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[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
[SIREN WAILING]
[GRANT] One day, when I was a relatively young 58,
I found myself in the back of an ambulance.
I'd had a heart attack.
[PARAMEDIC CHATTERING]
My story starts six months earlier,
at a company soccer match.
That's me getting the first goal, just saying.
But I also ruptured my Achilles tendon,
which meant six months of inactivity.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
And then it was Christmas,
with all of its fat-filled delicacies.
- What are we trying first? - Yes!
[WOMAN] Make some room for pudding.
I should have been okay
as my cholesterol was considered to be good,
and even my doctor credited my wife's cooking.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
But the next day, when I had my first run at the gym,
I noticed a chest pain, which led me to my doctor
and then to hospital.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
A year later, when listening to my radio, along came Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.
[CALDWELL] That's due to nitric oxide.
[GRANT] To my amazement, he said that heart disease
can be stopped, even reversed, by removing all animal products
and refined foods from my diet.
And I realized that being told animal fat is okay is a lie.
[TRAIN ROARING]
And now, I'm on a quest
to discover the truth
behind the big fat lie.
[BRIGHT MUSIC]
So there I was, in hospital, awaiting the surgeon's verdict.
Like many men in their 50s, I received a shock.
In the angiogram theater, I was told that the damage to my heart
was too great for stenting,
and I required open heart surgery.
My response was, "You're joking," but they weren't.
Responding to my horror,
the surgeons came up with another idea.
- Well, we're here again. - [GRANT] What they came up with
was a double T stent,
something they rarely try.
Fortunately, as it turned out, it wasn't needed.
I'll enjoy it all right.
But I still left hospital ten kilos
overweight and with four stents within my chest.
And this wouldn't be the last time I'd see an hospital ward.
Four years later, I was back.
But I'll get to that later.
When I found out, by simply keeping to a plant-based,
oil-free diet, I could have avoided my heart attack,
I was very angry.
And I want to find out why the Ministry of Health hadn't warned me,
and I won't let go until they front up.
Oh, hi, Chris. I sent you a request for an interview a while ago.
I'm just wondering how your response is going?
Yeah, I came back still requesting an interview
with someone from the Ministry of Health.
Is that not possible?
All right, well, you realize in the...
We didn't get off to a great start,
- but then the topic changed. - [CHRIS] Well, that...
[GRANT] I found it chilling that he was attempting to divert me
to one of New Zealand's largest export products.
[GRANT] I got the feeling that he wanted me
to present meat in a positive way.
[GRANT] However, not taking no for an answer
seems to have paid off, as we've ended up with a possible way forward.
Right, well that's encouraging.
Okay, well, how about I'll send you another email
showing, telling you exactly what I'm going to do,
and you can respond to that?
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
[GRANT] This book's all about eating.
Green peas are a vegetable.
They're really good for you.
Do you like green peas?
I want green peas.
[GRANT] Yes, I want green peas, too.
They're yummy.
What about this, eating spicy curry, mmm?
Yeah, curries are good, although,
that one doesn't look so hot.
See it's all that meat there that causes all those problems.
Eating lots of cakes, mmm, look at that,
see, that makes you all look silly.
Cake, yeah.
Okay, so we know that a whole food,
plant-based diet is good for you.
But why change?
What's wrong with meat and dairy?
New Zealand scientists have led the world
in exposing a real problem with our national product,
cow's milk.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
The A1 versus A2 milk story stretches back some 20 years.
Back then, studies came out comparing health in various countries.
This produced a startling graph that showed
that countries with high A1 milk consumption
also had high rates of Type 1 diabetes.
The European cows that produce the A1 milk
are the black and white ones,
while the brown cows produce the considered safer, A2 milk.
We concluded that A1 milk
was correlated with diabetes in children.
That's diabetes Type 1.
Crudish type of study, it gives an indication
that something might be going on, and for Type 1 diabetes,
the relationship was very, very strong.
[GRANT] These results could not be ignored,
and led to confirming research that came together in a book that shook the dairy world.
[GRANT] Why did you write that book, Devil in the Milk?
I became aware that there was some
very interesting evidence linking A1 beta casein
to a number of health conditions.
[GRANT] And his research showed that pieces of protein from A1 milk
could be getting through the human stomach
to harm the pancreas.
For Type 1 diabetes, what we do know for sure,
is that particular cells in the pancreas get destroyed.
[GRANT] Type 1 diabetes is irreversible.
The conclusion that A1 milk
could be causing Type 1 diabetes is alarming,
but back in 2007, the government's response was,
"Move along, there's no problem here."
There's no public health risk directly with milk,
and we don't mind if you drink A1 or A2,
so long as you just keep on drinking milk.
[GRANT] And they referred to a report that they had commissioned
a few years previously.
We looked at this back in 2003, 2004
when we commissioned Professor Swinburn.
So at that stage, the evidence was not hugely robust.
There were just a few studies, these association studies,
and while they were very suggestive,
they were not confirmatory in any way.
[GRANT] In fact, the result of Professor Swinburn's report was that all is okay.
That was the way the New Zealand authorities
chose to present Professor Swinburn's report.
[GRANT] But time is a wonderful thing, and today,
Professors Woodford and Swinburn have teamed up
to together produce a paper
that identifies A1 beta casein
as a dominant causal trigger for Type 1 diabetes.
And we're saying, "Hey, let's have another look
at all this evidence,
because it really is very intriguing,
and potentially quite convincing."
So this latest paper was an update on the research that's happened since.
- [GRANT] What did you find? - Well, in general I have to say that these pieces,
as they are slowly becoming evident,
are making up a pretty confirmatory picture,
that exposure of A1 beta casein,
to children who are susceptible to Type 1 diabetes,
may well be a risk factor or trigger for Type 1 diabetes.
[GRANT] No fewer than four professors
co-authored this paper.
So, what's New Zealand's main milk producer,
Fonterra, been doing about this?
It was Fonterra that was involved right early on,
or its predecessor, the New Zealand Dairy Board,
in research linking A1 beta casein to Type 1 diabetes.
[GRANT] In fact, their research was so convincing
that they took out a patent to identify
the likely safer A2 milk.
The patent said that the A1 beta casein
was linked to heart disease and Type 1 diabetes.
[GRANT] Does that infer that Fonterra knew
about this problem 20 years ago?
Yes, so I did say in my book that I thought
Fonterra was less than transparent.
[GRANT] In fact, there's a sentence in the book suggesting that there could
actually be some legal class action because of their prior knowledge.
Yes, so I have alluded to that
at various times in writing.
Should Fonterra come out publicly and say
there's a risk or this is going on,
that's a big risk to their business, actually.
So, they are taking a low-risk approach, which is to say nothing.
[GRANT] The government should at least be saying
breast feeding women should not drink cow's milk,
because there's a danger that diabetes
might be a result in the baby?
For the government, this is a big challenge
of a communication, because the evidence is not yet certain.
[GRANT] But to wait, people could become Type 1 diabetic.
They could, they could.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
[GRANT] While the case against A1 milk
is now well developed, it should be noted
that a recent Norwegian paper found that
offending pieces of protein can also be released
from A2 milk, albeit in a lot less quantity.
[ANNOUNCER] What you know about calcium,
[GRANT] Fonterra makes strong health benefit claims for milk.
- [ANNOUNCER] Juice being the only drink with vitamin. - [GRANT] But it's been
long accepted that milk fat contributes
- to heart disease. - [ANNOUNCER] With cream in it.
[GRANT] According to Professor Woodford,
A1 milk does so even more.
Also, there was evidence
that it was linked to heart disease.
Wherever we had a high intake of A1 beta casein,
in those countries, we had high levels of heart disease.
[GRANT] The lady across the road tells me you're a vegan, is that right?
-Yeah, yeah plant-based diet. -Plant-based diet. Why plant-based?
I had a bad car accident in 1987, they were going to amputate my leg.
