 But imagine somebody's on the fence about becoming a vegan. They're not really sure whether it's gonna be for them or not, and then they see what's happened here. This here, Alex, you're really losing me here, mate. You're really losing me here, mate. Hello everyone, welcome to another video. So CosmicSkeptic has uploaded a video clarifying his community post that I made a video about. Now that CosmicSkeptic has added some clarity here, I would like to do him the charity of responding to what it actually was and not make assumptions because you can't blame me for making assumptions because his post left many things to the imagination. But the main thing was I've been re-evaluating my ethical position on eating animals. So let's listen to Alex and we're gonna listen to Alex. Maybe offer some advice if I can or see how he approaches this because my whole thing was when you make a video, Alex, do not throw the animals under the bus because you have some personal health things going on and you're having some difficulties. So let's see how he approaches it. So as you can imagine, the past couple of weeks have not been particularly easy for me, but of course this is something that I expected when I made my community post announcement about consuming animal products. I expected that there would be a great deal of sadness and disappointment and hatred and anger and all of these kinds of things. Well, you know, Alex, I like obviously, I think you know that that was common anyway because you are an animal advocate, vegan advocate, activist. You've spoken about this issue on stage so poetically and then this post is the next thing we hear. But I kind of said that I saw it coming. So yeah, there's a few things that you were saying that kind of led me to believe that your ethical position was a little bit flaky and your position on veganism was not very strict. I'm basically just trying not to sensationalize this. I recognize that this kind of video can cause a lot of drama, bring a lot of attention, a lot of negative attention to the vegan movement, to animal advocacy. That's really something I'm trying to avoid. Well, I will give him that, that yeah, he's not trying to sensationalize this. He's not gonna say why I'm no longer vegan and why veganism is bad and why animals deserve to be killed for my taste preferences. He's not going down that route, which was something that I was hoping he wasn't gonna do because I've seen it before. Tim Sheaf, John Venus, I've seen this stuff. I've been a vegan now for nearly 10 years and an activist online for seven years and people come and go and they always sing from the same hymn sheet. But Alex here, at least, is coming from a responsible point of view. So I do think that he does, it's hard to say this, but I do think he does care about the impact of what he says in terms of how it harms animals and reflects badly on the vegan movement. So I'll give him that. I've been thinking a lot about how best to approach this whilst doing the least harm to animals and the least harm to the vegan movement as a whole. I'm still not entirely sure what that looks like. Of course, ideally, you would have wanted me to just stay totally plant-based, but I'm hoping to explain some of the reasons why I didn't do that. But crucially, and I should say this from the outset, even though it should be obvious, look, I'm not some kind of nutritionist. I'm certainly not a nutritional expert. And so I'm in a bit of an awkward situation here in that I feel I want to explain some of the problems that I was facing in maintaining a healthy plant-based diet, but I want to clarify that that shouldn't be informing your position on the viability of a plant-based diet for your cell. Another responsible thing to say, I am not a nutritionist. I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to this topic. Alex, why didn't you chat with someone who is a plant-based doctor or plant-based registered dietitian when it came to the issue that you're facing? Why didn't you reach out to them? If you cared about the rights, lives, suffering of non-human animals and this movement of justice for animals, why didn't you reach out to these people who knew about this topic a little more than you do before making a post like that that has probably done its damage? A lot of people have been sending me studies, in particular the American Dietetic Association study that being vegan is healthy at all stages of life, including pregnancy. As if this is new information to me, as if this isn't something that I was already aware of and wasn't citing myself, of course, the American Dietetic Association says that a well-planned vegan diet is healthful at all stages of life. The key point is well-planned there and my problem is not with the idea that every nutrient that's required to be healthy can be found in a plant-based diet. I think that it can. My problem is with the practicability of maintaining it for myself. Alex, if you have issues well-planning a vegan diet, you would have issues well-planning any diet. I mean, I'm no nutritionist, but I know that. You need to well-plan any diet. If you're having issues with eating a wide variety of whole food plants and getting enough sunlight, then supplementation is key and that just means taking a tablet here and there. I would recommend getting a blood test 100% to see if you're feeling a little off, maybe it's vitamin D, maybe it's B12, something like this and you take some supplements, have a multivitamin to cover your back and that would be if you're not well-planning any diet. So people have been asking, well, what's this magical nutrient that you can only get from an animal product that you can't get from plants? I wanna clarify from the start, there isn't one. Great, okay, thank you, Alex. There's no magical nutrient. Every nutrient that you need to be healthy can be found in an adequately-planned plant-based diet. As long as it's being supplemented. I just wanna talk to you about some of the reasons why I found it very difficult to maintain a healthy