So…I’ve had a lot of folks ask me for my thoughts on the Netflix documentary film “What The Health.” I’ll be honest, I drug my feet in doing this as these postmortems tend to be fairly painful, but the requests for some commentary has reached a bit of a fever pitch, so, here it is, with my usual preambles and caveats.
Some of my hesitation in digging into this is also that I’m just not sure if it matters. People generally make their decisions early and are seldom swayed by any future information. But, like that uplifting story about the person who throws starfish back into the ocean, if it matters to you, helps even a few people make better sense of all this, then it was likely worth it. Another not insignificant slice of my hesitation is that this is going to get me on the radar of the cranky (read crazy) vegan folks. One of the people featured in the movie did prison time for harassment and was the founder of an animal rights group that is known to have done everything from physical intimidation of people they disagree with, to firebombing houses of employees of the same.
Charming folks.
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but people are fucking crazy these days, so again, stoking the ire of the religiously militant vegans is not really an appealing thing to do. No one reading or commenting on this will have the degree of scrutiny and crosshairs (real or metaphorical) brought to bare on them that I will. I don’t want a big outpouring of emotion about this but I would appreciate some understanding that “you” get to read this, “I” get to deal with the aftermath of writing it.
I started this off attempting to be as professional as I could be, similar to this piece that I did.
In that piece I managed to largely keep it together until near the end of the presentation when I felt like the whole thing was a sham and I was just being messed with. With “What The Health” I did not make it very far before I came metaphorically unstitched and my professionalism fled me. I apologize in advance for that, this review would likely be taken more seriously if I’d managed to maintain a more clinical tone…but yea, even though I strive to have the emotional complexity of a Vulcan, I too can get squirrley at times. Some of the claims and tactics employed in the movie are just…well, I’ll let you decide what they are.
What I did-My Process man
I watched the movie and provided a time index for the various portions that I felt were particularly important to comment on. The time refers to the duration of the movie remaining. There are some things that I know I missed as there are sections of the movie in which claims are made in a rapid fire fashion and it would have made this already long piece literally 5x longer. Despite this I think you will notice that a lot IS covered and the way the “facts” are handled is remarkable. In some cases I just provide a name and time index, in other cases I dig into quite a lot of detail.
I introduce people as they appear and upon their first appearance I will generally mention a bit about their background and I also go out of my way to mention if they are vegan or not. Almost NO ONE featured in this film is not vegan. There is zero attempt to seek out contradictory views, this is a monochrome of political, nutritional and ecological ideology. That said, the film is remarkably well done and the folks producing it have spent a lot of time thinking about how to address the common counterpoints and concerns raised around the material they present. Without further ado, here is my review of “What The Health.”
First Spark Media– A film company focusing on activist related projects. Most of the material they have produced to date is vegan/animal liberation in nature.
1:31:23 Dr. Robert Ratner American Diabetes Assoc- Provides a long list of diabetes related problems. Asked what the relationship is between diet and diabetes. Response “I’m not going to get into that.” This section pops up later in the film.
Executive Producer: Joaquin Phoenix- Vegan, Filmmaker, Actor, Activist.
Directors Kip Andersen, Keegan Kuhn- Kip and Keegan produced an earlier film “Cowspiracy” which apparently had some input/backing from Leonardo DiCaprio. Both Kip and Keegan are Vegan.
1:30:06 Kip relates a story of his “previous hypochondriac past” Made a point that he diligently followed all the major health org’s recs.
1:29:33 Kip shares ABC news report: “New information, meat causes cancer”
Soundbite: “Processed meat is clearly linked to an increase in cancer”. No mention of absolute vs relative risk. “Just as dangerous as smoking cigarettes.” 1:29:22 This all made the circuit a few years ago and was pretty soundly debunked. The takeaway from the “research” was that if one consumes processed meats, everyday, for one’s whole life, the absolute risk for developing say, colon cancer was estimated to be 6%. The background risk for colon cancer is 5%. Now, I talk about the massive limitations of the type of study mentioned here a bit later (not sure we can trust ANY element of these types of studies), but what biassed researchers, and the media do is then look at the change in relative risk. The difference between 5 and 6 percent is clearly 1 percent. But 1 is 20% of 5. So, this get’s reported as a “20% increase in cancer risk.” One need not be a statistician to see how shady this type of information handling is. The next photo provides a concise breakdown of relative vs. absolute risk. I do not know who put this together originally, but it’s outstanding.
1:28:47 Processed meats a Group 1 Carcinogen, just like cigarettes and Plutonium!! They then shift to some great imagery of moms cooking breakfasts of scrambled cigarettes for the kids. YUM! I get into the details of the carcinogen claims later.
1:26:30 Kip is in route to talk to an American Cancer Society Rep. When the rep understands the interview will be about diet and cancer, she cancels the interview.
1:26:00 Dr. Allan GoldHamer (Vegan), Founder TrueNorth Health Clinic-Relates statistic on poor health.
1:25:47 Dr. Joel Kahn (Vegan), Kahn Center for Cardiac Longevity relates a story of poor national health, largely lifestyle related and preventable. Yep.
1:25:32 Dr. Michael Greger (Vegan) Runs nutritionfacts.org I’m not sure if there has ever been a less accurate URL vs site content in the history of the interwebz.
1:25:22 Dr. Milton Mills-Vegan
1:25:12 Dr. Michelle McMacken-Vegan- contends dietary choices trumps smoking for health. Maybe a stretch, but not too preposterous when we consider the Kitavans who smoke like chimneys, eat well and appear to suffer little if any ill effects.
1:23:54 Kip makes the point that the government blames lack of exercise and “sugary foods.” No source cited, is this really the message? The government has certainly pushed the exercise as medicine idea, in which one should not need to worry AT ALL about the food one consumes, one need only exercise more. https://therussells.crossfit.com/2016/03/24/inside-the-acsms-exercise-is-medicine/ This is a remarkable bit of cherry-picking and or telling a half truth which is a common theme throughout the movie. At a point later, it is stated that a focus on sugar has steered the story away from the real baddies, meat and animal fat. So, while the ACSM colludes to ban CrossFit (if this is news to you, read the aforementioned link) and make it largely illegal to say that diet matters (at all), we just need to exercise more, the real focus (According to Kip) is that the blame should have “always” been on meat and animal fat.
1:23:44 Dr. Neal Barnard PCRM-Vegan, “Diabetes Expert” Diabetes is not caused by high-carb diet…with an exasperated lilt. Caused by accumulation of fat in the blood, like typical meat based diet” Insulin resistance is a build-up of fat, yes…but is that the whole story? And how best to fix this? Time and again low carb diets have proven superior in this regard. Many, many people have unpacked the insulin resistance story in remarkable detail elsewhere, so I’m not going to devote a ton of space to that here. I will mention that the low carb approach has proven to be incredibly powerful in reversing insulin resistance and the related co-morbidities. BUT…despite consistent positive results on low carb approaches like Atkins, there has still been a lot of handwringing about “all that fat and animal products.” The solution? EcoAtkins. This is an attempt to eat low carb, but with largely vegan foods. If this is how someone wants to roll, that’s fine, but when studied against the original Atkins plan it was no better, and in some ways worse with regards to improving various biomarkers. This really IS an inconvenient truth, as the film completely ignores the low carb approach, even when built from “plant based” sources. Let me say that again, in a different way: Low carb diets have consistently proven to reverse insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes better than high-carb, low fat approaches. There IS a “plant base” low carb approach which works well…this gets no airplay.
1:23:00 Dr. Garth Davis- Bariatric surgeon, vegan, author of Proteinaholic. Garth is a genuinely nice guy, and although a staunch vegan, he and I have had some decent interactions over the years. That said, Garth is being presented as an expert, but the critiques on his work, specifically his book, are pretty severe. Denise Minger’s thoughts on his book.
Garth’s reply…which spends the opening salvo largely trying to discredit Denise due to “lack of credential” (that’s what we generally call a Straw Man attack) while also playing the game of somehow acknowledging her brilliance?? It’s odd. Really odd. If you notice my interaction with people I have NEVER raised the question of “qualifications.” Does the person know the material, yes or no? In this day where there is easy access to any topic, I am not only un-impressed by the Appeal To Authority, I get immediately suspicious. This is a way of shutting down the heretics without ever addressing their message or content.
1:21:55 Dr. Neal Barnard- Talks about a cookie…sugar lures you in, but it’s the fat that “gets you.” Reasonably truthful, but really misses the point. Hyperpalatable foods are the issue. It’s the flavor combos at issue. No one would be fired up to eat sugar, flour, or butter in plain forms. Ok, I could nosh on a stick of butter, but mix those ingredients into a cookie? That’s pretty damn tasty. Tasty to a point there is no “off switch.” This is a remarkably unsophisticated handling of what is a highly complex process, the neuroregulation of appetite.
1:21:29 Dr. Garth Davis – “Sugar is not great, low in nutrients, but it “does not cause inflammation, can be stored as glycogen.” “The focus on sugar has taken the focus off meat, dairy, eggs, pork, turkey, chicken…” I’m not even sure how to comment on this as the science is not remotely supportive of his dismissal of sugar: Now, that is looking specifically at fructose, but table sugar is 50% fructose.
