Forks Over Knives Analysis

The traditional American diet was simple, it was homemade, it was composed primarily of minimally refined ingredients, it was low in added sugars and fats, with the fats coming primarily from animal sources, and required effort to produce, by comparison, the contemporary American diet is much more diverse it's composed a lot of “palatable” sometimes artificial materials, its commercially engineered and sold, it's composed of refined ingredients, it's high in added sugars and fats with the fat coming primarily from seed oils, and requires minimal effort to procure(Pillsbury). At the same time as modern medicine is conquered the leading killers of the 19 century such as infectious diseases modern culture has created a whole new set of epidemics that we must now cure.

In this article, Michael Pollan expresses his views on what the Western diet is and how Americans need to escape from it. To the author, a type of American diet consists of an excessive amount of fast food and how it can lead to obesity and illnesses. Pollan expresses how he disagrees with the diet and states that both food and health industries are partially to blame for this. Pollan gives his opinion on the food industry, medical community and his own ideas on how to escape this diet.

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is an eye-opening analysis of the American food industry and the fear driven relationship many of us have with food. He talks in depth about all the little scientific studies, misconceptions and confusions that have gathered over the past fifty years. In the end provide us with a piece of advice that should be obvious but somehow is not, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He follows the history of nutritionism and the industrialization of food, in hopes to answer one question….. how and when "mom" ceded control of our food choices to nutritionists, food marketers and the government.

As a culture and as individuals, we no longer seem to know what we should and should not eat. When the old guides of culture and national cuisine and our mothers’ advice no longer seem to operate, the omnivore’s dilemma returns and you find yourself where we do today—utterly bewildered and conflicted about one of the most basic questions of human life: What should I eat? We’re buffeted by contradictory dietary advice: cut down on fats one decade, cut down on carbs the next. Every day’s newspaper brings news of another ideal diet, wonder-nutrient, or poison in the food chain. Hydrogenated vegetable oils go from being the modern alternatives to butter to a public health threat, just like that. Food marketers bombard us with messages that this or that food is “heart healthy” or is “part of a nutritious meal”. Without a stable culture of food to guide us, the omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance. We listen to scientists, to government guidelines, to package labels—to anything but our common sense and traditions. The most pleasurable of activities—eating—has become heavy with anxiety. The irony is, the more we worry about what we eat, the less healthy and fatter we seem to become.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, gives light to the question, “What should we have for dinner?” that he thinks Americans today cannot answer simply due to the fact that there are too many food options. This book serves as an eye-opener to challenge readers to be more aware and accountable of what is consumed daily. In order to understand fully where our food comes from, we must follow it back to the very beginning. Pollan goes on to discuss three different modern food chains in which we get our food: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. By tracing our food back to the beginning, we can understand that most of the nutritional and health problems America is going through today can be found on the farms that make our food and the government that can decide what happens. America deals with many food related illness such as, heart disease, obesity, and type II diabetes. Majority of a human and animals diet consists of being corn-fed leading to a high cause of obesity in the United States these are just some of the many diseases that come with over processed foods and diets we are unaware of. In this study, we will highlight the environmental and health issues and impacts related with modern agriculture and how these systems can be made more sustainable.

I chose to address the questions what are the strengths and weaknesses of the American diet, as well as, what is distinctive about American food. I chose these questions to focus my research paper on because of the relationship between the American diet and health care. The United States is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, due to immigration, which is what makes it so distinctive. The diet also has many flaws including the cause for rising medical issues. I have a pre-nursing major, so diet plays a big role in the medical field. My purpose for researching the American diet is to be able to…. With the Industrial Revolution, the inventions of many new products such as processed foods, refrigerators, and fast food chains.

Positing that most of our major health issues, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes, can be prevented (and even in some cases reversed) by following a vegetables-and-whole-grains diet, this dense documentary would rather inform than entertain. Its hale heroes are the nutritional scientist T. Colin Campbell and the surgeon Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., whose combined decades of research into the harmful effects of animal proteins are summarized, along with an extensive history of our worldwide dietary decline.