plant-based diet. Okay. I also wanna clarify that I really don't know what my diet's going to look like going forwards. I don't know if I'll continue to eat these foods or whether I'll be able to abandon them again in the future. I really don't know. So now he's saying that he doesn't know whether this is the be-all and end-all, whether he's made the, so he's a bit unsure about whether he's made the right decision. So we're still on the fence here a bit about this. So let's see where this goes. So I'm not trying to do an ex-vegan, anti-vegan thing. I'm not trying to come out and say, veganism did this to me, I had a horrible experience and this is why you shouldn't be vegan. Like I still want to encourage people to be vegan. I still want to encourage people, of course, to care about animal suffering and to help bring about the end of factory farming. But Alex, just now you're saying you want people to be vegan, you still want people to be vegan and you're not doing an ex-vegan thing here, which again, good. Just looking at your community post here, at the very least, even if I'm way off base and totally mistaken in my assessments, I do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if I've been unable to keep up that diet myself. But you're saying here that, you know, it's not that you don't want people to be vegan, you still want people to be vegan. I still want to encourage people to be vegan. So that's not consistent with your community post. I still think animal suffering matters greatly. I still want to see the end of factory farming as soon as possible. All that happened was in practice in my life I found it difficult to maintain a healthy plant-based diet. That's it really. No, that is not it, Alex. So, although I'm going to be charitable to Alex in some parts of what he's saying, you did not say that. You said you've been re-evaluating your ethical position on eating animals. Your ethical position shouldn't change whether in practice you have some health thing that's stopping you from adhering to your ethical position. No, and also what you said, I'm no longer convinced of the appropriateness of an individual-focused boycott in responding to these problems. You're no longer convinced. So in this video, you're just saying I struggled to maintain a healthy plant-based diet, but in your post, you were no longer convinced of the appropriateness of an individual-focused boycott in responding to these problems. You were just, it was excuse after excuse after excuse. I've re-evaluated my ethical position. I can't be healthy. I'm no longer convinced that boycotting works. So basically boycotting industries that torture animals, that murder animals, that violate the rights of animals is futile because individual boycotts don't work. That's what your community post was saying, bro. That's it really. I understand why that would annoy people or upset people, especially given that I'm somebody with a public platform. Alex, that's not, that's it. That's not what you said. You said a whole bunch of other things, bro. Like, and I think, and you're very intelligent and you said them deliberately. You were very deliberate about that post. I'm sure you looked at that very carefully before you posted it, but you were just excuse after excuse after excuse. It was just healthy. Why don't you just say what the health problem was at the start to stop people from making assumptions, man, eh? But that's what this breaks down to. Now, for most of my life, I've had a particular set of health issues, just like most people have some health issues that I must stress are unrelated to veganism. They're not caused by veganism. I had them before I was vegan. It's nothing like that. But for instance, one of the most important relevant here is IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, which. Okay. So I'm glad Alex has prefaced his health issue with what he prefaced it with. He said that it's not caused by veganism. He had it before he was vegan. People have to varying degrees. I've suffered with it quite severely for most of my life. It's not been as bad as I've been getting older, but it essentially translates to having some severe stomach problems, as well as, I don't really know how to put it, but you need to make sure you have access to a toilet. For most of my childhood, one of the great miseries of my life was that I essentially wouldn't be able to go anywhere that didn't have an immediate toilet access because otherwise I'd be absolutely stuck out and the anxiety of just being there and knowing that that was the case would be enough to bring on the symptoms of IBS and I'd just be paralyzed by it. Now, that is no joke. I empathize with Alex here. Of course, sympathize within empathize. I don't know what the right word is because I haven't been in this situation before, but my father suffered with Crohn's disease and the complications of his Crohn's disease, they cut body parts out of him. They gave him immunosuppressant drugs. They were feeding him dairy for a tube at one stage, but his immune system was really low. His complications due to his Crohn's disease, my father had these complications for years and years, about four to five years before the complications of this disease took his life from him. So I and my dad had incredible anxiety around food and around there being toilets around and things like this. So, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that can empathize with you on that one. Alex said you had this issue before you were vegan and then you went vegan. If this issue is stopping you from being healthy as a vegan, I don't see how this issue wouldn't stop you from being healthy full stop with any kind of diet. That's if we were just going for a picnic or like hanging out by the river or something. I knew that if I was going to eat something and then go to these things, there was a good chance that I was going to run into quite a bit of trouble. And so what I would do is have a very restricted relationship to food in these instances. It meant essentially not