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What are your thoughts on the documentary Forks Over Knives? (i.e. pro vegan)

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DisgruntledVirus

Lifer
Just watched this documentary on Netflix (http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Forks_Over_Knives/70185045?trkid=4213507) watch instantly. It's basically about the correlation between cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and other Western diseases and the high amounts of meats, dairy (the fat ones like 1%, 2%, whole, etc), and oils that traditional Western diets consist of. It suggests that we should effectively go vegan, or as the movie puts it "whole food plant based diet." It also says this is true for athletes from Ironman Triathloners, to MMA fighters, and others.

I personally believe that a plant based whole food diet (veganism) is very good for you, but have always been wary of totally eliminating meat due to the proteins and such. This movie is making me want to get rid of meat and dairy as well. I am curious what people here believe and think on this subject.

Synopsis:
What has happened to us? Despite the most advanced medical technology in the world, we are sicker than ever by nearly every measure.

Two out of every three of us are overweight. Cases of diabetes are exploding, especially amongst our younger population. About half of us are taking at least one prescription drug. Major medical operations have become routine, helping to drive health care costs to astronomical levels. Heart disease, cancer and stroke are the country’s three leading causes of death, even though billions are spent each year to "battle" these very conditions. Millions suffer from a host of other degenerative diseases.

Could it be there’s a single solution to all of these problems? A solution so comprehensive but so straightforward, that it’s mind-boggling that more of us haven’t taken it seriously?

FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods. The major storyline in the film traces the personal journeys of a pair of pioneering researchers, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.

Dr. Campbell, a nutritional scientist at Cornell University, was concerned in the late 1960′s with producing "high quality" animal protein to bring to the poor and malnourished areas of the third world. While in the Philippines, he made a life-changing discovery: the country’s wealthier children, who were consuming relatively high amounts of animal-based foods, were much more likely to get liver cancer. Dr. Esselstyn, a top surgeon and head of the Breast Cancer Task Force at the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, found that many of the diseases he routinely treated were virtually unknown in parts of the world where animal-based foods were rarely consumed.

These discoveries inspired Campbell and Esselstyn, who didn’t know each other yet, to conduct several groundbreaking studies. One of them took place in China and is still among the most comprehensive health-related investigations ever undertaken. Their research led them to a startling conclusion: degenerative diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even several forms of cancer, could almost always be prevented – and in many cases reversed – by adopting a whole foods, plant-based diet. Despite the profound implications of their findings, their work has remained relatively unknown to the public.

The filmmakers travel with Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn on their separate but similar paths, from their childhood farms where they both produced "nature’s perfect food," to China and Cleveland, where they explored ideas that challenged the established thinking and shook their own core beliefs.

The idea of food as medicine is put to the test. Throughout the film, cameras follow "reality patients" who have chronic conditions from heart disease to diabetes. Doctors teach these patients how to adopt a whole foods plant-based diet as the primary approach to treat their ailments – while the challenges and triumphs of their journeys are revealed.
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Everything they talk about is correlations so you have to keep in mind that a vegan diet doesn't inherently make you healthy. Also, Western diets frequently come with a Western lifestyle - reduced exercise and activity. That's a huge confounding variable here.

My main problem with this is that animal products aren't inherently unhealthy. The way animals are raised in mass farms, being grain fed, not being allowed to exercise, etc creates particularly unhealthy meat. Nobody has done significant studies on consumers of well-raised meats (wild caught fish, grass fed and free range beef, free range chicken, etc). I firmly believe that it's not the meat itself that creates these health problems, but rather the quality (and quantity) of the meat we consume.

In addition to this, it honestly depends on your lifestyle. If you're an endurance athlete, you can easily get by with a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle (much prefer vegetarian - there's no real benefits for a vegan diet). However, if you're a strength or power athlete, there's no way you can get appropriate amounts of protein for recovery from a vegan diet (without some form of supplementation).
 
I haven't seen this particular documentary yet, but I do have a comment on the Vegan diet. I picked up a book called "The Thrive Diet" by professional triathlete Brenden Brazier a couple years ago:

http://www.brendanbrazier.com/

I had previously read about how people like Dave Scott won 6 Ironman competitions on a vegan/vegetarian diet and was amazed that anyone could survive on a meat-free diet. Brazier does Ironman competitions professionally and always ends up in the Top 10 of pretty much every race he enters, and he also follows a vegan diet which he details in his book, so I decided to give it a shot.

I have never had so much energy in my life. It's not the most fun diet (no burgers or steak or chicken), but the food was actually pretty good. The annoying thing is that you have to go shopping like every other day because you need really fresh foods for it. Also you don't do any actual cooking - you just use stuff like a food processor.

On the flip side, you can also be a junk food vegan. I've got a couple vegan friends who eat fake burgers, vegan cookies, etc. and are pale and skinny and don't understand why. If you don't have the right protein/vitamin/mineral intake, then you're not going to be healthy. I'd estimate that at least 80% of vegans are doing it wrong - eating "just plants" but not eating the right combination of replacement nutrients to get what they need, which is why they are associated with looking unhealthy. The vegans I know (well - the *one* who does it right) looks great.

