There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the “vegan” documentary The Game Changers. In fact, during my office hours, it seemed ...

real-doctor-reacts-to-the-game-changers-quotveganquot-documentary

Real Doctor Reacts to The Game Changers &quot;VEGAN&quot; Documentary

a debate is contentious a debate is about winning a conversation is about truth-seeking together when i saw the debate devolve into personal attacks i felt like that was a loss for me as a viewer hey guys i want to talk about this new netflix documentary called the game changers it's all the buzz in town my patients are asking about it you're asking about it so i decided that i'm going to make a video on the topic but instead of overloading you with a ton of information i decided to source three of the most popular questions that you have and three of the most popular questions that my patients have and i'm going to answer them within this video full disclosure not only did i watch the entire documentary but i also watched both episodes of the joe rogan podcast the first where he had chris cresser on essentially debunking the documentary and then the second one where he brought in james wilkes from the documentary to have a debate with chris kresser about those qualms that's in total about seven hours of footage i watched it all i wanted to make sure i came prepared to answer all of your questions i want to start off this video by giving you my baseline thoughts on the subject going into watching the documentary so that you can be aware of my cognitive biases now we all have a bias in fact when i watched a debate between james and chris on rogan's podcast i saw their cognitive biases showing and i think if you're more aware of my cognitive biases and where i'm starting my starting point is you'll be able to make a better judgment as to whether or not the information i'm presenting you is accurate or where it's coming from and why i think what i do think as a board certified family medicine doctor who's done a lot of research on the subject the recommendation i give most often to my patients is a whole foods primarily plant-focused diet doesn't mean vegan it means getting the majority of your calories from non-animal sources but it also means it's okay to eat fish meats albeit red meat in moderation and we're moving to the greatest extent possible processed meats now in this diet you'll have a lot of fruits vegetables healthy fats like avocado nuts olive oil things like that it's actually quite close to the mediterranean diet we have to remember though that nutrition advice should be really given on an individual level so i don't recommend that to all my patients that's sort of my general advice and then we make little changes based on that person's body their health their conditions and what they hope to achieve so while i've never explicitly recommended the vegan diet to somebody if a patient comes in and wants to i make sure they do it to the best of their abilities supplementing blood testing and making sure they're planning to get the right macronutrients let's get into my thoughts before we jump into the questions i'm really happy this documentary was made it's debunking a lot of the myths we've been propagating for such a long period of time like we need to eat a certain amount of meat in order to put on muscle a lot of these have been proven to be untrue and i'm happy that this documentary is putting it out there in fact i'm happy that we're discussing nutrition we're actually learning about what constitutes good research why we're so misled with the certain headlines that we see in media i love that we're discussing this i mean this video rogan's video the documentary itself all the response videos this is all healthy debate that we need to do more and more often in nutrition so that we can raise the bar on the type of research we're doing we can actually make a meaningful impact on the future generations with nutrition research that being said the science of the documentary is pretty solid uh all the facts are well stated there's sources for everything that appear on screen i love that in fact in a lot of my videos i try and put you know links for further reading from major organizations like who cdc or if i'm referencing a specific study i put that study in there as well the one thing that i will say is i do feel it was made from an activist scientist standpoint the reason i have to make that a point is they didn't present any counter-arguments and when you're making a documentary i think it's in the documentary's best interest if the documentary's interest is truth-seeking to put all perspectives in there at least the most common ones so that we can as viewers decide for ourselves what's real what's not now the experts that they had in the film are credible experts they're some of the leading experts in the world but when you only have them speaking about it and no one else from the other side of this conversation you're leaving a void in there and it feels like it's been done intentionally from an activist standpoint now i don't want to put blame on anybody or assume why that's being done i just think that it would have been a more complete picture had we heard from the other side of the conversation about perhaps how much meat is healthy is no meat healthy and sort of get a little bit more details on that now james wilkes who's the star and co-producer of the film explicitly stated that his goal with the film wasn't to make everyone go vegan it was to reduce the amount of animal products that they're taking i love that goal i think we should all be thinking about that especially for the environment's sake but what it feels like in watching this film and speaking to many people about it my patients included the vibe that everyone gets from watching it is that eating any amount of animal product is incredibly unhealthy and we're going to be getting into that as we move forward in this video but i feel that if your goal was to send one message but in reality or from a practical standpoint you're sending a different message i think something needs to be adjusted when you're comparing animal food companies to tobacco companies and we're talking about dangerous words like inflammation cancer and referencing that only in terms of animal products you're essentially scaring people off in totality from it at least in their minds so we need to be really careful from not only are we presenting all the information factually but also how is it being understood by the audience let's start off with the youtube questions the first one was the most upvoted and it was is it true that all protein comes from plants and that animals are just a vehicle for that i think when we're making these types of reductionist statements we can really get lost as to the practical value of them let's use a metaphor all people were once lower forms of organisms because of evolution so we were once bacteria doesn't mean we're technically bacteria not really and the fact that a cow can eat a ton of grass and make it into a lot of protein it does not mean that we can eat that same grass and turn into a lot of protein there's differences between animals and humans so don't know what to make of that statement i hope that answers your question question number two will going vegan give me more energy first of all it depends what are you switching from and what are you switching to if you're switching from a very unhealthy let's say the american standard diet where you're eating a ton of burgers and pepperoni pizzas and things like that and then you switch to a healthy vegan diet you're gonna feel like you have a lot of energy but now on the other hand let's say you were eating already a mediterranean diet and now you switch to a vegan diet but one that's unhealthy you're eating a ton of refined carbs processed foods that are still vegan you're not going to see a dramatic increase in energy in fact your energy levels may fall i don't think it's a magic pill like in the documentary some of the athletes said oh before i was