eating or eating very minimally and safely whenever I was in one of these circumstances. So sometimes, you know, we'd be out and people would be getting food and people would notice that I'm not really eating anything or not finishing a meal that was in front of me or being really picky with my food. And a lot of the time I'd have to politely decline to eat various foods because I was just so worried that it was going to set off a reaction in my stomach. And one of the worst things about it is that it was quite unpredictable. I never knew when the stomach was going to flare up. So sometimes I'd be able to eat and be fine, but I didn't want to run that risk. I understand what he's saying here. And of course, I sympathize with Alex. That sounds like something that can probably ruin some people's like social lives. That's a terrible thing causing him suffering and anxiety and things like this. How would that be different eating any diet? My father had exactly what you're explaining. And he was an avid meat eater, cheese eater. He ate lots of processed food, my dad smoked, my dad drank, my dad did all the things like that he wanted to do around food though. He had food anxiety no matter what happened. Like no matter what diet he was eating. I just don't see how that pertains to a particular kind of diet. But let's keep watching. Maybe, look, again, I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a health expert. I just don't see why eating, I don't know, low-fiber vegan food or some kind of vegan food would be different to eating non-vegan food in that event. And so in any of these kind of circumstances, I'd be restricting my eating very greatly. And this is something that I did before I was vegan as well. So I was well adjusted to it, but essentially if I was going out and doing something, like if I was going out to a field somewhere or if I was going to give a talk, I just wouldn't really eat or I'd eat very minimally and I'd eat very safe foods that obviously weren't particularly nutritionally adequate but would help me to get some calories in. And then hopefully after I'd finish whatever it was I was doing, we'd go somewhere more suitable and I'd be able to eat more food. Now this clearly isn't ideal, right? Like this isn't a particularly healthy way to live, but it was essentially a choice between that or just turning down all of these opportunities and not doing any of these things. I'm well aware of the fact that every nutrient we need to be healthy can be found on an adequately planned vegan diet. My problem is with the practicability of this. You can imagine in a situation like the one I've just described, how it can be difficult even to make sure you're getting the right amount of calories, let alone making sure that you're on top of your macro and your micronutrient balance. Alex, before we continue, I'm just gonna say that you would have that issue either way, vegan or not. Now, what you need to do in that case is because like, how do you think you're gonna get your macro and micronutrient? You said at the start of this, you're not a nutritionist. How are you gonna get your macro and micronutrient balances correct just in any diet? What's it like in any diet? Like micronutrients, what are you gonna get them from a bit of fish? Like what do you think is like so special about non-vegan food that it's gonna provide all your macro and micronutrients, even if you have these symptoms of IBS and you can only eat a little bit of food? Like, that's what I don't get. That's what I don't get. Now, here's a quick solution because my father wasn't the only person that I have been around who's had stomach issues and there's a great, I'm gonna put the product here. It's called Shuul. Shuul, now Shuul is a liquid or powder form of, it's like a supplementary food here but it's in a powder or a drink, it's great, it's vegan. But all, here, let me just read this out to you. All ingredients listed in Shuul powder and Black Edition Shuul are low FODMAP and for this reason can be used alongside a low FODMAP diet as part of your dietary routine if you have IBS. If you have IBS and an extremely busy lifestyle where convenience is a top priority, Shuul could form a part of your eating routine to ensure you're achieving a regular meal pattern and optimal nutrition. However, as tolerance to FODMAPs can vary between individuals which I'm sure Alex has his own personal experience and I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist or a registered dietician but I'm sure there's plenty of plant-based doctors, nutritionists are Dr. Alland. Let me just grab him up for you, Alex and for anyone else who's having these issues, he's Dr. Alland Desmond and there is his, come on. Give it to me, give it to me. There he is. Dr. Alland Desmond is a gastroenterologist, a gastroenterologist and there we go. I'm not even expert enough to read what he is but he's very good on gut health and stuff like this. So check out Dr. Alland. Shuul is a great product and Shuul, let's just look at the nutrients of Shuul here for a sec. If you're worried about getting nutrients, Alex, just look at the nutrition in these bad boys. Let's just grab that. You can get ready to drink too, ready to drink and I'm sure you can, if you've got some money for some junk food here and there, you've got money for Shuul. You shouldn't be eating lots of vegan burgers and high-fatty, crappy foods anyway and convenience foods if that's what you're concerned about anyway but let me just, Shuul powder, ingredients of Shuul, let's go. So it's got like every single amino acid you can think of here. What's this chocolate? It's got all different flavors as well. Now it's got, okay, here's just one here, vitamin D, it's got vitamin D, calcium, iron, potassium, vitamin A, C, E, K, total K, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, B6, folate, vitamin B12, biotin, pan-tonot, pantothenic acid, phosphorus, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, moly, I don't even know that one. This nutrient here, molybendum is so