#198: Sgt. Vegan Bill Muir - Serving Humankind, Animals, and Our Planet
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Sgt. Vegan at work as an RN at a VA Hospital in Los Angeles.
Sgt. Vegan, Bill Muir, has always had a “think outside the box” attitude – from being a straight-edge punk rocker to going vegan in 1992, and then joining the military just after 9/11 where he served as a US Army Paratrooper.
And all of this - YES - as a hardcore vegan. Needless to say, it wasn’t easy, but he was (and is) so convicted and grounded in his values that he made it work.
Today, Sgt. Vegan chats with Rip about:
How he became a hardcore straight-edge vegan
Why he joined the military to give back
How he made it through basic training as a vegan
What it took to procure his own food and remain grounded in his values
Why he’ll never eat chili again and what he eats these days
Today, he is a Registered Nurse at a VA Hospital in LA, where he continues to stand up for those who need assistance. Whether it’s helping humankind, animals, or our planet, Sgt. Vegan is ready to serve.
Sgt. Vegan getting ready for a jump
Episode Resources
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
Sgt. Vegan Instagram @sgt_vegan
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Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
Today I want to tell you about our all new spiced lentil chili. It's available on our website at plantstrongfoods.com and it's coming to Whole Foods stores across the country in the very beginning of June. This gorgeous, globally inspired dish features four kinds of beans in warm East African spices like coriander, cumin, cardamom. We combined aromatic ginger, garlic, and onion with a hint of sweetness from whole blended dates to give this new concept considerable depth of flavor without the need for any processed oils or excessive sodium. It's delicious on its own or over a bed of quinoa or your grain of choice. It's ready to eat in just 90 seconds, and it's a great way to spice up your workday lunch routine when you're looking for something new and different.
Some fun facts. This Ethiopian chili features 17 different herbs, spices, and aromatics that are all slow simmered with a variety of beans and vegetables. Three different varieties of lentils, brown, red, and my favorite, a black beluga and together with the chickpeas, help bring this chili to nine grams of fiber and 10 grams of protein per serving, and if you're like me and you eat the whole box, that's 18 grams of fiber and 20 grams of protein per container. You can order a sampler pack of this chili and our four other new flavors by visiting plantstrongfoods.com.
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the Plant Strong Podcast. The mission at Plant Strong 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 Plant Strong journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Welcome to the show, everyone. It is Memorial Day Weekend here in the good old US of A, and I would love to extend my appreciation and send a big, warm, heartfelt thank you to all who have served in the armed forces. In honor of this holiday, I am proud to welcome a special guest, Sergeant Bill Muir, or otherwise known as Sergeant Vegan. Sergeant Vegan has always had a think outside the box attitude from being a straight edge punk rocker back in the day, to going vegan in 1992, and then joining the military just after 9/11 where he served as a US Army paratrooper and all of this, you guessed it, as a hardcore vegan.
Needless to say, it wasn't easy, but he was and is so convicted and grounded in his values that he made it work. Today, Bill is a registered nurse where he continues to stand up for those who need assistance. Whether it's helping humankind, animals or our planet, Sergeant Vegan is ready to serve. Please welcome Bill Muir, Sergeant Vegan. Well, here we are Plant Strong Podcast. We've got Bill Miur as my special guest today. Bill, I'm actually surprised that you and I have never crossed paths over the last decade or so.
Sgt. Vegan:
Yeah, I mean, you've been doing the vegan thing a while too. I'm going on 30 years. I, it's a small community, but everybody's well spread out and Yeah, you know? It's just one of those things.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. So, not only are you vegan, you are vegan strong and-
Sgt. Vegan:
All day long.
Rip Esselstyn:
... all day long. AKA the nickname Sergeant Vegan, which I think is absolutely fantastic and I love the fact, and we're going to dive into this, that you decided to confront being a vegan in probably the most hostile environment known to mankind, womenkind, and that is the Army. And wow, I mean, big kudos to you for sticking to your guns and to your beliefs and your commitment and everything that was really important to you. So, let's unpack that journey, but let's start, if you don't mind, at the beginning. So, tell me a little bit about the family that you grew up in and how you guys ate in your family.
Sgt. Vegan:
Well, thank you very much for that question. Very normal suburban upbringing. One, I'm one of four kids. I was the oldest kid. I grew up in a Catholic household right outside of Philadelphia and a very small I would almost say insignificant town called Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. The fun fact about that place is a lot of the area that I grew up in was used for the movie Silver Lining Playbook. So, if you ever watch that, most of the landmarks that occur in that other than the final scene are in my hometown. Why they decided to use Lansdowne? I don't know, but it makes me nostalgic to think about. I grew up, as you would guess, eating meat like most people who were raised in America.
I didn't think anything of it. I just thought, "Okay, this is what we do." My dad was a hunter. I grew up hunting as a kid. I didn't think anything of it because that's what most people that I knew were into and I thought, "Oh, that's fine. I guess we go into the woods and try to shoot something with a gun. That's cool," and it went like that until pretty much my first semester of college where somebody threw off some off-handed remark about eating veal and I thought, "That's weird. Hold on a second. You're just concerned about what's happening to baby cows in this situation, but not any other situation." I thought, "Man, but they still ate meat in every other capacity," and I just pushed it off but because that seed was in my mind, when my mom asked me, hey, what I was going to give up for Lent, which for viewers and listeners, if you haven't heard of Lent, it's a 40-day period before Easter where I think a lot of different Christians, but mostly Catholics, they decide to give up something in the idea that it's going to bring them closer to God or make them a better person.
