5 years ago

@porteruk Vegan isn't whole food plant based only, WFBP is just one of many diets a vegan can follow, it kind of sounds like you are confusing the two.<br /> <br /> Good review overall though, I haven\t seen it yet myself but I have heard much of the same you mentioned in your comments from others as well, probably just watch it for shits n giggles anyways.<br /> <br /> Btw, glad you are feeling better!! :)

5 years ago

@porteruk Huh? The film was full of references to scientific studies, often including their full titles, and always the journal titles and papers' IDs that can be used to easily locate them.

4 years ago

@rosetheflower there was no explanation of the studies, their limitations, or even what they were for. You could look them up, but the vast majority of people watching wouldn't know what to do with that information even if they did, which they won't.<br /> <br /> I am 'plant-based', only eating meat as a luxury item maybe once or twice a month. I do think it's probably the healthier way to live and I like it. This documentary did nothing to reinforce my decisions, though.<br /> <br /> It was a series of shallow anecdotes of people who don't know what they're talking about. The "experts" were largely absent or used only as props in white coats to give an air of authority about what was being said. The presenter didn't seem to know much about the subject and didn't attempt to interrogate any of the presented information. It played like a propoganda piece. That's not necessarily a bad thing, people are allowed to make documentaries that try to convince people to think the same way as you, it's just this is shallow and not remotely convincing enough.

4 years ago

@jaw72 The references were placed based on their relevance to each statement - exactly as one would expect - so the statements themselves served as the studies' summaries. Beyond that, each study has an abstract anyone can read through after a simple Google search of the ID or title. Even a written meta-analysis wouldn't go as far as reciting each study it references, so I don't know what you're expecting or trying to do here.

4 years ago

@rosetheflower Nobody is going to read the studies. That doesn't matter. What matters is how you present it. This documentary presented everything in a very American, pseudo-science salesman, unconvincing method.<br /> <br /> There are dozens of even YouTube videos that present this information in a better way in about 10 minutes. Whoever this guy is was the wrong person to do this job, there are hundreds of science communicators who could have done it better. All that time spent on athletes going "I ate some green stuff and I did a good thing" and "I ate fake meat so now my boner is bigger" was wasted time that was so cringey and easy to disprove by inviting literally any vegan athlete who doesn't have a gold medal to come do an interview. <br /> <br /> There was no attempt to actually explain the science, he resorted to cheap tricks like "you ate meat now your blood is dirty" rather than any attempt to explain why it might negatively impact your performance. We live in a golden age of television and documentary-making, we've moved so far on from this style. <br /> <br /> It doesn't matter whether the science is solid if you present it like you're trying to sell some quack diet or useless exercise machine. On the other hand, maybe this poor presentation style is why it's become so popular among people who would usually fall for that stuff so maybe it's not so bad after all.