What the Health

Last year, near my 18th birthday..I stumbled upon a documentary while researching the ill effects of animal agriculture and environmental destruction, got to watch "Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret" from the same directors and writers. It changed my life, basically changed the way I lived my life.

After discovering the big ugly lie that we are told about how the environmental crisis is all and just because of the fossil fuels. It goes on uncovering how the majority of us eat is killing the planet. I went full vegan, right then and there with my family of five. The FACTS were in front of me. Peer- reviewed studies. I highly recommend everybody to watch that.

Now this one is sort of a sequel to Cowspiracy. Brings us to the next big issue effecting everybody but in a more personal way. HOW YOUR DIET IS KILLING YOU! The best kept secret in medicine is that your body wants to heal itself, if given the right chance and conditions. It was lovely to see all my superheroes in one feature: Dr. Micheal Greger, Caldwell Esselstyn, Neal Bernard and many more. This is a perfect documentary to show to your friends and family and I don't this any sane person would turn away from this and not at the least consider veganism as a way of life.

As I like to put it, you go vegan for a reason and stay for a hundred.

I found this while looking for information to counter "Fat Fiction", a documentary promoting low carbs and high fat diet ("Keto" diet...which can cause kidney stones, by the way) for its health benefits, which seemed too good to be true. "What the Health" started with facts about diabetes costs--a good place to start a discussion of diet--but it deteriorated fast and lost me completely when it defended sugar.

Quickly it seemed this is promoting a vegan diet, but then it diverted to impact on the environment of raising farm animals. Then it became about civil rights and raising farm animals being institutional racism. Finally, big Farms and big Pharma get a zing along with old smoky industries. Can't argue with zinging big pharma, but let's try and focus. Are you making a movie about eating healthy? Or about saving the environment from pig and cow poop? Or is it about saving minorities from having to live near pig farms? Or is it about corporate agriculture? Or greedy drug companies? Corporate greed generally?

In the end, I could only stand about half of what the movie maker put on the screen. The fake ADA guy was the worst. How about just discussing legitimate dietary problems. Oh, I'm a vegetarian. After seeing these two movies, I'm investigating the Mediterranean style diet that seems to have allowed people to live longer and have less heart disease in Greece and Italy.

OK. I give it an 8 not for presenting an objective and unbiased position (its HIS documentary guys, not a bloody research paper). I give it an 8 because it raised a couple of huge points that most of the critics seemed to sweep over. I'm going to premise the rest of my comments here by noting that I believe the biggest enemy to a rational and logical discussion about the very, life changing issue of diet is emotion. At the end of the day we all want to have long health lives, no? So, lets discuss it. This guy had a crack at it so good on him.

It is up to us to draw our own conclusions. But again there are some big take aways here despite its apparent biased position that people seem to miss. Firstly, the collusion between food companies and apparent government authorities/bodies or any central body responsible for providing lifesaving and preventative information? They should be completely and fully independent and must be for them to have any credibility whatsoever. And they clearly do not so take everything they say with a grain of salt.

Point 2: Is the science he made reference to all encompassing? Absolutely not. But at least there were some references and citations to some studies to consider (and they did not say sugar wasn't bad for you). Regarding comments from the doctors. Well, yes they are providing their personal experience but I think it safe to say they have direct experience dealing with these problems and as practitioners of health they do so based on science so quite likely they've done extensive research so I don't fully discount what they have to say. And what is their vested interest? Well, besides promoting themselves they are promoting an alternate consideration to a healthy life style. And here's the thing. As Americans, we have a dreadfully poor track record when it comes to health and fitness compared to others in the G20. Clearly there is a lot of information floating around about diet and much of it influenced or engineered toward a specific message for the sake of the almighty dollar. I suggest we all focus on starting there in solving this problem before we can even think about anything else so we can get some honest, objective, credible science on this critical topic.

It is amazing how people reject new information and claim that this documentary is just vegan propaganda but they do not complain about the propaganda that raised them to eat meat, milk, cheese, and consume medicines for every little discomfort.

Loved the film.

The negative reviewers here did not watch the full documentary. This documentary is an evidence-based and that's fact. Non USA Government funded research (what I call agendasearch) is presented in this documentary. Without getting too biased I can tell you as a clinician what I have seen a plant-based diet do is amazing. "Look at the research and facts presented and go look for yourself." That was the message I received watching this.

I would have liked to see arguments from the other side, but when your living in a nation that has 30 million people with diabetes it is hard to listen to what has been preached during the rise of so many of these chronic and autoimmune diseases anymore. If you graphed meat consumption starting after WWI as one variable alongside the rise of disease they would both correlate nicely.

When we see a documentary that helps explain the rise of trillion dollar business we can begin to understand our health was never considered from the beginning. Watch this again and do some more digging on your own if you gave this a negative review.