249: The Truth About Animal Agriculture with Dr. Will Tuttle

[00:00:00] Dr. Will Tuttle: Once people become aware, they can begin to understand. So the World Peace Diet is a big picture book. It's a book that gives the big picture talks about the anthropology and sociology, history, nutrition, economics, and politics, and the whole thing. If you wanna understand our society. That's really the key to understand our culture.

[00:00:19] Maya Acosta: You have more power over your health than what you've been told. This is the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions Podcast. I'm Maya Acosta and I'm passionate about finding healthy lifestyle solutions to support optimal human health. If you're willing to go with me together, we can discover how simple lifestyle choices can help improve our quality of life.

[00:00:40] Maya Acosta: And increase longevity in a big way. Let's get started. Hello, my beautiful listeners. I hope that you enjoyed my recent conversation with Courtney Garza-McCullagh. She introduced me to Megha Shah, the co-founder of True V here in Dallas.  Megha and I will host my next podcast guest during his  Benevolent Revolution tour.  

[00:01:04] Maya Acosta: Again, here in Dallas at her establishment, and you will learn more about Megha soon in an upcoming episode.  Follow me on Instagram, where I highlight short videos of future episodes. That's @maya_hls_podcast. Dr. Will Tuttle is an author, speaker, and musician, best known for his book, the World Peace Diet.

[00:01:30] Maya Acosta: In it, he argues that the root cause of many of the world's problems, including war, poverty, and environmental destruction. Our treatment of animals. He also advocates for a plant-based diet as a way to promote peace and justice. Dr. Tuttle has a Ph.D. in education from the University of California Berkeley, and he has taught courses in comparative religion and philosophy of education.

[00:01:58] Maya Acosta: He's also a former Zen Buddhist. His work has been featured in publications such as New York. His work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time Magazine. As previously mentioned, Dr. Tuttle is coming to Dallas to share his beautiful message of compassion and awakening the sacred feminine.

[00:02:22] Maya Acosta: On December 13th, this year, 2022, we will live stream this event as well. So head on over to this link so that you can learn more about the tickets. It's bit.ly/DrTuttle, and as always, the full bio and the links for each of my guests can be found on the website healthy lifestyle solutions.org.

[00:02:49] Maya Acosta: Let's meet Dr. Tuttle. All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Maya Acosta. Today we have Dr. Will Tuttle. Now, he's been on the show before and my husband Dr. Riz interviewed him and he's also been in Dallas. So. We're gonna talk about his motivation behind his work, the writing of his book, the World Peace Diet, and also about his visit to Dallas, which is gonna be December 13th. So welcome, Dr. Tuttle.

[00:03:20] Dr. Will Tuttle: Thank you so much, Maya, and thanks, everyone for listening in. It's great to be here.

[00:03:25] Maya Acosta: Yes. Well, we're very excited to have you coming back to Dallas, but also my listeners maybe hearing about you for the first time. So I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your story and the main message behind your books and your works.

[00:03:41] Maya Acosta: You're also part of a five-month book tour that you're doing, so feel free to start anywhere sharing about that. 

[00:03:47] Dr. Will Tuttle: Right, right. Yeah. Well, I have a pretty typical story in many ways. I was born eating the usual meals that everybody eats, lots of meat, dairy, and eggs. This was back in the 1950s and New England.

[00:04:00] Dr. Will Tuttle: I was born and raised in Massachusetts. And I remember when I was about seven years old, I asked my mother about it. I said, the food we're eating, is this what everybody eats? And she thought about it and she said, yeah, that's pretty much everybody eats the kind of food we're eating. That's pretty normal. The interesting thing is I remember she left and then she came back and she said, well, that's not totally true.

[00:04:20] Dr. Will Tuttle: Because there are vegetarians, and I never heard that word in my life, but I was curious about it. And so I said, what's the vegetarian? And she just said, you know, don't worry about it. You're never gonna meet one. I don't know where they get their protein, you know? So I was so glad I wasn't a vegetarian. I thought these must be very strange people that probably.

[00:04:40] Dr. Will Tuttle: Dragging themselves through the dirt, not getting enough protein. And I was so glad I was getting plenty of protein at eating normal food, right? So that was my story. And the good news for me, really, I always say the smartest thing I ever did back in 1980, so it's been 42 years now, was go vegan. And besides marrying Madeline, my wonderful wife from Switzerland, But the reason really for me to make the change was I began to just question a lot of what was happening in our society back then in the seventies, the Vietnam War, and just seemed like sort of materialism and.

[00:05:16] Dr. Will Tuttle: I was born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, so I started reading Emerson and Thoreau and some of these more spiritual books and connecting with Christianity also, and I thought there's more to life than just making money and trying to get ahead in the world and that kind of stuff. So I decided with my brother, younger brother, Ed, to leave home and go on a spiritual pilgrimage.

[00:05:37] Dr. Will Tuttle: We thought we would walk to California, you know, that'd be kind of a neat thing to do. Kinda meditating and walking and we got as far as Buffalo, New York. This was in 1975, and then it was getting really cold. It was October. So we just walked south all the way to Alabama and so on. That long walk of just meditating and walking with really with no money, it was really an amazing adventure.

