Forks Over Knives is definitely a documentary that challenges what we believe to know and gives us questions to ask ourselves. Many of us, myself included, have grown up believing that animal meat in moderation was an essential part of our diet. Meat from animals contains “necessary” proteins that we need to be healthy and to have a balanced diet. I put the word necessary in quotation marks because the whole purpose of the documentary is to convince the viewer that animal meat is not only not necessary but that it also has damaging and long lasting effects on our health.
People are very biased and opinionated. It is very difficult to change people’s minds about what they already believe to know. However, this is one of the main purposes and goals of most documentaries. This film is attempting to be influential and to be able to affect people’s lives in hopefully positive ways. The filmmakers have good intentions in this film. Before viewing the film I was discussing it with Jonathon and he was telling me how watching the film would make me probably not want to eat meat anymore. I told him that probably would not happen and I was right. But it did make me consider the option of cutting back.
I would consider myself a fairly healthy person. I try to eat well and exercise. But I do not know everything, and this documentary brought up a lot of good questions to consider such as am I really being healthy and how can I prevent potential illness by taking into account the information the filmmaker is giving me. Although I will continue to eat animal meat, the documentary was very helpful, informative, and positively motivated. The film made me consider the state of our nation and the many health problems that are associated with it. It is important to constantly share information to help others and I think this documentary did a really nice job doing this.
First of all my name is Jonathan, and second of all ... I'm not sure what else. Anyways I haven't seen this film yet but I'm going to soon... hopefully. Not trying to be a complete skeptic (because I actually don't like people who just dismiss everything) but even though the film may contain a lot of "facts", just reading my reading for 293 that films don't necessarily have to be truthful. And having studied science, science isn't also always exact a+b doesn't always = c and science changes, anyways I'm gonna watch that film now and then maybe I'll have a better opinion.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you on the whole not giving up meat entirely thing. After watching this documentary, I am more open to trying out a vegan lifestyle sometime in my life. And maybe not completely permanent either, just for weeks at a time to decrease my eco-footprint on the world. This documentary definitely had to face a goliath in the sense that their argument is definitely not popular and goes against many misconceptions that we NEED cow's milk for calcium and we absolutely must have meat to get protein.
ReplyDeleteI think that anyone who watches this documentary should give this way of life a fair fight because, hey, the statistics are in favor of this argument. I didn't felt villain-ized when I watched it because I wasn't a vegan and I think that is where they were most successful. They realized that the world is just mis-informed and need enlightening and so they approached their audience with a sense of informing and educating, and not attacking. But there was also a sense of urgency with their horrific statistics about how America is going downhill.
I'm glad you enjoyed it as much as I did (and as much as I hope Jonathan does)