The premise of the movie is that a “ketogenic” diet, one that is high in fats and protein but low in carbs, can have amazing health benefits for people who follow it.
The film is the brain child of Australian celebrity chef, Pete Evans who co-created this movie with Rob Tate. It looks like they wanted to prove a point, namely our modern diet is killing us. I commend them for this, as there is something truly wrong with our food guidelines and the way most young people in North America relate to food. In his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” Michael Pollan, makes a the years after America was populated by immigrants their descendants have lost or forgotten their traditional ways of eating. In their place they have substituted seasonal, local, organic, traditional ways of eating for science backed, best practice eating…but the science is always changing and the average American is left confused and playing catch up.
The Magic Pill reviews some of the big scientific studies that got us into this situation namely Ancel Keys “seven countries study” which sparked the low fat diets of the 60-80’s.
In order to illustrate these points the film begins in East Arnhem Land, Australia, linking the common disease of the Aboriginal Yolngu, mainly diabetes and heart disease, to a western style diet. Most experts agree with this however they take issue that it can be fixed by diet alone. Interestingly the film juxtaposes the work of a charity (https://www.hopeforhealth.com.au/) who are teaching the Aboriginals to embrace some of their traditional ways of eating and who are seeing great changes in the individuals they work with, to the millions spent ineffectually by the Australian government on Aboriginal health.
The film also follows Caucasian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans who were all suffering from one or more of the so called ‘lifesytle diseases. These include type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, liver and kidney disease, asthma, and cancer. In addition the film also followed the stories of a young girl and boy with severe ADHD and intellectual development issues who were non-verbal and showed a lot of typical behaviours of being on the autism spectrum, which was very stressful for their families.
They were advised to eat organic, whole foods, eliminate processed foods, grains, and legumes, embrace fats (such as coconut oil, animal fat, eggs, and avocados), avoid dairy, consume wild-caught and sustainable seafood, eat nose to tail (bone broths, organ meats), and fermented foods.
That doesn’t sound too controversial to me. In fact I would think it is more controversial to eat food that is created in factories, doesn’t go off and is ‘enhanced’ with vitamins and minerals, I’m thinking of most children’s cereals on the market today!
To bring some validity to the movie the makers interviewed a slew of medical and nutritional experts most of whom I have either read their work or seen interviewed before. They include:
Dr David Perlmutter: https://www.drperlmutter.com/
Dr Rangan Chatterjee: https://drchatterjee.com/
Farmer Joel Salatin: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Cardiologist William Davis: https://www.wheatbelly.com/
Nutritionist Nora Gedgaudas https://www.primalbody-primalmind.com/the-magic-pill/
Professor Tim Noakes https://thenoakesfoundation.org/
One of the most interesting parts of the movie for me was how it included footage of the trail of Professor Tim Noakes who had a serious complaint about him filed by the South African dietetics association for giving Low Carb High Fat diet advice. Over the course of a year he clears his name despite all the resources this Dietetics Association put into fighting the case. Professor Noakes won due to the amount of scientific evidence supporting the low carb high fat model. On a side note I first came across Noakes’s work when I was studying sports science in the late ’90’s. We wrote an amazing book called “The Lore of Running” but shifted his research from running to diet when he realized the evidence wasn’t backing a high carb diet.
As the film progresses they show the startling changes in the ‘subjects’ followed linking these changes to their change of diet.
Since its release, some people have expressed concern about the message of the film, saying that it may cause sick and vulnerable people to throw away their medicines and change their diets. I spent a long time reading many of the posts by critics of the film and when you sift through the noise there was actually one person that all the critics quoted, and I think that was just because he said something shocking. This was Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Michael Gannon who compared the documentary to controversial anti-vaccination film, Vaxxed, and said the two were competing “in the awards for the films least likely to contribute to public health”. However he also commended the film saying,
“I enjoy [the] emphasis on protein because there’s no question that lean meat, eggs, and fish are superfoods” but added that exclusion diets never work.
This is the part I find hard to swallow, yes that was a deliberate pun. Most people are criticizing the film because exclusion diets are hard to follow. I agree they are, but surely the Standard American Diet consisting of high carbs and low fat is an exclusion diet of sorts as well! The only reason it’s easier to follow is that the large food manufacturing companies know that high sugar and salt push our primitive buttons and we find it very hard to stop eating processed food to the exclusion of fresh, seasonal foods. I see this all the time with my kids, offer them a cookie, with high sugar and low nutrients or an apple, they will take the cookie every time. In addition Vegan and Vegetarian diets are exclusion diets or sorts and millions of people have no problem following them.
If you are interested in learning more about why we eat what we eat, why food is so cheap in America and the health benefits of eating less carbs and more vegetables I would recommend watching https://themagicpillmovie.com/
I would also urge you to watch Food Inc which will fill in some of the gaps on the industrialization of agriculture in the developed world.
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