And to be snarky, when my mom asked me that as a punk rocker at 18 years old, I was like, "What would really get to my folks?" I thought, "You know what? I'm going to tell them I'm not going to eat meat." There was no word for vegan that I had heard at that moment. I know the word vegan came in into existence, I believe, in the '40s or '50s. It had never passed through my lips. I hadn't even heard the word before, but vegetarian I knew and I said, "I'm going to go vegetarian and that of course freaked my mom out and friends and family alike thought that they would be visiting me in the hospital very shortly that if you didn't get that emergency injection of meat every single day in your diet, you were going to die. Obviously, we know now that's ridiculous, but that's what people thought.
Rip Esselstyn:
And even though you didn't have the education around the nutrition, you were pretty confident that you could abstain from meat for a month and you wouldn't be hospitalized for protein deficiency.
Sgt. Vegan:
Well, that was the fun thing about it. I had no idea. Family doctor. I think I had a checkup around that time and they were amazed that I wasn't already dead. The general thought was if you don't eat animal products on a daily basis, three times a day basis, you're going to immediately get sick and go into that mythical protein deficiency ward that everyone thinks the vegans are going to that doesn't have any idea what they're talking about with health and nutrition, and because that was the environment that I was socialized in, I guess I thought that that was going to happen to me too.
Fast forward, even just through that period, I felt fine. I was like, "Hold on a second. You guys had told me that I was going to get sick and I was just doing it just because... " Well, I mean, as a punk rock kid, I wanted to question everything, and here I am. I was a college wrestler. I felt great. I was a runner, and to be clear, I wasn't vegan at that in that first couple months. I was just vegetarian, but it was fine. As we know now, it comes really down to getting your macros and calories that you don't need meat or dairy products at all, but in that early experimental phase, I was just doing it to do it and not really tracking calories, not really tracking macros, just eating to make sure that I had enough in my stomach and I was fine.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, you're a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh and-
Sgt. Vegan:
Well, at that point, I went to LaSalle University in Philadelphia.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay, and is it University of Pittsburgh where you decided that you were going to major in a dual degree in Japanese and sociology?
Sgt. Vegan:
Oh, you did your research. I like that. I think early on, I think by the end of my freshman year of college, I had decided that I wanted to make to concentrate on Japanese and later in my junior year in college and University of Pittsburgh... I transferred to University of Pittsburgh because they had a better Asian studies department, better Japanese department, and that they ended up sending me through an exchange program to Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, in Hirakata-shi. I'm sure nobody knows where that is that's listening to this, but just in case you are, hey, it's a great town.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, how's your Japanese? Have you hung on to any of your Japanese like [foreign language 00:10:39]?
Sgt. Vegan:
[foreign language 00:10:40]. I can still use Japanese. I'm actually going to be traveling there in April, and I'm planning to do some recordings and hopefully do some interviewing people and going around and checking out vegan restaurants and stuff like that there. I would say it's unfortunate. When I left Japan to join the military, I would generalize, generally say that I was at a not really well-read junior high school student. I could read and write. I could watch TV in Japanese, read manga, but if somebody tried to hit me with some science knowledge in Japanese, I wouldn't have known the words, but as far as everyday functionality, I mean, I was right there. I can still function, but maybe I'm knocked down to like a seven-year-old.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, that's still pretty darn impressive. I mean, I know that especially languages like Japanese, it's one of those things where you sink or swim. You get thrown into that culture and I've got a buddy that went over there and he stayed there for 10 years and was just absolutely fluent. Bless him for that. So, how long were you there before you left?
Sgt. Vegan:
So, a total of eight years and from having the background and studying in university to being there, and I studied up because I wanted to pass the Nihongo Nōryoku Shiken. I wanted to get number one. I got number two, which is junior high school, high school level. Level one at that point was a college grad. So, I got pretty good. I was good enough that when I went in the military, I took the JLPT or the Japanese language proficiency test for the Army and I was being paid to be able to speak Japanese, unfortunately, and never came up that they sent me to, I don't know, to take over Tokyo or something cool like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
When you went vegan in 1992, you say in the book... In your book, Vegan Strong, right?
Sgt. Vegan:
Yep.
Rip Esselstyn:
You say that really back then the only people that were vegan were the punk rockers, hippies, and the avant-garde, and I'd like to know. So, when it was in your freshman year that you decided that you were going to be a punk rocker, what was it about that punk rock mentality that appealed to you?
Sgt. Vegan:
Well, thank you very much for that question and I would say, well, I got into punk and metal at 13, 14, and it's interesting just because we're having this conversation now, and Moby just released his vegan punk rock movie or punk rock vegan movie. Either way, he released a movie of that title, and it really, really encapsulated my experience because I got into animal rights through this through veganism to some extent. I didn't go vegan as a result of it. I went vegan independently, but it definitely supported what I was doing. It was a small group of people, but it resonated with me, but yeah, I've been into punk and metal and hardcore since I was in high school and junior high. Just the music, the raw power of it.
Maybe at first, I got into it through metal and Iron Maiden. So, there wasn't any real higher level thinking other than, well, the cover looks cool or I don't know what version I would've said of that. At 14, I'm sure I wouldn't have said, "That looks dope," because kids didn't talk like that. Did kids say "bitching"? I don't know what I would've said at 14, but it would probably would've been ridiculous and it might've involved a four-letter word, but it might not have... I don't even know, but I got into it through that, through a cool record cover and ever since then, it's just been through the Iron Maiden to Metallica, to the Misfits. The Misfits to Minor Threat, and Minor Threat to starting to think... Minor Threat was our first straight edge band or first straight edge band I at least had heard, because I think there's some other ones you could say might have been pre-Minor Threat, but Minor Threat really brought straight edge to the forefront.
