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Worldwide, we're looking at approximately
315 million people with diabetes.
There's no question that we're in
the midst of a diabetes epidemic.
Right now, one in three
Medicare dollars
is spent in the care
of people with diabetes.
One in ten total health care dollars
is spent on people with diabetes.
There's no question that
this is a major problem.
[Kip] What in particular is the
correlation for diet and diabetes?
I'm not gonna get into that.
- Into diet?
- No.
[Latin music playing]
My name's Kip.
I'm a filmmaker from San Francisco,
and I have a confession to make.
I'm a recovering hypochondriac.
Like so many of us, I have a
family history of diabetes,
heart disease and cancer.
My dad had his first heart bypass
at 49, his second at age 50.
My grandpa died young from
diabetes complications,
and both my other grandpa
and grandma died of cancer.
I was always paranoid that I would
also get one of these diseases.
Like any good hypochondriac, WebMD's
symptoms checker was essentially
my browser's home page.
Even in my teens I took Metamucil
every day and a daily aspirin.
I read all the latest
self-diagnosis books,
I ate every multivitamin
I could get my hands on,
and I was obsessed with
bodily functions.
I followed all the large
health organizations'
recommendations for
preventing disease.
I exercise regularly, don't smoke,
don't drink soda, get enough sleep,
reduce stress and grew up eating what
I thought was a healthy diet until...
[tires screeching] The World
Health Organization this morning
has classified processed meat such as
bacon and sausage as carcinogenic,
directly involved in
causing cancer in humans.
[male anchor] Processed meat is clearly
linked to an increase in cancer.
Hotdogs or, bacon could be just as
dangerous as smoking cigarettes.
[Kip] The World Health
Organization had looked at over
800 studies from
ten different countries,
finding a direct link to consuming
processed meat and cancer.
Just one serving
of deli meats daily
increases your risks of
colorectal cancer by 18%.
I had no idea that what we
ate affected cancer rates.
But I never felt like I had eaten a lot
of processed meats until I realized that
processed meat includes
hotdogs, bacon, sausage,
salami, ham, pepperoni,
cold cuts and deli slices,
basically everything
I grew up eating.
The World Health Organization
classifies processed meat
as a Group One carcinogen,
the same group as cigarettes,
asbestos and plutonium,
and classifies red meat
as a Group Two carcinogen.
Was this like I had essentially
been smoking my entire childhood?
If processed meats are labeled
the same as cigarettes,
how is it even legal for
kids to be eating this way?
I thought this
was new information,
but, many of these studies
have been around for 50 years.
I couldn't believe I'd
been eating processed meats
virtually my entire life and was just
now finding out how dangerous they are.
Why hadn't I been hearing about it
from the American Cancer Society,
the largest cancer group
in the nation?
When I went on their website,
I was shocked to see that
none of this information was
featured on their home page.
But, even more shocking,
on their Eat Healthy page,
they actually encouraged eating
Group One carcinogenic foods
like processed turkey
and canned meats.
This is after the World
Health Organization
reviewed over 800 studies definitively
linking processed meat to cancer.
[man] Thanks for calling your American
Cancer Society. My name is Sam,
I'm a cancer information specialist.
How may I help you today?
Yeah, I was calling
because I was wondering why
you all recommend people to eat
processed meat on your website,
which the World Health Organization has
classified as a Group One carcinogen?
Which is the same class as tobacco
smoking, asbestos and plutonium.
This would be like
a lung organization
having a How to Roll Your Own
Cigarette section on their website.
It's kinda the same thing.
[Sam] Well, let me just place
you on a brief hold because...
[Kip] He wasn't able to answer my questions
and said someone would get back with me.
I had always been concerned
about cancer
because both my grandma
and grandpa died of cancer.
I wondered if things would've been different
had they known the link between diet
and this terrible disease.
In the US, one out of every
four deaths is from cancer.
Oh, sweet!
American Cancer Society rep
confirmed an interview this week.
So, we just went in for the interview
with the American Cancer Society rep,
and the security guard said
there's no interview scheduled.
So, I went into my phone
and it turns out last night,
after I told her that the
interview's gonna be about
the correlation between
diet and cancer,
she said she could no
longer do the interview.
[Kip] After repeated emails
asking why she was declining
my interview to simply
talk about diet and cancer,
she stopped
responding altogether.
Why would an American Cancer Society
rep not want to talk about this?
I was, however, able to connect
with a growing movement
of doctors who are willing
to talk about the link
between the standard
American diet and disease.
And it goes
beyond just cancer.
I took my old trusty van Super
Blue once again out on the road.
2/3 of adults are now
overweight or, obese.
And we have an epidemic cascade
of debilitating disease
that's overcoming the country.
There's no way we can sustain
the current style of care
with the epidemic that we're creating
with our diet and lifestyle choices.
The diabetes, the arthritis, the
heart disease, the dementia,
the obesity, the cancers are
affecting about 70% of deaths.
All the data is that those
70% of deaths and morbidity
are largely lifestyle
related and preventable.
Most kids by
age ten in the US
already have fatty streaks
in their arteries,
the first stage of atherosclerosis
leading to heart attacks, strokes.
Here in American medicine, we
operate from the disease model.
We are in the business
of treating sick people,
we are not in the business of trying
to prevent people from becoming sick.
When you look at
chronic disease risk,
all the things that we
walk around worrying about.
Actually, dietary choices trump
smoking when it comes to those risks.
If I could deliver one
message to the researchers
who are looking for the cause of diabetes,
and the cause of clogged arteries
and the cause of high blood
pressure and the cause of obesity,
I would tell them the
answers in three words:
It's the food!
It's what
the Americans are eating.
[Kip] Today, with 2/3 of
Americans being overweight,
clearly there's a food issue.
In the next 25 years, one out of every
three Americans will have diabetes.
My name's Michael Abdalla.
I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.
And unfortunately, I was diagnosed
about 10 years ago with diabetes.
And eight years ago
I had two stents put in.
I don't know where to go, I don't
know what to do, you are just like
out of options and you
don't know what to do.
You're taking medicines.
You listen to this doctor.
And the cardiologist
says take this.
And the endocrinologist
says take that.
And your general practitioner
doctor says...
You don't know
what's going on here.
It's a real challenging thing
and it is something that
you don't wanna get.
You just don't wanna get it.
[Kip] Government and media
almost exclusively blame
lack of exercise and sugary
foods as a cause of diabetes.
But, I wanted to talk with an actual
expert on the role of diet and diabetes.
I went to speak with premier
physician, diabetes expert
and researcher,
Dr. Neal Barnard.
[Kip] What role does sugar
play in causing diabetes?
Driving me crazy.
Diabetes is not and never
was caused be eating
a high carbohydrate diet, and
it's not caused by eating sugar.
The cause of diabetes
is a diet
that builds up the amount
of fat into the blood.
I'm talking about a typical
meat-based, animal-based diet.
You can look into the muscle
cells of the human body,
and you find that they're
building up tiny particles of fat
that's causing
insulin resistance.
What that means is, the sugar
that is naturally from the foods
that you're eating can't get
into the cells where it belongs.
It builds up in the blood,
and that's diabetes.
[Kip] I have never heard that meat was
associated with causing diabetes.
We had always been told that
sugar or obesity caused it.
Renowned weight loss
bariatric surgeon
Dr. Garth Davis,
though, agreed.
Everyone thinks that you get
diabetic because of carbs.
They did a huge study in that
EPIC study 500,000 people,
carbs consumption was inversely
related with diabetes.
In other words, the more carbs someone
ate, the less diabetes they had.
But, meat was
strongly correlated.
Get that aha moment. The starch
is, the carbs are good for you.
They're not bad for you.
This idea that carbs make you
fat is utterly ridiculous.
Carbs cannot make you fat
in and of themselves.
We have storage
in our muscles
and in our liver for
carbs called glycogen.
So, when we eat carbs, we
either store it or we burn it.
Now eat fat, that goes
straight to your fat.
Your body can't turn
those carbs into fat
unless you're really
overdoing the calories.
And obesity,
it's a death sentence.
You're at much higher
risk of getting cancer,
you're almost certainly
gonna get diabetes.
No one wants the fat shame,
and we all want everybody to be
comfortable with our bodies,
but, this movement to be
comfortable with our bodies
has made us comfortable
with being sick.
And that's a huge problem.
I go into the hospital
and I look around me,
people on dialysis,
all these sick people.
And just about every disease in there
is because of what people are eating.
Here's the thing.
If I eat a sugary cookie,
the sugar lures you in
like the Trojan horse,
but waiting inside that cookie is a
huge load of butter or, shortening.
And that's what
fattens you up.
And that's the part that
leads to the diabetes,
it's the fatty foods,
not really so much the sugar.
[Davis] It's not that sugar's good for you.
There's no nutrients in it.
It's excess calories.
But, when you eat sugar, you don't
get inflammation right away.
When you eat sugar, you're not getting
plaques forming in your vessels.
When you're eating sugar,
your body's gonna store most of it
as glycogen or burn it as calories.
And so this focus on sugar has taken
all the focus off meat, dairy,
eggs, pork, turkey, chicken.
People need to understand.
If they're child gets diabetes,
you've just taken 19
years off their lifespan.
We're talking life and death.
[Kip] I realized
there was so much more
about diet and disease
that I hadn't ever learned.
It felt as if this information
had been practically withheld.
Processed meat causes cancer.
Sugar doesn't cause diabetes.
I had doubt about the claims
these doctors were making,
so I did some searching
on my own.
Harvard researchers looked
at nine prospective studies
finding that just one serving
of processed meat per day
increased risk of developing
diabetes by 51 percent.
The link between eating meat and
developing diabetes became undeniable.
But, when I went on a leading
diabetes organization's website,
the American Diabetes
Association,
not only did they not have this
information front and center,
they were featuring recipes
for red and processed meat.
