LIDF

PlanEat

Shelley Lee Davies, Or Shlomi | United Kingdom, United States | 72 mins

Professor Colin Campbell, of Cornell University, tells the story of how back in the 1960s he was working in the Philippines when he noticed a higher than expected incidence of liver cancer in children, especially those from more affluent families. This observation leads Campbell on a life-long search for the connection between diet and health with him starting a unique and ground- breaking study with Oxford University and the Chinese government, which surveyed the population of China. Campbell’s research points in one direction – populations with a heavy animal protein diet are more likely to suffer from cancer than ones with a diet based on plants.

Elsewhere in America, surgeon and medical advisor to President Clinton, Dr Caldwell Esselstyn started to notice that if he put some of his patients on a meat and dairy free diet, they were able to prevent and even reverse coronary artery disease.

The third member of the trio is environmental scientist Professor Gidon Eshel, who has conducted pioneering work on the impact of the Western diet on the environment and made the surprising discovery that if you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions it is more important to give up red meat than to buy a hybrid car. In further investigations, Eshel has discovered how eating a diet heavy in meat and dairy is one of the main causes of ‘dead zones’, vast areas of the ocean off the world’s coastlines where no living creature can survive.

The story of these three men’s research is woven together through the film, with frequent appearances of chefs from around the world with a range of cuisines, who show how cooking without meat and dairy is both realistic and cool. Because this is not a negative film – it shows that there is an alternative to industrial agriculture and there is a way to feed the world, without destroying the planet.
More Details | Rate Film | Leave Comment