This transcript is AI-generated and [lightly] edited by a human.

Karina Inkster:

You're listening to the No Bullshit Vegan Podcast, episode 173. Today, computational scientist and ultra-marathoner, Jeyashree Krishnan, speaks with me about why critical thinking is important in choosing one's diet, how to make sense of conflicting diet information online, and why lifestyle and diet choices are not binary.

Hey, welcome to the show. I'm Karina your go-to no BS vegan fitness and nutrition coach. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you're a new listener or you've been tuning in for a while, but you haven't yet downloaded the free no BS vegan ebook, make sure you go to no bullshit vegan.com/ebook and get your copy now. It includes advice from yours truly on fueling strength training with plants, as well as insight from four experts that have been featured on the podcast, including Robert Cheek, one of the founders of Vegan body-building and spoiler. By the way, he will be back on the podcast very soon. Find out how much protein you really need, which five nutrition mistakes to avoid, why soy is a health-promoting food and should not be avoided. Six reasons. A 100% plant-based diet may enhance strength training, results and recovery and more. Download your free copy at nobullshitvegan.com/ebook.

My guest today is a computational scientist and data science consultant with a personal passion for ultra-marathons and plant-based cooking. Jeyashree Krishnan lives in Germany and uses her knack for simplifying complex data to solve problems and help others understand intricate concepts. Her drive stems from a deep-seated curiosity and a love for learning. Coming from India and having pursued her master's and PhD in Germany, Jeyashree brings a diverse range of experiences and insights to her work and daily life. She spends much of her free time diving into books and research papers, always eager to question and critically think about the world around her beyond her academic and professional pursuits.

Jeyashree cherishes the challenges of ultra-marathons testing her limits with each race in the kitchen. She loves to experiment with various cuisines with a special fondness for spicy dishes. Cooking plant-based meals is more than just a hobby for her. It's a way to explore creative healthy eating. Jeyashree's favorite vegan meal is a sweet potato boat, which is one of many things we talk about in our conversation. Here it goes.

Hi Jeyashree, thanks so much for speaking with me today and coming on the show.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Thanks, Karina. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Karina Inkster:

I love the internet sometimes. We met on LinkedIn and I saw your profile and I was like, this is an interesting human and she needs to be on the show.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Well, I'm really humbled and happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Karina.

Karina Inkster:

Of course, of course. So one question I have for you right off the bat is in your guest intake form, you put that your favorite vegan meal is a sweet potato boat, which I need to know about. Is this where you bake a sweet potato and you cut it in half and then you put a whole bunch of toppings on it. What's the deal?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Precisely. Yeah, I mean, it's my personal favorite because there aren't a lot of meals that taste great and are absolutely healthy, and this one ticks both. And it also is kind of a European, let's say, middle East Asian fusion. It's somewhere from near Greece or Italy. I have to look it up and I like it because exactly like you said, you just bake the sweet potato, cut them into half, and then you bake some chickpeas as well, put some spices on it and then chop some vegetables and then put it on top, and then it's like a full meal. You can have two sweet potatoes if you're really, really hungry and you're absolutely happy in the end, you can also add hummus. I think it's a good add for the whole dish, and it's kind of my weekend cheat, if I could call it that way.

Karina Inkster:

Well, not even. It's more like a treat. It's delicious.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Exactly, exactly.

Karina Inkster:

That's very cool. And you could probably batch cook them too, at least a sweet potato part. You could bake a whole bunch of them if you wanted to, and then you have three or four days worth just thinking ahead. I want to try it this weekend.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Precisely. Yeah, you could batch cook them. That's also another, now I think about it, it's a good add-on to have. Right. You don't have to redo it every day. And yeah, also the veggies, maybe the veggies, you might have to chop them fresh, but it's a good meal that you can make once in three days or something and just eat here.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, totally. Okay, now I'm hungry. Thanks for that.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

I can bring you some sweet potato boats.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, that would be amazing. Can you just send them over from Germany?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Karina Inkster:

Just so our listeners know, Jeyashree is originally from India, but is living in Germany currently. So we're transversing, what is it, a nine hour difference, something like this? I

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Would assume so.