And straight edge for those probably that don't know though it's brought up in Moby's movie is a lifestyle of sobriety and trying to rise above all the chemical addictive substances that are out there that society offers like alcohol, drugs and smoking and trying to think outside the box, and I think I was able to embrace first vegetarianism and then veganism because I had already said, "You know what? Let me try this straight edge thing," and when I did, it opened me up to, "Oh, maybe not everything that society's trying to feed me," like literally trying to feed me. They're trying to feed me dead animals on my plate. They're trying to feed me a bucket full of lies and maybe I can see through some of that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, what I really like too is in the book where you describe how you also stopped drinking, I think it was your freshman year, and there was something about that Minor Threat straight edge song, that mental freedom through substance-free living that appealed to you. I know it appeals to me greatly and especially has for the last 20-something years.
Sgt. Vegan:
Oh, right on. Right on. It was very much the culmination of life events that were going on for me right at that time. So, I drank on and off through high school like most kids that I knew and that was normal, but I had heard of this band. I had heard the lyrics, but it didn't necessarily crystallize in my brain until that the summer after I graduated from high school, my dad got me a job working on a ship. So, as you would guess, most tropes of the drunken sailor and stuff like that existed. So, there were some young guys who were like me who were just wanted a summer job, but most of the people had had jobs through the Navy, through working on ships their whole life and were either functioning or non-functioning alcoholics and being able to interact with them on a daily basis and go drinking with them and see where that excess and where that lifestyle was headed, I just thought, "You know what? This isn't really for me," but I hadn't stuck the landing, so to speak.
On going straight edge, I just thought maybe I could see maybe a couple beers and you're out with your friends and having a good time, but at the point where you have to make those couple beers into a case and now you got to just get all crazy and hurt somebody over to hurt yourself or break some stuff or get in an accident or a DUI. That just didn't make sense and then my freshman year of college, I still remember within the first week, I went into a buddy's room and he threw me a beer and I cracked it. I took a sip and I just looked at it and I thought of all those guys that I hung out with and their experiences and remember all the stories of the broken families and the divorces and all the regrets and I just looked down at the beer and I put it down. I said, "Okay, that's it. That's my last beer. I'm straight edge," and that was 1991 September. Usually not what you do your first week of college, but-
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, what are you drinking there? Is that a little seltzer water?
Sgt. Vegan:
A little La Croix. So, when I do interviews, for anybody who's seen me in other interviews, usually drink, do a coffee, black, and a La Croix. I find hydration to be one of the best things that you can do for your body and when you're talking a lot, it keeps your mouth moist and you don't want to have the dry mouth where it's hard to actually speak or say a word
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Yep. Cheers to you on drinking some water. So, let's get back to Japan because 9/11 hit in the middle of you having just a fantastic time, no responsibilities, and you equate it to the feeling that you had, I think running throughout your body and your bones to the greatest generation answering the call after Pearl Harbor where you're like, "Okay, I got to do something here." So, what did you do?
Sgt. Vegan:
So, I heard about the 9/11 attack. Very first time I got a text on my phone, I'm walking home from work at around 10:00 at night. Remember, this is at Tokyo time versus New York time. So, with the difference, it was a 12-hour difference, and I was seeing the attacks at night, at the end of my day. So, I got a text that said, "Two big buildings and a fire in New York and a plane." I'm like, "I know my kanji's not great and I'm tired, but this is like word salad." What does this mean? Then a friend of mine called me and was like hysteric. "You got to get to a TV. You got to see what's going on." Well, my DIY punk rockness even back then was I don't have a regular tv and I couldn't sit down and watch. I would only watch movies or play video games and I'd get news through the internet and stuff like that.
So, I had to knock on a neighbor's door. I randomly went through all the apartment building next to me, like hey, can I watch TV? I heard something's going on, and finally somebody let me go in and we sat there and we watched in real time this second plane hit, and it just seemed like the end of days, and I'm sure most of the people that were kids back then are not even born. It's really hard to put in the words and imagine what it was like, but it really felt apocalyptic. Maybe not like the Apocalypse, but a little bit of context leading up to 2000 in the Y2K kind of thing. There was a lot of paranoia, a lot of fear that something crazy was going to happen in the year 2000, and a lot of it came down to internet hype and hocus pocus that somehow when all the computers that were set to the '90s turned to the 2000s. Computers were going to crash and we were going to go into bedlam.
Obviously, that was all ridiculous, but that's what a lot of people thought was going to happen. Nothing happened. So, when we were attacked when 9/11 happened, I think a lot of that feeling came up as obviously that was an awful event, but that maybe there was more to it. Maybe things were really crashing down and I think people were just really, really scared. When I saw that in real time from an ocean separated from thousands of miles and living in Japan, I just thought, "Well, the party's over. I have to actually do something meaningful with my life. I have to go help," and I think a lot of that probably comes from my punk rock background, that DIY, that do it yourself.
You can't just let the government or let other people do stuff. There's something that you yourself can do. So, even though there was this idea I needed to do something, it didn't at first crystallize into I need to join the military. So, what I first did was I put on a bunch of shows with my band till I die for survivors. First survivors and-
Rip Esselstyn:
Was this over in Japan or in-
Sgt. Vegan:
In Japan.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, your band was made up of yourself and what other Americans or Japanese?
