More energy, weight loss, longer lifespan and lower risk factors for heart attack, stroke and cancer are the benefits of a vegetarian diet according to Forks Over Knives.
Lee Fulkerson writes and directs the film which advocates empowering ourselves by taking a preventative dietary approach to health. Skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and cancer in the U.S., despite a huge investment in healthcare, point to the effectiveness of dietary change.
Nutritional scientist and former dairy farmer T. Colin Campbell believes that health care costs in the United States could be cut by billions if Americans switched to a whole foods, plant-based diet.
Campbell authored The China Study, where comprehensive research reveals that “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.”
A renowned surgeon who heads the Breast Cancer Task Force at the Cleveland Clinic, Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., found that “many of the diseases he routinely treated were virtually unknown in parts of the world where animal-based foods were rarely consumed.”
Fulkerson plays guinea pig as he consults the team of Matthew Ledderman M.D. and Alona Pulde M.D. After just a few months on their whole foods, plant-based diet, Fulkerson saw tremendous improvement in his test measures of good and bad cholesterol, blood vessel inflammation (associated with heart attack and stroke risk), and blood pressure.
Several inspiring case studies are featured. Ruth Heidrich (then in her 40’s) successfully reversed her breast cancer (which had metastasized) by joining John McDougall, M.D.’s clinical study and going on a low-fat vegan diet. She continued aerobic and weight-bearing exercise. Today the 70-something athlete competes, writes and teaches.
San’Dera Brantley-Nation, a mother diagnosed with diabetes, works with Esselstyn and his wife to change her diet. Keeping a journal, Nation achieves impressive weight loss and reverses her diabetes. Ironically, she works in an endocrinology office and faces the skepticism of her own medication-centered physician.
Processed foods, touted in the U.S. since the 1950’s, act as a “pleasure trap” that only partly fills one’s stomach. Triggering the body’s sensors with natural and artificial stimulants, they induce a low-grade addiction, according to Terry Mason M.D., a Chicago urologist and, until recently, Chief Medical Officer of the Cook County Health and Hospital System. Eating natural foods which are much higher in bulk would alleviate these effects, he added.
An added benefit of the vegetarian way is a significantly lighter footprint on the earth’s environment. The clearing of much of the Amazon forest to make way for cattle grazing is shown as a case in point.
While some criticize such plant-based diets as too extreme, Forks Over Knives can be seen as too conservative. For instance, the differences between organic and conventional food supplies are not detailed. If one is eating pesticide-treated vegetables in abundance, wouldn’t that increase one’s risk for cancer?
The widely reported tainting of U.S. wheat, corn, soybeans and canola with pesticides and genetic modification are not mentioned at all here. One eye-opening claim that is offered: erectile dysfunction signals the “first early warning sign” of vascular disease.
Future films in this genre could address the social pressures facing healthy eaters. How does one gracefully bow out while most indulge in the pizzas, birthday cakes and drinks after work that are so integral to our social traditions?
First Lady Michelle Obama is shown speaking about the childhood obesity epidemic. More of a “wow” factor could have been achieved by including cameos of the many movie stars who espouse vegetarian, vegan and/or whole foods diets. For instance, Russell Brand, President Bill Clinton, Steve-O and Anne Hathaway are now finalists for PETA’s Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities List of 2011. Demi Moore, Madonna, Clint Eastwood and The Beach Boys all drink an organic apple cider vinegar (ACV) drink, according to the website of author and educator Patricia Bragg, N.D., Ph.D.
Forks Over Knives can inspire viewers to renew their commitment to a healthy diet, and even begin the shift to vegetarianism. This documentary joins a number of recent films on whole foods and diet, including Food, Inc.; Food Matters and The Beautiful Truth.
If you like Forks Over Knives, you might enjoy: The Beautiful Truth; Happy; I Am.
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Forks Over Knives 2011 / PG / 1 hour, 30 min
Cast Overview: Lee Fulkerson, T. Colin Campbell, Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.
Director: Lee Fulkerson
Genre: Documentary, Health, Mind and Body
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