#157: Ocean Robbins - From 31 Flavors of Ice Cream to a Real Food Revolution
Ocean Robbins is an author, speaker, facilitator, father, dancer, and movement builder.
Ocean Robbins, was born a changemaker. Recently, his Dad, John Robbins (author of Diet for a New America and other great books), was on the podcast, and the response from that episode was overwhelming. Many of you wrote in to say just how moved you were by John’s authenticity and his willingness to walk away from the Baskin Robbins fortune to forge his own “rocky road” of happiness without the strappings of running a mult-million dollar company that simply didn’t align with his values.
John and his wife built a one-room cabin in Canada and had a son. That son, now 48-year-old Ocean, is “a chocolate chip” off the old block of his father. As co-founder and CEO of The Food Revolution Network, Ocean thrives as an active author, activist, educator, and speaker.
His goal? To educate and inspire people to bring their life and food choices more in alignment with their values to create a more healthy and loving world.
From his very first peace rally at the age of seven, to his own natural bakery business at the age of 10, all the way through his non-profits and speaking tours in high school and beyond, it’s obvious that Ocean is living his purpose to be a beacon of love and kindness - hoping to bridge the gaps that separate us and, instead, shine a bright light on our commonalities as humans and stewards of this wonderful earth.
About Ocean Robbins
Ocean Robbins is author of the newly released book, 31-Day Food Revolution: Heal Your Body, Feel Great, & Transform Your World. He serves as CEO and cofounder of the 500,000-plus-member Food Revolution Network—one of the largest communities of healthy eating advocates on the planet. Ocean has held hundreds of live seminars and events that have touched millions of lives in 190 nations. His grandfather founded Baskin-Robbins, and his father, John Robbins, walked away from the family company to write bestsellers like Diet for a New America and to become a renowned health advocate. Now, Ocean is on a mission to transform the industrialized food culture into one that celebrates and supports healthy people and a healthy planet.
Episode Resources
Ocean Robbins Website - Author, Speaker, Food Revolutionary
Food Revolution Network Website
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Rip Esselstyn:
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Ocean Robbins:
What really struck me was action is the antidote for cynicism. And we still see that today, right? And you see that in your work. How many people are morbidly obese, are suffering, are hurting, feel like there's no hope, they tried all these things. Doctors have them on all these drugs. I mean, so many people are dealing with this kind of suffering right now and the antidote isn't just the magical belief that the next drug will cure you. Or that somehow you'll start feeling better. It's knowing there's real things you can do, real things you can eat, real exercise you can get, lifestyle changes you can make that are statistically correlated with massive positive benefit. And of course hope doesn't get you through the door, it just opens the door. Action is what walks through it, but you never get action without hope.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey. And I hope that you enjoy this show.
Okay. My guest today, Ocean Robbins, love that name Ocean, so big and bold and grandiose, was born a change maker. A few months ago I had his father, John Robbins, on the podcast. He of course is the author of Diet for a New America and a slew of other great books. And the response from that episode was overwhelming to say the least. And many of you wrote in to say just how much you were moved by John's authenticity and his willingness to walk away from the Baskin and Robbin's fortune and forge his own rocky road of happiness and contentment without the strappings of running a multimillion dollar company that simply didn't align with his values.
And if you remember from that episode, John and his wife built a one room cabin in Canada and had a son. And that son is now 48 years old. His name is Ocean Robbins, and he is, shall we say, a chocolate chip off the old block of his father and he's co-founder and the CEO of the Food Revolution Network. Ocean is an active author, activist, educator, and speaker.
And his goal is to educate and inspire people to bring their life and food choices so they're more in alignment with their values and thereby create a more healthy and loving world from his very first peace rally at the poultry age of seven to his own natural bakery business at the age of 10, all the way through his nonprofits and speaking tours in high school and beyond, it is obvious that Ocean is living his purpose to be a beacon of love and kindness, hoping to bridge the gaps that separate us and instead shine a bright light on our commonalities as humans and stewards of this wonderful planet earth. Please welcome Ocean Robbins. Ocean, it is really great to see you. I think the last time that I saw you, if I'm not mistaken, was back in 2012 at TEDx Fremont, is that right?
Ocean Robbins:
That's exactly right. You rocked the stage then, and you've been rocking the world ever since.
Rip Esselstyn:
Look who's talking, Mr. Food Revolution himself. Wow. Well, it's really great to have you on the show. I had your father on several weeks ago, episode 140. And I can't even tell you how much I loved reconnecting with your father after many, many years. And I think it's just appropriate that we bring you on the PLANTSTRONG podcast. And I'm actually embarrassed to say that I haven't had you on yet, so thank you so much for making time for us.
Ocean Robbins:
Well, I'm just thrilled to be here Rip, you are such an inspiration to so many people. I love your work and what you're doing and the message you're bringing into the world. And it's kind of fun that we both come from a lineage, don't we? Of change makers and we get to build on. Some people say, "Do you walk in your father's shadow?" I say, "No, I stand in his light." We get to build on a rich history and grow from there to make our own contribution in the world, building on so much wisdom and leadership from previous generations. And so your dad's been such a leader. I of course adore my dad. And here we are, what a pleasure to be working together.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So you just said that you adore your dad. I have always adored and respected and admired my dad, but people always ask me, "Rip, at some point did you rebel and did you not want to follow your father's path or eat this way and engage?" And I was like, "No, I really didn't." Was it the same for you or did you or not?
Ocean Robbins:
It was. I think that every youngster has a place where they got to find out who they are, not just be a clone of previous generations, but discover their own unique contribution and place in the world. And certainly I had that urge, but I felt like my parents' values when it comes to food were deeply aligned with my own. And so to rebel against them would be to rebel against me. And that's no way to figure out who the heck you are in my opinion, it didn't feel that way to me anyway.
I didn't want to rebel against that. I'd rather rebel against war and violence and animal cruelty and environmental destruction and rampant disease that doesn't need to be happening. I'd rather rebel against that. And so my whole life I've had a strong rebel spirit, that's why we started the Food Revolution Network after all. But to me, it's rooted in values that I feel my parents are deeply aligned with and I'm grateful for that.
Rip Esselstyn:
And the irony or really the blessing is that your father a long time ago decided not to follow in his father's footsteps and be as you so affectionately like to say, and your father a rebel with a cone or without a cone.
