If you want a lesson on every way you are being lied to in mainstream discourse, watch this movie. Even in this short trailer you see manipulated language, emotional imagery, pseudoscience, hearsay and plainly fallacious arguments.
For example, they relate how the ancient gladiators ate a MOSTLY “plant based” diet; inferring that a vegetarian diet can help make you a glorious, muscular, fierce warrior. Actually, ancient gladiators were mostly slaves who were subject to absolutely appalling, prison-like conditions and malnourishment. They were fed as cheaply and minimally as possible to keep them alive just long enough to get killed as entertainment. Their owners did not feed them meat because meat was expensive; not because sports nutrition was superior several 1000 years ago. If ever there was a group of people who were literally dying for a piece of meat, it was the gladiators!
So what of the scientific studies? All of the big, landmark studies highlighting the health benefits of a vegetarian diet list “meats” as being hot dogs, burgers, pies, pizzas, spam, salami, KFC and every type of processed garbage imaginable. No surprise, then, that people who avoid all of those foods known to accelerate death and disease – “vegetarians” – do not get sick and die as quickly. But that has absolutely NOTHING to do with meat. It has to do with processed crap.
The trailer shows a strongman suggesting he is as “strong as an ox” because oxen do not eat meat either. An Ox is a ruminant. From its mouth to its anus, every part of its eating, digesting and excretion organs and processes are completely different to a human. The fact that an ox is strong and only eats plants is as relevant as a snake being fast and swallowing animals whole once every few days or weeks. It does not make it the best way for a human to eat. Suggesting a human should eat like an ox to be as strong as an ox is a twisting of logic beyond all reason.
Next they have doctors talking to strength athletes about heart health, and applying standards for non-strength athletes. They show celebrating lower cholesterol, despite ZERO evidence that ever lower cholesterol levels are positive for strength athletes; and good evidence they are negative; just as high cholesterol correlates to increased life expectancy after the age of 65. ‘Normal’ systolic blood pressure in a large strength athlete absolutely correlates to reduced performance. Reducing BMI is the single greatest contributor to improved “heart health”, by mainstream medical measures, and is absolutely the opposite to what most strength athletes want to achieve. So when they say a vegetarian diet is good for ‘heart health’, they actually mean it will make strength athletes measure more like weak, skinny civilians. In other words, it is negative.
The fact that an ox is strong and only eats plants is as relevant as a snake being fast and swallowing animals whole once every few days or weeks. It does not make it the best way for a human to eat.
The fact is, a vegan or vegetarian diet is NOT the optimal diet for sports performance. Read the textbooks from the International Society of Sports Nutrition; the foremost group of sport nutrition scientists in the World. Vegetarianism is a LIMITATION to be worked around; like old age or injury. Sure, a vegetarian could still become a world champion athlete. But Ive met many different World Champion athletes, across a variety of sports, whose diets were absolutely HORRENDOUS. Even I would agree a vegetarian diet would be superior. Diet can BENEFIT an elite athlete; but diet does not create an athlete. Training creates athletes; and god-given talent tends to determine the champions. Vegetarianism is NOT the most nutritionally complete and optimal diet. It is not even meant to be.
Vegan and vegetarian diets are based on ethical arguments around the treatment of animals; NOT optimal sports nutrition. Sports performance is not the point or the goal. And that is fine. Most vegetarians know they need to be diligent to eat certain specific foods to avoid severe deficiencies. So while vegetarianism is better than a diet of meat pies and hot dogs (which, incidentally, tend to contain no actual meat), it is not better than a complete diet for sports performance or body composition.
The fact is, this movie, and all of the recent garbage propaganda promoting vegetarian diets, is part of a larger political agenda being pushed from the UN/IPCC. They are recommending limits and taxation on meat, along with myriad other dystopian policies, entirely for THEIR benefit, not ours. Even if they were telling the truth when inferring deforestation and desertification are caused by farming of animals, and therefore vegetarianism will ‘save the planet’, that argument still does not make vegetarianism a superior nutritional choice; particularly for strength athletes.
If you want to learn the truth about vegetarian diets, do not watch this propaganda. Read ‘The Vegetarian Myth’ by Lierre Keith. https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804/ref=sr_1_1?crid=11C5KEJSDZK1G&keywords=the+vegetarian+myth&qid=1565951021&s=books&sprefix=the+vegetarian+myth%2Caps%2C400&sr=1-1