Sgt. Vegan:
Oh, no, no. Thank you very much for asking. No, it was me and at that point, three other people who were Japanese nice and who were also vegans, who were also into the straight edge movement and into hardcore heavy metal or whatever kind of verbiage you want to use, and I didn't at first tell them that I was going to be joining the military. I just said, "Hey, we need to do these benefits," and the first benefits we did were for the children of the of people who had perished in the attacks and just money for organizations for them and then as we started to invade Afghanistan and started the bomb, then that switched to kids that were survivors and whose parents had died over there because I thought, "You know what kind of... "
If you're a kid raised in Afghanistan and your parents are dead, I mean that's awful. So, we did benefits and we just sent money over there as well. Whether we were able to help a lot of people, I don't know, and sometimes when I ended up going over there and serving, I wondered if any of the same people who were attacking us were possibly had been recipients of that money and how ironic it would be.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah. All right, so you decided at some point that you're going to join the Army, go to bootcamp. So, what year was that and where was it and what was that experience like?
Sgt. Vegan:
So, fall of 2002, I had made that decision and I went into basic training 2003, January 14. It's a funny thing. Other than their special dates, like whenever they were married and when they were born, most people don't know those dates, but anyone that served, you know your initial date of process. You know your date of separation. Those are dates that you have to throw around much that you end up learning, "Okay. This is the day that I entered the Army. This is the day that I separated." Probably, I don't know if reservists have the same thing because theirs is much longer and you're not doing it full-time anyway, but with the active duty military, you know those dates.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, it's funny. I know exactly the day that I started my career as a firefighter. September 3rd, 1997. It's funny how that sticks with you. All right, so what kind of harassment and belittling did you get? And it sounds like on a daily basis in bootcamp and then subsequently in the Army.
Sgt. Vegan:
Bootcamp, not that much. People knew that people who would sit with me while we were eating figured out real quick that I wasn't doing everything on everybody else's exactly the same way, because they could see, like, "Hey, this is what everyone else is eating and this is what Muir's eating," and I have vegan tattooed on the back of my neck. So, it only took one changing into PT gear to be like, "What the fuck? What is it? What's going on with that?" I didn't try to hide it, but I didn't try to bring it into everyone's faces when I didn't need to.
As far as actually harassment, I think because vegan is often tied to hippie, and if you're trying to do super ultra masculine things, then that could be brought up if you're not performing. I was in really good shape. It was never an issue in basic training at least other than the fact that I was starving to death. And sometimes, I would get spacey because if you're working out 14 hours a day on a thousand calories, it's going to take its toll and it's not going to take too long for you to not be doing too well, but I would not recommend doing that outside of the military, trying to go on some kind of crazy crash diet like that it's awful. Did I lose weight? Yeah.
I mean, I guess I looked like I was in good shape, but I felt awful being on such a clerk restriction. It's not that there's anything wrong with the vegan diet. I mean, obviously you've been vegan for a hot minute or two and you know you feel great, but it's the doing vegan right and doing vegan in most of our training scenarios is hard. I mean, can you make it through it? Sure. I know you can make it through because I made it through it and I made it through basic training into AIT, which is our four-month medic training in San Antonio, Texas, Fort Sam Houston, to back to Benning in airborne school and then I spent four months in ranger training battalion to be a ranger.
What ended up getting me DEQ or disqualified was they saw that the vegan tattoo on the back of my neck, and they had a thing out for me on that. Would I have made a good ranger? I don't know. I was in really good shape and I was a good medic. I didn't have that same killer mentality that the very first day of training when I went to the 75th RTB, the guy in charge goes, "Men rangers are not soldiers. Rangers are," sorry for the word, "fucking killers," and I thought I'm a lot of things. I'm not a killer. I'm a medic. I joined the military because I wanted to make the world a better place. I became a paratrooper because I had watched probably too too many episodes of Band of Brothers and I was like fully stoked on that whole streak of the paratroopers and also due to the allure of movies. I had watched Black Hawk Down and that's what made me try to become a ranger.
I got through most of the ranger indoc program and then they kicked me out pretty much the last week because they found a convenient loophole. They said that I had used my cell phone during the duty duty day and that it was a violation of code being on a cell phone, which was BS, but I mean most of the scenarios, and you'd probably have seen elite kind of teams. You can pretty much choose whoever you want, and to be fair to them, at that time I was probably a little bit... I wouldn't ever describe myself as hippie woowoo, but there was probably a little more of me in the very beginning of that, of still like, "Let's not hurt people for no reason," kind of thing versus after a whole tour of duty in Afghanistan, I probably had a little less of that in me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I mean, to the extent that you're comfortable, you talk about in your book how you did a year-long tour in Afghanistan and that it was surrealistic looking back on it. I mean, for those of us that have never served, never been to Afghanistan, especially under those conditions, what can you tell us about it?
Sgt. Vegan:
I think it's probably going to be... A lot of it, the bad stuff is going to be very similar to the stuff you saw as a firefighter. Trauma is trauma, and when you're in situations like that like fight or flight, life or death situations, that's going to leave a mark on you. I explain PTSD in this way. Everything you do, no matter what it is is going to have some impact on your life. However, situations like a near miss or a life or death situation or some kind of awfulness is going to be more impactful to you than when you had an ice cream cone. You're probably not going to remember that sitting and eating some vegan Ben & Jerry's as much as you are where a car almost hit you or maybe it did hit you, and in this situation with being deployed, people are not always trying to hurt you, but often trying to hurt you. And if they're not, and this could really extends to any theater of operations from Afghanistan to Iraq to I'm sure unfortunately our future wars.
