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Documentary Film: Forks Over Knives – The Extended Interviews

by Jennie Richards · Published October 27, 2014 · Updated April 13, 2019

Forks Over Knives – The Extended Interviews is a follow up to the earlier film, Forks Over Knives, featuring the same leading medical, scientific and nutrition experts in the 2011 movie.

This film highlights the numerous medical and nutrition research studies that have been conducted revealing a link between an animal-protein, meat-based diet to many degenerative and chronic diseases that are plaguing people in the U.S. today, including: breast cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer, heart disease, Multiple Sclerosis, diabetes and obesity. Additionally, the film highlights the research and medical evidence that shows how transitioning to a plant-based diet can prevent, halt and even reverse many of these diseases.

Featuring leading experts:

Colin Campbell, PhD
Caldwell Esselstyn Jr., MD
Neal Barnard, MD
John McDougall, MD
Pam Popper, ND
Doug Lisle, PhD
Terry Mason, MD

Some quotes from the film:

T. Colin Campbell, PhD (Nutritional Scientist at Cornell University)

The question is not whether we do or don’t get cancer, but how we promote those cancer cells to grow through our diet. Nutrition is key and evidence shows that with an animal-protein diet we “turn on” cancer cells much more rapidly.

The nutrients typically found in plants work to prevent cancer and the nutrients found in animal protein work to promote cancer cell growth. People who consume a plant-based diet that is low in saturated fat and high in fiber is associated with a lower risk of cancer.

Our research on animal protein actually turned on cancer. A plant-based diet has the ability to repress all types of diseases. This plant-based effect can happen very fast, reversing disease, you especially see it with heart disease.

The link between dairy consumption and osteoporosis is evident in research. The higher the consumption of animal protein, the higher the rate of bone fractures. There’s also published evidence – the higher the calcium intake, the higher the rate of osteoporosis. Exactly the opposite of what the dairy industry has told people. And the link is strong between the high protein in milk and prostate cancer.

Caldwell Esselstyn Jr., MD (Foremost researcher in the field of plant-based nutrition; head of the Breast Cancer Task Force at the Cleveland Clinic, and top surgeon)

In 1995, he published his benchmark long-term nutritional research on arresting and reversing coronary heart disease in severely ill patients using a whole food, plant-based diet, very successfully.

When the Nazis invaded Norway in 1939 and took their farm animals away – heart disease decreased dramatically, until post 1945 when Norway started raising animals again and eating more meat, you see a dramatic increase in heart disease again starting in 1946, post-war.

The seismic revolution with health comes from a lifestyle that protects people from chronic illnesses. Just don’t eat the foods that give you these diseases.

Dr. Neal Bernard, MD (Clinical researcher, author, health advocate and Founder of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine)

The problem with cow’s milk is that it’s highly linked to prostate cancer, it’s not the fat, it’s how the milk affects the human hormones.

Milk is the biggest source of saturated fat in a child’s diet. Migraine headaches, arthritis, allergies–they’re all are attributed to cows milk.

100 years ago the average American consumed less than 4 pounds of cheese per year; but today, Americans consume 32 pounds of cheese. The dairy industry wants you to eat more cheese. The U.S. government has been running the dairy industry for a very long time–saying “drink more milk, eat more cheese, consume more dairy!” But this is at extreme risk to one’s health.

If women cut animal fat from their diet, and boosted their plant consumption and exercised, we would significantly reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer.

School lunches – the government contracts for school lunch programs go to the meat industry, promoting meat, instead of promoting fresh vegetables and plants. It’s pure politics, nothing to do with health. The AG industry–dairy, meat and sugar get all the government subsidies.

John McDougall, MD (Physician and nutrition expert)

For all successful large populations of people, if you look at recorded history, live on a starch-based diet – potatoes, sweet potatoes, barley, rice, grains, and corn. Most calories always come from starch, then vegetables are added around the starch.

Oil is liquid fat, and it causes cancer. Dairy is liquid meat, fat and cholesterol. Dairy protein hurts more – it’s the number one cause of food allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, lupis, and many other auto-immune disorders. Dairy is not health food, it is not good for bones. It’s a block of yellow fat that increases the risk of your dying.

The problem is the food. Fix the food and you fix the problem. Doctors have been given the wrong tools (nutrition and food is not typically their expertise), we need to use the tool that fixes the problem – you fix the problems with food, diet, nutrition – and then patients will do well.

In Dr. Roy Swank’s Study in 1991 where he pioneered a radical approach to treating multiple sclerosis using diet, giving MS patients a plant-based diet and decreasing consumption of animal fats, could arrest the disease.

If people eat some version of the standard American diet of meat, cheese, milk, fat, refined foods, junk foods — it’s just a matter of time when that something will go wrong with their health.