Slowly coming down off of my veg high after seeing the documentary Forks Over Knives for the first time. What a fantastic, evidence rich, and sensible presentation of why people should transition to a whole foods plant-based diet. The movie shows a causal link between consuming animal-based and processed food and developing degenerative diseases such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and even cancer. Some may see this dietary change as extreme, yet in the movie Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn says something to the effect of, “Isn’t a bypass of a major coronary artery extreme?”

Forks Over Knives movie poster

The movie focuses on the research of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, a surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, and Dr. Colin T. Campbell, a Cornell University nutritional biochemist. Both doctors came from rural family dairy farms and grew up believing in the quality of animal protein. Later research and evidence changed both of their opinions, but they did not have a vested interest in reaching these conclusions, quite the opposite really.

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn came to his conclusion from a physician’s perspective when treating patients with heart disease after realizing his ability to help patients only reaches so far once they are on his operating table, chest open, undergoing bypass surgery. What can he do for these people before the situation reaches the point of major medical intervention? He has come to the conclusion that a dietary intervention of plant-based whole foods proves the best medicine. In his 20 year study he changed the diets of 17 patients with heart disease who were past the point of surgical intervention. His program consisted of a low fat, plant based, and whole food diet which eliminated processed foods, added oils, meat, and dairy. The results were excellent. Patients had major drops in cholesterol levels, a cease in cardiac events, and angiograms showed a widening of their coronary arteries — meaning increased blood flow and effectively disease reversal. One of the patients in his study was told by her original doctor to prepare for death and that she had less then a year to live. With diet change alone she was still living past the end of the study, with no further cardiac events. Incredible results from such a simple prescription to follow.

Dr. Colin T. Campbell started as a nutritional researcher with MIT and Virginia Tech and was on assignment in the Philippines to improve the diets of malnourished children. He was to accomplish this by using meat, milk, and eggs. There was a glitch in the study with underfunding and they had to instead substitute solely plant protein into the diets of these malnourished children. Dr. Campell noticed that the children in his study were at much lower risk of developing liver cancer, which was prevalent in children of the upper classes in the Phillipines who had diets high in protein. This started to make a connection for him — perhaps this increase in disease was due to the heavily animal-based diet of the upper class children. He later undertook a 20 year study (The China Study) through Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine surveying disease and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan.

“People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” – Dr. Campbell.

Dr. Campell also points out the fact that the meat and dairy industries are heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars. This creates a conflict of interest that perpetuates unhealthy standards in order to promote and increase sales of their product. The milk, egg, and meat industry have very powerful lobbyists who influence the creation of nationwide nutrition plans from lunch line choices in schools to what foods make it onto the food pyramid. Even with all of this evidence into how to make people healthier, industry regulators are still manipulating the system to make more money at any cost to people’s well-being.

I have one major criticism of Forks Over Knives and that is the murky territory it enters when patients start going off their medication while on the plant based diet. I think this is fine if after a few months they are evaluated by their physicians and told they no longer need their high blood pressure medication, insulin shots, etc. When beginning a vegan diet for health reasons, do not throw all conventional medicine out the window. Some of those medications are necessary for people with existing diseases, and going off of them prematurely could be disastrous. In the movie it appears that some people replace diet for medication immediately, which is irresponsible.

Overall though I was very impressed with the research, evidence, and message to improve public nutrition. I will be showing this film to my family who all eat meat and dairy because I care about their health and this film is an informative, easy watch. For people not open to veganism, I think it is a great jumping off point. If nothing else I think my family and I will be able to have a great conversation about our dietary choices. I often find open conversations and self-evaluation are the first step to changing minds.

Being vegan, I find myself asking this question on a regular basis. Why are meat and dairy dishes readily available, and finding quality vegan (even vegetarian) meal options a constant challenge at mainstream restaurants, family parties, etc.? Why is the idea of a following a vegan diet shocking and “crazy”? I think it isn’t, and yet I regularly encounter disbelief, surprise, and an attitude of “you’re weird, that’s not normal”. It may not yet be “normal,” but there are many excellent, profoundly moving reasons to choose to be vegan, and easy too, that it shouldn’t be so inaccessible.

Writer and Chef Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall puts it brilliantly when he says, ”We may be increasingly aware of the good reasons to eat less meat, but our cooking culture is still largely based around it. The idea of a fridge entirely free of sausages, bacon, chops or chicken can strike fear into the heart of many a cook. Meat is so familiar, so convenient, the easy route to something we instantly recognise as a “proper meal”. But there is absolutely no reason why we can’t embrace vegetables in the same way.”

Meat and dairy products are heavily subsidized by taxpayers, which enables superficially lower costs at the grocery store. It takes much more time, energy, and taxpayer dollars to produce every pound of meat versus pound of plant. Meat and dairy also extracts a huge environmental cost on land and water. The meat and dairy industry wants to keep prices down short-term to sell more and make money. They have an incentive to take short-cuts in production when they can whether this means feeding cattle growth hormones or improperly disposing of animal waste. There is no long-term plan to pay for or repair environmental damage they cause. All of the damage done (which we enable in the first place through our taxes) we the citizens will literally pay for in additional tax dollars and in loss of our natural resources.

Cattle and poultry farms use animals and have little if any consideration for animal welfare, their socialization, or quality of life. The majority of farms are mechanized factory farms, not the cozy image of an old barnyard complete with a family farmer putting care, kindness, and consideration into their work. Either way the animals are getting used and slaughtered cruelly and unnecessarily. Factory farms are hell holes of cramped, dirty cages filled with animals that live short, horrible, and excruciating lives. If you think this only effects the animals, think again. Meat industry jobs are not pretty. They involve dangerous, violent, and disgusting work — often work that falls to immigrants — and they correlate strongly with higher-than-average rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, and other crimes.

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Each week, “Vegan With Reason” challenges mainstream meat-loving individuals to take another look at the food they eat, and encourages vegan and vegan wannabes to fight the good fight… all from the perspective of a recently clean meat addict.

This week I have something special for you.  Author of the Cookbook The Happy Herbivore and blog HappyHerbivore.com Lindsay Nixon agreed to do an interview with me over Skype.  For those of you vegans that are unfamiliar with The Happy Herbivore blog and have not checked out her cookbook The Happy Herbivore… shame on you.

Bio:

Lindsay S. Nixon is a rising star in the culinary world, praised for her ability to use everyday ingredients to create healthy, low fat recipes that taste just as delicious as they are nutritious. Lindsay’s recipes have been featured in Vegetarian Times, Women’s Health Magazine and on The Huffington Post. Lindsay is also a consulting chef at La Samanna, a luxury resort and four-star restaurant in the French West Indies. You can learn more about Lindsay and sample some of her recipes at happyherbivore.com

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