Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Although this movie appears to give a convincing argument that we should not eat any animal products, we should beware that it plays fast and loose with the science. Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn are sincere in their belief of the plant only diet, and so is the movie, but we must take a critical look at the science. The first obvious problem is that it conflates "Western diet" with eating a lot of meat. The Western diet also contains a lot of sugar, coffee, chocolate, white flour, and other refined foods. The movie acknowledges this, but then when it focuses on disease, it talks specifically of animal protein. We are shown statistics of how modern diseases correlate with the Western diet, and examples of people improving their health following Esselstyn's diet. But never is "animal protein" separated from the other factors as an independent variable. The movie also acts as if traditional cultures ate very little to no animal foods. This is patently false. There is a wide variety of diets in healthy, traditional, non-westernized cultures. Some consume only a little animal foods, some consume quite a lot, but almost all consume at least some. The second obvious problem is that it conflates "casein" with "animal protein" and from their to all animal foods including fish. The movie (and Campbell) gets the science very mixed up on this. The reason that Campbell's low-protein rats did not develop liver cancer on the high aflotoxin diet is because there wasn't enough protein to rebuild and maintain their bodies period. The cancer doesn't stand a chance when everything else is dying around it as well. Only 12 rats on the low-protein diet, as opposed to 30 on the high-protein diet, survived more than 1 year. Pause the movie at 16:37 and read this for yourself. I have Denise Minger to thank for doing the research and pointing all this out. Next we are given Norway as an example where the reduction in animal foods lead to a clear drop in heart disease. Indeed the graphs do show a strong correlation, but again, I have Denise Minger to thank for doing the research on this. It would seem that the drop began before serious livestock restriction began, but after restriction of sugar, coffee, chocolate, flour, etc. Oops. Not only that, but it correlates with a heavy increase in fish consumption. So it would seem you're just as well off, or even better off, to ditch the refined foods and increase fish consumption. It's too bad the movie doesn't look at fish separately from other animal foods. It's something of a double standard to say Norwegians got healthy ditching animal foods and say nothing of their heavy increase in fish consumption, then later show UFC champion Mac Danzig as an example that we should remove fish from our diet. One final thing I want to point out is this movie implies we will have a lower ecological impact eating less meat, or possibly no meat. As far as conventionally, factory farmed meat is concerned, that is true, but small sustainable farms need animals to complete the ecological cycle. We do our best to support the long-term ecological sustainability of the planet by both animal and plant products from such farms. As Denise Minger, Chris Masterjohn, Stephen Guyenet, and others have repeatedly pointed out, there is no evidence animal foods from such sources contribute to any of the modern diseases. Anyone seriously interested in critically analyzing the science behind this movie should take the time and read Denise Minger's review: [...]