[00:05:57] Dr. Will Tuttle: We stopped for a while when we got to Tennessee at a community called The Farm. And The Farm in 1975 was the largest hippie commute in the world back then, and there was about almost a thousand people living there, mostly from California. And they were all vegetarians, you know? So I got a real inside look and I was already thinking it would be a good idea to eat less meat.

[00:06:19] Dr. Will Tuttle: I was kind of thinking that, doing a lot of meditating and so forth. But I. Still eating fish and meat and stuff. But then this was a community that was actually vegan. They said vegetarian because no one even knew the word vegan in 1975. You couldn't even say it, you know? So, but they didn't eat meat or dairy or eggs, and they had about 200 children that were born on the farm and they were all thriving basically as vegan.

[00:06:42] Dr. Will Tuttle: So, That was it. I could see that they weren't dragging themselves through the dirt begging for protein. They were doing great. And so that was it. And since the day I asked the guy, you know, I said, why are you guys vegetarians? And he told me that it was because of world hunger. A lot of people are starving because we feed most of the grain, we grow to animals and it's very inefficient.

[00:07:04] Dr. Will Tuttle: And then he told me about the suffering of the animals too. So from that day he told me that I've never eaten any meat. I stopped eating meat right then. And then about five years later I learned more about the dairy and egg, uh, cruelty and uh, how unhealthy that is really too. So I've been a vegan since 1980.

[00:07:22] Dr. Will Tuttle: And the main reason really for writing the World Peace Diet, I would say, is just to share the good. You know this really wonderful good news, the good news that no one, no human being needs to eat animal-based foods because we're all given this wonderful gift of a physical body that doesn't require any animals to suffer to get all the nutrients that we need to be healthy.

[00:07:46] Dr. Will Tuttle: That's the basic thing, but I. Realize that most people aren't aware of this. Most people like me were just following orders just doing what they were told to do by people that they trust completely. Like my mother, my father, my friends, neighbors, relatives, teacher, doctor, media, they all say the same thing.

[00:08:05] Dr. Will Tuttle: And so I was just following orders and I realized that we need to get. Into a position where, where we can begin to question these orders because nobody is malevolent. Nobody's thinking, oh, I just want you to suffer and be sick and cause a lot of hunger and starvation and misery and violence. No one thinks that it's just we're disconnected from what we're doing.

[00:08:24] Dr. Will Tuttle: We don't think about it. We don't think about, where the dairy comes from, or the eggs or the animal flesh. So we're just not aware. But think people become aware, then they can begin to understand. So the World Peace Diet is a big picture book. It's a book that gives the big picture, talks about the anthropology and sociology and history and nutrition and economics and politics and you know, the whole thing. If you wanna understand our society. That's really the key to understand our culture.

[00:08:53] Maya Acosta: So going back to the beginning where, you know, in 1975 you became aware of you were on an adventure and you came upon a group of people at the farm. You know, it's interesting, Dr. Tuttle, because there's a spiritual component.

[00:09:08] Maya Acosta: That you can't deny as an individual when you make a deliberate conscious decision to no longer consume animal products. You're understanding that you're helping, in some ways, you're helping to sort of reduce the harm that animals are afflicted with, but also the planet. And there's something so beautiful that you talk about that in our society and our culture, we don't really, you know, emphasize enough and that's the domination of the feminine. Please tell us more about that.

[00:09:37] Dr. Will Tuttle: Right, well, thank you. I think this is really important because we don't really think too much about animal agriculture, what it really is, but it's basically imprisoning animals into a very confined space and breeding them. The whole thing from the very beginning. We've only been actually doing animal agriculture for about 10,000 years, which seems like a long time.

[00:10:00] Dr. Will Tuttle: But in the big picture it's, it's kind of recent. It's kind of a new thing. And I say in the World Peace Diet. It was the last revolution that we ever had in our society cuz it changed everything. And one of the main things it did was. It reduced not only respect for the dignity and power of animals, but also the sacred feminine dimension of life.

[00:10:20] Dr. Will Tuttle: Because you're not only imprisoning animals and killing them, you have to breed them against their will on what the industry refers to, actually, in all cases as rape racks on the dairy or on a pig operation, whatever. So the female. Is confined and impregnated against her will, and it's very sexually violent and perverse.

[00:10:39] Dr. Will Tuttle: And we do it millions of times every day. And so what I realized in my research is that even going back when people first started doing this, it was kind of like human beings crossed a line. I think we knew somehow back there, we shouldn't do this, we shouldn't be doing this, you know, imprisoning and chilling and impregnating these.

[00:10:57] Dr. Will Tuttle: But the thing was, Once we started doing it, if you look into the, uh, religions, I'm very interested in religion. I have a Ph.D. actually from the University of California at Berkeley. It's in education, but in Philosophy of education, I've taught courses in comparative religion. I've studied the world religions.

[00:11:14] Dr. Will Tuttle: I was a Zen Buddhist monk actually in Korea back in the 1980s. And religion to me is really humanity's attempt to connect with spirituality and spirituality. is humanity's true nature. What we are is not a material object that was born and died. That's what we're told. We're just this piece of matter, but everybody knows we know.

