What the Health

The documentary opens with a single question: if heart disease, diabetes and cancer are this common, why do the big health organisations not speak plainly about diet. The director calls those organisations, turns up at their doors, shows their sponsor lists and puts the silence he gets at the centre of the film. Its conclusion is unambiguous: give up animal products. Its strength and its weakness are in the same place. Meat and dairy producers appearing as sponsors on institutional websites is a concrete and uncomfortable finding. The presentation of the science, though, runs one way: selected studies are relayed as settled fact, contrary findings are absent, and some comparisons are overstated. That is where criticism from nutrition researchers concentrated. Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn directed, the pair having previously made Cowspiracy together. The structure resembles an investigation, but the conclusion is fixed from the start and the film does not hide it; the aim is to persuade, not to argue. Who it is for: anyone who wants the diet argument gathered in one place in one side's language. Who it is not for: anyone looking for balance. This is an advocacy film, its sourcing is partisan, and its medical claims should not be accepted without checking.