good, I can't even pronounce it. Chloride chlorine and it's got omega-3, omega-6. It's even got medium chain triglycerides and lycopene and lutein and all this stuff like, bro, if you're worried about nutrition, you just get some fuel, bring it in a powder, you can take it with you when you contact me about France. You didn't mention that you had some type. If you just reached out to someone, like, look at the small amount of information I have on this, right? Imagine if you reached out to someone who's like an expert on gut health and who's sympathetic to your vegan philosophy that you hold and knows that you don't wanna consume animal products and just recommended you eat fuel and maybe they try to help you with the IBS and stuff, I don't see how that means that you should eat seafood and other animal products. Now it's important to stress that I don't have any health problems, at least to my knowledge, that are caused by veganism. Yeah, I mean, Alex, you seem uncomfortable here, mate, because you're going up against not just the American nutrition dietetics, like you're going up against a lot of science that just proves you wrong and a lot of anecdotes that just prove you wrong but its main thing is a lot of data that just proves you wrong anyway. But because of the fact that it is easier to get the nutrients that are required to be healthy on a non-vegan diet, which say what you like about it being easy to live healthily as a vegan, which I believe in many cases it can be and is, it is easier to not be one. Grabbing a scoop full of fuel and bringing it with you on your engagements when you're speaking engagements, right? A low FODMAP fuel, right? Something that you can just sip and get your nutrition and calories and protein and macros and micros, like you called them. What's easier than that? Really, I need someone that's like really good with health and stuff here to help Alex out. If he really wants help, if he really wants help and he really wants to stay involved with the animal movement and he wants to be vegan, Alex could just use a bit of guidance here, I reckon. And I hope this is genuine, Alex, and it wasn't to do with re-evaluating your ethical position and not thinking boycotts work and all this other stuff, even with my minimal amount of knowledge and nutrition and health and stuff. This is not really an issue that should like stimulate you to start violating animal rights and eating tortured fish again and things like this. I just don't see that here. I wasn't able to make it work. And so I ended up experiencing a lot of the typical symptoms that you hear in these kinds of videos. So these are the typical things that you hear about. I was experiencing fatigue, but at the same time as insomnia, I just wasn't sleeping properly. I was experiencing brain fog. I was unable to properly focus. Sounds like not enough calories. You might have a vitamin D deficiency that you need to look at, get your bloods done, get your full blood panel done. If you're eating not many calories, you might have other issues that stem from that, like fatigue and brain fog. If you're eating a bunch of junk food when you do eat and it's not much, then of course, you're gonna have some brain fog too. Get your bloods done if you're having these issues. Getting your blood panel done and taking away the guesswork would have helped you here, and if you, you know, it's not hard to go get a full blood panel done, like, and see if you're low on certain vitamins, just please do that. If you haven't done that, then you're just basically self-diagnosing, which is not a good thing to do. You know how many people are deficient in vitamins that are not vegan? Most of the people who are deficient in vitamins are not vegan. You know, I was experiencing all kinds of things that I found it very difficult to know what was being caused by my diet. And crucially, as I say, this isn't something that's caused by veganism. It's not caused by a vegan diet. It would have been caused if it was caused by my diet by the way that I was doing this vegan diet. I'm glad that he admitted that, which is something I said in my video, his application of this diet. Sometimes it looks like, so it seems to me like he's just fighting his battle alone and he's not asking for any like guidance or help or like help about planning diets or supplementing and things like this. Like, it seemed like you really needed to get your blood work done there, man. And if you haven't had your blood work done, still, I would still go get your blood work done now. Like now, go get it done as soon as possible. There have been various things that have happened in my personal life that have at points led to something of a mental health crisis. I don't really not say here because I'm sorry, but I'm just not going to give you the details about that. And he doesn't have to give us details about some personal crisis that he's had that's caused the mental health issues. So, yeah, he doesn't have to. There were certain things that he said that he needed to justify, like his ethical position on eating animals, supply and demand no longer works, why he's gone from an animal activist to eating animals. But in terms of him having a crisis of mental health, because something has happened that he doesn't want to talk about, is fully within his right not to talk about that. And again, crucially, I'm not trying to say that this was caused by veganism, but look, there were days when I would be eating zero calories and periods where daily I'd maybe be eating between like zero and 700 calories. Well, Alex, like if that were the case, a little bit of fuel, this stuff is calorie dense, bro, with all these nutrients in there, vitamin D, everything. And let's look at the macro nutrients of this fuel stuff. I'm not sponsored by a fuel, by the way. I'm just saying, man, like check out this stuff, dude. It's liquid drink. It's a liquid drink. You can get these pre-made. You can get them even in the supermarkets, Tesco selling, just boom, grab it out of the Tesco. Convenient