Since giving up dairy, the biggest increase in my well-being
was the fact that I'd lost about 40% of that pain out of my joints.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
- [GRANT] You like milk? - Yep.
What sort of milk, cow's milk or oat milk?
[GRANT] Yeah, but cow's milk is not good for you.
Cow's milk's got bad stuff, I think.
Dog's milk [LAUGHS].
- Dog's milk? - [WOMAN LAUGHING]
[GRANT] What we eat is critically important,
as is the nutritional advice we get from our doctors,
which I've found to be sadly lacking.
Well, what should have my doctors said to me?
For a start, drastically reduce
the amount of saturated fat in my diet.
So, high saturated fat is not good for heart disease.
If a person had a heart attack
and is eating pretty much what everybody else is,
then that may not be a good enough diet.
[GRANT] So what would be a good enough diet
to prevent a heart attack?
Well, in one of the most remote parts
of little old New Zealand,
a whole food plant-based team set out to find out just that.
The study's object was to see if ordinary people
could lose weight and improve their health
simply by eating a plant-based diet.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
Doctor Nicholas Wright was one of the study leaders.
I'd been wanting to do a research study for quite a few years.
So throughout medical school, and then those experiences working overseas and seeing
some whole food plant-based lifestyle programs in action,
I actually wanted to see how could we do one in New Zealand.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] Another key player was Doctor Luke Wilson.
He got frustrated with patients returning
time and time again and not getting well.
Nick and myself were working in the hospital in Gisborne
and we would see people with cardio vascular disease,
and you'd be doing all these things for them,
but they'd still come back.
The research is overwhelming
and once you start to read it,
it's kind of hard to not make some changes.
And so, I think it kind of
came out of the feeling from all of us.
We had this information, how could we
sort of give something back to the community that we were living in?
The first time that I really got any success
in the hospital was with Larry.
One of the questions he had as he said, "Can I have kale
if I'm eating like this?" And I said, "Yeah, you can have kale."
He's like "Great, 'cause I've just planted some at home."
And he's like, "What about quinoa?" And I was like, "This guy,
it's going to work out for him, you know."
And I was like, "Okay, that's quinoa is also good."
[GRANT] The Broad Study's program director is Canadian Morgen Smith.
I manage the programs here, so I've been managing the research since it started.
[GRANT] So you had more people wanting to be on the program
than you could take?
[MORGEN] Yeah, still so still now
we're still running programs
and we still got a waiting list.
I was worried about
breaking the news to them that they're going to
have to give up their meat and their dairy
and all this stuff, but a lot of them
very enthusiastically just said,
"Yeah, I'd love to give it a shot."
[GRANT] Once published, this study recorded
significant weight losses, cholesterol drops,
and improvements in diabetes,
and gained better results than similar studies
that didn't require participants to limit
the food they ate, or to exercise.
I was like, this is something
- that we can get people to do in Gisborne. - [GRANT] Yeah.
If we can make it happen there,
we can pretty much make it happen
wherever we wanted to in the country.
[GRANT] Following my heart attack,
and before I became plant-based,
I signed up for a series of cardiac recovery classes.
Healthy eating made up just 7% of the course.
I was given a list of saturated fats to limit,
and unsaturated fats to choose from,
which I found confusing.
I left the class with no clear idea
on how I should modify my diet.
How many pizzas do we have? Must have at least half a dozen.
For my wife and I, it was pretty much business as usual.
Less salami and cheese on my pizza and more oily fish.
But everything else, we were already doing.
A year on this recommended diet,
along with regular exercise,
didn't seem to make much difference.
And comparing how I looked then to how I look now,
I was still overweight, but I didn't stand out, much.
[BRIGHT MUSIC]
Tinkering with my diet made no difference
to my weight or cholesterol.
So when seeking the best advice
on how to prevent heart disease,
the organization most of us would think of
would be the Heart Foundation.
However, their priorities seem to be different,
judging from their phone introduction.
- You're speaking with Katey. - Hello, Katey,
a couple of weeks ago, I sent an email to your CEO, Tony
and to your nutrition manager, David.
[KATEY] No, I'm sorry neither of them are in the office.
Can you ask them to send me a reply?
[KATEY] Sure, no problem, okay.
- Thank you. - Thanks.
[GRANT] So if the Heart Foundation isn't available,
what does a plant-based health consultant say
you should do to prevent a heart attack?
There is only one diet that has ever been proven
to not only prevent, but in the majority of cases,
even reverse heart disease,
and that's a whole food plant-based diet.
- Like banana? - Yeah.
Banana, apple, carrot sticks,
strawberry, broccoli, can you say broccoli?
- Wonder food broccoli. - Coli.
Eggs, don't look at the eggs.
Broccoli's good,
broccoli yeah!
Kaye has a family history of obesity and heart disease.
How difficult did she find this new diet?
I have heart disease in my family.
I've got, my mother died very early,
my grandfather died at 56, my brother died at 52.
I was morbidly obese.
- Less of the genes. - [KAYE] When we were told
what the Broad Study program consisted of,
I was like, oh no, this is going to be too difficult.
And then I woke up the next morning and I thought,
well actually, I can't not do this
if I want to have grandchildren and stuff.
[GRANT] You went back to the doctor?
- He was pleased? - They were amazed.
[GRANT] So do you think you're going to stay on this diet
- for the rest of your life? - Definitely,
it is a lifestyle change.
[GRANT] We've discovered that A1 cow's milk
is likely to cause diabetes.
I wonder what Fonterra, a major milk company, thinks about this?
Hi Emma, I wrote an email a week or two ago now, requesting an interview.
And you suggested that I ring you back and have a chat, so that's what I'm doing now.
[EMMA] I'm presuming that you'd be advocating
a plant-based...
- Yes. - ...diet.
I've seen Forks Over Knives for instance.
Have you seen Forks Over Knives?
- Totally, yes. - Yeah, yeah.
I'm glad that you've seen that.
So you can understand my concern
about being us being involved
if this was a documentary about
the benefits of dairy in New Zealand.
[GRANT] It soon became obvious that they only wanted
to be involved on their own terms.
And she requested more information, which I later provided.
- [EMMA] Something in writing. - I'll do that and hopefully you'll come back with a yes.
- You never know. - [EMMA LAUGHS] Well, we'll see.
[GRANT] But she did say she'd get back to me.
- [EMMA] Try and get you an answer as soon as we can. - Excellent.
Well, I'm still waiting for that answer.
[ENGINES REVVING]
Fonterra also makes strong claims about bones.
The dairy industry in the past has talked about
teenage girls particularly needing to calcium bank when they are young
by drinking lots of dairy, but that's not necessarily the case, is it?
No, I don't think it is at all. And there's one longitudinal study that started in girls
at the time of puberty and ran right through to adulthood,
which showed no relationship between their calcium intake and their bone density.
So I think the whole idea of banking calcium
is probably not true at all.
Despite all this research, the New Zealand milk producers
carry on as if nothing has changed.
They even cynically promote their milk to children.
Milk for schools program is turning five so I'm helping them deliver
the milk to some schools.
[HELICOPTER WHIRRING]
Hi, Mindy, can you tell us why milk
is so important for kids to drink?
Sure Levy, milk's packed full
of important nutrients to help kids grow.
And it's also got lots of calcium, too,
and calcium's important for healthy bones and teeth.
[GRANT] Well, what about bone fractures then?
Surely, calcium in milk will help prevent them, won't it?
Your studies show that it doesn't help fractures
so, is that true?
We don't see any consistent relationship
between calcium intake and the risk of fracture.
[GRANT] However, an earlier study did show
that Asians and Africans who had more of a plant-based diet
and less of a dairy diet, did seem to have stronger bones.
Yeah, I mean, in fact, if you look at the bone densities
in Africans, their bone densities are higher
than in most Western countries.
[GRANT] So where does the calcium we eat mostly come from?
In Western communities where dairy products
are a major part of the diet,
dairy intake relates very closely to calcium intake.