And on their recipes for healthy
living, they had bacon-wrapped shrimp.
What the health?
All right, sent an email to
American Diabetes Association,
see if they'll get back to us.
As destructive as diabetes is, it
pales in comparison to heart disease.
Over 17 million people die every
year from cardiovascular disease.
It is the leading cause
of death around the world.
Nearly one out of every three
people will die from this disease.
The amount of people who die
from cardiovascular disease
is the equivalent of
four jumbo jets crashing
every single hour, every
single day, every single year.
My name's Amy Resnic, and I'm
from Swampscott, Massachusetts,
a little bit north of Boston.
And I recently went to
my doctor for asthma
because I had a very
hard time breathing.
And while there,
she did some blood work.
And one of the tests
was C-reactive protein,
there was a scale
of one to three,
one being low
for cardiac event,
three being high
for cardiac event.
And my number was 10.82.
What does that mean?
That means I am on the
road for heart attack.
And she said probably
within the next 30 days.
- 30 days?
- 30 days.
If I'm going
the way I was going.
I take this for
my heart arrhythmia.
I take this for pain.
Oxycodone for pain.
And lorazepam for stress.
Cyclobenzaprine for
a muscle relaxer.
Also take Topamax and Prozac.
And I also use a CPAP
machine to help me breathe.
And my asthma has been
so bad this past year.
I use it during the day
as well to get some air.
I am tired when I wake up,
I'm tired during the day.
I take a nap, I'm still tired.
I can't breathe.
And I know I need to make
a change for my health.
Or, else I'm not gonna
be here for my family.
When we speak
of heart disease,
I would say the role of
alcohol is pretty small.
The role of sugar is very small, too.
Smoking is big,
but, the good news is that most
people have quit or never did smoke.
The problem with animal-based diet, its
contribution to heart disease is huge,
and it is pervasive.
All this expensive imaging,
procedures, bypasses,
medication.
None of which has one
solitary single thing to do
with the causation
of the illness,
so you dive
a completely benign,
food borne illness that never
had its causation treated.
When we eat these kind of
dead meat bacteria toxins,
within minutes, you get
this burst of inflammation
within your system, such that you
basically paralyze your arteries,
you get this stiffening of the arteries,
their inability to relax normally in half.
So, it's not like decades down the road
eating unhealthy there'll be some damage.
No, we're talking damage
right then and there,
within minutes of it
going into our mouth.
Many people are given
the diagnosis of
Alzheimer's disease, when it's
not true Alzheimer's at all.
The vast majority of
people suffer dementia
due to their tiny blood vessels
in their brain clogging up
and their nerve cells being
shortchanged of oxygenated blood.
And guess where that blood
vessel dementia comes from,
those little tiny
arteries are clogging up
from that steady stream of
bad cholesterol, et cetera.
It's really quite clear.
Both from
the standpoint of cancer
and the standpoint of
cardiovascular disease
that animal protein
plays an enormous role.
[Kip]
Is chicken better?
It's a question of whether
you wanna be shot or, hung.
The flesh food that I would eliminate
from the American diet would be poultry,
would be turkey and chicken.
A brilliant advertising
campaign has convinced people
that oh, it's white meat,
it's healthier.
The leading source of Sodium,
in the American diet
for adults is chicken.
It can be labeled all natural chicken
but, be injected with salt water.
I think up to
800 milligrams of sodium.
Heterocyclic amines are
clear-cut carcinogens,
and they can form in any kind of
meat as it's heated, as it's cooked.
But, by far, the
biggest source is chicken.
We sent researchers into fast
food and family restaurants.
Not only were there carcinogens
in every single restaurant,
but, we found them in every single
chicken sample that we took.
If somebody brings their family in, and
they're buying a bucket of chicken,
nobody tells them that
there are carcinogens.
If you're selling
carcinogens to people,
you've gotta warn them
that they're in there.
[Kip] But the American Cancer
Society encourages people
to switch from red and
processed meat to chicken.
Why would the American
Cancer Society
tell people to switch from
eating one carcinogenic food
to another when a Harvard
University study showed
that men with prostate cancer who
eat large amounts of chicken,
increase their risk of the
disease progressing four times.
The number one dietary
source in America
of cholesterol is chicken because
of the volume of chicken.
Chicken's become grilled
chicken and organic chicken.
It's machismo.
But it has nearly as much
cholesterol per gram as red beef.
So, just on sheer volume,
it's the number one source.
You got eggs
being close behind.
[Kip] I never really
thought about eggs much.
I just thought of them as a
standard part of a healthy diet.
But, then I found a study suggesting
that eating just one egg a day
can be as bad as smoking five
cigarettes per day for life expectancy.
Yolk of a hen's egg is
the most concentrated glom
of saturated fat
and cholesterol.
It is made to run a baby chicken for
21 days with no outside energy.
It is pure fat
and cholesterol.
And when we put that into our bloodstream,
it coats our red blood cells.
Our blood gets thicker and more viscous.
It changes our hormone levels.
It raises
our cholesterol levels.
There's nothing healthy about
eating the yolk of the egg.
[Kip] But I thought cholesterol and
saturated fat wasn't an issue anymore.
All these saturated fat
studies that have come out,
trying to vindicate saturated fat is
a campaign by the dairy industry,
wherein the number one source of
saturated fat is dairy, it's not meat.
2008, the global dairy industry
got together at a meeting
and explicitly
read their agenda,
was to neutralize the
negative impact of milk fat
by regulators and medical
professionals unquote,
so what do they do,
they funded studies.
[Kip] The main study that started
the whole saturated fat media craze
was funded by
the National Dairy Council.
The egg industry
similarly funds studies
that confuse consumers by
making claims that eggs don't
negatively affect heart function.
That is, only when compared to eating
a McDonald's
Sausage McMuffin?
So, what they're really
saying is that
eating eggs is just as
bad as eating a McMuffin.
When you eat foods,
like a beef or, steak or,
a processed meat, a hotdog,
you're not just
getting saturated fat.
You're also getting other additional
toxins that are in that food.
There's heme iron,
carcinogens,
processing chemicals, this
all a lot more complicated
than just looking
at saturated fat.
The strategy is not on making
their products any safer.
The strategy is to just try to confuse
the public, to introduce doubt.
There's a famous tobacco industry memo.
It's called doubt is our product.
That's all they had to do.
They didn't have to convince
Americans that smoking was healthy.
They just had to introduce doubt.
Then they would win.
If there's just
enough controversy,
people kind of throw up their
hands, "I don't know what to eat."
Confusion is their game.
I really don't think people thought
what they ate led to heart disease.
They think, "Oh, it's
genetic, my parents had it."
I don't think people really think
that what they ate led to diabetes,
I think, "Oh, my parents had
it, I was gonna get it,"
and certainly cancer,
they don't think that way.
People have bad lifestyles
that they've inherited.
Environmentally, they've
been exposed to a certain way
of eating and living
that they've carried on
into their adulthood,
passed onto their children,
that is why they go on to
develop the same diseases
that their parents and grandparents
may have had before them.
But it is not inevitable.
Even if you have
a genetic predisposition,
doesn't mean it's going
to necessarily manifest.
And what determines
whether it manifests or not
may be those epigenetic variables,
the things that you can control.
The environmental factors, the dietary
factors, the lifestyle factors.
So, we can actually change
the expression of genes,
tumor suppressing genes,
tumor activating genes
by what we eat, what
we put into our bodies.
So, even if you've been
dealt a bad genetic deck,
you can still
reshuffle it with diet.
[Kip] I had always thought that I would
develop heart disease at a young age
because both my dad and
grandpa had heart attacks.
I was taught
that they were genetic.
But the heart attacks probably
had less to do with genes
and more to do with
our diets high in meat.
That's why when I went on the
American Heart Association's
Heart-Healthy Recipes page,
I could not believe they had an
entire section on beef recipes?
This was just like the
American Cancer Society
encouraging eating Group One
carcinogens on their site.
Meat loaf, pork loin, steak
on your recipe list,
are you kidding me?
It's like this menu is trying
to give people heart attacks.
On your website, we noticed
Heart-Healthy Recipes
and we were kind of
bewildered by why
there was a bunch of recipes on, a
whole section on beef, beef recipes.
And there was also
a section on egg recipes
when there's such a strong link between
beef, red meat and heart disease.
I honestly don't know 'cause
I don't do that, I guess.
That's not what what I do.
Another organization rep that
wasn't able to answer my questions.
But, he said that he'd have
someone get in touch shortly.
I was, however, able to
talk to the president
of the American College of Cardiology, Dr.
Kim Williams.
So, the American
College of Cardiology
is a 47,000-member
and growing organization
with a dedicated mission
to reduce heart disease
and to improve
patients' lives.
And if you look at the incidents
of hypertension and diabetes
and mortality in men, they actually
get reduced as you go higher
and higher in terms of how much
you restrict animal products.
What about fish?
So, fish is
a little different.
You've got the four worries,
which is PCBs, mercury,
saturated fat and cholesterol.
And the cholesterol
is all over the place.
You can have tuna in water
that'll be almost less
than a glass of milk,
to salmon or, tilapia
which is higher
than a pork chop.
[Goldhamer] If you look
objectively at fish,
what you find is they've become,
essentially, mercury sponges.
And that's why in many parts
of the country they warn you,
don't have more than so
many of these fish a week
because getting too much
mercury can kill you.
Fish are eaten by bigger fish
who are eaten by bigger fish,
and these pesticides or, herbicides
bioaccumulate in the fish flesh
and these big fish, including the salmon,
which people think is the healthiest fish,
truth is, the amount of
pesticides and herbicides
in the flesh of these fish are
shocking, and they have estrogenic
and cancer-promoting
properties in them.
They'll say, "Well, but, don't
sardines have less concentration
of toxic waste products
than other ones?"
Something being less toxic
doesn't make it healthy,
it just makes it less toxic.