[00:11:39] Dr. Will Tuttle: That's not all we are. There's a being , we have mm-hmm. consciousness and every religion. Even though religions are flawed because they have this divided loyalty, they have a one loyalty is good if they're trying to promote spirituality, but the other loyalty is to help reinforce the society. Religion exists within a society, so if the whole society's eating meat and dairy and eggs, the religion is, it's hard for the religion to really question that, even though spirituality definitely questions it.

[00:12:10] Dr. Will Tuttle: Mm-hmm. . So the sacred feminine dimension of consciousness. The capacity within all of us, whether we're a man or a woman, to be receptive and to love and nurture and protect life. Mm-hmm. , and this is always honored in all world religions and it's the core of spirituality, is to see others as beings with the same source that we have.

[00:12:33] Dr. Will Tuttle: So we have this natural sense of compassion and kindness and solidarity with other beings, and we realize the interconnectedness of all life. And so the sacred feminine dimension is the key really in many ways to awakening spirituality. And it's also the key, having a healthy society. Cuz when a baby is born, it's the mother who's birth this baby.

[00:12:56] Dr. Will Tuttle: And the mother has that sacred feminine dimension really activated, especially through the birthing process. So, Even though this little being is there and there's nothing but a lot of trouble in many ways, right? , but the mother gives and loves and protects and feeds and nurtures this little being. If that didn't happen, that baby would be psychologically and physically very messed up, would be, you know, have a hard time and.

[00:13:19] Dr. Will Tuttle: So that's the foundation of healthy individuals, of a healthy family, ultimately of a healthy society. Problem is that with animal agriculture, when we started to do these really atrocities against animals, to steal their freedom, to steal their babies, steal their milk, steal their lives, steal their purposes, steal everything from.

[00:13:40] Dr. Will Tuttle: With violence. When we did that, we had to repress the sacred feminine. The sacred feminine is like, no, no, no. These are being, you know, we have this basic empathy as human beings. Mm-hmm. , we have to repress that. That's the sacred feminine dimension. And once that happened, then we started seeing this arising for the first time on planet earth of a very warlike.

[00:14:03] Dr. Will Tuttle: Patriarchal society that developed a wealthy elite class that got rich on wars and where boys also had to be harmed also because young boys had to learn to be hard and tough and capable of violence against these animals, against rival murderers and, and even against women. So that created the kind of society.

[00:14:28] Dr. Will Tuttle: That flourished actually in the Eastern Mediterranean region back 10,000 years ago. But it spread, the Northern Mediterranean is spread and it conquered and took over a lot of more peaceful cultures, spread into Central Asia, to Europe, and then of course, a few hundred years ago, it spread really worldwide and came over here, for example, to North America.

[00:14:48] Dr. Will Tuttle: The Native American people here said these, these people came and brought their slave animals. You know, it's like this whole way of living of enslaving animals. Yeah. Of dominating the sacred feminine and it's still spreading through McDonald's and Burger King and Cargill and Monsanto, Kentucky Fried Chicken, you know, all these World Bank and the IMF are behind it.

[00:15:08] Dr. Will Tuttle: I mean, it's this whole system really that we're born into and it's still going strong and it's projected mainly through indoctrinating all of us as children, to eat meat, dairy products and eggs through not just corporations and governments, but through the. Through the parents, cuz the parents went through the same thing.

[00:15:28] Dr. Will Tuttle: They were wounded and so they pass on their wounds to their children and the children pass on the wounds to their children. That's what happens. It's not, you can't really blame anyone. It's just like, it's a cultural thing that's gone through the generations now. It's been a about 400 generations really since we first started doing this.

[00:15:46] Dr. Will Tuttle: But we can see what's happened when you repress the sacred feminine. This the situation where we have now tremendous injustice and inequality in the world. Nuclear weapons that could wipe everybody out many times over. You know, the sacred feminine dementia would, would be rising up and saying, stop this.

[00:16:02] Dr. Will Tuttle: Now let's live in harmony with each other. Let's stop cutting down the rainforest at three acres per second like we're doing. Let's really have compassion and kindness for each other and do things a different way. But that's been repressed. It's repressed. Every time we eat animal-based foods, we have to just not think about the suffering that we're causing when we pay for it, and that then we turn around and we actually eat that suffering and the violence and all the toxins that go in.

[00:16:30] Dr. Will Tuttle: So we end up having a whole society where people are basical. Unfortunately wounded and shallow. Really, we don't wanna look deeply. We don't wanna feel deeply and care deeply because then we'd have to change the way we're eating. And that's hard to do because the main way we bond with other people is eating together.

[00:16:51] Dr. Will Tuttle: We have to tell anybody, well, I'm not gonna eat your chicken. I'm not gonna eat Turkey with you for Thanksgiving. You know, I'm not gonna do any of that. People are afraid of that. You know, we wanna. More than anything. In many ways we're tribal and we wanna fit into our little tribe and get along. And so as soon as we question the tribe's food, then we are on the outside.