[GRANT] So, calcium from New Zealand's high dairy intake
doesn't seem to be helping our bones at all.
The implication that if we eat more calcium,
somehow we wind up with more calcium in our blood
and then our bones get stronger,
that's not the way it works at all.
[GRANT] So, if you don't want to get calcium from dairy,
where can you get it from?
But you need to be getting calcium from somewhere,
and so there are other sources as we've talked about.
Dark green vegetables like broccoli and spinach
have calcium in them.
Tofu is a source of calcium.
[GRANT] And are there other downsides
to eating lots of cheese and ice cream?
Our body is set up to make sure
our blood calcium levels don't go too high,
because if our blood calcium levels go too high,
we won't only get calcium depositing in the bone,
we'll get it depositing in muscles and kidneys
and other soft tissues.
One of the other things that happens as we get older
is that we get calcium deposited in our arteries
and that is probably part and parcel
of the process of heart disease.
[GRANT] And cow's milk, used in common products
such as Tip Top ice cream,
not only contributes to heart disease,
but its dairy products have also been implicated
in another disease, Crohn's disease,
a chronic and long-standing inflammation of the bowel.
And linked to this is a tuberculosis bacteria called MAP.
Mycobacterium Avium Paratuberculosis,
and MAP's easier to say.
It's got particular interest as it definitely causes
a disease in cattle called Johne's disease.
It's a very attractive idea that maybe that's the cause of Crohn's disease in humans.
And I mean the fact that half the dairy herd in New Zealand have MAP might be a surprise.
[GRANT] It's now established that MAP
gets into the human gut via meat,
or drinking water polluted by animal feces... or by pasteurized milk.
[GRANT] The study actually talks about commercial pasteurization methods
haven't been adequate,
or some things get through?
It may do. It's quite resistant to various heat treatments, etcetera
and that's a possibility that it could be
still in the milk supply.
A number of patients, even up to 50% of patients with Crohn's disease,
have this bacteria in resected specimens.
[GRANT] But today scientists are having second thoughts
and are now looking elsewhere for a likely cause.
You're saying in more recent years, some people have gone off the idea?
Most of us in the field have
as the disease progresses and even severe diseases,
it's still very hard to find.
[GRANT] So what's the most likely cause
of Crohn's disease?
Well, I think it's better to say we don't know.
[GRANT] So if they now doubt that this disease-causing bacteria found in milk
is the cause of Crohn's,
what about animal products in general?
I know of several cases where they've cut out
all animal products and they're effectively cured.
Yeah, well, that's good. I mean, I'm very pleased for those people.
[GRANT] And those randomized trials actually taken away all meat?
I don't think there's been a trial for that.
- Well, maybe there should be? - Possibly.
[GRANT] While scientists continue to search
for the cause of Crohn's,
there's still some promising research.
Like how broccoli has been found to be helpful
for at least some Crohn's sufferers.
[GRANT] You've discovered broccoli is a bit of a wonder vegetable, is that right?
To a degree. If you've got the NOD2 variant,
It's not a nice mutation to have.
If you've got it, it's good to find out about it
right at a very early stage,
so that it can be diagnosed and treated.
[GRANT] Broccoli will help that?
Broccoli will help that, if you've got NOD2.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
[GRANT] Nice?
Do you grow strong eating broccoli?
- Grandad likes broccoli. - I love broccoli.
- [GRANT] You like crocodiles. - [LAUGHING]
Right.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
[GRANT] In Auckland, there are two brothers who stumbled across
a way to cure an inflammatory bowel disease
by adopting a plant-based diet.
They made a business out of it.
This all started when my brother
was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
He was on a work experience in Japan teaching English.
And I went into hospital, did a colonoscopy to see what was going on.
So they put me in hospital for about a week.
So he went from about three to four bloody bowel movements a day
when he entered the hospital,
to about four or five weeks later,
30 to 40 bloody bowel movements a day.
During the fifth week, I think, the doctors and specialists said,
"You know, we're going to have to operate. We'll have to do surgery,"
and my mum didn't want that.
She declined surgery.
We were able to do a bit of research
and we found Dr. David Klein.
And so we changed to a whole foods, plant-based diet.
I started to feel a lot better.
My bowel movements came down.
- Ah, yeah, he actually got better in a week. - [GRANT] Really?
I had no ulcers and my inflammation was very low.
- [GRANT] What did the doctors say? - Ah, we didn't actually
tell the doctors that we'd stopped taking the medicines.
[GRANT] While their approach was rather unorthodox,
their results were undeniable.
[SHUKUL] I consider this to be one of the best books
ever written on digestive health.
[GRANT] And the impact of a plant-based lifestyle
can be truly profound.
The thing is, with this kind of change in lifestyle
and improvement in health, people who have been told
that they have absolutely no hope,
they've got an incurable condition that they're going to be living with
the rest of their life,
they realize that, "Hang-on, I've got my life back."
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] And that's what I found, too,
when I gave up animal fats and refined foods.
I got my life back.
Red meat and sausages, World Health Organization came out
a couple of years ago now, said, "They're bad."
Is that a no-brainer to your clients?
People are more likely to believe
things that they want to be true, rather than
to believe processed meat is definitely a carcinogen
and that red meat is most likely to be a carcinogen.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
[GRANT] So, eating meat could give you cancer.
But what about an early death,
what's the increased risk here?
Well, Professor Potter references a recent study.
So they were comparing people who ate only a little bit of meat,
- with people who ate a lot of meat. - Right.
The risk of dying for the highest group
compared to the lowest group was an increase of about 25%.
- A quarter. - Yes.
- That's significant. - Yes.
[GRANT] And there are many other aspects of meat
that make it far from the desired meal of the day.
'Cause these things don't just kill you,
they make your life miserable,
they give you pain, they give you disability.
If you have diabetes, which interestingly,
is also associated with higher consumption of meat,
you can end up with peripheral vascular disease,
which reduces your mobility.
You can end up with retinal disease,
which can damage your sight.
[GRANT] And that's not all. There's more bad news for meat-eaters.
There's also excess risk of respiratory disease,
and liver disease, and renal disease.
[GRANT] And what's amplifying all this sickness
is the fact that we eat a lot more meat than we used to.
[JOHN] The biggest problem is the difference
between the small amount that we've consumed
probably through most of our history,
and how we're now consuming meat
over the last particularly 50 to 100 years.
- [LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC] - [WOMAN] One, happy birthday.
[GRANT] One year into my plant-based diet, I learnt being vegetable-based,
you don't become the most popular person on the planet.
[WOMAN] Well, we're only doing it for you
and your dumb diet, dumb diet.
Is it good?
Not bad.
[GRANT] But experimenting with new foods and recipes
was becoming a way of life.
And while it will take time for my weight
and physique to benefit...
Right, off for a swim.
I was feeling healthy and confident enough
to try a local eight-kilometer fun run.
Thank you for being there.
[LAUGHING]
Six Ks, still feeling good.
Here I am running into the end.
[MAN ON MEGAPHONE] We tied red balloons to make sure
you know where that is, [INDISTINCT].
We continue to move around[INDISTINCT].
[GRANT] We know that animal fat will clog up our hearts,
but how much of the meat we eat is straight out fat?
The authority on this subject is Dr. Murray Laugesen.
He did the original study in 2005.
This study was actually done on behalf of Beef and Lamb, is that right?
- Yeah, yeah. - [GRANT] Sausages, what's the fat content of sausages?
Back then it was 3 to 23% fat.
[GRANT] But since then, there's been an update,
the government's 2016 Food Composition Tables.
And this report added a column, water content.
The question is, if we took the water out,
surely that would increase the proportion of fat.
Do you want to have a look at that and just tell me what you think?
What's your view?
It looks as if the actual percentages
that we measured were including water.
[GRANT] Here comes a chicken.
Oh!
[CHILDREN SQUEALING]
And there's another one.
And they missed that one, too.
