Original subtitles

- Our planet faces a lot of problems.

But in some parts of the world,

people live in a time of over-consumption,

abundance of food, and an eagerness to be fit and healthy.

The supermarket is overflowing with options.

But despite that, we are poorly advised in nutrition,

and easily vulnerable to misinformation,

and unreliable slogans, inaccurate health promises,

and colorful tempting packages

are cluttering our relationship with food,

and risking our well-being.

We are bombarded by conflicting information

about food, diets and supplements.

So how can we know what's best for us?

Which foods improve health, and which ones

can potentially promote disease.

I have struggled with these questions for a long time.

And it has been a challenge to find a diet

that would help me achieve my health goals.

After trying several new diets over the years,

I decided to change my lifestyle,

by simply incorporating lots of plant-based

foods into my diet.

So far, it has worked for me.

I lost 50 pounds, brought my blood pressure,

blood sugar and cholesterol under control,

and overall, felt really good.

But it was a work in progress,

and I still had many questions and concerns

about nutrition and living this plant-based lifestyle

for the long run, especially now with a recent

addition to our family, i felt that I really needed

to find answers.

So I decided to go on a journey,

to search for the truth, and to uncover

many of the myths surrounding food.

For three years, I traveled across the country,

and interviewed the world's top authorities

on the subject, as well as people that had experienced

amazing, life changing benefits through healthy eating.

All to explore the idea of what is the healthiest

and most sustainable diet for ourselves,

future generations, and our planet.

So join me on this journey of shocking discoveries,

and buckle up, because what you're about to learn

might forever change the way you look at the food

on your plate.

- Well, there's a lot of difference of opinion

about it, and there's a faction of people

who insist that there are different diets

for different people.

But I think that the evidence is fairly clear that

that's not true, and there really is

an appropriate diet for humans,

just like there's a best diet for cats, dogs,

elephants, and any other mammal.

And the best diet for humans is one that is plant-based,

almost all calories coming from four principle

food groups, fruit, vegetables, whole grains

and legumes.

It's low in fat, high in fiber.

Not very much processed food, none is great,

but in today's world, I don't know how realistic that is.

- What we have seen in nutrition for many, many years,

I must say, is a lot of confusion.

You go and survey people, you know,

outside of the science, and ask them what do

they think that nutrition is,

and you can hear all kinds of comments.

I eat this, and I eat that,

and this is good, and this is not good.

There's also confusion in the professions.

You know, medical doctors are not trained

in this field.

And there's confusion in my own field.

You know, about medical research.

We don't get an opportunity, to tell, you know,

the real science I think, the way it should be told.

Because we're overwhelmed,

with the corporate sector trying to sell stuff.

- We are living in extreme times.

Where we have 27% of people dying of heart disease,

25% of cancer, 10% of stroke,

four or five percent from diabetes,

the same number for Alzheimer's.

I mean, these are, in many, many cases,

diseases of nutritional ignorance,

and diseases that are all based on our lifestyle choices.

- There are a lot of different dietary theories

out there, but I think one fact is kind of indisputable.

Having a diet that is rich in whole plant-based foods,

is truly a great way to get you to good health.

- Everywhere I go around the world,

there's not a single person I've met that doesn't

know that fruits and vegetables are good for them.

It's not about the knowing, it's about the doing.

- There was a time when there was no heart disease.

No colon cancer, no breast cancer, no multiple sclerosis,

no inflammatory arthritis.

Of course these days, in Asia, the middle east,

in central America, and around the world,

people have become rich.

They have given up much of their starch,

and they replaced it with meat and dairy.

Throughout history, rich people, the royalty,

the pharaohs, the queens and the kings,

the priests, the priestesses, the people

that could afford to eat the meat.

They had artery disease, they had obesity,

they were sick.

Nothing's changed except for the number

of kings and queens living in the world.

- A question kept coming to my mind.

If plant foods are so good for us,

and the consumption of animal products

in excess appears to do us harm,

how about the ancient populations of people

that survived on diets based off mostly

meat, eggs and dairy,

and appeared to be healthy?

After all, aren't we known for being hunter-gatherers?

- All large, successful populations of people

have gotten the bulk of their calories

from starch, rice, corn, potatoes,

and other starches, breads and so on.

Particularly when you live near the equator,

as you move north and south in latitude,

then you end up eating more animal foods.

And if you get far north, like for example,

the inuit eskimos, they are largely carnivores,

because that's what's available.

But that's a small population of people

that exists on the extremes of the environment.

That's the exception,

not the rule.

- We have become the most successful

species on this planet.

No one comes close to us.

We share it with animals, and insects, and microbes,

and plants, but we're number one.

And the way we got to number one

was all about survival.

We see in color, i believe, because fruits

and vegetables are colorful.

Our hand is perfectly designed to pick,

forge, grab and dig, peel, and feed ourselves

fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans and seeds,

plant food, food made by mother nature.

- This idea that we're hunter-gatherers,

is true, we're hunter-gatherers.

But mostly, we've been gatherers.

One of the problems has to do with sexism.

It has to do with the fact that the gatherers

were grandparents, women, and children.

The hunters were men, and they got the glory.

The people who really provided the bulk

of the calories, for most of the civilizations,

through all verifiable human history,

have been the women, children and grandparents.

- Even when i began considering the idea

of eating mostly a plant-based diet,

I was still hounded with many questions.

How was I going to be able to live

without animal foods?

I didn't want to become nutrient deficient.

And how about things like protein, calcium,

and omega 3's?

In my head, I always associated these nutrients

with animal foods.

I needed to find out if those were valid

concerns, or simply myths.

- It's almost impossible to design

a protein deficient diet

surrounding, you know, a variety

of whole plant foods.

- What people need to know

is there's never been a case of protein deficiency

ever described in the world literature,

on any natural diet,

that met the sufficient amount of calories.

- You know, back to 1839 when protein

was discovered, it had this incredible reverence

associated with it, and it just gained traction.

But the evidence is very clear that humans

do not need to eat a lot of protein,

and when they do, they get a lot of health problems

I mean human protein needs are just a tiny percentage

of calories, maybe two and a half, three percent

of calories.

And if you were to eat the lowest protein

foods, in the plant world,

which would be foods like rice,

you're at eight or nine percent protein.

So you're not going to become protein deficient.

But, the promoters of the low-carb diets,

the promoters of the sports drinks,

and the food bars, and all these kinds of things,

insist and market to the public that they

absolutely must have more protein.

It's just not true.

In practical sense, and in reality,

the way we humans operate,

we get ideal loads of protein if we just get it

from plants.

When we consume animal foods,

to get that protein, if you will,

what we're actually doing, we're displacing,

the consumption of those foods that matter.

And foods that matter are plants.

- The amount of animal protein we eat

is the problem.

You know, in rural China,

and Japanese populations,

and healthier places in the world,

but for economic reasons, it's very, very, very tiny.

They use one little piece of meat,

they slice it up, and it seasons a dish

for eight people.

Here in this country, we have one gargantuan

piece of meat, we put it on a plate,

with a tiny little bit of vegetables,

we call that a meal.

The problem is that when you eat too much protein,

of any type, you stress your kidneys,

you stress your liver, and when it's animal protein,

you increase your risk of cancer.

And we see cancer is geographically distributed.

The more animal food consumed in a society,

the more cancer, more heart disease, you get.

- And it's amazing all the animals that we choose

in this country to eat for protein and calcium,

are vegetarian animals.

Where's the logic in that?

And I always like to remind you, also,

when you're eating your garbage,

you never ask , "where am I getting my protein,

"and my calcium."

It's only when you come into the healthy world

that all of a sudden you're concerned

with where it's coming from.

- We're in the midst of this amazing protein push.

Everywhere you look, the message is clear.

Protein, protein, protein.

This idea that you need massive amounts

of protein, to simply breathe air

in and out of your lungs,

you know, and to be healthy,

or to perform as an athlete.

- Prior to making this dietary change,

like my main nutritional strategy in a day

was to see how many grams of protein

I could get in, like about that,

the only calculations i ever really did,

I didn't count calories, i didn't count anything,

was just like trying to get in exorbitant amounts

of grams of protein in my day.

