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Planeat: eating plant-based diet heals the Earth

July 25, 2012 By

Can you heal the Earth with a plant-based diet? Planeat presents scientific research about the link between human diet and global warming. Shelley Lee Davies and Or Shlomi direct in their feature debut.

Gidon Eshel, geophysicist and Bard College professor, shares his research on how animal-based diets cause higher greenhouse gas emissions.

Planeat is now streaming at the film website, where the DVD is also available.

Ethics of food

“We say that however close you can be to a vegan diet and further from the mean American diet, the better you are for the planet,” Eshel notes about his study.

“It doesn’t have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan. If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you’ve already made a substantial difference.”

Eating an animal-based diet means encouraging practices like clear-cutting forests for cattle grazing. The average American diet releases 3.5 times more “reactive nitrogen” into the atmosphere than a plant-based diet, Eshel says.

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, urges us not to wait for the government to make changes. We can make a huge difference just in the food we buy.

Heart health highlighted

Caldwell Esselstyn, researcher and clinician at the Cleveland Clinic and author of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, talks about his 20-year research study. Eating meat, dairy and processed oils injure endothelial cells which line the heart, blood and lymph vessels, he found.

When Esselstyn’s chronically ill patients shifted to a plant-based diet, they stopped and reversed their heart disease. Our food paradigm will be transformed “in the next decade,” he believes.

Ann Esselstyn demonstrates the “hows” of veganism for Esselstyn’s patients as she makes vegan kale sandwiches and waffles. The couple’s son Rip is the author of The Engine 2 Diet.

Studying diet and disease

T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional chemistry at Cornell University, conducted The China Study, the most comprehensive, large nutritional study ever done. Subjects in rural China were studied over 20 years.

Campbell is shown teaching nutritional biochemistry and working on a farm plot. His views about diet changed completely since he grew up on a dairy farm, he says. The China Study shows a direct correlation between eating animal-based foods and the incidence of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Campbell acknowledges the great professional risks facing doctors and academic researchers who promote plant-based eating.

Embracing a new food view

Planeat is more quietly persuasive than similar documentaries as it encompasses the big picture: improving our health and the health of the Earth.

A number of vegan chefs talk about their food philosophy. Neal Harden, former executive chef at Pure Food and Wine in New York City, was trained in traditional French cuisine. He now focuses on making “colorful, vibrant” vegetable lasagna, biryani and sushi.

Chefs say their love of food is evolving as they make vegetables the central element on the plate.

Planeat’s website offers pages for recipes and activism.

If you like Planeat, you might enjoy:  Hungry for Change; Food Matters; Forks Over Knives.

 

Planeat  /   2011  /  NR  /  1 hour, 12 min

Cast Overview:  T. Colin Campbell, Caldwell Esselstyn, Gidon Eshel, Neal Harden, Yvonne O’Grady (narrator)

Directors: Shelley Lee Davies, Or Shlomi

Genres:  Documentary, Food, Nutrition, Healing

Filed Under: Awaken, Documentary, Heal, Healing - Traditional, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To Your Health: plant-based eats and healthy fun

June 8, 2012 By

To Your Health explores the health benefits and fun of plant-based eating. Food is the best medicine, according to Julieanna Hever, The Plant-Based Dietician: “I want the world to know that you can be healthy and it’s so easy.”

Hever’s energy and enthusiasm is compelling as she interviews whole food, plant-based nutrition icons. She also visits a farmer’s market, meets with restaurant owners, and tours a farm animal sanctuary.

To Your Health is now available at their website. Jesse Pomeroy directs.

Walking her talk

Fascinated by food, Hever (The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition) tried every diet until she began “eating close to nature.”

Many of the doctors interviewed, including Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. (Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease), have helped patients stop and reverse heart disease, cancer, diabetes, lupus and other diseases by adopting plant-based nutrition.

The protein myth

How do vegetarians get enough protein? The human body requires about 2.5% of its calories from protein, according to Dr. Pam Popper, Naturopath and founder of The Wellness Forum. “The average person in the U.S. consumes 18% of their calories from protein.”

“Americans have been taking in too much protein,” says Dr. Joel Furman (Eat to Live). Studies demonstrate that animal protein promotes heart disease and cancer, he says. Plant-based eating gives our bodies the right amount of protein.

The protein in plant food is enough, says Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study and hailed as the father of modern nutrition. Plant proteins yield “maybe thousands of antioxidants” and other nutrients.

