Plantriotic Podcast

Listen on iTunes! Good food can change someones life. Food is personal, intimate, and breaking bread at the table, or celery for that matter, is where relationships and new ideas are founded. Tal Ronnen, the chef and founder of Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles, is a unique kind of vegan activist. Tal has made his way onto the main stage having made appearances on The Oprah Show, Ellen, and in every major news show and magazine you can think of, in addition to being a grassroots community personality and cook. With vegan restaurants popping up everyone in major cities, Tal was inspired to get a culinary degree and open a restaurant due to the lack of high quality, well intentioned plant-based cuisine. When you think about it, most themes for vegan restaurants are just  that they are vegan, while all other restaurants have a specific cuisine they focus on. Crossroads Kitchen is a Mediterranean style fine dining establishment that just so happen to serve an entirely vegan menu. After graduating from New York

Listen on iTunes! It is still possible to live an Adam and Eve-like lifestyle in Southern California. Most people today source a majority of their food from supermarkets and grocery stores. If you are into food sustainability and buying local, you may shop at a farmers market or have an herb garden in your yard or on the window sill. Our guest today, Ben Benulis, sources roughly a third of his food from neighborhood fruit foraging. Ben, a raw fruit-based vegan, discovered that he was spending money at the grocery store on the same fruits he saw growing on trees while driving around his own neighborhood. After knocking on a few doors and making some friendly connections, Ben developed a roster of residents that allowed him to pick fruits off their trees at no cost. Ben became a hobby forager, and started a raw vegan and foraging YouTube channel called Whole Future with two thousand followers! Ben has been involved with the vegan fitness community in Austin Texas, and has attended the Woodstock Fruit Festiva

Listen on iTunes! It's tough enough going vegan midway through college, but Jackson Long, our guest today, is also training to become a pro cyclist. During his second year at CU Boulder, Jackson decided to take a semester off and devote his time to training around the clock. Attempting to dial into his nutrition to get as fit and lean as possible while keeping power, Jackson began experimenting with the Paleo diet. A few weeks into intense calorie restriction and low-carb living, Jackson found himself extremely lean, and eventually sick. Jackson got so sick on this diet that he had to stop training, wasting his first opportunity of getting signed on a pro team. This left him soul-crushed and eager to really figure out the optimal training diet. Jackson was exposed to the documentary Forks Over Knives and the book the China Study, which gave him the confidence to give plant-based a try. Half a year later, Jackson is still passionately on the diet, making progress in his training, and becoming a vegan advoca

"Healthcare" is a deceiving term. In most western societies we associate healthcare with drugs, vaccines, and surgeries, as if the body is always out of balance. I prefer to call this method sick-care, treating peoples symptoms to disease with short term fixes rather than long term solutions and prevention. What both Aaron Stuber (The Plant-based RN) and I have discovered is that the body is a highly efficient and relentless machine whose natural state is health and functionality. Similar to a high performance car, no matter how fancy the hardware is inside, without proper fuel the machine is useless. While completing his Bachelor of Science degree from Oregon Health & Science University, Aaron began personally studying the relationship between diet, lifestyle, and health, landing him in the position of going plant-based (vegan) or going against the science. He took the leap 10 years ago, and continues today spreading the message within the cardiovascular care sector. Aaron sees dozens of patients a day with

Listen on iTunes! A lot of people know a vegan diet can be healthy for a moderately active, fit individual. But when it comes to elite athletes, many people think a relatively low protein plant-based diet is out of the question. Today I bring you the talented, beautiful, and compassionate Jaclyn Silsby, Division 1 soccer player at Colorado College. A little less than a year ago, Jaclyn transitioned to a vegan diet essentially over night. No vegetarian transition needed, Jaclyn exposed herself to the reality of factory farming through the movie Earthlings, and never looked back. Jaclyn has had to learn to defend and justify her diet and lifestyle habits amongst a meat and animal product pushing athletic community. Jaclyn is also going to veterinary school after Colorado College, to hopefully run a business and spread the plant powered message in the vet community alongside her vegan fiancé, Harrison. I believe it can be useful to hear from someone who only recently has adopted a vegan diet, and hear about t

