Egg prices could rise by 41% this year, the USDA estimates, and our agriculture department is also looking to import eggs as prices soar. Guess what? There is no need. What egg shortage? There’s never been a better time to try plant-based eggs.

 

That’s a just egg omelette. And here I am making a just egg omelette just the other day. I could testify in a court of law.

 

It looks like eggs, it tastes like eggs, but it’s got added advantages of zero cholesterol with plenty of protein. This is the opportunity of a lifetime to drop kick that bad high habit and switch to just egg. It looks exactly like eggs, except it’s from plants.

 

So excited to be talking to the founder CEO of Eat Just, maker of this incredible product. And Josh, we’re in the middle of a bird flu crisis and price of eggs is skyrocketing and there’s a lack of availability. How does that help you with just egg? Well, it helps us, Jane, because often we’re the only egg on the shelf now.

 

So you’ve got millions of Americans going to buy chicken eggs and they go to the egg set at Walmart or Whole Foods or Kroger or their local grocery store. And often because of what’s happening with the eggs, they see one egg on the shelf and it happens to be that yellow carton. And it happens not to be made from chickens, but made from plants.

 

And as a result, we’re growing five times faster than we were at this time last year. We’re growing five times faster than chicken eggs. And it’s a quite an extraordinary moment for us and I think the plant based industry to be where we are today.

 

We’ve got to make sure that we’re delivering on time to these retailers. We’re always in stock because there’s no better time to move people from the chicken egg habit to the plant based habit than it is today. So just to be clear, you are seeing a surge in sales as a result of the bird flu crisis.

 

We’re seeing a surge in sales across the board. So everywhere from where I was raised in Birmingham, Alabama, to Oakland, California, to everywhere in between, millions of Americans are discovering that an egg from a plant exists for the first time. And we’re seeing more Americans today try it out.

 

More Americans use it in frittatas and quiches and omelettes and scrambled eggs during the week and during the weekend. And it’s a real breakthrough moment. So we have an incredible panel for you today.

 

We’re going to start with Stephanie McBurnett of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. This is a moment in history, Stephanie, where our culture can really make the shift. Tell us about it.

 

The pain in your wallet to switch over to away from eggs right at the breakfast table. So I like to talk about the big three. Egg consumption is linked to higher heart disease risk.

 

Number two, higher rates of type 2 diabetes. And then even some certain cancers are linked to egg consumption. So I just think this is a great moment in time where we can all kind of sit back and take a breath and think, why do we need to consume eggs? There’s such better options for our health.

 

And how is that going? Are you seeing, because Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reaches out to thousands of doctors and registered dietitians and people looking to improve their health, are you seeing a breakthrough or are you seeing people still think, I’ve got to get that egg? Because that’s what the mainstream media is pushing. I mean, they’re just pushing eggs, eggs, eggs. And yet they don’t really talk about the obvious alternatives.

 

Yes, this is a great opportunity for kind of those physicians that lean into the plant based world that are plant strong or 100 percent, because patients are coming to the doctor saying, I can’t find eggs. How am I supposed to eat a healthy breakfast? And they can slide right in and say, you don’t need eggs. Not only do they hurt your wallet, but they’re hurting your heart.

 

They’re increasing your risk of type two diabetes and they could be increasing your risk of cancer. So I think this is a great moment in time to really seize, seize the day. Right.

 

And really discuss with our patients the benefits of choosing something else at breakfast. Now, I want to bring in Tracy Shiles, and she has her own line of cookies where she makes incredibly delicious cookies without any eggs at all. And she is an expert in egg replacers.

 

So take it away. What do you have there? So these are my cookies that I make. These are Tracy’s Real Foods cookies.

 

And, you know, they hold together fine without eggs. I have been egg free myself since 1990 when I became vegan and learned about the industry and just decided, you know, I’m not going to take part in any of that. I don’t want to support that industry and the cruelty that was going on because I knew about factory farming back then.

 

So, so, you know, what are you going to do, though? So I’ve always been a home chef and then I became a professional chef and started my company. And so I just throughout the years investigated and looked into all the different ways you can replace eggs for everything across the board. They are not needed.

 

They’re archaic. We don’t need them at all. So I could show you a lot of great alternatives that you can use for all the different things.

 

So just egg is a great alternative for if you want to create a scramble, a frittata, something like that. But if you’re baking, maybe you’re going to want to try something else. And I’m old school.

 

I’ve been using these different things for years. And so I just want to show you a few of the great alternatives that are out there for different. Go ahead.

 

Okay. So what we have are, you know, there’s some great alternatives out there and some great graphics out there. You can find even positions committee who I’m associated with.

 

I’m a food for life instructor that Stephanie’s with. They have great alternatives and great resources. Oh, yeah.

 

So this is what I use for my cookies. And this is old school is using flax seeds. So when you want to create a flax egg, it’s super simple.

 

You just take some water. Now these flax seeds I showed you, those are the whole flax seeds. Now you don’t want to use those.

