Ep. 170: That Netflix Movie, The Game Changers: My Thoughts, and Debunking the Debunkers with Robyn Openshaw

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Robyn: Hey everyone, it’s Robyn Openshaw and welcome back to the Vibe show.

Today I want to talk about the Netflix movie Game Changers. You’ve probably heard about it. Hopefully you’ve seen it, but if not, I’m going to give you my thoughts about it and some experiences that I’ve had since watching it.

I watched it twice. John watched it with me the second time and was convinced. If you want to get a guy to go more plant-based or even just to eat healthier, [have them watch this documentary].

It’s a great movie to show a guy because they’re going to find the world-class, elite athletes from a lot of different categories a lot more compelling.

Men tend to think that if you’re a vegan, you’re weekly and a wimpy looking guy. You cannot think that any more after watching this film.

Mothers Without Borders Update

Before I get into all that, I just want to thank everyone who donated in my Mother’s Without Borders fundraiser. It was really successful. I had a lot of fun doing it.

We put some prizes out there. I am flying to Indiana to spend a day with our amazing listener, Kent, who donated $5,000. First prize is I fly to him for a day and we spend time talking about whatever he wants to.

We raised $30,000, which I now am matching. I promised Mothers Without Borders however much we raise, by the end of the year I would have paid them all of that.

Deep breath. I will be personally contributing $30,000. Any dollar that you gave became $2. I appreciate it so much. I’ve also been really excited to see that in the GreenSmoothieGirl online store. We have something in there.

If you ever purchased anything from GreenSmoothieGirl, at the end as you’re checking out, you’ll be offered the opportunity to contribute to Mothers Without Borders.

We’ve been collecting 70 to a hundred dollars a day just by asking people for a few dollars. I decided to stay focused on these kids because they’re out of sight, out of mind, right.

I don’t know if I’ll ever go to Zambia again, but I decided to imagine that twenty Zambian kids show up on my porch every single day. I just want you to think about this too.

If someone knocked on the door and you opened the door and it was an adult chaperone of 20 Zambian kids and they said, “We don’t have enough to eat.” What would you do?

You would invite them in your house and you would get everything out of your cupboard and your fridge, and you’d give them everything you possibly could if you knew that there were these kids standing on your door who hadn’t eaten in three or four days.

I just wanted to imagine that the kids who live in these Zambian villages that I’ve tried to adopt were on my porch. What would I do for them?

Then [I] do that, not the thing that’s really easy to do, which is nothing. I don’t see suffering. I don’t see hunger in my daily life because I live in the upper middle class world.

Anyway, there’s all this talk going on out there about intermittent fasting and what [it] is. It’s ridiculous if you think about it, since people throughout all of history have been lucky if they got three meals a day.

That isn’t even necessarily a thing in all areas of the world. Especially in indigenous parts of the world. People in the first world have fast food on every corner and a fridge full of food and access to credit cards, so they never really have to go hungry.

Intermittent fasting is basically skipping a meal a day. You’re probably aware that this last year we launched the Flash Fast, which is my Three-Day Modified Fasting Program that we feed a child through Mothers Without Borders.

We feed a child for three days in Zambia in your name, and once you’ve gotten 10 Flash Fast (we already have had a few who’ve hit that target), we send you some gifts.

We send you a shaker bottle and a wristband to help you remember. We don’t have these kids knocking on our door and saying, “I’m really hungry, and I have no access to food.” It’s a great reminder, this little bracelet that we send you when you’ve done 10 Flash Fasts.

It’s so good for us to eat 800 calories or less of plant-based nutrition for three days to really get into autophagy and even into ketosis and [to get] all the nutritional benefits.

It’s exciting that we can also take the proceeds of that and feed a child in Zambia for three days. If you feel to give, you can always give in the GreenSmoothieGirl shopping cart.

Greensmoothiegirl.com/MothersWithoutBorders is still open where you can learn more about what they do and how you can contribute, whether that’s on a monthly basis or a onetime contribution.

[I am] so grateful to everyone whether you signed up to sponsor a child or whether you did a onetime contribution. I’m so very thankful for you.

Between us, you and I, we have raised $60,000 for Mothers Without Borders. I just wanted to express my deepest gratitude for the help that you have given me with that.

