The Cast
Tesla Lobo
Tesla Lobo, a 22-year-old college student who lives with her family in Queens, NY. Her Honduran mom thinks people will say Tesla is crazy if she doesn’t eat meat. Tesla also doesn’t like vegetables or beans, but she does like a challenge.
Brian Flegel
Brian Flegel, a bacon-loving, bartending bachelor from California who eats out most of the time and lives in Harlem. He thinks his German mother’s cooking is the best and jokes that vegans are from outer space.
Ellen Mausner
Ellen Mausner, a psychiatrist/stand-up comic who is raising daughter Debbie and son Mark as a single mom and rarely has time to cook. She loves kosher hot dogs but not the cholesterol they contain since she has heart disease in her family.
Also Featuring (in Order of Appearance):
Marisa Miller Wolfson
Marisa Miller Wolfson, the narrator/vegan tour guide who leads Tesla, Brian, and Ellen down the vegan rabbit hole into a whole new plant-powered world.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D., a board-certified family physician who has helped thousands of patients prevent and reverse disease in his 20+ years of practice. His bestselling signature book Eat to Live has been reprinted more than 20 times and was recently revised and updated in 2011. Other books include Fasting and Eating Your Health, Disease-Proof Your Child, and Eat for Health. He gives the Vegucated film subjects a Healthy Eating 101 crash course and conducts medical tests on them before and after the six weeks to see how a vegan diet affects their blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight.
Julia Spagnoli
Julia Spagnoli, a former patient of Dr. Fuhrman’s and triple heart attack victim who lost 80 pounds and regained her health on a nutrient-rich vegan diet. She tells Brian, Ellen, and Tesla about how she began a love affair with kale and other heart-healthy vegetables.
Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Williams, a bodybuilder who bulks up on beans, tofu, seitan, tempeh, and other muscle-building plant foods for natural bodybuilding competitions. He shows Brian what a plant-powered athlete can do.
Jason Tracy
Jason Tracy, co-founder of OohMahNee Farm Animal Sanctuary, a haven for rescued farm animals in Pennsylvania. He introduces the subjects to some of the personalities on the farm, including Babe the rescued pig and Devlin the rescued sheep.
Cayce Mell
Cayce Mell, also a co-founder of OohMahNee Farm Animal Sanctuary. She shares some of the perks of raising a vegan child and takes Brian and Tesla on a tour they will never forget.
T. Colin Campbell
T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University and co-author of The China Study, the bestselling book that sums up his research on the China Project, which is considered the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. What he discovered during the course of this 20-year-plus project challenged everything he thought about nutrition growing up on a dairy farm. He presents some of his findings and the findings of others that don’t get as much attention from press or from policy makers who sit on committees that determine government nutrition recommendations. Having sat on some of these committees himself, he has special insight into some of the controversial reasons why this might be.
Stephen Kaufman, M.D.
Stephen Kaufman, M.D., Chair of the Christian Vegetarian Association, is well-equipped to answer practicing Christian Tesla’s questions about his interpretation of the Bible as it relates to eating and to a larger vision of a more compassionate world.
Howard Lyman
Howard Lyman, director of the documentary Mad Cowboy, the book under the same title, and a more recent book, No More Bull, was a fourth generation cattle rancher/feedlot operator from Montana who turned his family’s small organic farm into a giant feedlot operation. He witnessed firsthand how factory farming destroyed his land and, over time, became a vegan advocate. He explains how our increasing global appetite for animal foods is “forking” the environment.
Milton Mills, M.D.
Milton Mills, M.D., Associate Director of Preventative Medicine, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, sits down with Brian and Tesla to answer the inevitable question, “If animal foods are bad for us, why did we evolve to eat them?”
Jasmin Singer
Jasmin Singer, vegan blogger from Our Hen House, and animal advocate Moni Woweries offer a shoulder to cry on and words of advice when Tesla struggles with the biggest challenge new vegans face.