Okay, sausages, assorted meats and flavors, grilled,
52% water, must be very soggy sausages.
The fat content has to be at least 40, 43% fat?
Yeah, if you exclude water.
So, that leaves not much for anything else.
[GRANT] A lot of fat.
So people eating sausages for their dinner
may actually be eating close to 50% fat?
The actual amount of fat they're eating
is maybe double what they might read on the container.
[GRANT] I've since had these figures confirmed
by the writers of the Food Composition Tables,
and it gets worse.
Without the water, pre-cooked frankfurter sausages
contain a whopping 62% fat.
That's nearly two thirds.
[GRANT] I don't know if you should be eating hot dogs, they're not good for you.
It doesn't taste very good, it's plastic.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
Well, I'm sure our country's main meat supplier
knows about meat's cancer and heart health issues,
so I wonder what they think.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
Hello, can I help you?
When Beef and Lamb returned my call,
and we got on to talk about red meat and cancer,
she was quick to change the subject.
What about this World Health Organization's view
on red meat, processed meat, and cancer?
She was more interested in finding out who else was on board.
[WOMAN ON PHONE] They don't want to make any comment, Ministry of Health?
[GRANT] Ministry of Health are playing hard to get.
I'm still working at them.
And then we got on to the two tick program,
a recently discontinued Heart Foundation initiative
designed to identify the best in healthy foods.
[WOMAN ON PHONE] So, two ticks was introduced
to sort of identify whole foods,
those that didn't undergo extra processing.
- Right. - So two ticks applied
to fruit and vegetables, meats,
the cuts that met the less than 4% saturated fat.
- Yeah. - And yeah, I'll get back
to you today on what we decide.
Yup, if you did come on camera, you may be the only one to do it
from an industry point of view, and I think there'd be kudos there,
because at least you fronted up.
I think that would be a big tick [LAUGHS].
- Talking about ticks. - Yeah.
And as expected, they turned me down.
But following the call on the 2016 Food Composition Tables,
I identified five products that met the two tick standard.
But of these premium products, when you take out the water,
the total fat content ranged from 12% to a whole quarter.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
Curiously, the 2016 Food Composition Tables
don't list normal mince.
They only mention premium mince,
which is not what most people buy in the supermarket.
Most people buy mince with a lot of fat showing.
[GRANT] In 2005, 20% of normal mince was fat.
Without water, that would be near three quarters fat.
And the fat's percentage of calories would be higher still.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
There are other diets that really push the meat,
high fat Paleo and Ketogenic diets.
Gym instructor Ben Edusei had tried these, too,
but then he had second thoughts.
I'd tried the Ketogenic diet, so the high fat diet
'cause that was getting a lot of publicity.
And I found that I was struggling on that.
At first, it felt great, then within about two weeks,
my body started reacting quite negatively to it.
- Short term, some good things, long term, hmm. - [GRANT] Yeah, not good, yeah.
Luckily for myself, I met Dr. Luke Wilson,
and he had suggested that maybe I should look
to do a three-month plant-based protocol.
Fast forward to the end of the three months,
I got my blood tested, and to my surprise,
my cholesterol went, dropped down to 3.7. It was really pleasing.
[GRANT] And Ben has found a plant-based protocol works for his clients, too.
When it comes to your mobility, which is strength and flexibility,
people are getting more flexible, so they're able to perform
the movements properly.
[GRANT] And he found other fringe benefits as well.
I had also got my sex hormones tested,
and my testosterone had gone up
and my estrogen had dropped, which is quite pleasing.
- [LAUGHING] - [GRANT] I bet.
But what about the Paleo diet,
has it any redeeming factors at all?
I mean, if you look at the Paleo movement, for example, why is it so big?
There's no good research basis for it.
It does have certain benefits
when it comes to weight loss, short-term.
Aesthetically, at least, they get some really good results
from doing those kinds of diets,
which are very bad for your long-term health.
As I like to call it, so benefit to your heart,
your arteries, your pancreas,
and also your kidneys, etcetera.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
[GRANT] Are you going to cook something?
What do you want to cook?
- Hotdog. - Hotdog, please.
[GRANT] No, I don't want hot dogs, processed food.
Oh, you're eating a cucumber, cucumber's good for you, that's fun.
[SIZZLING]
And there's nothing the carnivore meat-eater likes more
than hearing the sizzle of the fat burning on the barbecue.
But this is dangerous stuff.
- Sausages often grilled on a barbecue. - Yep.
[GRANT] The process of barbecuing increases the risk.
Yes, it's high temperature cooking,
the high temperature makes these carcinogens largely.
Both the processing of meat and the frying of meat
has the tendency to increase the carcinogenic content.
The processed meat is preserved meat,
is often using nitrates and nitrites.
Nitrates and nitrites produce nitrosamines,
and when you fry meat, it also produces some compounds
called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,
and both of those are carcinogens.
[GRANT] You've got a sausage with a bit of black on it or a little bit of brown,
brown's better than black?
[JOHN LAUGHS] I would say both are problematic.
Both are associated with a higher risk of exposure
to some carcinogens that you've made in your flame.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
- You have them all the time. - Yeah.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
[GRANT] By now, I'm hoping you've got the idea
that meat isn't particularly good for you.
But there's another aspect of meat that's long been lauded
by the meat industry as a strength,
but in actual fact, it's turning out to be a real liability.
Professor Frizelle deals with the butt end of bowel cancer.
The villain is what gives meat the red color, Heme iron.
[FRANK] So, bowel cancer is endemic in the population,
where the blue line is Australia and New Zealand.
And if you can see that New Zealand and Australia
are well ahead of the rest of the world, okay.
And we see Japan has more or less doubled
over a period of ten years.
And now we see other countries such as Thailand
do the same thing, climb up.
And to double the rate of bowel cancer in a country,
it doesn't mean it's a genetic change.
It means it's an environmental change.
But a lot of bowel cancer, vast majority of bowel cancer
probably about 90%, it just happens.
Well, we think there is a bacterial cause
that causes a low-grade inflammation in the gut.
The important environmental influence
is what makes that bacteria become virulent
or become active, and that's where diet comes in.
So, if we have a look where you have cancer here,
the driver bacteria from here is here.
And there can be 20, 40 years difference to get the right environment.
And by the time you have cancer, those bacteria can be gone.
The environmental agent that makes those bacteria virulent
are things such as Heme, or meat, red meat.
And that turns those bacteria on.
And so it's more likely to be virulent
in the presence of a red meat eater.
- [GRANT] Heme iron's only from animal product, isn't it? - Yes, it is.
There's been a big change in New Zealand, and people in
New Zealand under 50, they've had a dramatic increase in left-sided rectal cancer,
particularly in young males. And the genes in young males hasn't changed,
- they're still young New Zealand males. - [GRANT] So what has changed?
[FRANK] Well, it's probably their diet.
[GRANT] Could it be as simple as just eating more hamburgers?
It could be as simple as eating more processed meat.
[GRANT] Yeah, but there could be other reasons.
It could be a combination of fat consumption,
could also be a quite important process.
We know that total fat consumption
has been linked with an increased incidence
in certain bacteria in the bowel,
[GRANT] Heart disease and cancer are our biggest killers,
and obesity and being overweight are major risk factors.
So how do you change to a permanent low fat way of life?
[MELLOW MUSIC]
Well, a trailblazing course
is the Seventh-Day Adventist CHIP program
headed up by Doctor Paul Rankin.
And their results are nothing short of astounding.
Chronic diseases like heart disease,
Type 2 diabetes, stroke, certain cancers,
there's overwhelming evidence that the whole food,
plant-based diet gives us the best option
for beating these diseases
and reversing the effects of these diseases.
Russell had been told he needed coronary artery bypass surgery.
He said to his doctor, "I'm going to try the CHIP program."
The doctor said, "Okay, I'll give you six weeks to see what happens,
then we're going to do the coronary artery bypass surgery."
Six weeks later, his indicators were excellent.
