Speaker 1: I don't judge, but the Internet does. The Internet says
Speaker 1: the worst people are somebody that's doing CrossFit or someone
Speaker 1: who's mean. I was gonna say, let me get it. Vegans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Honestly, I feel like nobody loves talking about themselves
Speaker 2: more than vegans. I don't have nothing against a vegan.
Speaker 2: Whatever you want to eat, eat that, that's fine with me.
Speaker 2: But they love talking about being vegan.
Speaker 1: A lot of posts out there about being vegan. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There are some aggressive vegans though, that are like, really
Speaker 2: mean if you aren't vegan, And those are the ones
Speaker 2: that I'm just like, Okay, well, I'm gonna just keep
Speaker 2: my distance because I don't want no smoke.
Speaker 1: Well, I gotta tell you I had an impossible burger recently,
Speaker 1: and you might have to keep your distance from me. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna give me some plant blazed smoke. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get some. I'm gonna get these wood chips. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify Studios.
Speaker 1: This is Dope Laps. I am all on the plant
Speaker 1: based meat alternative kick.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, we went and got that impossible whopper and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, the Kia is soy everything,
Speaker 2: soy life.
Speaker 1: That's not true, Like what do you mean?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: This is impossible meat? And I'm like, m well, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do for the function? Because everybody no? Okay? Dogs?
Speaker 1: We had. That is so funny because I posted the
Speaker 1: other day that I was at the grocery store and
Speaker 1: I saw some of the Beyond like the Beyond crumbles
Speaker 1: that you can get, and I posted it on Instagram
Speaker 1: and my friend Kate wrote me and said, is that
Speaker 1: what you're making the turkey out of? That? Is that
Speaker 1: what you're doing?
Speaker 2: Because we have friends giving at your house, right m h?
Speaker 2: And so yes, if I would have that, I would
Speaker 2: have been alarmed to but we didn't have that, y'all.
Speaker 2: We had a lot of really good food. This is
Speaker 2: almost becoming a food podcast.
Speaker 1: I know we got to change the category. But you
Speaker 1: know I got even my dad. I got him eating
Speaker 1: plant based. Let me tell you that is a meat eater.
Speaker 1: He could eat six chicken thighs in one sitting. It's true.
Speaker 2: He's very tall and very strong and he's powered by
Speaker 2: chicken thighs.
Speaker 1: He's gonna kill you. And so when you think about
Speaker 1: taking someone like that, and I don't know what his
Speaker 1: carbon footprint is, okay, Paul Bunyan carbon footprint. But when
Speaker 1: you take someone like that and you say, all right,
Speaker 1: I got this person to eat plant based meat alternative something,
Speaker 1: you're doing something different because he's not gonna eat a
Speaker 1: Boca Burger. No shade to Boca Burgers. I like those two,
Speaker 1: but he's not going for it. Okay. I got him
Speaker 1: that burrito bowl at Cadoba. He said, hey, you tell
Speaker 1: me this right here, this is all vegetables. I'm in.
Speaker 1: I can do it every day.
Speaker 2: Even Oprah, she did a thirty day vegan challenge right right.
Speaker 1: See, we're onto something. You have to follow on the
Speaker 1: footsteps of the greats. Yes, Oprah Beyonce, impossible, man, you'll
Speaker 1: get a burger. You don't get a burger. You'll get
Speaker 1: a burger. That was t t I thought that was
Speaker 1: an alright, Oprah impression. I thought it was good. But
Speaker 1: affect this Opra impressions.
Speaker 2: If I meet Oprah, Hey, Oprah, love to meet you,
Speaker 2: and I better help you with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I need my friend there. Okay, So I think
Speaker 1: this episode we need to put meat alternatives under the microscope.