1:20:52 Related this paper: Unprocessed red and processed Meats and risk of coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes—An updated review
From the abstract: “In meta-analyses of prospective cohorts, higher risk of CHD is seen with processed meat consumption (RR per 50 g: 1.42, 95 %CI = 1.07-1.89), but a smaller increase or no risk is seen with unprocessed meat consumption. Differences in sodium content (~400 % higher in processed meat) appear to account for about two-thirds of this risk difference. In similar analyses, both unprocessed red and processed meat consumption are associated with incident diabetes, with higher risk per g of processed (RR per 50 g: 1.51, 95 %CI = 1.25-1.83) versus unprocessed (RR per 100 g: 1.19, 95 % CI = 1.04-1.37) meats.”
Let’s unpack that:
1-Prospective cohort studies were the sole source of information. What the heck is that? From our good friend Wikipedia: “A prospective cohort study is a longitudinal cohort study that follows over time a group of similar individuals (cohorts) who differ with respect to certain factors under study, to determine how these factors affect rates of a certain outcome.“
Here is a short but interesting paper that looks at the limitations of cohort studies, in this case looking at OPIUM USERS and the risk of death. Arguably, opium use and risk of death is a much simpler story to unpack relative to complex dietary interactions…I don’t think anyone would argue that point. Despite this, the study is incredibly shaky due to:
Recall bias. Did people actually report what really happened (opium consumption in this case, meat consumption in the context of the papers being cited by What The Health). Recall bias is such an issue many people have called for the abolishment of this type of stuff entirely. http://www.ejcancer.com/article/S0959-8049(06)00846-X/abstract This due in no small part to the fact one cannot assign causation, just correlation, but correlation with perhaps more noise than signal. What I mean by that is that the data being looked at may be so fraught with error (noise) that any attempt at gain insight (signal) is literally impossible. The main study cited in the film is from a food frequency questionnaire, which again, have been found to be so fraught with error that many are calling for their abandonment.
Now, it might be worth asking, why are these folks relying on a dodgy methodology (A prospective cohort study, built entirely from a food frequency questionnaire). Here is an interesting snippet from the Red meat/processed meat paper: “ Similar to most other lifestyle risk factors (e.g., smoking, physical activity, obesity, consumption of salt, dietary cholesterol, fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains), the effects of meat consumption on cardiometabolic endpoints have not, to our knowledge, been investigated in any RCTs.”
Despite a complete lack of GOLD STANDARD testing (Randomized, Controlled Trials–RCT’s), public policy, bad documentaries and a never ending slew of media pieces are built from studies which are known, from the outset, to be incapable of showing causation. I cannot emphasize this enough, as the film presents this material as “proof” in the same way that a physicist would describe the properties of gravity.
2- Nearly 2/3 of the “risk” associated with processed meats is ascribed to the sodium content. There is SOME mechanistic plausibility here, particularly in the case of CVD, as a hyperinsulinemic individual tends to disproportionately retain sodium, and a high sodium intake MIGHT exacerbate this. But interestingly, trying to lower sodium intake in these folks also tends to do almost nothing, as the problem is upstream and due primarily to insulin. Here is a great line from the abstract of that paper: “Similar to other areas in prevention, the controversy is likely to remain unresolved until large-scale definitive randomized controlled trials are conducted to determine the effect of low sodium intake (compared to moderate intake) on CVD incidence.” Seems to be a theme emerging here…Huge amounts of money and an iron-clad public healthy policy is being promulgated by “research” that is incapable of addressing causation, and that may have more signal than noise. Finally, the whole discussion of sodium is likely flawed, again from poor mechanistic understandings. I’ll be talking to the author of The Salt Fix in a future episode of the podcast, but this story looks remarkably like that we have seen for fat, animal products etc.
3-Based on the paper and the arguably flawed data, there appears to be little if any association between unprocessed meat intake and CVD, and only a modest relationship between unprocessed meat intake and type 2 diabetes. Now, I’m being pretty generous even mentioning this point as the whole paper, the whole investigative process, is built on “data” that as I said previously, likely has more error than signal. (Sorry to be redundant, but if you come away with ANYTHING I hope it’s an understanding of what is being claimed vs what this material can actually support.)
An important point to take away from all this is the What The Health documentary is building a story first that processed meat is bad (which is highly debatable, and the notion it’s “as bad as cigarettes is just preposterous). That is a monumental claim and the facts behind this claim fall flat. Which should then make one suspicious about ANY of the information shared by folks promulgating information like this. I’m working on a post to follow this that will look at the epidemiology of smoking and compare/contrast that with what happens in “nutritional science.”
1:17:41 Michael Greger Nutritionfact.org Claims “dead meat bacteria toxins” immediately damage the endothelial lining of the circulatory system. There is no doubt endotoxemia is a huge issue, an overlooked issue. But Dr. Gregor is unique in assigning this only to animal products. There is abundant literature showing processed foods, with added processed oils increase endotoxemia (which can worsen insulin resistance and CVD risk) but if you ask Dr. Gregor and his ilk for any research showing whole foods doing the same thing, you will be waiting quite a long time. The main citation Dr. Gregor provides is an in vitro (petri dish style) study: In vitro studies should not be dismissed out of hand but they absolutely CANNOT be used as in vivo (in a living body) evidence. They are at best suggestive of potential mechanisms of causation and can inform future research. I can only describe tactics like this as “ham-handed” which is ironic given Dr. Gregor’s disdain for “the other white meat.”
Here is the post Dr. Gregor has produced to support his thoughts: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/dead-meat-bacteria-endotoxemia/
I agree with much of what Dr. Gregor is saying here with regards to intestinal permeability and health. I do not agree with his complete analysis of the cause (animal products) nor the best solution (a grain based vegan diet). And again, it is fascinating what is being left out of this discussion. This paper makes the mechanistic case for dense, processed carbs being the root cause for endotoxemia. Now, we can get in and debate the merits of one theory vs the other, but to completely ignore this contradictory information implies what can only be construed to be dodgy motives on the part of the filmmaker.
Worth a mention: some degree of inflammation and arterial stiffening occur after eating ANYTHING. Dr. Gregor does not mention this fairly important fact. If one reads between the lines, some kind of intermittent feeding vs grazing schedule is likely a good idea due to the inflammatory nature of just eating.
1:17:15 Dr. Michael Klaper
1:16:54 Dr. Caldwell Essltyn “It’s really quite clear that from the standpoint of cancer and CVD that animal protein plays an enormous role…” Question from Director: “is chicken better?” Dr. Essltyn’s response: “It’s a question of if you want to be shot or hung…”
Cancer rates are increasing, but due mainly to population increases and aging:
Meat consumption over time:
Total meat consumption in the US:
We seem to have largely swapped chicken for beef, and we appear to be overall below our previous historical highs in consumption. One could argue meat consumption has, over all, increased, yet cancer rates appear to be increasing largely as a factor of an aging population and an overall increase in population. That’s one part of the original claim that meat causes cancer, the other claim was that meat is at the heart of CVD. Take a look at this:
Despite a clearly sicker population with regards to obesity and type 2 diabetes, heart disease rates are declining, due mainly to decreased smoking (the smoking decrease is powerful enough to offset even the increases in diabetes, at least to some extent). If the claims about meat consumption contributing to heart disease and cancer were true we would NOT see trends like those depicted above. It is difficult to say whether Dr. Essltyn is outright lying or is just terrible at interpreting science. Either way, his claims are not supported by the evidence. I’ll have a few more thoughts on this at the end of this review.
1:16:13 Neal Barnard: “Heterocyclic amines are clear cut carcinogens and they can form when meat is cooked or heated.” True, but high temp cooking of ANYTHING produces a variety of potentially carcinogenic substances. Cooking at lower temps reduces all of these processes, and marinades with antioxidants dramatically reduces HCA formation https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10068-011-0022-9
But wait, there is more.
Remember that study I mentioned above that looked at In vitro (not in vivo) effects? It appears the microbiome bioconverts substances such as HCA’s to largely benign substances. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25707896 From the paper: “In conclusion, even if one would assume that 100% of the daily amount of PhIP ingested by a human being is converted into PhIP-M1 in the colon, this concentration most probably would not lead to cytotoxicity and/or carcinogenicity in the colorectal mucosa.” Some of the confusion in this arena stems from clear cytotoxicity and mutagenicity in animals fed HCA’s. What might be a problem with this? Yes, animals are not people, but more specifically, animals do not eat cooked food. Humans do, and have for perhaps 500 thousand years. Possibly longer. Famed evolutionary biologist Richard Wrangam makes the case in his book that humans are neither carnivore, herbivore or even omnivore, but rather “cookivore.” Give the book a read as this thing is turning into a monster and I do not have time to unpack all the details there, but I will make the point that if the medical and research community had even a bit of influence by the Ancestral Health/Evolutionary Medicine model, much of this goofy research and blind alleys would have never happened. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/06/invention-of-cooking-drove-evolution-of-the-human-species-new-book-argues/
The take away form all this is despite the boogeyman Dr. Barnard tries to create with regards to HCA’s, he ignores entirely that there are mitigating steps one can take when prepping food, and those mitigating steps may in fact not matter all that much when one considers that these substances are largely inactivated by the action of the gut flora. NOW…I can make a case that if the gut flora is disturbed, if the gut is unhealthy, this could be a problem, but that’s a topic for another day. One final note: Barnard really goes after chicken as the main culprit in the HCA story. He cites research which I was unable to find or verify, but I do know this: people are eating, on average, more chicken than previously. The agenda here appears to be to tackle that shift and shut it down. Interestingly, I’d like to see folks eat much less chicken, but this is due to sustainability issues, not health.