Farmed fish is
by no means healthier.
All the antibiotics that
these animals have to be fed.
Similar to chickens
and turkeys
kept in confinement,
these fish get infections.
They get fungal infections,
they get bacterial infections,
you've got to feed them
anti-fungals, antibiotics,
and these substances accumulate
in the fish flesh as well.
[Kip] I always knew that pollution
was bad for our health,
but I had never thought about the
environmental pollutants affecting food.
[Ewall] Dioxins being the most toxic,
man-made chemicals known to science
cause all sorts of things.
They cause endometriosis,
they cause cancers,
they cause endocrine
disruption problems.
But, most of your exposure,
93 percent of it,
comes from eating meat
and dairy products
because it climbs up in the
food chain so effectively.
So, you can get exposed to
them by living near these
incinerators and breathing it,
but, it will take you 14 years
to breathe in as much
Dioxin as a cow will
ingest by eating
the grass in one day.
And that Dioxin will
accumulate in its fat,
which includes the milk and the meat and
anyone eating meat or dairy products
is gonna get
that dose of Dioxin.
So, it climbs up the food
chain in every step.
Men have no way in their
bodies to get rid of dioxins,
but, women have two ways.
They're both involving
having a baby.
One is that dioxin crosses the
placenta into the growing infant
and the other is that it comes
out from the breast milk.
So, if you have a meat and dairy-consuming
mother breastfeeding that infant,
then the highest
impacts of toxic exposure
like mercury and dioxins
will go to that infant.
Pregnant women are told, "Certain
types of fish should be avoided,"
but, what about all these
other animal products
which are introducing, imagine
as the fetus is developing,
introducing these very
harmful toxins which,
create reproductive
abnormalities,
develop mental problems
and hormonal issues
right as the child is developing, the
most critical stage of development.
It does make you worry
when people say,
"Don't you wanna have a little bit
of milk because you're pregnant?
"Don't you wanna have some
fish 'cause your pregnant?"
Who do you think is gonna get
the chemicals that are in that?
[Snyder] All these
environmental toxins
and toxins from the feed
that they're being fed
accumulate in their tissues and
are released into the mother
and unfortunately,
to the child
when you eat these products
when you're pregnant.
So, this includes antibiotics,
hormones, steroids in animal feed.
Commercial animals are
largely fed GMO corn and soy
which are very laden
in pesticides.
PCBs have been
banned since the 70s,
but, they persist in
the environment, dioxins.
All of these compounds
can create hormonal,
reproductive, developmental
damage as well.
Eating organic beef,
poultry, pork
or fish will not help
you avoid contaminants
like mercury, like dioxins,
like strontium-90
because they fall out over
all sorts of farm fields
and water bodies, and then they
don't skip over the organic fields.
And so really, the
contaminants are coming in
regardless of how these
animals are raised.
[Kip] I had
always been concerned
about the possible
health impacts of GMOs
but, then found out that most
of the world's GMO crops
are actually
consumed by livestock,
with dairy cows consuming
the most per animal.
This fact, with everything I learned about
bioaccumulation made dairy terrifying.
Especially considering how
much cheese I ate in my life.
[Goldhamer] Cheese is an amazing
product when you think about it.
It's probably one of the single
best foods in compromising health
that you're gonna
actually feed to people.
Think about it, you've
got an animal product.
So, you've got all the issues
of biological concentration.
You have a highly processed
food product,
and not only does it have
naturally a lot saturated fat,
but, you put
a lot of salt into it.
There's a strong link between dairy
foods and autoimmune diseases.
And so that can show itself up
as excessive production of mucus
and exacerbation of asthma in
kids who are prone to that
and even adults, and also,
there's an association between
dairy foods and multiple
sclerosis and type one diabetes,
which is an autoimmune disease,
and other rheumatologic problems.
Cow's milk is
baby calf growth fluid.
That's what the stuff is.
There's absolutely no child
or human on Earth
who actually needs
the milk of a cow
any more than they need the
milk of a giraffe or, a mouse.
Most people in the world
are lactose intolerant.
That's the normal
state of affairs.
Why would your body create
this enzyme, just lactose
after weaning, after infancy,
it doesn't make any sense.
73% of African Americans
are lactose intolerant.
95% of Asians,
roughly 70%
of Native Americans,
and about 53% of Hispanic
Americans are lactose intolerant.
Our government is encouraging
Americans of color
to eat foods that it knows
is going to make them ill.
Ultimately,
what that boils down to
is the government is telling
me as an African American
to eat food that's gonna make
me ill for no health benefit
so that it will
benefit dairy farmers.
That's a form of
institutionalized racism.
Yeah, milk is a risky
food for human consumption.
As a pediatrician,
I see on a daily basis
children suffering from
conditions that are linked
or associated to
dairy consumption
such as eczema, acne,
constipation, acid reflux,
iron deficiency, anemia.
Cow's milk protein is
the most allergenic food.
People think, "Well, no,
I want hormone-free,
not injected with
bovine growth hormone."
But milk is
this hormonal fluid,
so it's just packed
with sex hormones
and natural sex steroid hormones like
estrogen, progesterone, in fact,
doesn't matter if it's conventional milk,
doesn't matter if it's organic milk.
Milk without hormones,
that's an oxymoron.
Organic dairy has just
as much saturated fat
and cholesterol and galactose, all
the things that you don't want,
as conventional dairy.
Dairy products, in general,
have a lot of other
products associated with it,
not the least
of which is pus.
They actually
have laws limiting
how much pus you can actually have
in the milk and still sell it,
I believe it's like
750,000 pus cells per CC.
Because you wouldn't want too much
pus and then it'd be like pure pus,
people might object.
In fact,
you could think of cheese
as kind of coagulated
cow pus, if you would.
[Kip] But, I was always told that
we need milk for strong bones.
I'm Jane Chapman,
and not too long ago,
I finally got some x-rays
of the hips and back,
severe bilateral
osteoarthritis of the hips.
And actually, I'm scheduled
for two hip replacements.
That's bone on bone.
It's the grinding
of the joints.
My stability is scary.
I hold on to the walls
when I'm at home.
I've been told
to use a walker.
I'm only 61.
This is not how you're supposed
to live when you're this old.
I have a really hard time
believing that
that's all that's left.
Researchers have studied
bone development in kids
and whether they get stress
fractures and that kind of thing.
And the kids who drink the most
milk have zero protection.
Milk does not
build strong bones.
Harvard researchers have looked
at a large group of older women,
over an 18-year period,
the milk drinkers had zero
protection from fractures.
So, this old notion that somehow
milk is gonna build strong bones
or protect your bones
later in life, it's a myth.
People that drink milk have
higher rates of hip fractures,
have more cancer
and live shorter lives.
[Kip] Turns out that
countries with the highest
dairy consumption also
have the highest rates
of osteoporosis, so clearly, drinking
more milk doesn't protect your bones.
Doing more research,
I found that dairy was linked
to many different types of
cancer as well.
Just like many of us, I thought that the
majority of cancer was due to genes,
but, only five to 10% of
cancer is actually genetic.
Any cancer is caused by DNA
mutation, but, that's not enough.
So, that can cause that first cancer cell,
but, one cancer cell never killed anyone.
Two cancer cells
never killed anyone.
But, a billion cancer cells, now
we're running into problems.
So, we need to reduce the
growth factors in our body,
like IGF-1, insulin-like
growth factor one,
it's this cancer-promoting growth hormone
involved in every stage of cancer cell
growth and spread
and metastases.
Any animal protein boosts
the level of IGF-1.
Dairy products
increases your risk for
various forms of cancer, especially
those related to your hormones.
So, breast cancer, prostate
cancer, ovarian cancer.
So, this is not a product
even in its most pure state
you wanna be consuming because
it does come with risk.
[Kip] I found out that dairy
can increase a man's chance
of getting prostate cancer
by 34%.
And for women who've had breast cancer,
just one serving of whole dairy a day
can increase their chance of
dying from the disease 49%
and dying from anything 64%.
Why weren't breast cancer
sites like Susan G. Komen
warning everyone about this?
[woman] Thanks for calling Susan G.
Komen,
this is Jocelyn,
how may I help you?
Yes, so we're wondering why
you don't have a huge
warning about the dangers
of consuming dairy
on your website
when there's a direct
link to breast cancer.
There was a study
published in the Journal
of the National Cancer
Institute that found out
women consuming dairy
who has had breast cancer
increases their risk of
dying of breast cancer 49%.
I was wondering why it's
not on your website.
[woman] We cannot answer
these types of questions.
[Kip] Once again, another
health organization rep saying
someone else would have
to answer my question.
Rather than risk
being stood up again,
I went straight to the
local Susan G. Komen chapter
to see if they would answer
my questions.
They didn't want to answer my questions in
person either and told us to stop filming
but, promised they would connect me
to the national office directly.
Susan G. Komen's
pink ribbon campaign
had done a lot to raise
awareness for breast cancer.
Although, it was confusing
to see pink ribbons
on dairy yogurt containers.
Breast cancer can be prevented
with a healthy diet and
lifestyle, but, we're not.
We're talking about pink ribbons
and putting all the money
into research for the cure.
I, for one, know that I would
want my daughter, my mother, me,
I want to focus on not
getting to that point.
And that's where I would like to
see more energy and effort put.
[Kip] I had been
a hardcore cheese-aholic
virtually my entire life,
despite the risks.
But, like so many others, I seem
to have been addicted to it.
It turns out that the casein protein,
that's the main protein in dairy products,
and particularly in cheese, it
breaks apart in the human digestion
to create what are called
casopmorphins.
Casein-derived, morphine-like
compounds that go to the brain
and they attach to the very same
receptor that heroin attaches to.
Don't get me wrong, they're
not as strong as that,
but, they are strong enough
to make you come back
again and again and again
despite the fact that
you're gaining weight,
you're more unhealthy
than you've ever been,
but, that cheese
just calls out to people.
