Plant Chat: Santino Panico, Filmmaker, From the Ground Up
It’s an honor to have Santino Panico, filmmaker for “From The Ground Up,” on my Plant Chat today. I thoroughly loved talking with him about his film, which tackles the roots of vegan and vegetarianism amongst elite athletes. The film was expanded to VOD/Digital platforms globally on January 9, 2018. In the feature, Santino, a former meat-eating college football player, goes on a journey to rediscover the athlete within—this time, as a vegan. As he meets with vegetarian and vegan elite competitors, his story about food and sport expands to confront the social norms and far-reaching impacts of food choices. Continue reading about Santino’s inspiration for this film, as well as his thoughts about plant-based eating for male athletes—and you too.
What inspired you to create this film?
I got my inspiration from two places. The initial emphasis was after I decided to adhere to a strictly vegan diet. I had been an athlete my entire life, and when I was going to the gym with my friends, who were fighters, and playing for the NFL, I would ask them if they knew any athletes that eat this way. At the top level, there was really only one—Mac Danzig—at the time. This planted a seed in my brain. Fast forward to when I had my MS from NYU, and I was working in an investment firm environment as a consultant. I was disappointed with my approach. I was teaching about environmental problems, but I was unhappy with what I was doing at work and that it was not having an impact that I wanted it to have. I noticed several documentary films on being vegan, and I thought that maybe it could inspire people to make a change by letting athletes tell their stories.
Tell us a little bit about the process of making your film?
I learned how to pitch and how to write a treatment for a film. I am like one of those people that dives in. I don’t use my brain, I use my gut and just go, which is good and bad. After reading what I could on it, it wound up taking four and a half years to make the film, not because of inexperience and adversity, but because of roadblocks that caused it to stall. I started writing treatments in 2012. I pitched a storyboard, and got funding in 2013, four and a half years ago. In 2013, I started filming. I approached the athletes, and we were all passionate about the subject.
Why do you think people are more interested in plant-based eating?
People want to make a dent in curbing climate change, and to develop laws to protect animals. We are in a constant state of health crisis, and people are starting to vote with their dollars. As consumers, we are starting to buy healthy food, and create a healthy income for healthy food. It’s interesting that the GDP doesn’t account for death through disease.
What is the deal with meat eating and men?
Meat eating has been coupled with wealth for centuries, going back to the Renaissance, meat equaled wealth. It was about males that were wealthy—fat males were a sign of wealth. Meat eating is masculine—eating the fat and flesh of animals is a masculine thing. American society associates hunting with masculinity—hunting and control of the land. A year or two ago, we were ready as a society to move on from the argument coalescing meat and masculinity. It’s not the way things are now, people are realizing a lot more about these roles, we are looking at sexes at the same level now, we are moving past stereotypes about what man is and masculinity is. More people are educated about this, and understand that if they eat a lot of red meat it will clog their arteries. Men were sold the idea; you see the burger commercials, where females are used as a sexual object, with ketchup dripping down their bikinis—they are literally selling the model as meat. Now we are seeing plant-based diets more and more. You can see vegan NBA athlete Kyrie Irving on a commercial. It is slowly changing as more people become educated and see that it’s not about being tough, it’s not about being bigger and stronger.
True strength comes from compassion and other Earth—that defines masculinity.
In America, males are constantly trying to prove something to their fathers—trying to show that they have bigger guns, that they are tougher, and what they have to prove. The marketing machine understands this and it skews the picture. We need education, we need PSAs so that people can see that it is not the case.
The new generation gets this more, it takes time. One of the things we do in the vegan world is that we are too dogmatic, and place a lot of blame. I try not to be. We need to keep in our minds that post World War II in American suburbs meat became affordable, and it was the rise of the middle class and policy makers that thought it was the right thing to do to eat more meat. They didn’t think it was going to be an issue with carbon and obesity. Now we know, we have research to show it’s a problem.
When we did preproduction for the movie, we pre-interviewed the athletes over the phone, and it was really interesting to me. We talked about masculinity, but that this lies in compassion. The most masculine person in the film is a fighter, and he did it all for animal welfare. The majority of the athletes we include in the film were vegan for animals. This tough, brilliant thinking about putting animals over their careers blew my mind. This idea that meat eating was attached to masculinity was why I wanted to do the film. I talked to a MMA fighter in the film—there are not many more people tougher or more masculine than that!
I love that you feature people from all backgrounds and ethnicities in your film. What are your thoughts on this?
It is interesting to see more African Americans embrace veganism. When I started in 2012, the polls showed that the people who identified with vegetarian and vegan diets were middle and upper class males—affluent white males. The thing that was fulfilling for me was to see the influx of minorities eating this way. African Americans like Kyrie Irving, Wilson Chandler, and Chis Campbell. I’m very hopeful about the future, that this is going to be more than just white males.