1:15:03 Kip mentions a study (does not provide it) that eating one egg per day was equivalent to smoking 5 cigarettes. I can’t actually unpack this one as there is no citation for this claim, which spurred me to search “Research citations What The Health.” The best I can find is this, which is not remotely up to snuff for a works cited: http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/facts/ Again, these are remarkable claims, with at best paltry support.
1:14:31 Michael Greger “You know these saturated fat studies that are trying to vindicate saturated fat…they are all just funded by the dairy industry.” He has a point, some of these studies are indeed funded by the dairy or egg industry…but the story is a bit more complex than that. This just replays the tape on all the old Ancel keys stuff, not the least of which was the recent unearthing of research data that was “forgotten.” The research looked at mental patients fed two diets: One high and one low in saturated fat. The low saturated fat diet was enriched with corn oil…cholesterol levels were consistently lower in the low SF group, but cardiac death and all cause mortality were WORSE. This is a remarkable study in that we’d never get this past an ethical review board today AND it was close to metabolic ward standards. The rigor of a study like this as compared to cohort studies is difficult to properly describe. They are not on the same planet. The point being, the claims about saturated fat and cholesterol made in this movie are highly inconsistent with the best science we have, populations and history, yet these claims are regurgitated again and again with no regard for what the facts actually support. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-found-in-dusty-basement-undermine-decades-of-dietary-advice/
1:12:18 A good section on epigenetics and that our genes are not our destiny…but clearly I’m not aligned with many of the recommendations being made.
1:10:41 Dr. Ken Williams president of the American college of cardiology: Paraphrasing: “ It is clear that increasing meat intake causes increased rates of CVD.” Kip asks “what about fish” to which Dr. Williams responds with the “4 worries,” PCB’s, mercury, saturated fat, cholesterol.” I think the first two concerns can be reasonably valid and are why it’s a good idea to eat fish that are lower down the food chain. As to the saturated fat and cholesterol “issues”…I think we’ve covered that.
Side Note:
This is a slick process overall. What the Health starts off with a fairly credible position (in most people’s eyes) of raising the question of the safety of processed meats and red meat in particular. Lots of people buy that, even if they still eat them. Then chicken, eggs and dairy are thrown in, all with the same specious claims of cancer, CVD, and diabetes being solely due to the consumption of animal products. But then they add fish. That gate-way product for vegans shifting back to animal products. Slick.
1:08:55 Mike Ewall, Energy Justice network “dioxins are the most toxic substances known to science.” Dioxins are nasty, no doubt about it, but Chris Masterjohn did a thorough unpacking of this topic here: https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/environmental-toxins/dioxins-in-animal-foods-a-case-for-vegetarianism/
The movie goes on to make the point that the main input for dioxins is the grass that cows eat! But again, there is more to the story (said another way, this claim is patently false). From Chris’ article “A review published in 1995 suggested that pastured animal products would probably contain higher dioxin concentrations because of a higher rate of soil ingestion;3however, newer research has revealed the fact that the primary sources of above-average dioxin concentration in beef samples are feeding troughs constructed with pentachlorophenol-treated wood and the inclusion of incinerator waste as a feed additive.6 Grass-fed beef is not exposed to these sources of dioxins.” Mr. Ewal appears to be either very sloppy in his fact finding or he maybe, has an agenda. If I were not trying to be professional I’d say the man is “A Damn Liar.”
Again, I have to tip my hat to the What The Health folks, as one of the thorniest topics they deal with is the use of grazing animals in not just food production, but also habitat restoration, carbon sequestration…you know, “save the planet” stuff. The push for decentralized, grass centric processes is in direct opposition to the CAFO meat production just about anyone can hate. But, if a healthy, not-so-nasty alternative (pastured meat) were to gain traction (which it has) that could pose a problem for the folks who approach veganism as a religion. Is dioxin a concern? Yes. Is it a concern as presented in this documentary? Well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide. I do have to give them yet further props for wrapping up this section by relating the story that moms can pass dioxins to their offspring, both in utero and via breast feeding. This is true, but the whole context of this piece is at best questionable.
1:04:43 A section on the problems of dairy, many of which I agree with. There are interesting associations between dairy and autoimmune disease. But again, there is a lot of nuance and unpacking to get the full picture on that story.
1:02:29 Dr. Barnard comments that there is zero evidence that milk builds strong bones. Again, I largely agree with this. I have always put most dairy products into a “grey area” in that if you do not suffer any type of immunogenic reaction to dairy, fine, dig in. I do not handle bovine dairy, but do great with sheep and goat. This is one area of overlap between the vegan and paleo camps.
The movie goes on to cite research links between dairy consumption and cancer…again, this is all correlational work, BUT. There are some proposed mechanisms that could offer some insight in all this. Dairy is loaded with various growth factors, and promotes the production and release of growth factors from the liver. In the context of a chronically overfed westernized society, this could pose a problem. And in general, dairy consumption increases with industrialization. The only pesky problem here is traditional societies ranging from the Mongols to the Masai have consumed prodigious amounts of dairy but have been largely free of modern degenerative disease. This too is “anecdotal” but it’s interesting how the filmmakers appear to go out of their way to avoid mentioning any of these confounders.
1:00:38 Kip contacts the Susan Komen organization (the pink ribbon folks, whom I have serious issues, but again, topic for another day) and asks why they do not warn against dairy consumption, citing this paper which looks at high and low fat dairy consumption and cancer recurrence and mortality in breast cancer patients. This was a food frequency questionnaire (garbage) but check this out from the paper: “Intake of high-fat dairy, but not low-fat dairy, was related to a higher risk of mortality after breast cancer diagnosis.”
Let’s unpack that:
1-As I said earlier, food frequency questionnaires are recognized to be so fraught with problems and inaccuracies that many researchers have called for their abandonment. This is unlikely to happen as a massive amount of infrastructure and funding is wrapped up in this hopelessly flawed process. This whole paper and it’s findings are questionable, but let’s put that fact aside for a moment and consider this:
2-How on earth does Kip ignore that lowfat dairy (according to the study) is NOT associated with increased cancer recurrence? I clearly have my own agenda here, I’m the “paleo guy”, right? But how many times can a filmmaker do stuff like ignoring what is simply in the abstract, lying directly or by omission, and still be taken seriously? I know a lot of folks reading this do not have science backgrounds…so you are taking things largely on faith whether you believe me or the folks in this film, but if this is an error on Kips part one must really question his ability to analyze information in this sphere. If it’s not an error it’s a manipulative lie by omission, which should call into question any and all claims and motives with this whole project. But, we will not drop the ball at this point with still an hour to go in this film, we will slog through.
3-As flawed as the basic research is, let’s look at how the confounders can add up in something like this. Now, why do folks choose lowfat dairy? In general, low fat is still perceived to be a healthier option. People who make one healthy lifestyle choice tend to make multiple lifestyle choices which are arguably, healthier. People who do not eat meat (for perceived health reasons) also tend not to smoke. Although researchers claim they can adjust for all these variables, critical analysis of this type of research makes a pretty strong case this is by and large false. These murky cofounders are difficult if not impossible to adjust for and are fantastic opportunities to offer up statistically hatched lies. So, despite the limitations of the research due to the food frequency piece, one could make a case that the low fat dairy folks DID in fact see benefits with regards to cancer recurrence, but this may have nothing to do with what dairy option they chose and everything to do with the overall mindset and choices that would drive these folks to make generally healthier choices in all aspects of their lives.
58:05 Christina Stella Center for Food Safety, staff attorney. Section on the drugs, particularly antibiotics, fed to feedlot animals. I agree with most all of this, it’s dangerous and appalling. But this is also all an outgrowth of the industrial food system. Options like Polyface Farms, holistic management, mobile slaughter can make CAFO food lots a thing of the past, which would essentially remove the need for the vast majority of the meds fed to these animals and the potential problems which will come from this method of food production.
54:42 Larry Baldwin Water Keeper Alliance Talks about the number of pigs raised in north Carolina (more than 10 million…approximately equal to the human population). The film makes a solid case about how damaging this centralization is to the environment, and also the disease potential of things like the H1N1 flu virus. This is all accurate and concerning information. This whole story would also change entirely with decentralized food production which effectively managed the waste products of this process. Consider this:
That’s the total amount of nitrogen fertilizer used in the us, 1965-2010. Although a small amount of this is used for backyard gardening, a main portion goes towards row crops and industrial agriculture. What is somewhat humorous about the vegan agenda of this film (stop eating/using animals in any way) is that the primary option for fertilizing the corn, wheat and rice that these folks recommend will fall in petrochemical derived nitrogen fertilizers produced by the Haber process. Various beans and legumes ARE nitrogen fixers and can and should play a role in better managing this whole mess, but what if we effectively used the waste from animal production to fertilize our agricultural crops instead of letting it poison water systems? What would this mean for antibiotic use in animals? Watershed contamination? A frustrating element to this film is that one solution and one solution only is being presented. Are all of the environmental, social and medical issues concerning? Yes, they are. But Planet of the Vegans is not the only way to address these issues, but it is the only solution offered in the film.
