Review of Forks Over Knives
Posted On September 17, 2010
The movie “Forks Over Knives” is like Mark Twain’s description of golf:
A Good Walk, Spoiled.
The documentary film starts from a great premise — eat real food and you can reverse many of the chronic diseases we see in our dismal culture of health.
Love it.
That said, the film makers don’t consider meat, dairy, or even eggs to be something you should eat. For example, consistently, they make an elemental confusion that makes it feel more like a giant serving of Op Ed Pie with an ax to grind than any shade of even-handed attempt to improve health through food.
Eating a wild caught salmon is equivalent, in their eyes (and camera lenses), to going to McDonalds and having a deep fried fish puck. Having a fillet — whether grass fed, free range, or doped up on hormones — is exactly the same for them.
This sin of omission could be called an oversight early on, but by the half way point, it was clear that this was an agenda rather than a balanced diet of information. While it was not the informational junk food equivalent to the corn growers insisting that their HFCS product is unrelated to obesity, I found myself over-sated all too quickly.
They used cultural comparisons just as selectively, pointing to countries that are healthy (and don’t eat a lot of meat or dairy) as examples of why these items “turn on cancer in your body”. They studiously avoided the steer in the room, a.k.a., Argentina. Argentina has some of the highest beef consumption in the universe, but still has lower rates of colon cancer than the US. (Cancer Res 35:3513 1975)
Here are some more links to scientific research that was not on the menu, if your dander is up and you care to get lost in the weeds on the issue:
- Meat consumption and colorectal cancer risk
- Frequent consumption of red meat is not risk factor for cancer
- Role of Life-style and Dietary Habits in Risk of Cancer among Seventh-Day Adventists
Bottom Line
If you’re a cheerleader for the vegan or vegetarian lifestyle and you want to feel warm and fuzzy about it … this film is for you. Otherwise, like Twain’s “good walk, spoiled”, the documentary Forks Over Knives takes a wonderful idea, and spoils the broth by studiously avoiding balance.
There’s sizzle to the idea, but no steak behind it.
For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower’s website.
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About The Author
Will Clower
One Comment
The UK government spends £1.2 Billion annually, on treating illness as a direct result of meat and dairy consumption, in line with a recent Oxford University study, commissioned by the Soil Association 2010.
You think meat/dairy consumption is healthy, then you are more deluded than you sound.
Consider the earliest known time at which man was unequivocally known to have used fire to cook, some 128,000 years ago. There is no way we could have evolved significantly enough in that time to consume 'cooked' meat….as well as our sliding/grinding jaw movement….the health statistics prove it!
Over 600,000 new cases of stroke in America EVERY year, says your research on 'Argentina' of all places that produce huge volumes of meat is misconstrued, or perhaps papers fiddled at source?! Put it to the test and commission Oxford University to research there, instead of referring to government backed 'doctors' research, oh and who exactly are these supposed people of note? Teresa Norat, Annekatrin Lukanova, Pietro Ferrari, Elio Riboli,†????!!!!
I sincerely hope your tap water doesn't become polluted from the run off of a vast slurry lagoon at a Super Dairy….the meat/dairy industries are a global menace and must be dealt with accordingly.
As for your references to Vegans, I think you need to seriously reconsider your misconceptions. I personally am a 210lb Vegan weightlifter and athlete of over 6 years (still gaining muscle mass on 40g of plant protein per day)…..my main aim is to promote good health (because I don't know a single family personally that has not been inflicted by dietary disorders and death). I am a humanist AND animal lover…..so please reconsider to change perceptions now, because people are suffering because of misinformation regarding diet!