Before we go any further, let’s cover the things that basically all nutritionists, doctors, and scientists can agree on. When discussing the movie’s content, I will be starting from these as basic assumptions. Vegetables are good for human beings. Fruits are no slouch either. Both in pure volume and as a proportion of one’s overall food consumption, eating large quantities of refined sugar is harmful to the body. Consuming disproportionately high levels of foods high in calories and low in nutrition (for example, eating a fast food meal and no veggies or fruit most days) can cause health problems. The spread of obesity in America needs to be addressed through concerted educational efforts and a reorientation of people to their food. Before anyone gets any ideas about throwing a beet-related tantrum or trying to frame this review as advocating that we all eat a cow a week—just don’t.

I generally do not discuss the plot of an entire film in a review to avoid spoiling a movie for my readers. In documentaries, I try to look into the facts and outline the arguments. If this is an issue for you, this would be a good time to stop reading and scroll to the last two paragraphs, in which I give my general summary.

Forks Over Knives makes these assertions ad nauseum through the entire movie:

A whole-foods (not refined), plant-based diet is the best for people.
It prevents and can reverse cancer and heart disease.
Meat, animal products, refined foods (including sugar and oil), and high levels of protein cause and/or contribute to cancer and heart disease.
They assert that animal proteins, both muscle and byproduct, are harmful. This includes meat, dairy, and other animal products. The doctors in the movie contend that the high concentration of protein in milk feeds cancer and tears away endothelial cells in blood vessels, making a person more vulnerable to heart disease. Huh? That is a pretty radical claim to make without outstanding evidence. Luckily for us they did set out to provide us with evidence—or should I say “evidence”?

The foundation for the conclusions presented in Forks Over Knives is built by Cornell University professor T. Colin Campbell, PhD, and Caldwell B. Esselstyn, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic. Campbell conducted several studies and research experiments outlined in the book. Esselstyn treated and continues to treat some of his patients with strict changes in diet.

Campbell explains a study he conducted on rats examining different concentrations of casein, the main protein found in milk, in which he found that different concentrations resulted in different cancer rates. 20 percent casein rates resulted in higher rates of cancer than 5 percent casein rates. Based on that and an observational study of Filipino families, he launched a humongous study of the diet of rural Chinese people and wrote a book, The Diet, Life-style, and Mortality in China: A Study of the Characteristics of 65 Chinese Counties, by Chen Junshi, T. Colin Campbell, Li Janyao, and Richard Peto. After examining over 300 factors of thousands of people, he concluded that a whole-foods, plant-based diet is best and eating meat or animal products is bad because it causes cancer.

After examining information about heart disease rates in Kenya and Papua New Guinea against the rates in America, and after conducting numerous bypass surgeries, Esselstyn decided to conduct a small study of fewer than twenty-five people to change their diet to plant-based whole-foods with small amounts of dairy. Of the people who stayed in the study, all survived much longer than was expected (many were close to death because of severe cases of heart disease). He continued the study and now has treated 250 people using the diet.

I am not a scientist, nor am I a member of the medical field (unless lifeguarding as a teenager counts), but I spotted some serious problems with the reasoning here. Campbell equates all animal proteins to casein; furthermore, he