48:45 Dr. Robert Ratner chief Science officer, American Diabetes Assoc. Kip interviews Dr. Ratner (he finally gets his sit-down with the ADA) and Ratner describes the mission statement of the ADA, and mentions that there is no way to prevent type 2 diabetes in all people. Not sure how Dr. Ratner has missed all the anthropological data showing populations without DM2, but I guess we will let that pass. To Kips’ credit he mentions a study comparing a low fat vegan diet vs the ADA recommendations and how the vegan diet performed better. Dr. Ratner gets pissed and closes out the interview, and is visibly pretty cranky. Dr. Ratner makes the point that many dietary approaches can reverse type 2 diabetes, there are many studies showing this. The problem is getting people to comply. Kip does not mention that a low carb diet beat both the ADA and conventional low fat diets, but hey, details. http://caloriesproper.com/diet-study-american-diabetes-association-vs-low-carb-ketogenic/
Low fat can work, so can low carb. I think LC works better (SEE MY ECOATKINS POINT ABOVE) and more consistently, but the important thing is “everything in moderation” is absolute bullocks when viewed through the lens of the neuroregulation of appetite and our modern world of hyperpalatable foods. Maybe I should write a book on that…wait…I did.
44:38 Kip mentions that dairy avoidance is associated with reduced incidence of type 1 diabetes. True, but also true for wheat, which again, he somehow neglects to mention: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4185872/
Important points: Not everyone who eats dairy and wheat develop type 1 diabetes. Not everyone who avoids these foods will be spared development of type 1 diabetes. But it may be that eliminating/avoiding allergenic foods such as these will reduce the POTENTIAL for developing the condition. This is perhaps one of the most infuriating and potentially injurious features of the film: Information is presented in black/white absolutes.
43:36 Kip discovers, in the wee hours of the night, that the American Diabetes Association is sponsored by a bunch of multinational food conglomerates. He lists a number of products like Dannon yogurt (which I can find on the sponsor page) and a number of entities that I cannot FIND, like bumblebee tuna. There is also a long list a pharmaceutical companies and even those bastards at Wonderful Pistachios.
Just kidding, pistachios are amazing.
Yes, corporate money has despoiled the whole medical industry…this is why I push for decentralization and I’d love to see 5 American medical associations, not just one. Kip goes on to do this same search for entities like the American Cancer Society…he highlights the meat oriented sponsors, yet somehow neglects to mention the folks who produce refined grain products who are also sponsors. The selection bias here is remarkable.
41:10 Steve-O. Yes, the “comedian” quasi-famous for such cinematic masterpieces as helping his friends put Hot Wheels cars up their bum, mentions an American Diabetes Assoc event he attended that had BBQ chicken. He left. The horrors. The gravitas.
(Ok, yea, I’m getting pretty punchy)
40:01 Kip beats the dead horse of the governmental bodies tasked with stewarding our health being funded by food producers. Yep, that’s a problem.
38:48 Mark Kennedy, Lawyer, PCRM- Mark describes the “check off program” which is effectively a government backed program that aids fast food producers (and others) in figuring out ways of increasing the consumption of fast food. As usual, they focus only on the meat and dairy inputs, ignore the refined grains and sugar. I’m not sure what else to say other than “and why do people want MORE government at every level of their lives?” I have an answer for that: So long as “my” perceived political ideology is in office, yea baby, bring on ‘Das Gubmnt’. Then, when the political pendulum swings it’s “OH SHIT!! How did that lunatic make it into office?! The government has too much power!” I promise, that’ll likely be the only political rant I do in this thing. Probably.
34:53 Film talks about “cheeseburger laws” which are designed to prevent litigation on the part of people who feel certain foods have caused them health problems. Only meat and cheese are mentioned. No mention of grains and or sugar.
Ryan Shapiro, Historian of National Security, MIT- Ryan describes how the American Egg board produced internal documents describing the vegan mayonase alternative, Hampton Creek as a “Crisis and major threat to the future of the American egg industry.” Too bad the American Egg Council did not just sit back and wait for Hampton Creek to be exposed as shysters and frauds: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-hampton-creek-just-mayo/?MPA_Daily_News_Roundup
Clearly there are plenty of dirtbags who are also meat eaters, this is not a uniquely vegan thing, but when you consider the games played at Hampton Creek as well as the wunder gal Elizabeth Holmes (vegan), founder of the zero to $9billion valuation to zero Theranos, you kinda have to wonder. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive
I’ve done my best to keep this as factual as I can, but at some point the annoyance with this stuff bubbles over. The tech scene is so enamored with crap like Theranos, Soylent and vertical farming that it’s almost maddening. The whole vegan schtick is sexy in that “I’m morally superior…l’m woke…” it just sickens me at this point.
32:55 (or there about) The film shifts to the massive influence of the pharmaceutical industry, how those folks do not want to see stints and statins go away. Yep agree with the analysis, just not the solution.
30:09 Jake Conroy, Formerly Imprisoned Activist- At this point in the film Kip is making the case that the pharmaceutical industry effectively gets its own legislation passed and then claims that they are so powerful they have imprisoned activists. Jake is introduced as if he was imprisoned “fighting big pharma” but was in fact part of an animals rights group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).” Huntingdon Life Science is an animal testing facility (which I think a MASSIVE amount of animal testing is both unnecessary and unethical). SHAC (from Wikipedia) “used tactics ranging from non-violent protest to the alleged firebombing of houses owned by executives associated with HLS’s clients and investors. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors US domestic extremism, has described SHAC’s modus operandi as “frankly terroristic tactics similar to those of anti-abortion extremists,” Jake was imprisoned in 2006 after being found guilty of harassment.
I thought the lies by omission detailed above were bad…this…I’m not sure how to even couch the degree of bait and switch bullshit here. Yes, the guy was imprisoned. For harassment of the HLS employees. And the guy is the organizer of the SHAC which has responsibility for things perhaps as severe as firebombing houses. Who firebombs anything? I can think of religious zealots and drug dealers. It’s people like this guy and DurianRider that might ensure that veganism never goes mainstream. Thanks for that guys.
26:43 Dr. Milton Mills- Kip asks if we need to eat meat to get complete protein. There is a long list of docs that come on mentioning how if you eat 2,000 cals of brown rice and broccoli, you will be “fine”. I’m not really going to unpack this as this topic has been beat to death. A vegan diet is likely better than a SAD junk food diet, at least for a while. One can reasonably easily supplement and get the things missing in a vegan diet (DHA/EPA, choline, etc) but it’s not optimum.
23:40-Dr. Michale Klaper- Mentions that “all these Paleo people are going to die from heart attacks and diabetes.” Ok. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11965522
22:19 Kip gets into some comparative anatomy, specifically of the teeth and makes the point that since we do not have large canines, we are not designed to eat meat.It’s fascinating to me that Kip manages to ignore nearly 2 million years of human stone tool use, the role these tools played in our evolution, and how this all led to a massive die of of megafauna (big critters) at the hands of our ancient and more contemporary ancestors. Some people just dismiss this material out of hand…it’s the history of humanity! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event
There are a lot of claims that come from Vegan Land, but the “Humans evolved to be herbivore/frugivorous and “never ate meat” is on par with insisting the earth is flat. One can certainly believe these fairytales if one chooses, but it’s interesting what a disadvantage people experience when they insist on using an operating system or world view that is fundamentally flawed. The notion that humans did not hunt significant quantities of both large and small game is not supported by any of the evidence from anthropology and calls into question how humans could have lived in any pre-agriculture environment that is above the 40* latitude line. My own story around this is possibly valuable: I participated in a Discovery Channel show called “I-Cave Man” in which we were instructed on the basic use of stone tools and then tasked with living in a harsh, alpine environment in late spring. I was provided some basic instruction ins stone tool knapping, dead-fall traps and snares a few weeks before the show and I practiced like a madman. I also made and practiced with an atlatl (a hand thrown spear, in which the throwing velocity is increased using a wooden launcher) for hours every day. I was still a relative novice, but by the time of the show I could make cutting tools that worked better than surgical steel. I managed to take down a 650lb elk with this Atlatl and between myself and castmates, we butchered the whole animal and brought it back to camp. Although Billy Berger (one of the castmates) is considered to be an expert in stone tool manufacture, he has related that his skills are likely on par with that of a 4-5 year old CHILD who would have been raised in a hunter gatherer troupe. My point here is humans were very good at hunting, stone tools make up for a lack of horns, claws and ripping/tearing teeth.
Somewhat related: With a few weeks of practice I managed to develop the skills to make a fire kit and actually make a fire with a hand drill. It was a bastard, and we barely pulled off the fire as part of the show, but again, it illustrates that although many of these skills are quite complex, a relative amateur can attain enough technique to pull this off in fairly demanding situations. As I mentioned above with regards to Ricahrd Wrangham, fire was a critical part of human evolution, particularly as it relates to our nutrition:
19:47 Dr. Caldwell Esseltyn- Relates research showing improvements in patients consuming a plant based diet. Yes, any shift away from a hyperpalatable, highly processed diet is going to be a win.
The final 15 minutes of the film is a mix of rapid fire medical claims about veganism, several before and after transformations, interviews with vegan athletes and heartstring tugging cinematography. This is a slick, well done film and the whole vegan story is incredibly compelling: eat to be healthy for yourself, your world, and be a kind, spiritually superior person. Who doesn’t want that? The problem(s) arise when we ignore a few things: Veganism is not the only healthy way to eat. It’s arguable if veganism is actually healthy long term, but I’m all about folks experimenting, just be rational and honest about your experience. Some of the most compelling elements involve the notion that veganism is going to “save the planet” and it is morally superior. It’s outside the scope of this already long piece to unpack those topics properly, but myself and others are working to have a concise, well researched accounting of those topics. I will say this: the vegans are kicking our collective asses. It’s a religion, it’s a community, and identity. I’m not sure how to deal with that other than creating an alternate food religion, which honestly sounds horrifying to me. The problem is these folks are well organized, well-funded and they get massive traction in producing films like What The Health, Cowspiracy etc. Cowspiracy was crowd funded and raised more than $600K in 48 hours. We have no similar analog (with regards to scale and reach) for “ethical omnivores” that are working to address many of the issues raised in the film, including animal husbandry practices, environmental damage etc. As a movement we are remarkably fragmented and in general I’d say most folks are more concerned with getting abs than thinking about the knock-on effects of an industrial food system. Not slamming folks, just stating an observation.