[00:17:09] Dr. Will Tuttle: And so most people just put their heads down and eat the food and don't tell me about it. I don't wanna know. But the thing, the good news is the sacred feminine is in there and she does care. And if we. Sort of water those seeds a little bit. And then there's other things too. The fact that it's healthier, it's, it's better really for the environment.

[00:17:27] Dr. Will Tuttle: It's better for our spiritual growth. There's many other reasons, but they're all interconnected. They're all based really on the same basic principle of caring for ourselves and caring for others.

[00:17:39] Maya Acosta: Yes, you said that we're wounded. And now knowing what I know today, I definitely can see that I probably wouldn't have been able to see it six years ago, seven years ago.

[00:17:49] Maya Acosta: That part of us that's wounded because probably down deep inside we understand. We probably know that there's something wrong, something hidden from us. I was a school teacher, elementary school teacher, and at that time, you know, you teach all sorts of basic things and understandings and what do you wanna do when you grow up?

[00:18:10] Maya Acosta: What do you wanna be? Right? And you talk about food and where it comes from, at least the produce. But we never really go into detail ever with children, ever about how bacon is produced about how ground beef is manufactured because it's a part of us that all of us can't bear to witness. And today when we talk about it and you know, you wanna bring it up to someone that's not familiar with what animal agriculture does to animals, they always wanna say like, I don't wanna know.

[00:18:40] Maya Acosta: I don't wanna see it. . So Dr. Tuttle, what's that about? What's the psychological component that, what is going on when a person just can't bear the truth?

[00:18:51] Dr. Will Tuttle: Well, it's actually, it's called Cognitive dissonance or Affective dissonance. It's just simply when we have, like, we have these two things, right? We have my self-image, here's my self-image.

[00:19:03] Dr. Will Tuttle: Um, I'm a good, loving, kind, caring person. And then we have, and I just like having hamburgers and hot dogs and cheeseburgers and so forth. And then we have this other thing over here, which is, well, those hamburgers and hot dogs and fish sticks cause a lot of violence and suffering. Other living beings who have feelings just like your dog and cat, you know, so those don't go together.

[00:19:26] Dr. Will Tuttle: So, so we have to go into denial basically about the reality that's happening. And so usually, The mind will come up with rationalizations to legitimize what we're doing. You know, so we'll think, well, I'm type, oh, blood type and I need to, you know, my blood type needs to eat meat. Or, I'm from the Midwest, I was raised eating animal foods, so, you know, I, I'm too old to change now.

[00:19:53] Dr. Will Tuttle: Or, you know, I'm a Christian, and Jesus ate me, so it's okay. Or my husband, he has to eat. We get a divorce. If I tried to change, I couldn't even think about it or my doctor told me I, you know, you need to eat plenty of protein. We think of something, you know, there's plenty, our society does furnish people with rationalizations to help them legitimize what they're doing and, but most of the time it doesn't come up too much cuz let's face it.

[00:20:19] Dr. Will Tuttle: I mean, vegans are probably only. One or two or 3% maybe, of the population, and we're not exactly sure, maybe for up to four or five, but most people are not. So it doesn't come up that much. And everywhere you go, there are billboards and ads and menus that just reinforce that you're on the right page, you're doing the right thing.

[00:20:38] Dr. Will Tuttle: Don't think about it. So I think. That's the what goes on. It's just simply, it's a cultural momentum that's enormously powerful. It has so much inertia. It's been rolling for 10,000 years and it's got itself embedded everywhere. And it's in the doctor's training, for example, they don't get any real nutrition training that's actually is accurate. So they're not questioning health-wise. We're not questioning governmental agencies. Don't question the media. I know. I mean, that's one of the things that I know a lot about because my father, actually, it's an interesting story. He was gonna be a doctor and he went to, in World War II, he was in World War II in France.

[00:21:19] Dr. Will Tuttle: He went over in D-Day plus whatever it was, six, I think. And he was a medic. He was in the medical core cause he was planning on being a doctor. And I remember when I was a kid, I said, you know, why didn't you wanna be a doctor? Cause he never was a doctor. And he said, well, he said, I saw so much horrible suffering over there.

[00:21:37] Dr. Will Tuttle: And he said, and and, and one of the main things I did was line, people would line up and I'd give him shots, you know? I said, I don't think it was that good. He said, I don't think you should really trust the medical profession. He always said that I wouldn't trust doctors too much. And I think I got good advice from him on that because I pretty much.

[00:21:51] Dr. Will Tuttle: Have stayed away from doctors for the last 45 years and just by eating a healthy diet and having healthy attitudes and plenty of exercise, I think we can be healthy. I mean, I think health is not something we have to get from a doctor or from drugs or procedures or, you know, we're much better off to rely on ourself for our health.

[00:22:11] Dr. Will Tuttle: But what he did do, instead of becoming a doctor, he bought a newspaper. And so I was raised in the media. I was raised in this world of newspapers. And advertising and headlines and, and I learned growing up, sitting around the table, listening to my parents talk about the news and what we're gonna publish and so forth, that you can never run any news that advertisers will object to.

