Olivia Davis

What the Health, released in 2017, is a documentary following a man’s journey to uncover the hidden truth behind leading health organizations, the  impact certain foods have on the body, and the connection between the two. Throughout the film, Kip Andersen, the film's director and main character, finds that meat and dairy contain carcinogens (a chemical also in  cigarettes) which are directly linked to causing cancer. He also finds out that large health organizations, including but not limited to, the American Diabetes Association and American Cancer Society, are sponsored and funded by companies who manufacture products causing the problems the organizations are supposed to be fighting. The organizations were also found promoting these foods, and not including any facts about their dangers on the websites. When confronted and asked to comment, all the organizations refused to speak to Kip, or cancelled after learning what the interview was about. 

 

Kip interviews doctors, researchers, and consumer advocates about what he considers “Possibly the largest health cover up of our time”, to uncover why leading health institutions don’t want us to know their ties to the food and pharmaceutical industries. The movie What the Health was nominated for the Cinema for Peace Award and the Image Award. Andersen, who is the founder of A.U.M. Films and Media, also produced the movie Cowspiracy, which won the Audience Choice Award and Best Foreign Film Award. Both films are health documentaries which have some level of focus on the meat industry. However, What the Health also focuses on other food industries, and their connection to major health corporations. 

 

For my focus area, I wanted to find out which corporate industries have influence on the major health organizations listed in the documentary. I went to the websites of The American Diabetes Association, Susan G. Koman, American Cancer Society, and American Heart Association. As Dr. Kaplan says in his blog post about the film, “All of these health organizations are taking money from companies that produce foodstuffs that are associated with the very diseases these organizations are supposedly fighting. The documentary makes the analogy that this conflict of interest would be like the American Lung Association taking money from the tobacco industry.”.

 

After searching the websites, I found information on all the organization’s sponsors except the American Heart Association. However, for the ones I did find information about, I saw a common theme: they are all funded in part by companies who produce food or medicine, or stores such as Walgreens and Target. Some examples are Pfizer pharmaceuticals, which sponsors the American Diabetes Association; Tyson chicken corporation, which funds the American Cancer Society; and KFC, which sponsors Susan G. Koman.  

 

Kip claims that diet and disease are heavily connected, and that eating processed meat, eggs, and dairy is as bad for your health as smoking. He also claims that by avoiding these products, you can prevent and even reverse chronic diseases. He shows how, by following a plant-based diet, two women who had chronic illnesses and were taking lots of medicines for different problems, became healthier within a short period of time by only changing their diet. By the end of the documentary Kip’s message is clear: become vegan.