Speaker 1: So let's get into the recitation. I want to know
Speaker 1: has anyone out there tried some version of this from
Speaker 1: I mean, it's in our local fast food establishment, So
Speaker 1: it's that Cadoba that I know about World Burger King,
Speaker 1: Burger King. I saw that KFC was trying to come
Speaker 1: up with a plant based chicken. That seems tough, and
Speaker 1: I feel like this is coming out of nowhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It went from one hundred percent angus beef yeah, to
Speaker 1: pea protein yeah, very quickly. Yeah. Me, I just want
Speaker 1: to know, like, how is this stuff made? What?
Speaker 2: I don't really understand how you can make pea protein
Speaker 2: sizzle on the grill?
Speaker 1: Yeah? How is it made? Is it better for you?
Speaker 1: Because I know people think like, oh, if I get this,
Speaker 1: this is a healthier option, is it? Is it? And
Speaker 1: then not only is it better, but like what kind
Speaker 1: of technology is this? Are they three D printing these burgers?
Speaker 1: Like I want to know the how because I know
Speaker 1: it's not like we harvested peas. You know, when you
Speaker 1: get a veggie burger, you can see like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of it, there's a little bit of carrot,
Speaker 1: here's a little bit of pee. Yeah, there's a little
Speaker 1: onion and mushroom over here. It's not like that, not
Speaker 1: at all. It looks like me this thing and even
Speaker 1: some it has like stuff that looks like blood pink
Speaker 1: to dark brown. What's happening? I don't get it, and
Speaker 1: so we want to get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 1: Let's take a big bite and jump into the dissection.
Speaker 1: All right, it's time for the dissection. We invited doctor
Speaker 1: Christina Agapacas to help us unpack all of our questions
Speaker 1: behind plant based meat. My name is Christina Agapakis.
Speaker 3: I am a synthetic biologist and the creative director at
Speaker 3: Ginko Bioworks.
Speaker 2: Ginkgo Bioworks is a biotech company that was founded in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine by a bunch of scientists from MIT.
Speaker 2: Earlier this year, the company launched a new venture called
Speaker 2: Motif to find the next big thing in laboratory based food,
Speaker 2: and they did this by developing the key ingredients using
Speaker 2: biotechnology and fermentation. But before we dive into the science
Speaker 2: behind all these plant based meat options, we wanted to
Speaker 2: zoom out and get a little bit more familiar with
Speaker 2: the history and the industry of plant based meat. Plant
Speaker 2: based meat is nothing new, but we are in sort
Speaker 2: of a renaissance period where it's becoming way more popular.
Speaker 2: I see these plant based paddies everywhere, and chances are
Speaker 2: you can find them in your local supermarket in the
Speaker 2: meat aisle. Back in April, Burger King announced their new
Speaker 2: Impossible Whopper, and McDonald's is actually working on their own
Speaker 2: version of a meatless burger alternative.
Speaker 1: The plant based meat industry has grown so much over
Speaker 1: the past I don't know, five to ten years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember seeing like morning Star burgers and
Speaker 1: stuff like that in the frozen isle, and every now
Speaker 1: and then I get a black bean burger. I even
Speaker 1: try to make my own black bean burger. No good.
Speaker 1: But now that this is at Burger King and all
Speaker 1: these other places and in the grocery stores like, have
Speaker 1: we reached a peak? Is the growth going to slow
Speaker 1: down now or are we on the trajectory to just
Speaker 1: keep going well.
Speaker 2: Analysts expect that the plant based protein or meat alternative
Speaker 2: market is going to grow by twenty eight percent a year,
Speaker 2: from four point six billion dollars in twenty eighteen to
Speaker 2: eighty five billion dollars in twenty thirty, so twenty.
Speaker 1: Eight percent of growth each year. Between thirty. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: I need to buy some stock. Yeah, the next episode
Speaker 1: will be about the stock market.
Speaker 3: It has been really incredible to see the change in
Speaker 3: the way that people kind of talk about vegetarian options
Speaker 3: and vegan options and how much demand there's been.
Speaker 1: It's been really really dramatic, and there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of different reasons people are gravitating more towards plant based meat.
