![\"Forks](\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/forks-over-knives.jpg\")
But an image on the film’s webpage<\/a> leaves no doubt as to what the title really means.<\/p>\nIn the upper left of the page, there’s fork with a tomato on it.\u00a0 At the bottom of the page, there’s the knife.<\/p>\n
Only, it isn’t a knife like you’d use to eat.\u00a0 Instead, it’s an image that evokes far more emotion — it’s a scalpel.<\/p>\n
The knife, here, is medicine and surgery. The fork is food.<\/p>\n
Food over medicine<\/h3>\n
If the argument against a plant-based diet is that it’s extreme, then what do you call 500,000 people each year having their chest opened up on an operating table, and having a vein from their leg sewn onto their heart?<\/p>\n
That’s one of many, many points raised by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn<\/a>, who, along with Dr. T. Colin Campbell<\/a>, Cornell University professor and author of The China Study<\/em>, presents evidence in favor of a plant-based diet for health.<\/p>\n Esselstyn and Campbell both grew up on farms believing that animal protein was essential to our well-being, but have since changed their beliefs in the face of mounting data pointing in one direction — that a whole foods, plant-based diet could be the answer to our country’s obesity epidemic and health crisis.<\/p>\n That evidence, and the theory which it supports, is the main subject of Forks Over Knives<\/em>.\u00a0 Among the evidence are several damning studies of the cancer-causing effects of casein, the protein which makes up 80% of the protein in cow’s milk.<\/p>\n A good portion of the film is devoted to a boiled-down version of the results of the large-scale statistical study conducted in China that is the subject of Campbell’s best-known work, The China Study<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n And that’s a good thing, because when I excitedly picked up the book at the DC VegFest last year, I put it down after leafing through it and realizing just how dense it was.\u00a0 Despite plenty of recommendations from friends, The China Study <\/em>is something that’s still on my list to read “when I get a chance,” taking a back seat to quicker reads that I’ve been meaning to get to. I can only imagine that people who aren’t already vegetarian or vegan will find less motivation than I had to read it.<\/p>\n So to be able to get a condensed synopsis in an hour and a half, along with real-life case studies of people who have dramatically improved their health after just a few weeks on a plant-based diet, is something that’s invaluable for the spread of this message which could do so much to change our country’s health.<\/p>\n What Forks Over Knives<\/em> lacks is the shock factor that its predecessors like Food, Inc.<\/em><\/a> and Earthlings<\/em><\/a> possess.\u00a0 Very few people, I suspect, will be so moved by the film that they are compelled to empty their freezers and go vegan the very next day.<\/p>\n And yet that’s also the biggest thing it’s got going for it, the thing that really could allow Forks Over Knives<\/em> to have the impact that so many vegans hope it will.\u00a0 By virtually ignoring the animal-friendly aspect and even avoiding the word “vegan” almost entirely, FOK positions itself as a documentary about health, and simply proposes the plant-based, whole foods diet as the road to a long, active life.<\/p>\n My favorite part of the documentary, actually, is the explanation for why whole foods (ideally plants, but not necessarily) are so vastly better for us than processed foods.\u00a0 It’s an easy-to-follow, intuitive argument about how processed food takes advantage of our ancient, innate drive to consume fatty and sweet foods because, in nature, these qualities are signals of high caloric density.\u00a0 And foods rich in calories, of course, were essential to our species’ survival when food was scarce.<\/p>\n Now that food is not scarce in industrialized countries, however, technology allows food manufacturers to exploit our drive to consume fatty, sweet foods, which for so long were rare in our diets.\u00a0 Manufactured foods are now so concentrated with fats and sugars that they produce a state of hypernormal pleasure not unlike the effect of recreational drugs, and without even filling our stomachs to the point that we feel satiated.\u00a0 The result, of course, is that people have to overeat, just to be satisfied.<\/p>\n Points like this will no doubt find space even in the minds of viewers who flat-out refuse to listen to arguments against consumption of animal products, and I’d say that’s far better than nothing.<\/p>\n Though the message is unmistakably pro-vegan, FOK gives at least an appearance of balance by strategically integrating the other side of the story.\u00a0 Traditional dietitians and naysayers are given the chance to speak their mind, and they’re not mocked or denigrated.\u00a0 They simply state their part, and the film moves on.<\/p>\n While these pro-meat and pro-dairy claims stand out, almost ridiculously so, against the pro-plant background of the rest of the documentary, the simple inclusion of these dissenting viewpoints does lend an air of fairness to the film, even if it’s not entirely balanced.\u00a0 (On this note, there are many arguments against<\/a> the findings of The China Study<\/em>, though I haven’t read them in depth.)<\/p>\n Another virtue of FOK is that it brings to life the people who are doing so much to spread the plant-based diet, and whom you so often read about but rarely see or hear.\u00a0 Pro mixed martial arts fighter Mac Danzig<\/a>, Dr. John McDougall<\/a>, firefighter and former collegiate swimmer Rip Esselstyn of Engine 2 Diet<\/a> fame, Farm Santuary<\/a> founder Gene Baur.<\/p>\n Even as a vegan, I still find that when I read about passionate and influential advocates of this diet, my defenses go up, as if on fanaticism-alert.\u00a0 So I found it really great to see and hear these people speak and see that they really are normal people, just like you and me.<\/p>\n I have but one criticism of Forks Over Knives<\/em>, and it’s that the film doesn’t do much to grab the viewer in the first half hour.\u00a0 But for the initial five-minute collage of news soundbytes about how horrible the standard American diet is, there’s little in the beginning of the documentary to really make you sit up on the edge of your chair and draw you in for the duration of the movie.<\/p>\n The most powerful parts of the film come in the second half, when we see the results of real-life case studies, and as the evidence for the plant-based diet builds.\u00a0 My worry, though, is that FOK will lose a lot of skeptical omnivores in the first half hour, when there are a few too many medical animations and details, even for this already-on-board vegan’s taste.<\/p>\n In any other circumstance, that’d be a minor criticism.\u00a0 For someone like me or probably you who doesn’t need convincing, FOK is an easy watch that will reaffirm your reasons for choosing this diet.<\/p>\n But for a film whose goal it presumably is to create massive, cultural change, I worry that FOK’s mildly slow start will prevent it from holding the attention of the very people who need to see it most.<\/p>\n And that’s where you come in.\u00a0 I have no doubt that most of you will make a point to watch Forks Over Knives<\/em>.\u00a0 But you’re not the ones who need<\/em> to see it, whose very life could depend on it.\u00a0 So do the people you care about a favor — bring them to see it.\u00a0 (Here’s a list of showtimes<\/a>.)<\/p>\nThe non-preachy approach<\/h3>\n
Not just plant-based, but whole foods<\/h3>\n
Balanced?<\/h3>\n
Real people like us (not fanatical hippies)<\/h3>\n
Where FOK falls short<\/h3>\n
Watch it (more importantly, get your friends to watch it)<\/h3>\n