Are you afraid to see Forks Over Knives?
A recent review of the movie seemed to belie the author’s fear over change. Some people like to stick with what they know, and what a lot of Americans know is a diet full of fast food, junk and animal products. The idea of leaving those things behind- especially if you think that you’re eating relatively healthy can be frightening.
The V-word can scare people, too.
This isn’t a film about veganism. It’s a film about health, which happens to include a vegan, or at least mostly vegan diet.
It’s not a movie about animal rights. There are mentions of factory farming, but in the context of how it is bad for us, not from the perspective of if being terrible for animals. There are lots of scenes with animals in them, but nothing graphic. Most of the animal scenes are more or less animals just being animals.
It’s not a movie about environmentalism. There have been a number of parallels made between this movie and An Inconvenient Truth, but mentions of environmentalism are not at all the focus of this film. Those comparisons have more to do with how the message is delivered and that people may not want to hear it, rather than the actual message.
It’s a film about health. Health through diet.
There’s a scene in the movie that has been talked about in the media lately. In it, the researchers talk about Occupied Norway during World War II, when livestock was confiscated to feed the German troops, and the subsequent changes in Norwegian health both while animal products weren’t available and when they were available again. There were audible gasps in the audience during the showing I attended.
It’s powerful stuff.
The bulk of the information talked about is from the work of Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study, and Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn. It’s solid research on the benefits of a plant based diet. Even if you’ve read The China Study, this is still worth seeing- and if you haven’t read the book, well, then you should definitely see the film!
It’s no longer playing in NYC, but it’s playing in many other places across the country!