It's now nine, almost ten years since Russell did the program.
He's in his mid-70s now, he is doing fine.
Hawera in New Zealand, they've had about
500 people do the CHIP program.
We went back and we asked those who had done
the CHIP program four years and one month ago,
to come back and retest.
69% of them said they were still living on the CHIP program,
which means they weren't eating meat, they weren't eating dairy,
they weren't eating poultry.
And we found those who came back
still had significantly lower blood glucose,
their cholesterol levels were still significantly better.
Eleven years ago, I was 115 kilos,
I went and saw the doctor, my cholesterol levels was 8.2,
which is dangerously high, my blood pressure was 160/120.
My blood sugar levels were just borderline Type 2 diabetes.
I adopted the principles of the CHIP program, a whole food, plant-based diet.
I've lost 40 kilos in weight, I'm now 73 to 75 kilos.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
[GRANT] Mushrooms are like meat, taste like meat, it will.
You like mushrooms, don't you?
You don't want this mushroom.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
Ian would be a typical Kiwi middle-aged man
and six weeks on the CHIP program gave him results
that any doctor would be amazed at.
- I was 104 kilos. - Yep.
And by the time I was finished, I was 96.
- [GRANT] Wow. - So I dropped a fair bit.
[GRANT] And how long did you take to do that?
Six weeks.
- I'm on remission of kidney disease. - [GRANT] Okay.
My cholesterol was 5.7,
and by the end of the course, it went down to 3.6.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] If you eat too much fat, you'll get fatter.
But what effect does sugar have?
Dr. Beaglehole is a long-time anti-sugar crusader.
It goes back to a time when he had a hard day at the office.
And in the morning I extracted 54 teeth.
And I looked out the window and I couldn't believe it,
but there was a Coca Cola truck,
bringing their wares into the hospital property.
And I actually became quite irate and thought
actually, something needs to be done about this.
I went straight to the Chief Executive
and said, "Look, last year we did
250 general anesthetics alone on children."
He asked me what did I think we should do,
and I said, "Have a policy where no sugary drinks
are sold on Nelson Marlborough DHB."
He thought it was a good idea, and a month later, the policy was announced.
It was the first hospital in the world
to have a policy where no sugary drinks
were sold on hospital grounds.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
[GRANT] But sugary drinks don't only affect
children's teeth, they directly relate to obesity as well.
New Zealand has the third highest rates
of childhood obesity in the western world, the OECD.
And also, embarrassingly enough,
we have the third highest rates
of adult obesity and overweightness.
We also know that New Zealand has the third highest rate of Type 2 diabetes
in the western world, and we've also got
the third highest rate of sugar consumption.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
[GRANT] The sugary drinks industry is moving fast
to counter these statistics.
But even they can't avoid the truth.
There's actually new and emerging evidence coming out
that even these artificially sweetened beverages,
even though there's no sugar, but there's good evidence
that these drinks are leading to weight gain
and even Type 2 diabetes.
And the new and emerging evidence suggests
that when you drink an artificially sweetened beverage,
which is packed full of, say, aspartame,
it's extremely sweet, and what happens is that
the taste receptors get confused
and it thinks it's drinking sugar.
So it starts laying down the whole insulin pathway,
and there's good evidence that the fat
is actually being laid down around the midriff,
around the liver.
[GRANT] And being a dentist, Dr. Beaglehole
is passionate about teeth.
He has actually ended up having all of his teeth out.
He told me that he was addicted to sugary drinks,
and he had a 1.5 liter bottle of Coca Cola every single day.
[GRANT] And going hand in hand with sugary drinks
is fast food.
Fast food factors in quite a lot with kids,
particularly children and adolescents, young adults,
because they're the big consumers of fast food.
But for quite a significant number of the population,
it does form a big part of their diet,
and if that is a big part of your diet,
then you'll almost certainly
going to become overweight or obese.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] But you don't have to live with the consequences of processed foods and fat.
Terry has made the change, and has never looked back.
Well, I was overweight,
getting more inactive and just not feeling well.
[GRANT] So how much weight did you lose?
- I went from 111 down to 92 Kgs. - [GRANT] That's a big change.
Till eventually, I was declared non-diabetic.
- Is that right? - Yes, I reversed it.
- [GRANT] So, what did your doctor say? - Oh, she was thrilled for me.
Yeah, she said it was wonderful. Yeah, well, I'm 72 in December.
- [GRANT] Could have had me fooled. - Yeah, still ride the bike
as often as I can. I swim, I referee soccer matches.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] The phrase comes back again, I got my life back,
and Terry is a case in point.
[BEEPING]
Meanwhile, back on the Ministry of Health trail.
[VOICE RECORDING] The person you're calling cannot be reached at this time.
Please try again later.
- [LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC] - [SIGHS]
[GRANT] Cath's own story is more typical of most Kiwis.
Well, I guess I'm like a lot of people, especially women,
in that I've had struggles with weight loss.
I discovered that I was also a food addict.
And in fact, most people with weight problems
have some kind of food addiction.
[GRANT] So how do you help a food addict?
[CATH] The same way you help any kind of addict.
There are some foods that are particularly addictive
and those foods, it's much easier to just eliminate them.
[GRANT] That word addiction also comes up
in mental health, and in sicknesses
not normally associated with the food we eat.
Indicators of unhealthy diet
are associated with poorer mental status,
and indicators of a healthy diet
are associated with a better mental status.
So, a lot of people are comparing the effect
of diet on mood a little bit like an addiction,
where you're feeling kind of low.
They have the Big Mac and it spikes up,
but it takes them back down to the baseline low level.
We've just had a huge push
on awareness of suicide and mental health.
Diet wasn't mentioned. Interesting.
If New Zealand has the highest rate of teenage suicide,
which it does, then we should be paying attention
to the types of food that our teenagers are eating.
[GRANT] And a colleague's research has shown
that healthy food can be as good as medicine.
And this colleague has now gone on to even test
in a randomized control trial, a dietary intervention
for people who are clinically depressed.
And it has about the same effect as antidepressants.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] Epigenetics is the study
of how experiences in your past
can alter your DNA,
and that of your yet-to-be-born offspring,
for good or for bad.
Dr. Bishop is studying how your choice of foods
can affect your children years later.
The mother's exposure to pollutants,
dietary factors, stress,
is very important because that will influence
some of the epigenetic marks that are laid down
in the developing fetus.
[GRANT] So, the mother's diet influences the way
the baby turns out as an adult.
Yes, pre-conception and during development.
[GRANT] So a takeout here is to carefully consider
the foods you eat even as a young person,
as these can affect the adult health
of any children you may bear or father.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
Does your mum eat meat?
Yeah.
[GRANT] What do you think about that?
- Is that good or bad? - I have meat.
- You have meat? - Yeah.
[GRANT] Is that good or bad?
- There's a lizard. - Lettuce?
- [WOMAN] Lizard. - Oh, lizard, ah.
Dr. Bishop was also involved in a study
that required more intake of legumes and fruit,
and less intake of meat.
The Mediterranean diet is high in vegetables and fruit
and low in meat.
And low in processed foods.
We did encourage them to eliminate the intake of processed meat.
[GRANT] You did encourage them to cut down on their dairy?
Um, yeah, to cut down on their dairy.
[GRANT] So the change in diet wasn't that radical, I mean, they just ate a few more
vegetables and bit less meat, is that fair comment?
It was radical for some.
[GRANT] And what were the results?
We found that there was a decrease in DNA damage
as the adherence to the Mediterranean style diet increased.
DNA damage is linked with various cancers.
[GRANT] And in this case, prostate cancer was the cancer
- you were looking at? - Yes.
[GRANT] So, less meat and more vegetables
will help fight prostate cancer.
My father was diagnosed with a very aggressive form
of prostate cancer, and he was quite advanced. And so there was nothing
that the medical industry could offer him.
And... So, he was really determined
that he was going to fight this,
and so I helped him to look in other directions.