Casomorphin may play a role in SIDS,
in sudden infant death syndrome,
may play a role in autism.
This is one of the reasons why
we don't want infants
drinking milk from cows.
[Kip] Human breast milk has 2.7
grams of casein per liter,
compared to 26 grams per
liter for cow's milk.
That's practically 10 times more.
No wonder it's so addictive.
This talk about addiction
made me think about
all the drugs animals are fed.
I went to the headquarters
of the Center for Food Safety,
the nation's leading FDA
government watchdog group
to see how concerned we need
to be about drugs in our food.
So, that we know of, there are
at least 450 different drugs
that are administered to animals,
either alone or, in combination.
These drugs are given to animals
for a variety of reasons,
very, very few of which are actually
beneficial to consumer health.
We've got drug companies that
work real hard to make sure
they can sell lots of drugs
to people raising cows,
pigs, and chickens.
The pharmaceutical industry sells 80%
of all the antibiotics that it makes
in the United States
to animal agriculture.
Antibiotic residues
are found in the meat,
other antimicrobials
are found in meat.
There has been ractopamine found in meat,
there has been hormones found in meat,
so right there, you're talking
about four different drugs
that could be in
the same piece of meat.
The pharmaceutical company
is supposed to show
the safety of animal drugs.
They're not really testing to see what the
impacts of these drugs are on humans.
They're really looking
to see what the impacts
of these drugs are on animals.
When we try to get information
on some of the health studies
and the environmental studies
from federal agencies,
we get back page after page
of blacked out information
because the company claimed
confidential business information.
Consumers have no idea what is in
the products that they consume.
So, how sick something makes me and
how bad it pollutes the environment
is a secret for a company.
In the animal agriculture industry,
as in the tobacco industry,
these companies really
have a vested interest
in making sure that
the public doesn't have
information about their effects
and what risks are really
posed to consuming them.
You have this system where animals
are living in their own waste,
they're living next to animals
that are sick or, even dead,
and they're stuck in
cages with these animals,
that bacteria tends to spread, that
the pathogens that are being created
in these filthy conditions are
breeding resistance to antibiotics
and the public are
becoming exposed to those.
We already have people dying.
From salmonella and other
things that you eat,
we have about 3,000 people die
every year in the United States.
That's more than the
number of people that were
killed in 9/11 in the
Twin Towers in New York.
If we had some terrorist
organization killing
3,000 people a year,
we would be all over it.
The antibiotic-resistant
bacteria deaths that we have
on top of that, you get
20,000 people dying a year.
That's seven 9/11s every year.
Can you imagine?
If that many people
were being killed
by some terrorist group
in the United States
every year,
we would find them!
You know,
the World Health Organization
has said we're nearing a
post-antibiotic era in medicine.
You'll be at risk in minor surgeries
o have a fatal infection.
You'll be at risk going to the dentist
if you have a tooth extracted.
Or, it'll be like civil war medicine.
You get an infection in your leg,
and you cut your leg off.
So, you have this
very dangerous situation.
By crowding these animals in,
they become a perfect
engine for generating
a new flu virus that can
come out into the community.
If you lived near
a swine spray field,
not even the CAFO but
the waste disposal field,
you are three times more likely
to have a MRSA infection.
You can't see how that impacts
the average person's life
in Duplin County, North Carolina and
not be a little upset about it.
From an environmental standpoint,
from a community standpoint,
from all other aspects, North Carolina,
we're in a state of emergency.
We've already had bouts of swine flu,
or H1N1, as they prefer to refer to it.
That particular swine flu
incident was
originated on a farm
here in North Carolina.
There's approximately
the same number of hogs
in North Carolina
as there are people.
Between eight to 10 times the amount
of feces is produced by a hog,
an adult hog as compared
to an adult human.
[Kip] 10 million pigs
in North Carolina
produce the waste equal to
a hundred million humans.
This is the equivalent of the
entire US Eastern Seaboard
flushing their toilets
into North Carolina.
But, there is
no waste treatment.
The pigs' waste falls
through slats in the floors
of the sheds they are forced to live in,
it is then pumped into giant waste pits,
which leech into rivers and streams and
is pumped out unfiltered onto fields,
further polluting the environment
and neighboring health.
When you go back and
you look at where these
hog facilities are located, there's
a disproportionate number of them
that are located near
communities of color.
Low-income communities.
It is definitely a human
rights issue.
My sister, she have asthma, you know.
Her brother, he have asthma.
He's three.
And we don't know
what she might have.
I have asthma, I have sinus,
I have sarcoidosis,
that's of the bacteria,
and I have a pacemaker,
which is sick sinus syndrome.
But, you know, mostly
everybody in this neighborhood
got asthma or, either cancer.
My neighbor there died from
cancer probably just last year.
My nephew down the street,
he's got cancer,
he's in terminal cancer,
stage four.
Not a smoker, not a drinker.
And it's not in his lungs,
it's in his lymph nodes.
Now see if you live here
and saw the way they do,
we don't eat no pork.
Well, I don't eat bacon because
I know where it come from.
When they die,
they go into a box,
and they decompose because
they swell from the heat.
A truck come and pick 'em up,
take 'em to the processing
plant in Rose Hill,
ground 'em up into feed,
and feed it back to the hogs.
If I come out this door,
if he's spraying there,
it's gonna come in my face.
It hits you
right in the face.
Smell like something that you
have never smelled before.
Smell worse than a dead body.
That's the family graveyard.
And I have my grandmother out
there, my sisters, my brothers.
When we go to a funeral,
he use the spray.
- During the funeral?
- During the funeral, yes.
During the funeral.
Yeah, they spray.
And when the people come, everybody
be closing their nose up
saying how it stink.
They can want a cookout
on Sunday, he'll spray.
Do you think he does it on
purpose?
I think so.
'Cause he just sprays Sunday.
He always sprays Sunday.
And in most of these area,
hog houses and turkey house,
it's in a black area
or the Hispanic area.
It's either or.
Do you think it's
also a civil rights issue?
Yes, yes, I do.
Yes, I do.
There have been times
in the past that I have
gotten ready on a Sunday and
gotten ready to go to church
and come out
and the smell was so strong
that I had to go back
and regroup because
it had got in my clothes, and
I just couldn't go to church
smelling like hogs, you know,
I just couldn't do it,
so I don't think
the government cares.
They care more about
corporations than they
do peoples, individuals.
They're gonna put
more chickens in this state.
This is the feces and
urine capital of the world
right here in North Carolina,
my state.
Look, there's a
blue-line stream right here
comes right across into my property almost
and the Contentnea Creek right there.
I've seen that blue-line stream now filled
with feces and urine from that hog pen,
and they can say,
"Well, we feed the world."
They're not interested in feeding the
world, they're interested in making money.
You take the money away from them,
they'll let the folks starve.
'Cause if you want to feed the world,
you can feed the world with more corn,
using corn and wheat and stuff
like that than you can meat.
Meat is a luxury item.
When we are doing things that
hurt other people, we are wrong.
But, a lot of good people
will sit there and eat bacon
knowing that it's causing someone
else to be very unhappy.
[Kip] I woke up
the next morning to find
the Burnt River had experienced
another massive fish kill
from the pollution running
off hog farms.
Tens of thousands of fish
were washing up on shore.
All this talk about health,
I realized that I was only
focused on personal health.
But, health started to
mean so much more to me.
It was about health of my
family and our communities.
I couldn't
under good conscience
support an industry that
I knew was harming others.
Pollution from
animal agriculture
isn't just an issue in
North Carolina, though.
Raising animals for food
produces more greenhouse gases
than the entire
transportation sector.
It is a leading cause of
rainforest destruction,
species extinction, ocean dead
zones and freshwater consumption.
American Diabetes Association
actually finally got back,
and they agreed
to an interview.
Preparing for the American
Diabetes Association interview,
I took a look at their diabetes
diet meal plan recommendations,
and they were loaded with foods
associated with causing diabetes.
How could they expect
people not to get diabetes
if this was the food
they were recommending?
And then, I saw multiple
peer-reviewed studies
published on the National
Institute of Health website
showing that a low-fat
plant-based diet
was more than twice as
powerful at controlling
and even reversing diabetes
than the ADA recommended diet
that included meat and dairy.
The mission of the American
Diabetes Association is
to identify a prevention
and a cure for diabetes.
But, in the meantime, to improve
the lives of all people
who are affected by diabetes.
And what's the best way
to prevent this?
For type two diabetes,
it's unclear.
We can't prevent type two
diabetes in everybody.
We were doing research, we came
across a lot of studies that said
that you actually could
potentially cure
or reverse diabetes with
a purely plant-based diet.
I don't believe there's sufficient
evidence to demonstrate that.
How does it compare to the
ADA diet that you recommend?
We don't recommend a specific diet,
we recommend healthy eating.
The one that's on the website.
We recommend healthy eating.
There is...
Do you have a whole
list of exact day-to-day,
the meal plan,
the whole meal plan?
All they are are selections
of foods to consider.
We do not have
a diabetes diet.
But, with that, selections
that you consider,
that plan compared to
an all plant-based plan.
No one's done that study.
We found, actually,
some studies.
A 74-week study found that low-fat
vegan diet versus the ADA plan,
in type two diabetes...
I think we're done here.
I'm not gonna get into
an argument about...
Oh, no, I just wanted
the studies of,
if this is true or,
if it shows that.
Any diet works.
Any diet works
if people follow it.
But, if it's a diet
that's not the proper diet,
like if anyone follows a diet
that they eat McDonald's...
I can't tell you
what a proper diet is.
I can tell you
what an improper diet is.
So, then we can talk about the good diets.
I'm not sure why...
I'm not gonna get into that.
- Into diet?
- No.
Why not?
If that's where you
want to go with this,
I'm sorry, I'm not the person
that you should be talking to.
