Forks over Knives

[Mtngrl]

A documentary about diet and health. View the trailer at www.forksoverknives.com. If you have Netflix, it's available for instant streaming.

[Mtngrl]

The thesis of this movie is that a mostly-plant based diet will prevent, arrest and even reverse diabetes, heart disease, obesity, "diabesity" ("Syndrome X") and cancer. Two researchers, one a clinician and one a biochemist (I think) are profiled. They both grew up on farms, but ended up both becoming vegans and advocating vegan diets.

Since it doesn't directly say a vegan diet is optimal, it doesn't have to point out some of the disadvantages, but I think everyone considering eliminating animal foods completely should be advised to take Vitamin B-12. Supplements grown on algae are available, but the vitamin does not naturally occur in any non-animal sources. We don't need much, but a deficiency is eventually fatal. To me that argues against veganism as a long-term proposition (that and the fact that there are no human societies whose traditional diet is vegan), but the movie nevertheless makes some very good points about the appalling state of public health and its probable origin in our diet (and food policy.) All the meat pictures are kind of gross looking, and all the vegetable meals are bright and beautiful. It definitely has an agenda, but for all that it's pretty balanced and has high production values.