We’re talking today about Game Changers. I’ll tell you what the film is in case you haven’t seen it. I’ll help you decide if you want to spend your time watching it on Netflix.

Plant-Based Diets are Best for Overall Health

For clarity and a couple of caveats here, my take on the whole vegan vs plant-based vs omnivore — that whole debate — I’m not actually super interested in it.

I do notice in the last 10 years a major shift where most people are very mainstream. Most nutritionists are very mainstream.

Here’s my bias. I cannot prove this. I think it would take me an extensive amount of research to be able to prove this. I believe the food pyramid has always been influenced by what people are willing to do.

I think that the reason that many of our institutions (despite reviewing the evidence) won’t go so far as to say that 90 to a hundred percent plant-based is the ideal diet because they don’t want to offend people. Honestly, I believe that they don’t want to ask us to do something too hard.

They don’t want people to reject their message if they talk about what the actual scientific consensus is and what the published literature and literally thousands of published studies lead us to, which is a lot more plants than most people want to tell people to eat.

I think it’s that 90 to a hundred percent is ideal. I’ll reveal my bias there. I believe that my bias is based on now 25 years of reading as much published literature as I possibly can. I pay attention every single year.

I don’t ever get to a point where I say I’m not paying attention anymore. I’ve got all the answers. A lot of what we do here on my podcast is you coming along with me while I dig deeper on a subject that I’ve been wanting to know about.

I get to ask questions of experts that I hope are questions you would ask or that you’re wondering about as well. A lot of it is you’re just along for the journey while I tried to learn more about these important subjects.

To my colleagues who say, “Vegan isn’t the way, or vegan isn’t the only way,” I would freely admit that there is no one study out there that takes people who are eating a whole food vegan diet and compares them to another group of people who are eating a whole food omnivore diet.

A lot of the research out there is cherry picked. Whether you’re listening to the vegan camp or whether you’re listening to the meat eater camp, there’s so much cherry picking that it becomes discouraging.

I’m going to get into this because I’m going to talk about Joe Rogan’s three hour and 42-minute podcast episode with the producer of Game Changers.

[The producer’s] name is James Wilkes, and he is an MMA fighter and a coach. He had an injury, [so] he started studying what the best diet [is].

He landed on the same thing that after 25 years of research I’ve landed on, which is 100% (or something less than that, but still close to 100%) is the ideal diet.

It’s two thirds of the planet that eats 90 to 100% plant-based. We forget that, and we become myopic. We become so North Americanized that we think that everybody is eating 20% or more animal protein.

20 to 40% animal products are what a lot of Americans are eating but not really anybody else around the world. Only the industrialized, wealthiest first world nations are eating that much in animal products.

The real outline of Game Changers is the reason everybody’s talking about it. It’s different than what the health [community] and the many pro-vegan agenda things out there is. It’s not all primarily about the impact on the environment.

A lot of vegans are that way because they’re using 5% of the Earth’s resources with their dietary habits compared to people who eat the amount of meat your average American does.

There are those kinds of vegans, the ethical vegans, the humanitarian, or the people who are looking out for the whole ecosystem for the planet.

That’s not what Game Changers is doing. It’s not really trying to argue for 100% pure veganism. I personally think that it’s entirely possible. A small amount of animal products is fine, and a healthy person can do that until they’re a hundred.

There are people who are healthy who do that until they’re a hundred or older. I will point out that all five of the blue zones are 90 to 100% plant-based.

I will point out that there are literally over 10,000 studies published about the health benefits of plant foods. I don’t personally have an agenda of convincing you or anyone else to go 100% vegan.

I personally am only about 95% vegan. That’s what works for me. The closer I am to 100% plant-based, the better I feel. Probably 5% of my diet is animal products.

It’s not generally because I think I need it, but rather it’s usually because I’m traveling or at someone’s home for dinner or whatever, and I end up eating a little bit of it because there isn’t that much else to eat.

Game Changers Cast of Extreme Athletes

What Game Changers is doing is it’s showing you a lot of world-class players at the very top of their game, high performance athletes. The vast majority of them shown in the film are 100% vegan. Some of them are more in the 90 to 100% range.

You can just Google cast of characters, Game Changers, or you could go to GameChangersMovie.com/cast. I did that.

