Forks Over Knives

When I started this challenge to get healthier through a better diet and exercise, a friend of mine mentioned a few documentaries that were very powerful in hammering home the grave consequences of the Western Diet -- a diet rich in animal proteins, dairy, refined grains, sugars and processed foods. One of the documentaries, "Forks Over Knives", has some staggering statistics that demonstrate the global impact of nutrition over the centuries. For example, the average American is 23 pounds overweight with forty-percent falling into the obese category. I myself, at 5 ft. 7 in. and 190 pounds am on the overweight/obese borderline. This year, 460,000 women will die of heart disease and stroke and we are seeing dramatic increases in diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and prostate cancer. Diabetes and hypertension are becoming diagnosed in children as young as four with one in every four preschoolers reaching obesity. This generation may well be the first generation of children who are outlived by their parents.

The United States spends 2.2 trillion dollars each year in health care, five times the budget for national defense and half of the US population is taking some type of prescription drug. Every minute, a person dies of heart disease....you get the picture. This 90-minute documentary is well-worth your time to watch. It is available on DVD, Netflix online and Hulu Plus.

"Let food by thy medicine." -- Hippocrates

"The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition." -- Thomas Edison