Professional vegan athlete James Newbury, who has been crowned as Australia’s Fittest Man for four consecutive years, has blasted critics of The Game Changers for ‘chasing the dollar’.

Newbury, who came fifth place in the 2019 Crossfit Games, made the comment when discussing the film’s backlash on the Plant Based News podcast with PBN‘s Co-Founder Robbie Lockie.

‘Going against the grain’

“There are few people that would just like to create a bit of controversy just to get an extra couple of clicks on their YouTube channel or get an extra bit of exposure through the media, or whatever it may be, just through going against the grain and saying ‘look this is a complete lie’,” the athlete said.

“So [the criticism is] not surprising,” he continued. “I think a lot of people are just chasing the dollar and, you know, I think thats a big reason why we’ve been taken down the path of ‘you have to eat animal-product, you know, this is the healthy option’- because theres such an exuberant amount of money in doing that.”

Despite the backlash, Newbury argued that The Game Changers had caused more positive change than negative – adding that you will ‘always get a little bit of negative [response] no matter what you do’.

You can listen to the full podcast here