Unpacking a topic like this involves shades of grey, and if I’ve learned anything about human behavior, it’s that we, as a species, do not do well in the grey. Black/White, Left/Right, Vegan/animal murderer.
UPDATE
Kip and Dr. Garth Davis have reached out to me and we are working to set up a conference where folks can present and debate theses complex topics. I’ll keep y’all updated as that progresses.
I hope you found this analysis helpful. Again, I tried to generally remain professional in my tone but clearly at some points became pretty frustrated. Now, I’d like to ask you a favor: If you do in fact care about this topic, please become a member of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. These folks fight the legal battles that small farmers find themselves in when they end up in the crosshairs of a local health department, or a multinational like Monsanto. The FTCLDF is interesting in that they will help just about any farmer, at any time. One of my favorite people in the world, Joel Salatin, had an interesting response when asked how vegans could get along in a world that worked along his model of food production (which includes, but is not exclusively based on animal products). His (paraphrased) response “If the vegans will let me raise the food my family wants to eat, I’ll make sure to raise the food their family wants to eat.” We could all likely learn a lot from some contemplation on that sentiment.
I’ll close with a question of sorts: Based on my average site traffic this post will get far more than 6,000 readers who would identify as “ethical omnivores.” Way more. If someone (not me) were to produce a GOOD movie based around the practices of regenerative agriculture and the Ancestral Health model, how many of you would donate $100? $50? If you are game to help, please say “yes” in the comments (along with any other observations you care to share. If your answer is “no” I’d appreciate you tell me why you’d be unwilling to support a project like this.
Update
A few of the commenters have made the point I’m biassed because I tend to promote a paleo/ancestral health approach. I mentioned all this bias myself. Multiple times. But reading comprehension ain’t what it used to be. Be that as it may, here is a review by a registered dietician (who also hold a masters in Public Health) who has many of the same concerns I had. In fact, she found some angles that I overlooked.
Update
This is an interesting article on the “Alarmist food documentary.” Kip hits every key with WTH.
UPDATE
Interesting film, The Magic Pill, looking at the ancestral health/sustainability story. It’s been released in Oz and NZ, coming to the rest of the world in January.
THE MAGIC PILL – final trailer from Robert S Tate on Vimeo.
Update
A new documentary film (Dispelling The Lies) is in the fundraising stages. This is a fantastic project and I highly recommend that folks who are interested in an Ethical Omnivore perspective on health and sustainability support this project. Please click through for more details and to donate.
I’m also excited to tell you about another brand new film, Kale vs. Cow, which will dive into the nutritional, environmental and ethical case for meat. Kale Vs. Cow is the brainchild of our friend Diana Rodgers of Sustainable Dish, a real food dietitian living on a working organic farm. The film focuses on the most vilified of farm animals, the cow, ultimately making the case that eliminating animals from our food system will cause more harm than good.
She needs your help! Support Kale vs. Cow’s crowdfunding campaign here!
Yes!
Thanks for the review!!!
Yes!
Is this a real person or the same company posting “Yes!” over and over
As I said in your other comment:
All responses have unique ISP’s and emails, so they appear to be legit. If someone were trying to “stuff the ballot box” I’d expect to see thousands, not dozens.
Yes! Thanks for your work on this
Yes!
And we’d be happy to donate a lot more than $100 if you’d sign on as an adviser Robb.
They’re aware of this, therefore they post dozens and not thousands. The art of deception is delusion.
Congrats to you Robb on writing such a “looonng” review. Seriously, no sarcasm. I appreciate the fact of the research and writing you did.
Unfortunately you lost my attention about a quarter of the way in. I could seriously sit through the “What the Health” doc so much easier.
The terms and jargon were just to much to follow. I am a simple person who needs “simplicity” to make informed choices and my friend, you did it do that for me at all. So as much as a review or case you seemed to have built, you’ve not accomplished anything to make me change my mind on my stand with the doc or my decision to become a vegan.
To be honest, after I researched you and what you do for a living $$, it was clear that this is another “A” versus “B” review.
It seems your review is trying to “convince” others to switch from Vegan to Paleo?? No?
Awe, maybe I shouldn’t say that as I did not read the whole article. True.
For me, I believe enough evidence or so-called evidence or research from the doc was good enough for me. I am quite capable to make an informed decision based on what I saw. Besides, switching to vegan is not going to kill me, Forks and Knives did an amazing job and still do of teaching the correct nutritional information to make the transition from non- vegan to vegan. To me, instead of comparing and bickering against one another, celebrate that both methods(paleo and vegan) are healthy alternatives to what many people eat today.
Keto, paleo, Vegan, blah blah blah, let’s just be free to make the choices we want to without having to read over a 45 minute (complex & scientific review) .
Just for he record, I love animals and if that were the only reason I become vegan, well, how do you review that with science?
Sara- i asked questions about clear misrepresentations in the film. Yes, i make a living telling people to not eat junk food, i’m not sure that is particularly nefarious in this case. As I said elsewhere, if Kip is not on point with the science he presents, if things are clearly taken out of context, omitted etc, then the WHOLE message is called into question. This is quite unfortunate as he makes fantastic points about corporate collusion, shady activities on the part of the governmental organizations charged with stewarding our health. “Keto, paleo, Vegan, blah blah blah, let’s just be free to make the choices we want to without having to read over a 45 minute (complex & scientific review) .” People are scared by the film, they ask for input about the veracity…just dismissing a topic because it’s hard is lazy and how we have ended up with the political situation we have in the US. Facts matter.
So Sara, you put your trust only in what you can easily digest (no pun intended) intellectually? I am not asking in an insulting tone; just paraphrasing what you said (ie. the documentary was easy to understand, the article was not; therefore you will stick with the documentary). That is a scary stance for anyone to take on any matter. Worth reconsidering.
Thanks for the review Robb – I watched the movie before I read your review, and frankly, the ‘bias’ in the movie was very evident and immediate. Your review is very fair and in accord with my conclusions about the film. For me, I improved my health dramatically by focusing on my ‘immune’ system/gut flora via incorporating more raw fruits/veggies as well as fermented foods and reducing/controlling stress, and improving my sleep quantity/quality. ‘Mainstream Medical’ never talks about the importance of a healthy immune system and its dramatic and positive affect on many health issues. Thanks and peace.
Thank gawd I read this article, I can eat again.
Yes
Yes
Is this a real person or the same company posting “Yes” over and over
All responses have unique ISP’s and emails, so they appear to be legit. If someone were trying to “stuff the ballot box” I’d expect to see thousands, not dozens.
Word! I watched “What the health” and, I am embarrassed to say, fell hook line and sinker. I have since started eating meat again and looking at both sides. This article was very informative. Thank you. Great, Great, Great points you made!!! I can see how the other side was trying to sway us now. Along with other things I’ve been reading about the NWO and how they are pushing society to go to a vegan based diet for very dark reasons.
Glad this helped, you might also find this interesting: https://quartzy.qz.com/1277389/the-art-of-the-alarmist-food-documentary/
Yes
Instead of trying to negate all the facts given, why not just try it and let the results speak for themselves. Jeez. People you’re missing the point here.
I LOVE outcome based approaches. Love them. I said multiple times there were laudable elements to the approach recommended by the film, but this does not negate the factual inaccuracies of the film. As I pointed out previously, Kip did a good job of couching the story of corporate collusion with the government in our food system. BUT. If the film is full of factual errors, it’s not hard to then dismiss these other, important, factual elements. So, instead of protecting a flawed product, you might consider asking more of people like Kip.
Let those that want to debunk science research over have their way.
Your life is your greatest asset, spend it the way that you think is just.
I will place my health with the latest research and technologies that free my family from the grips of the dairy, meat and poultry lobbies. I now realize that the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Diabetes Association are all only telling you partially the truth.
I have been on a plant based diet now with my wife for about 7 years.
Ocassionally, on trips to Europe, we are coerced from it, but , upon our return, we always thankfully embrace it.
I myself, will never return to the diet that I was weaned on as a child in southern California from the local supermarket.
https://www.facebook.com/kellymunfordjourney/
Many people have tried the vegan diet, done it right, and failed to thrive. Some become miserably ill. There are very sound genetic and enterotypic reasons for this, that don’t care about ideology. Here are just four reasons why some people just plain don’t cut it as vegans: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/4-reasons-some-do-well-as-vegans
As Robb points out, this documentary is riddled with factual errors. Anybody catching these errors is unlikely to want to try the diet, because the information given is inaccurate and often based on either misunderstanding or just plain ideology. It would be greatly to the film’s benefit to clean up the mistakes.
Yes.
Sugar is not inflammatory. What a joke.
Yes!
Yo
Anyone I have ever met with acne or eczema, including myself, show inflammation with consuming even too much fruit! So I believe sugar is an inflammatory. I am vegan and went vegan for the animals but learned that my health of course is important but overall I am worried for my siblings and their health. Plant based should not sound scary or a way to victimize people who eat animals. Just do research on your own and listen to the facts! (:
I agree. If it makes sense to you and is advantageous for your family, then do it. I was never one for listen to Joe Blow and his views he has on health while eating everything in sight. Do what feels right.
Yes!
