Forks Over Knives

I love groundhogs: especially juveniles.

That's the title of the documentary I watched last night.  I'm not claiming it's the best movie I've ever seen, nor the most compelling, but the basic message is what's most important.  Eating meat and dairy products is bad for your health.  It can lead to the development of diseases like heart disease and cancer.  Eating a whole foods, plant-based (vegan) diet is good for your health.  The movie is similar to Super Size Me (except in reverse), in that several people switch from a typical American diet to this whole foods, plant-based one.  All of them lost weight, felt better, and had more energy.  One of them was a man who was overweight and taking several different prescribed medications.  He was able to stop taking all of the medications and he felt better than when he was on them.  He also underwent a very impressive bodily transformation.  On meat and dairy, he had a typical pudgy, out-of-shape physique.  After switching to the vegan diet, it looked like he was in better shape than a lot of men who are half his age.  It certainly seemed like he was much happier as a result of ditching the meat, dairy and medications for fresh vegetables.
I had suspected this myself for a while.  Be good to animals (by not eating them), and as a result, you'll have good health and you'll be more likely to have a slim body.  Don't care about animals and contribute to their suffering (by eating them), and you're more likely to be overweight and have poor health.  Pigs, chickens, and cows are closely controlled by people.  They don't have much of a chance to strike back at their tormentors (humans).  However, they often end up doing it posthumously by negatively affecting the health of those who eat their flesh.
This isn't about my opinions though.  As this movie shows, several studies support the film's message about the importance of the right diet.  Also, several doctors have found this to be true.  One of these doctors, a firm believer in the evils of a diet which includes animal products, estimated that health care costs, which dwarf the defense budget in America, could be reduced by as much as 70-80% if everyone switched to the whole foods, plant-based diet.  That's not all though.  Switching to this diet is better for the environment.  The meat industry contributes to global warming more than the transportation industry does.  And I've mentioned it before, but it was included in this movie, and it's worth stating again.  Do you consider yourself a compassionate person?  Do you care about people, especially children, who are starving to death?  If so, become a vegan: or at least a vegetarian.  If enough people became vegetarians, then it would reduce the demand for meat, so less livestock would be intentionally brought into the world (for human consumption).  Currently, massive amounts of (vegan) food is grown for livestock.  If we reduce the amount of pigs, cows, and chickens brought into the world (for the purpose of being eaten), then more of the corn, soy, etc. that had been allocated for these animals would now be available for human consumption and could be sent to hungry people around the world.  In short, if enough people became vegetarians or vegans, we could end world hunger.