Also like SociallyChallenged said, the quality of the food is important too. If you watch stuff like Food Inc. and see how how American groceries are actually produced, it's pretty scary. Add to that the crazy genetic engineering they put into fruits and vegetables, the fact that tons of stuff still has bad pesticides used when actually tested, etc. etc. it's a wonder we get any nutrition at all.
 
I'd consider an ovo/lacto/pesco vegetarian diet, but not a vegan diet. I actually need an easy source of high quality protein and ovo/lacto/pesco could fit the bill. But I would miss meat. When I'm at the peak of my training cycle I get the strongest craving for beef, I think it's the iron and protein that my body is needing. And it tastes so good....
 
I'm basically eating a pesco vegetarian/pescetarian diet currently. I'm debating about dropping a lot of dairy (leaving some things like low fat milk and dairy products along with eggs), but not entirely sure. I've cut red meat out of my diet almost entirely, although like you Megatomic sometimes I just want a nice delicious chunk of red meat.
 
It's extremely difficult to eat a vegan diet without suffering from some type of nutritional deficiency. From all the research I've read, and all the information I can find out there, meat isn't the culprit behind obesity and morbidity. Those studies have been thoroughly debunked. The bigger risks are grains (mainly gluten and corn, and especially the processed kinds), sugar, and industrial vegetable/seed oils (highly oxidized, highly reactive within the body, insanely high omega-6 content which promotes widespread inflammation and deregulates many hormone signals). Almost every known hunter-gatherer population has thrived on meat and root vegetables, and these diseases of civilization are unknown within their populations. The risks of industrial meat production can be minimized by sticking to leaner cuts of meat (most of the problematic substances are in the fat, not the meat itself) or eating meat from pastured/grass-fed animals, which is ultimately more humane and more sustainable.
 
Megatomic said:
When I'm at the peak of my training cycle I get the strongest craving for beef, I think it's the iron and protein that my body is needing. And it tastes so good....
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Isn't it amazing how that works? How red meat tastes amazingly awesome when your body is craving the nutrition :awe: :thumbsup:
 
I did watch the video and it did make me think twice about my dairy intake. My wife and I already stick to a high vegetable/fruit/whole grain diet with meat sprinkled in here or there. We eat VERY little sugar.

I do drink a lot of milk...about 1.5 gallons a week. it is 95% skim milk with only whole milk going in my coffee (and that is it...no sugar). We also do use cheese a reasonable amount in our cooking.

Either way, I feel great...and have for years since my wife and I made a conscious effort to eat better. I'm not quite ready to give up my dairy fix, but I am continuing to look into it and am willing to slow down my intake in the interrum.
 
Kaido said:
Isn't it amazing how that works? How red meat tastes amazingly awesome when your body is craving the nutrition :awe: :thumbsup:
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Yea I listen to what my body tells me more then a documentary made by anyone with a lower IQ then my own.
 
Exodist said:
Yea I listen to what my body tells me more then a documentary made by anyone with a lower IQ then my own.
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No need to be so derogatory. They might have equal or higher IQ than you even. However, someone with a higher IQ still has to apply it correctly in order to provide anything useful to society. And someone with a lower IQ can indeed contribute if they apply themselves correctly.

I haven't watched the video, so I don't have an opinion on it per se, but correlation isn't causality. Just understand that they are pointing to possible causes to certain effects, and frankly, everyone is just going to have to decide for themselves and deal with the consequences or lack thereof.

I enjoy eating lean meat and intend to eat it until I die, but I won't begrudge someone who chooses not to. If it turns out that it contributes to the specific way I end up dying, then oh well...I guess it had to be something. I do try to make healthy choices in my daily diet, though.
 
Saw this documentary a month or so back. The most interesting part was the huge study in China. The evidence in that study is pretty tough to refute. There’s a fair amount of other stuff in the film – the folks losing weight on a plant-based diet – that could obviously be accomplished by caloric restriction, but the long term Chinese study…yeah that got me thinking. That being said, I don’t know if I could ever go vegan and be happy doing it. I’ve not eaten meat for a day or three occasionally - just to see how I’d get by - and it’s tough. I feel like I’m deprived.

I look at it this way: the leading cause of death is living life. Most of us could afford to change a behavior or two that might cause us to live a bit longer, but at what cost? How much value do you place on those last years when you’re pissing your pants and don’t know your own name? And how much enjoyment do you get out of a nice steak or slab of bacon, or beer, scotch or cigarette? I don’t smoke and I don’t drink, but I used to…a lot. The point is, as far as we know our purpose here on earth is to live the best life we know how and have a good time doing it. If I cut meat out of my diet I’m cutting out a lot of enjoyment I get from food.

Maybe there will come a time when I’m able to convert to veganism or vegetarianism and be happy doing it, but right now I don’t want to, nor is my health ostensibly suffering from my current carnivorous diet. On the contrary, the only time when I’ve ever been healthier was when I was in college playing varsity soccer, training 2-3 times a day. And considering I’m probably 200% physically stronger now than I was then, it’s kind of a wash. I’m happy and healthy being a meat eater.
 
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