It's not just going to be the actual situations, but the background anxiety that something could happen and then when you see some things happen to other people, like I would see... Well, not just see. Well, when guys would get hit by an IED and they'd bring the guys back and we'd work on the marines or other soldiers who had been hit in an IED attack. You are not in danger yourself, but you're living it through working on these guys that just got hit and blown up and you're trying to save their lives and then send them on a medevac and the culmination of daily direct attacks and mortar attacks and being shot to driving through IED alley yourself and that kind of stuff takes its toll.
I would definitely put my experience in Afghanistan as I am extremely lucky. I wrote the government a blank check for my life like everybody that serves that anyone that serves that raises the right hand and swears an allegiance to our country. You're writing the government a blank check up and including too your life. So, I feel extremely blessed as a paratrooper. I jacked up my back and my hips in Afghanistan. Like the daily attacks, jarred my brain a little bit, but I can still walk, talk and I feel very, very blessed to have made it through that. Not everybody can say that. Obviously, well, if you're deceased, you can't say anything. So, I feel very, very lucky and I didn't hate being in the military. I think that's a misconception that I think a lot of my fellow vegans might just not... That's just something I think a lot, talking to a lot of our vegan friends. They just are not going to expect that it was going to be all 100% bad and that I was just suffering the whole time.
I mean, most often if we weren't deployed, I would just be hanging out with my buddies at working out or shooting guns and stuff like that and it's hard for me not to some of that. The camaraderie, going to work out, running the obstacle course, like as we see with these mud runs and Spartan races, that stuff civilians pay good money for it to do and then nobody's paying them and that was my job to do that. I loved all that. It was really, for me, the stuff that sucked were... I mean, first and foremost, if I had to go in a training scenario and have to rely on someone else to bring my food, and I'm relying on unreliable people because they don't cater to anyone to be fair to them, but if you're somebody that's a vegan or is eating gluten-free or has a religious background that excludes you from eating "mainstream food," you're going to suffer from that.
So, that part sucked, and if I had made it through ranger training, by made it through, I mean they not kicked me out randomly for having vegan tattooed on my neck. Then I would've been spent to special operations medical training, which would've included what we called back then the goat lab, which have you heard of that?
Rip Esselstyn:
Never.
Sgt. Vegan:
Okay. Well, I'm glad you haven't, but at the same point, it is something we need to end. They had a practice where you would practice your emergency medical skills on live tissue. I.e. they would bring an animal in and they would shoot it, stab it, chop off a limb, and then you're supposed to save it and they do that multiple times until the animal dies. I would not have participated in that. I would've been a flat no, like freaking way under any circumstances. So, maybe they were doing me a favor. Maybe they saw the writing on the wall and they were like, "This dude, there's no way that it's going to make any sense," and one of the great things about being in 75th RTB is in order to punish me for not having what it takes to be a ranger or not being the full skillset to be a killer, as they said, they sent me to the 173 Airborne Brigade, which was amazing. It was an amazing group of guys and gals, an amazing experience, and I thrived in that unit and I loved being a part of the airborne community. However-
Rip Esselstyn:
That was in Italy, right?
Sgt. Vegan:
That was in Vicenza, Italy. One of the funny things that I don't think civilians see and you're not really missing much is there's a lot of different inner inner unit rivalry in the army and in all branches, but there's a brothers and sisters will make fun of each other. So, it's the Army and the Navy or the Army and the Marines or back and forth of who's better and whose uniforms are dumb and whatever, and there's also within the service, there's I guess a pecking order. There's a batting order and then there's a ribbing and making fun of each other and it's part of the socialization of being in that situation, but as a ranger candidate, we were basically told like the only thing worse than death would be to be a non-airborne personnel.
Anybody that's not a paratrooper is the absolute scum of the earth and not even worthy of breath. It was ridiculous. It's a ridiculous thing, but that's part of the brainwashing process and I never really bought into any of it, but it is something that you're taught. So, to be sent as a punishment outside of I guess the ranger community to become a paratrooper, I feel like I really won the lottery because it was the best scenario for me and Afghanistan sometimes had rough moments, and usually related to food, but being still part of a fairly elite unit and getting stationed Italy, which have you been to Italy yet?
Rip Esselstyn:
I have been to Italy, yeah.
Sgt. Vegan:
Did you go as a vegan. The food is amazing.
Rip Esselstyn:
I did. I went back in 1989, actually. Yeah, I was doing a triathlon over there.
Sgt. Vegan:
Even back in the 2000s, It was amazing for vegan food, and if I had a 100 lives that I could live, I would definitely live a couple in Italy and in Europe in general, it's so freaking awesome.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. You even got a doctor's note that said that you basically should be eating vegan, right?
Sgt. Vegan:
I did. I did, and I have a picture in the book and on my Instagram, if you don't feel like buying the book for it. You're just going to have to do some scrolling. I call it the golden ticket. Willy Wonka got a golden ticket to go to... Not Willy Wonka, but what's that dude's name? Whatever the kid is in Willy Wonka.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, Charlie.
Sgt. Vegan:
Charlie. Thank you. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, there's your doctor's note right there.
Sgt. Vegan:
So, basically, we had a battalion surgeon and I just came up to him and I was like, "Doc, whenever I have to go to the chow hall, I'm able to get enough food. As a vegan, eating plant-based here sucks. Could you write me a doctor's note that says that I need to get vegan food?" He was like, "Yeah, I guess." I was like, "Please." So, I took that note and I leveraged that to be allowed to live in an apartment outside of the barracks to be off post, to not have to go to the chow hall and it was night and day, different, being able to get enough food and being able to cook for myself. It was just amazing. I think the lesson to be learned in there is almost many situations in life, almost always in life, you're going to be given the normal path, which would've been, in my case, suck it up and drive on and deal with it.
