- What's going on, YouTube?
Klaus here from Plant Based News.
In this video, we go through six criticisms
of "The Game Changers", which has just come out
and had a fantastic reception,
but we'll see in this video
some of the keto, meat-based advocates don't like it.
And we're gonna talk to James Wilks,
the producer of the documentary,
about some of the criticisms, starting with "Men's Health",
who did a piece a couple of weeks ago.
Hope you enjoy.
(air whooshes)
- The "Men's Health" article
started off saying that the whole film
was built around the study about the Roman Gladiators,
which I came across.
And so therefore, said that basically,
so they said it wasn't a study,
they said it wasn't peer reviewed,
there was no control group,
and it wasn't published in a peer review medical journal.
Well, first of all, there was a control group,
there was a study and it was published.
The research was published
in two peer reviewed scientific medical journals.
And then second of all, the whole film wasn't based
on the findings of the gladiators.
That was just really an inciting incident,
for me to start looking into other research.
But the "Men's Health" article goes on,
it's extremely biased,
and if you look at the author of the article,
first of all he sells two books,
heavily promoting a meat-based diet,
then he interviews two experts,
you know, one of which had pretty poor credentials,
the other one is funded by the meat industry.
He's actually paid, as a paid spokesperson,
by the Beef Checkoff Program.
So you've gotta dig in
and see what are the motives of the people,
also sells a book, you know, promoting a meat-based diet.
So, you've got to go look at where the funding's
coming from and who's influencing these articles.
Since then, Dr. James Loomis,
the former team physician for the St. Louis Cardinals
and St. Louis Rams, who is featured in the film,
came out and wrote a rebuttal.
"Men's Health" sort of had to tuck their tail
between their legs and make some edits to their article.
- They actually changed their article?
- They have edited the article, but not really, you know?
They've made a couple of changes, but it was pretty weak
and they certainly could have made more.
- The second kind of criticism of the film from a few people
is being that the athletes, some of the athletes in the film
didn't actually build their muscle
and their physiques from vegan food.
Like one of the quotes from somebody was,
"Arnold Schwarzenegger would never be Mr. Olympia
"with potatoes, lentils and tofu."
Do you give any credibility to these kind of criticisms?
- You know to me, it feels like it makes sense,
but when you think about it, it really doesn't.
So all protein originates in plants,
and animals are just the middle man,
so where did that protein come originally?
That's the macronutrient that people are worried about.
Well, the animals that you're eating,
they got their protein from the plants,
so I just really don't see a good argument for it.
You know, I used to think
that you had to eat animal foods to get the protein,
but when you start realizing this middle man concept,
and the fact that all that protein does originate,
and you wanna get it from the source, right,
'cause the animals are doing you a disservice.
They're robbing the food of fiber and fiber nutrients.
They're concentrating the toxic heavy metals
and the pesticides.
And they're adding in inflammatory mediators,
which are not good for athletic performance
and they're not good for health.
- The next criticism was misleading use of information.
I think you've covered some of this,
but one of the criticisms was, "There are no qualified
"and experienced registered dieticians in the film."
- Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know that is a concern.
We've gotta remember that
the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,
which gives the qualification for the registered dietician,
is funded by industry, as well.
So if you look at the bottom of the handout
in the educational materials for registered dieticians
during their degree,
when it says you should have three servings of dairy a day,
at the bottom of the handout it says,
"This handout sponsored by a national dairy council".
So you've got to really look
at where the funding's coming from again.
We're being misled and it's not just the general public,
it's also the registered dieticians, as well.
But when you look at the people that we've got in the film,
I mean, you can get one doctor or one dietician
to say anything you want,
so we went to the world's leading
nutrition researchers and anthropologists.
So, you know, we had Dr. Walter Willett,
who was the Chair of Nutrition at Harvard at the time,
the most published nutrition researcher in the world.
Dr. Richard Wrangham,
who's the Chair of Anthropology at Harvard.
Let's see.
Dr. Aaron Spitz, who's the Lead Delegate of Urology,
for the entire American Medical Association.
Dr. Robert Vogel, who's the Co-Chair
of the Cardiovascular Committee for the NFL.
Dr. Kim Williams, who's the President
of the American College of Cardiology.
So not only did we take the preponderance of evidence
for the science, or anything that we quoted in the science
was based on the preponderance of evidence,
but we also interviewed the world's leading researchers.
You know, you can try pick apart anything.
- [Klaus] How did he do that?
'Cause you obviously wanted to make it
evidence based, factual, and entertaining.