Karina Inkster:

It's an evening for you and it's afternoon for me.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Exactly. Yeah.

Karina Inkster:

That's very cool. Well, okay, so tell our listeners a little bit about what you do, because we're going to talk about some stuff that isn't officially your career, like ultra marathon and veganism and things that you're very passionate about. But what you do as a JOB is quite different. It's computational science, you're a data scientist consultant. Tell our listeners a little bit about what this entails and what you do in your work.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Yeah, sure. So my career trajectory has been in the area of simulations and machine learning, and once I finished my graduation in that I joined a company here in Germany. There's a consulting segment where we solve digital transformation problems or data science problems in our everyday work. So you could imagine this is some kind of a consulting engagement with different sets of people within and outside the company that have a certain set of, let's say, challenges or business problems associated to data science in general. So that's what I've been doing for the last couple of years. 

Before that, as I mentioned, I did my PhD in computational science, which is more the, let's say the other side of the coin, if you could put it that way, because right now I work on short projects very quickly. Previously it was one very long project that was forever. So that's a little bit about me professionally. So my everyday life is coding and then meetings and then chatting with people and implementing stuff and so on and so forth. And of course, as you rightly mentioned, Karina, I like to run as well. I've run a few marathons and ultra marathons, and that keeps me going.

Karina Inkster:

Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you for that. What is fueling all of the training that you do? You're plant-based yourself, of course. So what is it about running, what is it about ultra marathon that keeps you going, that keeps you interested?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

That's a great question. So originally when I started, I didn't have a big scheme or a plan in mind. I just started running because hey, I want to do sports, I want to stay fit, and so on and so forth. It started off with the 5K and then it went to 10, and then the madness increased and it went to half marathon, and then the madness.

Karina Inkster:

Okay, I agree with that. Exactly.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

I mean, some people really thought it was mad. And then I started introspecting why I really want to scale and do that. And that's when I realized that if you actually think about it, life is like a marathon or a marathon is like life. In life. You typically have ups and downs and big challenges, small challenges, and whatever happens, you need to wake up next day, get out there, get doing things. Of course there'll be low days, but you need to push yourself to be like, you know what? This is going to get better. I'm going to get better. I'm going to push myself and so on. And I think Marathon is kind of like a trailer to this big movie called Life for Me, like in marathon or ultra marathons. Typically at 30, 40 kilometers, you're like, what? I mean, why am I doing this to myself?

This is really hard. You really want to give up. It's like a brain game. Your body's not giving up. Actually, you can push it, but your brain wants to give up. But then this thing of the resilience that you build by just pushing yourself, you know what, I'm not going to give up on my own. Of course, if for whatever other reasons I break my leg or whatever I give up, that's something that is beyond my control, but just trying to push myself in the marathon feels like I am more prepared for the challenges in life. Yeah,

Karina Inkster:

Interesting, interesting. It's a metaphor for life itself. I love that. That's amazing.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Thanks, Corina. That's what I tell myself. Yeah,

Karina Inkster:

Of course, of course. So tell me about the plant-based side of things. So what brought you to this way of eating? Did you grow up with that? Is it a decision you made? How does that look for you?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

It was certainly a decision I made because it's typically, let's say I went plan-based almost 10 years back. At that time, it was not, let's say very trendy to switch to this.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, well before it was cool.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Exactly, exactly. Now vegan is the cool, and there's a lot of replacement products. I'm super happy for that. But at the time it was a bit more challenging. The kind of transformation point came when more than 10, 12 years back, I watched this movie, what was it, an Inconvenient Truth, I think by Al Gore. The movie kind of showed this whole concept of climate change and how diet affects climate change and so on and so forth. 

And up until this point, most of these words are jargon for me. And I looked it up and I was like, what's this stuff and why do people relate diet to weather conditions and things like this? And that's what got me thinking about why we are eating what we are eating. So pretty much it's usually culture or tradition acceptable, but at the end of the day, it's also a certain set of macronutrients and it also influences the external environment and being. So once I started, that was around the time I was transitioning to research so I could pull out some papers and read and try to understand on my own certain things. 