for you, bros. It's 400 calories per bottle, 400 calories. It's got 22 grams of protein. It's got a little bit of fiber in there, some carbs, and it's got a bunch of vitamins and minerals. Look at that. I will even personally buy some fuel, Alex, to help him out here. It's not eating because of something that's happened in his personal life, which is, you know, that's terrible no matter what diet you're on. But being essentially unable to eat, I found that if I could stomach anything, I wanted it to be nutritionally dense. I wanted it to be something that was gonna give me the best chance of, you know, improving my physical health. Something like fuel, all right? And if you were having, and if you wanted to get your health back on track, you should take away the guesswork, get your full blood panel done, your testosterone, your vitamin status, your hormone status, everything. Get that done and then see what's going on and have a doctor sit there and review it with you and look at it and say, okay, well, your iron's really low, or this is low, or that's low, or that's too high, or, oh my God, mate, like you need to do this, this, and this. But now you've just gone, I'm gonna start eating some seafood and stuff. I don't know whether he's gone to the doctor, by the way, maybe he did get a blood panel done, maybe he did, I'm making assumptions again, maybe he did figure out something was low. Maybe the doctor told him to start eating animals again without telling him that you can get vitamin D, vitamin B12 and vitamin, he knows you can get these stuff from a supplement. So he's been around long enough, so. It's really difficult to find a balance here between trying to talk about my experience whilst trying not to make it just sound like I'm making a bunch of excuses and trying to make you feel sorry for me. I'm not gonna be able to give you all of the details of certainly the mental health stuff that I was talking about. I know that people are upset and people are angry, but the amount of vitriol that I've received, I've seen people. So Alex has gone through some stuff, right, and he doesn't have to tell us about it, and I feel bad for him in that case, but I also am an animal rights activist and he came into the movement to defend animals. He has come out with flaky excuses in his community posts for eating animals again, and he left it up to us to make assumptions, right? And there was a lot more he said in this than just I've been having some health issues. It was like, so. But on this topic here about him having some horrible stuff happening to him, I don't wanna see that happen to Alex, and you know, I hope he's okay. He's gotta expect that a bunch of people who care about, the pigs are being gas chambered right now. Dairy cows are being raped and slaughtered. The calves are being bashed in the head to death. The last thing the animals need is someone who was defending them to come out and go, you know what, I've re-evaluated my ethical stance on eating them. That is the last thing the animals need. And no matter how hard you are doing it in your life, you know for a fact that these animals that you're eating, whatever they, if they see animals, are suffering horrible deaths on the deck of a boat being dragged out of the ocean, all right, so that you can eat them. You know that, all right? So of course we're gonna come out and think of the victims, all right? You're still sitting here in the UK as a privileged human being going through some stuff. And I've been through a hell of a lot of stuff, had a loaded gun in my mouth, gonna blow my brains out. I know exactly what mental health issues are. I've been in the mental health ward before. I've been on antidepressants, antipsychotics, you name it, so I understand, right? But I also know a lot of animal rights people with mental health issues and I don't come out with statements like this. They have IBS, they might have Crohn's disease and they are vegan and animal rights activists. What you came out with was something a little different. And I saw this coming because of your rhetoric before that. If you were going through such a hard time, why are you on Michaela Peterson's channel throwing the animals under the bus and calling her a vegan by your standard? If she has to eat carnivore because of health, then she's a vegan, you know? Like that doesn't sound like, why are you doing all these speaking engagements, going through this horrible, horrible thing? That you sound pretty, you sound strong enough to put yourself through that, right, going through this horrible thing and putting yourself in these positions, but not strong enough to stay vegan for the animals or to look for a nutritionist who can help you find some fuel. You know, I just don't know, Alex. Like, although I do empathize with Alex, I'm gonna be charitable where I intuitively feel like I should be. I'm also going to be a little bit more, I've got some doubts. What I'm trying to do instead is get across the point that when I'm talking about the practicability of living a healthy plant-based diet, I'm not talking about the idea that a plant-based diet isn't or can't be healthy. What I'm trying to get across is that even if, in principle, it can be healthy and it's perfectly possible to be healthy on a plant-based diet, for various practical reasons, that might be something that's unattainable. Alex, you haven't met the burden of proof that it's unattainable. I don't think you've justified it being unattainable for some, for you. I just don't think it, I've known people to be in a much more terrible state than you and still maintain being a vegan. Like, so I just think it comes down to your commitment to want to live a lifestyle that is consistent with your ethical values. I don't think your ethical values were there anymore. That was my thing. I think you didn't have the ethical values, so therefore you were like, well, why would I even try when I could just eat animals? And also being completely misled into the point where you think eating animals will solve your