 

You want to grind them up. Now you can buy it as flax meal or you can grind them up yourself. And then you just go ahead and take three tablespoons of water and one tablespoon of ground flax and stir it up.

 

You can see it’s kind of watery. I’m going to go through some other things and we’ll come back and we’ll show you how this is thickened up. I love it.

 

And we will come back to you in just a second. Now we have a real treat for you. We are going to go out to a kitchen in Encino, California with famed vegan chef Karen Lakava.

 

Karen, take it away. What are you making in that pan? It looks delicious. So I’m making an omelette.

 

I just poured in some just egg. Well, it’s called eggs from plants. And I love making omelettes with these.

 

I actually have one right here that I made a little while ago. And it has some salsa on top. So this one is I just poured this in a little while ago.

 

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to add some cheese. And that’s vegan cheese? Vegan cheese. And this is a vegan monster cheese.

 

And then I’m going to add some caramelised onions. And I’m going to add some roasted bell peppers and all kinds of yummy things, right? And then there we go. So I’m going to let that cook for a second and then I’m going to turn it over.

 

It’s still cooking a little bit. And let me ask you, how does this compare to chicken eggs? Those people who think, oh, it’s never going to be the same. To me, it looks exactly the same.

 

I’ve tasted just egg. It tastes to me identical. Tell me about it.

 

So it tastes identical to me too. I have to admit, I haven’t had chicken eggs since before 1990. Just like Tracy, I became vegan in 1990.

 

But what I remember, it definitely tastes the same. And I have served these to my non-vegan friends and they thought it was delicious also. So you can’t go wrong.

 

And you’re not harming any animals, the planet, yourself. So why not do it? And right now, especially with what’s going on, it’s just crazy. So it’s the perfect time to move over and start some vegan egg inviting.

 

Pick that pan up and show it to us a little bit. So this is what it looks like right now. And I’m going to flip it over so that it’s more like an omelette.

 

See? Okay. And then, see, now it looks like an omelette. Okay.

 

Wow. Hold it up a little bit. Higher, higher, higher, higher.

 

You know what’s going to help? Let me do this. There we go. There we go.

 

Look at that. You can watch this. Ready? We can flip it.

 

Oh, wow. Now, that’s amazing. Carol Acaba, you are quite the chef.

 

Thank you. And I just think that it’s so egg-like. Yes, I will say myself as well, I have not had eggs in many, many, many, many years.

 

But my friends who have tried this, who are not yet vegan, they’re like, Jane, I thought you were vegan. Why are you serving us eggs? And it’s because you can’t tell the difference. Now, if you can’t tell the difference, okay, and if there’s a bird flu, which there is, and I’m getting breaking news into my phone right now as I speak about some latest developments in the bird flu.

 

And if there’s a health benefit to eating the plant-based eggs, why not make the switch? It looks the same, it tastes the same, and there’s added benefits, and there’s a bird flu. I want to go back to Stephanie McBurnett with Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. As a registered dietitian, what are the problems with eggs? Because eggs are still being sold as a health food, and that’s just not true.

 

Yeah, so there’s a few components in eggs that are really kind of bringing those negative health effects. One is they have over 200 milligrammes of cholesterol. And cholesterol right now is the leading, you know, it’s really linked to heart disease.

 

So the highest source of cholesterol in the American diet, leaps and bounds over any other food is going to be eggs. So if you have heart disease, if you have type 2 diabetes, you need to be avoiding eggs. Another factor is there’s no fibre in eggs.

 

So if you’re even replacing that with a whole grain cereal or toast at breakfast, you’re, you know, you’re not getting any fibre from eggs. Also, there’s choline in eggs, which some people tout is like a positive, and maybe this is where that kind of, where people are talking about the health benefits of eggs. But choline has actually been linked to prostate cancer, and it has been linked to why eggs have increased cancer risk.

 

So it’s kind of that triple threat of they’re high in cholesterol, they have saturated fat, they have choline, and then they have no fibre. You’re making a lot of good points. People are commenting left and right about this.

 

Coconut tastes eggy. Yum. And where do we get the vegan muenster cheese? Well, before we get to where do we get the vegan muenster cheese, I would like to talk a little bit about where we get Just Egg.

 

And in fact, I was able to interview the CEO of Eat Just, the maker of Just Egg about that exactly. Where are people buying Just Egg mostly from? You can get Just Egg, I’ll start with retail. So if you live next to a Walmart anywhere in the country, you go to where the eggs are sold, and you’ll see it.

 

We also have a frozen egg patty called Just Egg Folded that’s in the, where the frozen breakfast items are sold. So Walmart, and Whole Foods, and ShopRite, and Kroger, and Publix in the south, that’s where my mom shops at West Palm Beach, Florida, Kroger. You can get Just Egg at Berkeley Bowl, about seven miles from here.

 

You can get Just Egg in Kauai, in Maui, all across Montana. So every state in the country, almost every major retailer in the country has it right next to where the eggs are sold. And then on the restaurant side, we’re available at Pete’s Coffee, and Caribou, and hundreds of colleges and universities from Yale to the University of California system.