Listen on iTunes! Next time you engage in any form of commerce, think about where your dollar will most likely go. Will it circulate back into your local economy, or leave the city, state, or country into the hands of a faceless corporation? Today's guest is a "local" activist, traveling from city to city, preaching the importance of building local economies during the wave or corporate take over of our food, clothing, technology and appliances. It seems everywhere you look today, no matter where you are in the world, there is a Walmart, Taco Bell, Costco, McDonalds, Target and the list goes on. People demand convenient and cheap products, but don't take the time to think about the repercussions on our health, community economy, and our environment. Elise Rothman is a non-profit consultant, the founder of the Manitou Local First Grocer cooperative, and now the founder of Local Motive, a new business that builds bridges between local farmers and  business owners to enhance the local economy. She will inspir

Listen on iTunes! Imagine a wold where no individuals are harmed. No domestic violence, no discrimination, and no harming of the innocent, emotional, and free thinking animals we share our planet with. While it sounds obvious to strive toward such a state, we currently live in a world very removed from these universal principles of peace and harmony. Gene Baur is a person who is a servant to humanity that is inspiring people to strive towards living in line with your hearts values. As the co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, Gene Baur has been deemed by Time Magazine as the conscience of the food movement. Gene went from a meat eater, to vegan veggie dog salesmen at Grateful Dead concerts, undercover animal agriculture reporter, grad from California State Northridge and Cornell School of Agriculture, to a now 25 year vegan and leading animal equality activist in the world. Gene  has won an Intelligence Squared Debate against popular livestock farmer Joel Salatin, and has been featured in every magazine and paper

Listen on iTunes! As an outspoken and self proclaimed vegan activist, I am constantly under a social microscope and forced to defend myself about my lifestyle choices. From "where do you get your protein" to B12 and cost of food, people constantly ask me, and other proud vegans, about what we do and why. I became an active plant-based educator when I was 19 years old. I was a confident, mature, male, millennial living in progressive communities in the 21st century. Talking about veganism has never been too hard, and most people support my efforts. Our guest on this episode did not have it as easy as I did. Growing up with vegetarian animal rights activist parents, Tinya had to defend herself for choosing not to eat animals starting in elementary school, not to mention this was in the early 80's when vegetarianism or veganism was nowhere close to as mainstream as it is today. Tinya tells the story of her journey from growing up as a vegetarian, to getting married and turning vegan with her firefighter husba

They say you are most molded in your high school years. While this may be true, it does not mean you cannot change, and my buddy Josh is a prime example. Growing up in Los Angeles in the high class private school scene can have an affect on you. I know this, because I lived it. I went to middle and high school with Josh, but we never connected. As a trickster, class clown, and crucial member of the "stoner" scene, Josh rode the wave of high school in a unique way. Diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) at an early age, Josh found himself in his teens on various medications without any beneficial result. His doctors told him there was only one way to deal with a wandering mind, so he took their advice as any young kid would. Josh went to CU Boulder to study accounting, something he had no passion for, and during his first year expanded his spiritual potentials beyond his own understanding. Josh discovered Naropa University, a Buddhist-inspired, spiritual, and well respected college founded by Tibetan

JL fields is a power house of vegan activism. This powerful, open minded, loving, energetic, passionate, and hard working plant-based woman taps into a sector of the vegan conversation that seldom focus on, but is extremely important. There is a harmful stereotype in the mainstream consensus that vegans are supposed to look a certain way. People associate veganism with a petit, very skinny body type, which is not the way all people are built. JL is the co-author of the 2013 book Vegan for Her: The Woman's Guide to Being Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet and has her own book coming out this January of 2015 called Vegan Pressure Cooking. JL is a vegan lifestyle coach, Food for Life instructor, personal chef, career coach, and a corporate consultant offering wellness training, brand representation, and strategic planning services. JL is also a local in my current town of Colorado Springs, and writes the vegan dining review for the Colorado Springs Gazette. JL studied at the Natural Gourmet Institute and Orga

Plantriotic Podcast Episode #1 with Jackson Foster   The world is full of teachers, also know as "gurus". The definition of a guru is "the remover of darkness". Each week I will bring you a conversation with a guru in my life, in order to spread their light to you. In this first episode of the Plantriotic Podcast (The PP), I take the seat as the guru, in order for you, the listener, to learn a little bit more about me and what I am about. I had my good friend Abe conduct the interview. As you will hear in this episode, Abe knows me as a leader in a way most people in my life do not. I led Abe and a few other friends on a winter backpacking trip in the canyons of Utah that turned into a life threatening experience. Fortunately we are still here to tell the tale. I am a college student, podcaster, vegan activist, peace activist, environmentalist, writer, outdoor enthusiast, plant powered athlete, son, brother, friend, and a yogi. My Plantriotic mission is simple: 1) Inspire people to eat more plants. 2)