Ocean Robbins:
Without a cone.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, exactly. I mean for listeners that for whatever reason didn't hear your father, can you explain to us a little bit about the Baskin and Robbins history, the 31 flavors, the pink spoons, all that stuff.
Ocean Robbins:
Yeah. My grandpa founded an ice cream company with his brother-in-law Baskin and it was called Baskin-Robbins. And my dad, John, grew up with an ice cream cone shape swimming pool in the backyard and 31 flavors of ice cream in the freezer. And he was groomed to one day join and running the family company. But when he was in his early 20s, he was offered that chance. And he said, "No." And he walked away from a path that was practically paved with gold and ice cream to, as we jokingly put it in our family, we say he followed his own rocky road and he ended up moving-
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm going to stop you, because I find it jaw-dropping the amount of integrity that your father had at such a young age to basically follow his own path. And as you just said, rocky road and it was rocky.
Ocean Robbins:
Right. Yes. Well, I mean, we live in a society where we have made money more important than human life, more important than the survival of our planet, more important than happiness. We have deified money as if your net worth and your self worth were one and the same. And what my dad did was to essentially say no. Integrity and values and happiness do not come from the bank account. Obviously having money helps, no one's going to argue about that.
It makes things easier, but it isn't the source of happiness or fulfillment or integrity or contribution. And so my dad walked away from the chance to be a multi, multi, multimillionaire at the age of 20 to instead live with my mom in a one room log cabin in the middle of the woods where they grew most of their own food, practiced yoga and meditation for several hours a day, lived on a thousand dollars a year and ate a lot of kale. They almost named me kale.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know.
Ocean Robbins:
I grew up in a family where we valued time and quality time together more than chasing after money. And my dad wasn't out to make a killing. He wanted to make a good living. And as the years went by, we struggled. Obviously we counted every penny. I remember my mom and dad having-
Rip Esselstyn:
So you can remember struggling?
Ocean Robbins:
Yeah. I remember they would have fights over a $5 spend somebody had done that was like, because there's stress. When you don't have enough money and you're scared you get stressed, and how many couples get in arguments and conflict over that? And so there was that for sure. And literally they had a journal where they would track every penny they spent. So you talk about balancing your checkbook. I mean, every penny, every form, and I don't think they even had credit cards.
I grew up in a family where there was that kind of rigor and they would also apply that rigor to what they would plant in the garden, which frankly was the bank account. I mean, that was our savings account was what's in the garden and what are we growing and how are we preparing for the future? And then years later, my dad becomes the bestselling author and millions of people are reading his books and we started to have financial sufficiency in our lives. None of us expected that. I never thought that I would ever be more than poor, but I was okay with that. Maybe that's a kid's idealism in a way, grown ups I'm sure have more strain about it.
From my perspective it was likely I had love, I had enough healthy food to eat. I had time with my family and those are the things that matter the most. And then as I got a little older, my dad's book comes out and the world starts responding and we started to have some financial resources and I'm grateful for that. And Food Revolution Network is reaching a lot of people and we also have staff and we employ people.
And I think that the way I look at it Food 1.0 is about survival. If you get enough calories to fill your belly, that is success. And Food 2.0 is about commerce and it's made the buying and selling of goods the central point of food. And it's brought us an amazing amount of options. Consumer is king as long as they have the money to buy that is. And Baskin-Robbins brought us 31 flavors of ice cream in a time when most people just had chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.
And so Food 2.0 spread options all over the world. Unfortunately it's morally bankrupt and it's killing us and it's killing our planet, which is why I'm calling for Food 3.0 where the central organizing principle of our food is health. We eat to nourish ourselves so we can be well and so we can thrive and we grow food in a way that is sustainable so future generations can grow food. And that is ethical so that we are an expression of our values, which most of us want a compassionate and loving and peaceful planet. And so there are healthy profits in Food 3.0, they just come from healthy food.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Amen to all that. Can you remember back to that one room cabin you lived in, in British Columbia.
Ocean Robbins:
Oh yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
How old were you when you guys left there?
Ocean Robbins:
Well, I was about five when we left that cabin. And I'll be honest with you, I think of it as being very big. But recently my dad told me the dimensions and I think it was like 15 by 18 or something like that. It wasn't a big room.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so at the age of five, six, where did you guys go from there? Did you go to Santa Cruz then? Was that the next stop?
Ocean Robbins:
No, we moved to Victoria, Canada, and I lived ... specifically my mom and dad moved so I could go to school and they took on living in the suburbs and my dad became a psychotherapist and a body worker and led workshops. And that was kind of how we supported the family for a number of years for about five years till I was 10. And I went to school in Victoria, Canada. And then we moved to California and my mom and dad were missing the sunshine. And when I look back, I think my dad was being called to write a book called Diet for a New America, which came out in 1987.
And I don't think diet for a new Canada would've had quite the same effect on the planet. And so I think he was being called to, as he put it, he had escaped from the belly of the beast and now he needed to go back into it because the United States with 5% of the world's population has an outsize impact on the rest of the planet.
And we chat the future, whether it's technology or movies or food. So the American way of growing and processing food, whether we're talking about chemicals, pesticides, factory farms, GMOs, whether we're talking about the KFCs and McDonald's and Baskin-Robbins's of the world, these things are spreading around the planet. And as our way of eating and growing food is spreading, waste lines are expanding, hospitals are filling up. People are getting the diseases that we have.
The United States has the fattest and sickest population in the history of the world. Two thirds of us are overweight or obese. We take chronic illness as normal. More and more of us are living sick for more and more of our lives. And what's happening is that that's spreading now around the globe. So we're the trendsetter, we're the fattest population, but more and more people are getting fatter too as they eat more like us.
And so I look back at my dad's choice back in the mid 1980s, my family moving to California, my dad working on Diet for a New America almost immediately. And I think, you know what? He was onto something by focusing on this country where I live now still, and then growing out from there, he was seeing how we could make a real impact. And we are making an impact, as are you, as are so many of us today.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let's talk for a second about your path to founding and starting the Food Revolution Network. Because I think it is fair to say that you have really successfully connected all the dots and this is your calling and this is where you are supposed to be, firmly rooted for a long time to come. And I want everybody to know that if you haven't read Ocean's book, the 31-Day Food Revolution, highly recommend it. I know that I endorsed it back when this came out in 2019, it is a fabulous read. So well researched, so well written and so many great stories in here, Ocean, thank you for-
Ocean Robbins:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
... putting this out into the universe. But in this, I discovered that you started your first kind of peace rally at the age of seven at your elementary school. I mean, who does that at the age of seven? Ocean Robbins does. Can you remember your thoughts around that at all back then?