And I started experimenting it, and that's how it started. And slowly in the beginning, I was doing mix of everything. I was not strictly vegan because I felt I had to try it out to understand, and then slowly I was able to kind of make it into a thing. And now I almost feel like it feels almost irreversible. I feel more energetic and more up for things within this diet, and I feel like I am doing something for the environment, at least not negative.

Karina Inkster:

Of course. Well, thanks for sharing that. I think interestingly, a few different academic folks that I've spoken with have come to veganism from the research. They've been doing research themselves outside of their career, or they are research scientists, and they started looking into the connections between diet and environment and ethics and other humans on the planet. So it's interesting what brings folks to veganism and what is a catalyst. And in a lot of cases, especially for academic folks, it seems to be the research itself. And that's something that we can talk about too, because we're going to go into critical thinking and how that applies to our diets and decisions we make. But thank you for sharing. I appreciate that kind of background, origin story of who Jeyashree is as a plant-based person. Very cool.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Absolutely. Thanks Karina. 

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, of course. So why is critical thinking important in terms of diet and following through being consistent, making decisions for ourselves? What does diet have to do with critical thinking?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

That's an excellent question. Personally, at the end of the day, if we just drop the vegan agenda plan-based stuff, all of it, even if we put all that aside, we are in some sense entitled to take care of ourselves at least. So at the end of the day, we need to be aware of how much protein, how much carbohydrates, what is it that's going into my system, and what is it that's coming out of my system, how healthy I am, and so on. So at least at that level, I think we all agree that we need to know the numbers. We need to think critically, am I eating too much of fat? Am I eating too much of carbohydrates? No fat bashing here, but just telling any macronutrients for that matter. So that's certainly one layer because the area of looking into the diet itself is now so established that we don't question it, but what somehow I feel we are all a little bit, we have cognitive dissonance about is that from which source do we get all these macronutrients?

This is what we are all debating about here. And at that level, we somehow just neglect it. We don't care. We say, Hey, it doesn't matter which source it comes from as long as I'm getting my macronutrients. And I think that is where the critical thinking plays a big role. We already to some extent use critical thinking in our diet. Now most of us have a smartphone, we have some kind of a wellness app or something that tracks macronutrients. But what we don't really realize is the sources also matter as much as the macronutrients. And even more important, the sources that we consume also affect the environment, not just the animals, but also the bigger ecosystems, so to say. And that's where I feel it's important to exercise critical thinking wherever possible.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. So what sort of questions can we, as non-scientists in me ask ourselves when it comes to diet? What are some of the things that we can ask? 

Jeyashree Krishnan:

That's a good question. I think the idea of critical thinking does not require anyone to necessarily read papers or come from a scientific background. It's more a muscle that we just develop just by doing stuff. I think just like when we have a question, it's now very common to go to Google or chat g PT and ask, Hey, or why is it like this? Or what is that? And so on the same way, if we were to question our, let's say, fixed mindset about certain aspects of the diet. For example, we know statistically beef has the highest carbon footprint, but a lot of us consume beef. There could be a hundred percent rationalization for that. Perhaps some people consume beef only once a week. But for someone who consumes beef every day, it's actually logically hard to motivate exactly why that is good for the bigger ecosystem.

So there, I think where we need to come out is that we need to think, Hey, maybe I'm wrong. Let me go look up online exactly what's the effect of eating beef on an everyday basis, for example, and then be able to answer that and even correct that if possible, even if you skip one meal of that and eat something else, it overall adds up in the macro system. So these are the small questions. I think, no, let's say major questions about, I dunno, is this amino acid present in this? That's probably not the biggest of questions that affects all of us, but more the general questions and then taking them one level down compared to just a blog post on Google or something. You do a little bit more desktop research and convince yourself that what you're doing is the right thing for everyone.