It’s exciting; my goal is to show that Latinos, whites, African Americans, males and females—a wide variety of people—are eating this way. It’s not just limited to a few. Many people have the connotation that vegans are hippies with long hair—a white dude wearing flip-flops and surfing. But they are intelligent, genuine, honest people who gave me all of themselves. It was inspiring and incredible to see these athletes, the society gods of today, and I didn’t know how they would react to me. But everyone was so up front and honest; I was really fortunate to work with these people.
What is your primary goal for making this movie?
My goals are pretty simple. You and I are the converted, we believe in this lifestyle, and are educated, and do our research, but not a lot of people have the luxury to do that. Some of the information has been out there, and people know it. I wanted to get it to people like my father, my grandmother, and my mother. It’s illogical and naive to believe that everyone on the planet is going to eat vegan. But it is a win for us if someone starts with Meatless Monday, and then they take away red meat, or only eat it occasionally, that’s a win. I don’t want to preach to the choir, I’m not judgmental and conclusive about whether you want to do this for the long haul. No matter what, we are in this together. We are brothers and sisters, and we want to be inclusive with our message. We want to get as many people on board as we can. This is an extremely personal choice, and I want to try to guide them. I am trying to ask people to come on this journey with me, as opposed to telling them.
What did you find motivated most of the athletes in the film to eat a plant-based diet?
I found that it was a mixed bag in terms of what the athletes’ motivation for being vegan was. When I first started, it seemed the majority of the athletes eating this way were doing it because they couldn’t stand the way animals are treated. Now we are seeing that athletes in the mainstream are doing this for health. Athletes in the outdoors, such as climbers, who tread on that land, it’s about climate change and the impact they see is up front and personal. It is dependent upon the athlete, but the trend is more mainstream in sports now. More are doing it for anti-inflammation—the whole foods, plant-based diet. Research shows anti-inflammatory benefits for plant foods, and the body is your canvas—your paintbrush to form your masterpiece to make it the best. I see many athletes come at vegan eating first through animal welfare, and then more for health, and more for the environment.
Recovery in sports is right now in its infancy. Research shows plant-based diets increase performance and recovery, which means you can output more, you’re going to perform at a higher level. Personally, when I played football, and when I rolled around no matter how hard I trained in the off season to get prepared, my legs were always heavy and sore after two days. I just crashed. Fast forward to being vegan, and I had never run distance in my life, as an anaerobic athlete. I started training to do marathons, lifting once a day, running twice a day, and never did my legs feel not recovered for the next run. As I’m preparing for a marathon, I’m thinking back to my football days, when an ice bath didn’t help my legs. Now I’m thinking that I can’t wait to get back on the road.
The closer my diet is to the ground, to whole plants, nuts, seeds, fruits—as close to ground and a natural state as possible—that it can do wonders on your body. Food is medicine.
When I got done playing football, I had a hard time losing my football mass—my neck, girth, and legs. When I went vegan, everything shed off me. There is something connected to that—my knees used to kill me, but when I went vegan I dropped the weight, and the top of my knee caps no longer hurt. I had no shin splints. I couldn’t believe how much better my joints felt. Now I can run marathons and pound the pavement in New York City.
How has the film been received?
The feedback on the film has been interesting. We played this movie to 1,500 participants to gain critical feedback, and we absorbed the criticism for when we were ready to release the movie. We had several iterations of the film we showed to test groups, family, and friends, and the overall feedback was very positive. It was the best feeling of fulfillment to get good feedback from people who were vegan or not vegan—people felt they had not been preached to with the film. I showed up at the premiere in LA, and there was such enthusiasm. People in the theater weren’t all vegan, and I knew that if I showed a cow getting slaughtered, people like my dad would check out. That was in the back of my mind, but the feedback we received was fulfilling. I’ve been appreciative of everyone’s opinions of the film. I hope it doesn’t offend anyone, and I hope people will watch it with an open mind. I am a first time filmmaker, so this is my first rodeo, and I don’t know the ropes.
What does the future hold for you?
I really love the film world, it’s my favorite medium of art and it can be the most impactful. Everyone is busy, and not everyone can read or research things like you and I can. Not everyone has that luxury or energy to do this. I want to continue to make films that are impactful and that share social commentary. In the vegan world, I am not trying to make a food product or formula from the movie, but I want to do something that could live on from this legacy. I want to write a how-to guide and cookbook for athletes that want to transition to a plant-based diet. We want to help them understand how to calculate calories, get antioxidants, and all of the things that go into recipes. I don’t want to make money off of it, as I didn’t want to make money for the movie either. I wanted to share my passion, and I hope the movie serves as a “why” to go forward, and this can serve as a “how”.