Ocean Robbins:
I've always felt like whenever I've seen a problem, my question has not been whose fault is it, or why is the world so messed up? It's what can we do about it? How can we help? And I think that so many of us today feel so overwhelmed by all that's broken in our lives and on our planet that we give up hope. And frankly the media plays right along with that. I mean, it's sensational to tell us how bad things are and another reason why things are bad.
If somebody shoots up a school, it's national headlines for weeks to kill 20 kids. But if somebody nurses their baby, even when it's painful, if somebody is heroic in saving somebody's life, if somebody against all odds manages to make healthier choices and lose 80 pounds and then becomes an activist and inspires 50 people to save their lives by making those choices, that's not news. We don't hear about that.
And so my point is that there are so many acts of heroism encouraged taking place every day, personal and collective, people who are taking responsibility for their lives and people who are caring for others, people who are mental health professionals, who are helping stop people from doing crazy stuff. People who are nutritionists and coaches and doctors who are saying, "I didn't learn about nutrition in medical school, but gosh, darn, I'm going to learn about it now because I care about my patients."
We see this kind of courage all over the place and it doesn't get enough air time. But for myself in my life, I've always felt that every problem is a call to a solution, it's a call to action. And some people would say that's what entrepreneurship is really all about. You solve problems by coming up with solutions that benefit the whole. And so for me, when I was seven and I got concerned about ... A movie called The Day After came out and it was a horror movie of sorts about nuclear war. And I watch it, it was on national TV all over or international TV I guess, because I was in Canada and I was like, "This is terrifying."
And so I was like, "What can we do about it?" And I was like, "Well, let's have a peace rally." At lunchtime I go out with a peace sign and I get five friends to join me. I don't think we really moved the needle on the feature of humanity that day, but it was an expression, the fact that I cared enough to do something. And when I was 10, I founded a bakery called Ocean's Bakery. I was in the front page of the local newspaper. It said, "Boy isn't very rich, but he's got dough."
And it was all organic, natural baked goods. And I would sell them door to door around the neighborhood in my little red wagon. Every day after school I'd bake up some brand muffins or banana breads or blueberry muffins and it wasn't gluten- free. It was whole wheat though, and I'd sell vegan baked goods door to door and I'd learn about entrepreneurship and customer relations and balancing books. And my parents bought all the supplies and did all the cleanup. And only later did I realize that we probably weren't turning much of a profit because I didn't think about the cost of ingredients. But at 10 I think that's forgivable.
But I think I've always been somebody who wants to think outside the box. And I credit my grandpa for helping inspire me on that point because he definitely was willing to think big and to think systemically and to believe that anything's possible. And he essentially invented franchising in this country, and so...
Rip Esselstyn:
And your grandfather Irv Robbins, he launched Baskin-Robbins back in what, 1953?
Ocean Robbins:
Yeah. And it grew out of ... he already had a chain of about seven snowbird ice cream stores coming I think from '48 or something like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Ocean Robbins:
And he launched Baskin-Robbins, his brother-in-law Burt Baskin had Burton's ice cream and they decided, "Hey, let's team up." And they flipped the coin about whether it was going to be Baskin-Robbins or Robbins-Baskin.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, really?
Ocean Robbins:
Yeah. My dad's uncle won. But yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, go ahead. I have so many questions I want to ask, but go ahead.
Ocean Robbins:
Sure. Just to catch up on my sort of life story-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, I'm going to ask the questions on your life story, don't you worry.
Ocean Robbins:
Oh, okay, cool.
Rip Esselstyn:
You don't have to worry about that.
Ocean Robbins:
All right. Yeah. Well, I think that I started a nonprofit when I was 16. It was also very impactful.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, before you get to 16, I want to talk about, well, first I want to go back to Ocean's natural bakery because what's impressive to me is the amount of different baked goods that you were making. I mean, it was like eight different things. So you became quite an accomplished baker and that's not an easy art to master. Good for you at the age of 10 in rolling up your sleeves and learning how to, I mean make banana bread and all kinds of muffins. And I mean, do you remember what else?
Ocean Robbins:
Yeah. Carrot cake, blueberry muffins, bran muffins, banana bread, a whole wheat bread that I called bombs of love bread, which was very labor intensive because multiple risings, I used the Tassajara sponge bread method. Occasionally for extra things, I'd make cinnamon rolls or rice pudding, got into that a little bit, but most things were baked. I delivered in plastic bags.
And I actually had a poem about world peace that I had written, a vision of my ideal world in fifth grade. And I hand wrote that out and photocopied it. And with every delivery I delivered that poem. So it was kind of trying to spread, being evangelist for a vision of the way the world could be.
And I think there's something about a cute kid with a big smile. A lot of people were enthused by that. And I had standing orders. Some people would get a delivery every week. Other people would just take whatever I had that week and see what I brought. And I had over, I think I said over 200 customers around the neighborhood. I got to know all the neighbors and all the dogs, some of whom were friendly, some of whom were not so friendly. And there were a couple houses that I was like, "No, you don't get any baked goods, your dog's too mean."
Rip Esselstyn:
It's brilliant. And I've got a 13 year old daughter who right now is doing a lemonade stand and also selling some baked goods because she wants to go to Washington, DC, next year. And it's going to cost $2,500. So we said, "Okay. We'll pay half of it, but you have to pay the other half." This is really her only time to really get out there in the summer and make some money. And it's amazing the different skill sets that she's learning doing this, so what a wonderful thing. Now at the age of 14 and 15, I see that you kind of launched these environmental international youth summits, one in Russia and one in Washington, DC. And you even met Mrs. Gorbachev. I mean that's incredible.
Ocean Robbins:
I didn't actually launch them, but I participated and I did facilitate the environmental portion of this, the Soviet American Youth Summit of 1988, put on by youth ambassadors of America in tandem with their Russian counterparts. And this was during the first cold war I should say I suppose. We were with the first group of Americans to stay in Soviet homes legally. And at that time it was a very exciting time in Russia because there was Perestroika and Glasnost and people were opening up and they adored Americans. They had a very favorable view of us. I hear that they still do by the way, for all the craziness that's going on.