Strawberries contain 700 nutrients, and broccoli contains 900 nutrients, says Fuhrman. “In other words we need what nature put in real food.” “Nature’s had a few million years to fashion who we are,” Campbell notes.

Corporate food sets agenda

“The information that people get about nutrition is influenced by economic forces that run this country,” Fuhrman says. For example, The American Dietetic Association receives funding from the dairy industry.

“The food pyramid that was supplied by the meat and dairy industry free to schools. . . . It looks like it’s fact, but it’s fantasy,” says Mike Anderson, director of Eating and author of The RAVE Diet and Lifestyle. “The misinformation out there is just, just huge,” he adds.

The calcium-veg connection

Milk is the “worst thing” for our bones, Hever tells an audience. Why? Dairy is high in protein and sodium, and has an acidotic effect on the body. These properties actually leach calcium out of bones, she says.

Popper explains that with high acid-load foods, “the skeleton dissolves itself to neutralize the acidity.” She notes that “the more milk you drink the more fractures you get, the more calcium you leach.”

Dr. John McDougall (The McDougall Program) comments, “No one can say that a starch-based diet with fruits and vegetables is deficient in protein or amino acids or calcium.”

Hever lists the best plant sources of calcium: leafy green vegetables like kale and cabbage; broccoli; unhulled sesame seeds; tofu (when set in calcium), and blackstrap molasses.

 

Supplements: pro and con

Thirty years of research proves that nutrient supplements provide only short-term benefits, says Campbell. “They don’t work,” he concludes. Pricey supplements are often unnecessary, Hever suggests.

A supplement is “an isolated, concentrated nutrient” that will create imbalances, says McDougall. Some supplements can increase the risk of heart disease, cancer and death, he adds.

Hever confirms with several experts that vegetarians do need to take Vitamins D and B12. McDougall admits that Vitamin C, iron and iodine can benefit patients when needed.

Food addictions: the “pleasure trap”

Food manufacturers add chemicals to food to make us crave more and more, says Dr. Alan Goldhamer (The Health Promoting Cookbook). Oil, sugar and salt enhance our perception of pleasure. “People literally become trapped by pleasure when they artificially stimulate dopamine in the brain rather than naturally stimulate it,” he says. “The result is we become fat, sick and miserable.”

“We’re a society that is over-fed yet under-nourished,” says vegan Ironman Brendan Brazier, author of The Thrive Diet. “It’s because the food we eat has very few nutrients in it.”

If sugar and caffeine were discovered today, they would be classified as controlled substances because they are so addictive, according to Chef AJ, author of Unprocessed.

 

Food industry spoils

Some $14 billion in direct subsidies, and more indirect subsidies, go to the U.S. meat and dairy industries every year. This has made us “a nation of sickly, obese and diseased people,” Anderson declares.

“When you’re buying butter and cheese and milk, our tax dollar has been spent to make those products less expensive compared to fruits and vegetables,” he says.

“So that makes a pound of hamburger much cheaper than a pound of raspberries, and that’s nuts because hamburger’s one of the most resource-intensive foods on the planet. It’s very expensive to make,” Anderson notes.

“What you have in the food industry is the closest thing to socialism in this country because they are interfering,” he adds.

Four new food groups emerge

Educating ourselves is important, say plant-based nutrition proponents. It’s time to embrace four new food groups – vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes – says Dr. Neal Barnard of the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine.

“I think dieticians and physicians are on the verge of changing,” says McDougall. “Otherwise they’re going to become extinct.”

“There’s nothing in medicine, not even close, that has the same power to make people well as does nutrition,” Campbell emphasizes.

If you like To Your Health, you might enjoy:   Forks Over Knives.

 

To Your Health  /   2011  /  NR  /  49 min

Cast Overview:  Julieanna Hever, T. Colin Campbell, Joel Fuhrman, John McDougall, Pam Popper, Neil Barnard, Caldwell Esselstyn, Mike Anderson, Brendan Brazier, Chef AJ, Kevin Boylan

Director: Jesse Pomeroy

Genres:  Documentary, Health, Nutrition, Vegan

Filed Under: Awaken, Documentary, Heal, Healing - Traditional Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ingredients: farmers, chefs create farm to table flavors

April 24, 2012 By

In Ingredients, farmers and chefs unite to bring more flavorful, nutritious foods to restaurants and consumers. Local, sustainable farming is the key in this documentary written and directed by Robert Bates.