 

Lots of diners from Texas, back to Hawaii and Montana again. It’s a broad retail, broad food service distribution. And we’ve only just started.

 

This thing only launched about four years ago. So we got, we got a lot more to go. Are you thinking of going public? Eventually we will.

 

Yeah, we want to continue to build, build our sales volume. Thankfully, primarily because of our, our largest shareholder, who continues to emphasise to me, the import of selling our product at a higher and higher margin, having more of an impact. Every case that we sell today, every unit that we sell today is at a positive margin, which enables us to continue to be self-reliant, to be a healthy company.

 

So we’re going to keep getting our margins up, our growth higher, our consumer awareness higher, which certainly this bird flu situation is helpful with. And then eventually the plan is to, to, to go public and, and let everyday people participate in the, in the mission. And we’ve got breaking news just in as we speak.

 

This is a report that I am reading that somebody sent me from the New York Post and it literally came out moments ago, hundreds of birds in New York City infected by bird flu after poultry markets allowed to reopen. Hundreds of birds at a Queens live poultry market have succumbed to a new bird flu outbreak less than two weeks after the shops were allowed to reopen as the virus runs rampant across the nation. At least 150 birds were found to be infected with the extremely contagious and devastating virus according to data from the animal and plant inspection service.

 

So that is very shocking. What is your response Stephanie McBurnett as a representative of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine? I mean, that’s pretty scary to hear. It is not getting better.

 

It’s getting worse. It’s, it started a few years ago and it’s just snowballing. But the silver lining is this is a great opportunity to switch to something healthier at breakfast time.

 

This is, you know, intervention saying, you know, it’s, it’s, there’s, we have a health crisis and eggs are not helping that. And so we can just switch right to something healthier that has just as much protein. I know we talk about eggs and it having some protein and that’s why it’s touted as healthy, but there are plenty of other options, just like just egg that have just as much protein, if not more for your breakfast.

 

And we want to go back now to Tracy Childs. Tracy, you’ve been showing us the alternatives that you might call the natural alternatives that are literally just things like flaxseed. Okay.

 

I’ve got flaxseed right here. Look, flaxseed. It’s so simple, but it’s a binder.

 

Take it away. You were, you were showing us some really mom and pop. Anybody at home can use these ingredients to mimic eggs and use them in baking and cooking.

 

Yeah, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So, so this is the flax egg that I, I created.

 

If you missed it, all this is, is one tablespoon of flax ground flaxseed, like Jane showed us and three tablespoons of water. And you can see how it’s thickened up and become kind of viscous like eggs and sticky. So this can be put into a, anywhere where you’re baking that were called for an egg.

 

So the other, the other thing that’s similar, if you don’t want to use flax is chia. Okay, let’s go into chia seeds. So chia seeds, you can these actually, you don’t need to grind, but it may take a little more time, but same thing.

 

You can put chia seeds with water and put them, you know, chia seeds are amazing. And these, both of these are high in omega three fatty acids. So, you know, not only are they healthy and have no cholesterol, they are also have protein, they’re a seed, and they have really good fats that are good for your heart, not bad for your heart.

 

So I like that. And, and I love showing people in my classes, I teach food for life, nutrition and cooking, and this is black salt. So this is, it’s an Indian black salt, and you can sprinkle this.

 

And I know this is what makes just egg taste like egg too, but you can also mix it with, this is what I’ve been doing for years, put it with your tofu, mash up your tofu, or add some turmeric, add a bunch of spices, and you can create something that tastes like egg. Now it’s not going to be as close as just egg, but we love it and we’ve loved it for years. So, so another good idea for replacing eggs is not the garbanzo beans themselves, but the liquid.

 

This is called aquafaba. So aquafaba can actually be whipped up to become a meringue. And aquafaba is just the cooking liquid from garbanzo beans.

 

So you can open up a can and save that aquafaba in the fridge. You can put it on some bread, bread loaves instead of eggs. You can whip it up.

 

Like I said, you can use it as an, an oil replacement too. It’s amazing stuff. Don’t throw it away.

 

Let me ask you, so what would you use the aquafaba with to make the egg alternative? So you put a little cream of tartar and, and then you put sugar with it if you want to make a meringue. So it’s just, you whip it up with your beaters and it becomes, and you can also whip it up with your beaters and put it, fold it into things and it really will thicken things up. And I just love, I love, love, love all of these alternatives and the ideas behind them.

 

And I, I would make my kids muffins back in the nineties and the recipe called for apple cider vinegar and baking soda. Now that’s the thing is that these two things, if you add them to your, to your soy milk, that coagulates it and becomes like alive and it replaces eggs that way. It actually kind of becomes like a buttermilk, the, the, the butter, the apple cider vinegar mixed with the soy milk becomes thick and then reacts with the baking soda in your recipe.

 

So that’s a good alternative for muffins and silken tofu is wonderful to be added to all kinds of things. You can make your mayo out of it. You don’t need to have mayo made out of eggs.