But because I was able to think outside the box and say, "Okay. What can I do to improve my situation?" Now granted, we do have a saying also in the military, suffer in silence. You keep that shit to yourself, but basic training was awful for me. Not because of any of the training, but just because I wasn't doing an enough calories, and by thinking outside the box and by getting that letter written and being able to go and basically turn my military life until I deployed as a 9:00 to 5:00 job where I have that autonomy. I'm able to cook for myself. I mean, I usually had a 290 to 299. I had a 300 PT test. I was just not fast enough. I think I was doing a 13 and some change two mile while I was in. I would max out pushups and sits, but I was always a little bit slow.
Rip Esselstyn:
You also maxed out the plank. You also maxed out that five-minute plank. That was good.
Sgt. Vegan:
Yeah, I'd be able to do that too and pullups as well because I know when I was with the 75th RTB, their PT test was fun. They would do a run to do the PT test, and then you do pullups. You do pullups, pushups, sit ups, and they would always find a way to make it more than it actually was because to be honest, when you're in the military, and I'm sure it's the same as a firefighter, you don't want anybody who just does the bare minimum. No, that makes no sense and the military's not a place for people that just do the bare minimum, and I took that same out-of-the-box thinking to segue to Afghanistan and how I was in a war zone as a vegan. I took that same out-of-the-box thinking to apply it to when I was going to be deployed.
I knew that being deployed, I was going to be back in a situation where I wasn't going to have daily access to wholesome, nutritious food. I knew that that's basically an afterthought of feeding the guys and gals who are deployed and I thought, "How can I set myself up for success? How can I put myself in the best situation to be able to provide the best care for the men and women that I was serving with?" Because as a medic, I want to make sure that I'm always going to be ready to go without excuses and for that, I need to get proper nutrition. So, what I did... Well, I did two things. The first thing I did was I got these gigantic boxes and I filled it with everything that I might need and I had soy milk in there. I had vegan ramen. I had CLIF bars, which were around back then, which for those that were around back then, you remember CLIF bars were such a game changer. It felt like you were eating a candy bar at every bite.
Nowadays, obviously, only a candy bar is a candy bar, but back then, if you hadn't had a candy bar in 10 years, like a CLIF bar was amazing, and I got all that stuff and I put it in the 75-pound box. I shipped in them to myself because we had an address that for Bagram, I think it was, or I'm pretty sure I sent them to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, and I was so proud of myself and that I had been able to think outside the box. So, we get in country and first briefing, they're telling us about rules of engagement and going through bullets, and they gave me a sandwich baggie of 30 bullets for my nine mil, which was funny. It just was not what I expected war to be like.
And then they were like, "Oh, yeah, doc, by the way, one of your boxes exploded," and I was like a deer in headlights. I remember going with this gesture, which you're not going to get from the book, but for those who can see this, I go with my hands exploded and for the next, I would say six months, anytime where we were attacked or there was an IED attack, someone would go and my goofy ass voice said like, "Did it explode? Was there a mortar explode?" Which if it wasn't me, and if I wasn't in that situation, I'm sure I would've found hilarious because I said it in a funny way unintentionally, but I think I was just staring out in the space and I was like exploded. I couldn't believe that it was like everything in that place.
It just was surreal and I was like, "Well, what am I going to do now?" Now, I've cut my rations in half. So, I found out through somebody else that there was a website called anysoldier.com, and I had been... Well, there was actually a progression of this. First, I was eating that food, the 75 pounds. Well, the 75 pounds that I had left. I ate that down to nothing. Then I was relying on the chow hall, but they pretty much just had stale... for vegan stuff. It was like basically a 10 by 10 plywood box and there were a couple Marines that were press-ganged into bean cooks. They didn't know how to cook. They would just open these tins and none of that was vegan, obviously, and even asking them... I mean, poor guys. None of that would've worked.
So, they did have stale bagels. So, thinking, "How am I going to cobble together meals for the next 350 days on stale bagels? I don't know." So, I'm just thinking, trying to think, "Okay, what can I do?" So, the number 12 MRE, at least the bean burrito at the time was vegan, which for those that follow me on social media, I am trying to work with Mercy for Animals to get an all-vegan MRE again, but that's in the works. At least 16 years ago, they had one MRE that was mostly vegan. Now, they don't even have that but anyway, then I lost access to that. They realized that-
Rip Esselstyn:
Bill, for those who don't know what an MRE is, what does it stand for?
Sgt. Vegan:
Meals ready to eat.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, anysoldier.com, people sent you all kinds of stuff. You also at one point, you got absolutely sick and tired of chili. To this day, you're sick and tired of canned chili. Correct?
Sgt. Vegan:
Thank you very much for that question. So, yeah, so anysoldier.com was amazing. Basically, the way I got food from that, from people all over the world is that I wrote, "Hey, I have a platoon soldiers and there are people need this and that and the other probably maxim magazine dip and chewing tobacco, and oh, by the way, there's a vegan and people, it just lost their minds. A lot of people at back in 2000, and this was 2005, hadn't even heard the word vegan and then they look it up. They're like, "There's somebody that's maintaining that way of life in a war zone on purpose? That's ridiculous," and to be fair to them, maybe it is. Maybe it was. I don't know. I was going to do it anyway. I specifically joined the military for the reason that I became vegan, that I wanted to see a better world, and I thought I joined the military because I thought, hey, as a 29-year-old who's seen the world and who cares about people and animals, I could do a better job than your average 18-year-old who's going to be joining just for college, but I digress.