Ingredients is now available from Netflix, and at the film’s website.

Seasonal eating pleasures

Living in France at age 19 inspired chef Alice Waters of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse. People shopped at open air food markets. They stood in line at the bakery for fresh-baked bread. Mussels were eaten “right out of the water.”

“I had this whole sense of aliveness around eating,” she says. “It was a way I wanted to live.” Back in America, Waters sent food buyers to visit farms and develop relationships with farmers. She began ordering directly from farms that agreed to practice sustainable farming.

“As chefs we’re the catalyst,” says chef Greg Higgins of Portland’s Higgins. “We find the good ingredients, we showcase them to people, and hopefully get them excited and searching those ingredients out at the market.”

Growing good food

There’s a big difference between growing food and growing a commodity, says Bob Jones Jr. of The Chef’s Garden. “We farm the soil, not the plant,” he explains. Healthy soil ecosystems yield better color, flavor, shelf life and nutritional values, he says.

John Neumeister of Cattail Creek Lamb, who supplies Chez Panisse, uses low density ranching and a diversity of livestock to ward off disease.

Farm to table flavors

Sheldon Marcuvitz of Your Kitchen Garden supplies Nostrana in Portland, Oregon. “The restaurants that we work with best either write their menu every day or have a lot of specials,” Marcuvitz says.

“We only want to pick what’s perfect that week” to keep customers happy, he adds. He introduces new vegetables to restaurants, including the Mediterranean succulent agretti.

Cathy Whims, Nostrana’s chef and owner, believes that “if our farmers and ranchers are making a good living they’re going to stay here.” With oil shortages, “why do we need something that’s coming across country?”

Strengthening local economies

Food imports have increased four-fold in the past decade, with the FDA unable to inspect most of these, the film argues.

“Globalization has been sold to us as a given,” says Carol Boutard of Ayer’s Creek Farm. “You need to control what you eat. You need to demand and reassert that control and be part of the process of what you eat,” she urges.

When farms supply restaurants and farmers’ markets directly, they need not use food brokers or sell to international commodity markets. Local people profit.

A new generation of farmers is attracted to local farming. Government policy could support local farmers, many of whom cannot afford health insurance, college tuitions or retirement.

Hidden costs of cheap food

The demand for cheap food drives farmers and ranchers to reduce costs. They mass produce food and use cheap labor. Even major organic farmers grow monocrops and use organic pesticides, says Marcuvitz.

Organic food shipped from thousands of miles away is a week or more old, he adds.

Local farming pioneer

“People didn’t know what their demands were doing to the world, and they still don’t,” says Joan Dye Gussow, professor emeritus at Columbia University.

Gussow learned that Haiti was exporting hogs to the U.S. 20 years ago. “The poorest country in the hemisphere has no business raising hogs for the United States,” she said.

“We were just pulling food from all over heedless of the conditions of how it was grown and who grew it and what their situation was,” she continues. “So I had this idea that we really had to relocalize the food supply.”

Gussow began to grow her own food. “I haven’t bought a vegetable probably in 10 years,” he boasts.

Pay the doctor or pay the farmer

“You can pay the doctor or pay the farmer,” says Higgins. “There’s no culture in the world that spends less on food per capita or more on medicine than the United States. To me it’s a painfully obvious truth.”

A lack of fresh food and overabundance of processed foods puts kids’ health at risk, says chef Cory Schreiber, program manager for Oregon’s Farm to School program. Each year 17,000 new processed foods are manufactured. Processed foods contribute to childhood diabetes, studies have found.

Farmland decreasing

Beginning in 2000, the world experienced a net loss in farm land, according to Will Newman of the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust. Farm acreage has dropped every year since as world population grows.

Local farming can’t feed the masses yet, says the film. To achieve that, farms must be located near cities. Oregon’s Urban Growth Boundary law is considered one of the nation’s most progressive land use laws. Local farms supply the Portland metropolitan area as cities grow up rather than out.

Too many ingredients?

Ingredients raises many issues which it cannot fully explore in one hour. Mentioned are petrochemical use in food production and packaging; sustainably produced wine in Oregon; seed production; biodynamic farming methods; and getting kids to eat more vegetables through farm to school initiatives. (2.5 out of 5 stars)

If you like Ingredients, you might enjoy:  Food Matters; Hungry for Change.