We’re talking about people like Patrik Baboumian, who is a heavyweight power lifter. You actually see [him do some lifting] in the film. He’s been entirely plant-based for at least 12 years — I believe.

By the way, I watched the film twice, but I wasn’t taking notes either time. This isn’t a very structured critique. It’s just some thoughts that I’ve had since watching the film twice that I wanted to share with you.

[The film has] really taken the whole nutrition and wellness world by storm. There’s a lot of conversation out there about it.

The minute it launched, [individuals] funded by meat and dairy or the Weston A Price Foundation immediately [started] writing [and] debunking.

I remember when The China Study was released 13 years ago. I read it within two weeks of the book releasing. It’s by Colin Campbell of Oxford. It’s basically the layman’s review of the biggest nutrition study ever performed.

Originally [the book was on] animals then moved onto humans. It compared 6,500 people in China. Half of them were eating a 95% plant-based diet and half were eating only 80%. They’re eating like 20% animal protein.

With both the animal studies and the human studies Oxford and Cornell (who collaborated in that research) found that there’s virtually no cancer or heart disease or autoimmune disease in human beings who eat 95% plant-based.

We’re talking about whole foods. Anytime I say that, just assume we’re talking about a whole foods diet, right? There’s plenty of vegans who eat mostly garbage. Vegan doesn’t tell you much about what someone does eat.

It only tells you that they don’t eat animal products. That still leaves a lot of play for a lot of garbage foods that can affect your health.

The film shows you that you can be a top performing athlete. You can be top of your game, even in things like a weightlifting, bodybuilding.

You’ve got Kendrick Farris who’s an American record holding weightlifter [and] is featured in the film. You’ve got Bryant Jennings who’s a vegan boxing heavyweight title contender.

You’ve got Mischa Janiec who’s a professional bodybuilder. You’ve got others that you might not be all that surprised about like Scott Jurek, a record holding ultra-marathoner.

Guys who run 50 miles or more in a day don’t necessarily surprise people — the super lean athletes. Then you watch Patrik Baboumian lift 1,230 pounds in the Yoke Walk. Think about that.

He literally has all these weights on it and four guys standing on the thing that he then puts his shoulders under it and stands up and walks, and he’s done. He does 358 pounds in the Log Lift.

I mean this guy is crazy, and he eats only plants. When someone finds out that you don’t eat animals — I can’t even count how many times someone has said to me, “But where do you get your protein?”

One of the things that James Wilkes (the MMA fighter [and] one of the two producers of this film) shows is how you can get plenty of protein by eating just plants.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the film. He’s one of the few who isn’t 100% vegan. He has cut his meat eating back in the last 10 years by a lot.

I remember many years ago Schwarzenegger saying of his good friend Bill Pearl — who was Mr. Universe — he said, “Bill Pearl didn’t convince me to be a vegetarian, but Bill Pearl convinced me that a vegetarian can be Mr. Universe.” I feel like that was the agenda of Game Changers.

They also cut away to many medical doctors and PhD nutrition researchers who make statements in favor of the plant-based or vegan diet.

I’m going to say plant-based when what I mean is 90 to 100% plants, and I’ll say vegan when we’re talking 100%. They also feature Dotsie Bausch who I won a [silver] medal in some cycling event when she was [40].

She’s already at the older age where you peak and it’s about time to bow out of your sport. She decided at the end of her career, “I’m going to pour it on.” She went vegan, and she just crushed it.

Like I said, immediately after the film came out, there’s criticism of the film. It almost reads like a masterclass in developing your critical thinking skills.

If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you probably remember that I did a four-part series. It [was on] [honing] your critical thinking skills. Think like a researcher. Don’t fall into your biases. Don’t necessarily accept everything that you see or read on the internet or in any particular book as the gospel truth.

Here are some examples of how to dig a little bit deeper and take note of what wasn’t covered or take note of who paid for that study and that kind of thing.

Vegans versus Meat-Eaters

You know that joke, “How do you know someone is a vegan?” The answer is, “Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.” I guess that’s probably why vegans make meat eaters so mad.

I don’t find them to be that way. There [are those] one or two radicals out there, [so] everybody wants to label the whole movement as being that way.

I don’t find that everybody is that way, but there definitely are some radical vegans. They tend to be the ethical vegans rather than the health and wellness vegans. Right.