[00:22:35] Dr. Will Tuttle: They, they'll pull their ads, you know, so, mm-hmm. , I understand that in my bones, but most people don't realize that. And they think they're hearing the news on tv, or they read the newspaper or read a magazine. They're getting some kind of accurate information. It's not accurate. I mean, it's maybe somewhat accurate if it doesn't offend any advertiser, but the biggest advertisers are the fast food industry, the medical-pharmaceutical industry, the petroleum industries and the chemical industries.

[00:23:03] Dr. Will Tuttle: The banks in the background, they make huge money on disease. They haven't made any money on me in 45, 50 years. I haven't bought one drug or gone to one thing, anything. I haven't even gone to a doctor. So that's their worst nightmare is people who take responsibility for their health and don't buy their products.

[00:23:22] Dr. Will Tuttle: They want people who are eating foods that concentrate a lot of toxins like meat, dairy, and eggs, and not exercising. Just kind of watching television, watching the ads that are kind of programming us to buy these foods that are harmful and and so forth. So I think what we're talking about here really. A whole system that benefits a tiny elite in many ways.

[00:23:46] Dr. Will Tuttle: Mm-hmm. . But the rest of us, we should really be caring about our families, about ourselves, and being more proactive and taking responsibility for our health. And not just allowing the culture to provide the narrative, they provide a story, but it's a story that disempowers us. Mm-hmm. . And so the beautiful thing about veganism really is, you don't have to use the word vegan, you can just say, You know, I don't eat, I eat plant-based foods, or we eat whole organic plant-based foods.

[00:24:17] Dr. Will Tuttle: And that's, to me, that's real food for real people. . Yeah. You know, and, and we don't have to even, you know, be against the meat, dairy, and egg industry. We don't have to fight against anybody. We can just be Pro kindness and love and caring and eat a natural diet, a normal human diet. That's really a normal human diet.

[00:24:35] Dr. Will Tuttle: We're not designed to eat animals foods. We don't have canines. We don't have this blood lust that wants to just tear apart little animals or something. None of it. We don't have any of it. We're naturally herbivores. I mean, it's obvious. Mm-hmm. , we don't have to even use the word vegan. We can just say we're eating normally, and that's the truth.

[00:24:56] Maya Acosta: Yeah, that's part of the reason why I still have this podcast is because I wanna encourage people to take control of their health and not necessarily rely on health professionals. And I'm lucky that I just came out this past week. I was at the Lifestyle Medicine Conference with health professionals from all walks of life who understand that the key to.

[00:25:19] Maya Acosta: And preventative. Really preventative medicine is eating real food, like how you're saying whole food, but also being physically active and all the other components of lifestyle medicine. And the last night before we returned back to Dallas, I had the television on, which I typically don't watch television.

[00:25:37] Maya Acosta: I was watching a holiday movie. And you know this from your experience in the media, how many commercials were advertising pharmaceutical. You know, prescription medicine, and I was shocked for every little thing. I was shocked. And I'm thinking if the average person is watching television and they're being bombarded with not only prescription medicine, but fast food, that's the programming that they are receiving all the time that you need to eat at fast food restaurants, that you need to eat this way and you need prescription medicine.

[00:26:09] Maya Acosta: Look at yourself. You have symptoms. So I understand. Which is why I've disconnected, I'm disconnecting from, uh, sources that I think no longer feed my spirit in the right way. And conversations like this is what help inform individuals that, you know, we have to take control not only of our health, but our mind because of the content that is thrown at us.

[00:26:30] Maya Acosta: Yeah. So tell us more. If one of the keys is to be in touch with our divine feminine, what is one thing that we can do to come back to that beautiful aspect of ourselves that is pro-life? ProHealth that's pro connecting with Mother Earth.

[00:26:45] Dr. Will Tuttle: Well, I think you just said one of 'em that is, uh, to just never watch television.

[00:26:51] Dr. Will Tuttle: I mean, disconnect from, I would say disconnect from mainstream media. When people say, gosh, how is it possible that you haven't been to a doctor in 50 years? I say, it's easy. I haven't had a TV in 50 years. , you know, I just, I turned it, I got rid of my TV 50 years ago. It was. Yeah, 1972. And I think getting so bombarded with toxic ideas in our society that really play out in our bodies, our minds taken in.

[00:27:20] Dr. Will Tuttle: But to, to answer your question also more deeply, I think. Besides disconnecting from the mainstream media, which is really run by these forces that make money on sickness and disease, and unfortunately on war too. To have a regular, uh, spiritual practice, I think is the one of the most important foundations to being healthy.

[00:27:45] Dr. Will Tuttle: Nutrition is important. We could talk quite a bit about food, but the basic thing with nutrition, A hundred percent plant-based. And I would say quite honestly, nowadays, a hundred percent organic too. Because now in the last three or four years, glyphosate has just exploded. It's in everything. Mm-hmm. . So if we buy anything, almost anything that's not organic, we used to have this little list of the Clean 15 and.