problems or your health issues is, I just don't see how you would come to that conclusion. When there are many plant-based ways to help you get nutrition, there are people right now with Crohn's disease who do quite well as a vegan. Anyways, I'm not an expert on this topic, so we're gonna just keep moving along. To not recognize that, I think is a mistake and I think it's gonna do harm. What do you mean it's going to do harm to not recognize that it's unattainable to be healthy on a plant-based diet? You haven't even justified your own situation. Like, it seems to me like you didn't try enough. Like, if that were me, an animal rights activist, having some health issues, I would get my blood work done, my blood panel done, and I would see what I'm doing wrong in my life and I would try to fix it. And I'd look into these things and I would find a way. There would be no way that I would just, Man, like, I'm just gonna start eating animals because there's something about eating animals that's gonna solve my problems. And on that point, I should talk about some of the reactions that I've received just from the statement that I put out. But, I mean, you don't need me to tell you that there's been a great deal of hatred and vitriol. You can see it for yourself. Of course, what you can't see is the things that people are messaging me privately. Maybe I can show some examples on the screen. It's been relentless and sometimes from quite like established figures, like, blue-tick vegan advocates sending me messages saying that I'm, quote, fucking retarded, as well as I saw that vegan teacher said that if we were living in a time where it was still legal, she'd be calling for my public hanging. If we're in older times, I'd be calling for a public hanging, my God. You'll forgive me if I'm not gonna give you the details, certainly not of my mental health experiences when I know that there are people out there who are just waiting to essentially make content out of this. Alex, of course, I'm making content out of this. It's not, it's begrudgingly. I don't want, I didn't, you know, I was sitting there, I didn't even edit that video correctly I made about you. I had to address that as, I had to address this because you have a much bigger following than me and what you said has actual harm on animals. You're creating a bunch of doubt on people. You're throwing the, you know, this re-evaluating my ethical position in eating animals. Of course I have to stick with defending animals here, Alex. And I hope you understand that. I don't care if you don't understand, of course you would understand it. I don't agree with people just coming out. Well, look, I'm gonna say this, right? What you're doing to animals is, it's egregious, it's cruel. You think it's justified. Other people think it's not justified, all right? People who defend animals will defend them and they are coming at you in defense of the animals. That's what I was seeing there. Now, some of the comments are, don't really know what to say about some of those comments. That's not the way I would address this, but you've got a lot of people who are angry and traumatized. They have witnessed trauma from seeing what happens to the animals that you have re-evaluated your ethical position on eating in your community post. So you can understand, you left that quite open for people. Now, you're gonna have a bunch of people coming out defending those animals, aren't you? And some people defend animals in a apologetic manner, other people defend them in a relentless, unapologetic manner because they've had enough of people coming into the movement, proclaiming to care about this issue, and then throwing the animals under the bus because they're too flaky to find out if they have some deficiency, they're not rectifying, or if it's something they're doing wrong, or some other issue, they change their mind one day, right? Or activists, and they change their mind one day. So people are just sick of that. Animal rights activists are sick of it. Where is that principle, that strong principle? You lost it before you made that post. Don't try to say, oh, look at this, look what the vegans are doing now. They're attacking me because I've got this, because I've just made this post. That's all I did. No, it was the impact of that post that it had. We're fighting a justice issue right now, all right? And there's so many carnivores, and you're up there cucking to Michaela Peterson. Oh my God, Michaela Peterson, because you're on some, where is the, why be so apologetic on her platform when you had a chart, and you did say some really good things on there, but you also said some stupid things. It's like, pick a side, bro. You know what I'm saying? But, yeah, like, don't say, oh, the vegans are being mean to me now. You've seen my video, okay? Yes, you're gonna have some people, every movement has the relentless, unapologetic antagonists, okay? Every movement has them. And we're talking about animals being decapitated, suffering in gas chambers, stabbed to death. I don't have to tell you what we're talking about here. It's very, very, very serious. Imagine if you said, oh, you know what? I was once, you know, I was once against child abuse, but I've decided that I've re-evaluated my ethical position on abusing children, and now I'm gonna abuse children again. Would you, you know, if you've got a bit of stick back, would you think, oh, well, maybe, all I did was make that post, like, come on, mate. Come on, mate, you have to, if I ever said this, I mean, I wouldn't, but if I did, you know what's gonna happen? The same thing, so you ain't special. You're not unique. I've been doing YouTube a long time. Like, I've built up a thick skin to this kind of thing. I can deal with mean comments, but I've had a lot of people reaching out to me to check that I'm okay. You know, people seeing the responses and messaging me to be like, man, like, are you doing all right? I mean, this looks horrendous. You know, I was considering reaching out to Alex. I thought I'd make a public