[There is a] huge amount of evidence [about] the harm that we create in terms of our own health, by eating animal products, especially red [and] processed meat. Even grass fed beef is not above the fray [and] is not necessarily a healthy food to eat.

The risk that we’re at for parasites for instance, that alone has me [disgusted and horrified]. Years and years ago I put red meat on my never list. Pork has been on my never list since reading John Robbins work decades ago. I could never eat [pork] again.

It’s really amazing to me how vitriolic meat eaters are towards vegans. My take on that is if we continue eating meat and animal products at the rate that Americans do, we aren’t going to leave a habitable world to our children and our grandchildren.

It seems to me that people who want to eat meat and who want to find evidence that eating meat is actually good for them (or at least not bad for them) shouldn’t be so upset with the plant-based movement [and] people like me who don’t eat animal products.

A pound of animal flesh takes 20 times the resources — especially water — as a pound of plant food. Why don’t we want more people on the planet who are willing to use 5% of the natural resources to just stay fed. Just a little thing to think about there.

Joe Rogan had Chris Kresser on his podcast a couple months ago after the movie came out. They spent almost three hours debunking Game Changers, which does bring in some science [and] does quote quite a few PhDs and MDs.

After they did that, I don’t know exactly what happened, [whether] James Wilkes reached out to them and said, “Can I come on your show? I have something to say about Chris Kresser’s sort of anti-veganism.”

This may sound crazy. Who would listen to a three hour and 42 minute podcast? I just want to recommend to you that if you want a mind-blowing experiment, go listen to Joe Rogan’s interview of James Wilkes as he defends himself against Chris Kresser’s “debunking.”

Okay. Chris Kresser is one of the quickest ones to get out there probably because he’s going to get a lot of SEO for it as millions of people have watched Game Changers. Chris Kresser was out there very quickly with his debunking.

James Wilkes [is] on this episode that’s three hours and 42 minutes. That’s episode 1393 of the Rogan Podcast. Joe Rogan is like an MMA guy.

He has one of the most listened to health and wellness podcasts out there. I actually think it’s one of the most listened to podcast period, probably the number one in health and wellness. He’s done 1400 episodes.

Right now, he is doing a carnivore diet experiment. I’m really disappointed. The famous psychologist Jordan Peterson and his daughter are doing the carnivore diet and he probably really enjoys eating meat.

I’m really disappointed that he’s doing this ridiculous diet of eating nothing but primarily red meat. He does very freely in this podcast episode admit that it’s indisputable that eating lots of plants is very, very good for us.

James Wilkes had probably asked for his day in the sun. For almost four hours, he just hands Chris Kresser his butt on a platter.

It is amazing how he takes on one thing after another in the “debunking” that Chris Kresser had written. He shows Kresser to not only be wrong about many, many things.

He would have just kept going except they ran out of time. Joe Rogan was like, “I have to do two podcasts today, and this has already been over three and a half hours.”

He could have kept going on and on without a whimper. Chris Kresser did not even have a response to virtually anything at all that James Wilkes said.

Chris Kresser has [been] brought onto lots and lots of shows. He’s vegan hater number one. He’s the go-to guy to say that plant-based isn’t the way to go and that people need animal products and that animal products aren’t bad for you. In order to come to those conclusions, he has to close his eyes to a lot of evidence out there.

[Jame Wilkes] started with the B12 arguments that Chris Kresser made in his big huge debunking article. He moved on to the amount of protein that Chris Kresser represents is in plant foods.

Game Changers Proven Correct

He completely destroys every single argument that [Chris Kresser] made, not [by] just saying, “You’re wrong about this. You’ve interpreted this data wrong,” but by actually getting Kresser to admit that he doesn’t even know how to read the types of data that he’s representing.

[Chris Kresser] puts meta analyses of 18 studies [into his debunking article], and James Wilkes points out that they were 18 cherry picked industry funded studies.

Think [about] the Texas cattle ranchers association. Think of that as being an industry study that goes out to find out what the effects are of eating red meat.

Whatever they study, how much of that is going to actually get published? They’re not going to publish anything that isn’t in their favor.

Anytime there’s somebody funding [research], like the Cattleman’s association or whatever, those aren’t studies that real researchers and people who care about finding the truth are going to quote.

