirring]
Most people eating meat
do not want to destroy the Amazon.
They are in favor
of conservation of the Amazon.
Unfortunately,
they don't see the connectivity
between the meat
they are purchasing in the supermarkets
and deforestation.
[cow moos]
The main driver of deforestation
in the Amazon is livestock farming.
The idea is to create a pasture
for a cattle range.
First, they cut down all the trees.
And then they set fire.
They burn the vegetation,
the trees, the trunks,
to release the nutrients
that are in the vegetation.
So that's for starting grass
for a pasture.
Then they start bringing cows.
[mooing]
After several years,
many cattle ranchers abandon the pasture
because it loses productivity,
and then moves on and deforests new areas.
[tree thuds]
The expansion of the cattle ranches,
it exists to meet the global demand
for the consumption of meat.
And the US is one of the largest importers
of beef produced in the Amazon.
[Pat] Every time you eat a steak,
a little puff of smoke
goes up in the Amazon.
And you can think of that smoke
rising from the Amazon
as the secondhand smoke from your burger.
[birds chirping]
[Thomas] It is insane that we are
cutting down the Amazon rainforest
so that we can get
a one-dollar cheeseburger at McDonald's.
It's just crazy.
[sizzling]
We believe in eating much, much less meat
than the average consumer,
even if it's from a regenerative source.
We need to have a more diverse diet.
We need to eat more plants.
- [man] Come through.
- [Wendy] I'm excited.
[man] These all are meat pies.
Lamb curry, chicken curry, cottage pies,
lamb tomato bredie, and samosas.
[Wendy] Pam is vegan.
[man] Oh shit, I couldn't do that.
[laughter]
All the South Africans are all about meat.
- Yeah, that is true.
- Everybody's about meat.
[Pam] Especially beef.
[laughter]
[Pam] Wendy and I grew up
in Durban, South Africa.
[man] That's sausages for the barbecue.
- It's called boerewors.
- [man] Boerewors.
[Pam] South Africa's
a huge meat-eating country.
- Meat is extremely
- Meat is extremely important.
- [Wendy] There's a lot of meat.
- There's a lot of meat. Yeah.
[man] We are making pies here right now.
Ground-beef curry.
In our father's side of the family,
they owned a farm, they had cattle.
I remember
when we'd go there over Christmas,
they would literally
- slaughter a huge cow.
- Yeah.
And that is what we'd eat
throughout December.
Just indulge in meat,
and then, after that,
my mom would have to feed us castor oil
to kind of di
- [laughs]
- Oh God. It's the worst.
[Wendy] How many pounds is this meat?
Uh, 22.
Oh, this looks nice.
[Pam] Give us three hours
to get everything done.
I just need to taste this meat
to make sure that it's
- No, you don't need to taste the meat.
- I need to taste the meat.
- You can't taste the meat.
- I need to make sure it's soft enough.
- No more meat for you.
- [Wendy] I'm omnivore, sweetheart.
You're not gonna lose weight
if you eat too much meat.
It's nice and soft, yeah?
Why are you evil?
My biggest challenge
is not tasting the food while I'm working.
I'm so used of doing that, you know?
I'm so used of like,
"Okay, it's cooked. Let me taste it."
[Wendy] I just think
it must be a challenge
being on a vegan diet being a chef.
[horns honking]
[man] When I was starting out to cook,
I never thought that, one day,
I would open a vegan restaurant.
That's beautiful.
- And these are plated ahead of time?
- Yes. Plated and steamed together.
- And the tonburi? Also ahead of time?
- Yes. Yeah.
This will be hot
in the same way the tofu is now.
It's fucking beautiful.
I started cooking
in fine-dining restaurants in Europe.
For many years, I worked 16-hour days,
six days a week.
I took my competitive mindset to cooking.
I wanna go work for the best,
I wanna become the best,
and I wanna make cooking my life.
Eleven Madison Park
was a brasserie that I took over.
We were known
for honey-lavender-roasted duck,
butter-poached lobsters.