And why is that, though?
If that's what you want to
get into, I'm not the person
- you need to be talking to.
- Into diet?
Who do we talk to about diet?
You can talk to
anybody you want.
But, that's interesting, though,
why not recommend a diet...
Because the data don't
exist to support it.
But, if we see data
that we looked up,
that supports it with
the NIH, in Europe,
the European Association of...
We're done.
We're done. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna
get into that argument with you.
No, I'm just wondering,
but, I...
I'm not gonna get into
the argument with you.
Why is it in argument?
It's just to talking about
in European study of diabetes
and other places that have
studies, why...
There are lots of studies...
Why is it even
an argument, I guess?
There are lots of
studies in the literature.
Many of which have never been
replicated or frankly, are wrong.
That's why we do
peer review, okay?
The European Association
of Study of Diabetes
has been peer-reviewed
or, the...
I don't know what study
you're referring to,
and in the absence of being
able to see that study,
I'm not gonna comment.
I could show it to you.
I'm sorry, I don't
have the time for that.
I just don't understand why it's
an argument, though, or, okay.
That was interesting.
What he wanted to talk about was
people living longer with diabetes,
but, once you mention eliminating
diabetes or, prevention,
oh, now you crossed the line.
Prevention and cure... Whoa.
Let's not go there.
[Kip] Not only did Dr. Ratner,
the chief medical officer
of the American Diabetes Association
not want to talk about diet,
but, the fact that he had
such an emotional reaction
to my question made it feel
I was digging into something
that he didn't want uncovered.
I had always thought there was no
prevention for type one diabetes.
But, then,
I did research and came across
countless studies
referencing the link between
exposure to dairy at a young
age and type one diabetes.
[McDougall] This is a food
made for baby cows.
Cow milk protein gets
into the bloodstream,
and the body says, "Hey, this isn't
supposed to be in the bloodstream."
It makes antibodies to
the cow milk protein
which then attack the pancreas
and destroy the pancreas.
[Kip] How is this possible that ADA wouldn't
have this forefront on their website?
Why wouldn't they be warning
all parents about this
even if there were
only a slight chance?
Why were they
recommending people
to actually eat these
foods linked to diabetes?
It seemed all of the
large health organizations
were encouraging people
to eat the very foods
linked to the diseases they're
supposed to be fighting against.
American Heart Association
promoting beef,
American Cancer Society
promoting processed meat,
pink ribbons on dairy products,
and bacon-wrapped shrimp on
American Diabetes Association.
And then,
it all came together.
What if...
And there it was.
The American Diabetes
Association was taking money
from Dannon, one of the world's
largest dairy yogurt producers.
Kraft Foods, makers of
Velveeta processed cheese,
Oscar Meyer processed meats,
Lunchables processed kids' meals,
and Bumble Bee Foods, makers
of processed canned meats.
American Cancer Society
was taking money
from Tyson, one of the
world's largest meat producers
and Yum! Brand, owner of
Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell.
Susan G. Komen, who was supposed
to be fighting breast cancer,
was corporate
partnering with KFC,
Dietz Watson processed
meats and Yoplait yogurt.
And the American Heart Association was
probably the most disturbing of all,
taking hundreds
of thousands of dollars
from the beef industry,
poultry and dairy producers
and millions from fast food and
processed food manufacturers.
Every single one
of these organizations
was taking money from
meat and dairy companies
that are associated with
the causes of these diseases.
This would be like the
American Lung Association
taking money from
the tobacco industry.
I was sick of
not getting answers.
So, I went to the headquarters
of these organizations myself.
We have to speak
to someone in person.
There's millions of people
dying from the foods
that they are recommending
people to eat.
I wanted to find out why Susan G. Komen
had accepted $35 million from Yoplait,
when their products can
increase a woman's chance
of dying from
breast cancer 49%,
and ask American Cancer
Society if taking money
from KFC and Tyson was a reason
they promote eating meat.
But, every one of these organizations
declined to be interviewed.
What's really sad is
that we cannot trust
information from these
leading health organizations
like the American Heart Association,
the American Diabetes Association
because they are taking money
from the very industries
who are causing the problems that they're
supposed to be helping to prevent.
So, that makes the truth
something that
you are not gonna be hearing,
as far as nutrition goes,
from these organizations.
Well, that would be the
end of their funding,
that would be the end of their
jobs, there would be lawsuits
that would bring the entire
catastrophe down upon their heads,
and they would essentially
disappear as organizations.
This one time I got invited
to a charity fundraiser
for the American Diabetes
Association.
I showed up, and they had a whole buffet,
and it was all just animal products.
I remember like a big
thing of barbecue chicken.
And I was like, I stormed out.
I said like,
serving chicken
at a diabetes event
is like serving alcohol
at an AA meeting.
It doesn't make sense.
[Kip] We had scheduled to film an
interview with a prominent surgeon.
But, before we could get
inside the building,
the hospital's media
relations manager stopped us.
Actually I understand that Dr...
said that you could film here today,
but, unfortunately, that's
not gonna be able to happen.
I know that he advocates for
patients changing their diets,
but, the hospital makes
money off these surgeries,
and the reality is,
he does, too.
So, we can't do anything that's gonna
negatively impact the hospital,
so unfortunately, you're not gonna
be able to film here today.
He said that we could, though.
[Kip] I was sickened
by how open she was
about the hospital being more interested
in profits than people's health.
But, it wasn't just this
hospital or these organizations.
Even the US government
is involved, too.
Every five years, the US
Department of Agriculture
creates dietary guidelines
for Americans.
The committee who writes these guidelines
has been made up of individuals
who have received money from McDonald's,
the National Dairy Council,
the American Meat Institute,
the National Dairy Board,
the National Livestock and Meat Board,
the American Egg Board, Dannon,
candy and sugar companies, Coca Cola
and Anheuser, just to name a few.
Which means we are getting
our dietary recommendations
from the very industries
that are killing us.
And when they, the USDA, makes
a pyramid or a Power Plate
every five years for
the American public,
they're gonna guarantee
that on that plate
are gonna be foods,
which when consumed,
will result in millions
of Americans perishing.
The USDA, which is supposed to be
protecting us, has two missions.
It's supposed to protect us, and it's
supposed to protect the producer.
And guess what, when those
two come head to head,
they usually choose
the producer.
[Kip] In internal documents
uncovered by Dr. Greger,
the USDA admitted that eggs
cannot legally be called
nutritious, low fat,
part of a balanced diet,
low calorie, healthful, healthy, can't
say it's good for you or, even safe.
Yet they still
promote these products
to the American people through
federal checkoff programs.
If you ask somebody
if they have heard
of a checkoff program,
the odds are they haven't,
although daily, they are seeing the
messaging that these programs produce.
So, checkoff programs
are responsible
for the messages that we
see on TV, on the Internet,
on buzz billboards and
magazines that say things like,
"Milk, it does a body good,"
or "milk life.
Beef, it's what's for dinner.
Pork, be inspired.
The incredible edible egg."
The dairy checkoff
program gave $12 million
to Domino's to just market
cheese-heavy product.
And this is the USDA,
this is the government.
If you've seen those ads
for the Pizza Hut pizza,
the stuffed crust
or a pound of cheese.
Those are all government advertising
schemes for the industry.
How can we put more cheese on beef?
How can we put more milk in a coffee?
Things like that
to just drive consumption
of these just unbelievably
unhealthful products.
So, McDonald's, for instance, has
six people staffed full-time,
according to records we found,
whose salaries are paid for
by this government program
but, funded by the producers
who are regulated by it.
And these six people sit there
at McDonald's headquarters
and just come up with ideas.
Triple cheese decker
McCheese muffin
stuffed bacon cheese slider?
With extra cheese?
- Nice!
- Yes!
You don't think of it
on a day-to-day basis
that these are
government programs.
The Wendy's Bacon
Double Cheeseburger.
Government program.
The steak fajita
at Dunkin' Donuts.
Government program.
You would just never think that this just
pure garbage from a food standpoint,
is coming from
a federally-funded program.
That's one of the things that makes
checkoffs so incredibly creepy,
is that it is our government telling
us eat more beef, drink more milk,
eat more cheese, eat more pork.
One of the very effective
ways that the dairy industry
promotes its products
is to reach children
because kids
are impressionable,
they're gonna be consumers
for their entire lives,
and you might as well get
'em while they're young.
So, dairy spends at least $50 million
promoting its products in public schools
throughout the country
with posters,
with people
with milk mustaches
and messages like "Milk,
it does the body good,"
or "milk life."
Targeting young people,
like the tobacco industry
had to keep replacing their customers
who were dying with new customers.
Meat industry knows they
have to target young people.
That's why we have these
foods in schools
and marketing messages at
a younger and younger age
for kids to get hooked on
all the wrong kinds of foods.
So, there's
all kinds of parallels.
School districts where processed
meats are all over the place,
maybe it's gonna be bacon on the menu,
sausage, hotdogs or pepperoni pizza.
Any of those things
are processed meats,
and those are pretty much
the worst of the worst
with a direct link
to colon cancer.
And yet you have every day in the schools
meal items with processed meats.
[Kip] If the surgeon
general puts warning labels
on tobacco because of
their cancer risk,
why aren't the same
warning labels on meat?
Based on the publicly available data, we
know they spend at least $557 million
promoting their goods
through checkoff programs.
We know that they spend at least
$138 million lobbying Congress.
We expect that they spend
a good deal more than that
in figures that simply
aren't publicly disclosed.
[Kip] The industry's
lobbying power is so strong
that they can create laws
and push through legislation
that doesn't benefit
Americans in any way,
such as ag-gag laws that
criminalize whistle-blowing
or photographing abuses
by this industry.
Activists in the US can
be charged as terrorists
for disrupting the profits of
any business that uses animals,
under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,
to the even more ridiculous ones like
cheeseburger laws.