YouTube video because I was kind of losing faith in Alex anyway to when I seen a bunch of his videos. And I didn't respond to him straight away. I did do a lot of my responding in the video I made about Alex. He came out and made a community post, I'm gonna start eating animals again without reaching out to me. I wasn't gonna go see if he's all right. I needed to respond to it, right? I thought, you know, I'm gonna respond to it. I begrudgingly did. I thought, God, I wish this could just go away because of the impact this might have on animals, but I come out to defend animals, right? There was no, hey, Joey, man, do you know any plant-based doctors that can help me with this? I've got IBS, I've got problems. I would have kept it completely serious. I would have signed an NDA for you, bro. You know, don't victimize yourself in the face of this, mate, please. And a lot of it has been horrendous. But as I say, I can deal with it. The thing that I want people to be careful of here is like, how is this gonna look to other people? Oh, you're worried about the optics, cosmic skeptic. How does it look that you've reevaluated your ethical stance on eating animals after defending them for three years? How does that look? You're worried about the optics of people attacking who they consider to be now an animal abuser. You cared more about what that looks like compared to what your community post looks like. Like, I still want to encourage people to try veganism. You don't try veganism, Alex. You don't try it. That's what you did. I tried veganism. It's like an experiment. I tried veganism. It's a justice movement. You're either against animal rights or you support animal rights, all right? There's no trying veganism. This is a movement that it's not gonna go away because you left. I promise you that. I still want to encourage people to join the movement against animal suffering, against factory farming. We're not just against animal suffering and against factory farming. We're against animals having their rights violated, all right? So it's an animal rights movement. And it was always an animal rights movement. Funny that veganism was founded on the principle of animal rights, okay? So yeah, it's not some utilitarian movement and we just care about suffering. If the animals don't suffer and you shoot them in the back of the head and eat them, that is against the ethical principle of veganism. But imagine somebody's on the fence about becoming a vegan. They're not really sure whether it's gonna be for them or not. And then they see what's happened here. This here, Alex, you're really losing me here, mate. You're really losing me here, mate. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. So I saw in a pig get gas chambered and I was like, you know what? I wasn't really sure whether opposing gas chambers was really for me. But then I seen someone be mean to someone who decided to eat these pigs out of this gas chamber. So I thought, you know what? They're gonna be really mean to me if I oppose gas chambers. So I'm not gonna oppose gas chambers, mate. You do not know what you're talking about. You should shut your mouth when it comes to what activists ought to do, right? Because that is hilariously dumb. Imagine being in the times of slavery when, and yeah, I know you're going through stuff here, mate, but now you're overstepping the line. Imagine going through the times of slavery when, and it was like, you know what? I would join the abolitionist movement, but I might just stay supporting slavery because you've seen how mean those abolitionists get when he stops supporting slavery and then go back to supporting slavery. They get really mean. So I don't know. I'm gonna stay supporting slavery, actually, yeah. They see somebody who says, look, this wasn't working for me for various reasons and I need to let you know about that and seeing this kind of response, seeing this kind of this hatred and unforgiving vitriol. That's not what you said, Alex. You didn't say it wasn't working for me. You said I'm gonna be, I spent, for some time, I've been reevaluating my ethical position on eating animals, but what you will not know, which is something people have also noticed, but what you will not know is I've also been struggling privately to maintain a healthy plant-based diet. So these two things came together, which came first, the chicken or the egg, remember? And you also said that boycotts don't work. You also said some other dumb shit. What is that person gonna think? They're gonna think I obviously don't want a part of this because is that gonna be me if I then end up changing my mind? So I joined the anti-racism movement, right? You know, so against racism, but then I decided to be a racist again and the whole movement just started lashing out at me for being a racist, you know what I mean? Like, you know what? I'm never joining an anti-racist movement ever again. Like, this is what you sound like, bro. You're forgetting this is not a diet that you try. You keep jumping between it being a justice issue and a diet that you try. It's really, mate, yeah, you're losing me here. I understand the anger. I understand the disappointment, but believe me, it's not a good look. This is what a lot of people do, like, back off, man. Back off, like, back off. This isn't a good look for your movement, man. This isn't a good look. Bro, you're gonna get attacked by animal rights people if you start supporting the violation of animal rights again. If you start saying, hey, it's okay to eat animals. Like I said, if we were an anti-child abuse movement and you started saying, hey, it's okay to abuse kids, we're gonna come after you, aren't we? And it would be justified, wouldn't it? Now, I'm not saying everything everyone said is okay. I'm just saying that you have to expect that when you go against the movement that's there to protect animals and you start making posts on whether it's okay to eat them. Not a good look. And a lot of people have said, look, you know, it's so much worse because you've got