A big yes from the Netherlands! Thank you for this info, I started watching the movie and stopped doing so in tears. I just could not handle the subjective and offensive way of throwing ‘info’ at me. Some things I could refute easily, other things I could not… I gave up. Thank you again for doing the work. I wil share the link with a friend who has metbolic syndrom en diabetis II and is now turning into a vegan… I just offered to send him some info…. he agreed… I send him Thepaleomom-site… easy to read, even voor Dutch people. But maybe he can read this too.
Are you tying to stray your friend from going vegan? Sounds unusually for a friend to want their friends to not try something that is beneficial….Please warch the rest of the documentary. Documentaries are supposed to be informational and the light of this documentary is dismal and overall freaky, but it is the truth. Please do your own research, lovely!
Yes
Yes!
Without question..!! How much do you need..??
What the Health is a direct result of
“Lack of Protein”…
Haha! Yes!
Yes!
YEs!!!
Yes
Yes
Yes!
Yes. Please, yes!
Yes. I lean vegan in my food choices out of taste preference but am not completely vegan. I want to support movement toward more decentralized and cleaner production of all food.
Yes!
Yes. Make it happen, Robb.
I respect your views but I am vegan because my heart made me do it. Believe me, I resisted. Even if it’s not healthier, I believe it’s morally the right thing for me. I enjoyed the review and am trying to be open to other views. Hard….but trying. Lol.
I love your approach. That’s how everyone should do it, in my opinion.
Yes.
And thank you for the in-depth review. A vegan friend of mine recommended I watch What the Health, but I wasn’t prepared for what felt like religious propaganda — which, as you say, is a real shame because of the very real problems with the industrialisation of food that were lumped in with vegan ideologies. Signed: an ethical omnivore.
Yes!! I would donate more than $100 for a project like that.
Yes!!
No. I appreciate your analysis. I’m just fed up with biased reports. Seems very difficult to get anything that doesn’t have an agenda. Your’s seemed to be to get a job making a movie. Good Luck.
I did appreciate your perspective.
I feel very much the same way. I’m just trying to find unbiased facts and information… shouldn’t be this difficult. I learned a lot of disturbing facts from the movie. For years, we have eaten a mostly paleo diet and couldn’t believe what we were hearing in this movie – that free range chicken and eggs were harmful…. what!? It looks like I have to continue researching. One thing is certain… After years of my husband eating mostly paleo and still has to take high blood pressure and cholesterol medications, he is convinced more than ever that the paleo diet is not working. We are going to do a three month trial period to see if he can come off of his meds. Robb, I have one piece of advice for future reviews. Please consider the readers who are truly trying to figure out which data is fact …. please be more professional in your delivery. I had a very difficult time reading your review due to your snarkines.
My step dad went vegan cold turkey after watching the film with me (I’ve been vegan for 1.5 years now). Before he followed a strict paleo diet for 5-6 years (lots of meat, eggs, fish etc) but his cholesterol was still over 300 while on meds. After 6 weeks of being vegan he got retested and it dropped to 120!! The benefits of a plant based diet truly are amazing (for both our health and the plant!)
Aimee, depending on your personal biochemistry, a vegan diet can improve or destroy your health. The claim that a vegan diet will benefit the planet is highly questionable – can you think of a single natural, healthy, ecosystem that does not include animals eating each other?
Think of grasslands covered with zebra, gazelles, wildebeest, and buffalo. What happens if you knock out the carnivores – the lions, cheetah, leopards, jackals, hyenas, and raptors? The ecosystem collapses.
Humans are proud of their big brains and their special tool of culture. A well-managed grassland supporting meat animals, or a crop farm that integrates cattle, sheep, or goats, maybe free-range chickens, is a very healthy, very resilient managed ecosystem. Year by year, good livestock management (whether running grazers on grassland or rotating them with crops) increases soil depth and fertility, sequestrates carbon, rainfall retention and percolation, and produces more human-edible food than plants alone.
By the way, my husband has familial high cholesterol. He cut out grains and sugar, and a month later his cholesterol had dropped to well within the normal range. During this trial month, he increased his intake of meat, eggs, and cheese. He’s not overweight, but his waistline shrank nearly 2′ in this month. Sadly, his love of bread, pasta, and pastries, toppled him off the wagon again, and his cholesterol and waistline went back up.
On the other hand, one of my best friends struggled to get her biomarkers into the healthy range. For her, the regimen that works well is exclusion of red meat and shellfish. She loves seafood, so she is not happy with this.
My own experience with two years of ovolactovegetarianism followed by a vegan diet was abysmal. I was doing it right – on paper. My medical team could not understand why I was so thin (90lb at 5’5″ tall), had so many deficiencies, and got so sick, given that my diet theoretically provided ample calories and enough nutrients.
Then the testing started, and the lights came on. I’m hypoglycaemic – all those healthy whole grains were doing a number on me, as was my high fruit intake. The high amount of fibre in my diet sparked off appalling IBS. I’m gluten-sensitive, so I’d developed leaky gut from my home-ground, home-baked wholewheat bread. I don’t efficiently convert ALA to DHA and EPA, so the flaxseed was going straight through, and exacerbating the IBS and leaky gut. With leaky gut and IBS, I couldn’t absorb the minerals in my food. And I’m legume-intolerant, so those healthy pulse-based dishes caused crashing migraines, and nearly destroyed my gut. I was very sick indeed. It took close to two years to get me back to health. I had to have transfusions of immunoglobins, intramuscular shots of B12 and iron, IV treatments with a vitamin and mineral cocktail, and return to an omnivorous diet. I will never, never, never, put myself through that again.
Cholesterol is essential for life. Lowering it is certainly not beneficial. Look up Dr Paul Mason.
Robb very clearly says that he has no interest in making the movie. The idea of saying whether you would or would not donate to a documentary on ethical omnivorism appeared to to me to be merely gauging interest.
As for trying a different diet to see if you get better results, there is no suggestion in this piece that you shouldn’t do that.
I only know Robb from this one article, but from my point of view it only starts to get ‘snarky’ nearer the end where he has to reiterate the same comments over and over again because the documentary lies about the same points over and over again. It’s good to hear that you did get through it as, unlike the documentary, Robb cites all of his research and is open when he has personal opinions.
Finally, don’t believe everything you see on documentaries… next week there may be one commissioned by the dairy, meat and eggs mass producers and they would have equally strong – but opposing – ‘proof’ to What The Health. It’s a minefield!
When will “Paleo” types lose the living in a big city, air conditioned/heated homes, cars, computers, etc
True Paleo types should live in caves, wash maybe once a week or month in a creek, catch their own food, hunting with spear, cook over open fire, or eat raw meat
How do you KNOW some of these factors aren’t important, humans lived that way for a majority of history
This gave me a really good laugh! Using this logic, vegans should move out of the cities and live in trees, wash very seldom, eat only plants endemic to the region, in season, raw, or cooked over a smoky fire, and use only the tools they could make from stones and sticks. That’s what a natural, evolutionary, vegan lifestyle would look like. Humans lived that way for millennia – except that there is exactly zero archaeological evidence for vegan humans. None. Zip. Nada. Thanks to stable isotope testing, it’s possible to tell not only what proportion of a diet was plant or animal, but whether the protein fraction was plant, marine animal, or terrestrial animal. Ever more sensitive tests can now pick up starch granules on stone tools and in sediments, and differentiate between fats.
Either everybody had to return to the lifestyle of millennia, or nobody has to, regardless of dietary affiliation.
So true Paleo means 100g of fiber per day right? Where do you get your fiber and how much per day?
If everyone who ate meat consumed all their meat as grass-fed beef and continued eating the same amount of meat, how much grass land would that require globally?
John, this comment suggests that you know very little about the paleo diet, as conceptualized nowadays. Paleo folks can easily eat as much vegetable matter as vegans. Paleo-dieters eschew grains, dairy products, refined sugar, and industrial seed oils. They don’t eat any industrial foods. The paleo diet is not purely meat and fat. There are even people who call themselves pegans – paleovegans. They too cut out all industrial foods, relying on foods purchased in their natural state, of kinds that they believe would have been available in the Palaeolithic.
A Paleo meal might well comprise grilled meat, a pile of sautéed kale, a small serving of sweet potato, and an enormous mixed salad. Paleo-dieters get their fibre the same place as vegans: from plants.
If grazing were more widely managed according to Alan Savoury’s principles, we could produce a lot more meat.
Yes.
Thank you-thank you. I was intrigued by What the Health and immediately dug in to see the response. My visceral response was to make a change. My step bro and his equally bad ass wife have been vegans for at least a couple decades. I stopped eating meat and dairy that day, but I cannot deny being conflicted by the fact that I’m Native. Thank you for your insight and humor on the subject. I intend to absorb as much info as I can. But what to do with all that vegan butter? There was at least one example of a native permaculture movement that seemed incredible but I am three different tribes and non Indian. How to begin to research the ancestral diets specifically even though I have some ideas and then to source things like eel. Ew. Thanks again for all the links to good info. I feed my crew and if I can at least keep them healthy and provide basic sense and guidance I’ll feel better. But I also still want abs.
I’m reading this as a link over from Mark Sisson’s Best of 2017 Research Insights….
Some interesting points that I hadn’t really thought of as well. I found it interesting when I lived in Iowa that the pig lagoons were not well maintained and that they did little to compost the detritus of the lagoons into good fertilizers. Well composted waste can be a good fertilizer..yet, someone would try to speed up the process and the waste would be hot or toxic still.
