Plant-based diets are becoming increasingly popular in Southern California.

Thanks, in no small part, to famous folks like NBA veteran and Beyond Meat investor John Salley, who raves about the benefits.

The four-time basketball champ, wearing a shirt that says “Eat What Elephants Eat,” says he became a vegan in 1991 after his first colonic. The doctor who performed the procedure gave him books on veganism.

“Especially being a professional athlete, you want to feed the human body the thing that makes you work at the optimal level and in order to do that, you have to give it the optimal food,” he said.

As a vegan and professional athlete, people were skeptical, but it didn’t take long for him to switch his thinking from animal protein to plant-based protein.

“The truth is, you do need protein. You do need amino acids. You do need B12 and B6. And that’s the set-up,” he said. “You can get protein in [a number] of things – way more than you can from a dead animal part.”

He said the hardest thing to give up was pizza. But that won’t be for long. He is working on opening a pizzeria in Compton called Planet Health that will serve vegan food, sell clothes and provide a farmer’s market seven days a week.

As an early investor in the plant-based meat substitute Beyond Meat, he said he welcomes the competition of companies like Impossible Burger.

“I’m happy that more people are pushing the plant-based narrative. What I would like is for everybody to pay attention to the plants we’re getting. You don’t want plants with herbicides, pesticides, you don’t want GMOs. You don’t want that in your body,” he said. “Period.”

He said there are many reasons to be a vegan.

“I save 7,500 land animals a year, from death, by me staying on this. I save, anybody being on a plantation, in slaughter, I do not push that thought. My cholesterol is lower, my prostate is in place, I had a colonoscopy and I have no polyps, I’m 55-years-old, I’m the same weight I was in 1989, the fire in my belly is still there. My whole house is vegan and we really don’t run into sicknesses.”

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