And one of the directions I looked in was diet,
and really discovered the whole food plant-based diet.
My dad changed his diet and he ended up living
for another eight or nine years, when he was only
supposed to live for another, I think, year or so.
[MELLOW STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] Which gets me thinking, if meat's so bad for you
and your family, why bother eating it at all?
If one has a good effect and the other has a bad effect,
why not just remove one and just have the other?
Why take the risk?
Because people enjoy meat.
[GRANT CHUCKLES] You're dead right.
Prostate cancer is New Zealand's
most common male cancer by far.
And the World Health Organization sees
a direct link with red meat.
I wonder what's the Cancer Society's view
on treating cancer with a wholly plant-based diet?
So it's back to the phones.
-[WOMAN ON PHONE] Can I help you? -Yes, my name's Grant Dixon.
Daniel was going to get back to me. Is Danie...
[WOMAN] Did you leave a message, Grant?
The first email was on the 31st of July,
which is several weeks ago.
He's been pretty tied up, so that's probably why he hasn't responded
to your email. Okay, I'll pass any details to him
and I hope he will get back to you the next day or so.
[LIGHTS STRINGS MUSIC]
[GRANT] In studying diet, it soon becomes obvious
that fruit and vegetables are a powerful antidote
to the many toxins we ingest daily.
There's really good evidence that a diet high in vegetables
and fruit lowers our risk of cardiovascular disease.
And increasing your meat consumption
increases your risk of a variety
of chronic diseases and early death.
There are lots and lots of compounds
in vegetables and fruit, that one way or another are beneficial to us.
You know, some obvious ones are things like vitamins.
Higher vegetable intake correlates
with a lower cancer incidence of quite a range of cancers.
[GRANT] What's the difference in the food bill?
- It's been a lot cheaper. - Really?
Yeah, I used to eat quite a bit of meat.
Essentially just whatever vegetables are there,
a bit of starch, and yeah, I'm good to go, really.
- [MELLOW MUSIC] - [GIRL LAUGHING]
[GRANT] Are you taking a photo of grandad?
One-handed camerawoman, eat while you film.
[LAUGHING]
[GRANT] Scientists are even now finding
that specific fruit and vegetables
help fight specific cancers.
And we've been feeding it to
a very cancer-prone mouse model.
And what we've found was that yes, the ordinary kumara
has a protective effect on that type of cancer,
but the purple kumara has a very much stronger effect.
The message I would find is that kumaras are good for you,
and purple kumaras are even better for you.
[GRANT] So, vegetables work hard to fight against cancer.
And I still would really like to know
what the Cancer Society thinks
about the plant-based approach.
Time for my weekly phone call.
[INDISTINCT ON PHONE]
- Is that Daniel? - Yeah, it is.
Hi, Daniel, this is Grant Dixon from Dixon Productions.
I've been trying to get hold of you.
- [DANIEL] Yeah, yeah. - I was wanting someone senior, I guess,
from the Cancer Society to have a chat with me on camera.
[DANIEL] That's not likely looking at the moment only because we, this is the
- [INDISTINCT] with stuff. - Yeah
- I'll have a look at it and get back to you anyway. - Yeah, if you can
give me a yes or no, that would be good.
- Okay then, cheers, bye. - Bye.
And their answer was no.
They simply didn't want to front.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
This apparent reluctance to consider new ideas
is something that Dr. Wilson muses on.
[LUKE] And you'd think this is huge news,
that you could reduce the rate of cancer just by that dietary change,
and you think that would be front page news but it wasn't.
And I think organizations like the Cancer Society,
the Heart Foundation, to some extent,
I think they just sort of trust that, just like I did,
you know, if this was real and worked for people,
then we would just be, then we'd be doing it.
[GRANT] And yet, they're not.
And so I remained ignorant when I had my heart attack.
And what about all the others that are happening every day?
I got a phone call saying my dad was in intensive care.
And I had to get home.
Two days later, he had passed away.
Young as well, my dad was 54.
My dad passed away from a heart attack.
So, it's something that's been on my mind.
[GRANT] And if you survive your first,
the expectations are, your second won't be far away.
Four years after my heart attack,
and three years after starting my plant-based diet,
I found myself back in the coronary ward
The bleed's cause was a standard pre-angio blood thinner.
[WOMAN ON TV] If the pain or discomfort is still there...
She's talking about dealing with angina.
I don't get angina.
In fact, I haven't used that spray at all.
Reflux all night.
They don't seem to worry about gastro things in this ward.
It's only heart things.
About to go into angioplasty.
It's all going to be determined,
three years of vegan diet, three years of non-oil.
Will it show to have had a beneficial effect,
or are they going to find that I need another stent,
or dare I say something worse?
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
My original heart damage was severe
and it's going to take time for it to come right.
The question is, have I run out of time?
[MELLOW MUSIC]
Just came out of the procedure theater.
Um, it went really quick, about 10, 15 minutes.
All my stents are clear, my heart's looking really good,
there's no damage, no need for any more work.
I got out of the surgeon that my plaque,
he says no worse than it was four years ago.
And that was a huge relief.
- Heart damage? - [GRANT] No, there's no heart damage.
And the likely diagnosis was my severe reflux attack.
They couldn't tell whether the plaque in my arteries
had lessened, due to the dye they used second time around.
And then there's the recommended foods.
And now, getting ready for discharge,
I'm provided with the Heart Foundation dietary guide.
It gives a list of healthy foods, that's what they call it,
and includes milk, trim milk or low fat, but still milk,
oils, spreads, nuts, avocado, every one of those
on my diet is actually forbidden.
And the diet I'm referring to is the Esselstyn diet,
one of a few proven to reverse heart disease.
And then, of course, you've got fish,
seafood, lean meat, and skinny poultry,
because all those foods are totally full of fat.
And the hospital menu was much the same,
and included Class 1 carcinogens, bacon and sausages.
One patient even complained
that his food made him put on weight.
And the vegan options were bland.
And that's vegetable soup. There's vegetables in the bottom of it if you look around.
My second visit to hospital was definitely a check
to my plant-based lifestyle enthusiasm.
But in the end, it did confirm that I was on the right track.
It also confirmed to me how much the medical fraternity
are held captive by the drug companies.
And reflux is what I've got.
Despite having a cholesterol of 4.1,
close to the goal of 4.0 for heart patients,
I was still given a truckload of pills to take home.
Helps prevent heart attacks and strokes.
Well, that's good to know.
My wife just reminded me of a story that happened
in the hospital just before we left.
This lady, young lady came in, and invited me
to join a drug program.
My wife said, "Isn't it a pity
that someone couldn't come to you and say,
You've done all these amazing things to get
your cholesterol down without even using drugs?
Maybe we should follow this guy and then find out what his secrets are."
And yet there's no money for that.
This is one of the things you've got to remember about these
societies and organizations, is they really think the way
that they can make a difference is putting more money into research.
But how can we have studies now on heart disease
that don't recognize the fact that we already have a cure for heart disease?
[GRANT] And that's a question I'd really like to ask the Heart Foundation,
if only they'd agree to an interview.
[PHONE RINGS]
- [DAVE] Yes[INDISTINCT]. - Hello, is that Dave?
- Yeah. - Good day, Dave, this is Grant Dixon here
- from Dixon Productions. - Oh, how are you doing, Grant?
I'm doing very well, thank you very much.
Good, good.
I'm just ringing up to double-check the reason why you,
the Heart Foundation doesn't want to talk to me on camera?
[DAVE LAUGHING]
[DAVE] Why don't we want to talk to you on camera?
Um... Well, we've discussed this at leadership team.
The decision was to not, not to go ahead with it.
Yeah, I mean, I am one of your patients, so to speak.
[DAVE LAUGHING] Yeah.
Look, I can have another chat about it
with the people and um,
I'm just actually flying out the door
to go to my son's rugby practice,
-to take him to rugby practice.-Good for you.