Karina Inkster:

Well put. I feel like a lot of people need to learn how to research though. I mean, it took grad school for me to understand really how to do proper lit reviews and critique articles. I feel like not necessarily the peer reviewed research side, but the critical thinking side I think needs to be taught way earlier in the school system because it basically isn't, at least here in Canada, where I went to school until grad school, doing your own thesis, creating your own or running your own study. That's the point where I learned how to look at someone else's research and how to look at how large the statistical effect was and all this stuff, which is fine, but it took that long to get to that point. 

And I feel like this could have been taught in high school at a simpler level, but at least a way that gets people thinking about the right questions. Because from being on social media and from having a guilty pleasure of poking trolls on Reddit and Facebook and stuff, I know that there's a lot of people out there who have convinced themselves that beef is the absolute best thing for the environment and that, hey, everyone should be supporting animal agriculture because A, B, and C, it sequesters carbon and blah, blah, blah. They've convinced themselves of this. So what advice do you have for the general population to make sure that they're even asking the right question in the first place?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Yep, that's a good point. So I completely agree with you. I think a lot of things could have been taught in school, and I don't know why we weren't taught that. And certainly reconsidering your diet should be in the course, I think, but if someone considers this opinion that I'm throwing it out there. So coming to your point, Karina, I think there are three things that we can probably take out of this question of how do you convince people, or let's put it like this, how can people convince themselves that what they're doing is best for them? I think the first thing is like you mentioned, it's pretty cool to read Reddit or Cora or stuff like this, and they have really good answers, particularly the experiential bit is very valuable. I think when you are facing a particular situation or whatever, I think the subjective answers really help a lot.

But where the question comes to me is, are they objective? So most of the time, that's not the place we would want to go to get objective answers. This is where it gets muddled. What we would, I think recommend is that can you go pick up a research paper which has the highest number of citations for that particular study and read it. 

But this obviously is time consuming. It's not a material that everyone would want to read, and it's too challenging, it's too boring, all accepted. So in that regard, what would make sense is that's where the introspection really plays a big role. Sit down and think about all the ideologies that you really hold onto and you're not able to find logical answers for it. I want to eat beef because I don't know, in my family, we've always eaten beef and I really love eating beef because the taste is amazing.

Now, that's not a objective answer, it's a subjective answer. So if you give only subjective answer, then if you have the introspection mindset, then you can accept yourself. Hey, I'm not able to convince myself, so let me go to an expert, for example, like you and ask, Hey, what do you think about it? Now in this, again, there is a decision tree, maybe they will come to you or maybe they will go to someone who propagates beef. This is where it all gets confusing actually. But point is I think they should come to someone who propagates beef and someone who doesn't propagate beef here, both sides, ideally 10 of each if you can, and then make a decision. Now, this is again time consuming, but this is really the core of it. If you can spend that time, I think it's your health, it's your life, it's the health of the environment, it's worth it. 

But there are really only two methods, papers and people. And you need to have diverse set of papers or some kind of study that is not biased and not funded by certain agencies, or you need to have people and you need to have both kinds of people who give you two sides of the argument. And then you need to use your critical thinking to understand what's best for you and for the environment. But at the end of the day, I feel if someone doesn't want to be convinced, you cannot convince them. That's also true.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, I know that from experience, yes.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

But we can give it a try all the time. I think all of us have at any given point in time in some kind of cognitive dissonance, we always hold two kinds of ideology that actually conflict with each other and with respect to diet, certainly. But the thing is, when we have it, I think we should address it if we can and try to take action if possible.

Karina Inkster:

Okay. So let's review. There was a lot of info there. What are the three points that we can use to make sure that we're asking the right questions? So you mentioned people, you mentioned papers. That might have been from one of the points though.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

That's right. People, papers and maybe self introspection really. Yeah,

Karina Inkster:

Okay.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Or the critical thinking, just sit down and write, okay, I'm eating this, I'm eating this because I don't know, like A, B, C, D, I think it's good for environment, it's good for me, it's good for people around me. If all of the buckets stick, then you have at least to some extent a logical argument there. But if you write down reasons which are more like I love, she said, my father said, then there is a little bit of a if there, and then one has to dig deeper if possible. And the problem, as I said, is always, this is time consuming, but hopefully worth it in the end. 