 

Bananas are wonderful in pancakes and they’re a great binder. I want to ask you about bananas. Yeah.

 

To me, bananas would be the easiest thing for me to say, Hey, I’ve got a bunch of bananas here. How would you use the banana in cooking? So, uh, what you do is you mash it up, you just mash it up and put it with your flour. And it’s a great, great, I use it in pancakes.

 

This is, I, uh, my recipe is banana pancakes. It’s a bananas mashed up oat flour, soy, you know, some soy milk and some, and some leavening. That’s all you need.

 

It’s a natural sweetener too. So, you know, you use it in your sweet recipes and I, uh, this is one of the, as often skipped, but oats, oats are, um, better than wheat as far as being more sticky when you grind them up into the flour, um, put them with something moist. You know how oats do, they’re just very sticky.

 

They’re amazing as a binder. So you can actually add oats instead of eggs, especially to burgers. Um, so that’s what I use in my Tracy’s Real Foods burgers is, um, is, is flour and, um, and oat flour at that.

 

So, and I use oat flour in my, in my cookies as well. So, uh, you don’t need to use eggs. That’s the bottom line is they’re, they’re really archaic.

 

They’re not needed anymore and we can all do much better without them. For sure. It seems though with the media that they’re constantly hammering on this need for eggs.

 

I mean, literally every time I turn on the TV and a lot of, a lot of politicians too, like eggs, eggs, eggs, they’re using it as a political football on both sides of the aisle. This is not a political statement, but, um, never, never recognising that it’s the problem, not the solution. Okay.

 

That’s what we’re trying to let people know is that eggs are the problem, not the solution. Eggs brought us the bird flu crisis, uh, and the egg industry. If we didn’t have an egg industry, we wouldn’t be producing all these chickens and the bird flu wouldn’t be a growing threat that’s infecting cows and infecting people and becoming a real crisis.

 

So the idea that the media, which is advertiser based and which basically works for their advertisers, which is definitely not, you don’t see many commercials for bananas, right? And applesauce. It’s usually, um, meat and dairy laden, fast food and junk food. And then the pharmaceuticals that you need because you’ve gotten sick from all that horrible food.

 

So they’re not going to talk about these alternatives with some exceptions. Uh, Josh Tetrick told me that, um, some major networks have in the wake of this crisis, finally started to do a couple of episodes about, uh, alternatives specifically just egg. I want to get back to the breaking news that there’s been this new outbreak of bird flu in the New York city live poultry markets, which of course, animal activists have been trying to shut down for years.

 

They were shut down for a very short period of time. And all the activists said, that’s ridiculous. You got to shut them down permanently.

 

When they reopen the bird flu is just going to come back. And that’s exactly what’s happened. So let’s hear Josh Tetrick, the CEO of eat just the maker of just egg, the leading plant-based egg alternative talk about the difference between the chicken egg process and his process.

 

Uh, just egg is made primarily the primary ingredient is mung beans. The industry is really built on a premise that is, um, a problem, which is you can take lots of animals, put them in tiny spaces and hope that they don’t get sick, but eventually those animals will get sick. Um, and the good thing about mung beans is you can pack them body to body, to body, to body by the tens of millions.

 

Uh, and they won’t get sick. They don’t get the flu. Uh, they’re not susceptible to all the inflationary pressures that chicken eggs are.

 

Um, I don’t know whether the industry is, um, you know, attempting to stop our, our soaring sales today, but, uh, given what happened in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised. So tell us a little bit about the benefits of just egg, aside from the fact that it’s available, it’s on the shelves and, uh, obviously it’s zero cholesterol, high in protein. Can you elaborate on the benefits price aside? Yeah.

 

So most people are probably surprised to learn that 91% of the people who consume just egg, they’re not vegan or vegetarian. These are just regular folks trying to eat a little bit better for breakfast. And what they end up liking is that it’s entirely free of cholesterol.

 

It has three times less saturated fat than a chicken egg does. It’s full of plant protein, has about the same amount of protein as a, as a chicken egg, uh, would didn’t have any allergens. We’re actually the very first, um, uh, egg, um, that has been, uh, awarded the clean label certification.

 

So this is a pretty rigorous certification that looks at pesticide residues, that looks at a variety of toxins, food dyes, colourings. We pass that with flying colours and just a word that not a single chicken egg has gone through that rigorous process. So people choose us because the taste, because of the health, because the protein, and now hopefully more folks will recognise us because of our, our commitment to being clean label.

 

And we’re going to go back to our premier chef in Los Angeles, Karen LaCava, who is making just egg. What have you been making, Karen? Well, this is the finished omelette, first of all, that I’m making. I can’t wait to dig in.

 

And I started making some, um, some fried rice and you can see the just egg that’s in there and I’m stirring it up. I, I, uh, what I did was I scrambled the just egg. I made the fried rice and then I added them together.

 

And I also want to show you here, my ingredients that I’ve been using. And yeah, so I have all kinds of ingredients. It’s, it’s always fun to just have everything ready to go so that.