Speaker 2: Right a few years ago, I feel like people didn't
Speaker 2: eat meat for two main reasons, animal rights or for
Speaker 2: their personal health, like they want to get their cholesterol
Speaker 2: lower or whatever. But doctor Agapakis says there's another reason
Speaker 2: why it's become more popular.
Speaker 3: Climate ethics and environmental impact that you have is a
Speaker 3: major factor. I think that in many people's decisions, and
Speaker 3: that's been something that I think has changed pretty dramatically
Speaker 3: in the past few years, where where people look at
Speaker 3: the sort of impacts of their everyday things that they
Speaker 3: do and they see meat to the top of the list,
Speaker 3: and they see better options for them for things that
Speaker 3: still taste good that they can have access to that
Speaker 3: can can start chipping away at that impact that they
Speaker 3: have as an individual.
Speaker 2: So the demand is growing dramatically for different reasons. Let's
Speaker 2: talk about supply. What are these meat substitutes actually made of.
Speaker 3: It's basically like protein that comes from plants, right, and
Speaker 3: so there's lots of ways that that can happen.
Speaker 1: That's right. There are many different kinds of plant proteins though.
Speaker 1: For example, Gardenburger, which was invented in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: uses soy protein and it's burger patties, and those patties
Speaker 1: came with like those grill marks, so you felt like
Speaker 1: it was really grill what is it? But also peas, wheat, nuts,
Speaker 1: and rice are popular crops that are used as meat substitutes,
Speaker 1: but a lot of those earlier meat substitutes didn't quite
Speaker 1: hit the mark.
Speaker 3: You can do a lot with the texture from the
Speaker 3: proteins that you can get from plants, but you can't
Speaker 3: really do everything that meat or dare product does. You
Speaker 3: can't get the full sort of sensory experience. You can't
Speaker 3: get the kind of qualities, whether that's like how it foams,
Speaker 3: how it feels in your mouth, how it cooks, all
Speaker 3: of those things might that have different kinds of ingredients
Speaker 3: that come from the meat that are important.
Speaker 2: So while a lot of earlier meat substitutes tasted just
Speaker 2: find there was no way you could ever confuse them
Speaker 2: for the real deal. Yeah, especially with those fake sharpie
Speaker 2: grow marks.
Speaker 1: And so that really brings us to why plant based
Speaker 1: meat alternatives now are becoming so much more popular. So
Speaker 1: let's use two of the most popular plant based meat
Speaker 1: companies as an example, Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat. Both
Speaker 1: companies still use plants and grains for the bulk of
Speaker 1: their protein. Impossible uses soy protein concentrate and Beyond Meat
Speaker 1: uses pea protein.
Speaker 2: But what makes these so different from Gardenberger is the
Speaker 2: specialty ingredients their scientists have developed. These ingredients are used
Speaker 2: in much smaller quantities, but are what makes the product look, taste.
Speaker 1: And smell like real meat.
Speaker 2: In other words, these ain't the old school veggie burger patties.
Speaker 1: What's an example of one of these specialty ingredients.
Speaker 3: For Impossible foods? That was the heme.
Speaker 1: Heme has been referred to as the magic ingredient in
Speaker 1: the Impossible Burger.
Speaker 2: So heme is the stuff that makes Impossible Burger cook
Speaker 2: from pink to brown, right, just like a real burger.
Speaker 1: So what is heme for real? For real? Heme is
Speaker 1: most commonly recognized as one of the components and hemoglobin, right,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes our blood red, and its primary
Speaker 1: function is to just transport oxygen. So if scientists that
Speaker 1: Impossible use heme to give their beef patties that meaty flavor.
Speaker 3: And so being able to find a source of that
Speaker 3: protein that's vegan was really important to the team at
Speaker 3: Impossible Foods and is really a key ingredient for them.
