The food documentary from 2017, What the Health, was created to bring light to issues such as how what we eat affects our risk for disease and how a vegan diet could solve all of it. Spoiler alert: they think it will, which is an oversimplified view of the world.
It may seem out of date to review a three-year-old film, but as veganism is gaining popularity, and Netflix is gaining the viewership bump of everyone being home during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s worth revisiting.
The film was co-directed by Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn, the two creators of the successful documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.
However, the film has been broadly criticized for its inaccuracies and bias. By searching simply “What the Health” on Google, the second result is an article titled “Debunking What the Health, the buzzy new documentary that wants you to be vegan” published by Vox.
Early on, Anderson claims the consumption of processed meat is in the same classification of carcinogens, or cancer-causing substances, as tobacco. However, he then questions, “Was this like I had essentially been smoking my entire childhood?”
The answer is: health no. It is far from that.
Anderson stated he gathered this data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization (WHO), an easily accessible source.
Both tobacco and processed meats are classified as Group 1 carcinogens, along with over 100 other substances, including alcoholic beverages and outdoor pollution.
In the film, Anderson plays it off as if Group 1 carcinogens are the most dangerous cancer-causing substances, but this is not exactly true.
According to the WHO on a “Questions & Answers” page published in October 2015, “processed meat has been classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking…but this does NOT mean that they are all equally dangerous.”
The answer continues, “The IARC classifications describe the strength of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than assessing the level of risk.”
Evidently, the amount of research behind both the effects of tobacco and processed meats is high, classifying them in Group 1 together. Either’s risks are not equal to the other.
In another comparison of food and tobacco, Anderson states that eating one egg is equivalent to the effects of smoking five cigarettes each day.
Throughout the entire film, Anderson withholds information and conveys complete bias.
The majority of his sources only supported his argument for veganism and spoke only on the negative effects of animal products. In essence, Anderson’s “research” was cherry-picked.
Of course, not everything in Anderson and Kuhn’s film is inaccurate. Many environmental and industrial factors they cover are important, such as the harmful effects of food pollution.
AZoCleantech, an editorial team that researches and informs about clean technology, describes food pollution as “any unwanted element, such as a toxic chemical or biological contaminant, found in food that is either not native to the product or at levels that are significantly greater than normal.”
As factories pump out toxin-filled clouds, much of the pollutants land in the farms that grow food for the animal and meat industry. The plants are then fed to the animals which, in turn, climb up to the humans.
Overall, it is difficult to say whether What the Health is a “good” documentary. There is some evidence behind what the documentary is preaching and provides insight on the “behind the scenes” of the food industry, but it is misleading at many moments and that undermines its overall message and credibility.
