Imagine if you could cure all your ailments without worrying about the risks from medications. No more headaches, body aches, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, dogs and cats fighting, gluten induced PMS, and those god awful cupcake herpes.
It’s right here in this documentary that tells you to go plant based, ketogenic, paleo, sugar free, or to consume your food in juice form because… juice is how the cavemen cut sugar, I think?
Today’s Moment of Science… health “documentaries.”
I’ve watched, admittedly, far too many food and health documentaries. If you watch enough of these, a formula makes itself apparent. Through a combination of cherry picking data, an occasional line of total bullshit, and cleverly ignoring any information that suggests other diets can also be healthy, these documentaries make it clear why you’re probably dead already and watching this from the grave if you’re not eating their specified diet of organic plant based emu ass.
If you want to be a little better armed to spot the horseshit going into the next food documentary, look for a few patterns.
1. Feature people dealing with health issues they haven’t been able to manage using conventional health advice.
After a montage of reporters talking about the obesity crisis and candid shots of overweight people walking (which is just fucking rude), we meet our cast. Some of them are struggling with weight, some have health issues we don’t generally associate with diet. By the end of the documentary they’ve lost the weight and wouldn’t you know it, their psoriasis, headaches, and fractured tibia have all healed up.
2. Point out that humans didn’t evolve to eat our modern diet.
Their diet is THE human diet. It’s how we evolved to eat and they’ve got proof. True, you can find evidence that humans used to eat all sorts of different diets; that’s because we did. There’s never been one human diet, so any argument from antiquity to the effect of “correct human diet™ because old human diet” is utter nonsense. Someone’s current diet can merely need to be a bit healthier without bringing Darwin into this.
Humans used to engage in cannibalism. So.
3. It’s the system, man. Just ask our personal experts that are better than the real experts.
These documentaries tend to recycle a class of ‘rogue’ experts with an ideology to promote. In the documentaries about plant based diets, there’s the same handful of experts in every movie. Conversely, a different batch of five or six experts are in rotation for the documentaries dedicated to keto.
They more or less have one thing in common: they think they’re victims of being blackballed by the establishment, proponents of other alternative nutritional philosophies are wrong, and they have the one true answer. Watching keto and plant-based documentaries back to back is a knee slapper. Polar opposite diets, similar results. Funny that.
4. Attribute all health improvements to the diet.
Diet can cause or cure illness for myriad reasons both related and entirely unrelated to weight. A handful of specific diet plans are used in managing diseases like Crohn’s, celiac, and short bowel disorder, amongst others. But diet doesn’t cause all diseases, and we certainly can’t treat all diseases with diet alone. It sets people up for a false set of expectations.
“Maybe this will be the diet that cures my headaches,” I thought so many times in my younger life. And nobody exactly promised they cured headaches, but man, you can’t get through one of these docs without someone saying their headaches cleared up thanks to the power of spinach.
5. Go big and mention that time your diet performed a miracle.
It’s an insidious technique, but many documentaries will bring out someone who boasts that they skipped chemotherapy because of this diet. The narrative skips or downplays that the cancer was treated with surgery, letting you fill in the blank that the broccoli scrubbed the cancer out.
There are bits of preliminary evidence to suggest that some diets can have an adjunctive effect along with surgery, chemo, and radiation in helping recover from cancer. But at this point, no diet has been shown to cure cancer.
If you’re still determined to watch these wastes of bandwidth, I recommend drugs first. Preferably the type that gives you the munchies.
This has been your Moment of Science, balancing the peanuts with the m&ms in my diet.
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It’s just a shame that they never do true “man in the street” interviews when making these videos. Eventually, one of the videographers would run into me, push their hard sell and there’d be a new internet meme, videographer screaming for surgical intervention to remove my cane from his rectum – where it was inserted sideways, defying the laws of physics and physiology.
The remainder of the crew, rather occupied in attempting to evade a big, green raging creature called the Phenomenal Bulk, who is busily beating them with Buicks.
Although, you did forget to miss the sales pitch, either of their One True Product to Rule Them All or their new book, video series or line of canned unicorn farts.
Like the “if it’s natural, it’s good for you”, my response, “OK, I’ll make some bitter cassava for you, people used to and still do eat it. And die of hydrogen cyanide poisoning.
Interestingly, this after enjoying a cassava product, tapioca pudding.
Natural can’t hurt you, then enjoy some strychnine or hemlock tea! Or just stop listening to idiots that will get you sick or dead, people!
But, do remember one rule of food consumption that is effective for most people. Moderation in all things, to include moderation.
Well stated