 

Can you tell us what those ingredients are? I sure can. So I have, I have some caramelised onions. I have salsa for the top.

 

I have, instead of using spinach, I used, um, Swiss chard, but this is rainbow chard, broccolini stems, which are really sweet and delicious. And then some roasted bell pepper and then the cheese. And that vegan cheese is what? So I had two types.

 

The one that I was cooking with is, uh, that was the monster that I got from the farmer’s market. And then this one here is a Mexican blend that I used in the first, the omelette that you didn’t see me making. So you can mix up the cheeses, all kinds of vegan feta would be delicious with some spinach.

 

Uh, it’s just really fun to mix it up and have fun. And you can have a little omelette bar here for your friends and family and have them pick what they want and you can make it fresh for them. I love doing that.

 

Um, you know, that way everybody gets what they want and who doesn’t love fried rice as a chef. And I know you cater many events. You’re a vegan caterer, as well as somebody who donates your time to many causes.

 

Uh, you’ve made many dishes for unchained TVs, fundraisers. How does it feel? How does it work? The just day compared to chicken eggs? It’s the same. It’s the same.

 

It, it scrambles the same. It tastes the same. Um, I’d say it needs to set up a little bit longer, but that’s fine because you tend to burn your eggs if you’re not careful.

 

So from what I remember, um, yeah, it’s exactly the same. You just shake it up. It’s so much easier to, you don’t have to break a shell and worry about, you know, if you just pour it right in there and, and, and you just let it set though, let it set.

 

If you’re doing an omelette, don’t mess with it. And it’s perfect. It’s, it’s, it’s so easy to work with.

 

I love it. I love it. So thank you so much.

 

Karen LaCava. We’ll come back to you in a minute. I do want to talk to Stephanie McBurnett, uh, who is with physicians committee for responsible medicine about the difficult side of this.

 

And that is that it’s not just about taste. It’s not just about food, but it is about the suffering of animals. Many tens of millions of chickens have been, they say cold that’s killed.

 

Okay. And guess how they’re killed. They’re baked alive in a process called VSD plus, which stands for ventilation shutdown.

 

More than 2000 veterinarians have signed a petition saying, um, ventilation shutdown plus is horribly cruel. Now this is how far we’ve fallen as a society. There is a chicken inside a box that is being baked alive as part of a test of this process.

 

And every time I see this photo, I am embarrassed to be a member of the human race. Uh, what happens is, uh, they seal off the, uh, it’s not really a barn. It’s really, you know, these are factories.

 

They seal off the factory walls. They pump in heat and they wait for all these animals to die. We have a video here of one chicken dying of ventilation shutdown plus.

 

So when people say to me, oh, well, there’s nothing wrong with chickens. Chickens aren’t cruel. You know, uh, chickens have to lay eggs.

 

No, this is a massive industry. The majority of animals killed for food are chickens. And first of all, they grind up all the male chicks alive.

 

They don’t need male chicks in the industry. And now with bird flu, they are baking by the tens of millions of these animals that don’t even have majority of them don’t even have bird flu. They’ve just been exposed.

 

So because our tax dollars automatically reimburse these companies for any animals that they kill, they just kill with abandon as opposed to enacting, you know, biosecurity measures that they would, if they thought they would have to pay for an outbreak. Uh, can you elaborate a little bit on this, Stephanie? Yes, this is extremely disturbing. Um, you know, the fact that we have created this problem, as you’ve stated, and now we’re remedying it with having to mass kill off these wonderful creatures.

 

And really there’s just no need for this industry, right? Uh, chicken meat is not healthy. Chicken eggs are not healthy. They’re essentially, you know, and not to be graphic, they are the menstruation.

 

They’re the baby, uh, chicken, right? The, when, when humans menstruate every month, this is their menstruation, um, where, you know, so that’s what people are eating. And that’s why it’s so high in cholesterol, because everything a baby chick needs to become a regular chicken is inside that egg. So everything is jam packed.

 

It’s very high in fat, high in cholesterol. Everything is in there. And the fact that individuals feel that this is a health food and they need to eat that is also extremely disturbing.

 

So what is PCRM doing to spread the word that we are in the 21st century? We do not need to eat this way. This idea that is promulgated that you absolutely have to have eggs. You have be living under a rock that some of the top pastry restaurants in Los Angeles are completely vegan.

 

Their pastries are like off the charts, incredible, decadent, gorgeous eclairs and, uh, croissant all made without eggs. What, what can we do to undo the damage of this constant pounding of this myth? That is completely a lie. Exactly.

 

So PCRM, uh, is that kind of steadfast evidence-based, uh, science, uh, fact information. So when we have either individuals reaching out to us or checking out our website, or if maybe it’s healthcare providers, we have that evidence that you will be fine without consuming eggs. Actually, you’ll be better off.

 

So we have tonnes of resources on our website and we are really using this opportunity to spread the word. Um, and, and kind of expand what we already have and what we already know at PCRM kind of expand that education around the detriments of eggs and the egg industry. And, you know, as Kim Delgado was saying here, us humans can be so cruel as Nilo Asgarian says, it can take up to eight hours to die in this vicious way.