Karina Inkster:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, as you mentioned, it's not just our health, which is enough reason to do this kind of investment, but it's also the health of the planet and animals and environment and the effect on climate change. And I mean it's huge. Exactly. And I feel like there's a lot of different aspects that you can look at in terms of your effect on other humans and your effect on the planet. And diet is one of the main ones. It's one of the ones that has the biggest impact, especially with things like climate change. So I think it is important to invest that time if you can. I mean, look, we need to acknowledge that there are folks who live in food deserts or who live in poverty or who work three jobs as a single parent and just don't have the mental space. It's important to acknowledge that it's a privilege to be able to do this kind of work and to have time for it and to make decisions around what we're going to buy at the grocery store.

But folks who are listening to this podcast, for the most part, I'm pretty sure fit into the population of folks who can make their own food decisions and who have time, at least to some extent, to do research. And it doesn't have to happen all at once. I mean, you don't have to sit there for seven hours straight and do food research. You can just do it in little chunks. Absolutely. But I think it's important to keep in mind. Absolutely. So you had a point in our intake form just kind of topics that we wanted to discuss today around why diet and lifestyle choices are not binary. And maybe there are some aspects here that will have more or less impact, but what do you mean by that?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

When we were chatting last time, I think we kind of almost touched this topic but didn't go into detail. So my thought process was that whenever I talk with people, we always have this kind of a box discussion. I'm vegan, I'm vegetarian, I'm pescatarian, I eat meat, I eat chicken, I dunno, everything in the gradient basically. And then there's always the discussion of I eat red meat, I don't eat red meat, blah, blah, blah. So I feel like people, we have this notion, of course we have smartly found terms, but then we want to box ourself into these terms. And originally to my knowledge, this whole plant-based revolution a few years back was about changing someone to become plant-based, converting people to eat vegan food, which of course probably has its advantages and so on. But if you think with statistics in mind, you're better off trying to make people eat more vegan food per week than convert most or all people to vegan entirely. So that's what I meant about the binary choice. So it's not about vegan or non-vegan, it's more about how many, let's say meals per week do you eat that is more, this was kind of in the direction of what I was referring to in that comment. Yeah,

Karina Inkster:

Got it. Okay. Yeah. When we chatted first, which was just a quick zoom call after I saw your LinkedIn profile, and I'm like, dang, this is an interesting person. We were talking about how of course as vegans naturally we want the whole world to go vegan. I mean, that's pretty much a given if we were to wave a magic wand. But realistically, what will have the most impact on the animals, on the environment, on other humans is if at a population level, humans eat more plant-based food and less animal food. And so I see what you're saying now, the binary thing is you don't necessarily have to freak people out and say you need to go 100% vegan immediately or else, or it's not going to work.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Exactly.

Karina Inkster:

So I think that's an important point to keep in mind. At the same time, we can hold the idealistic, we just want the whole world to go vegan.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Absolutely. I think one of the downsides of our time is this whole industrialization of food. I feel like probably to my knowledge, at least from what I've read, 40, 50 years back, the amount of meat consumed by an average person was far lesser than what it is right now because we simply have more access. You just walk into the supermarket, you can buy whatever you want for all week. Probably this binary question comes up through time, I feel. And in some sense, there was this whole, we are just eating meat because we have access to meat. And then there was this era where you just have access to meat anytime. And then in between people realize that, okay, people are consuming too much meat, so we need to go. And then the plant-based revolution took, its all hype that everyone should eat. 

But I think the answer is somewhere in between. If you are eating meat, I don't know, once every so often, it really shouldn't matter. Of course, as you said, the ideal picture is that it doesn't happen, but in reality, if we could even reduce it by 20, 30%, it's already going to help the environment a lot more than it's right now. Yeah,

Karina Inkster:

Absolutely. And I think a lot of food brands these days realize this. And of course, I mean at this point it seems like just bad business to not have plant-based options in a restaurant or in your line of products. But I think a lot of businesses are catching onto this idea. This morning on Instagram saw a post that the Daiya or Dea, I don't actually know how to say the company, but the vegan cheese company put out an ad with beef burgers shown on the barbecue with the non-dairy cheese on top. And the whole idea of the ad was like, Hey, you don't have to be vegan to use our product. And of course, a lot of vegans are pushing back at this, which I completely understand. But the point is, I think even large corporations are catching onto this idea that maybe not everyone buying their products is vegan, and probably most people aren't.

