I received an email asking me to watch and review a movie titled Chow Down (2010). After reading the brief synopsis, I decided it was up my alley. Chow Down is available on Hulu for free, which is a really convenient way to reach the public. This is another movie that discusses our current American diet and how it is impacting our health, very similar to Forks Over Knives.
This movie focused on chronic diseases that are highly impacting our population; 70% of deaths each year are from a chronic illness. Chronic illnesses include diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer and high cholesterol. This movie argues that if we eat a plant based diet we could avoid these chronic diseases and increase our life expectancy. A plant based diet consists of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans/legumes, otherwise no processed foods. This movie focuses on three people, each of whom has at least one of the listed chronic diseases. Each person decides to change their diet to a plant based one and they discuss their struggles with it, but also their improved health. Each person discusses how previous doctors always prescribed medication or surgery to help their diseases. The problem with this method is these are not cures, just band aids to help fix the problem, eventually another problem will crop up. With a change in diet, these illnesses can be reversed and health can improve immensely.
I think this diet has merit. The more research and publicity about it will help educate the public in how their diet is the most important factor to their health. I also think that the real issue is processed foods and caloric intake not necessarily meat and dairy. With that said, eating meat every day or at every meal is not good for your health. Making sure you have quality meat (grass fed, free range, organic, etc.) when you do consume it will be best. To me these options are not unhealthy, but it is true that too much of a good thing is bad (and bacon is really good). Same goes for dairy. No you do not need to drink milk everyday, but eating yogurt or cheese with a meal is not going to kill you. Maybe it is easier for people with chronic diseases to make a more drastic change in their diet than just watching their portion control. By doing this, there are no temptations in the house and you just stick to your plant based diet.
I also think that letting the public know how important diet is to your health is a very important factor for our health system. So many people cannot afford health care or have health bills they can’t afford as a result from these chronic diseases. If we change our diet it can help avoid these situations, because with a healthy diet we would be healthier as a population. One person in the movie discussed how this diet is more expensive than a processed diet because fresh fruits and vegetables are more expensive per pound than processed foods. If you pay more now for your health it will be less expensive down the line.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie but it was a bit scattered. I felt that some points they were trying to get across, they made too late into the movie. For example, they didn’t mention the plant based diet until well into the movie, which I feel should have been introduced earlier. It still makes a good argument that this diet will improve our health as a country and increase our life expectancy (whether that is a good thing or not). If you are interested in food or food systems, I would recommend you check this movie out.
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