Just because there are grams of protein

on the nutritional content of something,

doesn't mean that your body can actually

process all of those grams.

- Protein does some other things.

It elevates blood cholesterol levels,

which most people have not heard of.

But that's about 100 years old, that idea.

And then repeated several times,

but always ignored.

Animal protein starts heart disease.

It increases things like the production

of so called free radicals,

which are those highly reactive molecules

that actually stimulate aging,

and encourages cancer formation.

It also stimulates the production of the wrong

kind of hormones.

It tends to increase the level of estrogens,

for example, and one, which in turn,

is associated with breast cancer.

It changes the microflora in our intestine

when we're consuming too much protein.

I mean, it does all these things.

- There's lots of things we have to worry about

in the American diet.

Fiber, 97% of Americans don't reach the daily

minimum intake of fiber,

98% of Americans don't reach the daily minimum

intake of potassium, for example.

The nutrients of concern for most Americans

are the ones that are found in plant foods.

Mostly fruits and vegetables,

and the ones that we're getting too much of,

in excess, whether it's calorie, sodium,

cholesterol, saturated fat, are found

in processed foods and animal foods in general.

- Many people decide they want to improve

their health, by staying away from red meat.

And instead, they begin consuming more white meats,

like chicken, Turkey, and fish.

I always wondered if certain types of meats

were really better than others.

- People think that they're going to be healthy

by giving up red meat,

and instead, eating poulty and fish.

Stop and think about this for a minute.

What are meat, poultry and fish?

They're muscles of animals.

In one case, they have to move a limb,

another case, they flap a wing,

in another case, they wiggle a tail.

They're the same.

High fat, high protein,

high cholesterol, no dietary fiber,

high in the food chain, so heavily polluted.

- From the standpoint of the effect of the protein

and fat in those foods, and their effect on health,

it really doesn't matter.

It's dose dependent, not type dependent.

So fish is not healthier, in many cases,

it has more fat, than chicken and pork.

But you have other issues with fish, too.

In the ocean, you have this whole hierarchy

of things eating things, that eat things, that eat things.

And so you concentrate all the pollutants in the ocean

including Mercury, in fish like tuna,

that are some of the favorite that we like to eat.

So fish is really not healthier.

Don't kid yourself in thinking that if you're eating

fish and chicken you can eat more of it.

Because one thing in common with these

healthy populations around the world that

do eat a little bit of animal food,

whatever type they're choosing,

it's really a tiny, tiny percentage

of what they're eating in their diet.

So fish doesn't get a free pass.

A lot of people are being told to eat fish,

by cardiologists, or to take fish oil.

That's the other thing.

By cardiologists who say that if you do that,

you'll increase your hdl cholesterol,

and here's the problem with that.

It's true, by the way.

It just doesn't make any difference.

Studies are pretty clear that in populations with very

low incidence of heart disease, total cholesterol,

ldl cholesterol, and hdl cholesterol

are very, very low.

So that's the wrong reason to eat fish,

or take fish oil capsules, is to increase your

hdl cholesterol.

Work on getting all your cholesterol low.

- Since I was a kid, I always heard that milk

was a very important food.

And I consumed a lot of it.

I also loved all kinds of dairy products,

cheeses, butters, ice creams, yogurts,

you name it, I had it all.

It took me many years to begin realizing

that perhaps that was not such a great idea.

But I still wondered.

How about calcium?

Would I be able to get enough of it from plants?

- Well, we have a lot of calcium in dairy.

But it's never been a problem to have too low

calcium in a diet.

- An orange has a 110 milligrams of calcium.

Alright, so if you're trying to take in 1500 milligrams

a day, that doesn't sound like so much,

but when you're only trying to get 500,

it sounds pretty good as a percentage

of your daily intake.

- Milk is healthy food,

for calves.

For baby cows.

I mean, milk is for babies, literally.

I mean, we're the only species that drinks milk

of another species, and then the only species that drinks

milk after weaning into adulthood.

Why is milk associated with increased prostate

cancer risk, for example.

Well, what is milk?

Milk is a cocktail of growth hormones

to get a little bovine animal,

who's you know, who's susceptible to predation

out on the African Savannah,

to, you know, put on a few hundred pounds

in a few months, right, because they don't

want to get eaten by a lion.

And so it's engineered as this growth food

for rapid growth, which is great if you're a little

baby cow, but if you're an adult person,

that extra growth hormones is not a good thing.

You know, one of the hardest things for people

to give up is dairy, and they're sometimes

really resistant to it, so one of the things I tell

people is, "well, why don't you look at the evidence

Because I've always said taking control of your health,

is not doing what I say instead of what other

people say, taking control of your health is

looking at the information and making a conscious

choice, about what you want to do.

- Dairy products i describe as liquid meat.

They're basically just like red meat.

High fat, high cholesterol, no fiber,

in fact, they may be worse than meat.

- The casein that they use to bind the cheese

is so full of chemicals.

The chemicals are as addictive as heroin,

that we don't have four stomachs like a baby

calf, and unfortunately, it is in everything.

They put cow secretions, i know you have other names

for it, dairy, butter, ice cream, cheese.

But it's really breast milk from a cow.

- The only reason people think we need

extra calcium is because two decades ago

scientists, they raised the bar on how much

calcium we needed.

That in turn was influenced by the dairy industry.

What they're really saying is, "we're not drinking

"enough milk."

Because that's what the dairy industry wants us to say.

When in reality, if you look at the relationship

between how much calcium that people consume,

in different societies, as it relates to,

let's say, osteoporosis, the bone disease,

the higher the calcium intake,

the higher the risk of osteoporosis.

No one wants to hear that.

But that's what the datas show.

- What goes on inside an egg during incubation?

Well, after a week, the eye shows up clearly

in the embryo, as the first external organ to develop.

Gestation is much further advanced at ten days.

The chick's outline is more pronounced

as other organs begin to form.

At 14 days, you can see the shape of the chick.

The contents of the egg provide nourishment

during the incubation period.

- Most people can't imagine starting

their day without eggs.

It's the favorite breakfast option around the world.

And eggs make their way everywhere,

in breads, cakes, candies, dressings,

and even drinks.

Eggs have played an important role in our foraging

ancestors creation and survival.

Overall, eggs are regarded as a healthy food,

rich in protein, minerals and fats.

But in today's world, are eggs really a good food choice?

I was shocked to discover the mounting amount

of scientific evidence showing that eggs

and especially commercial eggs might not be

the healthy food that we all once thought it to be.

- Eggs are the most concentrated source

of dietary cholesterol,

in the average person's diet.

And dietary cholesterol can lead to an increase

in blood cholesterol levels, which is the leading

risk factor for our number one killer

of men and women, heart disease.

- Eggs have kind of the same issue as dairy

in some ways, because commercial eggs

are from chickens that are commercially raised,

so, if you ever knew how they were raised,

it's horrible, you would never go near it once.

So, it's disgusting, but aside

from the disgustingness of it, commercial

chickens are fed antibiotics, to keep them

bigger, it makes them bigger, cephalosporin,

to be specific.

They are fed feed that's usually corn and soy,

genetically modified, so bt toxin, corn,

roundup ready corn, roundup ready soy.

So those are effecting again the bacteria

and the microbiome of the chicken,

and then, of you, because you're ingesting it,

it's bio-accumulative.

A commercial chicken leg is mostly omega 6,

it's not omega 3, so it's a horrible polyetceteric

profile, and that's you know, the least of the problems.

Because, like I said, you've got the residue

from glyphosate and bt toxin, and pesticides.

- The next nutrients on my list were

omega 3 fatty acids.

Who hasn't heard about fish oil capsules?

And their supposedly great health benefits.

There seems to be a lot of controversy

on this topic.

I was curious to find out how much of these fats

we needed to stay healthy.

And how would someone get them,

if they didn't eat fish.

- A lot of these silly dietary fads become an industry.

There's a lot of money to be made, making products

that cater to them, and that sort of thing,

and I'm convinced that's the omega 3 thing.

Okay, so here's the deal.

There are two essential fatty acids.

Omega 3's and 6's.