The Russian people have a very favorable view of the American people. They love our movies. They love our blue jeans. They love our food, whether or not they should. And so anyway I traveled around there and I memorized a little speech in Russian about how I was an American who wanted peace and I had come because I wanted to get to know them. And I would go around on the streets of Moscow and deliver this speech and people would weep and they would give me their war medals. I came back with a jacket with over 300 buttons and war metals and pins that people took off of their own bodies and gave to me as an expression because I guess they wore a lot of pins in those days, but it was an expression of their desire for peace between our peoples.
And I felt like it was such a living experience for me that every human being, regardless of politicians, regardless of what the leaders do or don't say, what they argue about, what their opinions are, even who's got guns pointed at whom, human beings for the most part want to live in peace. Human beings for the most part want to get along with each other. Human beings want their kids to be healthy and safe and well. And this cuts across all ideology and all perspective.
And I've continued to hold that. We live in a time now of so much partisan divide in the United States and around the world and nationalism. And I'm interested in how we can ... of course there's reasons why we want to be patriotic and love our country. Of course there's reasons why we believe in our values and should stand for them, whatever those may be.
But at the same time, there is a common humanity that unites us together. We all eat, cancer doesn't care who you voted for. It cares what you eat and how you live. And I don't think at the end of the day, that ideology really has much to do with how healthy you are. So we all have bodies, we all eat. We all operate by the same basic rules. We all fare better when we breathe clean air, when we have clean water and when we have less stress and more peace in our hearts and lives, we all want our kids to be safe and healthy and happy.
And when we get back to those basic values, I will say ultimately at the end of the day, that's what brought me and we'll get to the full story, but brought me to the Food Revolution because this is a place where everybody, no matter what color their skin is, what their ideology is, what national flag they fly. Everybody at the end of the day wants to be healthy and wants to be well and what we eat matters.
And I think that's an incredible unifying force. And to be honest, I've been looking my whole life for how the heck do we end all this ideological division, all this violence that ensues from it and create some common ground for our species so we can solve the huge problems before us, without fighting each other in the process. And I think that healthy food could be one doorway in that direction.
Rip Esselstyn:
Beautifully said Ocean. At the age of 15, you were either part or you created our future speaking tour and you spoke to over 30,000 students presented at the United Nations and even open for the Jerry Garcia band. That's pretty darn rock and cool.
Ocean Robbins:
That was an experience.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you remember, how much time did the Jerry Garcia band give you to talk?
Ocean Robbins:
They gave us 10 minutes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Hey, that's good.
Ocean Robbins:
And the audience was too stoned to care much, but by the end they were getting a little impatient because they didn't come to see us, they came to see Jerry. But it was still an incredible honor. And I do remember that the smell on that stage was very strong and it wasn't tobacco in the air. But yeah, that was an amazing experience for sure. I started creating a future tour with a friend of mine. I went to a summer camp for young people who wanted to change the world.
And essentially we got this idea, we were big thinkers. And we said, "What if we started a national speaking tour, speaking to school assemblies about the environment and food and social justice." And we thought we could maybe in 45 minutes in front of a thousand students at a high school, we could transform those thousand students' lives.
And our theory of change was if we could speak to all the schools in the country, we could change the entire future of the world. And what we discovered, we did actually reach about 600,000 students in schools over the next five years, so that's about several percent of the high school population of America. And what we discovered though was that just because you talk to a captive audience of a thousand high school students for an hour doesn't mean you've changed their lives forever. It's kind of like scattering seeds from an airplane. And of course, some of them will sprout and some of them did sprout, no doubt. And it was quite an education for me, but it was also hard work.
And the hardest part was there's so much cynicism. I mean then as now most young people were scared for the future. We would ask in school after school, "Raise your hand if you believe the world will be a better place in a generation with less violence and less pollution." And we'd watch 1% of the hands go up in the room and I'm sure it would be the same right now if we did that.
And then we'd ask, "Raise your hand if you want the world to be a better place in a generation." And we'd see every hand go up. And so what does it say when a generation after generation of young people are so afraid that they believe that they're going to shape the future, young people will shape the future. And yet most of them believe the future's going to be bad even though they want it to be good. What's wrong with this picture? Well, from my perspective, it's because people feel powerless and helpless when they go into apathy and cynicism and despair. So our remedy for that was positivity and hope and action, not hope as a spectator sport, you don't get hope from reading The New York Times or watching Fox News and saying, "Oh my gosh, what's going to happen? Is it going to be good or bad out there?"
No, you get hope from what you do. Hope to my eyes, it's a verb. It's not a noun. It comes from your actions. It comes from your choices. It comes from how you live. And then there's huge hope. As long as there's breath in your lungs and blood in your veins, and you have the capacity to do something with your life, you've got hope and you've got the capacity for something better and brighter for your future and for our collective future. That was the cornerstone of our message. And we had to learn how to tailor it in a way that would reach a super cynical audience with lots of humor and self basing humor and engagement.
And we learned a lot and we spoke to young people whose environment was trees and blue sky. And we spoke to young people whose environment was gangs and concrete and trying to get home from school without getting shot. And what we saw was that everywhere people wanted to live and they wanted to be healthy. And back to the same experience I had in Russia, everybody wants a healthy world and everybody wants hope for their lives and wants their family to be safe and well. And so our goal then was to help bridge that, so that dream of the world they want could be something they could contribute to.
And I'll tell you something else really quick which was fascinating. We were trying to help people start environmental clubs in their schools. And sometimes we would speak to environmental clubs that were already formed in those schools. And we would ask those students, "Raise your hand if you believe the world will be a better place in a generation." And 60%, 70% of the hands will go up within the clubs.
What really struck me was action is the antidote for cynicism. And we still see that today. And you see that in your work. How many people are morbidly obese, are suffering, are hurting, feel like there's no hope. They've tried all these things. Doctors have them on all these drugs. I mean so many people are dealing with this kind of suffering right now. And the antidote isn't just the magical belief that the next drug will cure you, or that somehow you'll start feeling better. It's knowing there's real things you can do, real things you can eat, real exercise you can get, lifestyle changes you can make that are statistically correlated with massive positive benefit.
And of course hope doesn't get you through the door, it just opens the door. Action is what walks through it. But you never get action without hope. If you don't believe it's possible, you won't do it. So we've got to have hope and then we've got to put it into action and make change.
