Recently I have found an interest in my eating habits and finding ways to improve them. Being someone who is very proactive in trying to save the environment, I thought cutting out foods that in some way negatively affect the planet whether it’s by how they are produced, what transportation methods are used, or how much water they are consuming, would be a great way to combine the two interests.
While doing research, Maddie Mareno, a friend of mine, recommended I watch “What The Health,” a documentary on Netflix. Directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, the film goes into depth about promoting veganism and the awful “truth” when it comes to eating animal foods.
I cozied up in my bed with popcorn, set up my computer and was ready, or so I thought. After watching 20 minutes of the documentary it was clear that it was more about the atrocity of killing animals and their impact on the human body. Because I was more interested in learning about how killing the animals was impacting the environment, the film wasn’t as intriguing as I had wished, but nonetheless it was still thought-provoking.
After I watched “What The Health,” I had taken in some information that just seemed a little too extreme to be real. I googled the documentary and was pleasantly surprised by my findings. In the film it compared eating one egg a day to smoking 5 cigarettes a day. However, this statement was exaggerated from outdated data and has been proven wrong in recent studies. Knowing this information was false, it made me question the authenticity of the entire movie. I went back to the reviews and comments left about “What the Health” and found that I wasn’t the only one who wondered about some of the things discussed.
790 Netflix users wrote strongly worded reviews — the majority of them bashing the film for its false information and lack of helpful advice. I have to agree with the unhappy viewers because it was frustrating knowing that I spent an hour and 32 minutes learning about things that aren’t even true. It was scary when I first heard about the things the film was speaking on and then to know that all that stress came from false allegations; I was not too happy.
I recommend to those who are trying to learn more about health and their diets to go ahead and skip over “What the Health.” It still is educational but not worth having to spend the time to fact check.
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