So I'll give you a call back tomorrow morning.
I'll just give you a call on your mobile.
That'll be great.
They say that the establishment's beliefs
only change one funeral at a time.
But there is hope, with a new generation of doctors coming through.
[LIGHT STRINGS MUSIC]
Chloe is an example of a young doctor
who has come across plant-based research,
and realizing how strong it is,
wants to take it on face value.
So I'm a junior doctor,
which means that I work in hospitals.
[GRANT] So you've been on the diet for how long?
So, that's eight or nine months now.
[GRANT] So you're a real newbie?
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
About a year ago, I started a blog
called Let Food Be Thy Medicine.
And actually through the research for that blog article,
I found out about the huge amount of research
that supported this way of eating.
[GRANT] And then the penny dropped. Why are we spending
so much time fixing sicknesses
we simply don't need to see?
A couple of years ago, I realized that we
were being the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff,
and what I was really interested in was going up the cliff
and actually helping to stop that progression of disease.
The best way that I've seen to do that
is through a healthy diet.
At medical school, we got very few lectures on nutrition.
In fact, I looked back and counted,
I think there was only about four.
And we have hundreds of lectures
about different medications and different surgeries.
We should be focusing more on how to prevent these diseases.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
[GRANT] What have we got here? We got bunny eating garlic.
Yum, yum, you like garlic, too?
Yes, you do, you're eating your garlic as well.
Yum, yum, yum.
Garlic's yummy isn't it?
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
Many diseases could be avoided
by taking out animal products,
refined foods, and oils from our diet.
And plant-based cooking experts such as Kate Broughton
and Aaron Brunnett will tell you how to do it.
Hey, welcome everybody. Thank you so much for coming. So what we're going to do today
is do the inspiration and share some great cooking techniques.
So, on the menu, we've got a creamy broccoli bisque.
We're going to be making a raw taco fiesta,
and our main is going to be a shepherdess pie,
which is a lentil-based pie.
So I was kind of looking for integrity and something that would take into account
the fact that climate change is happening,
there's a lot of environmental impact going on.
For me, it was actually curiosity.
I just wanted to feel what would my body feel like
if I actually took out the meat, the dairy, the cheese, the fish, and the eggs.
Plus, it's great for my health and it's also great for sort of compassion towards animals.
When you sort of throw open the door to the plant kingdom,
it's just this abundant and rich world
of fabulous flavors and colors.
It's a huge opportunity to accelerate
the healing in your body, and the benefits,
what you gain is so much more than what you give up.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
[GRANT] But sometimes transitioning needs some help.
And a young Auckland couple has built a business
with this in mind.
A company that we've started about a year
- and a half ago now? - Yeah.
I started watching all the documentaries on Netflix,
Forks over Knives, Cowspiracy, and Vegucated.
Yeah, we watched these documentaries and we just said,
- "Right, that's it." - [SASKI] Cold turkey.
Yeah, we're going to be moving straight away.
I think a lot of people were asking us, you know,
"What do you eat as vegans?" And "Where do you get your protein?"
And we just thought it would be great if there was a business out there
that could people make the transition
to a plant-based vegan lifestyle.
You have relearn to cook,
you have to relearn to shop.
Yeah, we just thought we'd start putting recipes out there
and doing the shopping and everything for everyone.
[SASKI LAUGHS] Yep, I'm the recipe creator.
[GRANT] Tell me about that, how do you do it?
Just veganize some of your favorites, really.
We prefer people to try
and make their own food from scratch.
We believe it's healthier than the processed things you can find.
And I think once you get into the habit of eating this way,
it's really not that difficult.
[GRANT] But big food is out there,
resisting this anti-processed food trend.
You would think that the key issue
in New Zealand's current obesity epidemic
would be what we eat.
But not according to the food industry.
Recently, Parliament conducted an inquiry
into the obesity and diabetes epidemic.
Dr. Gabrielle Jenkin wrote her PhD thesis on what happened.
[GABRIELLE] Well there were about 313 submitters to the inquiry.
Probably about 10% of those were from the food industry.
The rest were really from some members of the public,
but actually mainly from health organizations.
By far overwhelmingly, the submissions argued
for increasing regulation in all areas of food policy
to reduce obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
The findings from the inquiry did recognize
most of the public health type arguments
in favor of regulation.
But it fell down at the point of being turned into policy.
It basically ignored what the health select committee found
and recommended, except in the area of schools.
- [GRANT] Yeah, and exercise. - [GABRIELLE] Yeah.
The food industry have always put forward
food is not constituted as the problem,
actually, it's exercise.
So, as long as we exercise, we can eat whatever we like,
which, of course, we know is not true.
[GRANT] So, the 10% of submitters from the industry
outweighed the 90% of submitters from the public?
Absolutely, so it was a democratic process
but not a democratic outcome.
And big business have deep pockets,
and they will go into risk protection mode,
they will go on the attack, on the counter-attack.
We saw it in New Zealand, actually even in the 90s,
when the Public Health Commission,
which was a newly minted commission
to support public health in New Zealand,
dared to mention taxes on unhealthy food,
and the big vested interests came in,
and the Public Health Commission was disbanded overnight.
As long as we are framing the problem
as the obesity epidemic,
the problem becomes individual obese people.
If we frame the problem as unhealthy food,
you have immediately got a different solution
that's suggested by that.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
[GRANT] And thus the need for legislation.
The real issue isn't the consumer,
it's the foods that are being sold to us.
There is really good evidence there that the food industry
knowingly manipulates the fat,
salt and sugar content of their products
uh, to make it highly palatable,
um, one could even say, perhaps addictive.
[GRANT] The big companies must know they're actually making people fat
by selling their food, is that ethical?
Uhm, it's profitable.
[GRANT] And then, true to his word,
Dave from the Heart Foundation returned my call.
[DAVE] Grant Dixon, Dave Munro here, Heart Foundation.
[GRANT] Again, they declined my request
for an on camera interview, but then we got chatting.
[DAVE] Probably the first thing to say is that
we don't want to be portrayed in a way
that looks like we are telling people to eat a certain way.
[GRANT] But surely, not telling people how to eat
is like only shouting helpful hints to a drowning person,
when what you should do is throw in a life preserver.
And then we got onto the supposed nutritional value of eggs.
But talking about eggs for a moment, if I may.
I'm a bit confused about the Heart Foundation's policy
on six eggs a week for people with heart disease.
One egg is pretty much
your total cholesterol limit for the day.
Clearly, cholesterol is not the issue.
Well, no, no, cholesterol is definitely the issue.
And this is where the Heart Foundation
has fiddled the science.
They argue that eggs won't make much difference
to the larger cholesterol fire.
But surely, more cholesterol can only make things worse.
One way or another, cholesterol ends up getting laid down
in the arteries, and the arteries end up being blocked.
And that's what causes people to have heart attacks.
[GRANT] While it's true that much of our cholesterol
is produced by our body, significant amounts
still enter our bloodstream through our food.
And eggs are the largest source of cholesterol in our diet.
[DAVE] Yeah, I'd say that saturated fat
would be the one impacting on your blood lipids.
[GRANT] Well, for the record, one egg yolk
has more than twice the saturated fat as rump steak,
and more saturated fat than bacon.
So, if they won't take cholesterol seriously,
what about cholesterol being absorbed
a lot more in the presence of saturated fat?
But people eat eggs with bacon,
that's what they do, they have bacon and eggs.
[DAVE] Well, Grant, they don't have to.
For example, they can hard boil an egg, and they can...
But you don't tell people not to eat bacon and eggs.
That's the point I'm making...
[DAVE] You're saying that we should be more overt in telling people
- to not have bacon with eggs? - Totally. With eggs.
- That's right, because it's very dangerous. - Yeah, yeah.
- Ow! - He bite you?
He bite me.
Well, don't put your hand in his face.
And in they go.
And to bed for the night.
And a final comment or two on eggs.
