Friday, February 17, 2012

the week of documentaries ;)

We have all been sick this week.  Don got a nasty cold last week and then we picked it up.  The baby, Cyan, and I have it the worst.  Sinus headaches, body aches, ear aches, nose plugged or dripping, etc.  It’s just a yucky full body nasty cold.  So I have spent some time perusing Netflix for new information about food on the ‘play it now’ section and I found some really interesting documentaries that you may want to check out.

Forks Over Knives.  A very interesting, if somewhat dry, fact based movie about the benefits of a ‘whole foods, plant based’ diet.  Some of the studies sighted in this movie lasted 40 years and researched entire countries (like China!).  It was fascinating!  They were talking about the coloration between animal proteins and cancer and had amazing amounts of facts to back it up.  A really good movie that doesn’t use sensationalism to get it’s points across, making it more dry than most of these movies because it lets the facts do the talking… and yet, I truly enjoyed it.  It wasn’t hard to watch, because they facts they were presenting were absolutely fascinating.

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.  Awesome, uplifting movie about an Aussie man’s road to health and recovery from a debilitating autoimmune disease (and about 100lbs) by drinking nothing but plant and veggie juices for 60 days.  It was like watching a season of the biggest looser without all the sensationalist that goes into that show.  Just the uplifting bits were left behind.  It was a really cool movie to watch and the information about micronutrients was presented in a way that even my kids were nodding their heads to.  The best of the three for sure.

Food Matters.  The driest one yet, but it had a lot of really neat links between cancer and food.  The doctors sighted were definitely not actors.  They were dry as toast.  But the facts they were presenting were the types of things that I have wondered for years… is chemotherapy really as beneficial for cancer as it seems? Why are they not using diet to combat disease?  What kind of nutritional education do doctors get in medical school?  (I’ll give you that one… almost none.)  It reminded me of collage and a good seminar in the science of food.

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4 comments

Nessa said...

Forks over Knives changed my life. I bought Rip's Engine2 book, read it, completed the 28 day challenge and even got to meet him. We've been "Plant Strong" since September and for both my husband and I we both lowered our cholesterol by over 50 points so far on diet alone. More than any drugs have done for us. We feel so much better and healthier. So glad you got to see this movie! ;o)

Val in the Rose Garden said...

Nessa that is AWESOME! I really liked Rip and watched his mini feature too! I liked his approach to the plant based diet. :) It makes it seem so easy!

Blessings
Val

Kimberly said...

As you can imagine, with lymphoma I've been reading like crazy on the subject. There actually *are* doctors who are doing wonderful things without chemo or at least low-dose chemo and other alternatives. Strangely enough, one of the best books I've read on that subject is by Susanne Somers (!!). She interviewed quite a few of the most successful researchers who are having great results with alternatives in "Knockout".

And as to the meat thing - there has never ever been research on the cancer and meat link that wasn't done on CAFO meats. I personally think meat is in no way the culprit, but all of the ::bleep:: that is in/done to meat in industrialized countries. When you look at traditional societies that eat plenty of meat, but not the horrible CAFO meat that we've consumed, the cancer stats are equivalent to veg societies. Anyway, soapbox here :-). Grass-fed organic meats are part of my arsenal :-).

Val in the Rose Garden said...

Kimberly - oh my love. You know I agree whole heartedly with everything you are saying. As I just said on Facebook to another post on the subject: "These movies have not made a huge impact on my eating. However, I eat TONS of veggies and have for years... so it was more life-affirming than it was life-changing for me. It did give me more foder for my constant food/nutrition addiected mind though... which is always cool. lol... And I do love seeing what food trends come out that are actually promoting *real* food. Paleo, Primal, Forks Over Knives... none are better or worse in my opinion... becuase they ALL promote eating real, whole, living food. Yay! Bring on the livng food!"

*smooch* Praying for you Kim. <3

Blessings,

Val

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