A cheeseburger law is a law that
says a plaintiff cannot recover
against a manufacturer,
distributor or, retailer,
on the theory that the food
made the plaintiff obese
or caused
an obesity related disease.
Cheeseburger laws
are a direct response
to a problem that the
tobacco industry has had.
Big Tobacco has paid $400 billion
to state Medicaid programs.
Cheeseburger laws
proponents say,
"We don't want to see the
same kind of thing happen
"to the meat
and dairy industries."
The fact that these laws are
based on a model template
called a Commonsense
Consumption Act
is actually ironic because
what they're saying is
you, the consumer, should
have the common sense
to know that
our food is bad for you.
I've often typified the
meat industry to people who
maybe don't understand
its power and reach,
as it's got all the money of
Big Tobacco and Big Pharma,
and it has the personality of
the National Rifle Association.
So, any little thing that comes
up, man, they beat it to death.
[Kip] Robert Martin
wasn't exaggerating.
When the profits of the egg
industry were threatened
by egg alternative company
Hampton Creek Foods,
extremely disturbing emails were uncovered
by Ryan Shapiro and Jeffrey Light.
We uncovered documents demonstrating
the American Egg Board
considers Hampton Creek, quote
"a crisis and major threat
"to the future of the
American egg industry."
The American Egg Board
considers a successful
egg replacer company
to be such a threat
that they joke on their
government email addresses
about murdering the CEO.
[Kip] In internal government emails
with the heads of the egg industry,
they suggest having the CEO of Hampton
Creek, Josh Tetrick, murdered,
including a menacing email from executive
director of the American Egg Board.
The meat producers
don't have to pay for
the heart disease or
the environmental destruction
or any of the other externalities,
as economists call them,
that their products cause.
Then there's a whole
pharmaceutical aspect of it
and the fact that there's a very
strong pharmaceutical industry
and lobby that has a huge stake
in preserving the status quo.
These chronic diseases,
these are the cash cows of
the pharmaceutical industry.
We have a $5 billion stent industry.
Do they ever want to see that go away?
We've got a $35 billion
statin drug industry.
Do they ever want
to see that go away?
I'm talking about the
pharmaceutical industry
effectively controls
what doctors are told.
Most research isn't
put into prevention.
It's put into the medication
that we might use
for that particular disease.
I'm on two different
high blood pressure medicines.
Six asthma type medicines.
Even after
four years of shots.
And another medicine
to help take care
of side effects from some
of those medicines.
I'm on high level
anti-depressants.
A couple of different pain meds
for my back and hips.
I'm taking about 16 drugs.
Not counting the insulin
in the morning.
I take insulin in the morning,
insulin at night, 32-34 units,
of insulin.
Lantus to be exact.
Some of these meds
are for diabetes.
This is for peeing.
I have to use this
for my prostrate.
And then I have to
use this for the heart.
And I have to use this
for blood pressure.
And it's just on
and on and on.
The doctors are telling me this is
what I gotta do for my whole life.
And it's frustrating
and very stressful.
And I don't know how long my liver
is gonna last taking all this stuff.
Under conventional medical treatment,
whether it be for autoimmune disease
or even conditions like high
blood pressure or, diabetes,
you're told that
you have to take drugs.
And not just for a week
or a month or, a year,
you're told you have
to take drugs forever.
You're guaranteed that if you
follow your doctor's advice,
you'll be sick forever.
You'll never get well.
That's the guarantee.
Because the strategies are all
about manipulating the symptoms,
not dealing with
the underlying cause.
You come in with that diagnosis,
you get a bunch of pills
that have nothing to do
with the disease causation.
Or you get these procedures that have
nothing to do with disease causation.
It's a deception to say
this pill will help you
unclog your arteries, this one will
save you from a stroke, no, it doesn't.
The people who take
the statins, et cetera,
they still get their heart attacks,
they still get their strokes.
This does not reverse disease.
This does not make plaque smaller.
This is a front
of massive proportions.
[Kip] In the US, treating chronic disease,
such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes
is a $1.5 trillion industry.
That's the GDP equivalent of the
10th richest country in the world.
I went back and dug deeper into the
health organizations' funding,
and there it was again.
These organizations were
accepting millions of dollars
from pharmaceutical companies that
are making billions of dollars
from the very same diseases these health
groups are supposedly trying to end.
It seemed like a major
conflict of interest,
unless ending these diseases
isn't really the goal.
The pharmaceutical
industry spends more money
on lobbying than any
other single industry.
Just like animal agriculture,
they are so powerful,
they write their own laws
that have had activists
imprisoned to silence them.
The government's in bed with anyone
that gives them the most money,
which is the pharmaceutical industry,
which is the animal ag industries,
they are pumping the
government full of money
and resources, and in return, the
government's giving them want they want.
Subsidies, imprisoning
activists that go against them,
and I think it's quite
telling that these industries
are working so hard
and spending so much money
to criminalize people for
simply taking a picture,
for simply recording what's going
on inside these facilities
and making it
known to the public.
They're behind walls,
they're underground.
They're in these secret facilities
that no one knows about,
but if they did, they would
be shocked and outraged.
And I think people would
not want to think that their
pharmaceuticals, that their food
are coming from these places.
And that's why I think it's such,
the ag-gag laws are what they are
is because they are trying to silence
people into not speaking out
and not showing the truth.
[Kip] I finally realized
how deep the collusion
truly is between government
and these industries.
And how dangerous
it could be to expose them.
These concerns intensified after
meeting the USDA whistle-blowerrrr
who revealed mad cow disease
in the US meat supply.
USDA operates
like the military.
So, when I got on TV
and that right away,
USDA sent out memos to all the
veterinarians and food inspectors,
"If anybody from the media ever
contacts you, do not talk to them.
Refer 'em to Washington DC,
and we will talk to them."
So, right away,
it shut up everybody.
American public should be
very concerned about this.
What's going on with USDA?
Here in the United States,
we have at least four
cases of mad cow disease,
but, I'm almost positive
there's more cases than that,
but, the government isn't
looking for it.
What you're saying
is that there could be
already mad cow's disease
in humans.
Right, and I think a lot
of it was misdiagnosed.
With the Alzheimer's
or dementia,
it takes several years
you see the progression,
but, to make it easier, these
doctors just sign off on it
as dementia or, Alzheimer's
without actually taking
a biopsy of the brain
to see if it's that or is it
actually a prion disease
like Creutzfeldt-Jacob
disease or, mad cow disease.
Do you think
it's safe to eat meat?
I personally don't
think it's safe to eat it
because of the fact how the
line speeds are increasing
and also our inspectors are
not well trained enough.
At the present time, the line speed
now is going about 220 cows an hour.
That gives you about, somewheres
around four cows per minute.
So, that's 15 seconds per cow.
These dangerous
slaughter speeds
means that animal waste
ends up everywhere.
Testing shows 88% of pork chops are
contaminated with fecal bacteria.
90% of ground beef and 95%
of chicken breast sampled
contained
animal waste bacteria.
There is nothing clean
about eating this way.
But, it just isn't waste, it's
also pus-filled infections.
You could see there's a bump
or some kind of abscess
underneath the hide.
Most of the time when
the hide's pulled off,
either that will open up the abscess
and the the pus will come out,
or if it's deep-seated, when the
inspectors are doing their work
or the company employees,
they might stick their knife
into an abscess, and it
explodes all over the place.
[Kip] I had heard enough. I was
utterly disgusted by the corruption,
the greed, the disease and the
abuse I was learning about.
The very animals we were killing
were killing us and the planet.
But, so many people eat meat and
dairy every day of their lives.
And we are so concerned
about getting enough protein.
[Kip] Do we have to eat meat
to get complete protein?
Oh, my God, oh my God.
You want me to jump off this
building, don't you now?
Well first of all,
all protein is made by plants.
I'll state that again
for the record.
All protein is initially
made by plants, all of it.
And it is not necessary
to eat animal tissue
in order to get protein.
Only plants have the ability to
actually take nitrogen from the air,
break those molecules apart
and incorporate that nitrogen into
amino acids and then make protein.
Any protein you get from an animal
is simply recycled plant protein.
If you ate a diet that
was calorically adequate
and even things like brown rice and
broccoli and you got enough of it,
you'd get enough, both quantity
and quality of protein.
2,000 calories of
brown rice and broccoli
is gonna be about 80
grams of protein a day,
including the essential
amino acids that you need
in order to maintain
optimum health.
Greens are loaded with protein.
Beans are loaded with protein.
Vegetables are loaded
with protein.
You really want to get
your protein from plants
because plant proteins have a much more
beneficial effect on our physiology.
The funny thing
about protein is
most Americans get about
twice the amount they need.
Most Americans get less than half
the amount of fiber they need.
But, the conversation tends
to always be about protein,
so in my mind, it's just this
magical marketing campaign
that protein has taken
on over the decades.
The question is not
where to get your protein,
it's where do you
get your fiber?
I have never in my professional
career seen a protein deficiency.
I have never seen someone come in
eating normal amounts of calories
and they're protein deficient.
You just don't see that.
So, human milk has the
lowest protein content ever
in any species ever tested.
That's the fluid that's been designed
by evolution over millions of years.
And that's just like the
perfect food for human babies.
Perfect food,
lowest protein content,
any other mammal, and so gives a sense
of kinda protein requirements...
- It's lower than...
- Anything, so look...
- Lower protein than even...
- Than rat milk, ape milk.
- Really?
- Donkey milk, any milk that's ever been tested.
And you hear this a lot in body
builders who are like, "Well, I need
chicken, or, I need fish to be
strong, to build muscle tissue."
That is utter nonsense.
The largest, strongest terrestrial
animals on the planet
are all herbivores.
The biggest, strongest
animals are all herbivores.
When we bring in people
and they're on meaty diets
and we transition them
to a plant-based diet,
we always track
what they're eating.