As a Business & Society researcher (yeah, I’ve got a Ph.D.–in business), I’ve always kept my eyes on the Vegan Lifestyle. Vegan left me B12 deficient and anemic. Sigh. When I gave it up, fish was not a gateway food, I slapped down some bacon and pork chops when I got done. I just could not handle Vegan.
Being a critical thinker and a food and diet tinker-er, I think that there is likely a point of compromise somewhere in all of this. Paleo seems to hit the nail on the head for me with the inclusion of healthy fats, a few 2-3 reasonable servings of protein (not an entire side of beef) each day, and lots of fresh veggies, fruits, and the ‘slower’ uptake carbs (potatoes, some flours, and oatmeal for me).
Sadly, now I’m worried about the abuse of monkeys who are used to harvest coconuts. Oy.
As a conservative thinker I believe that we each have an accountability for leaving the planet in at least a habitable state. Yet, when I teach one chapter on sustainability to my students, I realize that we’ve outgrown the planet–and that’s with me and about 25 students laying out a sustainability footprint as one person.
I know, I know, sustainability footprint calculators have their issues as well.
Anyhow, I appreciate your thoughts.
Linda
Yes.
Thanks Rob. As always, your analysis was on point snd extremely thorough. As a physician myself, I know your science is on the money. Many years ago, your book changed the way I eat forever and my health has improved no end. Thanks for all your hard work in this field, it is greatly appreciated!
Yes
Yes!!
Great review … thank you for taking the time to critically review this documentary. I have lots of referrals to watch it and now can do so critically (also didn’t realize it was another vegan documentary which leads me to not want to watch it)
When I disagree with things or feel like something is wrong I look into the they side, which is exactly what critical thinking is. In order to be a critical thinker you need to be open to the opposing sides. Please lay your biases aside when it comes to eating animals and their secretions. Please watch What the Health and though dear may arise don’t worry too much, just try to make a difference! We all can with our dollar bills! (:
Jesus. Please collect your thoughts before you decide to spray us with your word salad next time.
Thought provoking for sure, genetics seem to play a big part. Microbiotics is a very healthy life style but boring and misses out on the many fantastic plant based and meat based nutritious food choices. I am for moderation in most all things but like to get out on the fringe from time to time. Life’s short so eat your dessert first!
Yes!
Yes
Yes
Yes!
Absofuckinlutely.
Absofuckinglutely x2
Yes
Yes, in fact I helped support another film based on the same lines (The Perfect Human Diet). It had good info but lacked the pizazz needed to attract an audience outside the paleo crowd.
I liked that film. Thanks for that. I hope someone wants to make another good film that make it as big as these vegan films.
Where can I find this film?
It’s on Netflix
Film can be purchased for $9.99 from “Whatthehealthfilm.com.”
It’s on Netflix
Yes
Yes!
Fuck yes!!!
Also, I’m married to a film composer and I’m sure he’d love to provide some killer music if you make this film!!!
Yes. Thank you for the article.
Yes!
Yes. And yes. (Husband shouting from couch)
Yes!
Yes. Excellent review, as is everything you do, Robb! Thanks for being brave!
Yes! And, I for one would be very, very happy if you were on the radar of the cranky vegans. I frankly count on you to help educate the world regarding best practices – food, lifestyle and ‘saving the world’ wise. They like to believe that meat-eaters are mindlessly following the CAFO-eater masses. They’re wrong. There are folks out here who know what we are doing and are living robust, thoughtful lives. As an ex-vegan, I can honestly report that the events that I went to hosted by vegans and vegetarians vs the ancestral and paleo folks are striking in their differences. The vegans were pretentious and not friendly in the slightest; the ancestral and paleo folks are radiant, friendly, fun and intelligent. With your help, the record will be set straight.
Hi Marty. I have followed a vegan diet for six years, but I still consider myself a fun guy to hang out with. Like anyone with strong views (whether it be veganism, religion, etc), I agree that people can be so caught up in their beliefs, they become insufferable. If you are ever in Eastern Canada, we can have a beer!
I’ll take you up on that if the offer is extended.
that is quite the generalization saying that “The vegans were pretentious and not friendly in the slightest”. The politics of diet are not pretty, just like politics in general. There are plenty of meat eaters that aren’t friendly either. being vegan (or your diet in general) should be looked at as an individual endeavor. It doesn’t need to become a fight but rather finding a lifestyle and making food choices that make YOU feel good and thrive. You wouldn’t judge another for playing a game that makes them happy, just as you shouldn’t judge them on the lifestyle they’ve found that makes them happy. Vegans are not a virus that you should be “on the radar” for. Eating a plant based diet fills you with micro nutrients while meat and dairy can leave you feeling bloated, lethargic, or tired. Maybe that doesn’t apply to all people, and of course it doesn’t. We’re all different. How do we expect people of different backgrounds and experiences to eat the same way as us. The most you can do it educate yourself as much as you can and make as educated choice on how you want to live your life. That said, you would hope others do the same to ensure the best life for themselves. There is no motive for vegans to try to “convert” meat eaters to their lifestyle if they didn’t think it would make them(the meat eaters) feel as good as themselves (the vegans). If you were unhappy with your life, why would you recommend it? If you are educated enough to make a thoughtful decision on how you want to live a fulfilling life, i think there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the people that mindlessly eat food just because it was artificially titled as “healthy”, that need to take another look at what they’re consuming and fueling their body with; whether that’s vegan or vegetarian or paleo, or whatever. I just think people should venture out, try new lifestyles, and not be so quick to judge people and what they eat with out having tried that diet before, because you won’t know the best thing for your body if you just stick to the standard american diet just because it’s “normal”.
Yes!
Common sense indicates to me that eating meat cannot possible be as harmful as “What the Health” claims. I really needed this review to help me make sense of the movie. I haven’t finished the entire review or clicked through all the links yet but I will.
My only negative comment about this review is that the Vegans in my life are fabulous people and I endeavor to treat them with the kindness they treat the entire world. I hated that you started with a reference to militant vegans – I guess they must be out there but the vegans I spend time with are LOVELY people. At a vegan wedding just days ago we danced for hours and love and joy were in the air!
For a movie to compete with this one it will need to be straight forward and funny. It is certainly difficult to make a scientifically sound argument that is easy for the masses to take in quickly but we need to TRY hard to do it.
I like Lily’s response and would agree with her. Everyone should eat whatever they want if it continually ‘feeds’ them…no pun intended…but id does work! If one is healthy…no cancer, no health issues…then keep on doing what you are doing. If, however, there are health problems..it’s time to relook at lifestyle ways, which may or may not include food. however food is the biggest thing we consume…so it makes sense to start the changes there.
I agree with Margaret.
I am not surprised the vegans behaved that way! They are in serious need of a tryptophan fix!
Absolutely, yes man!!!!
Yes
I would absolutely give $100, if not more. We NEED this. I cannot wrap my mind around being vegan. Most vegans I know don’t eat animals, but will consume massive amounts of sugar and flour. It blows my mind.
That is true, but I would say massive amounts of carbs. I eat a lot of unrefined carbs, but not a lot of simple sugars. Guilty when it comes to bread as well. That being said, I do a lot of long distance running, and that stuff is the fuel of my engine.
Unrefined carbs become simple sugars in the body. So you are just doing the refining internally. What is more frightening to me is the consumption of soy, which isn’t too good for humans and most is grown with the aid of glyphosates and petroleum, as are most non-organic grains. A high carb diet is filled with glyphosates(used as a desiccant) unless organic. I’ll take a pasture fed cow over a bowl of soy any day.
Yes.
It would need to be great to penetrate the minds of those it needs to, but it’s possible – ‘Food inc’ changed my thinking dramatically.
Yes!
Yes. Yes. All day long yes. I would donate way more than $100 if we’re serious about this.
Yes, and thanks for the review, I’m happy to use your article as a rebuttle to all the people telling me to watch the movie (I did begrudgingly) but would love to send them back to watch your movie instead.
YES!
Yes (duh)
Yes!
Very timely review as my husband and I watched this documentary in disbelief this weekend, and I was searching for a review from a Paleo/ancestral health approach. I don’t understand how documentaries like this one completely ignore how humans have lived and evolved over time. My “favorite” lines from the documentary (paraphrasing) were:
“Elephants, one of the strongest animals on earth, only eats plants.” Um, okay but the king of the jungle eats animals so…
And
“With a vegan diet and supplements, you will thrive!” HELLO the fact that you have to supplement negates everything you just said.
Thanks for the great facts oriented review! I just started Wired to Eat and I can’t get enough!
So….
Life span of an Elephant : 70 to 80 years.
Life span of a Lion : 12- 15 years.
Yes, and fruit flies are a matter of days, while some whale species may be in excess of 200. I know your implication is that plant eaters inherently live longer…this has absolutely no bering in any of what we are discussing. If you want to run with this, what is the average lifespans of chimps and gorillas relative to humans??? Oh…gee…
God some vegans are so fucking stupid. Hey LG did you even read the damn article?? Holy fuck. There really isn’t anything else you can say to ignorance like this.
How simply one forgets how similar we are to chimps and gorillas HAHAH
@Alexis: have you ever looked at the actual physical differences between other great apes and humans? Like the reversal of the ratio between small and large intestines? We’lol leave gorillas out of it, as they are much more distant relatives than chimpanzees. In chimpanzees, 1/3 of the total gut is small intestine, 2/3 is a very large sacculated caecum plus huge colon. In humans, it’s the other way around. This strongly suggests that chimpanzees can digest a heck of a lot more fibre than humans, as the caecum is a big alkaline fermentation vat. The marked extra length of the small intestine in humans strongly suggests that humans took a different evolutionary path, in which we became truly generalist feeders, equally capable of digesting plant and animal foods.
