In our Biology class we watched an incredibly ground breaking documentary by the name of Forks over Knives
The documentary explores the possibility that
so-called "diseases of affluence," such as heart disease, can be
reversed by adjusting our diets to include less processed and
animal-based foods. Back in the 1960s, Cornell University nutritional
scientist Dr. T. Colin Campbell was working to find a way to feed the
citizens of impoverished Third World nations when he discovered something in the
Philippines that forever changed the way he thought about consumption of food.
There, he discovered that the rates of liver cancer among richer children who subsisted on diets rich in animal-based foods were notably
higher than in the children who consumed plant-based diets. Meanwhile, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, a surgeon, was also discovering that many of the diseases he saw in patients were practically nonexistent in areas of the world
where people were primarily consuming plant foods. Several
investigations by the researchers, who did not meet each other until
the 1980s, (including a study in China by Dr. Campbell)
led them to the revelation that a whole-food, plant-based diet could
prevent, and even reverse, such intense conditions as type 2
diabetes, heart disease, and even some forms of cancer.
I found that this movie taught much of what I have been taught by my parents over the past few years. However, the film shows the reality of what goes on in America and other richer countries who eat rich, animal based diets.
