Farm group, others dispute claims in What the Health

The U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance is joining researchers and nutritionists in questioning claims in the Netflix movie What the Health.

The new documentary recently was debunked by the International Food Information Council Foundation. “The film focused on promoting a vegan, plant-based lifestyle while denigrating all animal products including meat, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy,” said Dr. Megan Meyer, IFICF science communication director.

“It’s sad that moviegoers believe the statements in this movie instead of learning the real facts,” said Tony Banks, commodity marketing specialist for Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, a member of USFRA. “People need to realize that the makers of this movie have an agenda, and that’s to cut out all animal products from our diet.”

What the Health co-director Kip Andersen asserts that meat, fish, poultry and dairy are fattening up Americans, giving them cancer and Type-2 diabetes, and poisoning them with toxins. But critics say the film selectively analyzes nutrition research to demonize particular foods and praise a particular diet. In the film Andersen cherry-picks studies about nutrition and exaggerates their findings or reports them out of context to drive home his case for veganism, Meyer explained.

For example, the film claims eating processed meats is as bad for you as smoking. Using the World Health Organization’s 2015 review of the link between processed meat and cancer, Andersen claims WHO views bacon as a food on par with cigarettes and asbestos when it comes to causing cancer, and that eating a daily serving of the stuff increases your colorectal cancer risk by 18 percent.

The WHO did not say that eating meat was as deadly as smoking, Meyer countered. It did find that eating hot dogs, bacon and lunchmeats can slightly increase the risk of colorectal cancer, but only if one eats it every single day. A person’s lifetime risk of colorectal cancer is about 5 percent, and the WHO found that eating processed meat daily appears to boost a person’s risk of cancer by 1 percentage point.

“So enjoying the odd strip of bacon or salami sandwich isn’t going to change your lifetime cancer risk, but eating the stuff every day could increase your risk of this one particular cancer by a single percentage point,” she noted.

Additionally, the movie incorrectly links antibiotic use on farms to possible swine flu rates. Meyer, who holds a doctorate in microbiology and immunology, said “stating that the use of antibiotics will increase viral infections is just plain wrong. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections. The swine flu is a virus. Antibiotics do not work on viruses. The end.”