The American Dietary Guidelines
clearly state that we should eat
as little dietary cholesterol as possible.
And in the U.S., some 90% of the research
undergirding the Heart Foundation's eggs are good policy
was funded by the egg industry.
Meanwhile, back on the phone call.
You're saying increase your fruit and vegetables,
which I agree with, but you also say
have some meat thrown in as well,
and people like me end up with heart attacks.
Anyway, I'm preaching at you and I suppose I shouldn't do that.
[DAVE LAUGHING]
[GRANT] Well, brave thinking is what's needed here,
independent from food industry influence.
But finally, a breakthrough on the Ministry of Health front.
They've now agreed to an on-camera interview.
But New Zealand's biggest food producers,
Fonterra and Beef and Lamb, turned me down
or didn't return the call.
They really need to address these public health issues,
as for them, time is running out.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
Consultant Dr. Rosie Bosworth
is one of a number ringing the warning bells.
We have a very small window of time
where plant-based proteins will start
to come to market at prices that undercut
the traditional dairy and meat sector.
A lot of these synthetic meat companies,
or we like to call them cellular agriculture clean meat,
they intend to be at mass market within five years,
and competing at price points far below
New Zealand's traditional commodity prices.
[GRANT] So what's driving this rush towards plant-based processed foods?
We have the rise of the millennial consumer
who are interested in plant-based protein, veganism,
flexitarian diets where we're reducing our meat consumption.
We have the environmental impacts of animal agriculture,
and people becoming much more savvy
to the environmental impacts of the foods they're eating.
And we have a huge rise in investment
going into alternative proteins.
We're living in an era where
the animal is no longer needed.
[GRANT] So, what are the stats to back this up?
We're already seeing a rise of plant-based milk alternatives.
In the last five years, this has risen by 250%. And you compare that
to the dairy, and we're actually seeing, at least in the United States
or internationally, a decline in dairy by about 11%.
So, plant-based milks are going like this,
dairy is declining.
[GRANT] And what's happening with meat?
At least in the United States, red meat consumption
- has dropped by 20% over the last five years. - That's huge.
That's huge. Europe is expecting by 2030, to have 35% of all meat
on the market being an alternative protein.
And we'll reach a point of scale where these companies
are able to produce meats in such vast quantities
on the very fringes of our city, that will come
and undercut any form of the lowest value commodity price.
And at that point, dare I say it that it's game over
for traditional animal agriculture.
- So that's a worry. - It's a big worry.
[PLAYFUL MUSIC]
[GRANT] And also slow to change has been the official line
on how to avoid serious sickness and heart disease.
It's been a long time coming,
but I've finally got my interview
with the Ministry of Health.
And after some, should I say, softening up questions,
we got straight to the point.
Our recommendation is that people don't eat
any more than 500 grams of cooked red meat per week,
and also to limit processed meat.
So, you're really actually saying,
meat only once or twice a week?
Red meat, yes.
- 'Cause pork's red meat as well. - Yes.
So, you still are comfortable with people
eating processed meat?
I think a number of the processed meats
are a common part of New Zealanders' diet,
such as sausages, ham, and so on,
and so we need to be, you know, fair and reasonable.
[GRANT] There was a time we were fair and reasonable
about cigarette smoking, too.
And then we moved on to a Ministry-funded program.
Healthy Families New Zealand
is actually a community initiative
that's operating in ten high-need communities around New Zealand.
Yeah, I had a quick look at that and I noticed
that the Southland region had a program
about how to prepare a healthy Sausage Sizzle.
And they came up with ways of, I think, swapping out butter
for margarine and using healthier bread for instance,
but they still had sausages.
Isn't that a problem?
- [ELIZABETH] Well, do you think we should ban sausages? - Yes. Yes, I do.
Well, I don't think that's going to happen in New Zealand.
So, shouldn't we claim the high ground?
Yeah, and we communicate that information.
What we're doing is funding organizations,
such as the Heart Foundation, to work with the industry,
to make sausages healthier.
But it's not quite the same, is it? I mean, we're talking about something
that will give people cancer, probably bowel cancer.
I mean it's serious stuff.
- No, but we've said limit the amount. - Limit.
Well, I guess if they took me seriously,
there'd be rioting in the streets.
But one day.
And then I got onto my hobby horse.
Let me tell you my story.
Seven years ago, I had a heart attack.
I was 58 years of age.
Two years before the heart attack,
I asked him, "What can I do about it?"
He went away. A month later, he rang me up,
only time I've been rung up by a doctor.
And he said to me, "Grant, I've looked into it,
Two years later, they're wanting to cut my chest open,
give me a heart bypass, I've got four stents now.
That all could have been avoided if a body like your body
gave good, positive, "Don't eat red meat,
don't eat processed foods, don't eat high fat products."
I think that we know that that's likely
to have reduced your risk, but I don't know that we know
that it's definitely going to prevent it in all cases.
I was eating the Ministry of Health recommended diet.
My wife is an excellent cook. My doctor congratulated her on how low my cholesterol was.
My cholesterol was hovering around five at the time,
which was supposed to be good.
It's now 3.2.
It needs to be a lot lower. Don't you...
It's not just about cholesterol though.
No, but it's a good marker about where your health is,
surely around your heart and your arteries and so forth.
My point is, the Ministry has a responsibility
to tell the public the truth.
And the truth is, you have to be a lot more severe
in your diet to avoid these ailments.
We're not doing enough, all these sicknesses we've got,
all these high percentages.
Yeah, but we also, on the other hand, see
that life expectancy's increasing.
Yes, there is always something that can be improved,
but there are also positive things going on.
[GRANT] Will the Ministry of Health walk away
from what is now undeniable evidence?
Or will we have the first government in the world
to stand up to big-food and big-medicine?
We have a simple choice, what's best for public health,
or what's best for private profits.
We can't have both.
In a former time, with my heart condition,
I would have been told to go home and get ready to die.
But now, my health is fantastic,
far better than many of my peers.
I feel good, I look good, my bloods are great,
and I don't take statins,
and I run 60 kilometers a month.
[BRIGHT MUSIC]
I'm one of thousands who've also discovered the truth,
and who no longer believe the big fat lie.
[BRIGHT MUSIC]
What would you like to say to Kiwis about their diet?
Our very high meat-based diet is literally killing us.
I mean, meat's not a required part of anybody's diet.
Beware of what you eat, think about it carefully.
When we know that heart disease can be reversed,
that needs to be stated as a fact,
so that when people do want to change their lifestyle
in that way, then they know that the information's there.
So why isn't this taught in medical school?
This is a reality, we can reverse heart disease with diet.
I should be telling people to eat this way. I should be eating this way,
everybody should be eating this way for our long-term health.
Instead of just saying, "Oh, it's too hard and people won't change their diet,"
we'll say, "For those that do want to change their diet,
well, here's the information."
If I'd had this information,
I may have been able to save my brother,
and the dieticians hadn't given him the answers.
When I was young, they just died of old age. We've been fooled.
And the World Health Organization actually highlights
the benefits of a whole food plant-based diet.
So why would we have to go through the middle animal?
Why not just go straight to the source
of where nutrition comes from?
Eat as many types of vegetables
and colors of vegetables as you can.
Keep your fiber content up.
Try it for a month, without your dairy, without your meat,
without your poultry, without your eggs, without your fish, and see the change it can make.
And just give it a go, just pencil out a couple of weeks.
You're not going to die. You actually probably are going to enjoy it.
I've lost 12 kilos, I feel better, I think better,
I feel like my body is much more harmonized.
[GRANT] Someone told me you're a vegetarian, is that right?
- Yes. - [GRANT CHUCKLES] Why?
It's for moral reasons basically, I won't kill animals.
[GRANT] I'm a whole foods, plant-based person.
- Same. - Are you now? Why are you?
Oh, all... The evidence is unequivocal in terms of diet having such a big impact.
As long as you have enough patience and discipline
and commitment, amazing things happen.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]