Their vitamin intake goes up.
Their nutrition overall goes
up, dramatically better.
And these same people
might worry in advance,
"Will I get the nutrition that
I need on a plant-based diet?"
The fact is, you're not getting
the nutrition you need
on a meat-based diet,
and you're gonna get dramatically
better nutrition on a plant-based diet.
For an average-sized guy like myself, I
need about 56 grams of protein a day.
That's optimum, probably I really
need 30 to 40 grams a day.
Diets that are really
high in these protein
create diabetes, create heart
disease, create cancer,
create the diseases that I'm
treating on a daily basis.
[Kip] But, this is the opposite of what
all the high-protein diet fads say.
The food you eat determines the
bacteria that live in your gut.
While you eat animal flesh
every day,
you are summoning up
bacteria that eat carnitine.
And those bacteria will
turn that carnitine
into a molecule
called trimethylamine.
Your liver then turns that
into trimethylamine oxide.
That's a molecule from hell.
That molecule drives cholesterol
into the artery walls.
And the people who will
consume this flesh-based diet
are contributing
to plaque building up,
they may lose weight on
this diet and that's good,
but, what's happening inside
your arteries, Paleo friends?
What's happening is that
plaque is building up,
and these are the folks who
drop dead at the gym at 39.
Boy, he was lean
and he looked really good,
but, where is that cholesterol going?
It's going into your artery walls.
So, I believe these Paleo folks are
setting them-self up for an epidemic
of clogged arteries, colon
cancers, autoimmune diseases.
This is not a healthy diet.
We are not carnivorous apes.
Humans' closest
living relatives are chimps
who get 97 percent of
their calories from plants
and the remaining three percent
mostly from insects.
Comparing the anatomy of
true omnivores like bears
who eat both meat and plants
to frugivores like primates
who eat almost exclusively plants,
the differences are pretty clear.
Frugivore teeth have flat
molars for chewing plants,
where omnivore teeth are serrated
for stabbing and tearing flesh.
Frugivore jaws can move forward
and back and side to side,
omnivore jaws cannot.
Omnivores have much stronger stomach acid
for digesting meat compared to less acidic
stomach acid of frugivores.
The intestines of frugivores
is nine times
their body length compared
to three times for omnivores.
This is because meat
will putrefy in the gut
unless it is
moved through quickly.
If humans were
indeed true omnivores,
we would need to change our physiology
and appearance quite a lot.
But, we fit every
requirement of a frugivore.
We may behave like omnivores, but,
anatomically, we're frugivores.
Human beings, unlike bears and
raccoons and to some extent, dogs,
don't have that mixed
anatomy and physiology
that you see in the true omnivores,
and thus, we are not true omnivores.
In humans, the canines
have become really small
and rounded and actually function
like accessory incisors.
They're utterly useless
for ripping and tearing
anything other than
an envelope.
So, the idea that the mere
presence of the canine
somehow means that we're
supposed to eat meat is silly.
[Kip] He was right.
I always thought my canines
were for meat,
but, what kind of animal could
actually kill and eat raw
with these tiny teeth?
The thought alone
was disgusting.
I mean, everybody loves
a smoothie made with fruit
and even some vegetables.
But, if you think about putting a
fish or a piece of beef in a blender
and grinding it up, the thought
is absolutely repulsive.
[Kip] All these diseases
I had learned about
were from eating a diet our
body wasn't designed for.
What would happen if we
started eating a diet
our body actually was
designed for?
The data is crystal clear, that you
can stop and reverse heart disease
with plant-based diets,
scientifically shown, I've
seen it in my own patients.
People who adopt low
fat plant-based diets
can actually reverse
their heart disease,
and that literally means
watching the plaque
start to go away, something
they didn't think could happen.
My experience
with patients is
and the studies show
that when people adopt
a fully plant-based diet,
their cholesterol levels
plummet within a few days.
And if you do blood test
in a couple of weeks,
you'll see dramatic
improvements.
Yes, your numbers
are gonna look great
within a week or, two, your cholesterol
can come crashing down, in fact,
if you're on medications,
your doctor may have to
pull off your blood pressure medications
so your blood pressure don't drop too low.
Because it can work too good,
like the side effect is
not having to take drugs.
[Kip] In a groundbreaking
study published by
Dr. Esselstyn following
patients suffering from
cardiovascular disease,
99.4% were able to avoid
major cardiac events
by going plant-based.
'Cause it's not just heart disease.
It's hypertension, it's diabetes,
it's strokes,
it's heart attacks,
it's several of
the autoimmune diseases,
lupus, asthma,
GERD, osteoporosis,
there's a multitude
of diseases.
Even rheumatoid arthritis,
it can be so dramatic
when you see these poor souls
just absolutely crippled
with rheumatoid arthritis
go plant-based, and then they
come off their medication.
I wanted to follow
up with Jane Chapman
who had been suffering
from severe osteoarthritis,
and I could not believe
what I saw
after only a few weeks of
fasting and changing her diet.
Those are so amazing to see you
like this only a few weeks later.
I know!
From going from the walker,
needing wheelchair
assistance at the airport
to strolling down the street,
enjoying the fresh air, the sunshine.
Two weeks, it's all it took, two
weeks to get off all the meds
and start to
feel the inflammation
just kind of
drain out of the body
where the movement
was much easier.
Just a lot of healing
occurred very rapidly
just by doing the right
things for your body.
When you're treating
diseases with drugs,
you know there's one drug
you take for cholesterol,
a different class of drugs you
take for high blood pressure,
different class of drugs
you take for diabetes,
but, with diet, a plant-based
diet affects all these diseases.
One diet to kinda
rule them all.
[Kip] The impacts of eating this
way go far beyond ourselves.
By getting rid of heart
disease alone,
we would save up to $48
trillion in the USA,
three times the US GDP.
Conditions like
high blood pressure,
you don't have to take the drugs the
rest of your life and be sick forever.
What you can do
is live in such a way
that it gives the body
a chance to heal itself.
We took 174 consecutive patients
with high blood pressure.
And 174 people were able to
lower their blood pressure
enough to eliminate
the need for medication.
For inflammatory bowel
disease like Crohn's,
the best remission rates ever
achieved through plant-based diet.
MS, multiple sclerosis,
the best results ever achieved
compared to
any medical, surgical,
any kind of intervention
was a plant-based diet.
You can see that with
every sequential reduction
in animal products,
people live longer,
they have less heart disease, they have
less cancer, they have less diabetes.
You can actually take human cancer
cells, put them in a petri dish,
and you can drip the blood
of those eating vegan,
get about 72% suppression in
human prostate cancer
cell growth in vitro,
they wanted to try this again
with women and breast cancer,
so they said, "Let's see what
a plant-based diet can do."
After just two weeks,
their bodies cleaned up.
You dropped their blood
on the same carpet
of cancer cells, you can
clear off the whole plate.
This is just after just two weeks eating
healthy, which raises the question,
what kind of blood do
we want in our bodies?
My background is in industrial
and systems engineering.
And that was my career
path for a long time until
I got thyroid cancer,
and everything
changed from there.
I decided that I wanted to try
alternative methods and treatments
rather than have surgery
and have my thyroid removed,
which meant I'd be on medication
forever, and I didn't want that.
I just started reading
on how a plant-based diet
can heal the body and it has
worked for so many people.
So, I immediately just switched to a
completely whole food plant-based diet.
After a year, the cancer
was completely gone.
And my thyroid had
shrunk to normal size.
And I was completely
free of that.
[Kip]
This was tough to believe.
Couldn't this all just be from eating
healthier, though, like no sugar?
Turns out Dr. Walter Kempner
from Duke University
back in the 1940s was
reversing some of our
worst killer diseases
with diet alone.
And the diet he was using was
not only strictly plant-based
but, it was made up of white
rice, fruit and table sugar.
And he was reversing diabetes, he was
reversing malignant hypertension,
reversing heart disease,
the diabetic complications,
reversing diabetic blindness.
So, these people basically had
death sentences, went to him,
and were given
basically sugar.
You know, this horrible diet,
but, it was strictly plant-based.
[Kip] If this information had
been around since the 1940s,
why don't
all doctors know this?
We're not taught about the power
of food in medical school.
No one is taught that
the changes that
we make with our diet
are probably the single most
powerful thing we can do
to determine our destiny.
It trumps our genetics.
Why isn't your doctor
telling this?
Odds are your doctor
never learned any of this.
In fact, there's even a bill introduced
just mandating physicians get seven hours
nutrition training every couple of
years, just to kinda stay on top of it.
And who came out against that?
The California
Medical Association.
Even the family physicians,
the surgeons,
all the mainstream medical
groups came out opposed.
It's seven hours.
That's a lot.
Even if it's over
one four-year period.
So, they're not just kinda neutral,
but, they're actually actively opposing
nutrition education.
Ironically, when patients
come to doctors with questions,
they assume that the doctor
knows something about nutrition
and so it's kind of
a double whammy
that doctors haven't been
taught much about nutrition.
[Kip] Why don't we hear
about this from dietitians
when nutrition is their
entire specialty?
Turns out the American Nutrition
and Dietetics Association
puts out nutrition fact sheets written
by the industries themselves.
The industries pay $20,000 per fact sheet
and explicitly take part in writing them.
So, you can learn about
eggs from the egg industry.
You can learn about lamb
from the lamb industry.
This would be like
learning about the benefits
of smoking from
the tobacco industry.
When people are eating meat, I
think of it as a bit like smoking.
It's sort of Russian roulette.
You may not get diabetes, but
your chances of getting diabetes,
about one in three.
You may not get cancer, but, your chances,
if you're a man, about one in two.
A woman, one in three.
Your chances of gaining
weight, two out of three.
It's not all diet,
but, most of it is.
The best thing that you
can do to make sure that
you empty all those
bullets out of the chamber
and not taking a risk
with your health
is to get the animal products out
of your diet and eat healthy foods.