Entertainment is a big part of it, right,
- Yeah. - 'cause you wanna draw
people in and show people the amazing stories.
How difficult was it to choose which doctors to put in,
when there's such a finite amount of time?
- Yeah, it's tricky, right, 'cause there's some really good
doctors in the plant-based space,
like Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Campbell,
but those sort of people have been seen a lot,
and they're also very well known,
and they're very sort of in the plant-based movement.
- Yeah, they're perceived as being entrenched
in that kind of mindset.
- Right, and so the general public that aren't plant-based,
might go, "Ah, well yeah, they're biased
"because that's their point of view".
So we just thought we'd go to, you know,
not that they're biased at all anyway,
but people might think that.
So we just went to literally find the world's best,
you know, go to Harvard.
Go to the Chair of Nutrition at Harvard,
go to the Chair of Anthropology at Harvard,
and ask them their opinions.
And there's consensus, we're built to eat plants
and it's better for us.
You know, Dr. Walter Willett,
again, the Chair of Nutrition at Harvard,
at the time that when we filmed,
said that when you look at dairy consumption
in prostate cancer,
that there is a pretty clear causal link.
So to have someone,
one of the greatest nutrition researchers on the plant,
say there's not just a strong correlation
but there's a causal link between those two
is really incredible.
I mean, he couldn't be saying those things
if there wasn't sufficient data,
he'd be putting his job on the line.
- I think what you said refutes the fourth point
I've got down, which is a criticism which is too agenda led.
For example, a quote from somebody online is,
"There's fear mongering around fat
"and it's clear plant-based agenda".
- Well, I don't know where they're getting the point
about the fear mongering is fat,
because we're certainly not anti-fat, I'm not anti-fat.
It's not, people focus too much on the macronutrient ratios.
High-fat, low-fat, high-carb,
low-carb, high-protein, low-protein.
But the reality is it's the quality
of the protein that's more important.
So Harvard did a meta-analysis last year,
on low-fat, low-carb diets
and what they noticed is if you took carbohydrates
and you replaced those in the diet
with fats from animal sources,
your increase of risk of death went up by 18%,
but if you took those carbohydrates out of your diet
and replaced them with protein and fat
from plant-based sources,
your risk of death went down by 18% from baseline.
So it's not about high-fat, low-fat, high-carb, low-carb,
it's about the quality of those nutrients.
- So the fifth, kind of main criticism from people
that watched the film, the nay-sayers
and the keto, the meat-based kind of people,
the shock-jocks that wanna hate on the film,
one of the things they've talked about
is kinda general conspiracy theories, like to give a quote,
one person said, "It's full of mostly former athletes
"that probably just want a paycheck".
Does being plant-based, or in the documentary
that you've made, result in them getting more money?
Were these people paid?
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, was he paid to be in it?
- No, I mean, first of all, none of the people
that were in the film were paid to be in the film.
Second of all, James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Chris Paul, Novak Djokovic,
don't make a penny from being in the film.
Even if the film made lots of money,
those executive producers are not making a dime.
They did it because they believe in the project
and they believe in plant-based eating.
- Sure, and I guess some of the people
even funding it are probably doing it,
not because they want anything back,
but just because they believe in the mission, right?
- They're doing it for the social return,
not for the financial return.
- Right.
And so the sixth main point of criticism
was there was a lack of female representation,
which I think is a fair point.
- Yep.
- And you probably got a response to that?
- Yeah, there's definitely a lot more
males in the film, than there are females.
There are some really powerful females in the film.
Dr. Bausch, the eight-time
USA National Cycling Champion and Olympic medalist.
Morgan Mitchell, who's the 400 meter Australian Champion
and Olympian, as well.
And there's also some really powerful females
that we filmed that unfortunately didn't make the cut,
so like Tia Blanco, two-time World Surfing Champion,
or Cara Lange, the youngest person ever to score a goal
in Olympic Soccer, for Canada,
and there's others as well that we filmed,
just unfortunately didn't make the cut.
The reason that there was more men
is because one of the underlying myths,
probably the underlying myth, under all of this,
sure, we've got the myth that you need meat for protein,
and there's not enough protein in plants, that myth,
but underlying that,
I think there's this real men eat meat myth,
and that's evident by the fact that eight out of 10
vegetarians, vegans, plant-based eaters, are female.
You know, fast-food menus are driven by young men.
Young men eat twice as much meat as women.
So there's a lot at play here,
as to why there's a lot more male focus.
(air whooshes)