 

I mean, the idea that that is not taken into consideration when they talk about bird flu in the media and they use the word cull. Okay. When you hear that word think kill and now think kill in a very horrible, horrible, torturous way.

 

And that’s why 2000 veterinarians and it’s more now have signed this petition saying ventilation shutdown plus is a horribly cruel, um, manner of death. It’s torture and it should not be considered. But when you think about the totality of that and you see that, uh, our media and our government do not care a whit about that issue.

 

Um, where does that leave us on a moral perspective, Tracy, as a species and a society? Yeah, I’m not sure, but you know, I have, like I said, I’ve been living this lifestyle for so long and, um, I’ve just found that unless you’re actually working to get these products out, it’s very difficult of your body. Uh, it’s very difficult for people to, um, fathom the, the, what we feel as vegans to fathom, um, how we feel about animals and how we don’t want to harm them. And once we learn about the industries, we want to get away from them.

 

So, so really it’s just about getting, um, getting the word out to people and reaching them on whatever, whatever level it is that works for them because, um, you know, animal products in general are just terrible for the environment. They’re terrible for us. They’re terrible for our, uh, as a species there, you know, they’re just terrible in general.

 

So let’s just, um, reach people on the level that works for them, whether it’s their health or whether it’s a concern for animals. So if they say they love animals, you can, you can ask, um, so why do you eat eggs if you love animals? Because they’re, it’s a cruel industry and thank goodness for, um, for the innovation that we’ve been experiencing lately. Um, not only the innovation that went into all those alternatives I showed that, um, of the chefs and different people that started experimenting and wanting to get away from using eggs, but that the product just egg is out is, um, is a tremendous advantage now that, um, that people have an alternative and they can switch over.

 

And so that, thank goodness that that’s that, that we have now, we always cover whoever we accept people wherever they are on the journey. And I want to go to this comment from this lady, Kate, become a boring vegan who hates food. Now this is one of the biggest stereotypes and just absolutely in my opinion.

 

And Kate, again, I, we accept you wherever you are on the journey. We hope that we can convince you. And I’m going to go back to Karen Lakavi, the foodie of Los Angeles.

 

I hope we can convince, uh, Kate that we’re not boring people who hate food. You know, it kind of reminds me of when, uh, I used to drink alcohol and I thought that I’m about to be 30 years sober, April 1st. And I used to think that that was what made me fun at parties, little come to find out that’s what made me not fun at parties.

 

Uh, I thought that was my solution. If I had a bad day at work, guess what? It was usually the cause of my bad day at work. Um, it’s the same thing.

 

We think something is the solution when it’s actually the problem. And it’s having that aha moment of no, this isn’t helping me. This isn’t, you know, I thought, Oh, he gets over.

 

You’re never going to have fun again, never go to a party, never make a fool of yourself. Well, I make a fool of myself all the time now, except I remember it very well. Uh, how would you respond to Kate’s comment? First of all, I won’t eat something.

 

If it doesn’t taste good, I’d rather just not eat. And I grew up in New York city, uh, where every amazing restaurant was there. And my mother was a foodie.

 

She would take me to everything. You can do so many things. I mean, this just egg, you can make, um, you know, eggplant Parmesan, you know, my, my uncle just made some the other night and it was delicious.

 

And he used just egg instead of egg, you know, with the breading, uh, there’s in baking, like, uh, there’s so many things that you can do. And even without the just egg, just in general, there’s so many great restaurants, so many great cooking classes, so many great recipes go on, on chain TV. I have a couple of segments as a matter of fact, uh, can make, sorry.

 

Uh, you can make all kinds of delicious things. You just need to learn quite frankly, I think it tastes better than, than animals. I really do.

 

Um, it’s cleaner, it tastes cleaner. The flavours are better. Your body feels better.

 

Everything. It’s just, I just cannot imagine being, uh, going back to eating animals and Tina there. I totally agree with you.

 

It is fun to be vegan. It is so fun. And there’s so many new foods that are coming out.

 

Jackfruit, which has been around for a number of years now that used to just be in the Indian, uh, restaurants. You’d see it, which I used to love to go just there for that. Now it’s everywhere.

 

There’s so many things. Uh, I love cooking for my friends, Jane, I love cooking for you, uh, and making an experimenting with you guys and just making all kinds of new things. And you are one of the top vegan chefs in Los Angeles and always so generous with your time.

 

And you know, I had taken this out because I was just in my fridge. I wasn’t in my fridge. I was looking in my fridge and you know, what can I use? I had this, of course I use it all the time.

 

It’s so fantastic. There’s nothing. Oh, I want scrambled eggs.

 

Boom. And, uh, I had scrambled eggs with some German bread. You know, the really intense German bread the other day was fantastic.

 

And then I found this, I have this as well. Um, tell us about this. What do you know about this? Tracy Childs.