We had foie gras on the menu.
In the beginning,
I continued to cook that type of food.
We did what this game was all about.
I knew that I wanted
to have Michelin stars.
I needed to have Michelin stars
to be recognized.
First, we got one star,
and then we got two stars,
and in 2011, we got, actually,
three Michelin stars.
We started moving up on a ladder
of the best restaurant in the world.
The world's best restaurant, 2017.
From New York, it's Eleven Madison Park.
[cheering and applause]
In 2017, our restaurant was actually named
the very best in the world.
[dramatic string music playing]
I think after that,
there came a lot of reflection.
We reached the very top of that mountain.
And it felt empty.
- [Daniel] Oh my God. Wild They're wild.
- Wild, yeah.
[Daniel] Wood ear, is that the name?
I saved for you, uh,
the one with the wood.
- [Daniel] With the
- With the bark.
- [Daniel] Really?
- Yeah.
- [Daniel] Do you have it?
- Yes.
Nice.
[Daniel] How often can you get them?
- [man] No, this is just by nature.
- [Daniel laughs]
- [man] We don't know.
- Yeah.
- [man] Whenever nature gives.
- Yeah.
[Daniel] After receiving the award,
I looked at the 20 years
of Eleven Madison Park
and the ingredients
that came to the kitchen.
And if I'm truly honest,
things have changed.
It's changed a lot,
and in the last five years,
it's changed more rapidly
than ever before.
Things used to be wild,
now they're farm-raised.
Things used to be available,
now they're not available.
Things used to taste a certain way,
now they taste totally different.
- The flavor wasn't right.
- Yeah.
[Daniel] The quality of our food,
it's changing in front of us, rapidly.
[cows mooing]
I started to realize
the impact that animal farming has
all over the world.
I started to realize
what was going on in the fish industry,
and how broken it is.
I started to feel guilty
because I felt that, for a long time,
I didn't question enough
exactly where our food was coming from.
Like, all of our food.
When you have that knowledge,
you have the responsibility
to speak about it.
[man] In eastern North Carolina,
there are more hogs than there are
anywhere else in the country.
There are hog operations
around every bank of trees.
Flying over, you see these massive
Pepto-Bismol-colored ponds.
They call them lagoons,
but many of them hold ten million gallons
of untreated feces and urine
from these hogs.
[pigs grunting]
The smell from the hog operations
is so intense
that it'll make your eyes water,
it'll make your nose run,
it'll make you go inside.
[woman] Some days it smells so bad
that even the dogs won't go outside.
In the county where I live,
there are 33 hogs
for every individual in the county.
We are number two in hog production
in the United States.
The adjoining county is number one.
These large hog operations
are called CAFOs.
The Department of Agriculture
actually defines it as an operation
that has a thousand or more animals in it.
[pigs grunting]
Each animal in one of those operations
releases approximately
1.3 gallons of manure every day.
That's over a thousand gallons
of manure a day,
and this is a process
that happens day after day after day,
and most of these operations
are much larger than a thousand animals.
All of the waste sits
until the farmer sprays the liquid
onto adjoining fields to prevent overflow.
[Mike] The spraying of the pools,
that's hog feces
literally jet-propelled
dozens of feet in the air.
It'll go 300 feet long.
The drift takes it even further.
And you can imagine all the problems
that the neighbors have to live with.
[woman] This is the home
that I was raised in.
They've been spraying the lagoon
about 30 years.
We wasn't rich by no means,
so our washing machine was outside.
And then we used to hang our clothes
on the line.
It was so close that, when he would spray,
it would actually hit our clothes.
The grandkids played around our property,
and they was coming in the house
saying it was raining outside,
and we was like,
"No, it's not raining outside."
But we find out that it was feces.
Less than 30 feet
from my mom and dad's back kitchen door.
And we finna eat dinner.
[Mike] I can't imagine
anything more humiliating
and, frankly, inhumane,
than being sprayed with animal waste.