We had the CEO of a vegan burger chain on the show a while back, and he said the vast majority of his customers are not vegan. They are eating at his place as an alternative for the animal-based burger they would've had normally. So this kind of thing with options available and with marketing, I think is in line with this idea that it doesn't have to be binary. It can, I mean, we're both vegan. I'm not going around telling people or something. I'm firmly in the vegan box, but not everyone has to be in order to see a difference, I think is the point.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

That is true. I think all these meat replacements are truly helping this process, in my opinion. So it's good that they have these kind of options around and people are interested in buying and trying it, and we are seeing that kind of change, at least it looks like to me, that the taste box gets sticked. So that's a good thing, right? Because that's one feedback that mostly comes out that let's say the plant-based food is not as tasty as let's say, meat or something. And these meat replacements really fill that void in between. And like you said, the whole binary picture gets broken down a bit and more people are interested in trying vegan food. Yeah.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah. I mean, in 2003, which is when I went vegan, you had a bean burger as your only option, probably not even in restaurants. I mean, you'd have to go to the grocery store and buy them frozen, and it's just like congealed beans at that point, which is fine, but nowadays you really have no excuse. I mean, you can get the same texture and flavor and meat experience if that's what you want. I mean, a lot of folks don't want that, and that's fine. But I mean, I've said it multiple times on the show. I didn't go vegan because I didn't like how meat tastes. I just didn't like where it came from. So I'm happy to have all these options. I think they're great. They're a plant-based source of these textures and flavors that aren't killing animals, which works for me.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think in my opinion, the one hurdle, let's say that still is up ahead is all of these plant-based food, it's still, as you mentioned, a privilege, unfortunately. Yes,

Karina Inkster:

That's true. Very true. 

Jeyashree Krishnan:

More of these replacements are also a privilege because you have an additional, I don't know, a few euros or dollars that you have to pay on top just to get the meat replacement version. So

Karina Inkster:

Oh, a hundred percent.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Exactly. Hopefully in the near future, more people start consuming these things so that the price of each of these vegan products goes down. That's one more cool thing that could happen to ensure more people are interested in products like these. Yeah,

Karina Inkster:

I think that's a great point. I think it's important to keep in mind that veganism doesn't have to be more expensive. I mean, you could live on beans and rice for next to nothing, but all of these more specialty products. 

Yes, unfortunately, they usually are more, there's a chain here in Canada of fast food called  A and W, and they have, I don't actually know what their normal burgers cost, probably $6 or something. But the Beyond Burger is 13 bucks just for, I get it sometimes in a lettuce wrap with a little side of fries, and it's $13. It's more than twice the price probably of what it would cost if it wasn't a Beyond Burger. That's crazy. And so for folks who are going to these types of places on a regular basis who are looking for a deal, that's probably not even an option for them. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. So I think it's an important thing to keep in mind.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Exactly. I find it super ironic because I mean, we discussed this shortly also before Karina, but you would know 30% of India is vegetarian, A lot of food there is plant-based. Of course you'd have milk and curd and cheese here and there, but you can easily get around as a vegetarian. And typically the vegetarian options there are cheaper than the chicken or the meat options. And then it was a little bit of a interesting thing for me to notice when I came here, and generally in the West, that the plant-based options are priced more than the meat options. So I think at the end of the day, I personally think that it's about the number of people that consume that kind of diet, so to say. And once you have more people interested in these kind of things, I hope the $13 go down to $5.

Karina Inkster:

That would be the ideal, or just on par with whatever the regular burgers cost.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Regular burgers. Yeah, that's true.

Karina Inkster:

Yes. Not actually regular, but you know what I mean, the dead animal burgers.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Yeah.

