I had an evening off, so I decided it would be fun to watch a food documentary and write a little review on it. Ahhh, a chance to sit back and relax! I went to the kitchen, made myself some caramel hot chocolate, and scooped a little bit of caramel ice cream into a bowl.
Ok, by now you should be able to tell that I definitely have a thing for caramel. Yeah... it's sort of a weakness of mine.
Anyway, every now and then it's nice to have an indulgent treat like that, and in this case it was only 5 points! Not a bad deal, right? I was feeling pretty good.
By the end of the introduction to the movie, I wasn't feeling as good as I felt before. By the end of the movie, I looked at my empty bowl and felt a bit... well, guilty. Why did I just eat that?!
Don't worry, I got over it. Caramel and I are still good friends.
Forks Over Knives (2011) is a 90-minute documentary on degenerative diseases and how they relate to meat, dairy, and processed foods. If I could sum up the overall message of this film in one sentence (and I really think I can), it would be this: "Eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet to reduce your chances of getting cancer and diabetes." There it is. That's what this movie is all about.
It's an interesting movie though, so I would very much recommend watching it for yourself. The writer and director, Lee Fulkerson, meets with various people throughout the movie to learn about nutrition, disease, and food politics from a few different perspectives. His two main sources of information are Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who support a plant-based diet. Both of these doctors grew up on farms and followed similar paths of interest. Meeting later in life, they combined everything they had individually learned and came to the conclusion that degenerative diseases are both preventable and reversible if you eat the right foods. In comparing and contrasting America to other cultures, they discovered that Americans eat more meat, dairy, sugar, and processed food than other nations. All of these things appear to add up to an alarming rate of cancer, diabetes, and obesity. We are one sick country!
I found myself fascinated as well as concerned by the information presented in this film. While one could say the argument presented in this documentary is somewhat (though not entirely) one-sided, I feel Forks Over Knives still presents valuable information that anyone can learn from. While watching it myself, I started questioning my own eating habits. "Do I eat too much meat? Could I cut back? Should I become vegan? But I LOVE dairy - I couldn't possibly give it up! How could I eat more whole-foods?" So, the most important thing about this film is that it made me stop and think. And man... there is a lot to think about.
One thing is sure, we have drastically changed our eating habits in the past 100 years, and our nation's health has been steadily getting worse. Something needs to be done about that, and the people interviewed in this film seem to think they have found the answer. The research they present is credible and compelling, and I do believe there is a lot of truth to what they are saying. Without a doubt, eating more whole-foods is beneficial to our health. The closer we can get to how things are found in nature, the better. So yes, I will try to eat as many whole-foods as I can. But completely cut out meat and dairy? I think that is a little too far out for me. It seems to me that while eating too much of those things has been shown to be harmful, eating them in moderation may be just as healthy as not eating them at all. Everything in moderation. I like that.
My Rating: 7 out of 10
Worth The Watch: Yes
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