lizhe_05

Rather than a documentary, I would rather call this title a vegan or "whole-food, plant-based diet" propaganda film. It does not make an effort to present a balanced story, cite reliable sources (like professors at a medical school) or give you a comprehensive overview of the food it mentions. I cannot see any intention of this movie actually educating people about nutrition or health. Rather, it promotes vegetables throughout the movie and cherry-picks negative information about meat, which is not how things actually are, with the hope to scare you into giving up eating meat all together.

It shares many of the fundamental fallacies of "What the Health", so I do not really want to get deep into them. The narrative is same: conspiracy theories, scaremongering, extreme cases (e.g. 500 pound guy), "common people" telling their life story in the most dramatic way, physicians explaining science who are actually authors and speakers for advocating veganism and benefit from such activities. You hardly find a professor in a medical school or nutrition science department of a university, who gives you a more comprehensive overview of academic opinions of nutrition, in these propaganda films. The real conspiracy is that these people (physicians, speakers, authors and chefs etc) try to link everything to diet without talking about other equally important factors, totally ignore the benefits of meat and dramatize the potential danger of meat, so that you can be scared and then tricked into buying their vegan diets or even their treatment programs.

As for this film specifically, the plot is just a mess. Massive amount of "statistics", interviews and video clips just pour towards you without a clear outline or any structure, which is even worse than an endless lecture. There are way too many "real life cases" where protagonists having several health issues talk about their experience, which are just repetitive and boring. There are also so many short physician interviews about a lot of things that you lose track of what this film is really about. It is more similar to grandmother's nagging, so you can imagine what a terrible experience it is to watch this movie. Several of the physicians from "What the Health" have showed up, so you more or less know what this film is like before even watching it. This movie relates everything, from lupus to erection dysfunction, to your diet. I am really terrified by this! lol. Plus, if you just use a bit of your brain, you will know that the "Cleveland Clinic" stuff is just blatant advertisement, period.

IMDb declined my first submission of the review, citing "violating guidelines", but I do not really think it fit into that category, so I hope IMDb staff did not do that out of personal bias. The producers should really think clearly if this is the way to tell the world their ideals, and if they should be doing it at all.