this platform, but, you know, if you're commenting this kind of stuff underneath that platform, all of these thousands of people are gonna see your comments. Alex, you've got way more moral culpability than the people commenting have. Don't even try to compare it. So, of course, there are still gonna be people who think that this is inadequate. It's inadequate because now you're trying to put the blame on the people in your DMs because they're being mean to you when you're, you know, that's why it's inadequate, mate. And it's also inadequate because I could do five minutes of research and find nutritionally adequate meal replacements that are low FODMAP that could potentially help you with your nutritional requirements. And it took me a small amount of time and you could have asked any nutritionists about this. You know what I mean? So that's another thing. And if you're having trouble with IBS, right, you're gonna have that same trouble no matter which diet you choose. And if you had all these symptoms, why didn't you get a blood work done? And your first thing was, you know what? I'm gonna start eating animals again. There's something in fish that I can't get from a supplement. What is it? I don't know. There's no magic, so you start off, there's no magical nutrient that you can't get from a plant-based diet. And then you go, well, you know what? My solution to all these ailments is I'd better not be vegan. What I really wanted to do is just expand on my post and say, look, this is the experience that I've had. It's not that I think that you can't get all the nutrients you need from plant-based sources, as some people have assumed, and quite understandably, that I meant. It's not what I meant. I was talking about the practicability of maintaining such a diet and that you shouldn't come to me for nutritional advice. We definitely won't and I implore anyone not to. And I wouldn't come to you for any kind of advice, really, because it seems like you're all over the place. It seems like you've got some issues going on. It seems like you're doing a little bit of, like, switching the blame here onto people who are angry, that you've gone back to eating the victims that they are defending. It seems like that you haven't done enough due diligence with it when it comes to your own personal health. Look, personal health is a very touchy subject. I get it. But, mate, if you really cared about animals, you'd get blood work done and try to get that solved. So let's keep going. But I'm not trying to offer you some kind of advice here. One thing that I said at the end of the statement that I put out was that I was sorry, especially to people who'd become vegan activists or advocates on my account. And a lot of people misunderstood that. I'm not sorry that I've turned people vegan. I'm not sorry that I've made people advocate for this cause. I'm just trying to say that I'm sorry to them for the disappointment that they might and do feel because of what I'm doing here. I'm not sorry that they've become vegan activists. Yeah, I thought that as well at the start, but then I actually changed my mind on that. I thought that maybe I misinterpreted him, so I did say that in the video. But that's not the only thing you said, Alex, that you were sorry about. I'm especially sorry to those who are now vegan activists on the account of my content. You actually said, I do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if I haven't been able to keep up to that diet myself. That's what you said as well. So you didn't even want people to be vegan. And in this video, you're saying maybe you should be vegan. So which one is it? All right, I've got my own personal health issues just cause I can't be vegan. That doesn't mean you can't be healthy as a vegan, right? But here you're saying I do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if I've been unable to keep up that diet myself. Two inconsistent things. Alex, you should review this stuff before you put it out. And I hope that vegans don't see me as their enemy on this front. Like I'm hoping we can still work together in our advocacy here. I think honestly, that would make you a huge hypocrite, but I still think you could help. If you could help us abolish this industry, I do think you need to speak to someone to do with your health stuff. I don't think you've been getting good advice if you have been getting advice. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening. I didn't really know how to begin the video. I don't really know how to end it. I can only say thanks for listening. Thanks for at least trying to understand. I'm gonna talk to the camera. Alex, I appreciate you making that video. I appreciate you not throwing the animals completely under the bus with that video. You seem confused. Your video's inconsistent with your community post. I'm glad that you didn't go full anti-vegan. It's much different to what I've seen with other people's ex-vegan videos. So it seems like Alex is still on the fence about this and what he's gonna do. I don't know. But yeah, it seems like he's tuned. Maybe he had some time to think about things. He's listened to everyone's videos. I think he has listened to comments and videos. So look, Alex Huell. I'm not sponsored by Huell. Blood panel. Someone who can help you. Dr. Alan Desmond in the UK. Fantastic. Tell him Joey Carves from Recommended You. And look, let's see how this evolves. Yeah, I hope that what you got going on in your personal life gets better soon. Yeah, you were such a good voice for animals, mate. You were such a good voice for animals. But that utilitarian crap, throw it in the bin. You gotta have some rights in there. But anyway, that's my video. That's my response. I only responded to it. Well, I'm gonna respond to it because I'm an animal rights activist and one of the biggest animal rights platforms in the world, you know, so I had to address it. I'm sure Alex knows that. Let's get back to defending the animals. Let's get back to debunking the crap and let's get back to the fight.