James Wilkes catches Kresser in quoting industry studies. He catches him grabbing from somewhere else on the internet, (false information) and just plugging it into his argument without doing fact checking.

[Wilkes] catches [Kresser] not knowing things like all chickens are supplemented with B12 as part of his multifaceted argument. The fact that you need B12 is not a reason to eat animal products.

It’s a lame reason to animal products because animals are deficient in B12 at this point. The animals are really — the film says — the middlemen to get you your B12. Animals get it from a soil organisms. Now the soils are becoming so depleted.

It’s pretty much all of us that need to take a B12 supplement at least occasionally. I’m very hit or miss with it. I do try to take B12 since I don’t eat meat.

One of the studies that they show in Game Changers is that 40% of people who eat meat are B12 deficient, and it’s also 40% of vegans are B12 deficient.

That doesn’t represent all the studies that are out there. There are definitely studies that show that more vegans and vegetarians are [more] B12 deficient than meat eaters.

All I’m saying is that there is no definitive study that shows if you want to avoid B12 deficiency, the way to get that is by eating meat.

[Wilkes] catches [Kresser] purposefully manipulating quotes. Kresser quotes the film, and then leaves off the last part of the quote because it doesn’t serve the agenda.

[Wilkes] catches [Kresser] in many cases giving false data or misrepresented data. I would really encourage you to listen to it.

When to Listen to the Three Hour and 42 Minute Podcast on Game Changers

Now you might think, “I don’t have three hours and 42 minutes”. Hey, me neither. How many of you have a half hour to an hour drive that you’re going to do sometime in the next week? Start thinking of that as a great time to be educating yourself.

Don’t put your earbuds in when you’re listening to podcast because then you cannot be aware of what’s going on around you. I just turn it on on my phone, and I listen to it, and it didn’t take any time. When I was driving and when I was working out, I listened to that episode number 1393 on the Joe Rogan show.

Usually on this show, if I talk about science around eating a plant-based diet, I’m talking about reducing your disease risk and about increasing your longevity.

I’m talking to all of us regular people, not high-performance world-class athletes. I’m just talking about how to decrease the misery in your life and get more life but also more more healthy life.

What Game Changers is doing is showing [how] people who absolutely depend on their energy outpacing all us mere mortals every single day make a living.

They have to be 100 times stronger than the average person or 100 times better performance than the average person can do. They train and they train and they train. There are more of these athletes than you think who are eating 100% plant-based.

The Bias Toward Game Changers

I have a colleague who — I think I’ve mentioned — I’ve been in a debate with for about six months, and he accuses me over and over again. He accuses me of bias, and he has a point.

I’ve had a lot of vegan doctors and authors on this show. I think that I do that because I feel like there’s almost nobody who’s eating enough plants.

I feel like getting 15 to 20 servings of greens and vegetables and fruits, raw plant-based foods, some nuts and seeds is very key to getting our health back if we don’t have it. We’re staying healthy if we already are.

It’s definitely the major thing I did to get my health back when I was in terrible health in my late twenties and early thirties. I do want to say I agree that I have a bias, and I agree that my bias is toward the plant-based diet.

I don’t mean have a salad on the side of your plate. I’m going to say it boldly, 90 to 100% plant-based. Wherever in there you feel best [and] you feel comfortable.

If you’re feeling angry when you hear that and you’re like, “I need more meat than that,” here’s the thing. I don’t actually want to make an argument that you’re wrong.

My mission on GreenSmoothieGirl for 13 years now — virtually everybody is deficient in the nutrient dense plant-based foods that have been linked to preventing disease [and] have been linked to longevity — my goal is to help you eat more of them.

Whether that be by inspiring you because I did it and raised my four kids that way; whether it be by educating you with research I like to share with you and our guests that I bring on this show; or with our recipes on GreenSmoothieGirl; or our programs like our Flash Fast or the 12 Steps to Whole Foods Course.

Which is your lifestyle? This is something you can do and really enjoy it day in and day out, year-round. Those habits I discovered in 12 Steps to Whole Foods are what I did to change my life.

I used to be 70 pounds overweight. [I] slept 10 hours a day and was never ever rested. [I had] other terrible things that I was suffering with. It was 21 different serious complications or symptoms that I was experiencing in my twenties when I was supposed to be in the prime of my life.

