Forks Over Knives: What Does It Mean For Us?

Do you ever wonder why you try to follow the conventional wisdom of recommended dietary guidelines and your health still declines?  The brilliant documentary “Forks Over Knives” and the book “The China Study” provide the answers.

 Forks Over Knives

Forks Over Knives: The Plant-Based Way to Health has been getting a lot of well-deserved positive press lately.  The bottom line: we would all be healthier if we eliminated meat and dairy products from our diets.

The film presents excellent research to support the claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by eliminating animal-based and processed foods from our diets.

Or, as one of the M.D.s in the film summed it up:  if it has a mother and a father, don’t eat it.

The science is impressive.  I was thoroughly convinced, and so are leading edge nutritionists.

The film covers the work of famed nutritionists Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn of the famed Cleveland Clinic.  Campbell conducted The China Study which followed thousands of Chinese over decades and found that increases in their incidence of cancer and heart disease directly paralleled their adoption of a Western diet.

Some interesting anecdotes from the film:

•  When Nazis commandeered all the food animals in Norway during World War II and rationing forced the English away from meat, disease rates plummeted. After the war, meat eating returned and disease increased.
•  In the traditional Japanese diet, breast and prostate cancers are all but unknown.
•  Our nation spends more on healthcare than any country in the world yet has the poorest health.
•  The U.S. government subsidizes crops such as corn, which is used to make totally unhealthy corn syrup and fed to the animals which we in turn eat.
•  It is NOT necessary to eat meat to get enough protein in our diets. [check out this post on vegan protein powders.]
•  School lunches are filled with unhealthy food.
•  We are raising the first generation of children who will not live as long as their parents, because we feed them fast food that is inherently unhealthy.

 The China Study

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health describes a monumental survey of diet and death rates from cancer in more than 2,400 Chinese counties.

Here are just a few of the highlights from the book:

•  The study produced “more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet, and disease variables.”
•  “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest.”
• “There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.” [beans and lentils, legumes, grains, especially quinoa, nuts, soy products, tofu, avocados].

The bottom line: avoid meat, dairy and processed foods for a healthier life.

Many members of the medical profession are in agreement, including Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dean Ornish, M.D.

A friend of mine retired last year from a distinguished career as a surgeon at a major U.S. hospital.  I saw him at a gathering for the first time in many months and overheard him telling someone he was a vegan.

Having shared many a meat-hearty meal with him in the past, I turned to him and asked, “Forks Over Knives?”

His answer: “Yes.”

When our medical doctors are in agreement about the importance of avoiding meat and dairy products, it’s time to pay attention.

In truth, I still eat meat if I know it was locally and humanely raised, and is hormone and anti-biotic free.  But I don’t eat much of it.

I encourage you to view “Forks Over Knives” [it’s also a book] and/or read “The China Study.”  You will likely, as I did, change your diet forever and move on to better health.

In fact, your life may very well depend on it.

“Let food be thy medicine.”  Hippocrates