Olivia Davis
My film review is over the documentary 'What The Health' by Kip Andersen. It was released in 2017. The film follows a man's research behind leading health organizations, what companies fund them, and why who they are funded by goes against the messages they are sending out.
What the Health: A look at leading health organizations and their ties to the food and pharmaceutical industries
By Olivia Davis
To view my previous draft, click below:
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.
One of the most disturbing scenes of the film takes place in Dublin County, North Carolina. In this area, there is the same number of hogs as there are people, but pigs produce 8-10 times more waste. These pigs are kept in kennels, tightly packed together. Their waste falls through slats in these cages, and then pumped into giant waste pits, which then leaks into the nearby rivers and streams. This unfiltered water is then pumped out onto fields. The result of this process is an impact on the local's health. One example of this is the cases of swine flu that spread around the area, originating in North Carolina. Larry Baldwin, who works with Waterkeeper Alliance, claims that this is a human rights issue, especially because a large number of these hog farms are located in close proximity to low income communities. One local woman who was interviewed even states that the majority of her neighbors, who live by these farms, have asthma or cancer.
Picture this: It's a country road. Just down the street from houses, there are two dumpsters sitting side by side. However, it is not trash that fills these dumpsters. These containers are overflowing with dead pigs, stacked on top of one another, with flies swarming around them, as they wait to be picked up. The truck that picks them up will take them to a processing plant, where they will be butchered and turned into food. This is a real image in the film.
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 these claims by following 2 women throughout the film. In the beginning, these two women had chronic illnesses, which they were taking lots of medicines for. Kip has these women stop taking their medications and start following a plant based diet. He claims that by only changing their diet, they were able to become much healthier within a short period of time. By the end of the documentary Kip’s message is clear: become vegan.
Works Cited
Kaplan, Jonathan MD. A Physician's take on "What the Health" , 2017. Medical Economics, https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/physicians-take-what-health
Belluz, Julia. “Debunking What the Health, the buzzy new documentary that wants you to be vegan.” vox.com, 20 April 2018, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/7/25/16018658/what-the-health-documentary-r
American Diabetes Association, www.diabetes.org
Susan G. Koman, www.komen.org
American Cancer Society, https://www.cancer.org
American Heart Association, https://www.heart.org