Pollan believes that Western diet is the primary cause of many of the different ailments that are impacting contemporary society. A few of the most notable include: heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. This is because there is no vested interest in supporting primary care and preventive medicine. As the health care industry wants to create drugs that can treat these conditions. Yet, they do not deal with the root causes of the problem. Instead, they allow the individual to engage in a pattern of destructive lifestyle choices. This increases the profit margins for everyone inside the health care industry by taking this approach. (Pollan)

The movie, “In Defense of Food” is written and created by Michael Pollan. In this movie Pollin addresses the question of the correct way to eat. Additionally, he explains how the food industry gains from the confusion over what is nutritionally correct, an idea created by scientists called nutritionism. Pollan discusses how control over what families ate shifted from cultural factors, such as mothers and traditions, to marketing and the food industry. He concludes that

In this this reading “Escape from the Western Diet” by Michael Pollan, Pollan talks about a variety of scientific nutritional theories that are believed to be responsible for the numerous number of people that have been plague by diseases due to following the “Western Diet”. But Pollan believes that these theories are invalid and states that the food and health industries are the ones to blame. He believes that both the food/health industry are to blame because when the food industry decides to release new products they use nutritional theories while the health industry does the same when creating new prescriptions and treatments. His solution to this problem is follow what Denis Burkitt suggested which is to revert and follow the diet of our

The Effectiveness of Forks Over Knives In his documentary Forks Over Knives, Lee Fulkerson sheds a light on the main cause to heart diseases and diabetes through the help of Dr. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn who have spent many years researching the negative effects of consuming refined, processed, and animal based foods. Fulkerson also seeks guidance from Dr. Lederman and Dr. Pulde to show, through example, what a whole food, plant-based diet can do from people who are struck with these life-threatening diseases as well as someone, like Fulkerson, who lives life without any major diseases but can still benefit greatly from the diet switch. With the use of statistics, research and science, real-life examples, and visual aids Fulkerson

Joel Fuhrman, the author of ‘Eat to live and the End of Diabetes’, who checks the participant’s physical well-being and blood tests. At the beginning of the film, all participants depict high chances of developing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity due to increased cholesterol and blood pressure. Wolfson engages other professionals who understand the vegan diet to assist the participants in bettering their health.

Forks Over Knives is a documentary dedicated to spreading knowledge of the effectiveness of a whole-foods, plant-based diet. It was directed by Lee Fulkerson, produced by John Corry, and distributed by Virgil Films and Entertainment. The documentary was released May 6, 2011, a time ridden with diabetes and heart disease. America in 2010 had seen over 20 million cases of diabetes. Over 600,000 people died of heart disease. America was in crisis mode – desperate for a solution to keep residents healthy and alive. Fulkerson believed he had found that solution – a diet that cut out animal products and heavily processed foods. He wrote this film with the intention of spreading that diet. Forks Over Knives is targeted towards people who have

Fat,Sick,Nearly ,Dead and Forks over knives, are 2 documentaries which have both done studies and documented information on eating Plant foods and a whole food diet, that shows how effective this optional way of eating is a way of controlling diabetes, heart decease, obesity, cancer and having a healthier life, which is why I decided to try it myself. In the documentary Fat, Sick, Nearly, Dead it was more about fasting but, using whole foods and plant food only. Jo Cross, was the subject of this lets say experiment. This gentlemen’s health was deteriorating fast.

Growing up in the United States, there are many things that I had just accepted as the norm. Eating a diet heavy in meat and dairy are staples in the diet of the average American that those who differ are considered strange. Interestingly, the United States is also referred to as one of the unhealthiest nations in the world. How could we be so unhealthy, when we are such a developed country that has access to the best medical care and information. The documentary “Forks Over Knives” focuses on exactly this point. It claims that there is a fundamental problem with the diet of Americans, particularly our heavy consumption of meat and dairy. This documentary asserts that the cure for all of our health related problems is to switch to a whole