Karina Inkster:

Okay. So with all of this information out there, so let's say someone has gone through a bit of the process of looking at the research, asking the people, looking at the papers, doing a bit of introspection, they're going to come across a shit ton of conflicting information on the internet. I agree. It's just everywhere. And so actually, when we have new folks coming into our fitness and nutrition coaching, very often it's because they feel overloaded by too much information. Like, oh my God, I have no idea where to start because I've heard 14 different things and they all conflict with each other. What the hell do I need to do? So in terms of diet and lifestyle decisions, choosing what's best for us, the fact is there's a bunch of conflicting information out there. How do we work with that? How do we deal with conflicting information, conflicting opinions, and make a decision from there?

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Yep. This is always the challenging question. I mean, once I was talking with a friend of mine who was talking about his friend being confused about whether to become vegan or not, and I was like, Hey, the evidence is out there. You just have to see it. And then you will know. I mean, we can all agree that if you eat meat, the carbon footprint is higher. There is no doubt about that because I don't know, you consume chicken, chicken eats some kind of a fodder, but then it goes through the lifecycle and then you have to kill it, and then you have to convert it into something that you can consume. 

Whereas if you directly consume, I don't know, soy or tofu, it's going to be a lot cheaper and a lot less stressful on the environment. So makes a logical argument. And I was telling him that he was like, what you don't understand is that they can read 10 papers, but they would not have the kind of background to sift through information, leave away the full stuff and take the actual summary out.

And I feel in the end there, you just have to go to a trusted person, whoever it is. If there is someone in your family who is, let's say, has a background in going through papers or has an expertise in the area or friends who have expertise in the area, I guess most of them I would recommend and they would end up going to these people for advice and then take their advice as the final word. But whether that's the best decision in terms of whether they would become vegan or not, is never guaranteed. Right? Because it depends who you go to. That's why we initially discuss the idea of they should go to 10 people or something. But then you mentioned that if they go to 10 people, they would be super confused in the end. 

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, likely. 

Jeyashree Krishnan:

The problem here is trusting the ground truth. The ground truth is clear when you actually do the math, particularly environment wise, ethics wise, there is no question. And in terms of health, yes, typically there's no question. But then the people can come up with counter arguments. So long story short, I would say you need to find a trusted person or be able to draw judgment on your own or with the help of, for example, nutritionists or sports people such as you Karina, this is the only thing if that means that they end up going to a person who propagates them to eat meat, well, that is truly a consequence that we need to be aware of. And it's possible. Yes, that's the truth.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, it happens. There are people with PhDs who are touting the carnivore diet and all sorts of ridiculous stuff. So it does happen. I think in an ideal world, we would be going to larger scale organizations or databases rather than individual people. But the truth is, we all have trusted folks that we go to. Someone for me that comes to mind, shout out to Dr. Matt Nagra who was on the show. He has one of the best Instagram feeds on sifting through bullshit and what studies mean and how big the effect was and what did they find and who did they study. And I think one of the main reasons I follow his work is because you know, okay, he's vegan. Yes, but he's looking at the research objectively. He'll tell you what's wrong with this study that found A, B, and C is great about veganism.

So if you find someone who can be objective and set aside their own biases, I'll call it, even though it's technically research-based, I think that's a sign that you found someone who knows what they're doing. And there's a lot of folks in veganism I find who have this gut reaction of you're doing veganism wrong if you criticize it at all. So if you criticize a study that found veganism is better for you than eating meat, if you criticize one of the many documentaries out there now, which I've done a lot by the way, because documentaries are not legitimate science anyways, there's a portion of the vegan population who is basically like vegan is great at all costs. And I think that actually is doing veganism a disservice because people who know how to think critically and who know how to look at research are just going to discount veganism based on these people who have really no clue how to do critical thinking. 

And I think it's important that we base our decisions on actual science and we get people interested in the movement from a point of legitimate peer reviewed data and not a documentary that's inherently biased. Even though it might get people thinking about veganism, it's generally not a legit source of data, which is one of many problems I have with documentaries, even though we see a lot of people who watch something like the Game Changers and they're like, oh my God, I have to go vegan. And they go vegan overnight, which is great,

Jeyashree Krishnan:

And then give up the next day. 

