“What the Health” is a shocking reveal of the correlation between diet and the risk of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes

Do you actually know what you are putting in your body? Is it good for you? Would you change what you put into it if you knew the truth?

I would imagine most people would just brush these questions off, thinking that it is just another typical ploy to get them to stop drinking or smoking or eating sweets. However, in the 2017 documentary “What the Health”, Kip Anderson, a filmmaker, points to research and experts’ advice to say that the most detrimental things that most people are putting into their bodies is not any of those but actually meat and dairy products. 

Now of course, smoking and alcohol and sugar are not great for the body by any standard. The point is that we are taught that these things are the culprits of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer when it really mostly comes from the food groups that are promoted to us by the government that consist of a healthy diet. 

This documentary followed the journey of Anderson as he explored and researched the causes of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. He was motivated by the history of people in his family dying due to diabetes and cancer, including his own father. What he found and the doctors he talked to pointed to diet and the food that people ate regularly as the cause of all of these diseases. 

“The World Health Organization had looked at over 800 studies from 10 different countries, finding a direct link to consuming processed meat and cancer. Just one serving of deli meats daily increases your risk of colorectal cancer by 18%,” Kip says about a World Health Organization’s study on classifying processed meats as a Group One carcinogenic, in the same group as cigarettes, asbestos, and plutonium. 

This find was especially shocking to Anderson because of the fact that on the website of the American Cancer Society, they actually encouraged eating processed and canned meat as a part of a healthy diet. 

However, with each large organization that had contradictory information on their website about diets that were actually bad for those with diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, they declined to answer any questions about the correlation of diet and these different diseases. After being confused and shocked by the unwillingness of these organizations to talk about this correlation, Anderson learns that this is due to the fact that many of these corporations are funded by the very industry’s products that cause the diseases they are fighting against. 

Since he cannot talk to those who run these country-wide organizations, he interviews other experts and doctors willing to talk about the correlation between diet and heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. This is the really enlightening part of the documentary that contains so much interesting and surprising information about the direct link between these two things. 

While also researching the science side of the meat and dairy industry, Anderson also investigates into the environmental damage that the industry is causing along with the negative effects to those people in communities living near farms that raise pigs, cows, and chickens. He also discovers that the majority of these communities are where black or Hispanic people live. The stories of these people and the loved ones they have lost to asthma and cancer from living close to the toxins that are being dumped into the soil and water sources are heartbreaking. 

What I really appreciated about this documentary was that it gave practical resources for helping those who would possibly want to shift to a plant based diet and dispersing myths such as that it is not healthy for the human body, it causes a protein deficiency, or that it is expensive. These are real worries that stop people from changing their lifestyle even if they know the information that the documentary disclosed. 

I would definitely recommend this film to everyone because of its essential information about the correlation between the “recommended” diet components and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. These facts are not put into important organizations websites because the meat and dairy industry doesn’t want these to be common knowledge or they would be out of business. People need to know what they are consuming and how it is affecting their health and life expectancy and make changes that they want to. It is up to people to shift their lifestyle if they so choose but it is essential for them to know the information necessary to make that choice themselves.