Analysis Of Forks Over Knives

Submitted By captynn
Words: 1100
Pages: 5
Open Document
Before we go any further, let’s cover the things that basically all nutritionists, doctors, and scientists can agree on. When discussing the movie’s content, I will be starting from these as basic assumptions. Vegetables are good for human beings. Fruits are no slouch either. Both in pure volume and as a proportion of one’s overall food consumption, eating large quantities of refined sugar is harmful to the body. Consuming disproportionately high levels of foods high in calories and low in nutrition (for example, eating a fast food meal and no veggies or fruit most days) can cause health problems. The spread of obesity in America needs to be addressed through concerted educational efforts and a reorientation of people to their food. Before anyone gets any ideas about throwing a beet-related tantrum or trying to frame this review as advocating that we all eat a cow a week—just don’t.

I generally do not discuss the plot of an entire film in a review to avoid spoiling a movie for my readers. In documentaries, I try to look into the facts and outline the arguments. If this is an issue for you, this would be a good time to stop reading and scroll to the last two paragraphs, in which I give my general summary.

Forks Over Knives makes these assertions ad nauseum through the entire movie:

A whole-foods (not refined), plant-based diet is the best for people.
It prevents and can reverse cancer and heart disease.
Meat, animal products, refined foods (including sugar and oil), and high levels of protein cause and/or contribute to cancer and heart disease.
They assert that animal proteins, both muscle and byproduct, are harmful. This includes meat, dairy, and other animal products. The doctors in the movie contend that the high concentration of protein in milk feeds cancer and tears away endothelial cells in blood vessels, making a person more vulnerable to heart disease. Huh? That is a pretty radical claim to make without outstanding evidence. Luckily for us they did set out to provide us with evidence—or should I say “evidence”?

The foundation for the conclusions presented in Forks Over Knives is built by Cornell University professor T. Colin Campbell, PhD, and Caldwell B. Esselstyn, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic. Campbell conducted several studies and research experiments outlined in the book. Esselstyn treated and continues to treat some of his patients with strict changes in diet.

Campbell explains a study he conducted on rats examining different concentrations of casein, the main protein found in milk, in which he found that different concentrations resulted in different cancer rates. 20 percent casein rates resulted in higher rates of cancer than 5 percent casein rates. Based on that and an observational study of Filipino families, he launched a humongous study of the diet of rural Chinese people and wrote a book, The Diet, Life-style, and Mortality in China: A Study of the Characteristics of 65 Chinese Counties, by Chen Junshi, T. Colin Campbell, Li Janyao, and Richard Peto. After examining over 300 factors of thousands of people, he concluded that a whole-foods, plant-based diet is best and eating meat or animal products is bad because it causes cancer.

After examining information about heart disease rates in Kenya and Papua New Guinea against the rates in America, and after conducting numerous bypass surgeries, Esselstyn decided to conduct a small study of fewer than twenty-five people to change their diet to plant-based whole-foods with small amounts of dairy. Of the people who stayed in the study, all survived much longer than was expected (many were close to death because of severe cases of heart disease). He continued the study and now has treated 250 people using the diet.

I am not a scientist, nor am I a member of the medical field (unless lifeguarding as a teenager counts), but I spotted some serious problems with the reasoning here. Campbell equates all animal proteins to casein; furthermore, he
Show More

Related Documents: Analysis Of Forks Over Knives

Essay about About Me

Each description gets more serious-drab Arab city, refugee camp, crushing time of one disaster after another. Repeats one significant word (in this case “outside”) in each of the phrases, creating music, rhythm, and setting up the topic of the essay: exile] Something greater, greater than they are. The sculpture is greater than them but there is no limit. 2. “How rich our mutability, how easily we change (and are changed) from one thing to another, how unstable our place-[.…

Words 382 - Pages 2

Essay about The Pawn

channel of action for the male characters in the novel. Events and actions happen to them, usually for the sake of teaching a male character a lesson or sparking an emotion within him. This is in accordance with the feminist criticism essay in the book. The author of the essay argues that women in 19th century literature served a specific purpose in literacy during this period and generally their purpose is in relation to a man’s actions. She essentially reasons that in earlier literature women were secondary…

Words 1284 - Pages 6

Essay about Information

the source of that information. 2. There are two main systems of referencing, the footnoting system and the Harvard system. Using footnotes you put a number in the text and then at the bottom of the page the same number with the information about the source. In the Harvard system you put the name of the author of the information and the year it was published in brackets immediately after the information you are referencing. This is called a citation. The information that follows refers to…

Words 636 - Pages 3

Essay about The Hostel

tear to the eye. Immediately, two drunken men staggered through the front door with the stench of cheap alcohol on their breath. These men came to be known as Arter and Conrad. They seemed like decent enough guys, but apparently were about as clean as Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. One could only hope their possessions would be safe for the night in the company of two sloshed men. A sad looking bunk, which lay in front of the men, was the only salvation in sight. The sheets are…

Words 685 - Pages 3

Essay about No No

Marshall Mathers better known by his stage name Eminem, is a rapper from Detroit, who grew up in a trailer known as eight mile, which was the title to his blockbuster movie 8 Mile. He grew up without a father and often raps about how he hates him. His music inspires me because he raps about coming up from nothing to making more money in one day than most people do in a month. After listening to his music I started listening to more rap music, and more types of music period. Now I have a profound love for…

Words 589 - Pages 3

ABOUT ME Essay

Interpersonal COM 2201: Self-Concept Essay As we discussed as class we were all able to agree on the fact that it is for one, not easy to identify and truly understand who are you, what you have to offer, and how your self-concept has been influenced by your relationships. Through my process of investigating my own self-concept, it was not exactly the easiest task but in the end I was able to come up with three highly unique characteristics that none of my other class members possess. First being…

Words 910 - Pages 4

Essay about The Boy

Independence in America “For no nation, in a state of foreign dependence, limited in its commerce, and cramped and fettered in its legislative powers, can ever arrive at any material eminence.” (39 Sharp) Thomas Paine introduced to the world in his essay Common Sense, published in 1776, that American’s need to break off their dependency with the English because if they do not, they will have to keep relying on the English to supply them with essentials to thrive as a nation. Paine was able to recognize…

Words 1007 - Pages 5

Essay about YAY man

Monochromatic: Green atic essay") consists of the evolution of a theme or an idea rather than a plot per se; or the film literally being a cinematic accompaniment to a narrator reading an essay. From another perspective, an essay film could be defined as a documentary film visual basis combined with a form of commentary that contains elements of self-portrait (rather than autobiography), where the signature (rather than the life story) of the filmmaker is apparent. The cinematic essay often blends documentary…

Words 536 - Pages 3

Essay about to be or not to be

Virtue ethics is an important strand of moral philosophy, and a significant body of philosophical work in virtue ethics is associated with a radical critique of the market economy and of economics. Expressed crudely, the charge sheet is this: The market depends on instrumental rationality and extrinsic motivation; market interactions therefore fail to respect the internal value of human practices and the intrinsic motivations of human actors; by using market exchange as its central model, economics…

Words 829 - Pages 4

Essay about The Beginning

Writing Lab Cyber Essays Guide to Writing a Basic Essay Nuts and Bolts of College Writing Writing Center Essayinfo.com Study Skills Online What to Write: Old Dominion University Library provides lists of hundreds of possible subjects organized by category. Queen’s University Library not only offers lists of topics, but provides many research guides for individual topics, complete with lists of related books, multimedia, and other resources. This Argumentative Essay Topics page offers…

Words 409 - Pages 2