Speaker 2: So how did the scientists that Impossible use heme without
Speaker 2: using animals as the source for hem That seems really
Speaker 2: tricky and confusing for me.
Speaker 1: When we tend to think about heme, people always go
Speaker 1: to the example of hemoglobin and hemoglobin being in blood.
Speaker 1: But the thing to remember, hem is also present in
Speaker 1: plants and is present in one of our favorites.
Speaker 2: Soy, we're going to take a quick break, but when
Speaker 2: we get back, we're going to dive into the actual
Speaker 2: process of finding and extracting these proteins that are then
Speaker 2: used to make the magic ingredients in our plant based food.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned.
Speaker 2: We're back and we're ready to dive into the actual
Speaker 2: process of engineering these plant based proteins that ultimately become
Speaker 2: your impossible whopper. As doctor Agapakis says, it's an incredibly
Speaker 2: multidisciplinary process that involves aspects of biology, chemistry, and genetics.
Speaker 1: My friend, the kia is lighting up. It is a
Speaker 1: wonderful symphony. Right. In order to get a plant based
Speaker 1: burger patty just right, scientists have to go through a
Speaker 1: lot of trial and error looking for the proteins they
Speaker 1: have the best qualities. And before the break, we found
Speaker 1: out that hem was the key ingredient in making impossible
Speaker 1: burgers red and juicy.
Speaker 2: Just like real meed. You can find heme in soy,
Speaker 2: but only in small amounts, and so extracting it from
Speaker 2: the soy would be really really inefficient.
Speaker 1: So the scientist Impossible new that they couldn't just pull
Speaker 1: the heme straight from the soy. That would kind of
Speaker 1: cause a lot of problems. So they figured out a
Speaker 1: way to make their own hem.
Speaker 3: The way that they do that is actually sourcing the
Speaker 3: gene for plant hemoglobin. So like the protein that binds
Speaker 3: iron and blood is also used to buy iron in plants,
Speaker 3: and so they took that same gene and then transferred
Speaker 3: into yeast, and now yeast can start making that rotein
Speaker 3: at high quantities and then that can be used as
Speaker 3: an ingredient in the food.
Speaker 2: Okay, I need to break this down a little bit. First,
Speaker 2: they find the gene for the plant hemoglobin, where do
Speaker 2: they find that? So in the sixties and seventies, scientists
Speaker 2: used to use a very manual process to break down genomes.
Speaker 2: So remember that's all the genetic information in a plant
Speaker 2: or in an organism into these tiny little pieces. And
Speaker 2: then to say which of these pieces has the thing
Speaker 2: I'm interested in?
Speaker 1: That took forever.
Speaker 3: But now with al Gore's Internet, now I just go
Speaker 3: to my computer and type like I want the gene
Speaker 3: for insulin, and.
Speaker 1: Like, whoop, there it is.
Speaker 3: I can actually search those databases now and say like
Speaker 3: I want a hemoglobin gene, Show me all of them,
Speaker 3: and like here's I don't know, a few thousands.
Speaker 2: This has really widened the pool of potential genes when
Speaker 2: it comes to sourcing for plant based proteins.
Speaker 3: When it comes to sourcing those genes, it's all of
Speaker 3: biological diversity, right, Like, those proteins can come from any kingdom,
Speaker 3: any organism, and because of the how much people will
Speaker 3: have sequenced and how much sequencing is out there, you
Speaker 3: can source those genes from almost anywhere now and be
Speaker 3: able to access that diversity and learn from it.
Speaker 2: So let's say that you've scoured the database and done
Speaker 2: a bunch of tests and you found the gene that
Speaker 2: produced the protein you need to make the perfectly juicy meatball.
Speaker 1: Then what do you do.
Speaker 3: We can take those sequences that are on the computer,
Speaker 3: the digital sequence of the DNA code, and synthesize it
Speaker 3: into actual chemical DNA that now the yeast can read
Speaker 3: and start producing. That yeast now is a factory that
Speaker 3: copies itself, and in a tank that looks like a
Speaker 3: brewery like tank sort of facility, you can have trillions
Speaker 3: of each of these cells, each making their own and
Speaker 3: so like that's where you can actually get to that
Speaker 3: level of tons.