 

Ingredients  /   2009  /  NR  /  1 hour, 7 min

Cast Overview:  Bebe Neuwirth (narrator), Alice Waters, Greg Higgins, Carol and Anthony Boutard, Lee Jones, Bob Jones Sr., Bob Jones Jr., John Neumeister, Sheldon Marcuvitz, Cathy Whims, Peter Hoffman, Will Newman, Laura Masterson, Pascal Sauton

Director: Robert Bates

Genres:  Documentary, Local Farming, Sustainability

 

Filed Under: Awaken, Community, Current Affairs, Documentary, Heal Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Economics of Happiness: local initiatives heal global ills

April 1, 2012 By

The Economics of Happiness urges us to go local to solve environmental, economic and human problems caused by globalization. Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick and John Page direct.

Labor of love

Diverse, multicultural views abound here. Five years in the making, the documentary spans six continents. It is now available on DVD.

Eight “inconvenient truths” about globalization are described. Globalization breeds insecurity. It wastes natural resources, destroys livelihoods and accelerates climate change. Overall, it makes us unhappy.

You might be surprised to learn that globalization is wasteful and inefficient. Government hand-outs to big business and false accounting support it.

Tale of the Ladakhis

Ladakh, or “Little Tibet,” a village in the western Himalayas, is shown before and after globalization. Happy people are shown living sustainably on their land. All Ladakhis had spacious homes and plenty of leisure time. Community activities flourished. There was no unemployment.

Ladakh was opened to tourists in the mid-1970s. Subsidized roads were built to deliver subsidized, processed foods. This undermined the local farming economy, says Norberg-Hodge. Unemployment, depression and conflict followed. Air and water pollution appeared. Western advertising made folk ways seem passé.

Outside economic pressure “created intense competition, breaking down community and the connection to nature that had been the cornerstone of Ladakhi culture for centuries,” she explains.

 

Having more means less

Psychiatrists speak out about rising levels of depression in the West. Striving to measure up to media images of affluence, “there is a constant pressure on people to have bigger, better, more,” says psychotherapist Mary-Jayne Rust. “It doesn’t bring us happiness.”

Boston College professor Juliet Schor, author of Plenitude, notes that multinational corporations drive the food and entertainment choices of children. Comparison and competition exploit greed, says Samdhong Rinpoche, Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Children feel pressured to emulate Western culture.

Ecologies, resources depleted

“Encouraging consumerism threatens the ecological fabric of the entire planet. Natural resources are already stretched to the breaking point by population pressures,” Norberg-Hodge explains.

“It’s a terrific onslaught of marketing, merchandising, advertising, brainwashing,” says Balaji Shankar of India’s Kumarappa Foundation.

“The very logic of globalization requires that goods travel ever-longer distances from producer to consumer,” says Norberg-Hodge. “Because of hidden subsidies and skewed regulations, food from the other side of the world tends to cost less than food from a mile away.”

We pay for waste, inefficiency

Government subsidies fuel tremendous waste, according to Zac Goldsmith, Member of the UK Parliament. “Tuna caught on the East Coast of America is flown to Japan, packaged, then shipped back. English apples are flown to South Africa to be waxed, then flown back again to be sold.”

Fuel oil use and greenhouse gas emissions soar as goods crisscross the world.

Treaties such as NAFTA say that international trade will promote economic growth. Yet countries routinely import and export almost identical amounts of the same products such as potatoes, sugar, beef and coffee.

Casino economics

Mergers, takeovers and relocation of business to low wage countries threatens livelihoods, says Norberg-Hodge.

The situation is dire for displaced farmers in the Third World. “The present development model encourages urbanization, and intentionally works to reduce the number of farmers,” says Pracha Hutanuwatr, a leader in engaged Buddhist initiatives.

“All those displaced farmers have nowhere to go but the city, where they become cheap labor for industry, for investment from abroad,” he says.

Human rights crisis

“All we want is our land,” say Indian farmers. “Give us our land and we’ll work hard to make something, to make a life.”

“Removing people from the land is the root of all unemployment,” says Vandana Shiva, a Right Livelihood Award winner and author of Monocultures of the Mind. Shiva notes that “100,000 Indian farmers have been driven to suicide” as they lose their livelihoods.

Forced off the land into cities, religious and ethnic groups are forced to compete for few available jobs, says the film.

