Brian Sanders lost both of his parents around the time he turned thirty. He tells Tab that those losses helped set him on a long search into food and health. He was active, but he was also noticing changes in his own body and wanted to understand the choices he was making every day.
That search became Food Lies, his documentary project, and a growing body of interviews and conversations about nutrition. Brian explains why he questions conventional messaging around saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal foods. He shares his own approach to eating and the arguments he has pursued through his work, including his concerns about processed foods and the influence of the food industry.
Tab brings his family's routines into the discussion, from making food at home to deciding what his children eat. They talk about the work of turning an interest into a habit: shopping, cooking simple meals, and finding an approach they can maintain while traveling or spending time with other people. Brian describes a gradual change in what he wanted to eat rather than a daily contest with willpower.
His interest in health also led to a question about where people could spend time together. Much of his work happened online, and he missed having a place to meet people who shared his interests. He describes moving toward that idea in Austin through Sapien Center, where conversation, work, exercise, and time together could happen in the same setting.
Brian and Tab discuss how food choices become part of a person's identity, and how easily a conversation about dinner can turn into assumptions about politics or beliefs. Brian also explains how the documentary expanded into a series as the questions and interviews accumulated. The project he describes is still being developed at the time of this recording.
For Brian, the community gives those online conversations somewhere to land. Someone can close a laptop, join the people nearby, and carry on a discussion face to face. He wanted a place like that when he was living in Los Angeles. In Austin, he began building one.
Health and nutrition views discussed are the speakers' perspectives, not individualized medical advice.