Speaker 2: This process is called recombinant microbial technology, and it's the
Speaker 2: ability to take genes from one source and put them
Speaker 2: in another organism or plant.
Speaker 3: You change the sort of apply chain, right, So now
Speaker 3: instead of having to grow a ton of crops to
Speaker 3: squeeze out the tiny bit of hemoglobe, and you make
Speaker 3: something that makes tons of sugar, you put that into
Speaker 3: the organism that's transforming that sugar into that protein.
Speaker 1: This is really clever. Like, I don't think we appreciate
Speaker 1: what scientists are doing here enough. And I'm not just
Speaker 1: saying this because biologists do it. Break it down for
Speaker 1: the people. Zee, If you have a gene that you
Speaker 1: know encodes for a protein, and that protein is only
Speaker 1: made in small amounts, you have to take so much
Speaker 1: of that source material to get enough protein to be useful.
Speaker 1: You know, many soy plants, we would need to get
Speaker 1: enough hem to make blood for burger king supply of burgers,
Speaker 1: a lot of plants. So instead you take that gene
Speaker 1: and you say, I'm going to use something that can
Speaker 1: grow really quickly, turn over really fast, won't really damage
Speaker 1: the environment, and use that to produce the protein I want.
Speaker 1: So that's the yeast. They use yeas, So you can
Speaker 1: use microorganisms which are really small. You just got to
Speaker 1: feed them some sugar, you know, a little bit of salt,
Speaker 1: some amino acids, add some water. They're happy. And then
Speaker 1: you like how I make cinnamon rolls. Oh well, I
Speaker 1: would like to add that you are using yeasts in
Speaker 1: your cinnamon rolls, and that's what helps it to puff up. Yes,
Speaker 1: because they're releasing gases. That's what makes your dough rise.
Speaker 1: Don't even get me going. So imagine you have huge
Speaker 1: vats of these bacteria or yeasts however they're doing it,
Speaker 1: producing this protein, and then you have a way that
Speaker 1: you can select only the protein and none of the
Speaker 1: other stuff is left behind. And so you just have
Speaker 1: pure protein and a bunch of it, a bunch of it.
Speaker 1: You can make those burgers bleed and sizzle on that grill.
Speaker 1: Baby a meat taste. Yeah, just like that.
Speaker 2: And what really surprised me is when doctor Agapak has
Speaker 2: told us about this recombinant microbial technology process and the
Speaker 2: fact that it's been around for a while.
Speaker 1: She gave us an example.
Speaker 3: One of the most sort of important and kind of
Speaker 3: classic examples of this is how we used to get insulin.
Speaker 3: So in insulin for diabetics used to come from the
Speaker 3: pancreases of pigs. And like one of the earliest applications
Speaker 3: of exactly that recombinant technology, the ability to take genes
Speaker 3: and move them around and start thinking about them as
Speaker 3: these different kinds of machines that can be moved into
Speaker 3: sort of microbial factories. Is the gene for human insulin
Speaker 3: being moved into bacteria. So now instead of pigs and
Speaker 3: killing pigs to get insulin, you can get human insulin
Speaker 3: directly from a bacteria that's growing in a tank.
Speaker 1: Some people were allergic to insulin from pigs, and I
Speaker 1: would imagine that someone who for religious reasons or dietary
Speaker 1: reasons does not want pork anything to enter their body.
Speaker 1: This was probably an issue, and this was a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Did they started doing that synthetic human insulin
Speaker 1: basically insulin produced by bacteria, that was first done in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight's born.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's get back to heme. This whole process
Speaker 2: we've gone through is just to get one of the
Speaker 2: ingredients for the plant based meat, right, but the majority
Speaker 2: of the patty is still made up of plant proteins
Speaker 2: from peas or soy.