All the rest of them, your body synthesizes,

essential means must come from food.

Alright, so we find omega 3 fatty acids

in foods like seafood, walnuts, flax seeds,

some soy, alright.

And then we find omega 6 fatty acids

in land animals, chicken, pork,

beef, and polyunsaturated vegetable oils.

And so you can see what our problem is,

we eat a lot of omega 6 fatty acids.

And in fact the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6

fatty acids used to be between one to one,

and one to four.

You know what it is today?

Between one to twenty five, and one to thirty.

So this has led a lot of people to say,

"my gosh, this is so out of whack.

"Omega 6 is up here, and omega 3 is down here.

"Maybe what we ought to do is take

"omega 3 fatty acid pills, fish oil pills,

"and encourage fish eating to get that

"omega 3 back up to that ratio that we have

"been accustomed to as a population."

Okay, there's no evidence that it works,

in fact a large meta-analysis that looked

at 89 studies showed that it didn't make any difference

in health outcomes, but besides that,

wouldn't it be better to lower the omega 6

fatty acid in the diet, stop eating all those

land animals, stop consuming all that

plant oil, and the ratio goes back to normal.

So let's not supplement with omega 3,

let's ratchet down omega 6, and we end up

where we need to be.

There's no money in the decreasing omega 6.

There's a lot of money in selling people omega 3 pills.

And getting them to eat fish.

- In fact, when you take a supplement omega 3's,

we've got some really good evidence now.

Summarizing a lot of studies.

The higher the use of omeg 3's, the higher is the risk

for type ii diabetes.

And even there's evidence that cancer goes up, too.

It does exactly the opposite of what people think it does.

It's disgusting.

It's one of those ridiculous things.

- Early on, there was data suggesting

that it might be beneficial, but now,

the preponderance of evidence is that

fish oil is useless, so there's this billion dollar

industry that's basically selling people

fish oil as snake oil.

- For many guys, eating a diet rich in meat

is seen as a reflection of their manhood,

and associated with being strong and manly.

I felt the same way for most of my life.

So I was really surprised to come across studies

that showed that such a diet might actually

have the contrary effect in the long run.

- Here they are eating the meat that's going

to make them macho, right?

It has the opposite effect.

That's not being very macho to have erectile dysfunction.

- It's all about blood flow, they even say it

in the Cialis, and Viagra commercials.

So, if your arteries are clogged,

with cheese and dairy and meat,

and bacon and all this bullshit,

what's the main vein?

Come on, it's simple science, man.

- It's unquestionable that men think that they have

to eat a lot of protein and that eating

a plant-based diet may not be really masculine.

But I'll tell you what's really not masculine,

is erectile dysfunction.

If you want to be virile, if you want to have

a great masculine life, eat a plant-based diet.

There is a great deal of evidence that erectile

dysfunction is caused by diet in many instances.

And the reason is, that if you have coronary artery

disease, in one area of the body,

you have it everywhere.

So those very tiny blood vessels

that lead to the penis, are some of the first

to get effected, and so erectile dysfunction

has been referred to as the canary

in the coal mine.

It's the sign that something is terribly wrong,

and you need to fix it, and at that stage,

it's much more fixable than if you've already

had the heart attack, or the stroke,

or something really serious happen.

- Obesity is linked to more

than 60 chronic diseases,

and it is common knowledge that there is an epidemic

of obesity around the world.

Today, two thirds of adults, and nearly one third

of children in America struggle with it.

It seems like in the last 30 years,

human waist lines have simply grown

out of proportion.

And if obesity rates stay consistent,

by 2030, 51% of the American population

could potentially be obese.

- As far as dieting, or losing weight,

people take two approaches that don't work

And so of course they say diets don't work.

One approach is they try and starve themselves,

and be hungry all the time.

These are portion controlled diets, typical diets

that people follow.

They don't work because you're hungry all the time,

you can't tolerate that kind of pain.

The alternative is the make yourself sick diets.

And those are the high protein, high fat,

low carbohydrate diets.

- Over the last few decades,

there has been an explosion of commercial diets

in the U.S.

Most of them revolving around the idea

that eating few carbs, and lots of animal protein

helps with weight loss,

all orchestrated by multi-million dollar,

ingenious advertising campaigns

and celebrity endorsements.

As a result, nowadays, most people associate

carbs with weight gain.

For many years, I worked really hard to cut my carbs,

without any long term results, and without fully

understanding why i was doing it.

I wanted to find out what the latest science

had to say about these low carb diets.

- Rob atkins, some years ago, in 1973,

published his first book,

in which he argued that it's not the problem

with the fat, it's not the problem with the protein,

but mostly fat, he said that's not the problem,

the problem is we consume too much carbohydrate.

And he made that point, we should be consuming

low carb diet, he said.

And then many other people wrote the same thing.

The south beach diet, is only a copycat,

for the most part, of the atkins diet.

The zone diet is basically a copycat, different name.

The blood type diet in many regards is also a copycat.

Good calories bad calories, dairy 12, same thing.

Even Marco paleo, and I have to say, omnivore's dilemma.

And the paleo diet in this day and time

is a copycat.

they may try to throw out you know, different types

of arguments for why that's right,

they're all wrong.

- Everybody wants to hear good news

about their bad habits.

So when you tell people you can eat all

the lobster you want, you can have steak,

and eggs, and you know, some include dairy,

some don't include dairy, but that's sounds good

to people, because it sounds less restrictive.

- This is written by people, I should tell you,

who don't have experience in this field

of nutrition research, period.

Most of them have never even published

a single paper into scientific literature.

- Some of the people who are talking

about low carb diets are little better than

news reporters, and that's not to take anything away

from their skill at investigating things, but they cannot

don't have the skills to evaluate scientific information.

- Low carb diets, they make you sick.

And as a result, your whole body gets sick,

with artery disease, and kidney damage,

liver damage and so on.

They increase mortality, that's been shown

over and over again in major studies.

But they also make you sick in a way

that you lose your appetite.

The dieter goes, "oh, I've finally found it."

And then you go into ketosis, you lost your

appetite, as a result, you're able to sustain

yourself without thinking about food all the time.

Because you're sick.

These diets are dangerous,

and people should not be on them.

- Well, you know, the biggest lies in the world

are the ones that have a little truth.

We all know that.

It's a great tactic.

It's true, I happen to agree, that we should cut down

on simple carbohydrates.

You see, that's out of context to the whole.

You know, sugar, white flour.

That makes sense.

So in that sense, there's a little truth.

But they don't always point that out.

They just say, low carb, low carb, low carb.

- Listen, forget about what you like and dislike,

think about what your objective is.

Alright, let's just acknowledge we all like eating

right, but that doesn't lead to health.

- I personally knew several people

who experienced amazing healing and health

benefits after adopting some kind

some kind of a plant-based diet, including myself.

But at the same time, i had also met others

who are still experiencing health issues,

or were struggling with their weight,

after adopting this lifestyle, some for many years.

So it made me wonder.

Was there a flaw in this diet?

- First vegetarian that I knew well

about 40 years ago, was actually a vegan

he was a very strict vegetarian,

he lived on Coca cola and potato chips.

He was fat, greasy, and unhealthy.

So being a vegetarian means really nothing to me.

- 90% of the vegetarians are still consuming dairy.

90%.

And they also consume sometimes some fish,

and sometimes some chicken, and eggs, and so forth.

The nutrient composition of the vegetarian diet

is not very different from the non-vegetarian.

So, as a result, if you compare the health of vegetarians,

with non-vegetarians, you can't expect to see very much.

- But somebody's decided they're going to be vegan,

in other words eat no animal foods, they've made

a declaration as to their physical and mental

strength, and their interest, and their willingness

to work hard.

After all, if you become vegan,

you have to stand up to your mother-in-law,

and your doctor or your dietitian, you have to,

quote, risk protein and calcium deficiency,

even though that's not true.

But the problem is that too many vegans

they don't look good.

They're overweight, they're unhealthy looking.

- I don't really like to use the words vegan

and vegetarian because,

that's not describing the kind of science

I'm talking about.