performing so horribly and now all of a sudden i have more energy if they were eating healthy before and switched to a vegan diet i don't know how much we can say that it was the vegan diet that caused it directly perhaps in individuals we can say that but not as a general rule we haven't seen the evidence for that question number three how did you feel about the experiments that they showed in the film that was probably one of my biggest issues with the film i understand what they're going for they're trying to debunk a lot of these myths surrounding performance and masculinity and how you can be vegan and still do well in all these aspects of your life and that's true but i wish they didn't resort to a lot of these examples that weren't scientifically meaningful like what does it mean to see triglycerides floating in your blood what does it mean that these three gentlemen didn't have the proper erections at night when they ate something else it's not a controlled experiment there's so many variables at play and the sample size is tiny like i understand why they had to do these visual demonstrations because it works really well in the documentary in fact when producers call me to do morning shows or daytime talk shows they always ask me to bring in demonstrations just like that or little experiments but unless i can say they're scientifically valid or whatever it is i'm proving makes sense i don't feel that i should do it because i don't want to mislead the audience by any means all right let's move on to the patient questions these are the ones that are the primary questions that seemingly everyone had the meat of the discussion if you will question number one i'm looking to put on muscle and i want to go vegan can i still put on size absolutely yes and i think the strength of this documentary was debunking that old myth that you couldn't be vegan and put on muscle you absolutely can you have to plan accordingly supplement accordingly making sure that you meet all of your amino acid demands but outside of that make sure you have a good workout routine i'm actually going to be showing you my workout routine in a video coming soon are there any health concerns with going vegan and can we all go vegan the vegan diet is one that's appropriate for all life stages they said in the documentary and i couldn't agree more with that it's not necessarily the first diet that i reach for when i recommend it to my patients but it absolutely can work it's just important that it's appropriately and well planned and i know in the joe rogan debate james made a point in saying all diets need to be well planned this is true but the vegan diet does require more effort in that you really need to plan your protein your supplementation and you generally don't have to do that if you're eating an omnivorous diet if you do happen to go vegan but do it in an unhealthy or an unplanned way you could actually do serious harm to your body you can develop b12 deficiency which will lead to anemia you can develop other vitamin or mineral deficiencies most notably vitamin d and calcium and also if you're trying to put on muscle if you're not planning your protein sources correctly you could also get in trouble in that way but for most people that shouldn't be much of a problem and the mack daddy of them all the final question the question that so many people have asked me the question i've even pondered after watching the documentary myself are meat or animal products as unhealthy as they say and do i need to get rid of all of them to stay healthy i rarely am so blunt in answering questions like this because there's usually a lot of nuance but the answer is no i think the documentary went one step too far in fear-mongering uh people to eliminate meat out of their diets completely in fact james on the joe rogan podcast said that frankly that he believes that no amount of meat is safe or healthy i don't think that's the case i don't think evidence has proven that to be the case i think we just don't know enough i think the research that we have is really flawed we have industry funded research underfunded research research that's done with questionnaires my answer would be if you're eating a healthy whole foods plant focused diet and you eat some meat i think that's a very healthy diet i think eliminating meat completely is a personal choice i don't think it's one that you normally have to make for your health albeit nutrition is an individual thing and if your doctor recommends that there might be a different conversation for you but there's one thing that i love about this documentary that i want all of us to take away from it we should all reduce the amount of animal products we're eating we're overeating calories as is specifically animal products processed animal products we need to get this garbage out of our diet it's one of the main reasons obesity is overflowing in the united states in addition to refined carbs so yes we should lower our reliance on animal products we should be eating more fruits and vegetables and in fact me doing whole30 right now one of the takeaways that i've gotten from this is that i should be eating more fruits and vegetables and that i have been relying on getting all my protein specifically from animal sources so this documentary did bring awareness to that and i'm really proud of it for doing so just saying that we should remove all animal products completely as james said not a huge fan of that i don't think there's evidence to back that up i think when you compare a vegan diet to an american standard diet it does an amazing job of overturning illness even but when you compare a vegan diet to someone who's otherwise healthy and omnivorous i've never really seen evidence to show that vegan diet is superior and the interesting part about it is most if not all major organizations agree with that james made a really big deal in the podcast saying how chris cresser's views on nutrition were not matching scientific consensus well james views aren't matching scientific consensus i haven't seen any guidance from the who or cdc to say that we should not be eating animal products altogether i've seen that they recommend we should increase our vegetable and fruit intake decrease our processed food refined carbs our red meats or processed meats but to say to remove all animal products not scientific consensus i want to leave you with some thoughts that i had about the joe rogan podcast where james wilkes and chris kresser debated about the documentary i know joe rogan framed this as a debate where chris debunked the documentary james saw that episode was very upset about it and he wanted them to sort of battle it out or duke it out with their information i don't necessarily want to see a debate from these two gentlemen i want to see a conversation a debate is contentious a debate is about winning a conversation is about truth seeking together when i saw the debate devolve into personal attacks i felt like that was a loss for me as a viewer i think that these guys are so smart they've done countless hours of research between them and they can bring a lot to the conversation and i think both of these gentlemen agreed more than they disagreed and it didn't come off that way by the way they were talking with one another it almost seemed like they disagreed on everything it's not true and i think their only real point of contention is should you go a hundred percent animal product free or go mostly animal product free and i think that's such a my new difference that our research with the low quality that it is right now i can't really tell which one of them is right so i still say to my patients that they should eat a predominantly plant-based diet with some animal products in there removing processed foods as much as they can i put together a playlist for you of all my nutrition videos including going vegan for 30 days so click here and if you have any residual questions leave them down below in the comment section because i want to answer them

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