Speaker 1: They're still using plant based protein. They're still using pea
Speaker 1: protein and soy, but they have these features that are
Speaker 1: what we call the especially proteins like heme, which aren't
Speaker 1: present in large amounts. This technology allows you to scale
Speaker 1: up how much hem and how much of the rare
Speaker 1: you know, the rare jewels. It's like a power up.
Speaker 1: It basically allows you to collect way more, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if use a place Saga Gena says, well,
Speaker 1: let you collect way more rings, and so now you're like,
Speaker 1: I have everything I need to make the ultimate patty.
Speaker 1: This is a really great way to kind of tackle
Speaker 1: the supplying demand issue right that we have with animals,
Speaker 1: that we have with food in general. There's a demand
Speaker 1: for food, but the cost to the environment to keep
Speaker 1: that supply up is really high.
Speaker 3: Often it is significantly lower impact because the efficiency is different.
Speaker 3: So like when you are you know, you take sugar
Speaker 3: and you'd give it to the yeast, the conversion efficiency
Speaker 3: of that yeast into the hem and the volumes that
Speaker 3: you're talking about are much smaller. And similarly, like the
Speaker 3: conversion of sunlight to p protein is a lot more
Speaker 3: efficient than the conversion of sunlight via grass to cows
Speaker 3: to meat protein.
Speaker 1: We do have to consider the environment and there are
Speaker 1: a couple of ways that this type of technology has
Speaker 1: an impact. You do have to feed these organisms, so
Speaker 1: it's not like, oh, this doesn't cost us anything. These
Speaker 1: organisms don't just like yeast and microbes. Microbes don't just
Speaker 1: produce stuff without any input. There always has to be
Speaker 1: some type of input. I think the convenient or a
Speaker 1: nice thing is that the input is so much lower here.
Speaker 1: Do we need to build that, do we need special lines?
Speaker 1: And you know, is there some stuff that's related to
Speaker 1: the industrial nature of this, Yes, but I think the
Speaker 1: industrial footprint and there's a couple of studies that have
Speaker 1: shown this that the industrial footprint is lower than it
Speaker 1: is for beef, pork, chicken, chicken. And I think the
Speaker 1: other thing that we should consider is the source of
Speaker 1: these materials a lot easier to harvest team from yeast
Speaker 1: making hem than it is hem from big blood and yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that we have to acknowledge that, just
Speaker 1: like doctor Agapacas said about the insulin, you know, there's
Speaker 1: that added benefit. And so by using this recombinant technology
Speaker 1: to let the microbes create what we need, we then
Speaker 1: don't have to have such an impact on the environment.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine growing all that soy, cutting it all down,
Speaker 1: you know, but only only using such a small part
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, it was a huge waste. And so
Speaker 1: the scientists have found a way, They've found a cheat code,
Speaker 1: a shortcut to getting us it's the same product, but
Speaker 1: with less waste. And I think that is something that
Speaker 1: should not be overlooked, and I actually think this is something,
Speaker 1: This is where we're going to head in the future.
Speaker 1: Because now what we're talking about is just using this
Speaker 1: technology to make one small component of a larger product.
Speaker 1: But some people are starting to ask, well, if I
Speaker 1: can use the lab to make this one thing, can
Speaker 1: I make animal protein in the lab? Can I make
Speaker 1: animal tissue? Can I make Yeah? And so now we're
Speaker 1: talking about real funny about that they are, But you
Speaker 1: don't feel funny when they grow the skin and give
Speaker 1: you a skin graph that you don't You take that
Speaker 1: skin graft and you walk out of that hospital. I
Speaker 1: know that that's high. I know that's not the major
Speaker 1: way that things are done now. Most people have skin
Speaker 1: graphs from other areas on their body. But that is
Speaker 1: a that's new technology, right, And so you really have
Speaker 1: to ask where will we draw Where do you draw
Speaker 1: the line? Yeah? I guess it's just basically up to you.