How I turned it all around is those habits in 12 Steps to Whole Foods and, of course, our detox. There are no animal products in our detox. No animal products should be in any legitimate detox.

I’m always open to the criticism. If I’ve been biased, I think I’m going to bring a few people on who will make a case for some meat eating. I’m not going to critique them or criticize them. I’m just going to ask them, “What do you think is appropriate?”

I think I’m going to try to bring Chris Masterjohn on the show. I’m not bringing Kresser on because what James Wilkes just did to him shows that he’s cherry picking the information that he shares with his audience.

James Wilkes points out a couple of times, “You depend on debunking Game Changers to make a living because you make a living selling a diet and supplements that are heavily meat eating.”

If you have somebody you think I should be interviewing that has another take, please write us. Please write us at GreenSmoothieGirl and say, “I think Robyn should interview this person or that person and here’s why.” I’m really interested in who you’d like to see on this show. There aren’t very many people that we can’t get to.

I do just want to say that the way I acquired my bias is by reading the scientific literature. I’ve read a few thousand studies that keep saying the same thing, “Eat plants, don’t eat animals.”

I do want to point out that that is how I acquired my bias. In conclusion, I just wanted to recommend Game Changers to you. I think they share some really good research on there.

Their graphics and visuals are incredible. They must’ve had a really good budget. They have lots of people not just talking about science and statistics and studies.

You have Derrick Morgan of the Tennessee Titans, an NFL player, and his a vegan chef wife showing us how they do it.

You get to see a lot of fun things in the film as well like how Derrick Morgan and his wife invite the whole Tennessee Titans team over.

Game Changers’ Experiments

They have two really cool little experiments that they do. They have a doctor to make some points about sexual health.

Three NFL players were given a totally plant-based burrito on one night and then on another night, they were given a meat burrito.

They had a device attached to their sexual parts, and they discovered that they had [30 to 40%] longer erections. You might say, “I don’t want to have an erection all night,” or, “That’s not a measure of sexual health that appeals to me.” That’s just something they can easily measure while people are asleep.

The point is, it goes to overall more efficiency in the cardiovascular system, which goes to better sexual performance, more sexual endurance.

That is a really cool little study with three NFL players. They come out and they show them. Of course, they’re all giggly. They turn into embarrassed little kids when they’re given their results.

All three of them had a vastly better sexual performance or an indicator or a marker of sexual performance just from eating a burrito made of beans and rice and vegetables rather than beef.

One of those guys was actually already was vegan, so with him, they showed that both of the days of the experiment, he had really great biomarkers. His name’s Griff Whalen. He’s one of the many vegan athletes who are featured.

There’s another study they do where another physician has three NFL players eat meat versus plant-based. If I remember correctly, it was the burrito experiment again.

They took their blood. One ate a chicken burrito, and one of them ate a beef burrito. They were showing it’s not just beef. The one who ate the chicken burrito [also] shows up as having quite a bit of fat in their blood.

I think it was that Griff Whalen guy [that ate the vegan burrito]. His blood was clear and clean. That’s an indicator of better performance. Even if you aren’t a competitive athlete, you still want better performance.

You’re still performing every day. Whatever it is you do that you care about, whether it’s being a better wife and mother or whether it’s being a better UPS truck delivery person, whatever it is you’re doing, you want to do it well.

I felt like there were a lot of great data points in there, even though all the meat biased people went out there and quickly wanted to do a debunking.

There’s just so much great evidence there shown by probably 15 PhDs and MDs who believed that the preponderance of evidence is in favor of eating a plant-based diet.

This is exactly the kind of episode where I wanted to know more about something; I wanted to watch the movie; I wanted to have a conversation about the movie. I’m just holding your hand while I continue doing my own research.

If I ever am up there saying that I have now arrived at all knowledge, and nothing could ever change my mind, then somebody needs to get a big hook out and pull me right on off that stage because I’m still learning.

I’m still asking questions, and I’d be really excited to hear from you. Write us on Facebook or email us at support@GreenSmoothieGirl.com.

If there’s somebody you really want to hear from, then you might even want to submit to us specific questions based on their content. I’d be super interested in that and love to hear from you what you thought of Game Changers.

We’ll see you next time.