[00:28:10] Dr. Will Tuttle: We don't even follow that. We just get organic on everything because glyphosate is a broad-spectrum antibiotic, and it really devastates the microbiome of the soil and us. Mm-hmm. . So I think organic and Whole Foods also try to buy as much as possible whole. Like vegetables, grains, fruits, nuts, seeds, and just make food.

[00:28:31] Dr. Will Tuttle: Madeline, my wife, has a cooking channel. It's called Madeline's Intuitive Kitchen, but there's lots of ways you can learn online just to eat the way we used to eat before all these processed, packaged foods. Mm-hmm. with additives and drugs and chemicals added in there. So that's number one. But attitude is even more important I think, in many ways than the food.

[00:28:52] Dr. Will Tuttle: Attitude is really important. If we, we can be eating a very healthy diet, but if we have a lot of anger or resentment towards people, towards our parents or whatever, that'll work against our being healthy. And so the more we can work with our mind and make a habit. Of waking up in the morning and just giving thanks for another beautiful opportunity, another day to learn, to grow, to contribute, to be part of making a better world, and to connect with my own inner wisdom, to live my life more fully and deeply, to bless all living beings.

[00:29:26] Dr. Will Tuttle: You know, just have a purpose. A lot of us in our society don't really have a purpose beyond trying to make money or please people or get something for myself and. The more we can create a purpose that's outside of us to help others to help the world, the more we have a reason for all ourselves. Cause we have trillions of cells that are here to serve the spiritual, eternal conscious, which is what we are.

[00:29:50] Dr. Will Tuttle: And if we wake up in the morning and say, well, it's Monday morning, I don't wanna go to work. You know, we're study this message to all these cells in our body, uh, nothing for you to do today. And they might as well just get sick and not do anything. So we are the captain of our vessel, so we have. Be enthusiastic about our life and that's something we can do.

[00:30:10] Dr. Will Tuttle: That's something we have the power to do. That's Thoreau said that when he was out in Walden, he said, I know nothing that's more important and more uplifting than that. Each human being by their own. Action can raise themself up. You know, you can raise yourself up in your consciousness. You can learn and grow, and you can quiet, learn to quiet your mind and connect more, more deeply with the source of life, which is infinite and eternal and is manifesting through this vehicle.

[00:30:38] Dr. Will Tuttle: We identify with, we shouldn't identify with this vehicle. We should identify with the being who makes this vehicle temporarily possible for a few decades. We're just here for a few short decades. So we are as far, far, far, far greater than that. And once we. Make a habit of really identifying with the eternal being that we are.

[00:30:57] Dr. Will Tuttle: Then we start to see that in others, and we start to naturally honor and love and respect them. It doesn't matter what the outside looks like, what race or anything that's ridiculous. Mm-hmm. or species. We start to see all beings and then we start to just feel a sense of love for our life, a love for all life, and this is the foundation of health is really in the attitude of awake.

[00:31:19] Dr. Will Tuttle: To the, our true nature. And then we naturally start to feel how this body launched to move, right? I mean, to move our body to just sit and, and put our body in these strange positions in couches and chairs and desks and things. I mean, luckily when I was went away to the Zen Center in, when I was a kid, I mean with my brother, we ended up at a Zen Center in Alabama in 1975 and eventually, I've never had furniture in my house since then.

[00:31:48] Dr. Will Tuttle: Cause, cause there they just had softwares and these Christians on the floor. So I've been sitting, I've been sitting on, right now I'm sitting on the floor. I, I'm just always on the floor. But I just think, you know, we're raising a society where everything is done wrong. In a way the architecture kind of is these boxes and artificial light and tempera.

[00:32:07] Dr. Will Tuttle: We're kind of addicted to being comfortable all the time in, its in a narrow range of temperatures and separated from nature and afraid of nature, afraid of bugs and germs and animals. And I mean, we have to connect with nature, connect with our creativity, connect with exercise and movement and healthy food.

[00:32:26] Dr. Will Tuttle: And then the other big thing is relationships and really, Make, take a proactive responsibility to be loving to people, whoever they are, smile to people and, and say loving things. We can all bless others by, by saying how much, how grateful we are for the people in our lives. Let 'em know. Tell them the more we spread love into to human animals.

[00:32:48] Dr. Will Tuttle: People need that. Most people are going through their lives. Struggling, having a difficult time financially, emotionally, you don't know all the problem people have. They don't even talk about them usually, but you just, you know, don't get offended by people. , you know, they're wounded. Be loving. Just be loving.

[00:33:05] Dr. Will Tuttle: The more loving we can be. The better it is for everybody, including ourselves, you know? Really. And there's no point in getting angry at, at anything. I mean, why, why get angry? That's, that's ridiculous. I mean, where people do things cuz they're hurt. So if someone's hurt, you don't yell at 'em. You just try to heal them.

[00:33:23] Dr. Will Tuttle: Try to help them understand and just be loving. That's really what it comes down. We can change ourself. We can never change anybody. We can change our response to other people. That's what we have power over, and we can change our response in a positive way for them and for ourselves. Even though we're not taught to do that, that's what we have to learn to do. Mm-hmm. ?