Speaker 2: What do you feel comfortable with and what impacts do
Speaker 2: you want to make on society? And once you weigh
Speaker 2: those things out, you can make an informed decision.
Speaker 1: I guess now we now we just gotta stick to
Speaker 1: our crumbles. We gotta stick to those crumbles and patties.
Speaker 1: But I hope to elevate up too. You think you
Speaker 1: think you're gonna be a vegan. No, I'm sorry. Even
Speaker 1: when I was, I liked the flavor. I don't have
Speaker 1: to eat the meat, but I need it in there.
Speaker 1: I need bacon flavor. I need bacon flavor.
Speaker 2: If hey, scientists, wake up, If you can do that,
Speaker 2: I'll be right on board. Yeah. I would put bacon
Speaker 2: flavor on everything. I'd put it in my toothpaste.
Speaker 1: Oh t T.
Speaker 2: If you lick a burger patty, does that make you?
Speaker 2: Does that mean you're eating meat? I think you gotta
Speaker 2: like masticate like so, if I lick a patty, I
Speaker 2: can be vegetarian.
Speaker 1: If you're thinking about that, you're not committed to the
Speaker 1: vegetarian lifestyle. Oh it's just so hard. Yeah, we won't.
Speaker 1: Don't bother joining the group. I don't think you're gonna
Speaker 1: make it. See now she's trying to challenge me. I
Speaker 1: know my friend. If it's one thing my friend will
Speaker 1: rise to. It is a challenge. She does not like
Speaker 1: you telling her she can't do something.
Speaker 2: That means I need to head to the grocery store
Speaker 2: and buy those plant based meat crumbles or whatever they're called.
Speaker 1: Oprah said ten days was enough. Lets you do a
Speaker 1: ten day vegetarian challenge.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're gonna put it up on the instagrams
Speaker 2: as we do, and whoever is opting in, you gotta
Speaker 2: send us a picture of.
Speaker 1: Your food every day. Yes, this is intense. I'm ready
Speaker 1: put them on the stories.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm gonna fail the first day because I'm gonna
Speaker 2: forget and I'm gonna be like, I had eggs this morning.
Speaker 1: That's like, did I tell you my dad we were
Speaker 1: doing that thing? He said, Oh, I messed up. I
Speaker 1: had brisket for breakfast. Who eats brisket for breakfast? That
Speaker 1: sounds just right. That sounds just like Curtis. That sounds
Speaker 1: just right. That's it for Lab nineteen.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to check out our website for a cheat
Speaker 2: sheet on today's episode. You can find it and sign
Speaker 2: up for our newsletter at Dope Labs podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Also, we love hearing from you. What did you think
Speaker 1: about today's lab? What are your ideas for future labs?
Speaker 1: Our number is two zero two five six seven seven
Speaker 1: zero two eight.
Speaker 2: You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram. At
Speaker 2: Dope Labs podcast.
Speaker 1: TT is on Twitter at dr Underscore, t Sho and
Speaker 1: you can find Zakia at z Said. So follow us
Speaker 1: on Spotify or wherever else you listen to your podcast.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our guest doctor Christina Agapakis. Find out
Speaker 1: more about her work in the show notes. Dope Labs
Speaker 1: is produced by Jenny rattlet Mass of Wave Runner Studios,
Speaker 1: mixing and sound design by Hannes Brown. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jen Stanley.
Speaker 2: Original theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura,
Speaker 2: with additional music by Elijah L.
Speaker 1: Harvey. Dope Labs is a production of Spotify Studios and
Speaker 1: Mega Owned Media Group and is executive produced by us T. T.
Speaker 1: Shadiah and Zakiah Wattley.
Speaker 2: I know what you're thinking, Oh, I don't want all
Speaker 2: these GMOs.
Speaker 1: Well, TT wants to fight you. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: something