The Eating You Alive documentary discusses the causes of chronic diseases and their prevention by switching to a plant-based diet. With the help of a few medical experts and researchers, this documentary unveils the true reasons behind why the majority of Americans become ill, and claim that the situation can be overcome with whole foods and plant-based nutrition.
Reasons to Follow a Plant-Based Diet
Chronic health conditions like cancer, heart disease, obesity, hypertension, Alzheimer’s, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and erectile dysfunction are common among half the adults in the U.S. A number of medical studies and innovative technologies, including the latest drugs, aren’t effective; and the number of people dying from these chronic illnesses have increased.
For this purpose, the Eating You Alive team traveled to a number of places and interviewed a number of people, ranging from Hollywood chefs to bloggers, to produce a film that would inspire them to eat plant-based foods. Like Eating You Alive, there are few other documentaries that focus on the benefits of a plant-based diet. The Forks Over Knives documentary and their magazine say a plant-based diet can help eliminate or control diseases like cancer and diabetes.
On their web site, Forks Over Knives says, “A whole-food, plant-based diet is centered on whole, unrefined, or minimally refined plants. It’s a diet based on fruits, vegetables, tubers, whole grains, and legumes; and it excludes or minimizes meat (including chicken and fish), dairy products, and eggs, as well as highly refined foods like bleached flour, refined sugar, and oil.”
What Is Clean Eating?
Fitness, health and lifestyle brands, best-selling books, and online blogs have their own strategy for clean eating.
Clean eating may mean different things to different people. The concept mainly centers around eating real, fresh food—prepared simply and with limited ingredients.
Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet
Plants are the most nutrient-dense foods. They contain micronutrients like vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. A plant-based diet can prevent, and also reverse, a number of illnesses. It also contributes to the least amount of environmental harm than other diets by decreasing a person’s carbon footprint by 55%.
Adopting a plant-based diet while getting rid of meat, dairy, and processed foods does not mean compromising on taste or health. In fact, with a nutritious plant-based diet, there are ample ways to treat the taste buds. A plant-based diet will also reduce the brutal slaughtering of 20,000 animals per minute in the U.S. alone.
“If half the country ate a single serving more of fruits and vegetables, we could save 20,000 cancer deaths per year … A whole food plant-based diet is more powerful than anything we have in medicine when it comes to chronic (lifestyle) diseases,” according to Dr. Michael Greger, author of “How Not to Die.”
Sources:
“Eating You Alive,” Eating You Alive web site; https://www.eatingyoualive.com/, last accessed February 1, 2017.
Amir, S., “Are Some ‘Healthy’ Foods Actually Causing More Harm Than Good?,” Thrive Global web site, January 26, 2017; https://journal.thriveglobal.com/are-those-healthy-foods-actually-killing-you-72a50c1e5562#.9noikaxoo