The Magic Pill Page #9

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This is a randomized

control trial

published

in 2008 by Dr. Phinney.

These are expensive trials,

and there's no money to do it.

He does not get

funding from the National

Institute of Health.

He has to go and raise

this money himself.

This is the evidence.

He's putting people

with a metabolic syndrome--

half of them

on a high-carbohydrate,

low-fat diet,

and the other group

on a high-fat ketogenic diet.

Look at the results.

Body mass and abdominal fat:

high fat outperforms

high-carbohydrate,

low-fat diet.

Triglycerides--

one of the key markers

of metabolic syndrome--

down 50% on the high-fat diet.

[Kate]

We tend to over-consume

carbohydrate in this country

because it's addicting,

but also because we produce it

in ridiculous amounts.

If you fly

from New York to L.A.,

the majority of what

you're flying over--

all those little circles

and squares on the ground--

that's America pumping out

carbohydrate as fast as it can.

That's the 30,000 foot view,

that's what's happening,

and that's reflected

in our grocery stores.

Now here's the HDLC,

which we are all taught

is the "good cholesterol."

What we're not

told is when you eat

a high-carbohydrate diet,

your good cholesterol

comes down.

And you go on a high-fat diet,

HDL cholesterol goes up!

[Nora] There isn't

a single multinational

corporation on planet Earth

that wouldn't stand

to profit from every man,

woman, and child consuming

a carbohydrate-based diet.

The very particles that

are damaging our arteries

are increased

on a high-carbohydrate diet

and reduced on a high-fat diet.

It's incredibly cheap

to produce.

It's highly profitable,

and it keeps you

perpetually hungry.

What could be more perfect?

[Noakes laughs]

Now, this is even

more remarkable.

Saturated fatty acids

in the bloodstream

which greater your risk

of heart attack.

Now you eat more saturated fat,

and the saturated fatty acids

in the bloodstream go down.

[Nora]

Pharmaceutical companies

are profiting from this.

Weight-loss industry's

profiting from this.

Undertakers are

making out like bandits.

About the only people

that aren't profiting

from all of this are--

are the rest of us.

[Barry]

All right, this is

what it looks like

when a yuppie tries

to approach a couple

of cows on a farm.

The biggest drawback

was the budget,

because it's very expensive

to eat healthy.

One of the ideas

we threw against the wall,

and it actually stuck was

that we were going to buy

a grass-fed cow.

A whole cow.

Emma, why don't you go

with Mom-mom to pet the cows?

We saved over $400.

[Nora]

For tens of millions of years,

long before we ever came along,

grasslands and ruminants

co-evolved.

Cattle are basically

designed to eat one thing

and one thing only,

fresh green grass.

Check it out! Yeah, buddy!

Grass-fed meat.

[Debbie]

I've got hamburger.

I've got T-bone steaks,

porterhouse steaks.

I've got liver.

I didn't like it as a kid,

but I thought,

"It came with the cow,

so I'm gonna see what

we can do with it."

The butcher, he's like,

"Oh, you got bones

for your dog, huh?"

[laughs] We're like,

"No, they're for us." Like--

[Nora] We used

to have 40 more species

of large herbivores

roaming across North America

before the end

of the last ice age,

and we had 60 million bison

thundering

across the Great Plains.

Today we have

60 million cattle

that are populating feedlots.

You know,

grain feeding of animals.

[cows mooing]

And what do grains

do to cattle?

They fatten them up.

We could take

a hint from that.

Roughly 97%

of all the meat produced today

is produced in these feedlots.

-[women] For the animals!

-[men] Go vegan!

-[women] For health!

-[men] Go vegan!

[Nora]

And where we hear passionate

vegetarians and vegans

and animal rights advocates

screaming about how we raise

animals for food,

I'm standing

right there with them.

It's wrong. It's unsustainable,

and it has to stop.

But there's

also misinformation

and misunderstanding

being promoted

by genuinely

well-meaning people.

What people don't understand

is that everything really hinges

on restoring natural systems.

[Robert]

Do you see that

happening in the United--

Like, can we reclaim

our Midwestern prairies again?

Is that possible?

It depends on how successful

this documentary is. Right?

[Robert]

You were-- You used--

You were a vegetarian.

Oh no. I was a vegan.

I was never a vegetarian.

I went from standard

American diet, vegan.

I think when I started

as a teenager,

I had very good impulses

about the world that I wanted

and the...ethical base

that I wanted to form

the actions that were my life,

that were going to be my life.

That hasn't changed.

So justice, and compassion,

and anything that

questions human hubris

or human entitlement--

those are the only values

that are gonna get us

to the world that we need.

The problem is information,

and with a different

collection of facts,

a different set of information,

I might have made

a very different decision.

If you want to reduce

your carbon footprint,

one of the best things

you can do is eat locally,

grow your own food

in your own backyard.

So I took this up

with a fervor.

I really wanted to do all this,

so I made a garden happen.

And pretty immediately

hit the wall of...

what do plants eat?

We're used to thinking of plants

as sort of insensate salads.

They actually have needs.

Well, I'm going to get

the organic whatever,

and I go to the farm store,

and I'm looking around,

and every single thing

that's an amendment

that is for fruit

like strawberries,

it's bone meal

and blood meal.

Well, where do I think

minerals come from?

Well, I don't know!

I've never done this before,

and I'm horrified!

I mean, I don't even

want to smell it.

I don't want to touch it.

It feels so unclean.

[Robert]

And where does this bone meal

and blood meal come from?

I comes from, you know--

from animals. [laughs]

He's like, "Where"--

it doesn't fall out of the sky.

I know this is

about dead animals!

It's horrifying to me.

What do I do?

I have to supply

what the soil needs,

and what the soil wants is

dead plants and dead animals,

and I can't take animals

out of that equation.

I mean, it's absolute hubris

to think we can.

That's what soil is.

That's how it evolved.

That's a thriving,

living community.

There are insects, and they want

to eat strawberries, too.

So either I'm going to kill them

or I'm going

to get some creatures

that will do it for me.

And I went ahead

and got chickens and ducks.

[quacking]

Again, this was

this just tremendous moment

of ethical

and moral meltdown.

So now I'm enslaving

these chickens and ducks

to do this terrible thing

for me, which is kill.

You've never seen anything

like a duck eat a slug.

You want to see happiness?

"This is what I live for,"

was what my duck said,

and, boy, was

she a happy little creature.

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