 

Yeah, that’s, that’s a good old school egg replacer. And, um, I’ve used that for years too. That is actually made with starch.

 

And I had that in my, in my little, um, demo thing here with starch. Yes. You can, uh, use any kind of starch, but you can also buy these products.

 

It also has a little bit of leavening in it, like a baking, um, powder, but it’s, um, that’s, but starch is a good binder. So think about it. If you add water to starch, you know, corn starch, tapioca starch, arrowroot starch, any of that, if you add some water to it and start, start us mixing up with your fork, you’re going to notice that it’s becoming very egg-like and it’s, it’s, it will help things stick together.

 

It’s that’s my go-to for my loaves. I make a, um, a vegan loaf that normally would, a vegetarian loaf normally would have had eggs in it or a, or a vegan burger would have normally, the recipe would normally have had eggs in it. Well, you know what? You don’t need the eggs.

 

Eggs are just, like I said, they’re just so old school, so archaic, so not needed. You know, it was what people had a lot of back then, you know, in the days when these recipes were created. And so people think, Oh, the rest, it’s a time old recipe.

 

This is the way I make a cake. Well, you know what? That’s just an old fashion cake. You don’t, you can veganize your cakes and make them delicious.

 

And just like Karen said, it’s going to taste better. That’s the thing. That’s the key is that when you get the cruelty out, your food actually tastes better and it’s not going to be boring.

 

Believe me, you know, all the spices, all the things that they put into animal foods to make them taste good. Guess what? Those are plants. Yeah.

 

And ethical herbs. Wow. So many wonderful vegan egg options than when I first went vegan 12 years ago.

 

And that’s really true. Like there’s so many of these products. I’m about to head to Natural Products Expo West, which is the largest natural products expo in the world at the Anaheim Convention Centre.

 

Thousands and thousands and thousands of different products. And Just Egg is going to be there and a whole bunch of other egg replacement companies are going to be there celebrating all of this stuff. And so, you know, what I would say to Kate is we don’t ride horses to get from coast to coast anymore.

 

There’s cars and there’s planes. You know, we have modern technology that we rely on all the time. And we have to realise that that modern technology also applies to food in the sense that, yes, since the dawn of time, you could have used flax seeds back in probably the mediaeval era in place of eggs.

 

But people have their demands. They want something that looks like a scrambled egg. We made it.

 

I didn’t make it, but Eat Just, Josh Tetrick made it. OK. And so you can still have your eggs and eat them too.

 

You can have your cake and eat it too. I mean, the resistance. Here’s what I say.

 

The first step to realising you’re brainwashed and getting out of being brainwashed is to say, oh, maybe I’m brainwashed. Maybe I’m repeating somebody else’s talking points. Maybe this isn’t my own original idea.

 

Maybe I’m just conditioned to behave this way. And that’s why I’m saying what I am saying, whether it’s bacon or all vegans are boring. Maybe I’m the person who’s being cheated.

 

As one very wise person said, we’re all being factory farmed, not just the animals who are being tortured. The humans are being tortured. So you have 43 percent of the population right now, which is obese.

 

1. Seventy three percent overweight or obese. And now they’re selling us the drugs to lose the weight.

 

So they make money on both sides. Do you want to comment on that, Stephanie McBurnett of Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine? I have worked. I’ve been very lucky to work in the research department at PCRM, where we work with individuals with type two diabetes, transition them to a plant based diet, and then we track their insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity.

 

And every single person who has transitioned has said their mind has been blown by the amount of options of food, that they were stuck eating the same four things, right? Eggs, chicken, beef, pork. And now that that is out of their diet, it’s almost as if the whole world has opened up and they’re eating things they’ve never even thought about or known about. And so it’s anything but boring is what I’ll have to say about that.

 

But it is I find every single person is just can’t can’t talk enough about all the different quinoa, different foods, bulgur that they’re eating that they didn’t even know about, different beans. And so that’s kind of the one comment I have on that and about the obesity rates. Yes, it is just kind of getting worse and worse.

 

And I think it’s tied in with this food industry, just kind of being tied to that they’re trying to make a greater profit. And they’re they don’t care about our health, they care about profit. And there’s the egg industry that has gone so far as to get into the research and try to manipulate the research that is out about eggs.

 

But it’s all getting pushed away by actual real research that doesn’t have any influence. Things are coming to the surface just in 2023, a meta-analysis came out that showed every hundred milligrammes of cholesterol of dietary cholesterol per day, increase the risk of type two diabetes by 5%. So 100 milligrammes is half of an egg.

 

So if you’re eating an egg a few times a week, you’re increasing your risk of type two diabetes. And this is, this is just, there’s two different studies that came out in 2021, 2019, there was a study published in JAMA showing that just three to four eggs per week, increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality. So the research is there.

 

We just have to, we just have to follow it. I think, and this is, this is nature’s way of telling us we don’t need to be eating eggs anymore. And let me just ask you about a fact that a lot of people are not aware of, and that is that there’s no cholesterol in vegan products.