[00:33:45] Maya Acosta: Yes, and that's what I like about your message, Dr. Tuttle, is that you are about having compassion for others and being gentle with the message. And you're on a tour. You're on your benevolent Revolution tour. And you're gonna stop by in Dallas, December 13th. So tell us a little bit, what do you mean by benevolent revolution?

[00:34:07] Dr. Will Tuttle: Well, actually the main book that I wrote as you know, quite a few years ago, it came out in 2005 as the World Peace Diet. And that's the foundational thing. And I talk in, in that book about a benevolent revolution. You know, we've had this herding revolut. Which changed everything where we dominate animals and we end up creating a lot of war and competition and so forth.

[00:34:27] Dr. Will Tuttle: So I say it's time for a benevolent revolution where it's going back to compassion for animals and nature, liberating animals liberating each other and getting healthy on every level, healthy, physically, psychologically, spiritually, environmentally, and culturally. And that's the benevolent revolution.

[00:34:47] Dr. Will Tuttle: And so I'm actually writing and it should be coming. Probably in February, I think February or March, a new book called The Benevolent Revolution. So it's basically the World Peace Diet message 15 years later. And I think the message is the same, but it's deeper, and I think it's really about living this.

[00:35:06] Dr. Will Tuttle: In our daily life and the keys to having radiant health on all these different levels because we're all interconnected. So I'll be talking about some of those ideas and we'll have time for Q and A. My wonderful wife, Madeleine, will be with us and she'll have her paintings. She's a visionary artist from Switzerland and paints these watercolor paintings of animals.

[00:35:27] Dr. Will Tuttle: Yeah, we have a book on intuition. That's that book. That's one of her paintings right there, right? Yeah. On the cover of the book.

[00:35:32] Maya Acosta: I'm holding one of the books. For those of you that are watching the video of, you know, some of the beautiful books that you left us last time you visited, and she participates, like her paintings or her right?

[00:35:45] Maya Acosta: You said it's watercolor, it's always. A part of your presentation, it seems like when we were on the vegan cruise in 2019 and you were playing the piano, some of those drawings were hers or watercolor. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. Beautiful. It's the com and sometimes she plays the flute as well.

[00:36:02] Dr. Will Tuttle: Right. Yeah. If there's a piano, I play the piano and she plays the flute.

[00:36:06] Maya Acosta: Right. And so what can we expect when you stop by December 13th. So she'll be with you and she'll have her paintings. Right. And will you have other books for sell or just the one that will be released in the spring of next year? 

[00:36:20] Dr. Will Tuttle: Yeah. Well, no, we'll have the, uh, the World Peace Diet book. We'll have the, uh, circles of Compassion book on social justice issues.

[00:36:27] Dr. Will Tuttle: Buddhism and veganism, which is more about spirituality and meditation and the, uh, islands of the inner islands, which is on developing intuition. Another new one called Veg Inspirations, which are excerpts from the World Peace Diet. We actually have quite a few books, but the main book is the World Peace Diet.

[00:36:43] Dr. Will Tuttle: We have a book on music and art, and we have CDs and guided meditations and not paintings. We, we'll have actually all that stuff and we'll have time for q and a if people wanna have questions about anything we're saying too, so it'll be great.

[00:36:56] Maya Acosta: Yeah. Awesome. I'm so excited. And it's going to be held at a venue by an individual that is familiar with your work. Her name is  Megha Shah at her shop, which is called True V, and it's the only commercial kitchen that's fully plant-based that people can rent out. And she also has a small business with bite size. Uh, delicious foods that she's going to talk about when she comes on the show as well. But I'm very excited for us for the fact that you're coming back to Dallas because there's a new generation of individuals, uh, younger people who are really eager to hear from you.

[00:37:31] Maya Acosta: And then the rest of us that are familiar with your work, we're gonna come back together. And there is, you know, I wanna add that there really is this spiritual component that before I became vegan, I sort of, Drawn to spirituality, but I think what was holding me back from fully making that transition was the food.

[00:37:50] Maya Acosta: And once I changed my food and I stopped eating animals, once I stopped contributing to the animal suffering, I felt connected, like connected. Like never before. I, you know, I love nature even more, but I also realize nature feeds me all the beautiful, colorful foods that I'm taking in. And along with your really just speaking about the divine feminine and how what we eat affects the planet.

[00:38:17] Maya Acosta: You also promote healthy eating, which is, you touched on that earlier, us eating whole foods. Real food is, I. For our overall well-being. So this is, I look forward to you coming back. I'm very excited. So thank yous putting us. Oh, hi, Madeleine. How are you? Hi. Hi. So excited to have you back.

[00:38:39] Dr. Will Tuttle: She'll be with me so We'll, we're looking forward to it.

[00:38:43] Maya Acosta: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very excited to talk with both of you and, and you'll be traveling in a van. That's the one that you're staying in, in during your tour, right? 

[00:38:52] Dr. Will Tuttle: It's a little tiny one. Yeah, A little tiny. It's a little one little tiny one.

[00:38:54] Maya Acosta: Yeah. Different one. We'll have to show you. We have a camper van as well.