So, I said, "Hey, this vegan needs stuff," and I would get boxes and boxes and boxes. Any time that they would do a mail drop with us, I would get between five and 20 boxes and pretty big sizeable boxes, granted no perishable stuff. So, it wasn't like I was getting fresh produce and being able to make wonderful salads, but I got enough stuff that I could live, and then I would of course spread the rest out to my guys and then give some to locals.
Well, toward the end, I had to cut it off because I was still getting enough stuff that I had to have my own mini Conex, which for those that don't know Conex, Conex is a storage container and that was obviously a scenario that was not intended that I was going to have my own dedicated Conex. So, I was like, okay, please no more stuff. I really appreciate everybody. So, I ate everything down to my final month in March of 2006. I remember because we left Afghanistan in 2006.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is that when you left the Army?
Sgt. Vegan:
Sorry, say again?
Rip Esselstyn:
Is that when you left the Army?
Sgt. Vegan:
I left the Army. You don't leave directly from theater. So, we left country in March of 2006, and my separation was June of 2006, after they have a whole bunch of like processing stuff. So, I was left with just cans of chili and I had chili stacked from the floor to the ceiling of the hooch that I was in, of this basically plywood box we were living in, and every day I would take another can off the pile and just crack it and eat. I stopped bothering to try to heat it up because it really didn't improve the taste for me and to this day, when someone offers me chili or my mom, and my mom is a little bit forgetful and she'll say like, "Hey, if I'm visiting home, we'll make some chili," and I'll just go like, "No thanks to chili." I'm sure for those that love chili, it has nothing to do with the taste of chili."
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you remember what brand of chili it was and was it like a [inaudible 00:51:41]?
Sgt. Vegan:
I'm pretty sure there was some Amy's in there. I can't be positive. I know that had people had gone through great pains to send me vegan stuff, but it wasn't always great.
Rip Esselstyn:
Just so you know, Sergeant Vegan, we have six new chilies coming out in the Plant Strong food line. So, I'll have to send you something and see-
Sgt. Vegan:
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, Thank you. No, thank you. No, thank you. I'm hard fast to this today. I'm hard fast.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, dude. We got an Ethiopian spice lentil that's got this burberry, huh? How does that sound for you?
Sgt. Vegan:
No, it sounds awful. No. No, thank you. It's just one of those things. So, if I have another 50, 60 years in me and I don't even eat another bowl of chili, it'll be still too soon.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, what are some of your favorite recipes? What do you love to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Give me a typical day.
Sgt. Vegan:
Well, I've been doing something different in the last two months. I'm usually not eating lunch and my eating schedule, whether I'm going to work or whether I'm at home is also different. So, today is day two of not being at work. So, I usually work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I have Wednesday that is just basically a sit on the couch and play video games day and this is because I work a compressed schedule. For those that are thinking of working in compressed schedule in healthcare like me, just know that it's going to be great on paper that you only work three days a week, but it doesn't mean you're going to necessarily have four days of free because at least one day, you're going to have energy for nothing.
So, my first day after working three compressed night schedules is I'll sit on the couch and do nothing and then today, this is my first full day of being awake and seeing the sunshine. I'm going to probably go to the gym and either do legs or chest later.
Rip Esselstyn:
And Bill, for people that don't know, you are a registered nurse at West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, and you have referred to this not as a career, but as a calling. How long have you been working there as a registered nurse?
Sgt. Vegan:
Well, thank you very much for asking. I've been an RN at the VA for eight years. I started back into healthcare. Well, at first I got out of the military. I was going to open a vegan restaurant. I went to vegan culinary school. This unfortunately was 2008 and then for those that don't remember, 2008, the economy collapsed. Not a great time to open a business or maybe a great time. I don't know, but for some people who are really out-of-the-box thinkers, but I wasn't far. After the economy collapsed, I was like, "Okay, what can I do? I ended up going to Haiti on a humanitarian mission as their medic in 2010," and that got me back into wanting to do healthcare again and also probably surprising for a lot of people. I rejoined the military in the reserves and I was a reserve medic for two years.
And during that time, I became a nursing assistant and then I transitioned into wanting to become an RN. I quit my job as a nursing assistant. I went back to school, and I mean, Uncle Sam was good on his word and I got a degree in bachelor's of science in nursing for free. Well, I mean, the most unfree thing you can do is get free "money" from the government, but I got free education and it was a really good school. Drexel University's awesome in Philadelphia. For those that don't know, great school, and I've been an RN ever since. It's definitely, thank you very much for saying, a calling
Rip Esselstyn:
You dedicated Vegan Strong-
Sgt. Vegan:
To my mom.
Rip Esselstyn:
... to your mom who I guess has been super supportive. Have you always been close to your mom?
Sgt. Vegan:
My mom and my family, yeah. My parents, like I would hope this is an experience that you and everyone else here has as well. I mean, my parents were amazing. My parents are still amazing people. Very grateful that they're still with us to this day. Yeah, I have a close family and they're super supportive of everything I do. I mean, they've had to unfortunately bear with me as I live abroad for years upon years and then say that, okay, I'm finally coming back to the states without coming back to the states via Italy. I mean, that's just a crazy choice to make and then I moved to California. My family's mostly in Philadelphia still.
So, they put up with me and they've put up with a lot of guff from me. One of the funny early Sergeant Vegan moments, and my parents aren't vegetarian, but they're very supportive, but when I first went vegan, I wrote, "Meat is death," on one of my mom's cookbooks in really, really big letters. I think it was this '70 style like... because at least there was a picture of what looks very old timey and this like pot roast or some crap like that and I just defaced her book in a very disrespectful... I mean, I would argue accurate, but disrespectful manner and they've put up with years of very self-righteous Sergeant Vegan mouthing.