- I would call myself a fat vegan when I first

started out, that's exactly what I was, and I

was trying to tell everyone how great this

lifestyle is, and it saved me, and it reversed

my heart disease.

But yet, I was still walking around, about 75 pounds

to a hundred pounds overweight.

- Now why is somebody a fat vegan?

Not because they give up the animal foods.

That's a good thing, you need to give up the animal foods.

But what they haven't given up is the oil.

The olive oil, the other vegetable oils,

the fat you eat is the fat you wear, whether

it comes from a plant, or an animal.

- So, I made the change.

I removed the foods in my diet that were

empty calories, the oils and the fats,

the sugars, the processed foods,

the food additives that kept me coming

back for more, those companies add those

things purposely to get us to not eat

just one potato chip.

We need the whole bag.

There's millions of overweight people in this country,

and they're all struggling, trying this diet,

or that diet, and they try this diet for a week,

or that diet for a week, and they're spending

a lot of money on all these different diet programs,

and pills, and supplements, and adding things

to their diet to lose weight, or to get healthy,

and that's where we need to realize that a whole foods

plant-based diet is free, there's no shakes,

there's no bars, there's no powders,

there's no counting calories, we eat until

we're full and satisfied, and stop.

And that's it.

- As much as i liked the idea of eating

exclusively a plant-based diet,

especially since it had worked for me,

I wanted this film to be very accurate

with the latest science on food.

So I wondered, if realistically,

from a scientific perspective,

could every person in this day and age

eat a plant-based diet 100% of the time?

- I can't say, and I don't thing science can say,

that everybody has to be 100%.

I can argue the case, i think, for the vast majority

of people, we ought to be at least 90,

probably 95%, we've got good science for that.

And in many cases, if people already have

a disease, it's a good idea

they should be 100% all the time.

So that's my scientific argument.

I have another practical argument, though

on this question, concerning how far do you go.

And that is that if we're going to adopt

this dietary lifestyle,

it's really important that we become accustomed to it.

And we should go probably 100% if we can.

And don't tease ourselves with the other things.

Because what happens, we never become accustomed

to this, where our taste preferences change.

- If you do it right, there are no health issues.

In fact, the side effects are you're going to lose weight,

you're going to look better, you're going to have

more energy, you're going to avoid most of the common

degenerative conditions, most of the time,

you're going to have a longer life, and a healthier,

and a better life.

You know, that's about what happens

when you do this.

So there isn't a downside.

- We often hear that the key to good health

is moderation, and it makes sense.

But why then does it not seem to work

for most people?

- You know for some people,

that's a really easy thing to do.

But unfortunately for most,

finding moderation is like finding a needle

in a haystack.

And, because others can do it,

they feel lost, and they feel like an absolute

failure because they can't.

And the truth be told, most people

can't find moderation, so they're actually

in the majority and not the minority.

But this minority few that are on television,

that have never, ever been fat,

never, ever been sick,

have genetics very much on their way,

they're out there saying, "it's all about this,

"and all about that."

I mean, how are they going to relate

to that poor person sitting at home,

that's 350 pounds, that feels like their

world is over?

Now, I know what they feel like.

I was 310 pounds.

I was loaded up on medication for eight years.

I understand, I can relate.

I won't tell anybody that moderation's easy.

Moderation's damn hard.

Really hard.

I still haven't mastered it.

I'm a work in progress when it comes to moderation.

But what I'm finding is that I'm away

from an extreme now,

of 93% of my energy coming from this processed

and fun part of town, animal fat,

I've now got this moderation up,

I've now moved it up, and it's working.

- So how are people supposed to get

all this information?

Since everyday we're bombarded with TV ads,

infomercials, news talking about the new food trends.

How can we know who's telling the truth,

and has honest and unbiased science

behind their products?

- The media always approaches things with the idea

that if we're going to interview somebody

about diet, we have to let somebody with a different

opinion give their opinion.

Alright, so here's what happens.

Someone like Colin Campbell, at Cornell university

writes this book, the China study.

of references, it represents decades of very

meticulous research, work that he did, right?

And so they're going to interview him, well then

they go find somebody that's promoting a paleo diet,

or a low carb diet because we have to have

the contrary opinion.

That person may have written a terrible book,

that's a little more than a storybook,

it's not referenced, it has no credibility,

but in the eyes of the public, now those two

are equal, Colin has an opinion,

and this other person has an opinion.

So it confuses people, and it gains traction that way.

- We tend to look at the fast food industry

as the big villain, responsible for all the havoc

surrounding food choices.

But these same companies that are contributing

to the problem may also hold the key

to the solution.

It is a supply and demand issue,

so if enough people begin demanding healthy,

plant-based options, perhaps that could be a good approach.

After all, it is us the consumers who should dictate

what the market has to offer.

And not the other way around.

- You can make better, cleaner, healthier products

by incorporating more plant-based foods

into your products, and not to shy away from that.

So, I don't take a negative approach like down

with these fast foods.

We need to make them understand

that they can still make money, and they

can still have a sustainable business,

because there are people out there

that want this food.

We just have to make it available to them.

- Most people rely on their doctors

for information about diet and nutrition.

But several medical school programs

show that doctors get very little training on nutrition.

Sometimes, none at all.

- As I went through medical school,

and I went through residency, and I started

after that, working on my own as a physician,

after awhile, I became kind of a little bit frustrated

with my inability to really, really help people.

Because what i thought was happening,

was that, I was just basically seeing patients,

asked to see them very quickly,

and was really left with limited options

as far as what I could do.

I really felt what i needed to do with the time

that I had, was left to do, was just basically

treat symptoms, instead of trying to get to the root cause

of the problem, or the root cause of their disease.

So, it left me basically practicing I think the kind

of medicine that the majority of people are

practicing in the U.S., which is pharmaceutical based

medicine, and I don't have a problem with medication.

I think medications are wonderful, medications

are great, they're necessary for a lot of people,

they are really the only option.

For many people they're a good option.

But I think what we're missing is that there's

something else that's out there.

- I was outsourcing my health, to somebody else.

I was coming along saying, "here's some money,

"will you fix me, I'm busy over here."

And when are you going to come up

with a drug that's going to like, cure me?

- By using more chemicals to correct

the imbalance, we're actually causing

the imbalances to be even stronger.

I found that people who've been on medications

for a long time, are developing a lot of side effects

from those medications, where then are causing

other organs in their bodies to become diseased,

their functioning is weakening, their overall health

is weakening, their immune system is getting

deficient, if something is destroying

you really need to infuse that with something

that's going help rebuild it.

- So, if somebody comes along and says,

"you know, doctor, I can take this patient, and by doing

"these simple things, you know changing their diet,

"getting them to eat a little bit differently,

"more plant-based, getting them to exercise

"a little more, do you realize that I could make

"this diabetes essentially, if you were

"to test them again, virtually go away?"

And a lot of doctors in this country,

some may be familiar with the idea,

but a lot of them, even to this day,

would still say, "no, you know, I don't think

- The cause of most of our diseases and the cure

is within anybody's reach who gets the knowledge.

The problem is, is they have to make some change.

That's a small problem.

The real problem is there is no money

in doing the right thing.

There's money in selling you statins,

and blood pressure pills, and powerful arthritis drugs,

and laxatives, and antacids, that's where the money is.

So that's where the education goes.

- We have to shift the dollars,

from expensive procedures,

and shift it more towards education,

teaching people, showing them about their disease,

and why it's there, and teaching them the things

that they can do day in and day out

that would positively impact that disease,

and possibly even get it certainly improved,

and maybe even reversed in some cases.

- You can expect artery disease, to stabilize and reverse,

and the symptoms to go away,

you can expect the type ii diabetes, if it's really

type ii diabetes, to be cured 100% of the time

with diet change and associated weight loss.

You can expect the arthritis' to improve,

and go away and be cured, many times,

with your inflammatory arthritis'.

The bowel problems, all the way from indigestion,

to constipation, to colitus, you can expect

to cure when you direct your attention to the cause

of the problem and you fix it.

- On the supplement aisle is where

things get really crazy.

It seems like every product can improve our health,

in one way or another.

Some support each of our different organs,

others give us energy, stimulate our immune system,

prevent colds, reduce appetite, or promote weight loss.