I’m an anthropologist who specializes in archaeology. There has never been a hominin species that was not omnivorous. I always think that too much credit is given to the big brain, and not enough to our amazing generalist gut – and our staggering ability to lay down fat. A very lean woman, at 18% body fat, carries 3 times as much fat as a female chimpanzee in prime breeding condition. A scrawny man down to 5% body fat is still twice as fat as a hunky male chimpanzee, running 1-2%. Our fat gives us high survival ability in lean times, better female fertility, and higher reproductive success than chimpanzees.
Even within our species (mostly sapiens, but with varying amounts of Neanderthal, Denisovan, and at least one Species X, which is thought to be Homo erectus), there is considerable variation. Although we may vary by less than 6% in gross genome, looking at SNPs shows that we have a million Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. If you and I differ by only 1%, that is still 100,000 differences in our genes. Then there’s the messiness of gene copy numbers. Take Salivary Amylase 1: I might have only 6 copies, you might have over 30. I would have a tough time with starches (I am, in fact, hypoglycaemic), while you might thrive on grains. Which version of the ApoE gene do you have? Maybe you have a variant that limits your ability to process saturated fat; my variant might allow me to eat any amount of animal fat and maintain low cholesterol and very low triglycerides – which is indeed the case.
My ancestors over the last 300 years were lactase-persistent Northern Europeans, for whom dairy products and fish were staples, and Afrikaners, who relied very heavily on red meat and dairy products. There’s also a dash of KhoiSan. Over this period, children born with genes that did not fit them for a high-protein, high-fat diet, would probably have died at weaning.
In a population where the diet was starch or fruit heavy, with little access to animal foods past weaning, the reverse would have happened. Children with high requirements for protein, inability to synthesize DHA and EPA from ALA, and high zinc and iron requirements, would have died. The population’s genome would be skewed toward the plant end of the dietary spectrum.
There are very real biological differences between individuals even of the same birth family. A diet on which one child thrives might be less than optimal for a sibling.
I was very ill as a vegan. Yes, I was doing it properly! It was only when my body went Into a severely catabolic state and I had a battery of tests done that I found out that I’m hypoglycaemic. I also have low starch tolerance. All those whole grains and fruits I was eating were wrecking my metabolism. I’m highly sensitive to legumes, so the lentil rissoles, tofu, and beans, caused smashing migraines, IBS, and leaky gut. I was dangerously anaemic, and seriously deficient in vitamins A, D, and B12, and in several minerals. I had to have IV infusions of immunoglobins to get my immune system functioning again, plus painful intramuscular injections of iron and B12. It turns out that I don’t make much vitamin D, regardless of how many hours I spent each day under South African sun, or efficiently convert beta carotenoids to retinoids. But then, for many generations, my ancestors’ staple foods were rich in both. Genes can be lost with disuse. Many Inuit, for example, cannot produce sucrase. Fruit makes them as sick as milk makes those who don’t produce lactase.
Undeniably, some people thrive as vegans as long as they supplement wisely. Others thrive on paleo diets with no supplementation at all. There are people who eat nothing but raw meat and fat – and their health is provably excellent.
There’s really no point in comparing humans to chimpanzees. It makes more sense to compare sapiens genomes with really close relatives – Denisovans and Neanderthals. We were so closely related to them that we interbred.
Supplementing is a completely different topic. Our soils are deficient = our food is deficient. We all must be supplementing
Supplementing is not necessary if your diet includes plenty of nutrient-dense animal foods & limits/excludes plant foods with their poor bioavailability of nutrients & their anti-nutrients inhibiting nutrient absorption.
Yes I would proudly donate! I just need to catch up on my car payments first.
The only supplement a well-planned vegan diet needs is Vit B12, and this is not because it is made by animals. It is not. It is made by bacteria. In ancestral times we all got enough Vit B12 just drinking out of streams or ripping a tuber out of the ground. Now, with food sanitisation practices, even meat eaters may be Vit B12 deficient and need supplements. In some animal husbandry practices, livestock are supplemented with Vit B12 so that the meat product actually contains Vit B12.
Vitamin B12 is present in beef because the grass that cattle eat feeds the bacteria in their rumen & the cattle then digest the bacteria. And there are many nutrients, including essential amino acids & fatty acids, lacking in a vegan diet.
I would support a movie like that!
Thank you for this analysis and it really helps see the other side. I’ve been a big supporter of paleo for years and now I’m questioning…
I was hoping you would have got to this study that showed high fat, not high carb consumption acutely impairs endothelial function. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9036757
This is interesting for those of us who exercise yet fat not carbs limit this flexibility for 4+ hours. This looks bad to me but your thoughts?
I touched on this in the article amigo, ALL meals cause a decrease in endothelial function.Their “high fat” meals were both high fat AND high carb…should this surprise anyone that this would be the worst of all worlds? This is a case for not having highly complex meals and also to do some degree fasting vs grazing. Always question, but before formulating a question, establish CONTEXT.
Brian,
I am in this field and there is evidence showing that exercise prevents the transient potential decrease in endothelial function. With that being said, if you are an exerciser, you are likely protected. There is thought that these transient decreases in FMD, but no one really knows yet. There is no longitudinal study indicating a potential decrease on FMD is predictive of heart attack, mortality, etc. Lastly the studies on lo get term effects of fat vs carbs on FMD do not show a negative effect of fat .
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25497262
This study focused on eggs specifically. For what it’s worth, Dr Katz is huge proponent of plant based diets, so I really trust these data given they are the opposite of what he likely had hoped for.
Yep. Also a lot of the regenerative ag folks are more and more post-vegan and that group is growing. It should be a combined effort. I know the Carbon Underground folks if you’re interested.
Yes! I couldn’t agree more with your analysis of the pseudo documentary. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing the sheeple flock to lies, half truths and blatant terroristic agendas. I was once a vegan(while going through cancer treatment) and ended up in the hospital with severe malnutrition and other deficiencies. I had been following a strict vegan diet for years and often took advicer from a well-known vegan nutritionist (no names given?!) I learned to listen to my body, educated myself in my own nutritional needs (primarily paleo) and kicked the snot out of colorectal cancer! (Imagine! A vegan diagnosed colorectal cancer at the age of 39!!!) Thanks for opening eyes!
You weren’t vegan all your life. And cancer takes years to grow. YEARS.
Explain babies (0-12months old) with cancer… (from your theory of cancer needing years to grow)
They will blame the meat eating mom…
I would absolutely be willing to contribute to a film on this topic. I’m trained as an anthropologist and studied human evolution, the rise of agriculture and nutrition years ago as an undergraduate and have been concerned about misrepresentations about healthy diets and eating ever since. It’s little remembered that one of the first books talking about what is now called a Paleo diet was written in the early 1980s by a couple of female anthropologists who had worked with hunter-gatherer populations. Back then, writing about food and nutrition was seen to be as a “women’s topic” and it was not given much respect in the academic community.
Yes! I too went vegan for about 3 years. At first I lost weight and felt great. Now I realize it was from cutting out processed foods. After awhile I felt awful. My b-12 and D3 numbers were in the toilet. My digestion from all the raw food was horrible. I ended up with colon cancer. I’m clear now after surgery/Chemo but am healing myself with good quality meat and lots of bone broth. Vegan is not for everyone.
Yes! About time.
Thanks for the review. Maybe we can start by doing a kickstarter to buy you a bottle of “just for men”. I’m sure you grew some gray hairs after that epic review.
More than a few!!
Yes and thank you for the review!
YES
Yes!!
Thank you so much for this! Working in the Keto idea and looking into diabetes as an optometrist this movie got me equally fired up. Thanks again, I really appreciate your work and time you took to write this.
Thank you.
Ryan
Yes!!
Thank you so much! Appreciate your work!
Thanks again
Ryan
Boom roasted lol
Now that’s funny.
Yes!
Yes, I would definitely support a film highlighting regenerative agriculture in the context of Ancestral Health! Bring it!
Been a follower of your site since 2010. You do great work. At 57 I’m better than at 27. You are a part of this. So yes. I would help
Honored!!!
YES YES YES!!!
Yes, yes, and yes.
And thank you for doing this despite the cross-hairs!
Yes and thanks for the great rebuttal points in the review. We need to feed the sustainable omnivore movement.
Yes.
Absolutely, yes.
Yes! I will donate!
Yes
To regenerative Ag
Yes x1000
Yes!
Yes, I would! Thanks for the thorough review!
Im poor grad student so I couldn’t donate 50 but definitely donate 10 or 20
More than generous, thank you!
I’m not a grad student, but I’m still poor.
I’ll donate $10. Keep up the good work!
Yes
Thanks for this insightful review. And, yes! I love the idea of a movie, Rob! I hope someone from the ancestral health movement picks up the vision and runs with it!
Yes.
Thanks for taking the time to write this! Great review! This is exactly what I needed!
YES! I would walk to your house from WV and hand deliver the money after that review!
Me too lol
Yes. I believe educating people is a large piece of the solution to improving our national health epidemic. I certainly didn’t have nutritional information growing up and was obese until age 35. Now I try to pass on what I’ve learned to anyone who asks. I would be most happy to donate to this cause.
Yes, you can count me in!
Great breakdown of What the F**K?
Yes!
Yes!
Yes.
You have my email and my $100.
Let’s go.
Yes. Anything I can do Robb!