I came to TrueNorth to
help me with my asthma
and to lose a little
weight, and it's amazing
just in two weeks
of changing my diet,
don't have to take
any asthma medication,
no antidepressants,
no pain medication,
no heart medication, nothing.
No medications at all.
And it's really,
it's just incredible.
I was taking oxy and Advil, and I
was taking 800 milligrams of Motrin
three times a day
just to get through the day
because I was
in so much pain.
- And now, nothing.
- Wow.
- Nothing at all.
- Two weeks.
Two weeks, 14 days.
All that medication,
you're completely off.
Completely off everything.
It's just been so
frustrating to me because
I went to so many
different doctors for help,
and I tried so many different
medications to help me with my asthma
and nothing helped, and
I was stuck on the couch
for the last 10 months
unable to breathe,
and now in two weeks' time,
14 days,
I'm off my medication.
And I can breathe and I
feel good, and I can walk.
My life has changed
and it only took
two weeks of whole
plant-based diet.
- That's incredible.
- Yeah.
That is incredible.
It really is.
- That's amazing.
- It really is.
I feel so blessed and so good and
just so happy to be doing this
and I'm hoping that
I can be a role model
for other people
and not be pushy about it.
Because everyone's gonna
do it in their own time.
But, thank God my time is now.
That's pretty cool.
Thanks.
Thanks!
[Kip] As powerful as Amy's story was, I
knew for some, eating a hundred percent
plant-based would
still seem extreme.
I think there's the sense that
everything's okay in moderation.
Right? But we haven't seen
that moderation works.
There really isn't a study that shows that
by eating meat and eggs in moderation
you can actually turn your heart
disease around and get better.
But, I know people who have given
up meat and they felt sick.
Yeah, it's unlikely
that anybody's symptoms
are caused by dead
decaying flesh deficiency.
The lack of highly processed
animal food products
in the diet is not gonna be
associated with the causal
factor by why they're sick.
There is gonna be a reason
why they're not feeling well,
but, that's not gonna be
one of them.
So, I've had people go vegan, and they
come back to me and they're like,
"I'm hypothyroid and my doctor
says I'm hypothyroid because
"plant-based diet
makes you hypothyroid."
I'm like, so what does your doctor tell
all his meat eaters that are hypothyroid?
What's in animal flesh or dairy
that you can't get in plant-based?
Cholesterol.
Heterocyclic amines.
E. coli, you know,
if you think about it,
there is nothing in an
animal-based diet
that you can't get in a
healthier form somewhere else.
The only other vitamin
is vitamin B12.
It's not made by plants,
not made by animals either,
made by little microbes
that blanket the Earth.
So, because of the way we
live in our sanitized world,
unless you're eating
bacteria-contaminated foods,
we need to get a source
of B12 from somewhere,
and so the healthiest,
cheapest, safest source
is to get a vitamin B12 fortified
food or vitamin B12 supplement,
not to get it
from meat and dairy.
[Kip] What about people who say they have to
eat meat for their blood type or, their genes?
It's just like I need
meat because I'm a Capricorn
or I need meat 'cause I have an A plus
blood, it's like what do you say?
No one has to eat meat. There's
no vitamin, mineral, nutrient
that you can't get from
non-animal sources.
Valentine's Day,
I decided to go vegan
and give up all meat, which
was never in my thoughts
in a while million years,
but I've heard so much success
from people that are vegan.
And so I gave up all
animal product whatsoever,
I've lost 29 pounds,
I've been able to
cut my meds in half,
I've been able
to cut my insulin in half,
and now I'm going for the moon,
I'm going to go cut it all out.
In the last six weeks, we've
just had three grandchildren.
And my ugly face
is going to be around
to see 'em graduate from high school
and college. I'm gonna be here.
My mission is to let everybody
know you do not have to suffer
from diabetes and cancer
and heart disease
because someone
in your family had it
or because the doctors are telling
you this is what's gonna happen.
You can take charge
of your health
and have a positive
outcome just like I did.
The reason I'm so
committed to this is
my grandmother had diabetes, and
I didn't know what I know now
about healing the body.
And if I did, I feel like
she could've lived at
least a few years longer.
And so it's in her honor
that I do what I do.
If I could save someone
else's grandmother,
aunt, uncle, father from that.
So, I'm excited about getting
the message out there.
[Kip] There's a common belief that
eating plant-based is expensive.
Not at all. It can be done
in a very inexpensive way
where you buy foods that are in
season and you shop in the bulk bins
and that saves a lot of money.
You can eliminate
a lot of your expenses
on your grocery bill by
not buying meat and dairy
because those things
are expensive.
Our meal plan for our family of four
is $25 per person in the family.
20.64 is your total.
[Kip] 20.64? Whoa.
That's for an
entire week of food.
[Kip] An exploding
movement of elite athletes
are utilizing vegan
diets to heal injuries,
speed recovery times and
enhance their performance.
Before I was vegan, I was only bench
pressing 315 like five times.
Then, after going vegan,
I was doing 400.
425, 465, and I was
like, oh my God,
this is amazing, I'm vegan
and I'm bench pressing
465 pounds,
this is ridiculous.
And as soon as I went vegan,
tendinitis started disappearing.
My strength in my right
arm started coming back.
High blood pressure
was going down.
You can't be strong and be dying
on the inside, that's not strong.
That's weak.
That's really weak.
Because yeah, you look big
and strong on the outside,
yeah, big man, no, but, your
heart's crying for help,
on the inside you're dying.
I'm a professional parkour athlete, a
two-time world free running champion,
and more recently
I got into Ninja Warrior
where I'm captain of
Team Europe as we won
USA versus the world.
For something like Ninja Warrior
and parkour, specifically,
you really need to have a good
strength to body weight ratio,
so I was carrying mass
that I really didn't need.
And when I went vegan,
I lost 15, 20 pounds.
I was more agile, I was more efficient
and more stamina in my body.
Just that extra bit of pop
that I didn't have before,
it just gave me
that extra strength.
This is a vibrant way to live.
It can enhance you
as an athlete, for me,
a hundred percent better
athlete than I was before,
it's unlocked a whole new
chapter of my training.
The science is there,
the health is there,
the athletes are there proving
that you don't need to eat
dead animals to be strong,
to be healthy.
I started working out
when I was 47 years old.
All the muscles you see,
I gained as a vegan.
I gained 15 pounds of muscles on my body,
eating all plant-based and vegan foods.
All the aches and pains in
my body, it just went away.
Because I'm not ingesting
so many inflaming foods,
the acidic foods
that animal products are.
Gorillas, rhinos and elephants, they
all get their muscles and strength
from eating plants.
That's what I do.
[Blanco] I travel all around
the world for my surfing,
and I've always been
able to eat vegan.
I feel like if you want something
you can make it happen.
I just don't make any excuses. I would
never not be vegan now that I know
all the benefits and now that I
know how it feels to be vegan.
Every aspect of my life has been
improved by adopting this lifestyle.
I feel better, I perform
better athletically,
I sleep better, my energy
with my kids is better,
my focus at work is better.
Everything is better,
my skin cleared up.
I've kept myself trim for
nine years now doing this.
All I can tell you
is that I felt
and I continue to feel better
than I ever felt before.
My friend Jason Lester and
I were the first people
to do this challenge
called Epic Five,
which entailed
doing five Ironmans
on five Hawaiian islands
in under a week.
An Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim
followed by a 112 mile bike
and then running a marathon
26.2 miles after that,
so we did five
of those in a row
on five different islands
in a little under a week.
Did you almost die?
No. We didn't die.
So, I guess the famous question,
where'd you get your protein, man?
From plants!
[Kip] Like so many people,
I was looking for excuses
not to change my diet.
But, once I finally did,
I felt liberated.
Within days,
I could feel the blood
running through my veins
with a new vitality.
Within weeks, I felt a transformation
throughout my entire body and mind.
Not only could I survive on a
purely plant-based vegan diet,
I could thrive.
I felt amazing.
I competed in my first
marathon in six years,
training half the amount and beat
my personal record by 23 minutes.
Less than a month later,
I did my first full Ironman.
Although I could possibly
get away with eating
a little bit of meat and
dairy without ill effects
to my personal health, I could
no longer willingly support
an industry I knew was
causing so much suffering
to communities, families
and all life on the planet.
A whole new world opened up.
I felt whole again.
Connected to a greater sense
of what true health is.
And where true health doesn't end
with me, but begins with us.
If people adopted a plant-based
diet, the changes we would see
in our individual health, in
our national health situation
and in this physical,
environmental world we live in,
would be so profound.
Today, you can say,
I'm not gonna
eat that stuff anymore.
It's the one thing that I
can do myself personally
to make a difference.
It will give you a greater sense
of well-being and happiness
when you know that one, you're
not destroying your health
every time you sit down and eat,
you're not promoting cruelty,
and you're not
damaging the Earth.
I don't want my gains to be at the
detriment of the planet of other things.
And yet I'm not weaker,
I'm stronger.
That's the beauty of it,
when you're altruistic,
when you make choices for
the greater good of others,
it's comes around benefits me as well.
It benefits us all.
Studies show that we can not
only survive but we can thrive.
I just feel this is a great way to
live, not harming other beings.
When you can be
healthy and happier.
I love it!
It's a great life.
I never thought that I could
feel this good at this age.
And I just want everybody
to feel this way.
I feel like a 20-year-old,
I'm almost 50.
Nothing tastes as good
as healthy feels, basically.
And so the choices that
we make every single day,
day in and day out
around our food
has the capacity to bring us true
health and optimal wellness.
Not just individually,
but collectively
as a species
and for our planet.
We're not gonna live forever.
But while we are alive,
we can live well.
And for me, as a doctor,
that's what I wanna see.
Where there's a will,
there is a way.
And I believe that.
[Latin music playing]