[00:38:58] Maya Acosta: We don't have the time. Risk is still working, so we don't have the time to spend in it for long periods of time, but right when we downsize like that, when we experience that, we realize we don't really need half the things we. And we're more connected to nature, more happy and more outside time. Yeah, that's right.

[00:39:15] Maya Acosta: That's right. Well, we're excited to have both of you visit us again. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with my listeners? 

[00:39:23] Dr. Will Tuttle: Just thank you for your precious time and we look forward to seeing you hopefully on December. 13th when we come through Dallas, you can go to our website, actually world peace diet.com or willtuttle.com, either one, and see the schedule.

[00:39:36] Dr. Will Tuttle: If you're not right in Dallas, if you're in, you know, another city we're coming, we're gonna do about 30, 30, or 40 different cities in the next four and a half months. So we also have, if we have a training, if you wanna go deeper into this world peace diet facilitator training. Madeleine, we have lots of videos of Madeleine's cooking and my lectures and lots of different stuff, so yeah, maybe check out our website too.

[00:39:59] Maya Acosta: That's right. I'll add those links in the show notes. Well, Dr. Toddle will see you in a few weeks, and thank you again for joining us. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Dr. Tuttle is on a five-month book tour to promote his book, the World Peace Diet. In it, he argues that the key to creating a peaceful world is to stop consuming animal products.

[00:40:20] Maya Acosta: He bases conclusion on his own journey from eating meat and dairy to becoming a vegan, as well as his study of the history and philosophy of religion. And Dr. Tuttle outlines some steps that he believes are necessary to create world peace, and those are awareness, compassion, and. He argues that awareness is the most important as it allows us to understand the violence inherent in the animal agriculture industry.

[00:40:51] Maya Acosta: Compassion is necessary to motivate us to make the change and to create a more peaceful world, and then finally change the most difficult as it requires us to fundamentally change how we think about food and our relationship with animals. Here are a few things to keep in. We are all interconnected.

[00:41:12] Maya Acosta: What we do to animals we do to ourselves. This means understanding that our actions have consequences for us and the animals that we share the planet with. When we harm animals, we are hurting ourselves and the world. Once we realize that, We can begin to make changes in our lives that will help reduce the suffering of animals and promote a more peaceful and sustainable world.

[00:41:38] Maya Acosta: We can make a difference by supporting businesses and organizations with humane animal policies. We can vote with our dollars. We can send a powerful message that we do not want animals to be hurt or killed for our benefit. We can also choose to eat less meat and dairy, or to go vegan or vegetarian.

[00:41:58] Maya Acosta: Every little bit helps, and we can create a huge impact. When we make all of those choices, we are responsible for educating ourselves and others about the truth of animal agriculture and its impact on animals, our planet, and our health. To do this, we must first become aware of the reality of the situation.

[00:42:17] Maya Acosta: That animals are being imprisoned and killed for our food and that it is causing tremendous suffering and violence. Once we know the problem, we can question it and then learn about alternatives. Many resources are available to help us understand more about the impact of Animal A Agriculture and options for change, and we can also talk about what we are learning.

[00:42:41] Maya Acosta: And help to raise awareness about the issue. We can make a difference by making compassionate choices in our lives, and we can understand the psychological component of why people choose to ignore the truth about animal agriculture. This industry causes a lot of violence and suffering to animals, yet many people consume meat, dairy, and eggs daily, and this is because of what we call cognitive dissonance.

[00:43:09] Maya Acosta: When we have two conflicting ideas, in this case, we consider ourselves to be good caring people, yet the food that we're eating is causing harm to animals. Our minds will rationalize the situation and come up with reasons why it's okay to continue. Eating animal products. For example, we might tell ourselves that the animals are treated well or that they do not feel pain.

[00:43:34] Maya Acosta: However, the reality is that animal agriculture is a cruel industry, and the only way to end the suffering truly is to stop consuming animal products altogether. It can be challenging to switch to a vegan lifestyle, but it is essential to remember. Every little bit counts. Every time we eat a vegan meal or purchase cruelty-free products, we make a difference.

[00:43:59] Maya Acosta: The more people can make compassionate choices, the more significant the impact we can have. In addition to reducing the amount of suffering in the world, veganism is also one of the most effective ways to come back. Climate change. Animal agriculture is responsible for significant. Impact on climate change.

[00:44:19] Maya Acosta: So by eating vegan, we can help to slow down the effects of climate change. According to Dr. Will Tuttle, the key to creating a more peaceful world is to stop consuming animal products. He argues that. Our treatment of animals is the root cause of many other world's problems, including war, poverty, and environmental destruction, and he also advocates for a plant-based diet to promote peace and justice.

[00:44:47] Maya Acosta: I'd love to hear how you apply these principles of awareness, compassion, and change in your life. Let me know in the comment below, and also I hope to see you at Dr. Tuttlet's lecture here in Dallas. As always, my friends, thank you for being a listener. You've been listening to the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions podcast with your host, Maya Acosta.

[00:45:09] Maya Acosta: If you've enjoyed this podcast, do us a favor and share with one friend. Who can benefit from this episode? Feel free to leave us an honest review on Apple Podcast that helps us to spread our message. Thanks for listening.