What the Health
Filmmaker Kip Andersen turns his camera on the American food system, asking why the same government agencies that write dietary guidelines also promote meat, dairy, and eggs. He interviews doctors, dietitians, and public health researchers who argue that processed and animal-based foods drive diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, while nutrition groups and health charities stay quiet because of financial ties to the industries they should be scrutinizing. Andersen visits factory farms, sits down with representatives from the American Diabetes Association and the American Cancer Society, and pushes back when he gets evasive answers about sponsorship money. The film builds toward an argument for a whole-food, plant-based diet as the alternative the medical establishment won't recommend. Critics have disputed some of its statistics and the way it frames correlation as causation, and the film doesn't hide its advocacy. What it does clearly is lay out, with named studies and on-camera confrontations, why its makers believe dietary advice in the United States is compromised at the source.