Rip Esselstyn:
I have a eight year old daughter and her name is Hope. And you talked about someone who is active, got all kinds of action going on. You're right, hope is a verb, it is not a noun.
Ocean Robbins:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
But you know what, in hearing you talk about what you created back when you were 14, 15, and I want to talk about 16 here with yes, is how precocious you were as a young teenager. I mean, just phenomenal. It's so impressive to me. At 16 you founded YES!, and I want you to tell the audience what that stands for and you basically ran that for the next 20 years.
Ocean Robbins:
I did. Well, I talked about the creating our future tour, that kind of morphed into YES! after about a year. And YES! or Youth for Environmental Sanity was a nonprofit organization, still is, it's going. Our focus was initially on speaking to school assemblies. Eventually it evolved and we started focusing on what we called jams, which were week long gatherings for groups of young activists and change makers.
And they wound up working with leaders in over 65 countries, traveling around the globe, facilitating these events. I spent accumulatively over a year of my life facilitating week long events, over 50 of them. And as I worked with young leaders all over the planet, I was again deeply moved by discovering how much more we have in common than divides us. And we intentionally chose to bridge divide, so we worked in the Middle East. We held a Middle East jam for seven years in a row where we brought young leaders who were from Syria and Lebanon and Iran and Iraq and Israel and Palestine and Jordan and Egypt and all over the region together.
Some of these people were very courageous. They literally were risking their lives to be in the same room with people from these other places. We couldn't take pictures at these events. We had to keep the people secret who all was there because we didn't want to jeopardize people's safety. And one of our alumni did get tortured in Syria for having participated in our work. But he kept coming back and leading because he wasn't going to let that stop him. But the reality was that for people to come together across these divides was profoundly impactful to me. And we didn't shy away from the conflicts, but we let the human be the doorway to the political.
And we did cross partisan dialogues. We organized jams with leaders who were of different political ideologies as well. We worked with black and white youth in the South. We worked with people from a lot of different contexts. And again I saw that everybody eats and I saw how America was exporting a way of eating around the world that was killing people.
In West Africa the traditional food is millet, but people are importing rice from Vietnam in order to feed a population that has become dependent on that. And the government in face of economic crisis, while their fields are furrow and they don't have enough water to grow rice, their fields are empty. And then government is subsidizing the importation of rice to feed a hungry population. Meanwhile, they could be growing millet, but the people have lost the taste for it because of colonization and its impacts.
And I saw how indigenous people, I'm friends with Tashka Yawanawá from the indigenous tribe the Yawanawa people. He's the chief of his tribe in Brazil. And their rainforest homeland is being destroyed for cattle ranching. And if it's not cattle ranching, it's for soy farms, which are being used to grow soy for guess what, cattle. And we helped raise the money so that they could buy an airplane and a satellite phone so that they could fly over their land and report illegal logging, because desperate people are chopping down the forest or burning it so they can create grazing land for cattle or land on which to grow soy and the government's doing nothing about it.
But his people can now report it when this is happening and get some action on it because there are channels in place because it's illegal, because they have territorial protected lands, which happen to be the lungs of the planet. And so by helping protect Tashka and his people and their cultural survival, we were also helping to make a difference on this planet. But as long as we have a voracious appetite for meat, then it's going to come from somewhere and it's going to lead to deforestation and cultural annihilation and climate change and all the other problems we're facing today. Eventually after 20 years of running this organization and seeing the impacts of our diet style and colonization around the globe, I decided I needed to move on from the nonprofit and focus on food.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes you did. And so that brings us to 2012 when you launched the Food Revolution Network. And did you do that jointly with your father or yes?
Ocean Robbins:
I did. And really the idea was that I would run the company, the enterprise, we call it a company because it's structured that way. We think of it as a mission, so we usually call it an organization. But that I would run it and he would kind of be the wise elder and help us stay on track with our mission. And that's always been part of his role because there are all kinds of choices you make in life about what is integrity. And when are you willing to compromise on this in order to have a bigger reach or even marketing language, certain things may convert better, but at what cost, if you're selling fear for example, rather than selling hope. And some people are motivated by fear.
But what's the balance there? Because we do want people to take action. We want them to get that there's urgency, but we don't want to be another huckster that's out there profiting off of people's suffering so that we can make a buck. And so we're trying to figure out always, how do we stay true to our core values in the midst of an economic system where money is completely value neutral, but all too often it tends to be ... I have a gravitational pull towards ethical questionability.
And my dad given his background has definitely earned his stripes as a person who values integrity above all else. And we've been a wonderful combination in that way. And I think that he's also helped us so much because he reads like a book a day. I mean, he's just voraciously, always on the front lines of the research. And I couldn't do that and be a thought leader in that way. And also be running a company with a growing organization and bills to pay and funnels to build and tech stacks to improve and all the things that we have to do. We've been a wonderful combination in that.
And as the years go by, he values his time and space. So he doesn't have a lot of ambition to push push push. He wants to change the world. But as far as growing in organization, that's not his central goal. And for me, I want to see how big we can take this because I really want to change the way the world eats. And I see the amount of suffering that's coming from the status quo. And from the beginning, our mission has been healthy, ethical, and sustainable food for all. So there's been this consistent through line even as we've grown and developed new strategies and explored how we can respond to needs, to help create the change that we were born for.
Rip Esselstyn:
Healthy, ethical, and sustainable food for all. I am hopeful that this is going to happen. And in fact, I think that it has to happen for us to have a livable world here. And one way or the other, I think that the vast majority of civilization is going to get the memo here in the next five years. Do you kind agree with that if they haven't already?
Ocean Robbins:
We are in times of unprecedented and extraordinary change in the food culture. The number of Americans who identify as vegan has increased at least fivefold in just the last few years. The explosion of plant-based alternatives in the marketplace has gone mainstream. You can now get a vegan burger in some fast food joints. I don't recommend it from a health perspective, but it is amazing that it's available.
We are seeing more and more people who want to move in a plant-based direction. A lot of people are motivated by environmental concerns, especially younger people tend to be motivated by environmental and health concerns. Older people tend to be more motivated ... I'm sorry, environmental and ethical concerns affect young people. Health concerns tend to motivate the older generations. And I think that we are just seeing an explosion of interest though, because the facts are starting to get out there. And we seem to have reached some kind of a tipping point.