[Sherri] Some of the homes
are so close to the CAFO,
that there was bacteria
that ended up on their homes.
[Mike] There's a particular bacteria
called Pig-2-Bac
that is only found in the gut of hogs.
They've found that bacteria on kids' toys,
on refrigerators in the home.
There are a number of health concerns,
like increased respiratory illnesses,
like asthma, heart attacks,
high blood pressure,
various types of cancers,
for folks who live near the CAFOs.
Many of them owned the properties
long before the CAFOs were there,
but had no control over the CAFO
going in next door to them.
I have worked on environmental justice
issues for most of my life.
I want people to understand
that this kind of thing would never happen
in a community where folks had access
to money and power and politicians,
but would only happen
in communities of color
and low-income communities.
[pig squeals]
[woman] Most people don't know
that CAFOs are where
99% of the nine billion animals
in this country
live pretty much their entire lives.
Even though they impact
their neighbors so significantly,
there's no right to know
where these facilities are
or how close they might be
to your water supply or your home.
[chickens clucking]
[distant siren wailing]
[John Sr.] You know what?
You gotta make sure you get your protein.
You look hungry all the time.
When you take care of your body right,
everything else will follow.
- Who's on the plant-based?
- [John] I am.
You're on the plant-based? Okay.
So, I'm curious to know
how it's been going for you,
and how you feel the last four weeks.
Um, I feel pretty good.
I did notice, when I would compare
on the Trifecta meals,
the protein count, um
compared to the omnivore,
it's low like, lower.
I still do struggle, I feel,
to eat enough in a day.
That's just still something
I'm kinda working on.
The workouts so far have been really good.
I've really had a lot of fun with them.
What's been most challenging, honestly,
is just taking time out of each day
to, like, prioritize eating,
which was something I wasn't used to.
[Nimai] Two. Good job.
[John Sr.] Come up.
[Nimai] Three. There we go.
- Keep those arms high.
- Stay tight.
[John] I feel like I look a bit bigger
when I'm looking at myself in the mirror.
Finish strong, finish strong,
finish strong, finish strong.
[John] But I don't know.
- Good job. There we go.
- [John Sr.] Good job.
Seven, eight, nine. Breathe.
- Ten, eleven, twelve.
- Ow.
I'm not gonna be able to walk tomorrow.
Wait, no. I will.
- You will.
- I'll be okay.
- 'Cause you're gonna do cardio tomorrow.
- Yep.
[trainer] Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
If you employ a major dietary change
and sustain that over the course of weeks
[Carolyn] That'll be for my lunch.
[Justin]you can see
very positive changes
in the gut microbiome.
[Michael] All right, looks pretty good.
[Justin] But participants
need to be motivated
to stick with the study.
[Wendy] How does it feel being a vegan?
It's very hard.
[Rosalyn] This recipe is so easy,
you could do it.
So for the second four weeks,
they will be making their own food.
[Charlie] This is my first time
cooking vegan food.
For dinner,
we were gonna have some chicken.
[Valerie] It's next to impossible to tell
where any product that you pick up
at the grocery store was produced.
People deserve to know
what they're eating
and where it came from.
[man] You can't trust these labels.
If they got about this much room
to go outside in, then that's free-range.
It's ridiculous.
Hey, you know what,
maybe I'll just go pescatarian.
[Wendy] Is it wild caught?
- [man] Look how nice and red inside.
- [Wendy] Yeah.
[man] You're guaranteed
a decent quality of fish.
[Wendy] Right.
- So some of this is like 20% fat.
- [Wendy] Mm-hmm.
[Pam] This is horrible fish.
I wouldn't serve this to my dog, my cat,
not even the mother-in-law.
[Miyoko] These are looking good.
- Food is not just to nourish the body.
- [woman] Oh yeah.
[Miyoko] Food nourishes the soul.
You have to romance people.
It has to be something
that makes people go,
"Oh my God. I can't wait
to get a fork and dig into that."
And that's what we're trying to do.
[gentle electronic music playing]