A quick review of "You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment" (on Netflix)

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Watching four 44-minute episodes about diet sounds like a recipe for a snooze-fest, but this Netflix documentary is fast paced enough to maintain your interest, if diet interests you at all, and discloses some alarming facts about the impact our current food system has on the planet. 

One example of that last statement: One presenter reminds us that any health problems resulting from eating a steak amount to the "second-hand smoke" from burning down the Amazon rainforest...since most such forest clearing is done so ranchers can raise beef cattle, and the US imports a lot of Brazilian beef. 

The red is the area burning (from NASA 9/14/20)

When the Amazon cattle deplete the soil in one area, the ranchers clear cut and burn another...just as slavers depleted soil growing cotton then cotton growers moved to better soil. This soil-depleting dynamic motivated both the American Civil War, since Northerners didn't want new states to be slave states, and Booker T. Washington's interest in the soil-restoring peanut crop.

Another example: environmentalists report farm-grown salmon releases enough biological waste to kill any wild salmon in the area of the farms. Industrial fish production and wild fish don't mix. This is doubly disturbing since wild salmon feed upstream wildlife, and initially made upstream forests possible.

Disclosing the risks of meat-eating to the planet is not exactly new, but the awfulness depicted and described is a bit shocking. In one isolated bit of justice, the North Carolina neighbors of a (Chinese-owned) Smithfield pig farm won $475 million in settlement for their exposure to the toxic pollutants from that industrial pork producer. One additional note: meat is exempt from the FDA standard that vegetables must respect: no salmonella or other dangerous bacteria must be on the veg.

One narrative that runs throughout this series: an eight-week Stanford study of the impact of vegan vs. omnivorous eating for 22 sets of identical twins. Because they're twins, genetics are not a variable, just diet. Some of the results

• LDL cholesterol dropped significantly for vegans, but remained the same for omnivores
  
• TMAO - blood marker for inflammation was lower for vegans, higher for omnivores
• Microbiome gut health: - bifidobacteria (good gut bacteria) rose for vegans.
• Epigenome: (aging/telomeres) - vegan group had longer telomeres on their DNA, indicating a younger biological age, while the omnivores didn't change--a surprising change in only eight weeks! The epigenetic clock--an indication of aging--results show vegan diets can slow or reverse aging--something that surprised the experimenters since the results were signficant after only eight weeks.
  

Politicians get into the act in this documentry too: New York's Mayor Adams testifies that he reversed his type-2 diabetes with a vegan diet despite his doctor's willingness to prescribe lots of anti-diabetes medication, and he explains that New York's hospitals now default to tasty vegan entrees, while their public schools have vegan Fridays. When he showed his doctor the results of the twin study, the doctor declared the effectiveness of diet in managing diabetes was never mentioned in his medical training.

In addition to the troubling disclosures about the disastrous consequences of factory meat farms, the documentary discusses alternatives that can replace them. One farmer allied with a farm animal advocate to change his crop from chickens to mushrooms. Both advocate and farmer declared they were much more satisfied with farming as a result.

Some longer-term studies show that vegans have 53% lower chances of Alzheimers or stroke. Some studies even demonstrate vegan dieting can even reverse the progression of brain impairment over the long run.

One sad statistic: 20% of US children are obese, susceptible to diabetes.

Some of the meat alternatives mentioned during the series:

Impossible Meats
Prime Roots plant-based foods
Wicked Kitchen (Beyond Meat)
Miyoko's (cashew-based) Cheese

One compromise You Are What You Eat makes is in these recommended meat substitutes. Some are highly processed, and processing is not always health positive. The "Whole Foods, Plant Based" diets recommended by the websites below are healthier. You Are What You Eat concentrates on the environmental damage done by carnivorous eating, and reports some health benefits that would be maximized by less-processed food. It aims to persuade hard-core meat eaters to try something different.

As someone who has tried the Beyond and Impossible burgers, I can testify that they are very close to nice ground beef. My personal favorite plant-based burger is Dr.Praeger's. It's less processed, and a bit more distinct from a nice quality ground beef burger, but after all, a McDonald's burger tastes much worse than the veggie burgers available now. The condiments dominate the taste.

Other diet-related Netflix shows:

Forks Over Knives, What the Health, The Game Changers (this last video produced by Titanic's James Cameron, Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger--yes, the governator is vegan too)

There are several websites offering recipes and health information about vegan diets, among them: Dr. McDougall's, and the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. Look to them for testimonials and recipe suggestions.