It makes me really confused.

If they're all so good for us, should we even have

to worry about eating healthy?

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- There's some products out there that could

be beneficial to our health,

and there's nothing wrong with them,

but I think the problem comes when people

overdo or overuse that one product,

and look at is as you know, the silver bullet,

the thing that's going to cure all my ills.

When people go to that extreme,

I don't think there's a product out there like that.

- I discourage supplements,

most of the time.

For most people.

And part of the problem with supplements

is that supplements, drugs, procedures,

they all have application for specific populations.

So, the whole pitch, if you will, is based

on the idea that you can't get enough nutrients,

from food, you don't eat the right diet,

so you can somehow, make up for it,

by taking these dietary supplements.

So it's become a 40 billion dollar industry.

The sales pitches worked, people are doing it.

They're buying this stuff.

And the people who sell it, they're hanging

on for dear life, and they're not about to give

into the scientific truth.

But the reality is that all of the nutrients

that you need are in food, and they're in food

- in very specific and complex combinations

that we don't really even understand

all of yet.

And so when you extract a single nutrient

and purify it, and put it in a pill,

you're overloading your system with something

that it's never seen before, and is really not

adapted to deal with.

Much better to eat smaller amounts of it,

in the food, and again, I'll Grant that there

are exceptions, and in my office,

I recommend supplements sometimes,

but not to the general population.

And that's the problem in medicine, too,

we want to take everything, and sell it

to everybody, because that's how you make money.

- A lot of people have done a lot of disservice

to many, many people,

trying to offer them a magic pill, or a magic this,

or a solution in five days,

that's going to change your life.

And the simple reality is, is that you can't do

20 years of damage, by ignoring mother nature's best,

the fruits, the vegetables, the nuts, the beans,

the seeds.

You can't spend 20 years saying no to that,

and then expect people in white coats

to come up with something that's going

to solve that, in five days.

So what we have to do is we have to see

the error of our ways, which was turning our back

on mother nature, and we have to turn

towards her, for a solution.

- Vitamin supplements for example,

we've got a lot of data that, when you take them

out of context, like that, and use them that way,

in the short run, yeah, it looks sort of interesting,

maybe they're looking good for a little while,

especially in people that may be really low

on them, but in the long run, no.

You know, they don't work

and yet we're spending 32 billion dollars a year

on nutrient supplements.

- The most important supplement for those

eating plant-based diets, is

a vitamin b12, a regular reliable source

of vitamin b12, it doesn't have to be supplements,

but they have b12 fortified foods.

This is very important, it's critical

for everyone eating a plant-based diet

to get a regular reliable source of vitamin b12.

There's only two vitamins not created by plants.

One is vitamin d, created by animals,

such as yourself when you walk out into the sun,

and the other is vitamin b12, not made by plants,

not made by animals either, it's made by little microbes

that blanket the earth, so, you know,

it might've gotten enough

from drinking out of a mountain stream, or well water,

but now we chlorinate the water supply to kill

off any bacteria, so we don't get a lot of you know,

b12 in our water anymore, don't get alot of cholera

either, that's a good thing.

But because of the way we live

you know, in our, you know sanitized, modern world,

got to get b12 from somewhere.

Our fellow great apes get it from you know, bugs

during feces, but I prefer a more sanitary route,

which is one 2500 microamps of it once a week,

cost less than five bucks a year,

or vitamin b12 fortified foods everyday.

- We spend more money on healthcare

than any other country in the world.

Yet we have some of the highest rates

of chronic disease on the planet.

Fortunately, it seems that some health insurance

providers including medicare, are beginning

to embrace the concept of disease prevention

through diet.

Instead of spending millions of dollars

trying to simply manage the problem,

when it might already be too late.

- So medicare now accepts for reimbursement

both the Dean ornish program, for reversing heart disease

as well as the pritikin program.

And this is out of a recognition that it's not only

safer, it's not only cheaper, but actually

more effective than kind of the traditional

approach, which is very costly surgery,

and a lifetime of drugs.

And so,

I mean this is great, from a whole,

I mean, the most important things,

is reducing suffering and saving lives,

but from kind of a fiscal responsibility,

I mean, it's so much, cheaper, so much more

cost effective, that, and who's footing the bill?

Well, if it's medicare, it's taxpayer,

so they're saving money by making people healthier.

- For most people, it is hard to imagine

that anybody could perform well as an athlete,

without consuming any animal products.

Not to mention being a world class athlete,

or even a world champion.

- I am a professional triathelete,

specializing in the iron man distance.

I'm also the ultraman world champion.

I have been racing for triathlon professionally

for 10 years, I've finished 66 iron man races,

and I love to train, and race all the time.

- I'm an ultra-endurance athelete,

most people have heard of an iron man,

if you haven't, an iron man is a very long triathlon,

during which, over the course of a one day period,

you swim 2.4 miles, you ride your bike 112 miles,

and then you run a marathon.

While ultra man is essentially double that distance,

and in 2009, I was the fastest American

and 6th place overall in this race.

- I do believe that last season,

on a plant-based diet was my strongest.

Than I've ever been.

I did a couple of iron man races,

that were among the top five,

best performances in my career,

and I was able to win the ultra man world championship.

- What you're also seeing are atheltes like

mma fighters, they're realizing performance gains

they're recovering more quickly in between their workouts,

you see nba players, NFL players, NHL players,

olympic athletes, all kinds of athletes who are

starting to experiment and explore this way

of eating, and getting good results.

I've been doing this for over eight years

right now, I've never had a problem building

lean muscle mass, i continue to get stronger,

fitter and faster, and it's fine.

- For me now, the proof is in the pudding.

I know that I am like stronger than I've ever been,

without animal products, and so

I proved it really, like, to myself and I've hopefully

proved to other people that it can be done.

- I'm a neurofibromatosis patient,

I'm an ambassador for a couple

of organizations, that do philanthropic work

for sick children.

I'm an npst cancer survivor.

Npst is a rare sarcoma,

it's one of the most aggressive and fast,

infiltrating cancers that there is on the planet.

I've had over 325 tumors removed from my body.

I've lived a very, very rigorous and painful last

three and a half years, battling for my life,

and I had a decision to make.

I'm either going to let this take me,

or I'm going to fight.

Like giving up wasn't an option,

I don't know what's going to happen,

but I'm not going to die sitting down,

or laying down, I'm going to keep my hands up,

my head tucked, and I'm not going to stop

swinging until it's over.

And without a plant-based diet,

I would not be here today.

It kind of kept my cancer at bay,

and it's allowed me to thrive in ways

I didn't know was possible.

The insane mindset that

animal protein is the key

to being very healthy,

you know, almost killed me.

I'm not saying plant-based diets

cure, or they're the end-all, be-all,

but what I am saying is that if you're

going through some type of health crisis,

your odds are very, very much greater

when you embrace a plant-based lifestyle.

Those are just the facts.

And my life is the living proof.

- In 2006, I attempted suicide,

while I was on 250 milligrams of Zoloft,

for what the doctors diagnosed as major

depressive disorder.

And I was told I'd be most likely on it

for the rest of my life.

A week after that i went into a personal

development course, and changed my beliefs.

From there, I started to look at what I was

putting into my body.

And I started to look at nutrition,

and nutritional healing, and what I could do.

And it led me to going within,

and back to nature.

I stripped away all of the processed food,

I went back to just eating raw fruits

and vegetables, and juicing, and green smoothies,

and I started to have a sense of a natural,

natural happy high started to come into my body,

and I was feeling better

than I'd felt in many years.

The symptoms of depression started to drop away,

the heavy, sluggish, tired feelings

that I couldn't cope, the chronic fatigue,

the aches, you know, everything started to shift.

And I started to feel my cells were

transforming on some level.

I'd made the decision that I didn't want to put

ever again, the fear of death and suffering

of another life, and eating animals into my body.

And that translated to

a shift for me, I cured my own depression.

And I've never looked back.

- Eating tasty food is one of the biggest

pleasures in life.

So many people might argue that even though

eating an unhealthy diet is not good for them,

they don't want to jeopardize the fun aspect of it.