 

If you look at Just Egg, it says right here, zero cholesterol, no, no cholesterol. And I always tell people, take a look at this one too. I didn’t even have to check.

 

Zero cholesterol. Every single vegan product has zero cholesterol. Can you explain that fact that is so crucial when heart disease is the leading killer? Okay.

 

Yes. So cholesterol, dietary cholesterol is linked to heart disease and type two diabetes. It’s mostly found in eggs and enamel products because it isn’t found in plants.

 

So anything that’s vegan is already off the bat, not going to have cholesterol, which is going to bring down your total cholesterol. Also what’s linked to our cholesterol levels in humans is saturated fat intake. And the highest amounts, the highest foods with the highest amounts of saturated fat are actually dairy and cheese and eggs and animal products.

 

Right? So you see this link of not only is the cholesterol that’s hurting your heart in animal products, but it’s also the increased saturated fat as well. Wow. So, you know, for all of these reasons, it’s a no brainer.

 

What kills me is that despite the fact that this is a no brainer, despite the fact that we have all of these alternatives that we’ve been showing you, bananas, applesauce, chia seeds, flax seeds, silken tofu, aquafaba, vegan yoghurt, apple cider vinegar, and more. And then for those who want the egg experience, whether it be an omelette like this one or scrambled eggs, you have just egg. And that’s why their campaign says, what egg shortage? There’s never been a better time to try plant-based eggs.

 

By the way, if you want to try, you can just go to www.ju.st, put in your email and you will get a discount. And as you’ve heard on the show today, there are so many places you can buy it online. You know, whatever your preference is for shopping, it’s widely available and you could get it like that.

 

Whether it’s, you want to go on Amazon, Whole Foods, Kroger, all of these places that were mentioned by the CEO of Eat Just, it’s there, take advantage of it, give it a try. And I hope Kate will also give it a try. Final thoughts, starting with our chef, Karen Lacava.

 

Final thoughts. You don’t need eggs. You don’t need animal products to have delicious food.

 

So why do it? Why harm the environment? Why harm the animals? Why harm yourself? And have fun experimenting. Who doesn’t like to have fun? You can have some friends over and try new recipes. Just do it, do it.

 

Pasta, you can do pasta with all kinds of vegetables. There’s so much. Have fun with it.

 

Well said. All right. We’re going to go straight out to our San Diego premiere chef.

 

Hey, I have a few things. Yeah. So the thing I remember when I used to use eggs was that I was kind of scared, right? I knew besides the bird flu, which wasn’t happening back then in the nineties, you know, there was salmonella in eggs, right? And people were getting the, you know, a lot of people who get the flu are actually getting salmonella poisoning, actually.

 

So just getting the eggs, getting the animal products out of your kitchen is going to make your kitchen safer. It’s going to make restaurants safer. Using just eggs as a safer product, for sure.

 

Animal products are just plain dirty. The whole raising of them is dirty. The raising of plants is much cleaner.

 

Having plants in your kitchen is a much cleaner way to live. So just do it. It’s not a problem.

 

Once you get used to the idea and start looking around, you can replace them and just be that much happier and that much safer and that much healthier. Well said. And we’re going to go to Stephanie McBurnett with Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

 

Your final thoughts. Yeah. So I think we’ve cracked the code on the egg crisis, right? And use this as a golden opportunity as our friends and family.

 

And even at the supermarket, you hear these conversations about egg prices. You can also come in and say, well, we really don’t need them. They’re not good for our health.

 

And here’s some replacements. And I will just add that my favourite thing to make with just egg is a quiche. Put some hash browns and then just egg and veggies on top.

 

Well, I hope you come back and make that for us. We’re going to stay on top of this story because I do believe this is a turning point. You heard Josh Tetrick, the CEO and founder of Eat Just, the maker of Just Egg, say that his sales are skyrocketing.

 

So people, and I’ve seen it myself. I was shopping the other day at a supermarket and I saw somebody staring at an empty counter with a couple of egg cartons and then this big space. And you know what I said? Try Just Egg.

 

I do it because I’m doing that person a favour. They may not be aware of this alternative. And so I urge everybody to get it, whether you get it online, Amazon, or you get it at Whole Foods, or you get it at Kroger, or you get it at any of the other places where it’s available.

 

Try it and share out this video to spread the word as well. Unchained TV, which is our nonprofit free streaming television network, was created by me because I was in mainstream media for 30 years and I saw that they’re not talking about this. You don’t need somebody to knock on your door and say, don’t talk about the egg replacers when you’re seeing the TV commercials that keep the lights on filled with meat, dairy, and eggs and pharmaceuticals.

 

So we’re really trying to get out the truth. So you can help us by sharing out this video. You can also help us by becoming part of the team by downloading Unchained TV, which again, we are a 501c3 nonprofit run by volunteers like Tracy Childs and Karen LaCava and myself.

 

None of us take a salary. We’re just here to try to wake people up and save the planet. We didn’t even get to the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet.

 

You can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions footprint by 75% by going plant-based. So it’s a vegan Netflix. Okay.

 

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