Warning: this article contains spoilers.
After hearing lots of buzz, I finally got around to watching the Netflix documentary What the Health. It is a film all about the health benefits of a vegan diet (that is, a diet containing no meat or animal products such as dairy). It was co-directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn. I am personally a vegetarian and I have done a good deal of research about the benefits of veganism, so I figured that this documentary would probably confirm some of my own ideas on the lifestyle and provide me with some new insight. So I got cozy, grabbed my kale chips, and sat down to watch.
But as I watched, fact after fact jumped out that I hadn’t heard in any of my previous research. The film states that processed meat has a direct link to cancer, that eating 1 egg is as toxic as smoking 5 cigarettes, and that animal proteins are more dangerous than sugar, among other startling statistics. I, like many other viewers, began to regret every bowl of macaroni and cheese I’ve ever eaten. The narrative is compelling, the fast pace of the film kept me engaged, and all of the facts were cited by credible sources, so they must be true, right?
Maybe not.
As well-done as this documentary is, I’m a natural skeptic. So after viewing this film, a simple google search indicated that not everything Andersen and Kuhn suggest in WTH is entirely accurate.
Many of the movie’s most startling facts are, according to a number of other sources, exaggerated, misrepresented, or flatly untrue. Andersen and Kuhn leap quite quickly from citing studies that find links between certain foods and health concerns to stating that they definitively cause these conditions. I’m no scientist–not by any stretch–but I have taken enough basic courses to have heard the words “correlation does not equal causation” time and time again. Additionally, some of the studies cited were isolated, out of date, or clearly state that more research is needed. And potentially the film’s worst offense is that it is entirely one-sided. All of the experts featured are vegan, all the the vegan-converts were magically successful, and very few valid counterpoints were even mentioned. From a critical standpoint, this is where this movie loses its last shreds of credibility.
Like I mentioned, I’m not a scientist, so check out these articles that fact check WTH and explain some of the logical fallacies in greater depth:
http://time.com/4897133/vegan-netflix-what-the-health/
https://robbwolf.com/2017/07/03/what-the-health-a-wolfs-eye-review/
Now, I don’t mean to say that everything What the Health has to say should be discounted. The film also looks into the connections and sponsorships between major food corporations and health organizations, the role the government plays in our food system, and some of the problems with our animal agriculture system. These systemic problems are real and they are certainly worth calling attention to. Additionally, there is a lot of research that indicates that a vegan diet has a number of health benefits– just not to the extreme that this film suggests, of course.
The bottom line? In my opinion, if the worst thing What the Health does is prompt Americans to eat more vegetables, I don’t think we need to be too concerned about the inaccuracies and biases the film perpetuates. However, it is a good lesson not to believe everything you see without checking twice.