Forks Over Knives

Editor's Note Documentary filmmaker Lee Fulkerson explores the possibility that so-called "diseases of affluence," such as heart disease, can be reversed by simply adjusting our diets to include less processed and animal-based foods. Back in the 1960s, Cornell University nutritional scientist Dr. T. Colin Campbell was working to find a way to feed the citizens of impoverished Third World nations when a trip to the Philippines forever changed the way he thought about food consumption. There, he discovered that the rates of liver cancer among affluent children who subsisted on diets rich in animal-based foods were notably higher than in children consuming plant-based diets. Meanwhile, surgeon Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, head of the Breast Cancer Task Force at Cleveland Clinic, was also discovering that many of the diseases he was seeing in patients were practically nonexistent in areas of the world where people were primarily consuming plant foods. Several subsequent investigations by the researchers (who would not meet each other until the 1980s), including a groundbreaking study in China by Dr. Campbell, led them to the revelation that a whole-food, plant-based diet could prevent, and even reverse, such degenerative conditions as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. In this film, Fulkerson examines Dr. Campbell's and Dr. Esselstyn's theories by following the two doctors' individual, yet very similar, story arcs, from their farm-based upbringings to their astounding discoveries. The film also records the experiences of a group of patients suffering from chronic maladies as they participate in an experiment in which their diets are substantially altered and wholesome, plant-based food is, essentially, used as medicine.

	Lee Fulkerson - Screenwriter
	Ramon Balcazar - Composer
	Mac Danzig - Host
	Joey Aucoin - Host
	Neal Barnard - Host
	Gene Baur - Host
	Brantley-Nation, San'Dera - Host
	Junshi Chen - Host
	Lee Fulkerson - Director

Los Angeles Times
"[A] richly inspiring and informative documentary....[An] important and heartening documentary." 05/06/2011

New York Times
"Mr. Fulkerson bites into the global consequences of our food choices and the extent of corporate influence on our official nutrition guidelines....By the time we're introduced to the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed convictions of a few recent converts to veganism, the atmosphere is positively giddy." 05/05/2011

Entertainment Weekly
"[T]his exploration of the health benefits of a 'plant-based diet' is so scrupulously researched and argued that only a fool would ignore its findings." 05/13/2011

Chicago Sun-Times
3 stars out of 4 -- "Here is a film that could save your life....It centers on the work of famed nutritionists Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic." 05/11/2011