 

Free markets are not free

“The irony is that the majority of really polluting things that are happening today would not exist within a genuine free market,” Goldsmith says. States pay massive subsidies for monoculture farming, fossil fuel mining and nuclear power.

“It would be impossible to maintain the current global economy as it is today without enormous support from governments around the world. We’re about as far away from the free market as it’s possible to be,” he adds.

Economic growth at any cost?

More economic growth is touted as the answer to poverty, unemployment and environmental decline.

“Not only our economies but our societies, our political systems, the entire culture is focused on making sure that our GDP [gross domestic product] grows as fast as possible,” says Clive Hamilton, author of The Growth Fetish.

“Using GDP as a measure of societal progress is little short of madness,” Norberg-Hodge elaborates. “If there’s an oil spill, GDP goes up. If the water is so polluted we have to buy it in bottles, GDP goes up. War, cancer, epidemic illnesses . . . involve an exchange of money, and that means that they end up on the positive side of the balance sheet.”

Unplugging the corporations

Bailouts to big banks, stimulus packages to encourage consumer spending, and carbon trading schemes just keep a broken system afloat, the film says.

Small, local farms can produce substantially more food per acre and provide far more jobs, according to research.

When we withdraw legitimacy from big corporations, “they lose their power over us,” says David Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy.

Gross National Happiness

The term Gross National Happiness was coined by the King of Bhutan in 1972. He went on to incorporate it in Bhutan’s development policy. Following his lead, world economists have begun to develop more meaningful measures of well being and prosperity.

One example of this is the Genuine Progress Index (GPI). Ron Colman, executive director of GPI Atlantic, explains that GPI takes into account human, community and natural wealth in addition to produced, material wealth. GPI “counts full social and environmental and economic benefits and costs.”

The Economics of Happiness calls for the removal of fiscal and other supports from giant, transnational corporations and banks.

Measuring progress locally

Small business and local economies can generate wealth in more equitable, sustainable ways. “If you shorten the distance between producers and consumers,” says Goldsmith, “you’re putting money straight back into the local economy where it’s desperately needed.”

Going local means that governments will re-evaluate what they regulate, tax and subsidize. Subsidies for renewable energies and mass transit are suggested.

Banking with local credit unions means that your dollars go to local economies. Ecovillages and post-carbon cities are on the rise. City governments are investing more locally. All these support local jobs and tax revenues.

Farmers’ markets allow consumers to pay less and farmers to earn more. Community is fostered at local markets.

Solutions underemphasized

The Economics of Happiness is mostly unhappy. It documents problems thoroughly and outlines solutions briefly.

What can you can do locally? The film’s Generate Alternatives and Become a Policy Changer pages are excellent places to begin. (4 out of 5 stars)

If you like The Economics of Happiness, you might enjoy:  Thrive; 2012: The Odyssey; Timewave 2013.

 

The Economics of Happiness  /   2011  /  NR  /  1 hour, 8 min

Cast Overview:  Helena Norberg-Hodge, Mary-Jayne Rust, Juliet Schor, Samdhong Rinpoche, Balaji Shankar, Zac Goldsmith, Pracha Hutanuwatr, Vandana Shiva, Clive Hamilton, David Korten, Ron Colman

Directors: Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Gorelick, John Page

Genres:  Documentary, Economics, New Thought

Filed Under: Awaken, Character, Community, Current Affairs, Documentary, Heal, Native & Life Wisdom, Nature, New Economy, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Food Matters: go vegetarian and raw to get healthy, empowered

March 16, 2012 By

Vegetarian and raw foods promote healthier, empowered people, according to Food Matters. James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch direct this documentary that challenges “a pill for every ill.”

Good nutrition is relatively cheap, simple, safe and effective, the film says. Plant-based nutrition and vitamins, along with modern medicine and health-savvy government policy, can help. Food Matters is now available on DVD or via Netflix.

An epidemic of “What would happen if everybody ate lots and lots of fresh, organic food that’s minimally processed?” asks Andrew Saul, the therapeutic nutritional specialist. “I think we’d have an epidemic of health!”

Better health would lead to less reliance on pharmaceutical drugs and expensive surgery. “One of the few free choices a person has is what they will or will not eat,” says Saul.

The film’s website features juice, superfood and raw recipes, along with updates on nutrition.

Nutritional science meets clinical medicine

“Optimum nutrition is the medicine of tomorrow,” said Linus Pauling, who won two Nobel Prizes. Nutritional pioneer Max Gerson “showed that vitamins and especially large quantities of fresh vegetable juices and organic foods would help to reverse cancer. Gerson had about a 50% cure rate with terminally ill patients. That’s extremely high,” Saul adds.

