Re: "What the Health" - New Doc

Hey everyone, just thought I'd share something I posted to FB about this new health documentary. It was interesting but raised a lot of red flags. While promoting a virtuous message, it seemed quite unreasonable in a lot of areas. Of course processed meats from animals raised in inhumane conditions and fed an unnatural diet of corn and grain is terrible for health. However, what if the animal is fed a natural diet (grass) and treated with respect? While the film didn't outright say "100% vegan is the only healthy and morally correct choice," it was disappointing that they didn't explore any of this. This kind of unforgiving attitude of is what can give people a bad impression of veganism.

I have met several open minded and intelligent people who live a vegan lifestyle, but will be positive about any "win" towards their vision for the future. That is, celebrating when someone has taken steps like simply reducing their meat consumption or switching to free range eggs and only eating humanely raised meat. Just my opinion, but this kind of attitude seems like it would do more for the cause. Anyways, here's the FB post:

"Kip Andersen, known for his hit "Cowspiracy," released a new documentary called "What the Health." Andersen is a talented film maker and this film was a good watch, but right around the 8 minute mark the film throws itself into the garbage can. You'd think with a $273,000 budget he could spend more time studying biochemistry and how the body works. There are some good messages: Yes, processed meat from inhumanely raised animals fed an unnatural diet of corn and grain is surely bad for health. However...   

"Sugar does not cause diabetes" is the seriously unfortunate message he extracts from Dr. Neal Barnard and Dr. Garth Davis near the start of the documentary. People can and should be allowed to eat sugar if they want, but walking around with the idea that constant sugar consumption does not lead to significant deleterious health effects is quite (for lack of a sugar coated word,) dangerous.  

[Cliff notes version - skipping a lot of reactions, you can see this in more detail here: https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=42m52s]
-The key trait of diabetes (2) is insulin resistance.  
-Sugar (sucrose, table sugar) is made up of one molecule glucose and fructose. ("Sugar" also refers to just glucose as in the case of "blood glucose," making this topic shit to walk through) Fructose is the villain here.
-Fructose is not necessary in any biochemical process in the body, so it is processed mainly in the liver
-While getting metabolized, fructose deactivates an insulin receptor called IRS-1 provoking insulin resistance
-(The big thing about all this is the "rate"
- Fiber slows this down so fruit isn't nearly as bad as a candy bar)
-Large influxes of fructose can't be processed efficiently by the mitochondria, leading to the production of free fatty acids through de novo lipogenesis  
-Free fatty acids produced through this pathway provoke insulin resistance In the film they make it sound like dietary fat and cholesterol are the culprit, which is wrong*.

There are some very bad fats and some very good fats.  Cholesterol is necessary for cell membranes, is a precursor to 5 major classes of hormones and 25 percent of all body cholesterol is amassed in the brain. This is why statin drugs have absolutely awful side effects like terrible muscle and joint pain, loss of memory and loss of libido and erectile dysfunction.  

[*There's a lot more to this but it would require another long boring post]