Forks Over Knives

I just finished watching the movie “Forks Over Knives”.    This is a movie about two doctors, who have been advocating a plant based with whole grains diet.  They recommend removing all animal products from your diet including meat, chicken, fish, milk, cheese and eggs.  They also recommend removing all oils as well.

They interview some patients of the two doctors who have switched to this type of diet and dramatically changed their lives for the better.   They showed some studies showing cases where adapting this diet will dramatically lower their chances of contracting cancer and heart disease.  Some people even reversed their cancer and heart disease. 

This was a very entertaining movie and is only about 90 minutes long.  It is currently showing for free on hulu.com.   The ironic thing was the commercials that Hulu showed.  The first one was for Dairy Queen advertising their burgers.  They also had one for SweetTarts and for PF Chang’s frozen dinners. 

My main issue with these types of movies is that I usually start to drastically change my diet.  My wife states that we have been down this road before, referring to the infamous incident in 2007 when I decided to go vegan 2 days before Thanksgiving.  That lasted for about two days until Saturday.  She is very supportive of me with my food issues.   Sometimes, I do go over board and it can get to her.

Just today, after finishing the movie, I was whipping up a batch of my famous sweet potatoes and we were discussing how much olive oil to put in it.  She thinks I use too much.  I said how about I use no oil after reading a recipe on the movies website.  She then gave me a look that only a wife can give her husband. She wanted to know if this was because of the movie.   I told her of course not.  A few hours later I confessed and we laughed about it.

If you are planning on dramatically changing your cooking style, I recommend implementing the changes over time.   If you are planning on switching to a vegan or vegetarian diet and you are used to eating meat at every meal, there is a chance it may not stick.   Once, twice or a few times a week, make a vegan/vegetarian meal.  Do not throw out all of your food.  Finish what you have over time.  Once you have a few staples that you make for meals, you change more meals over until you have completely changed your diet.   You will have a much better chance of success.

What was the craziest diet you have switch to, to improve your health?