And ultimately, I think a lot of the influencers are actually being paid by industry, whether they admit it or not.

Yeah, it's true.

And so there's so much opposing information and conflicting information and even conflicting information within our own community as well.

And people in our own community who are promoting certain products too and even buying somewhat into the whole protein thing.

It's really kind of bizarre.

But the thing that's most frustrating to me is that, and you've kind of touched on it, is that it's just plain deceitful.

There really is no science to support the idea that eating a meat-laden diet with lots of meat and dairy, that that's going to decrease your risk of cancer or heart disease.

And I was just wondering if, yeah, when do you start feeling that actually the attacks your dad went through from industry were also coming to your direction?

I feel like most of the people who listen to this podcast are familiar with your father's work with the China study, but could you just, like, give us a brief synopsis of that, an overview of that, the findings of that?

Yeah.

So, um, that came on the heels of a pretty long history of laboratory research that he had done, um, many of those years at Virginia Tech, but also at Cornell University.

And, um, that research was focused on the various mechanisms that are involved in the cancer process and how a diet can affect those mechanisms.

And every time he looked at a mechanism, it always pointed in the same direction: namely, that a high animal protein diet pushed it forward, pushed the cancer process forward from the initi- initiation phase through the promotion phase.

And so by the time he got to the end of that, he kind of established the biological plausibility, uh, behind the idea that a high animal protein diet can, uh, cause and, you know, push forward the cancer process and maybe other chronic conditions.

And so then the next question he had is, well, do we see this in a human population? And so he had an opportunity to do a massive study in China, and I say massive because of the, the breadth of the study design.

Can you, can you talk about some of the things that you've personally seen by switching people to a whole food, plant-based diet?

I know you tried to pa- you tried to paraphrase it in the book.

Yeah, so this was a really nice gentleman who'd been an, uh, a, um, cancer doctor, an oncologist, and I think he'd recently retired, but just super nice, super open-minded.

Actually kind of reminds me of your dad, you know, a c- a physician who came to this idea with such humility and, um, uh, just a, an incredible human being.

But, uh, he was sitting in the audience, um, and he asked the question, you know, w- that you just posed, "What's, what's the difference? Why is plant protein healthier?" And I didn't know what my dad was gonna say.

And he, at first he didn't either 'cause he just sat there, he put his head down, he's kind of slouched in his chair.

And then he lifts his head up and he said, he basically said, "I don't know." He said, "But, but we know it's true because we can see, you know, we can see the effects, so we know it's true." And, and of course, you know, you can talk about, well, animal protein has this structure, plant protein has this structure, so it has something to do with the structure.

But ultimately we still don't know why exactly, you know, this here versus this over here does what it does.

Can you, can you share with, with the Plant Strong listeners, like, how that happened and how it affected him?