And therefore, they continue eating unhealthy things.

But one thing that i came to discover

is that when you transition into a healthier

eating lifestyle, you do not have to compromise

on taste.

Yes, you will go through a transition period,

but once your taste buds, and your body's chemistry

begins to change, you will start to crave

and really enjoy these foods.

It is important to find food you like,

and once you realize that almost every dish

can be made plant-based, you will see that

it is not that hard at all.

- There's such a stigma with the word vegan,

I guess that people just get automatically

turned off and just assume that it's going to suck.

But it's like it doesn't.

If anything, to me, and i mean, that was another

big thing, why I do it, because it's better.

To me, I think food's just way better this way.

I would say just try it.

You know, you'll surprise yourself.

- When you're becoming vegetarian,

and you've given up the meat and the dairy

and the eggs, the only thing you know for food,

you think you're going to starve to death.

You have to understand that

marinara sauce, and pasta, and lasagna,

and bean burritos, and oatmeal, and hash-brown potatoes,

and so on, things you love, that's where you get

your calories and your protein and your vitamins

and your minerals.

- There are so many beautiful, wonderful

amazing, delicious plant-based foods out there.

In fact, when I started to do this a whole world

opened up to me, and when you begin to eat

these nutrient dense foods that are actually

fuelling you, that are actually nourishing you,

with all of these amazing vital nutrients

and micronutrients, you start to feel good,

your cravings change, and your taste buds change.

You know, that cheeseburger, that you couldn't

get out of your mind, suddenly,

you're not thinking about that anymore,

and you're actually craving that Kale smoothie.

And that's something that happened to me

that I would have never thought would have happened.

- People think that vegan food just tastes like crap.

And that's not true.

I think that people think that being vegan

might potentially be strange,

that people are weird, that you have to be a hippie,

or you have to embrace wearing hemp clothes,

or something.

- You want to have a burger, you can have a burger.

You want to have spaghetti and meatballs,

you can have spaghetti and wheatballs.

You want to have fries, you want to have chocolate

mousse, you want to have pumpkin pie,

you want to have stuffing, you want to have,

you know, even hotdogs.

- And so when you're looking at

the idea of taking the leap,

into this way of eating and living,

don't look at what you're going to be

not eating, embrace and be excited

about the adventure of all these new foods

you're going to be bringing into your life.

- Eating healthy will not do you

much good if you can't afford it.

Or if it leaves a big hole in your pocket.

So my next question was is it possible

to eat healthy on a tight budget?

- A common misconception is that a whole

foods plant-based diet is very expensive.

I routinely post pictures of my grocery receipt,

and I take my whole bounty that I bought

at the produce market, and put it out on the table

so people can see, how much I end up with,

and they're shocked.

Whole grains that we buy in bulk,

are very inexpensive.

You're going to cut your grocery bills in half,

from a typical standard American diet,

in the beginning, it might seem like a lot of effort,

but in the long run, you're saving all this money

for all the new clothes you're going to have to buy

for the new slim you that is produced

from eating this whole foods plant-based diet.

- It's easy to go into those markets and say,

"there's no way that I can do this."

But the truth of the matter is that

it doesn't have to be expensive,

it doesn't have to be inconvenient,

it doesn't have to be difficult, it doesn't have

to be time consuming.

And my experience is that it has actually

simplified my life, and it's been cheaper

than eating the other way around.

- At this point of my journey,

I already had seen enough evidence

about the benefits and safety of a plant based diet

for adults, but was this lifestyle also ideal

and safe for children?

- Not only can children grow healthy

on a plant-based diet, they'll grow

healthiest on a plant-based diet.

I mean, we have an epidemic of childhood

obesity, and children raised plant-based,

actually grow taller by about an inch,

they grow about an inch taller than meat eating

incumbents, and most importantly,

they grow less in a horizontal direction, right?

They don't have the same problems

with childhood obesity, so Dr. Benjamin Spock,

the most esteemed pediatrician of all time,

wrote one of the bestselling books

in human history, recommended in his final

edition, the 7th edition of his book before he died

in his 90's, that all children should be raised

with zero exposure to meat and dairy.

And he did this because he saw what

you know, the older generations were dying

from, and wanted to get them off on a good start.

I mean the leading killers of our children

will eventually be, same thing.

Heart disease, cancer, strokes, copd,

diabetes, hypertension.

These are diseases that can be prevented

in many cases arrested, or even reversed

with a healthy enough plant-based diet.

- As a new father, I wondered,

how could I get my daughter to eat healthy?

Since getting her to eat anything at all

can sometimes be a problem.

There's so much junk being marketed

to kids out there, and it is often difficult

for parents to transition their children

to healthier food options.

- I would not be surprised at all

that if in 15, 20, 25 years time,

people will look back at the last 10 to 20 years,

and they'll say, "how did those people give that food

"to their children?"

- A big question that we get all the time

is, "how can I get my kids to eat better?"

I think every parent wants their kids to eat

healthy, and it's difficult, especially when

everywhere you look, there's a fast food restaurant,

or a processed food snack that is being marketed

towards children.

And the first thing that I always say is,

"you have to lead by example."

As a parent, you can't be eating lousy foods,

and expect your children to eat healthy,

because you tell them to.

So you have to walk your walk, that's number one.

The second thing is, i encourage all parents

to make the preparation of meals and the shopping

of food inclusive with their children.

The more you can bring your kids into the fold,

the more they're going to develop an emotional

attachment to where their food comes from,

how it's prepared, and the impact that

it's having on their health.

- Really get inside their heads,

and sort of think how they would think.

Keep telling them what is good, what is bad,

won't probably work, you have to interact with them,

you have to show them what's possible.

Get your hands dirty, get the kids to help you,

and let them own what they're doing.

If you always put something in front of them

in a silver platter, and let them consume

that information, you know, it'll only

involved, let them have the responsibility.

The way I approach it is that I try to make it

as fun as possible, use colors, use flavors,

teach a little thing that they never knew about,

use gadgets that, normal people won't see,

but I want them to go away with a feeling

of accomplishment, and something that

they're eager to share to their friends.

Hopefully their parents.

I think that's the best part.

It's like holding a bird.

You don't want to hold it too tight,

You don't want to hold it too loosely,

or it's going to fly away.

That's something that each individual parent

has a specific knowledge of their kid.

- I get the questions all the time.

"What do I do, how do I start,

"how do I tell my kids, oh, they're going to be

"meat on their plates, that they're not having dairy."

Try a vegan burger, it's basically the same thing,

you just leave the meat out.

You're going to put that burger on that bun,

you're going to put all the fixings on that,

whatever your kids like, you make it exactly the same,

that's a great way to get started.

- When I think with the younger generation,

what's so exciting is, is that they get to start

young, I mean, I'm not going to have any regrets,

but it sort of bums me out a little bit that I'm

just now discovering this in my 30's because

I wish I would have done this when I was younger,

because just the thoughts of like the energy,

that I would've had in college.

- I think the other thing is to not have

hard and fast rules, with your children,

you can't eat that, and you know, you have to eat this.

And instead, respect them as independent sentient beings,

who have you know, the wherewithal

to make conscious decisions for themselves.

So, at our home, we serve plant based foods,

all the time, we don't have any animal products

here, but when my 10 year old daughter goes

to a birthday party, she's surrounded by you know,

chicken McNuggets, and birthday cake and all of that,

and we don't say to her, "you can't eat those foods."

We say, "have a great time at the birthday party,

"and make the right choice for you."

And that doesn't mean that she always makes

the right choice, that way you are empowering

them, this is a lifetime we're talking about.

This is a long road ahead, so it's about getting

your children to think consciously about their

own choices, so that when they reach the age

of maturity, they are informed and educated

and prepared to be responsible stewards of the planet,

and responsible stewards of their own bodies.

- I could not make a film about food choices

and not explore the topic of organic,

versus non-organic.

It seems that everybody's obssessed

with those words, and it's becoming increasingly

adverse to foods that don't carry an organic label.

Others fear that consuming more plant based food

might be damaging to their health,

due to the increase of pesticides in those foods.

But should this really be our biggest concern?