And I think that part of it is the availability of whole foods plant based options in the marketplace that tastes good that kind of remove that barrier. When I was a kid, we had to bake our own breads if we wanted healthy bread. We had to make our own tofu sometimes. There wasn't the options, supermarkets did not have tofu or soy milk. Now they have 10 different kinds of plant-based milks if not 15. They didn't have an organic produce section, now they do.
All kinds of things are changing fast. And honestly, supermarkets are looking more and more like whole foods, because whole foods has helped shift the conversation. And I think that in this day and age, a food company can no longer survive if it doesn't at least manage to market itself as healthy, and most of them aren't, so they've got their work cut out for them.
But fortunately there's new alternatives springing up and people are preferring that, most people given the choice would rather eat something healthier than less healthy. And now people don't want to do necessarily is compromise on flavor or time or budget or quality of life. We're gradually learning to bridge those gaps. People can have delicious food that's really good for them. And I'm not going to argue I mean that donuts taste better than kale to most people, but you can learn to love kale. You can learn to love foods that love you back. And you can also learn ways to prepare kale that you really like. And healthy eating is a skill like learning to play a musical instrument or learning a language, it takes some time and energy, but once you've got it, it becomes ingrained and it can be the path of least resistance.
We don't struggle to talk because we learned how to do it when we were little and we just do it now. So if you've been ingrained in a way of eating, in a way of thinking, in a way of living that is detrimental to your wellbeing, you may be paying the price of that. But what I see is more and more people are saying, "Oh my gosh, it's worth it to learn this." And as more and more people become fluent in the language of health, it becomes spoken. And then you have more incentive to learn it because there's a social momentum that builds around that, instead of being an outlier or an alien. I mean, who wants to speak a language that no one else talks, right? It's kind of lonely.
But now you get to connect around it. And that is another barrier that I think has been there historically that is starting to shift. As these barrier shifts, I see us gaining critical mass. And honestly I think climate change could be one of those things that really pushes us forward because we could see government policy saying, oh my gosh, the only way we're going to meet our emissions targets is if we encourage healthier eating, which means we've got to look at subsidies, we've got to look at the way that we're subsidizing factory farms by giving cheap grain and soy to cattle. We've got to look at the way that we're subsidizing junk foods and the impact it's having on the health of our populations. High fructose corn syrup is subsidized. And then we've got to look at whether we should maybe reallocate some of those resources to support wholesome healthy foods that feed the population in a healthy way and help create a sustainable future.
Rip Esselstyn:
My father always loved to say that so much of this is about nutritional literacy. And right now, for the most part, we have a culture that is nutritionally illiterate. I'd love for you to talk for a second about GMOs. And what are your thoughts on GMOs? I was swimming with a guy at swim practice yesterday, he was telling me that all GMOs are all over. It's completely overblown and GMOs can save the world, because there's a certain promise behind GMOs. And I know that you at the Food Revolution Network feel very strongly about this.
Ocean Robbins:
Well, first of all, what's a GMO? Some people think it means God move over, but it means genetically modified organism. And the official government term now is bioengineered or BE. So you'll start to see that on labels now and more and more people are starting to adopt that. Although most consumers still use GMO or genetically engineered as the terminology. All of them mean the same thing. We've been hybridizing, we've been crossbreeding. We've been selecting plants for properties we liked for so many generations.
And so some people say, "Okay, that's genetic engineering because we're favoring certain genes over others." But actual genetic engineering is happening in a lab, it's not happening in a farm. And it kind of is to traditional cross breeding what the nuclear bomb is to the sword. We're literally inserting the DNA from a whole other life form into a life form. It's not that you're selecting the sweetest carrot or the juiciest onion or the apple with the longest shelf life and then planting that. It's that you're taking genetic material from a virus or a bacteria or a fish or a pig in some cases and inserting it into the DNA of another life form and getting something that you hope will generate what you want and there's a lot of trial and error.
And in theory, I have no problem with the notion that we can improve on DNA of our crops if it will lead to the promises the industry has given us, which are bigger yield, better nutrition, lower water consumption, less pesticides and less climate impact. All of that sounds great. If that's what we get from GMOs, I am for it.
However, in practice, that's not what these industries are up to. So about 30 years now into the mass cultivation of GMO crops, what we have got is none of those benefits. Union of Concerned Scientists did a study three years back on yield and they ended up calling it failure to yield. They concluded that GMO crops led to no improvement in yield. We now have data telling us that they lead to a net increase in pesticide use. We have no savings in water. We have no better flavor or better nutrition coming from GMO crops.
What we do have is two traits. 95% of the crops on the market have one or both of these traits. And one is that they are herbicide tolerant. This means they can be sprayed with glyphosate, which is a probable carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor. So now the EPA keeps raising the allowable limits of glyphosate in our food because there's so much more of it now in our bodies, in umbilical cord blood, in breast milk and in our water supply, in our air because we're spraying our crops with glyphosate and other herbicides, including 2,4-D, which is one of the active ingredients in agent orange, because they're resistant to it so we can kill the weeds.
And yes, it makes weeding cheaper. The farmers don't have to hire laborers anymore to go out there and weed the crops anymore, but that's what it's for. It's not for any of the other benefits they promote. And then number two, they've got crops that are pesticide producers, so they produce insecticides in every cell of the plant. So if a bug takes a bite, its stomach splits open and it dies. The main one being BT, which is widely used in organic farming, it's considered generally safe to humans, although toxic to bugs.
But what we don't know is what does it do in our own intestines? And for that matter, what is glyphosate, which is also patented as an antibiotic, what does it do in our intestines? And when you see the explosion of gut health problems people have today and the implosion of microbial diversity in our guts, some of that obviously is because we're not eating enough fiber and we're eating too many animal products and too much sugar, but some of that might be possibly because of all of the glyphosate exposure, maybe even the BT exposure that's coming in from these crops.
It's not that I'm opposed to GMO or bioengineered technology per se, but I am concerned about whose hands it's in, because this will reproduce forever. We can't put the genie back in the bottle. And when we talk about now fish salmon that have been genetically engineered to grow constantly so they get to market rate four times faster than regular salmon. Okay, well, on the one hand, that's great for feed conversion ratio, so it could make salmon cheaper and less resource intensive. But on the other hand, what happens if those get out in the wild? Will they out compete the other salmon and eventually we will have no traditional salmon left.
