What the Health

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.

Anyone who left a 7* or less rating just isn't getting it, sadly. Or they didn't watch the entire thing, or they love our government. This is not a vegan propaganda. This is entirely about all the crap we don't realize we are eating, and how it kills us, and also how eating a plant based diet is soooooo healthy. I mean come on people. You honestly don't understand how eating a plant based diet is so much better for us? Really?! You think all the animals we kill to eat are so healthy and holy and blessed and make sure that they don't allow any crap into their bodies?! Our world is overpopulated so we need to mass produce the animals. How to do that? Steroids, antibiotics, not caring about how they're raised, not thoroughly and gently treating them all as they need to be treated because we are eating them. I am very saddened at how many negative reviews there are. That's a shame. You think we all get cancer just because? Just for the heck if it? NO. It comes from somewhere you fools. What do we do the most on our lives? Eat. Just sit back and think about it. Y'all are just to ignorant, naive and LAZY to eat a plant based diet. God forbid you do something to make a complete change to your life.

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.

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.

I got to see the world premiere in NYC followed by a Q&A with the directors. I found it very captivating. The documentary entertains, shocks, informs, angers and inspires you. If you watch how they try to investigate health organizations and medical facilities, I think you'll be baffled by the frankness with which they refuse to discuss important information regarding saving people's lives. The personal stories in the film give you hope that there is a better way to how we are going about our diet and health care. We can have a better option than just suddenly dying of cancer or heart disease after a few decades of life if the information, such as in this documentary, would be exposed to the public. I hope people will take a look at the significance of diet after watching this. People would not demonize carbs and sugar as much if they would realize what they're calling carbs contains tons of fat. Pizza is not a carb; it is carbs with a bunch of fat from cheese and processed meat and oil. Potatoes get a bad wrap, but people cover them in butter, sour cream, cheese, bacon, salt, oil and any other unhealthy food you could think of. The combo of fats and carbs leaves your body unable to handle the carbohydrates as they cannot be absorbed into your cells; that is how diabetes arises. People don't even understand what a true high-carb diet entails: plain potatoes, rice, oats, lots of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, without adding salt, oil, meat and dairy to all their meals. I hope this film clears that up for people.