- Fear of pesticides should never keep anyone

from maximizing their fruit and vegetable intake.

There, you know, so there's been like chemic computer

modeling studies that suggest that, so for example,

if half of Americans ate a single more serving

of fruits and vegetables a day, we'd prevent

20,000 cancer deaths every year.

If just half the people, just one more serving,

20,000 people would not have died from cancer,

would normally have died if they hadn't done that.

So that's how powerful fruits and vegetables are.

But, because these were conventional,

pesticide laden fruits and vegetables,

they estimated that it would, that the extra

pesticide burden from all those extra fruits

and vegetables would cause 10

extra cancer deaths.

So in all it would only prevent 19, 990 cancer deaths.

But that's what we're looking at a year,

this tremendous benefit.

Then a tiny bump in risk.

So, okay, great, choose organic whenever you can,

why accept any risk, why not get all benefit?

Sure, but we should never let concern about pesticides

in any way dissuade us from stuffing our face

with as many healthy fruits and vegetables as possible.

- If you're eating meat, and you're eating commercial

meat, and you're worried about switching to plant-based

diet, and worried about the pesticides in the produce,

you're being ridiculous, because you're getting

a fraction of the pesticides by eating the vegetable,

that you can mostly wash it off.

Remember, you can wash, you can soak your

vegetables and use a wash to get pesticide

You cannot wash the pesticide off of the hamburger

meat you're about to prepare.

- I encourage people just to go ahead and buy

whatever produce they can afford,

whatever produce looks the freshest

that week in the grocery store,

and whatever's on sale,

so that's where they're going to save money,

is not worrying about,

"i have to buy organic bell peppers,

"and they cost me four dollars each."

That's not a sustainable lifestyle.

- Besides the health aspect related

to our food choices, I also realized during the production

of this film, that there was another very important

factor, that is often overlooked,

ignored, or misunderstood.

The connection between food choices,

I was really shocked after reading the united nations

report on global warming.

After all, it is hard to grasp the idea

that the burger, or steak on our plates

might be contributing to things such as

global warming, water scarcity,

species extinction, the destruction of the Amazon forest,

the depletion of our oceans, and even world hunger.

I had a hard time understanding it at first,

but once I began digging a little deeper,

the connection became clear.

- Now, it's seven billion people,

what we eat, determines how the whole planet

is used, and what's happening now

is that, as we run out of land,

to grow these animals and the food

for the animals, we burn down rain forests,

to aquire more land.

And the number one cause of all of that

is our food choices.

- It's expected to have a 40% shortage in fresh water

supplies by the year 2030.

We have again, irreversible loss of biodiversity,

ecosystems, and extinction of species faster than

we've ever seen before, for the past 65 million years.

We have a world hunger issue with a little less

that a billion people on earth suffering from hunger,

with about 350 children dying from hunger each hour.

- You might be asking yourself,

how is all that possible?

And I had the same questions,

because in fact, many of these issues

are not only related to our food choices.

Many are very complex problems,

with several social, political, economic,

and cultural variables.

But here are some intriguing facts.

70% of our arable land is used to grow crops

for animals and not humans.

It takes on average 2400 gallons of water

and 12 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef.

Five million acres of rainforest are destroyed

every year, so companies can graze animals

and grow food for these animals.

The excrements of 80 billion land animals

killed every year for food are not treated.

And go back into our water basins,

and our oceans, creating a lot of pollution.

And these are just a few examples.

So when you consider these facts,

it all begins to fall into place.

- We need to focus more, and understand

more what the footprint is, the complete

life cycle analysis, ecological environmental depleting

footprint is of that item is versus just how

close it is to you.

Or whether it's even organic or not.

It's much less of a footprint to eat something

that was grown 1500 miles away,

if it was plant-based, than it is to eat

a food item that was slaughtered,

that was an animal product,

by your next door neighbor.

And our largest footprint is,

you know, across all sectors,

our food choice specifically as it relates

- No matter how green, or eco-friendly

we try to be, the truth is that by nature,

we are a very destructive species.

Almost everything we do has a negative

impact on the environment.

So many people often try to minimize their footprint,

by doing things like switching to more effective

light bulbs, taking short showers,

bicycling to work, using solar energy,

or even buying an electric car.

And those are all great things.

But the question is,

are these actions in fact the easiest

and most effective when it comes to helping

protect our planet and its' resources?

- You look at the four major problems.

We've got overpopulation,

and we're adding about a million people every

four days, net.

Then you get to the way we live,

and the way we consume stuff,

all that stuff is coming from finite resources

which we are steadily depleting.

So those first two factors the overpopulation,

and the way we live, are driving the third one,

which is our dependence on fossil fuels.

Look at the numbers.

Since 1950, the line for consumption

of fossil fuels have gone steadily up,

every year, and there's no end in sight.

The fourth big driver, of all of these

environmental issues, particularly global warming,

is the way we eat, is our consumption

of the meat, dairy, eggs and fish,

and that keeps going up.

It requires, per calorie, over 10 times as much

land, 10 times as much water,

and 10 times as much energy.

And it ranges.

But the average is well over 10 times,

and that's a big number.

Now the good news is, we can change

what we eat, any individual over night.

People say, "wow, what would happen if everybody

"changed at once?"

Well, that's not going to happen.

The bad news is, those first three items,

overpopulation, over consumption,

and dependence on fossil fuels, each one of those would

take decades, if not centuries to fix.

- With more and more people embracing

the idea of reducing their intake of animal products,

or adopting some kind of a plant-based diet,

it seems that things are moving in the right direction.

But are they, really?

- You know, I hear people saying, "things are

"are getting better.

"You know, we see people putting solar

"panels up, and more people are eating

"plant-based, and there's vegan restaurants

"going in down the street, things are getting better."

Well, not really.

And not even close.

For every individual,

that's moving in the direction

of a plant-based diet,

there's a hundred people moving

in the other direction.

We've got to double our food production

in the next 40 years, to feed the nine billion

that we'll have by 2050.

- When it comes to global warming,

the production of animals for food

currently contributes to about 14.5% of the total

global warming effect.

A contribution larger than the entire

global transportation sector combined.

Livestock amounts to 53% of nitrous oxide emissions,

44% of methane gas,

and 5% of the total carbon dioxide

released in our atmosphere.

- Raising livestock and eating fish,

and also producing dairy is one of the largest

contributing factors to climate change.

And the public needs to know this,

and policies need to be enacted to help

It's one of the easiest ways that we have

to not just adapt to, but to mitigate climate change.

And it can be done as easy as just changing

out what you have on your plate.

- Organic grass fed beef

seems to be the new trend.

And the idea sounds really appealing.

Cows that live off grass don't take any antibiotics,

and therefore supposedly provide a healthier

food source for us, when compared to factory

farmed animals.

But is there a catch?

- It's a very large movement today,

and I think what's happening is that

there's been a shift because of more and more

people being concerned about the humane

raising of animals, and moving away from factory

farms, they're moving toward grass fed operations,

or pasture fed operations.

It's a complete fabrication by the meat and dairy

industries to continue perpetuating

the slaughtering of animals, because even though

some animal might be humane raised,

they're still not humane killed,

and all of the animals that are still placed

on your plate have to be slaughtered

in some manner, and so there's still

a humane issue there, but from an environmental

standpoint, in many aspects, raising grass fed beef

is less sustainable than factory fed animals,

and the reason is, because it's so land intensive.

It may require eight pounds of feed to produce

one pound of an animal product, if it were beef,

but in a grass fed situation, sometimes, it's 10 times

that much, it may be 70, 80 times from a grass fed

to a grain fed beef.

Additionally, from a climate change standpoint,

grass fed cattle produce 40 to 60%

more greenhouse gas emissions, meaning methane,

carbon dioxide, land use changes,

than a grain fed cow would.

- Another thing often taken for granted

is the depletion of our oceans.

We often think of fish as a never ending

self replenishing food source,

but the truth seems to be quite different.

- Over 90% of all the big fish in the oceans

are already gone.

80% of commercial fisheries are over exploited,

or depleted.

The fishing fleets are chasing the last of the fish.

And have to travel further and further away

from the land and deeper and deeper into the ocean

to catch them.