The Gerson Therapy “activates the body’s extraordinary ability to heal itself through an organic, vegetarian diet, raw juices, coffee enemas and natural supplements,” according to the Gerson Institute’s website. Graphic before-and-after images of Gerson Therapy patients are shown.

True healing

“The health system is a disease-care system,” says Ian Brighthope, M.D., who pioneered Australia’s first post-graduate medical course in nutrition. U.S. medical schools offer students little or no training in nutrition.

Charlotte Gerson recalls her father’s words: “It’s the doctor’s duty to activate and re-activate the body’s own healing mechanism. Then the patient’s healed. It doesn’t matter what you call the disease.”

“You nourish the body and then the body fixes it,” according to Saul. “Vitamins enable the body to heal itself.”

Good nutrition defined

Superfoods have an “extraordinary quality” of vitamins, minerals, co-factors, enzymes and chemicals that can prolong life, says raw food authority David Wolfe.

What are some of these foods? Raw honey. Wheatgrass. Spirulina. Echinacea. Cacao. Coconut. Noni. Bee pollen. Kombu. Kelp. The list goes on.

New ways, new basics

With cancer, heart disease, stroke and dementia rates rising, says investigative journalist Phillip Day, “clearly the old ways aren’t working and we need a fresh paradigm and we need to go back to basics.”

Medicine has made tremendous advances in critical care, infant mortality and the like, Day adds, yet it fails to prevent disease.

Transforming food habits

“Good health makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t make a lot of dollars,” Saul quips. Widespread good health would require transforming our economy.

“The drug industry is a half trillion dollar a year world-wide conglomerate,” he explains. “Almost $3 billion just in North America. This is really, really big business.”

Health-hungry consumers rule

“If we change our food choices, we change agriculture,” Wolfe says. Transforming corn-wheat-soy diets into superfood, organic and raw food diets would create demand for the new foods.

“When we choose organic, raw, plant-based foods we take our power back and we decide that we are going to have quality,” Wolfe says.

A diet of just 51% raw foods, Wolfe says, would prevent leucocytosis, an immune system response to cooked foods.

Losing nutrition

Conventional fertilizers don’t replace the 52 minerals in healthy soil, Gerson points out. “When the soil is deficient, the plants are also deficient and weakened. They lose their defenses,” leading to pesticide use.

“If we eat just commercial vegetarian food, we get deficient, toxic food,” Gerson concludes.

When food is shipped thousands of miles regardless of season, it loses nutrients. The nutritional value of week-old supermarket produce drops to 40% “if you’re lucky,” says holistic dentist Victor Zeines.

The cancer business  

The American Medical Association admits that less than 30% survive using chemotherapy – surgery – radiation. “More than 70% of them die. That is just not acceptable,” says Dan Rogers, M.D.

“Let’s face it, if cancer disappeared tomorrow, millions of people would have to retrain,” says Day. “This is a $200 billion a year industry.”

Health centers licensed by the Gerson Institute are located in Mexico and Hungary. It is illegal in most countries to treat cancer patients with nutritional therapy. “The legal treatments in these countries are surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy,” Food Matters tells us.

Healthcare debate

“There’s a lot of debate over how we should finance and change, provide healthcare to everyone in the United States,” Saul says. “Is the solution to simply give them access to a system that doesn’t work very well? Or would it be a good idea to teach them how to be healthy?”

“I think they need education, not medication,” he concludes.

Taking responsibility

Take responsibility for your own health, Saul urges. “Why not be healthy and happy? You change your life, you do some exercise, you eat right, you feel better.”

Pay attention to how you feel after eating, Wolfe recommends. “I feel very strongly that the best doctor in the world, the best nutritionist in the world, is you.” (5 out of 5 stars)

If you like Food Matters, you might enjoy:  May I Be Frank; Dirt! The Movie; The Beautiful Truth; Hungry for Change.

 

Food Matters  /   2008  /  NR  /  1 hour, 20 min

Cast Overview:  Andrew Saul, Ian Brighthope, Charlotte Gerson, David Wolfe, Phillip Day, Victor Zeines, Dan Rogers

Directors: James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch

Genres:  Documentary, Health, Nutrition

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Documentary, Heal, Healing - Traditional, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,