And might there be some other problem we can't imagine right now, because when you create new life forms and they reproduce in perpetuity, which one is going to turn into Frankenstein's monster and at what point could it destroy all life on earth? There have been almost released GMO experiments I could say in the bacterial realm that could have destroyed plants ability to photosynthesize. And there was an experiment they thought it would help crops be more productive. And they got within weeks of mass release of something that could have potentially destroyed photosynthesis on this planet I'm not kidding you. It didn't get out, thank goodness. But the possibility is there.
And what the danger is, when you put this in the hands of companies who have large profits at stake, I mean, theoretically it would be in shareholder interest. Let's suppose there's a nine in 10 chance that something's going to make a company a trillion dollars and a one in 10 chance that destroys all life on earth for shareholders from a purely economic perspective, I hate to tell you, but that's a risk worth taking.
However, I don't know anybody who would say that's a risk worth taking at the end of the day. And so what I'm concerned about is lack of regulation and profit motive tainting the perspective on what's okay and what's not. But I absolutely believe personally that there is the possibility and even the likelihood that genetic engineering could play a part in helping reverse climate change, could play a part in helping feed the world in the future. I think it could, but we've got to create the systems so that we're not risking the future of our humanity in the process.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Yeah. Ocean, so that then takes me to, what are your thoughts on organic versus non-organic and being able to eat this way in a way that is affordable for those that don't make as much money as others?
Ocean Robbins:
I'd say we need to not make the perfect the enemy of the good. There are a whole lot of studies showing that people who eat kale live longer and are healthier in various ways than people who don't. And most of the kale eaten in those studies was not growing organically. So if you're choosing between organic donut and non-organic kale, go for the kale. And for those who can afford it, there are some advantages to organic and those advantages are personal and they're also systemic and collective.
On the personal level, organically grown foods are treated with less pesticides. They're going to be non GMO by definition. And so you're preventing exposure to neurotoxic pesticides and other pathogens that might be in there. And for processed organic foods, there are certain chemicals and compounds that aren't allowed that are probably no good for any of us or that could be dangerous. There's some safety in that.
And if you can't afford organic, I do recommend with produce, especially leafy greens, soaking it in water with a bit of baking soda for 15 minutes, that's been shown to get about 80% of the pesticide residues out of it. You just soak it in like a tablespoon per gallon of baking soda water. You don't need fancy produce cleaners, that does the job just fine. And if you can't do that, don't let that stop you from eating kale, because it's still going to be good for you. There's so many benefits. But we're talking about what's best here. And if you're looking for what's best and you can afford it, I think there's compelling reasons to go with organically growing food. It may be higher in nutrients. It's definitely lower in pesticides. And the other piece is the environmental and ethical impact because farm workers are dying in droves of cancer.
The life expectancy for farm laborers in California where I live by one study was estimated at 49 years. We don't have solid data on this, but we know people are dying young. And yes, they have very hard lives and a lot of poverty and bacterial infections and all sorts of issues. But a lot of them are getting cancer because they're working in fields that are sprayed with pesticides. And if you're concerned about the way that workers are treated and you want them to live with dignity, then one of the top things you can do is to go organic so that they don't have to be poisoned in the fields in order to grow food to feed us.
And it also matters to our environment because if you want healthy soil, it's a lot easier to make healthy soil if you're not poisoning it. Those pesticides don't just kill the bugs on the crops, they also impact the bugs in the ground, they impact earthworms, they impact bacteria. And we have dead soil in many cases and we're trying to grow living food in dead soil. And that's a no win proposition, so the soil gets degraded. It erodes.
And top soil erosion is threatening the viability of growing food in future generations. And we need to be going the other direction. We need to be sequestering carbon in the soil and pulling it out of the atmosphere and organic food is a step in that direction, so-called regenerative. It means a lot of different things, depending on who you ask. But the essential principle is that we want to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere and get it in the soil and build up our top soil rather than eroding it. And I think that's really important. And organic is one of the steps in that process.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you for that about organic versus non-organic. That was really, really helpful. Tell me this, in your life, have you ever tried some Baskin-Robbins ice cream?
Ocean Robbins:
Yes. When I was a kid, we used to visit my grandparents at least once a year and I was on and off vegan, but I was always vegetarian, but I became vegan when I was about 10. But before that definitely had some ice cream when we would visit. And I'll be honest, it tasted really sickeningly sweet to me because I never ate anything that sweet elsewhere in my life. But I enjoyed it. I look forward to that just a little bit. And my dad invented Jamoca Almond Fudge, so that was always the flavor of choice. But my grandpa, he had a commercial freezer with 31 flavors of ice cream always on hand and he was a fan for sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now I also read in the book a very interesting event that happened when your dad asked you to go to a steakhouse with him and just try at least one bite, just for I think the experience and so you could learn something about it. Can you tell me what that experience taught you?
Ocean Robbins:
Yeah. When I was in elementary school, I was kind of a militant vegetarian and I described earlier that I was passionate about taking action on what you believe in and the shadow side of that can be sometimes we can become a bit fundamentalist in our ideology and try to cram it down other people's throats. I went so far as one day going through at lunchtime in my elementary school and interrogating all of my classmates about the contents of their lunch boxes. And I remember my best friend and I got in a fist fight because he was eating a roast beef sandwich and I asked him if he believed in the death penalty for murder.
And then I told him that my body wasn't a graveyard unlike his, and we ended up in a fist fight. And by the end of that fight, his roast beef sandwich was in the garbage and I was in the principal's office. And I had to think long and hard about the fact that I was preaching the gospel of compassion for all life. Well, I was getting a fist fight with my best friend over what he was eating and something was clearly not right about that. And my dad saw this and saw that it was potentially detrimental to my social life and my wellbeing. And so he said, "Ocean, I'm going to do something very unusual here. I want you to go out for a steak with me." And I had never eaten steak and I was like, "Over my dead body I'll go out for a steak with you. I don't eat my friends and that includes cows and that includes you."
And then he was like, "No, I'm serious. This is important. I'm your dad and with that comes a certain responsibility. And the thing is I want you to know that for many people, most people, stake isn't vile, it's food and desirable food. And you will not be able to influence people in a healthy way if you don't understand how they feel and how they experience it." And I realized then that my militancy risked alienating the very people I would ever hope to reach. But I still was pretty resistant.