Karina Inkster:

That's right. Exactly. See, this is a problem. Then they realize, oh, wait a second. That's exactly it.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think adding to the point that you mentioned, a lot of our approach is self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Sometimes we don't ask the question, am I eating the right diet? But it's more like, oh, I'm eating, I don't know X, Y, Z, I'm not going to take any sides here and then go to the guy that propagates X, Y, Z and then take his opinion. And that's very likely going to conform to the assumption that you go in with already. So in other words, if you are vegan, go question why you're not eating meat. It's a legit question to ask. And if you're eating meat, it's good to ask why I am not going vegan. And then maybe at some point people will converge the fact that overall being vegan is actually better for the environment.

Karina Inkster:

Well, this is an interesting point because one of the things I think folks should do more when they're researching on Google is looking at the opposite viewpoint. So usually what we're doing in an argument, or if I were to poke some trolls for shits and giggles on Reddit, we're usually Googling something like, why is veganism healthier than eating meat? Exactly. Or why is veganism better for athletes than being omnivorous versus taking veganism out of the equation or out of the equation and saying, what is the best diet for athletic performance? What is the healthiest diet? Or even looking at the opposite, why would an omnivorous diet have benefits for A, B, and C? So a lot of times we're not actually looking for the other, so-called side when that might actually help us in a lot of discussions, I would think.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Absolutely. That's a very, very good way to put it. Yes. So just to explore all of the options space, but like we discussed before, the main downside of this approach, it costs time. So if people can just, like you said every other day, question their assumptions about diet, this would still be better than not questioning it at all. And in the end, like we said, we are not really targeting a binary world in terms of diet. We are trying to converge somewhere in between for now and hopefully in the future generation it gets better than how it's today. 

Karina Inkster:

Well said. Yes. Well, Jeyashree, what's next for you? Do you have a race on the horizon? What are some projects that are happening for you at this point? Yes,

Jeyashree Krishnan:

So the main thing I'm super looking forward to is a marathon that's coming up in April. So I am training for that one now. And then if all goes well, I'll run one more towards the end of the year. And alongside just a few months back, I started doing some bodybuilding workouts as well, because I was truly focusing only on cardio before that. Now I'm doing a little bit more so cardio as in only running and swimming, but now I'm also doing a little bit more of muscle building. 

Karina Inkster:

Good for you. I like to hear it.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Thanks, Karina. Hoping that at some point I converge to now the new lingo called hybrid athlete. I'm looking up and learning about it. I still don't know about the concepts fully yet, but I like the sound of it and maybe I'll just try it out this year and see where it takes me. Yeah,

Karina Inkster:

That's exciting. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of folks who have main sports and that is perfectly fine. Runners, swimmers, long distance athletes of various types, cyclists, and they don't do strength training, which makes sense in a way because it's very time consuming to do endurance sports, and there's only so many hours in the day, but you're at higher risk of injury if you don't strength train and you're actually going to improve your performance at said sports with strength training, you're going to bulletproof yourself. 

You're not going to get injured and you'll perform better. So I think the idea of hybrid is right on track because we don't get stronger by running. We don't get stronger by swimming. We get stronger by lifting heavy shit, which then helps the swimming and the running or anything else that we're doing. So I think that's fantastic.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Thanks, Karina.

Karina Inkster:

I might be a little biased because this is what we do, but yay for doing strength training.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Thanks Karina. I keep my fingers crossed.

Karina Inkster:

Of course. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show and speaking with me, Jeyashree. It was a great conversation.

Jeyashree Krishnan:

Yes, thanks a lot for having me, Karina. I'm super excited that we could finally get going on this one.

Karina Inkster:

Jeyashree, thanks again for joining me on the podcast. Access our show notes at nobullshitvegan.com/173 to connect with Jeyashree. And don't forget to download your free copy of the No BS Vegan ebook at nobullshitvegan.com/ebook. Thanks for tuning in.