Documentary Film PLANEAT
Where have we gone wrong? Why has the death rate from heart disease and cancer exploded in recent times? Why are the ice caps melting, the oceans dying and the forests being cut down as we produce the food necessary to support our burgeoning populations? This powerful documentary film inspires us to make the right food choices—choices that can dramatically reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, protect our environment and make our planet sustainable while celebrating good, healthy food.
The documentary film PLANEAT is based on the ground-breaking research of T. Colin Campbell, M.D., Gidon Eshel, Professor of Physics and Geosciences, and Caldwell Esselyn, MD. PLANEAT is the story of three men’s life-long search for a diet, which is good for our health, good for the environment and good for the future of the planet. With an additional cast of pioneering chefs and some of the best cooking you have ever seen, the scientists and doctors in the film present a credible case for the West to re-examine its love affair with meat and dairy. PLANEAT shows how the problems we face today can be solved, by transitioning to a healthier plant-based, whole foods diet.
We can make this happen!
Film Length: 72 Minutes
Originally Released: 2011
How to Watch the Film:
Stream PLANEAT here
See it on Amazon
Watch it on the Gaia Channel
Here’s more about the Science in PLANEAT
Want Some New Recipes?
Check out http://planeat.tv/your-plate
Be Part of the Change! Here’s how!
- Reduce and eliminate your consumption of meat, dairy and eggs – all animal products
- Buy, prepare and cook more whole plant-based foods and dishes at every meal
- Ask your local restaurant to provide more whole, plant-based options on the menu to choose from
- Ask retail stores to provide more vegan plant-based alternatives to animal products
- Ask your government to introduce policies that promote sustainable diets and food
- Ask your government to support and help subsidize smaller, local, organic farms instead of heavily subsidizing Big Ag – industrial animal agriculture and industrial farming
Quotes from the Film
Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics
“The choices you’re making about what you eat are ethical choices and decisions – it’s one of the most central ethical issues, we do it three times a day.”
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, PhD, Co-Author of The China Study, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University
“Meat, dairy and other animal-based foods have all the factors that create the growth and development of cancers. These kinds of foods are like fertilizer for cancer. I will predict that people that eat animal-based foods are going to have health problems.”
“Plant-based diets consume dramatically less land, release dramatically less reactive nitrogen, and emit dramatically less greenhouse gasses than the animal-based diet.”
“Plant-based diets are where the health is, animal-based diets are not. But on a plant-based diet you must be using whole foods with the food intact. It’s about whole foods and whole grains, not processed grains.”
“Diseases of affluence are typically heart disease, cancer, and chronic disease. Diseases with high blood cholesterol levels – blood cholesterol levels increased the more animal products were consumed. Blood cholesterol levels go down, when less animal products were consumed.”
“The average American diet, releases into the environment about 3 to 5 times the nitrogen versus a plant-based diet.”
“Raising animals causes a lot more environmental issues – including dead zones in oceans. The Gulf of Mexico just off the southern U.S., is where the draining of the heartland from raising animals in the Midwest, goes – into the ocean. Every year the Gulf has a dead zone, it’s quite vast – the waters have no oxygen and it kills all the life in the ocean. One of the main causes, is the discharge of Reactive Nitrogen from raising animals.”
“The large-scale problem has to do with the cows, and manure management. Large-scale feeding operations contribute to the scope and scale of the dead zones, like conventional farming does.”
Dr. Caldwell Esselyn, M.D. – Cleveland Clinic Foundation
“If these cultures, which eat a plant-based diet, and have no coronary heart disease, then maybe we could arrest and reverse the heart disease in people that eat an animal-based diet by feeding them a plant-based diet. So we did a study where coronary heart patients were put on a plant-based diet and we carefully monitored their health, and found after several years, 17 of the 18 patients had no further coronary events, but the one that returned to animal products – had another heart attack and bypass surgery.”
“Some athletes who run marathons are so unhealthy due to the foods they eat. Certain foods injure endothelial cells – including dairy, eggs and meat. These animal foods cause endothelial disease and dysfunction.”
Richard Peto, Professor Epidemiology, Oxford University
“The research chose 65 Chinese counties and collected data from 1000s of Chinese citizens. One study that really stood out was between heart disease and blood cholesterol levels. It’s not normal for the heart to degenerate; the Chinese had very little cholesterol in their blood. If you eat mostly plants, you’ll have very few heart attacks in middle age.”
Martin Ping, Hawthorne Valley Association
“Small scale organic farming may save the environment, but won’t be able to feed the world.”
Chef Downes, Pure Food & Wine
“We get back 1/3 of the food value we feed animals based on all the grains we feed them. A person consuming an animal based diet causes the use of twice the amount of land versus a person who eats a plant-based diet. Every acre devoted to food production is an acre that is not devoted to biodiversity and wildlife. You lose tens of millions of years of genetic knowledge when you lose the wildlife.”
Film Credits
Directed and Filmed by: Shelley Lee Davies / or Shlomi
Executive Producer – Christopher Hird
Based on the research of: T. Colin Campbell, Gidon Eshel, Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.
Production of Studio at 58 and Dartmouth Films