But we did go out to the Parrot House, which is the top 30 story hotel building in Victoria, Canada. One of the fanciest restaurants in the city and he ordered me a steak and I took a bite and spatted out. And he said, "No, I need you to swallow."
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, wow.
Ocean Robbins:
So I did because I was a little rambunctious, but I did swallow it. And I said, "Okay, are you satisfied?" And he said, "Yes, I just want you to take that in." And so I did, and there are vegans to this day who are mad at my dad like what kind of parenting example is that? But I'm really proud of him because to me what he was doing was humanizing. And Martin Luther King said something. He said, "You have no moral authority with those who can feel your underlying contempt." And when we pathologize people of any ideology, of any perspective, of any dietary preference or lifestyle choice, we lose moral standing in that relationship.
And any of us who want to change the world or be a positive influence in any respect need to learn that lesson. And I think that as a society today, we are so caught up in our fundamentalist ideologies and perspectives and social media has become an echo chamber where we're surrounded with people who think like us and put down the other side and create these divisions. And there is a comfort that comes from feeling like you belong to something and you know what's right, and you know the path forward. And so there's a beauty to that, but there's also a real tragedy in that, which is that we cease to be in touch with our common humanity.
And I'll tell you something, if you're a political activist of any shape or stripe and you actually want to change policy, you've got to learn how to reach people who don't think just the way you do. And the same is true with food. If you want to change the way the world eats, you've got to learn to interact with humans, they're eating the way they're eating right now. And they're eating that way not because they're idiots, not because they're clueless, they're eating that way because it's the best choice they know how to make given the information and the resources that they have available to them.
And if you can give new information and new resources that help to inspire them to create something different, then that is beautiful and sacred work. But you can only do that when you know who you're talking to, what they value, what moves them, what inspires them, what their dreams are, what their fears are. And if you can relate to that, not as an expert who knows better than them, but as an ally who wants them to have what they want for their lives, then I think you have the capacity to actually make a difference in their life.
At Food Revolution Network, that's what we're trying to do is to help people create the lives they want, create the health outcomes they want, live by the values that they hold more effectively and consciously. And we do that through education, through summits, through online courses, through films, through our blog, through all the resources we share, our core goal is to help people live the lives they were born to live.
And at the end of the day, to me that's what it's about. And I don't think I'd be able to do this work right now, in all honesty, if I hadn't had a dad who took me off for stake when I was 10, because he's had the foresight to see what this is really about.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's incredible, Ocean, that really is. Well, obviously your dad knew what he felt was right for you at that point in time and it had a very dramatic impact. And then now look where you are today and what you and he are doing with the Food Revolution Network. And your latest revolution summit, how many people did you have that attended that?
Ocean Robbins:
For the last five years we've had about 300,000 people joining in each of our food revolution summits.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Ocean Robbins:
And we have an email newsletter that reaches about 700,000. And we're just trying to spare the world in every way that we can as are you, right? And it's really amazing how powerful an idea whose time has come really is. Because we're not trying to push people for anything other than just to awaken to what they really want and how to live it. And there are a few places in life where the choice is so clear. And most things have trade offs.
Politicians will argue about, should we subsidize this program or not? And obviously the benefit is you get a thing you wouldn't have had. The cost is you have to spend money on it, right? There's always trade offs in everything. But when it comes to food, the same food choices that are healthy for your body, are healthy for our planet, are more ethical, help animals to live in dignity or to not be tortured in factory farms.
Those same food choices contribute to a stable climate. And you don't have to choose between food choices that help you fight cancer or help you fight heart disease or help you have more vitality or longevity, the same food choices that are good for one of those things are good for all of them. And to me, that is an incredible source of hope. And it really lights me up to know that we can make a difference. And at the end of the day, I don't think that the animals care whether you go plant based because you're worried about them or you don't give a wit about them and you just don't want to die of a heart attack. The effect is the same.
I don't think that my friend Tashka in the Amazonian rainforest really cares whether we stop eating meat, because we're concerned about his people or we're concerned about cancer. At the end of the day, the effect is the same. When we eat lower on the food chain, we have all these impacts personally and collectively, and I'm interested in showing all the doorways in to this way of living and all the benefits that can flow from there.
Rip Esselstyn:
Boom, that's what I'm talking about. Ocean, you are such an insane wealth of information. You walk the walk, you talk the talk. You are the food revolution man. Congratulations man.
Ocean Robbins:
Thanks man.
Rip Esselstyn:
You got me all pumped up. You got me.
Ocean Robbins:
Nice.
Rip Esselstyn:
There's so many other things that I wanted to ask you today. But unfortunately my time is up right now, so I'd love to have you back at some point, maybe a few months, if that works for you.
Ocean Robbins:
Love to. And for everybody listening, if you want to join with us, you can go to foodrevolution.org, to check out all of our website and all of our blog and resources. We have hundreds and hundreds of articles on virtually every food and health topic and lots and lots of food. So go ahead and use the search bar there. You can also find us at foodrevolutionsummit.org, if you want to hear our latest summit, where we interview leading food experts and bring that all to the world for free. And you can check out 31-Day Food Revolution, which is the book that I wrote in 2019, that Rip, I'm honored to have his endorsement on there, along with Sir Paul McCartney and a few others.
And it's really about how you put all this into action, how you take the steps day in and day out to live the food revolution and make it happen in your life. And really you're part of the food revolution every time you choose real food over processed junk. Every time you eat lower on the food chain, every time you put your values into action with your knife and fork and I thank you for that.
Rip Esselstyn:
A guide to liberation from a toxic food world. 31 day, is that be kind of an honor of Irv?
Ocean Robbins:
It was. I decided that 31 steps to health could be more pleasurable than 31 flavors of ice cream. And so I set out to prove it. There's 31 chapters and each one ends with action steps you can take to apply what you're learning in your life and get the results that you want.
Rip Esselstyn:
Brilliant. Ocean, have a great rest of your day. Hit me with a little PLANTSTRONG loving.
Ocean Robbins:
Thanks, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
Boom.
Ocean Robbins:
All righty,
Rip Esselstyn:
To learn more about Ocean's work and the Food Revolution Network, visit foodrevolution.org, or you can simply visit the show notes at plantstrongpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. Remember, action is the antidote to cynicism and also remember to always keep it PLANTSTRONG.
The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori Kortowich, Ami Mackie, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