I mean, even before I was Sergeant Vegan, I would say stuff. All of the stuff and all of the ways I've thought about that, I don't think any of that was necessarily wrong, but there's definitely a right and a wrong way to interact with people, and I would say the easily the first 20 years of being vegan, I was probably interacting with people in a mostly negative way. Nobody needs a "meat is murder" sign jammed in your face. What people need is they need to see someone that's living a happy, helpful, awesome life, living vegan strong like we are, being very stoked about life and that kind of feeling will, in my opinion, will do more than just angry finger pointing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. That'll definitely rub off. So, you dedicated this book not only to your mom, but also to animal rights, human rights, the vegan movement, the armed services, the men and women in the armed services, and then lastly that you know what? Freedom isn't free.
Sgt. Vegan:
It certainly isn't, and I would love to see us not need military. I would love to see us not need cops. I mean, I'm sure you're the same. Even as a firefighter, you would love to see us not need firefighters, right? I would love to see us not need nurses. I would love to have this paradise be available and then every man, woman live in peace and harmony, but unfortunately, I don't think that exists. I think you're always going to need stand up and be there to help others, and unfortunately, the reality of the world, I think there is still going to be hostile nations that are going to want to hurt other people for no reason and you're going to need people in the military, and unfortunately, as much as I would love there not to be [inaudible 00:59:48], we're still going to need people in that role.
We're definitely need more compassionate people and definitely more people that are going to have more restraint, but to think that there's no going to be no more robberies is ludicrous to me. So, yeah, I dedicate [inaudible 01:00:07] and we dedicate our lives to making the world a better place and appreciate people who are willing to put their life on the line for others and are willing to go outside themselves and do something for the benefit of the world and knowing that whatever pay you're going to get for it is not actually going to compensate you for the sacrifice that you're going to make for that job, but just realizing that it's for a better world, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So, Sergeant Vegan, what did you have? Because you evaded me. What did you have for breakfast this morning?
Sgt. Vegan:
Thank you very much for that question. So, I know I mentioned tofu scramble in my book and I have a daily recipe. I actually rocked some tofu scramble. Now, the way I make my tofu scramble is a little bit different from others. So, I will elaborate. First, I start with extra firm tofu. You can use other different levels of firmness. However, for those that don't know, if you use a soft or a medium firm tofu, you're going to get a lot of liquid and that's just in my opinion going to just make up for a messy, sloppy mess.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, no. No Good. No good. Got to do the extra firm always.
Sgt. Vegan:
And you can play with the firmness too. Just so you don't know, you could freeze soft tofu and then squeeze the water out of it. It goes from medium and you can also change the consistency if you want to freeze really any block of tofu and then when you thaw it, I think it changes the chemical makeup of the actual thing in that it's more dense.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, it does. It definitely does. Yep. Yep.
Sgt. Vegan:
Anyway, from there, I cube, season, and then I add vegetables. I've been somewhere between lazy and smart in that I usually use frozen vegetables because I can get it and store it and always have it ready and I don't have to go to the supermarket. I do a mix of onions, peppers, and that's just it, and then I also do broccoli in that as well and there was a sale on field roast, so I added two field roasts. So, just one field roast sausage is 20 grams of protein. So, combination of those two in the tofu. I didn't eat the whole thing, but half of it, I would reckon that was probably about 75 grams of protein maybe, thereabouts.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, Bill, I want to end this with a quote that you have in your book, and it goes like this. "My belief is that being vegan not only promotes physical health and strength, but also makes us mentally and spiritually badass."
Sgt. Vegan:
I stand by that. I wrote that in 2016, '17. I put out the book in 2018. I still totally stand by that statement. There's this idea that vegans, and the media will often try to portray us as the butt of a joke as that we're somehow weak. I mean, look at you. You're ripped. I mean, I'm no slouch myself. I think that to portray vegans as anything but people, whether men or women who want to make the world a better place and not contribute to the unnecessary suffering of animals and also the unnecessary destruction of the planet, and also not contribute to the unnecessary suffering of their fellow men and women because let's face it, those carcinogens in that decaying, rotting flesh and that those animal products that we don't need to eat, it's ridiculous and going vegan and realizing, thinking outside the box and that we can be perfectly happy and healthy without all that unnecessary garbage is awesome. It is badass, and standing up for fellow humans and fellow animals and being able to have that inner strength, especially when others are telling you that you're wrong. Nothing more badass than that.
Rip Esselstyn:
I agree. Thank you for letting us more deeply understand your story, your journey, showing us how you can be vegan even in incredible situations like being in the Army, being in a war zone. If you want it bad enough, it's yours for the taking and you've been doing this now what? 30 years, did you say?
Sgt. Vegan:
Yeah, this past August, May 30. So, now, I'm at 30 and some change, and I mean, I would love to make it to 90 years. We'll see what happens.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, to a fellow strong, you're vegan strong. I'm plant strong. Give me a fist bump as we head out. Bang.
Sgt. Vegan:
Bang.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sergeant Vegan's books, including his memoir, Vegan Strong, are available now at Amazon, and I'll be sure to put a link to that in the show notes. Thanks again to Sergeant Vegan for heeding his calling to serve others and thanks to all of you who are heeding the call to keep it planned strong. See y'all next week.
Thank you for listening to the Plant Strong Podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything. The Plant Strong Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clarke. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth 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.