I've seen illegal fishing in Antarctica,

and that's as far away from land as you can get.

- When someone sits down at a table,

to eat fish or seafood on their plate,

what they're really doing is they're eating

a target fish that's becoming depleted to the point

of near extinction, but they're also eating

baggage comes with it, and typically it requires

about five to twenty times more other seafood,

as by-kill, and by-kill is the term

that relates to all those other sea life,

living in the ocean that are killed in the process

of trying to get that target fish to your plate,

whether it's with purse seine type of fishing method,

or long line or bottom trawling, or middle trawling,

our oceans are expected to be completely

devoid of all fish that we recognize

commercially today by the year 2048.

- The oceans are dying, and nobody wants

to know about it.

And if the oceans die, we die.

It's as simple as that.

And if you start destroying them,

you're basically killing out the crew,

and the life support systems going to collapse,

and there won't be any air to breathe,

and there won't be any food to eat,

and the climate'll be out of control,

and, not a good thing.

But we have to humble ourselves and recognize

that we need this diversity, we need these creatures,

we need this interdependence, and if we don't see that,

then our chances of survival are quite slim.

My big concern is not that we're going to wipe

ourselves out, out of sheer ecological stupidity,

but that we're going to take so much with us.

- So much confusion, and so much debate.

That it just boggles my mind that we can't

think like third graders, and say, "why not

"just address the number one cause here."

You know, we got ten holes in the boat,

the boat's sinking, which hole do we fill first?

Go to the big hole.

Fill that big hole first.

- I mean, so often we're looking at just what

we would like to eat, because it satisfies

our taste preferences.

Well, we're at a point in time,

in order to save humanity essentially,

save our species, which is not an overstatement

at all, we need to start looking outside of self,

and start looking at how our choices are fully

effecting those around us, those species

that we share this planet with,

and especially future generations.

- A couple years back, I saw

a documentary called, earthlings,

that exposed the conditions in which

farm animals are slaughtered.

It made a big impact on me.

I knew that animals got killed for food,

but seeing how it actually happened,

and seeing the suffering, pain and terror

that these animals go through,

put things into a new perspective for me.

I was already eating mostly plant-based foods

at the time, but after seeing those images,

I decided I could not contribute to the killing

of innocent animals any longer.

So I became a 100% plant eater.

I was not in a position to judge anybody,

after all, I ate animals for over 30 years of my life.

But I wanted to understand,

how come in this day and age,

such a massive genocide was allowed.

And how come us, the general population,

government and corporations allowed

for this to happen?

- We love some animals, and eat others

because we have been born into a invisible

belief system that conditions us

to compartmentalize when it comes to animals.

It conditions us to think of certain animals

as edible, and other animals as inedible.

And the invisible belief system that conditions

us to eat certain animals, is what I call carnism.

One way carnism remains invisible, is by remaining unnamed.

If we don't name it, we can't even think about it,

so we can't question it.

When we don't see something, obviously,

it becomes much easier to maintain

this mythology that there is no problem,

there is no atrocity.

- This is not just something to eat.

This is beautiful love,

joy, work, action.

This is life.

- You're think they're just animals?

They have intelligence.

They have language signal.

They have love.

So when they are about to face deaths,

in a death chamber,

they fear, and they sad, and they anger.

- You know, everybody talks about the holocaust,

what about the holocaust we're creating for the animals?

of animals, and you want peace on earth?

Peace on earth is for all living entities,

not just humans.

People just got locked up in Utah

for photographing a cafo, a concentrated

animal feeding operation.

These people keeping the people ignorant,

and it's sick, to make money.

And if the truth gets out, if people know

where their food came from,

or how their food was produced,

they wouldn't eat that shit.

- When you start to threaten the dominant

paradigm of society, you're going to become

a force to be reckoned with, and they'll do

everything they can to destroy you.

And that's exactly, that's happening now.

- There are still people who'll see that,

and they'll be resistant, i mean, I was one

of those people, you know, I grew up in Texas,

eating beef all the time, and I loved animals,

I always loved the companion animals

I grew up with, and you know, I never

really thought much, i thought I was eating healthy.

So I think a lot of the resistance that people feel is

because we're so conditioned to eat these things

all the time, we've been conditioned from a very young age.

- And even if we make the intellectual connection,

even if we say, "yes, I'm eating a cow."

We still don't make the emotional connection,

because if we did, we would feel the empathy

that would cause us to feel disgusted

rather than appetized.

- I couldn't pretend anymore

that was, eating that chunk of chicken breast

was the same as the broccoli next to it,

it just didn't, I couldn't, i couldn't fake it

to myself anymore.

- And there's a reason why, you know,

slaughter houses, and feed lots are not

located in densely populated areas.

It's not for lack of space, it's because people

don't want us to see it.

Then those animals go on a long journey

to the slaughter house, at night, usually.

So we don't see a lot of that, and that's by design.

- Who's to say which animals are to be tortured,

and killed?

We've decided in America, in our part of the world,

cows and pigs, and lambs are to be eaten,

but in some parts of the world, they eat dogs

and cats, and in some parts of the world

they eat snakes and monkeys.

- Yes, it's true that people have eaten animals

for thousands of years, but today,

for many people in the world,

there's absolutely no need to eat animals.

You know, we are causing, as human beings,

massive suffering, to other sentient beings,

suffering that is completely unnecessary.

When eating animals is no longer a necessity

for survival, then it becomes a choice.

And choices always stem from beliefs.

- There is a popular myth that perpetuates

the idea that fish don't feel any pain.

That makes it easier for people to consume it,

since it seems to be more humane.

But, is it really true?

- Fish have proprioception, they have feelings.

And so there are a number of researchers

that would tell you very clearly that it's a very

uncompassionate way to eat, you're slaughtering

between one and three trillion fish per year,

and all of those fish have sensory reception,

they all have feelings.

- The industries depend on keeping these

facts out of our consciousness.

So for example, we learn to resist

taking in information from those who

may help us begin to question carnism.

If you shoot the messenger, you don't have

to take seriously the implications of their message.

- So we need to educate our children

the true meaning of what these animals

really are, by showing, and by awareness about life

of the pig or chicken is very much same as life

of cat and dog.

- Our time on this planet is very short.

And change can sometimes be difficult.

And slow.

But by taking the right steps,

we can point ourselves into a better direction.

As for myself, this was the most exciting journey

I ever took.

And I look forward to continue living

a healthy, plant-based lifestyle with my family.

And to keep empowering others

with this information.

- It's so important for us to take care of ourselves.

For our own human health standpoint,

but it really won't matter how healthy we are

if our planet isn't healthy.

- You know what's unique about us?

We are the only species out of the millions

that does not live in Harmony with nature.

- At least it's good to educate yourself

and be aware, and then you can make

the decision from there,

because ultimately, it's your choice

to make, you know.

It's not like, "hey, you know, you're the worse

"person if you don't do this."

No, it's not like that, but at least educate yourself,

find out, you know, so at least you just know.

I mean, you can make the choices on your own.

- I don't believe there's an evil cabal of doctors

and government people,

I believe there's a system in place,

and the world is so asleep,

and they've forgotten, intuitively

that people just follow the system

without thinking, without questioning,

and it's because they're asleep.

It's not because they're stupid, it's not

because they're not motivated.

- I mean, it's really insanity when you think about it.

That we are sitting here, in the modern day,

and we've got to talk about eating fruits

and vegetables.

You know, you go back in any time in history,

past, say the last 100, 200 years, and it was just like

everyone was doing it.

- If you want to be a responsible steward of our

precious planet, and its' dwindling resources,

eating a plant-based diet really is

the only solution.

And by voting with your dollar,

and eating a plant-based diet,

you are saying no to animal agriculture,

and all the devastation, all the havoc

that it's wreaking on our planet.

- I think that every human being

wants to do good.

I think that every human being,

in their core, wants to do what's right.

And I think that if we look at it,

and we say, "you know what?

"What is it that I can do today,

"to make the environment better,

"to make my health better,

"and to have compassion for animals,

"for our fellow creatures.

"What is it that I can do today?

"I can start on the path to a plant-based diet."